Day-one Xbox One adopters have had their consoles for a week and a half now, and the warts are starting to show. Over the past few days, we’ve seen a surge of complaints about the new Xbox’s interface and operating system, and Microsoft is publicly promising today that it will do better.
We mentioned a few of the Xbox One’s interface issues, like its inability to show you how much hard drive space you have left, in our extensive review. Since the system’s November 22 release, Xbox One owners have compiled even more complaints about OS sluggishness, Kinect issues and party chat confusion. One journalist, writing for Edge magazine, published a scathing editorial today titled “Xbox, why? The baffling incompetence of the Xbox One interface.”
“Xbox One’s debut user experience is stuttering, clunky, and a serious challenge to Xbox Live’s long-held status as the premier console service,” Edge wrote. “Bluntly, they take too long to load, don’t offer the functionality that Xbox Live was built on, and are, inexplicably, badly handled by the OS.”
Some fans have put together a website called Xbox Feedback that lists complaints about the system. They’ve got a lot of suggestions: a controller battery indicator; a way to disable gestures; a more effective party chat system and many more.
Last night, responding to a Reddit thread about the Xbox One’s party chat issues, Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb promised that the company is listening to all of this feedback.
“I had a meeting today about much of this and I can say that things will get better,” Hryb wrote. “I can’t offer a timeline of a list of what [will] be addressed first, but we are aware of the issue and things will get better.”
In May, we reported we’d heard that Microsoft was six months behind where they wanted to be on the next Xbox. In late October, we reported that the Xbox One’s operating system was going through some last-minute growing pains. Today, it seems like the new console’s interface isn’t quite up to peoples’ standards just yet.
Comments
99 responses to “Microsoft Promises Improvements As Xbox One Complaints Increase”
10 Hour wait times on the support line doesn’t help either.
http://www.fool.com.au/2013/11/25/microsoft-wasnt-ready-for-the-xbox-one-disaster/?source=astgrsit0010001&UTM_campaign=gravity_au
The wait times are ridiculous for online help, but the rest of that article is pretty stupid.
If you rush out to buy new electronics in the first week you really have to expect that:
A/ Something might go wrong, and
B/ They could be very busy if something does go wrong and you want tech support to actually walk you through a repair job.
My European imported 360 RROD’d on the night of the Australian 360 launch (it was about 6 weeks old), I called Microsoft and they replaced it as fast as could be physically hoped for (with an Aussie console). Given the issues MS had with the 360 failure rate I’d very much doubt that they were LESS prepared to do replacements this time around.
If the disc drive is behaving like that it’s pretty clear the thing has a physical component that needs fixing, unless you’re stupid enough to void your warranty and risk destroying your 5+ year investment trying to repair it yourself on day one, the common sense thing to do would be to either take it back to the shop you got it from or accept that you’re going to have to wait a whole few days for a replacement console.
Seriously, what kind of advice did he expect to get from the online help and even if they did help, would you REALLY want to hold on to what was clearly a buggy machine even if you could get it running with a work-around?
Has anyone here ever had online support provide any kind of meaningful assistance to a physical issue with an enelctonic device?
“Turn it off at the power, unplug your machine, wait 20 seconds, power the machine back on. Did that work? No? Please put it in a box and mail it to us for repairs.”
This is 100% correct. Every time and sometimes for a as long as a year (or even more!)
But try telling that to someone. I wrote that I would not be buying either console for a long time because A/ Teething problems & B/ I’m a cheapskate and want to wait until the price has dropped.
The response I got was basically how stupid I was and that all those problems were a thing of the past, it just doesnt happen anymore. Right now is the only time I have ever felt justified reading how both consoles have issues and as I predicted (guessed) the Xbone has more problems than the PS4.
I think it’s important to differentiate between hardware malfunctions, software bugs and software deficiencies.
Going off very unscientific internet feedback it seems that the Xbone probably has more software deficiencies, as in functions that you would expect that are completely missing, although at the same time it probably does more stuff overall than the PS4. That stuff doesn’t matter heaps because it will be fixed in a few months.
I don’t hear too many complaints about either console having bugs, I haven’t had my Xbone crash yet.
As far as hardware faults who knows. Both companies will deny that there’s a problem and the minority of people who have issues will always be overrepresented in online forums. It seems to be disc drive issues for the Xbone and some kind of blue light thing on the PS4 as well as some issues with ports.
I mean even with the 360 which was CLEARLY f*cked it’s very difficult to know how many of them were actually faulty by %. All I know is I have 3 of them and only one works, and my brother bought 3 that were broken out of the box!
Around 30% of the first release 360s failed, according to good game last night.
Wow, my personal experience is that it would be much higher than that.
If I go off myself, my brother and my 3 best mates I think only one of us has a functioning console from the first year of release, and he upgraded to a 360S of his own accord over a year ago.
