Earlier this week Xbox announced they were changing their home page, again. I haven’t played around with it, but it offers a good chance to have a chat about what kind of features people do want from their consoles.
Something that never ceases to give me the shits is searching for games through the PlayStation Store, for instance. Why, why, fucking why, does Sony insist on having a fullscreen gigantic set of letters that you scroll up and down one letter at a time, instead of having a keyboard pop-up and then a list that refreshes automatically every time you add a letter? You know, like a modern storefront?
On the Xbox side of things, a particular bugbear of late was trying to play .MKV files and have subtitles work correctly. The only option was to download an ad-supported app through the Xbox Store that was originally built for Windows 10 and Windows Phone. It looks like utter garbage on the TV, but I can get subtitles displaying correctly, which the Xbox’s default app won’t do.
So, tell us dammit. What features would you like your consoles to have?
Comments
28 responses to “What Features Do You Want In Your Console?”
1080p@60fps.
Really this shouldn’t be a difficult target to hit.
Factor in price, and it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult. The CPU is the biggest problem for consoles.
PCs have hit it for years now, and already consoles are moving on to attempt 4k without even mastering 1080p. I know cost is a factor but 1080p @ 60FPS isn’t a difficult standard to target in 2017.
Let’s see how the Xbox One X sells. PS4 Pro can almost hit 1080/60FPS so the XBX should have a real shot.
Someone somewhere has decided that the extra 30fps isn’t worth the extra hardware cost. That’s all there is to it. I hate that person, but I have a suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to argue with their math.
A modern Amiga
Not sure if it counts as a console feature but I’d love to be able to change my PSN ID. Pretty confident I’m not alone in this one.
Nope, you’re stuck with xxSmashMouthRocks69xx forever I’m afraid.
You’re an All Star.
Hey now.
Access to awesome games. Something which my PS3 and PS4 deliver on 🙂
My thoughts exactly!
A fast, response, lag and clutter free UI that doesn’t get slower with each “update”.
The ability to completely “switch off” things i don’t use.
This -^
We were discussing this in a comments section a few days ago, but neither the One or PS4 have gotten close to any of the 360 dashboards in terms of speed, layout or flexibility. The janky, slow loading pages are a particular bugbear as it feels like it takes an age to do anything;
Example, for a long time I’ve found the XB1’s black background particularly oppressive and dull (rather than the sleek I expect they were aiming for). Can you change it? I have no idea as the thought of having to navigate through the god awful settings menus and enter my password 50 times (even though it’s supposed to remember it where it can) just to see what options are in each section makes me want to bang my head on a wall. And don’t get me started on the PS4 store.
Other than that, adverts are irritating but then i occasionally like them when they show games i don’t know about.
But agree with ‘turning off’stuff. I don’t and never will care about Mixer – so let me get rid of it from my forced tabs. Same with the social thing – bring back the old friends lists without the whole app thing, or wall of achievements – does anyone care if Johnny got a cheevo for beating the first level on xxxxxx? Same with movies etc too.
Yep. 360 Dashboards were the best. They’re so fast and intuitive to use. Both the XB1 and PS4 have garbage interfaces that are slow to respond. Heck, the PS4 can’t even auto-launch disks on start up!
Heck, the PS4 can’t even auto sign-in on Startup and always has the stupid seizure warning. I just want to get to my games / movies as quickly as possible
That’s weird, my PS4 auto signs in on start-up.
Use rest mode?
But even when I power mine off it logs in automatically. Pretty sure there’s an option to turn it on/off in settings. {See: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/get-help/help-library/my-account/access-and-details/automatic-sign-in-settings-on-playstation-4/ }
I turn off everything at the wall when I’m done with it. You save a decent amount of money when you don’t have 4 consoles and a TV draining standby power
Ah, well, the price you pay for penny pinching is manual log ins 😉
Although you should still be able to set it to auto login, regardless.
mouse and keyboard support for firstperson, third person shooters.
The usb ports are right there for heavens sake. just enable them!
I would really love for people to have the ability to create and distribute their own UI mods. Sony’s UI/UX designers are absolutely rubbish at their job so it would be nice if someone who knew what they were doing could make something that let me manage my library and features the way I want.
Would be nice if the accompanying console app wasn’t broken as all hell and next to impossible to shop from.
*cough* Sony *cough*
I’m going to use the machine which is the best at running cross-platform games. Currently that’s the PS4 pro. I assume next year it’ll be the xXboneXx.
Though if they can’t fix their fucking bullshit UI, the playstation will probably remain my primary media machine.
Can’t believe I forgot to mention this earlier – updates!
Both of my machines are set to update automatically, yet it’s amazingly common how often one is waiting for me when I turn either machine on. The amount of time they take is insane too given their frequency (I’ve had four on xbox in the last fortnight?). It was fine back on 360
(although PS3 ones were a joke) when they were really quick, but now they take ages – when you don’t get much time in the week to play, 20-30 minutes taken watching a progress bar just sucks.
To add to that – i don’t imagine many have come across this – the way xbox handles an update if it’s released whilst you’re mid-game is abhorrent. I was playing Dark Souls last week and suddenly the game went off mid-battle and the machine proudly told me it was time to update, giving me the option of updating now or later. Worrying about my ‘soul horde’ I quickly selected later and returned to my game, naturally as i’d declined the update I was signed out of live and thus Dark Souls booted me as I was playing in online mode and it got grumpy. Ridiculous. Can think of much better ways of handling it than this – even a 2 hourly message in the corner of your screen nagging to restart/update would be preferable.
Consistent keyboards/input. (On Xbox One) The Netflix app has its own stupid thing, the Youtube app has its own stupid thing, just use the built in keyboard! It can’t be that difficult. In fact it should be easier! And it also works with the Xbox app which is extremely helpful. How is it that Nintendo are the only ones that do a consistently good job at inputs?
I’ve seen the Playstation store’s search thing and my god. No. Just… What happened on the day they decided to do that?
The ability to sell digital games when you finished with them could go to a highest bidder style sale
In my short experience with a PS4 Pro:
1. Patch notes that are more than just “This system software update improves the quality of the system performance.”
2. Let me remove icons/apps I don’t use, particularly in the TV & Video space.
2.1 If I can’t remove them, for the love of fucking christ stop moving the app icons around willy fucking nilly.
3. A store front that makes goddamn sense (although, I can’t think of any decent gaming digital store fronts).
4. “Smart” searchable settings. I get that OS’s have become inherently complex, but let me use simple search strings to find settings even if I don’t know the exact wording the manufacturer has given a setting.
One thing on the PS4: until a recent update the “streaming services” menu item just loaded a subfolder right away, below the bar of library apps and games.
Now it loads a new window – very, very, very slowly – to show me the app options. Why, SONY, why?