Xbox One background music coming in the summer, at the earliest

Xbox head Phil Spencer announced that the Xbox One won’t be seeing background music until sometime in Summer 2016, at the earliest. Disappointing news to say the least. You can technically play music while playing a game on Xbox One, but only when you use the “snap” feature to snap an app, like Groove Music. The problem with snapping Groove Music while playing an Xbox One game is that it takes up a good portion of the screen and can be a distraction.

@TheEjderha83 Won't be before summer sorry to say.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) January 14, 2016

Playstation 4 is already able to play background music and the situation is especially frustrating for Xbox One owners, as the Xbox 360 can easily play background music already. You would assume that background music functionality would be a feature that Microsoft would bring from Xbox 360 to its next-generation console, the Xbox One, wouldn’t you? Apparently that’s not a safe assumption.

On the Xbox feedback site, more than 22,000 people have requested “Play Music From Apps Without Snap (Background Music),” since the post was created in June 2014. No clues as to how this basic and much requested feature slipped past Xbox executives, but they should make adding in background music playing a priority for sometime well before the summer.