I went through 3, my brother went through 3-4, and 2 of my mates replaced theirs at least once maybe twice. Thats not including repairs made under warrenty mind you, I would have been through 5 or so in that case.
Honestly if i’d had to guess i’d be surprised if 30% of first release 360’s were still functioning.
I wonder where they got that figure. Microsoft would downplay the real number if you asked them and any internet polling gets ruined by fanboys trying to skew the result.
Damn! I had no idea it was that bad.
I still have my original fat PS3 and it’s going strong.
I have been emotionally readying myself for it’s demise for a couple of years now, but it just keeps ticking.
I won’t argue that there can be issues with new electronic products at the point of them being initially released – but that’s not something that we should automatically accept and excuse.
$599 is a sizeable investment and receiving an unready item is basically not good enough.
If I had plumped down that amount I wouldn’t be able to be philosophical enough to shrug off my loss as being a normal part of growing pains – I’d be mightily peeved that I’d handed over a good wad of cash in order to play games that also cost me a good wad of cash, and whose value drops by the day, and have instead being provided with a useless paperweight. I wouldn’t be at all happy.
If you pay money, you expect products and services that work in the manner in which they’re marketed. If they’re marketing it as an unready item that may fall over after 5 minutes then fair enough, but if they’re marketing it as an uber piece of tech that will blow your mind and has been created by those guys that have owned the software market for the last 40 years or so, and the item doesn’t work – then you’ve been lied to.
If you bought a new TV that just came out and it didn’t work – would you be ok with that?
What about a new toaster, or a washing machine? What about a new car? if you were driving along at night and suddenly the computer that controls your engine dies leaving you coasting down the highway would you just smile and call customer support?
The fact that we so complacently accept “teething problems” on a generation of devices that have had at least 8 years of development is bizarre.
Yeah. I really hate the attitude of being dismissive of launch problems. It’s not like we’re talking about the first run of a product from a mom and pop operation. “Oh, your $500 (plus games and accessories) device was broken out of the box. Boo hoo. It’s launch. Anything under 10% failure rate is to be expected. Get over it”. Saying that simply because you’re satisified (or aren’t experiencing the specific problem) is just being a douchebag.
The crazy part is you see it even in situations where the companies themselves admit they made a royal screw up. Sony weren’t standing there going ‘wah wah wah, it’s a launch, suck it up’ when those PS4s were coming out of the box broken. Microsoft aren’t sitting there saying ‘nah, it’s day one and we were in a hurry, piss off’ either.
No one is saying u can’t be upset but because people like to get ahold of things like xboxes an playstations and mod them copyright infringe on them and other thing before launch day what maybe 1000 consoles are tested and they might fix those issues and once it’s running steady they release the console world wide and sell millions of them thento expect a company not to have issues with some of them is asking for too much but what is wrong is yelling at those tech support agents and treating them disrespectfully cause ur product doesn’t work cussing them out for something they have no control over is not ok and people that do that need to take a good long look at it and see what u are doing
8 years of development….. yeah nah. And I suggest you to go out next time a big tech advancement happens in flat screen televisions and buy the first line of them. Tell me you run into no problems or disappointments and i’ll be shocked and rush out and buy one myself.
All of your examples are technologies that are not making such leaps. Toaster? Really? Have they done anything but add more slots to toast in the past 10 years? Washing Machines? If you buy a washing machine thats broke you are one unlucky sole, as those things have been around for decades.
A console that came out at a global launch date, and is the first edition of the technology, and software, will and always will have problems. Nothing is perfect at release, its when the technology has time to perfect itself that it turns into a toaster. And god i look forward to making some toast.
Just as a Random aside….I bought a BRAND NEW washing machine on the weekend-($550 Samsung Frontloader) got it home installed it levelled it etc- ERROR! Tried problem solving it-couldn’t -had to ring the service Dept, who were very helpful but no luck so they sent a service tech out today….Turns out there was a leak in an internal hose 🙁 So obviously “great” QA/QC on that part. He has patched it but will still need to order a new one. (We could have gotten a replacement washing machine but it is pretty difficult to remove and reinstall an 80Kg device into a small room).
And that’s not to pour water on your story so to speak-I agree completely. Seeing how many different OEM parts would be in each machine one of the parts manufacturers are probably a bit soft on QA/QC. Only time will tell where all the vulnerabilities are. Same thing happens on first runs of cars-but it often takes a year or two to show up that the gearbox is a bit dodgy or suspension doesn’t last.
We accept them because they are a reality.
Consoles aren’t those things you listed above, they’re consoles.
They play games and undertake other recreational tasks. If it breaks (like a car does) then there’s no serious risk to your personal health and safety unless the thing catches on fire. They aren’t regulated externally in the same way the motor vehicle industry is so it’s FAR less likely that something is going to go wrong with your car on day one.
The only fair comparison is to other high-demand electronic items (that’s basically only phones these days).
