@nekroskop: of course I am. I don't have real issues with Sony, I still buy their consoles and I'm pretty sure I always will. I care about games, not the machines. They both have their ups and downs. Right now I prefer the xbox one simply because it's a much more interesting machine for a new generation. Plus I think it has better games scheduled for the first six months to a year. The launch lineup for xbox one was definitely better. That's not even just my personal opinion, there were more games and higher reviewed games.
Sony has done almost nothing to push what the box can do and how we play games. Ever since Microsoft released the original xbox, they've been adding things that consoles couldn't do that are standards now. Sony seems happy to give you the same basic thing every time, just more powerful. They never take risks. The PS4 is the safest console they've ever made.
I have friends that have PS4s and they are enjoying them in the same way my friends with xboxs are enjoying that machine. The general consensus from the ps4 guys however seems to be that it's a similar experience on the hardware side. Yeah, shiny new graphics are great, but it doesn't feel different enough. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but the xbox one guys are talking about the new stuff a lot more.
For the record, I wrote a similar write up for the ps4 and I'm pretty sure I listed a lot more negatives about the xbox one.
It's been almost two weeks and I've been having a great time with the Xbox One. There are a lot of very cool features and things I didn't know I would enjoy as much as I have, but there is room for improvement.
The unboxing experience was fantastic. So much better than when I opened I PS4. The box and everything inside of it is just nicer than what you get from Sony. The Xbox One packaging doesn't look like it's for a toy. They didn't need to throw pictures of game characters and tacky nonsense all over it like Sony did. It's a nice black box with the contents and minimal labels. Inside is no different. The kinect, the console, and the accessories are all divided into their boxed sections and it comes together nicely.
The Xbox One is a $500 console and it feels and looks like it. It's solid, the materials used are better and it doesn't wobble. It looks expensive. The headset is basic, but nicely matched to the console. The same applies to the controller. Everything just feels good. Even the HDMI cable they included matches the console and is nicer than what you get with the PS4. Yeah, Microsoft is asking $100 more, but it looks like a lot more than a $100 from the outside. Let's not even get into the ear bud that sony includes. Build quality of everything is better than the PS4.
I had no issues on either console getting the day one update. I did however run into issues accessing the the PS store the day after it launched. Had to wait hours to download anything at all. No such issues on the Xbox One on day one around 2pm. Installed the update and immediately accessed the store and downloaded everything I wanted. Speeds were a bit slower but I guess that's to be expected on the first day. Xbox Live handled the load better than PSN did. It's not surprising.
My biggest issue with the PS4 was that it doesn't feel like a huge leap over the PS3. I'm not talking about raw power or graphics. Of course it is absolutely more powerful. It's seems like Sony being Sony. The Xbox One feels like a completely different machine. The interface, what the machine can do and the overall experience. That's not always a good thing and I'll get into that.
I'll start with the good stuff because I am overly critical and a lot of things bother me from a usability standpoint.
The system is quick. Not as quick as the PS4, but in terms of how much more the UI is doing, they've done a good job. Still get the occasional slowdown here and there, but that seems to be a software optimization issue more than anything. Bugs that need to get ironed out. The ability to quickly switch between games and apps is fantastic. Snapping is fine, but going back to the dashboard and switching between games, apps, and live tv is extremely cool. Microsoft has always wanted the one box that controls everything and with some refinement, this could be it.
Xbox Record that is by far my most used voice command. I love it. It's better than what the PS4 offers. PS4 gives you 15 minutes of recording while the Xbox One maintains the last 5. The difference is in the experience. When I'm playing a game, I will never stop playing, go to the PS4 share app, find the video, cut it down and do all that in the middle of a game. It's almost useless. Starting a capture is also useless because you don't know when something is going to happen. For example, When I'm playing battlefield 4 and something crazy happens. I just say "xbox record that". Done. It grabs the last 30 seconds which is always enough to capture the thing that just happened. I don't have to leave the game, I don't have to do anything. Later I can get that file when it's convenient. It's simply done better.
The next great feature is the upload studio and getting access to regular 720p MP4s. It's fantastic. The PS4 allows you to post to Facebook and that's it. There is no way to get video files or screenshots off the system directly and even one step removed like the Xbox One. The Upload Studio is easy to use and send the file to your Sky Drive. It's elegant and it works extremely well. The video file isn't the highest bitrate, but it's 720p and it's good enough. Having the file and being able to do whatever I want with it is fantastic. This video is just some random clips trimmed and edited together using the Upload Studio app from the console. It works really well and I think people aren't giving it enough attention. It's a highlight of the console.
