Xbox One Thoughts
So, I braved the elements, and looked a little stupid and waited in line for an Xbox One yesterday. I've had a bit of time to mess around with it and form some thoughts. I don't own or have even seen a PS4 in the flesh yet, so I have no thoughts here which directly compare one against the other. But I thought it was worth writing up a bit on this. This will probably also be a fairly long post.
Firstly, one of my major reasons for buying this was a lot of the entertainment features. Some of that didn't pan out as well as I had expected and some of it panned out better than I expected. Things that worked better than expected were Xbox Music and the ability for the Xbox One to control my TV. The part which didn't work as expected was the TV pass-through itself. This a slight disappointment for me, as it was one of the major differentiators for me when compared to the PS4.
Basically, I wasn't expecting the Xbox One to pick up and control my TV... at all. I was expecting it to control my cable box. And, it successfully auto-detected my TV even. And, it supports the ability to turn my TV and on via the "Xbox On" and "Xbox turn off". This would be great were it not for where the TV part falls short, at least for me (I haven't read of anyone else complaining, either because it is too soon, something specific to my environment or perhaps a fault in my particular console).
The hitch I'm hitting on the TV part is that every so often (and it is fairly often) the TV feed freezes for a second or two and then picks back up. This isn't generally a problem... but it would ruin the experience of watching movies and at the wrong time could ruin a good TV show even. And this meant not passing the TV through the Xbox One at all. Which all defeats the purpose of having the Xbox control the power to the TV. If you can't guarantee the Xbox and TV will always be either on or off at the same time this cool functionality actually starts causing problems. For instance, if you had the Xbox off and were watching some TV, when you fired up the Xbox it would actually turn off your TV... this is because the IR Blaster technology only knows to send the power signal to the TV. It doesn't know whether it is already on or not. So, all coolness there is lost because of the faulty pass through experience I'm having.
Xbox Music on the other hand is working pretty darn handily. I knew they were going to use Xbox Music but since I come from the PS3 it was still nice to see it was actually there. It even pre-synced any music I had downloaded using Xbox Music on my tablet and desktop since around the time Windows 8.1 was released. Which meant I didn't need to go manually build playlists and the likes. It is worth noting, a huge reason I care about this is because I subscribe to Xbox Music Pass. I wager this application may seem lackluster to someone who doesn't have that.
The next topic is a love it or hate it one for most people. Voice commands and gestures. I think die-hard gamers tend to be the haters. Both of these forms of input are unreliable to some degree. Many people will rightly complain that the command structure is a bit too rigid. But that is also important. Not rigid enough and it becomes easier to accidentally trigger something.
Last night for example, while testing out the TV pass through functionality, during a commercial I started talking to my wife about the console and it picked up on me saying "Xbox" at one point and start listening for commands. Because the command structure is so strict, I didn't inadvertently anything aside from getting the Xbox listening for me to tell it to do something.
The one point I will gladly concede is "Xbox On" vs. "Xbox Turn Off". WHY? Who thought this was smart? The commands are quite literally intended to have the exact opposite effect. They both serve the same purpose. But the language required to execute the commands is different. "Xbox Off" does NOTHING! It is small. But it is small and incredibly stupid.
But, moving past that, I find both the voice commands and gestures to be quite useful for navigating the console. While working in front of the TV I would skip songs and manage my playlists entirely using a combination of voice and gestures. Gestures are better for things like scrolling through a list since the voice command requires you to repeat the same command as many times as the intended item in the list is away from the current item, whereas the voice commands are better for quick simple atomic commands since they save you the time and effort of trying to get the Xbox's attention with your hand.
Within games however, aside from a quick dabbling in the free wave racing sport game I avoid it like the plague. I still think for tactical games voice can be used to great effect. And subtle usages of the camera can be integrated into most games in a beneficial way. But, I think these are primarily things which excel at controlling the console rather than as a precision tool meant to control most gaming experiences.
Gaming, so far has been impressive. I downloaded Ryse based on the gameplay clips from other users in the store (more on that shortly). And the graphics are just stunning. Though, to be fair, it wouldn't really matter how good the graphics are. Once you get wrapped up in a game you rarely stop and look around and take the time to enjoy just how good (or bad) a game can actually look. But, if you're someone who does care about those things, the console does appear as though it can deliver. Killer Instinct on the other hand didn't really look any better than that style of games did 10 years ago. So a lot of the onus to make games look good still falls to the developers.
Next is a feature I thought was really cool. I bought my Xbox One sans games. I wanted to get the console which was going to be the hard part and then worry about the games when I had some time to think about them. But, one of the cool things Microsoft has built into their store is a feature where game clips from users are available to view inline with the games. Meaning I don't need to write down a list of games I think I might like and go mining for gameplay footage. It is built directly into the console. And because of that I already bought a game... so Microsoft can feel confident it is helping people impulse buy. Though, it may also deter people from buying less than stellar games.