Nobody needs to be happy about day-one consoles breaking, its happened to me and it sucks. At the same time it is important not to let the nerd tears run too freely when they do.
It might suck for you as a consumer not having your new toy for a few days, but it sucks a lot more for the company selling the product who has to pay to repair the thing while you’re on the internet making 100x more noise than the 90+% of people who are quietly enjoying their new product. The Xbox 360’s failure rate must have cost Microsoft MILLIONS in warranty extensions, console repairs and other expenses.
I wouldn’t complacently accept “teething problems” except they have occurred with every single major electronics launch ever. That’s just the nature of mass producing ANYTHING. You can be annoyed by it, but seriously if you want a launch console what can you possibly do OTHER than complacently accept it.
So I’m expected to just suck it up when I have a problem with something I paid a lot of money for, to spare the feelings of a massive company that released a faulty product? We can’t damage poor little Microsoft’s reputation by calling them out on their shoddy design. That’d be unfair. We need to give them half a decade to make the thing, then another few years to finish it before we can talk about it because they’re special and they need a little extra time after they charge us $500 for a device they claimed would do everything and more.
Microsoft spent millions replacing XBOX 360 units because they sold millions of dollars worth of consoles without properly testing them in a realistic operating environment before beginning mass production. Microsoft admits they dropped the ball there. They spent all that money because they knew it was replace the units with a smile or face a class action lawsuit that would have ended with everyone being refunded and spending that money on PS3s. It’s as simple as that.
I think they did well with that response, but that doesn’t mean the XBOX 360 failure rate was even close to acceptable. Whether you want to hear it or not the XBOX One interface and built in apps aren’t up to scratch. I say that as someone who is really happy with his XBOX One, really loved the XBOX 360 and have always come off the XBOX support line satisfied with their response. I will stick with this console but they need to know they have to lift their game. Thankfully according to this article they understand that, but the fact they needed to be told in the first place makes me think they need this pressure kept on them.
Nobody at Microsoft is shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘launches? What are you gonna do?’, so I really don’t understand why the community feels they need to aggressively insist that everyone just shuts up about the embarrassingly sub-par elements of the XBOX One.
Sorry maybe I wasn’t clear.
I was talking specifically about hardware malfunctions of the nature the bloke at the top of the thread was whinging about.
I haven’t seen any evidence yet that the Xbone hardware failure rate is any higher than the Playstation 1-4 or the Original Xbox.
In that case I don’t see any point to getting heaps upset because you have to wait a couple of days for a new console if yours breaks or being particularly shocked that it happened.
It’s unfortunate, it’s annoying, but it’s also basic f*cking reality that some machines are going to have hardware issues that occur when you replicate X million of the things.
If you can name me another thing on this planet which successfully reproduces itself everytime without the occasional variance of fault I’d be impressed to hear it.
Complaining that they are ‘unprepared’ (as the article did) suggests that the guy probably has a completely unrealistic understanding of how electronics companies operate.
Microsoft would be unprepared if they sold every last console they had and when the expected x% broke they had no replacement consoles, leaving people with faulty consoles waiting for the next shipment in a month’s time.
It just hasn’t happened, Microsoft ARE prepared to replace faulty consoles as quickly as they can be physically delivered. I know, ITS HAPPENED TO ME.
They AREN’T prepared to give hours of warranty-nullifying online hardware repair advice to idiots who are in denial that their disc drive CLEARLY has a hardware fault and who, as games writers, really should know better.
I don’t have a problem with whinging about the shitty OS. I do the exact same thing. There are things they should fix about it and we shouldn’t give them a pass if they don’t.
Unless a console has a disgraceful failure rate (like the 360 did) I don’t feel bad for people who get angry that their launch consoles broke. It doesn’t matter which company makes the system, these things happen and sometimes you have to wait a week without your favourite new toy.
You’re saying that users should be prepared for and understanding of when their launch console breaks, but the companies that produce those consoles are totally fine to have no real system for dealing with faulty hardware, which is apparently totally unavoidable, in place at launch.
If this is simply an unavoidable problem that every bit of home electronics faces then it stands to reason that I should be able to walk into the store I brought my XBOX One or PS4 from and get it replaced on the spot regardless of pre-orders being sold out. If they know it’s going to happen they owe it to their users to be over prepared for it.
It would also stand to reason that early adapters would get discounts and bonuses because we are putting up with the rough patch, testing their hardware/software, while creating the install base they plan to use to sell consoles in the future. This is a full priced production run version, so why should I treat it like a free access beta version?
I’m not trying to insult you because you seem like a pretty reasonable guy, but you sound like the people who stood there saying ‘just get over it’ when people were complaining about dead pixels on their handhelds, LCD TVs, etc. Things don’t always work out of the box on launch, hardware can be tricky, but that doesn’t mean they get a free card to just shrug it off and let quality control go down the drain.