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Cloud saving is something that was introduced on the 360, but it wasn't great. There were too many weird syncing issues and other problems. It's handled the right way on the Xbox One and it's handled better than the PS4. I don't know how it works, I don't know if it saves everything to the cloud every time you save. That doesn't matter because I don't need to know. The best technology works without you knowing it. For all their talk about the cloud and how it would change gaming, this isn't directly affecting games, but it is absolutely making the experience better.
Don't show me this
I don't need to know that it's sending the files or when it is sending them. It's useless. I went to my cousins place this weekend. Logged into my account from his Xbox One and that was it. That's all I had to do. I put in my copy of Dead Rising 3 and my save was there. Same for Forza and any other game I played. It just works. I don't have to tell it a time to send my saves or anything like that. This is the way it should be. Seamless.
The Kinect is possibly the most controversial piece of gaming hardware ever. It's definitely the most polarizing. I thought the original Kinect was a joke. I didn't buy one, but this one is different. My brother was visiting this past weekend and he now has his profile on my xbox. Seeing him walk in front of the TV and it instantly recognize him is magical. When he wants to switch to his profile and his dashboard, he just says "xbox, show my stuff" and it becomes his console. It's great and it simply works.
Voice commands for me have worked around 80% of the time. 8 out of 10 isn't bad, and it is definitely useful to say some things instead of reaching for the controller or the tv remote. Being able to say "xbox, watch AMC" and having it switch the channel is shocking to people when they see it for the first time. Telling the console to snap live TV while playing a game is unlike anything we've ever had in the living room. The problems arise when it doesn't work.
The controller is great. I don't understand what the hell people are talking about when they say the ergonomics are inferior to the 360 controller. That's nonsense. It's essentially the same shape. Just about everything is the same except the battery pack and the bumpers. That's what took me the most time to get used to. Teaching myself to not remove my index finger from the trigger to trigger to press the bumper. I love it now because it's faster. Rolling my index finger back just a little bit to hit that bumper is much faster than physically lifting it off completely. It took about a week to get adjusted, but I'm loving it. Still need more time, but It seems great and it fits my large hands better than the DS4 which still causes the same issue for me as the DS3. The DS4 grips are still not big enough. My little fingers still hang off the bottom. The buttons are nicer, the d-pad is an improvement, the analogs and the triggers are still better than the DS4. I need more time with it, but both the 360 and xbox one controller are better than the DS4. I like the DS4 a lot more than the DS3, but it's still not comfortable. Battery life is also great. My Eneloops are giving me easily 30-40 hours of play time on a single charge. DS4 battery life is abysmal.
Now the bad....
The party system. It seems like Microsoft wants parties to be seamless with the console experience no matter what you are doing. In theory, if you join a party for a game with people and everyone is going other things on the console, it should pull you all in when a game is ready. That's how it is supposed to work. Everyone seems to be pointing at battlefield specifically, but it seems broken half the time. Sometimes it pulls us in, sometimes it doesn't. The 360 party system was outside the game. The games handles invites themselves. Now that the console is trying to do it and tie it all together, it's causing issues. What they are trying to do seems great in theory, but it just doesn't work properly. I don't know if this is an issue with the games and being rushed for launch or if it is a system level problem. Either way, it needs to get fixed because it worked better on the 360. It was simple. This is not.
Party chat has also been broken too often. How can something so simple be messed up for the new generation. Luckily you can just use skype instead, but it's annoying. Party chat worked great on the 360 and it's not working correctly on the xbox one. These are the things that they had over the PS3 last generation. You can't come out of the gate and not have the same functionality.
Games take ages to install. I'm a patient person for the most part. I can wait for things. It's not the end of the world when I have to wait 15-20 minutes to play a game, but compared to the PS4, it takes way too long. I'm guessing it is this way because PS4 games aren't installed in the same way as the Xbox One games, but it can get a little ridiculous. I'm going to put this one on launch titles. Some let you play much faster than others, so some part of it has to be on the developers. Either way, they need to get the game playable much more quickly.