The store itself is a nice feature. So far, every game I can buy in the store I can buy online as far as I can tell. This wasn't true of the PS3. There were a bunch of games in the store but it wasn't all of them. I hope this trend continues. I rarely want to leave my house to buy a game.
And lastly is the controller. Having played the PS3 before I thought I would be completely screwed over by the locational transposition of the D-Pad and left joy stick. But I wasn't. Controller is pretty damn good over all. I'm still a little ticked that they don't come with a chargeable battery pack out of the box. It was perhaps excusable last generation. The Wii came with batteries, and I think the PS3 was probably one of the first major consoles to have a rechargeable controller. Now however, Nintendo (at least in North America) isn't even really considered a contender and that means that Microsoft's sole rival in this space has now been offering a rechargeable controller since its last generation of products and they STILL chose not to give that benefit to their users. Even if the primary reason for the price difference is the Kinect, for a pricier system this is sort of premium feature I expect to be present.
One of my first accessory purchases will be a charger... which really just makes me look and feel stupid and makes the console maker who produced this controller richer.
But, in general I'm happy with the system. People who didn't get lemon PS4's seem to generally like their platform as well though. So if someone were looking at this article to try and decide which to buy, I would say; are you tied into either ecosystem (PS Vita, Windows 8 tablet, WP8 phone, Xbox Music pass, etc...) or are their any titles which are or tend to be platform specific which are the most critical? Those should be the primary factors, with the games probably being the biggest (this is a gaming platform after all).
If you don't feel like there is any deal breaking differences for you on those fronts, then I would recommend the Xbox One. And I would recommend it because of the mandatory Kinect sensor. Out the of the mandatory platform specific features in the two consoles, Kinect kicks the living crap out of a tiny touch pad embedded on the controller. If there is going to be an exciting new class of video games on the horizon, you can almost guarantee it isn't going to be a tiny touchpad that brings it. I also feel like there is much more flexibility in the Kinect than a touchpad. And, because it is included in EVERY Xbox One, developers are much more incentivized to utilize it when and where it makes sense. And, as a double bonus, Sony has a similar technology in their PS eye, and even if it isn't included with all consoles, simply the fact that it exists improves odds that even by cross platform titles will utilize the technology.
This is a stark contrast to the touchpad where only PS4 specific titles are likely to make much if any use of the touch pad. Game studios want their games to be equally enjoyable on any platform. So exclusive functionality like the touchpad either need to be ignored entirely or only used in completely superfluous tasks.
Firstly, one of my major reasons for buying this was a lot of the entertainment features. Some of that didn't pan out as well as I had expected and some of it panned out better than I expected. Things that worked better than expected were Xbox Music and the ability for the Xbox One to control my TV. The part which didn't work as expected was the TV pass-through itself. This a slight disappointment for me, as it was one of the major differentiators for me when compared to the PS4.
Basically, I wasn't expecting the Xbox One to pick up and control my TV... at all. I was expecting it to control my cable box. And, it successfully auto-detected my TV even. And, it supports the ability to turn my TV and on via the "Xbox On" and "Xbox turn off". This would be great were it not for where the TV part falls short, at least for me (I haven't read of anyone else complaining, either because it is too soon, something specific to my environment or perhaps a fault in my particular console).
The hitch I'm hitting on the TV part is that every so often (and it is fairly often) the TV feed freezes for a second or two and then picks back up. This isn't generally a problem... but it would ruin the experience of watching movies and at the wrong time could ruin a good TV show even. And this meant not passing the TV through the Xbox One at all. Which all defeats the purpose of having the Xbox control the power to the TV. If you can't guarantee the Xbox and TV will always be either on or off at the same time this cool functionality actually starts causing problems. For instance, if you had the Xbox off and were watching some TV, when you fired up the Xbox it would actually turn off your TV... this is because the IR Blaster technology only knows to send the power signal to the TV. It doesn't know whether it is already on or not. So, all coolness there is lost because of the faulty pass through experience I'm having.
Xbox Music on the other hand is working pretty darn handily. I knew they were going to use Xbox Music but since I come from the PS3 it was still nice to see it was actually there. It even pre-synced any music I had downloaded using Xbox Music on my tablet and desktop since around the time Windows 8.1 was released. Which meant I didn't need to go manually build playlists and the likes. It is worth noting, a huge reason I care about this is because I subscribe to Xbox Music Pass. I wager this application may seem lackluster to someone who doesn't have that.
The next topic is a love it or hate it one for most people. Voice commands and gestures. I think die-hard gamers tend to be the haters. Both of these forms of input are unreliable to some degree. Many people will rightly complain that the command structure is a bit too rigid. But that is also important. Not rigid enough and it becomes easier to accidentally trigger something.