If releasing a million XBOX One’s means 2% of them are going to be broken on arrival that’s Microsoft’s problem not the poor sap who gets stuck holding a $500 promise of a functional XBOX One sometime in the future. Don’t ask that person to shut up because they don’t represent a significant portion of the install base.
Yeah, MS support has been amazing each time I’ve dealt with them. I litterally can’t count the number of times I’ve had my 360 replaced and each time they’re done it in a timely fashion. Furthermore they replaced a console I had that was well out of warranty, the issue was with the disc drive so it wasn’t covered under the extended warranty.
My other experience with them was with the FIFA hack, someone stole some of my MS points (thank god I had no payment method connected to my account) and they fixed it within a day.
I’m not defending those wait times, that’s just unacceptable, but normally Microsoft are unexpectedly good about that stuff.
I feel it… deep in my bones… the shitstorm is a brewin’.
Taking away the old game invite system was the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. Cross game chat and a universal method of inviting people to games were two of the key advantages XBL had over PSN. Without those there’s basically no advantages at all, hence it’s suddenly incredibly hard to justify paying for xbox live.
Does anyone know how the PS4 operates in this regard? can they invite/join sessions?
I believe PSN has cross game chat now, not too sure about game invites. Presume it’s the same as their old system as I haven’t heard any different.
i can speak for the vita, it’s got an easy game invite system, so i’d hope that the ps4 would too!
I’m fairly sure they just did the conservative thing and brought the PS4’s online functionality in line with the XBOX 360 with a few tweaks and improvements. Although this time they ensured they’d have room to grow should they need to. That sounds like an insult but it’s the sane thing to do. XBOX Live and the PSN didn’t need a total rebuild. They both worked very well so just refining what they had was a smart idea. Especially in Sony’s case where they’ve got the Vita to think about.
Yeah, this is definitely the case. I’ve never had a problem with PSN, the simple fact it was free was more than enough to justify it’s capabilities. Furthermore Playstation plus is a ridiculously good deal. I just don’t think MS can justify charging for xbox live on the Xbone as it really has no features that aren’t present on the PSN and there’s no possible way it can even come close to matching the value offered by Playstation plus.
Can I actually have a PS Plus user explain the awesome deal it is? I haven’t researched it enough, but all I know is PS Plus is required for online play (like XBL), gives access to free games (like XBL, though the titles vary obviously). What else does it do? I know that PSN allows you to use Netflix and such without a paid service, however I know XBL is or has done a similar thing.
Furthermore they are the same price are they not? I beleive they are in Australia. I must be missing something big, because they really seem like the same service, with PSN just being a younger network, due to being free beforehand, so not being able to put the same amount of money Microsoft did into the Cloud network, and expanding XBL servers to allow for dedicated server hosting.
I’ve had a PS+ sub for about 2 years now. The biggest draw is the auto-upload for save games, and the free full games each month. We’ve had things like Xcom, ME3, Uncharted 3 and the most recent is Grid 2. It’s very, very good value for money if you compare the amount of hours of gaming you get in the free games to say, a movie of 2 hours for $17.
So it uploads your save games to the cloud? Like Xbox Live. The free games vary on both consoles, with both offering full titles (Halo, Dead Rising 2, etc.). I don’t really follow them much as most of the games I already own. So am I still failing to see the massive benefits PS+ has over XBL?
@andrewvallis Too many reply levels.
I think the way the games are offered is different. If I download (and even if it doesn’t finish) a game from PS+, it gets marked as “Purchased” in the store for the life of my subscription. This means technically, in 2 years time I can go back and re-download any of the offers from this year for instance. I’ve got a massive pile of shame on the PS store because of this, but I have access to them all whenever I want. I’ve also heard the game selection is quite often sparse compared to PS+, but I can’t comment myself as I’ve never used XBLive.
@andrewvallis The difference is thus:
– Xbox live only recently started giving free games.
– 2 free games a month?
– This month is 7 year old Gears of War and some $5 indie game
– This is PS3 list for this month: GRID2, Guacamelee, Sonic Racing,
– Vita: SOnic, Guaca, GTA Liberty Stories
– PS4: Resogun, Contrast
– The above are ‘new’ games for this month. Current library is 15-20 games all up.
– Last month was: Metal Gear Rising Revenge, Jak & Daxter Trilogy, Motorstorm, Oddworld
Simply, it’s an insane amount of value in terms of games only.
What do you mean cross game chat? The parties?
Can someone tell me why numerous people are saying cross game chat is gone?
My friend and I have been using the party system to talk to each since release and a majority of the time he has been in BF4 and I have been in FIFA 14, we have not had any issues.
Not saying cross game chat is gone, just saying it was one of the two primary reasons that xbox live had a better party system than PSN.
I’m pretty sure PSN has cross game chat now, which is why it’s no longer something xbox live has over PSN. should have clarified that though.