Last night for example, while testing out the TV pass through functionality, during a commercial I started talking to my wife about the console and it picked up on me saying "Xbox" at one point and start listening for commands. Because the command structure is so strict, I didn't inadvertently anything aside from getting the Xbox listening for me to tell it to do something.
The one point I will gladly concede is "Xbox On" vs. "Xbox Turn Off". WHY? Who thought this was smart? The commands are quite literally intended to have the exact opposite effect. They both serve the same purpose. But the language required to execute the commands is different. "Xbox Off" does NOTHING! It is small. But it is small and incredibly stupid.
But, moving past that, I find both the voice commands and gestures to be quite useful for navigating the console. While working in front of the TV I would skip songs and manage my playlists entirely using a combination of voice and gestures. Gestures are better for things like scrolling through a list since the voice command requires you to repeat the same command as many times as the intended item in the list is away from the current item, whereas the voice commands are better for quick simple atomic commands since they save you the time and effort of trying to get the Xbox's attention with your hand.
Within games however, aside from a quick dabbling in the free wave racing sport game I avoid it like the plague. I still think for tactical games voice can be used to great effect. And subtle usages of the camera can be integrated into most games in a beneficial way. But, I think these are primarily things which excel at controlling the console rather than as a precision tool meant to control most gaming experiences.
Gaming, so far has been impressive. I downloaded Ryse based on the gameplay clips from other users in the store (more on that shortly). And the graphics are just stunning. Though, to be fair, it wouldn't really matter how good the graphics are. Once you get wrapped up in a game you rarely stop and look around and take the time to enjoy just how good (or bad) a game can actually look. But, if you're someone who does care about those things, the console does appear as though it can deliver. Killer Instinct on the other hand didn't really look any better than that style of games did 10 years ago. So a lot of the onus to make games look good still falls to the developers.
Next is a feature I thought was really cool. I bought my Xbox One sans games. I wanted to get the console which was going to be the hard part and then worry about the games when I had some time to think about them. But, one of the cool things Microsoft has built into their store is a feature where game clips from users are available to view inline with the games. Meaning I don't need to write down a list of games I think I might like and go mining for gameplay footage. It is built directly into the console. And because of that I already bought a game... so Microsoft can feel confident it is helping people impulse buy. Though, it may also deter people from buying less than stellar games.
The store itself is a nice feature. So far, every game I can buy in the store I can buy online as far as I can tell. This wasn't true of the PS3. There were a bunch of games in the store but it wasn't all of them. I hope this trend continues. I rarely want to leave my house to buy a game.
And lastly is the controller. Having played the PS3 before I thought I would be completely screwed over by the locational transposition of the D-Pad and left joy stick. But I wasn't. Controller is pretty damn good over all. I'm still a little ticked that they don't come with a chargeable battery pack out of the box. It was perhaps excusable last generation. The Wii came with batteries, and I think the PS3 was probably one of the first major consoles to have a rechargeable controller. Now however, Nintendo (at least in North America) isn't even really considered a contender and that means that Microsoft's sole rival in this space has now been offering a rechargeable controller since its last generation of products and they STILL chose not to give that benefit to their users. Even if the primary reason for the price difference is the Kinect, for a pricier system this is sort of premium feature I expect to be present.
One of my first accessory purchases will be a charger... which really just makes me look and feel stupid and makes the console maker who produced this controller richer.
But, in general I'm happy with the system. People who didn't get lemon PS4's seem to generally like their platform as well though. So if someone were looking at this article to try and decide which to buy, I would say; are you tied into either ecosystem (PS Vita, Windows 8 tablet, WP8 phone, Xbox Music pass, etc...) or are their any titles which are or tend to be platform specific which are the most critical? Those should be the primary factors, with the games probably being the biggest (this is a gaming platform after all).
If you don't feel like there is any deal breaking differences for you on those fronts, then I would recommend the Xbox One. And I would recommend it because of the mandatory Kinect sensor. Out the of the mandatory platform specific features in the two consoles, Kinect kicks the living crap out of a tiny touch pad embedded on the controller. If there is going to be an exciting new class of video games on the horizon, you can almost guarantee it isn't going to be a tiny touchpad that brings it. I also feel like there is much more flexibility in the Kinect than a touchpad. And, because it is included in EVERY Xbox One, developers are much more incentivized to utilize it when and where it makes sense. And, as a double bonus, Sony has a similar technology in their PS eye, and even if it isn't included with all consoles, simply the fact that it exists improves odds that even by cross platform titles will utilize the technology.
This is a stark contrast to the touchpad where only PS4 specific titles are likely to make much if any use of the touch pad. Game studios want their games to be equally enjoyable on any platform. So exclusive functionality like the touchpad either need to be ignored entirely or only used in completely superfluous tasks.
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