Main complaint i’ve heard is the UI has been made harder to use in doing so. As theres no Xbox Menu popup now, it takes you to a whole new screen.
I really don’t know how Microsoft didn’t see the benefits of the new “Snap” feature in terms of the Xbox Guide, Achievements, and other things that take you to new screens when they could just snap them, and have an overlay of more information if you requested it, similar to the Steam Shift+Tab overlay.
It’s a Windows 8 thing. On Windows 8 it works pretty well, it’s a natural evolution of Alt+Tab, but on the XBOX One where you do a central task (watch a movie, play a game) rather than multi-tasking it doesn’t fit in.
Snap is a good idea, but needs to be used as a regular thing. It needs to act like the Steam overlay, but from the snapped menu, so you can still see your game/movie in the background. I would do a concept art if I had an Xbox One in my hands right now in order to get the screenies I need 🙂
Sort of a 3D snap? You could snap the way you do now, but you could also snap over and under the current ‘layer’, with the over layer being a smaller window that could be toggled on/off similar to the 360s guide?
Yeah pretty much. If you have ever used Steam or Origin on your PC it would be similar. Snap would act more as an overlay, instead of a “part” of the screen. It overlays the game, and can have transparent parts across the main part of the screen, with the “Xbox Guide” style on the right side “Snap”.
CUSTOM F*CKING SOUNDTRACKS
It was a major selling point of the original Xbox! I could do it in Project Gotham Racing 1, why the hell can’t I listen to my own music while I’m playing Forza 5?!
It *almost* works, you can listen to your own music and play games if you have a third of the screen ‘snapped’ to music, but as soon as you close the snapped side-bar it turns off. It’s such a f*cking stupid system and probably the biggest demonstration of how rushed the front end feels as far as I’m concerned.
The new dash is definitely flawed in that regard, but I can think of an easy fix: allowing snapped apps to be hidden while still continuing to operate. I can’t think of any logistical reason why this couldn’t be achieved (hell, you could throw in additional Kinect prompts like “Xbox, show/hide app” or “Xbox, show/hide snap”), and it’d turn snapped apps from being quite a nuisance to being extremely useful.
Yep, it’s such an easy and obvious fix I can’t f*cking believe they screwed it up.
Knowing Microsoft they probably noticed during development, could have fixed it easily with a button press, but decided that wouldn’t be Kinect-centric enough.
They’re probably engaged in an 18 month project to get people in 100 different languages and 500 different accents to say ‘Xbox hide snap’ so that the feature can be implemented with Kinect support. After which it will probably work about 60% of the time.
Pretty sure this should actually work right now, but the app intentionally pauses the song/video in the background. Windows 8 has a terrible music app, but it does handle background operation.
The same thing was evident in the launch of Windows 8. Background apps would be limited, which made multi-monitor use while playing games horrible (videos stutter, audio problems etc.) That didn’t take long to fix with the proper feedback, so i’d see a fix for these kind of things coming very soon. Afterall, as you said, theres many easy solutions to the problem.
Yeah it needs work to be up to the functionality level of the 360 os. But if we look back at the original 360 “slides” os and think about how much the current 360 os can do in comparison… I’m not worried. Get the party, background music (has to be snapped, making the game window smaller, for no reason) and memory management (I guess it makes sense seeing as we can’t actually use other memory peripherals yet) systems back up to 360 level and I’ll be happy enough.
Then get on legally streaming new, relevant content as soon as its aired via an Australian Netflix app etc. I get that there are legal issues being worked out as a result of TV interests in this country but come on… Harden up and take my money Netflix.
whelp, I’m glad i decide to wait.
While the complaints are valid – it’s still a good system. EG. If a game crashes it will dashboard instead of locking up the whole system. So if there are any games in your must play then it may be a good reason to pick it up – otherwise waiting is totally a good approach.
All the games I’m waiting for are coming to 360 anyway. When I decide that I want to pick up a XB1 (see: When my bank account doesn’t burst into tears at the thought), I’ll pick up those games for the new gen, but until then, I’m happy with my 360.
I don’t have an Xbone but I can remember the 360 starting out with an interface that was slick and easy to use, then got progressively worse as they updated it.
While I’m not complaining, you can pretty much project what the Xbone interface is like if you’ve got a current/updated 360. The Xbone dashboard is the next step in that downwards trend.
I see it as a platform for evolution, because surely it can’t stay like it is. I think it will be much easiesr for them to update on the fly without massive firmware updates once or twice a year.
To be fair the original 360 dashboard did barely anything.
Music, friends list, demos, settings and that’s about it.
I’d imagine that setup would have been totally unworkable with things like avatars, streaming tv/movie support, internet explorer, full game downloads, kinect support ect…… And I’d rather have extra features and a cluttered front-end than something like the original Xbox had that really only did 4 or 5 functions.
I actually didn’t mind the 360 dashboard in the end, I guess I like it more than the Xbone one at the moment but I’d be very surprised if that’s the case in 6 months time.
“Music, friends list, demos, settings and that’s about it.”
Honestly, that’s exactly what I want from my games console, without a single thing more. I don’t mind if they add other stuff to cater to tastes, but being able to customise away all the extra stuff would be wonderful to me.
I got my 360 a month or so before the original interface was updated, so keep that in mind when I say that I don’t look back at that original interface with rose tinted glasses that many do. That’s not to say it isn’t as you say, but nostalgia tends to elevate the positives and gloss over the negatives.
I have high hopes that the voice commands will make the difference. Console interfaces end up being cluttered because they try to cater for all the services and features. I believe voice commands is the best solution for cutting through that clutter.
Thats because over time Microsoft opted to distance itself from its own brand (Xbox) and try and integrate a Windows feel into every product they own. Hence why the XB1 looks the way it does and the latest 360 dashboard looks like Windows 8 LITE. Personally, I hate it.
Wait.. the slide popup was better than the Xbox Guide? Am i missing something….? The only difference i’ve heard thats legitimate is no customisation, and a slightly slower popup time (talking 1-2 seconds). Other than that it was more usable, more user friendly, and just looked better.That is what I call an improvement, and I imagine the same will happen to the Xbox Ones day one garbage in-game UI’s.
I don’t get the comment from Edge about it being too slow whilst praising how good the 360 dashboard is.
I totally agree the OS is barebones compared to the 360, but there’s no chance in hell the 360’s OS was quicker than the Xbone. The Xbone is undeniably quicker. And the video recording alone leaves the 360 for dead in comparison.
Agreed! This is pretty fast for me. I guess what isn’t as fast is access to certain things that were previously in the menu when pressing the Xbox button – like party stuff. It’s still pretty easy to access though.
Mine is lagging now on the interface. Xbox 360 UI is much smoother even after using for a long time. Not sure if it’s hard disc space issue or just pins causing the lag. I have 9 items pinned on my page now
Nvm found the reason. Apparently X1 goes into sleep mode instead of shut down and will need a full power unplug to make it smooth again. 🙁 wtf
You can hold the xbox jewel light on the front of the x1 for 5 seconds (waiting for a chime), does the same thing via a non power cutting/actual shut down kinda way.
So far my numero uno ‘problem’ is something rather esoteric – namely no support for a keyboard so I can type in my password when I sign in. Takes a wee bit longer with a controller.
Use smartglass.
But that takes longer too – you have to sign in on smart glass and then have it ready and waiting for you when you want to enter codes in. Used it myself a few times and gave up. Having said that though – I’m actually happier with entering codes than I was on 360. The D-Pad is 100 times better and my entry speed has gone up significantly.
I shall try!
Having a keyboard plugged in before turning the Xbox one allows it to be recognised – don’t know if it will work for your password though.
Maybe it’s because I’m using a wireless keyboard. Worked on the 360 so I figured it would work on the X1, but alas doesn’t seem to. 🙁
Ugh, I can’t wait till they bring out a chatpad.
Truth be told, I haven’t touched my chat pad on the 360 since pretty much when I bought it. Reason being that shortly after I got the MS Arc Keyboard and that’s been the quickest way to type.
I wonder why they couldn’t include voice dictation via Kinect in this. Maybe it will one day. I know it’s not simple, but the technology is mature now and quite usable.
I’ve become so used to my 360 chatpad that I physically feel uncomfortable holding a pad without one. The extra weight is like the embrace of a dear friend.
I am EXACTLY the same. My controller doesn’t feel right without the weight of my chatpad attached to it.
Then learn 😀 I can type using the Xbox 360 keyboard and analogue stick about as fast as I can text (namely because I make a few more mistakes while on a phone touch keyboard). its weird at first, but you can get pretty darn quick with it, even after they nerfed the Xbox 360 keyboard to have sluggish key changing.
Yeah it’s fast(ish) but nowhere near as fast as I can touch type my password.
Fair enough 😛 I’ve gotten it up to speed with my texting speeds, and the time taken to take out my phone and load up the app (I have a pretty average phone), wouldn’t be worth it. Be thankful for the plethora of options we have to choose from to enter a password 😀
I find it quite sillly that my xbone wont tell me how much HDD space I have. This is something I want to know and removing this information doesn’t make the system easier to use. Just keep it buried in the system menu like the 360. It didn’t scare away people then. It wont scare people away now.
It’s weird why features like these were not included. Ditto with a battery meter. My controller just died and I had no idea it was going to. Just stopped turning on without any warning.
I believe memory management is coming when they release the update that allows external storage. Parts of the X1 os are just not finished yet. I am watching this very closely as I plan on switching most of my games over to as fast a usb 3 external hdd as I can when the functionality is released.
Anyone would think they’ve had to rush these systems out in a few months … Just wtf have they been doing for the last few years?
past 8 years 😉
I think labeling Feedback as complaints is a little harsh and makes things sound worse then they probably are. It also dilutes the valid complaints, such as the noisey disc drive in.
But hey, saying the Xbone has lots of complaints will get more hits then customers raising valid feedback.
I’m really enjoying playing the XBOX One but the UI is just a joke. At it’s core it’s got some great ideas but the execution is just embarrassing. They screw up so many basic things. It’s almost like in order to keep the console a secret they skipped having anyone use more than one aspect of it at a time. As if they never actually had someone sit down and use it while it was connected to the internet. So many of the faults are glaringly obvious when you’ve got just three people on your friends list.
There are way too many aspects that the XBOX 360 beats it on. Get an achievement on the 360 and you press the guide button to bring up the achievement list for the game with the achievement you just unlocked selected. Get an achievement on the XBOX One and you have to hold the guide button, leave the game, wait for it to load the Achievements app, wait for it to load the achievements, go in, go into the game, find it in a rather… chunky?… list of achievements.
I mean it’s not a huge deal when it comes to playing games, like I said I love playing games on the XBOX One, but that clumsy, time consuming, bloated way of doing things seems to be the running trend when you go to do anything on the XBOX One. You play a game and it all runs smooth, but then you go to do something simple like check your friends list and getting there is like trekking through the Amazon, having to slash down trees with a machete. Then when you finally get there it’s more interested in telling you what your friends are doing than actually letting you interact with them.
My friends list might as well just be a random sampling of user trends on the greater XBOX Live service.
wow sad to hear so many pissed off. IVe had one problem with moderate Nat and it was a 20 minute wait on laptop to chat then it was fixed and i havnt noticed any other things i dislike. But i came from a PS Background.
These are just a few of the issues I have with the Xbone User Interface so far
-You can’t view, or manage what’s on the hard drive.
-It’s impossible to know which of your friends are actually online, for example it might say that 2 friends are online, but two hours later one friend drops out, you go to your friends and it’ll say something like “friend 1 started playing Dead Rising 3 two hours ago”, and “friend 2 started playing Ryse an hour ago”, but there’s no way of knowing which one of them is still online.
-Achievements are impossible to view while in game, you can view the achievement you just got buy holding the guide button, but if you want to view the achievement list, you have to dashboard out, go to achievements, and it will then show you that one achievement, you then have to back out and go back into achievements just to be able to select the game that you want to be able to view the achievement list for. Not to mention the fact that you can’t earn achievements if you’re offline.
-The Blu-Ray player is crap, for a start it’s not built in to the console, it’s an app, also been watching Breaking Bad on DVD, and at the end of EVERY SINGLE EPISODE it freezes in the credits, and I have to “fast forward” with the right trigger to get it to keep going.
Fix your shit Micro$oft.
Is that confirmed policy or is it a glitch that’s happening to some people? I’ve been earning achievements just fine and my internet connection has barely been able to hold together for 10 minutes at a time. It’s hard to tell because I can’t see any of the info on the XBOX website like I used to do with the 360.
I think they do unlock but you dont receive a notification? I played DR3 on day 1 during the small hour downtime and it popped next time I jumped on, I got a mate who receives no achievement notifications at all but he has them all? I just wish they had friends apprearing online notification, always hated it thinking it was an achievement on 360 but now I miss it, maybe just a different noise for that would be good.
I will admit I like that the idea of the notifications area up in the top corner of the dashboard.
I just wish I could set my own custom filters on this stuff. To me that would have been a real next gen refinement to XBOX Live. I want to know when people on my friends list come online, when they go offline, when a download stops/pauses, invites, messages, when I unlock an achievement and when I unlock a reward. I don’t care about who is playing what. That’s just me though. Some might want the opposite of that. No achievement notifications would probably be a popular one.
It would also open the door to a lot more annoying options. I’d like to be able to find a game in the store and receive a notification when a demo or full version is released. I’d like to be able to do that but with DLC. If they did it automatically it’d be too much but if I were in control I think I’d really like it.
Yeah, I mean FFS, it can’t even play DVDs properly without locking up. You expect *some* problems getting something at launch, but even the really basic shit is broken.
Im guessing there’s more to the “battery indicator” thing right? It can’t NOT tell you how much battery life is left in the controller, right…??
Yes, if you perform an action that would normally unlock an achievement, it will not pop (unlock) until you connect to the internet, so if you didn’t connect for months, you could potentially receive 100’s of notifications of unlocked achievements all at once when you finally connected to the net.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/games/troubleshoot-achievements-challenges
Ok. So it’s just the way the 360 worked except it does the popup alert when you connect to the internet rather than pretending the achievement unlocked and then officially unlocking it when it checks in with XBOX Live. That explains why my achievements take that extra time between completing the achievement and popping.
I had been hearing all this stuff about achievements not working online and wondering how it was possible that while my connection was constantly dropping out I hadn’t missed a single achievement.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I was watching a DVD only to press the menu button (thinking it’s Start and I can pause the film) and for the playback to quit. Doh!
Lucky it all can be fixed with updates
yes it ‘can’ but I think the source of this frustration is that it seems to be the norm these days…put out beta-broken-code and let us poor suckers pay for it and debug it for you…
Release your consoles at V0.9, give early-adopters a discount to put up with this shit, then V1 comes out at a premium…
haha yeah
a LITTLE bit like DLC. Are they just holding back the full version of the game and making us pay more later, or, are they actually creating extra stuff we can choose to get for extra$$
That’s what shits me these days. Half added pieces of software not properly tested or written just rushed out the door with the “we’ll just patch it later” mentality. No one cares about doing it properly the first time much these days.
hopefully by christmas they have fixed some of these issues and i will never have know how bad it was at launch
I was absolutely shocked and disgusted to hear they’ve left out some of the most basic features like parties, online friend notifications and battery power left. Is that really true? I cannot believe they shipped without them, who the hell thought that would be fine? Have the people who made the xbone even used a 360?
@dogman Sorry mate it wouldn’t let me reply in the top thread.
I’m fine with people getting upset when they are poorly treated if their system malfunctions, if they’re forced to wait an unreasonable time for a replacement or if the company refuses to fix a problem which is clearly their fault.
The dead-pixel thing is a perfect example. People shouldn’t have to put up with that sh*t, it’s infuriating to have that kind of thing happen to a product you just purchased and if the company tells you that it doesn’t matter (as some did) then that’s extremely shabby and people should get as angry as they want.
I’m talking specifically about day-one consoles and how realistic people are about these things occurring and how quickly they can fix them. If you rush out and buy a product at the same time as a million other people you have to expect that there’s a small chance that your system might be faulty and that for a week or two there’s going to be more people than normal needing customer service. That’s just reality, it’s not you getting a BETA console (although they will refine the system with time) it’s just the reality of putting together several million complicated machines and selling them all at once.
Often you CAN take the machine back to where you bought it and they’ll replace it on the spot. If not then both companies keep stores of spare consoles at distribution warehouses in major areas so that they can be sent out to unlucky customers who buy broken systems. Both Microsoft and Sony do a really good job of replacing consoles that don’t work as far as I’m concerned.
When my 6 week old European import 360 died on the Australian launch night I mailed my broken system to Microsoft AU and I had a new machine back no questions asked within a week. They didn’t try to weevil out of it (like your LCD example), they didn’t interrogate me about why I had sent them a European console which didn’t have a receipt or why I didn’t try to return it to the store I bought it from. They knew it would have taken them ages to fix the console (as they often do post launch) with so many having been sold in the past few week, so it was just “sorry about that here’s a new one” ASAP.
I don’t know reasonably what more people could want from a company, if it’s a hardware fault it’s a hardware fault. As long as they replace if as best as possible and don’t f*ck you around then I can’t justify getting too upset.
@aretokas Actually thats the same way XBL store works. You get a free game, you have access to it whenever you have an active Gold Subscription. Thats at least to my knowledge, I haven’t dropped my subscription in a long time so it may work without.
As for games, its mainly just preference. I couldn’t care to play Uncharted at all, but if I just got an Xbox and they gave me Halo 3 for free? I would jump at it (unfortunately again, all the good titles offered I already own). They sound pretty much like the same thing to me aha 😀
First of all we need to be able to play Battlefiled 4 with mouse and keyboard with the Xbox one if not all sell it and get back to my Pc !!!!!
That will teach all you clowns for buying Micoshit. They couldn’t code a fly on shit let alone a decent gaming console. Get a PS4, you will not regret it.
@stickman Fair point, though I’ll have to point out that aside from the PS4 games (of which Contrast is a “small indie game” as well, there really isn’t much new games there either. Sure they may not be 7 years old, but that doesn’t discredit how great a game, and I would say “essential” to someones collection Gears of War is. So giving it for free saves people spending actual money on such old games, while still enjoying them. I can see the PS offers more games, but it also has more platforms to do so (in terms of the Vita). If I was to bring in the free games I can play on Windows Store it wouldn’t exactly be a comparison aha 😀
Eitherway, only Jak and Daxter trilogy inticed me at all, whereas the Xbox ones have been a collection of some of my favourite titles. Again, its all a preference thing.
Currently I believe XBL is a far better deal due to its more sound network structure, and the huge amount of money MS put into the servers this generation, which allow popular titles to finally get dedicated servers, and for new and cool ideas like Titanfall to come out of the Cloud Computing. Hopefully Sony gets to that stage in this generation, if only to push Microsoft to further improve its network.