Quick access to the party, friends, and messages. With the 360, you could press the guide button and get quick access to those things. With the Xbox One, you can't. It's dumb and its backwards. Luckily you can still open notifications directly in the same way you always could, but if you miss it, you have to go to the dashboard, fine the specific app or go to the notification center, launch the app and manage it from there. That's a serious usability issue that stands out even more because it was handled better on the last console. It's a step back and they need to create a shortcut screen or something that will bring those things in front of you without forcing you to leave the game.
Sound support. Dolby 5.1 may be ancient, but it's used by every surround headset manufacturer. It is the standard. I'm lucky enough to have a DTS decoder for headphones, but there is no excuse for not having 5.1 coming through the optical. How could they possibly launch without that simple little thing that the 360 had since 2005. Not sure what they were thinking.
We also need more sound options for the chat headset. The 360 allowed us to direct chat audio to the audio system, headset or both. I don't like having to use weird solutions because the console doesn't let me do what the 360 did. I love that the chat sounds so good and is leagues ahead of the PS4's terrible chat quality, but don't mess with things that worked perfectly before. The options for mixing chat need to come back.
Now the bad part of the voice command system. I get voice commands to work about 80% of the time, but I feel like I am being very deliberate about them. The console seems to have trouble if you go too fast so the way I'm forced to speak is less conversational and more robotic. As they get more data, I'm sure it will get better, but it's not the perfect voice controlled future they were promising. It works well, but it's not perfect. I guess they deserve some credit for making it better than anyone though it would be, but it needs to be better.
The Xbox One lets apps run in the background. Running apps have the option to "quit" when you press the menu button. The OS is built to handle all those apps running in the background and that's fine, but I want to know which apps are running and when. They need an app manager that lists out everything that is running and an easy way to close them quickly and efficiently. It might be my obsessive nature, but even if they don't affect performance in any way, I don't want anything running in the background. It's not terrible, but they need to add some management options.
Finally, we come to storage. There is none! Or at least no options or data management at all. I don't know how I feel about that. You can still delete apps and games easily enough, but there is no drive data. Again, I understand what they are trying to do, but it just seems odd. I don't care right now because it's so close to launch and the hard drive isn't going to get filled up any time soon, but it will one day. Will it just tell me when there is no more room? Seems a bit strange.
Like the PS4, these are mostly small issues, but they are still issues. Some of them stand out more because the 360 did so many of them the right way. This seems even worse in comparison to the PS4s shortcoming because Sony was never good at UI and usability. Microsoft took a step back in some major areas. It's doesn't break the experience, but it hurts it. Some simple things have become overly complex and that is never a good thing.
Both need refinement, but Microsoft tried to fix things that weren't broken. They are a lot more ambitious than Sony, they always have been. The stuff that this box can do is amazing when it works, but it needs to work better. I'm guessing the first big firmware update will come in the spring. I hope it's sooner than that, but with the OS being so complex, it doesn't seem like they will be able to churn out updates like Sony will be able to.
I think people just lost their minds because it was such a radical change. I used the DS4 for a week and I liked it. I used the xbox one controller for a day and I knew it was better.
It's still inferior to the 360 and the xbox one controller in several ways.
Analogs are still worse than the 360/one
Triggers are still worse
Battery life is a joke. I got more than 20 hours from the AA duracels they included. My Eneloops offer ridiculous life.
Build quality and finish are a joke on the DS4.
Maybe it's also my large hands, but the shape of the dual shock 4 is not as comfortable.
People wanted a better controller and it's a definite improvement over the DS3, but it's not incredible like everyone seems to think.
It depends on the shipper. Amazon is great but they only require signatures for more expensive items. They always leave stuff at the door for me. Just sits out there all day until someone brings it inside.
I ordered mine from the Microsoft store and they shipped via UPS as well, but it needed to be signed for.
My cousin lives in a small apartment building. There is a small table by the entrance where the mailboxes are. Every time I visit, there are at least 10-15 boxes from amazon just sitting on the table. Whoever delivers them just drops them all on that table and leaves. It's ridiculous.
It's a terrible situation. Hopefully it works out.
Yeah. Second that on the microsoft store. They are selling bundles which aren't ideal but they come with a 3 year warranty which is normally $70 but is discounted right now if you get one of the bundles.
I think the bundle I saw had the console, 2 games, 12 month gold, and the 3 year warranty for $700. Normally would be $680, so getting the 3 year protection for $20 is a pretty good deal. Obviously they are charging $60 for live which is almost twice what is regularly goes on sale for, but it seems like a decent deal if you have to have one.
I finished it last night and I can understand where you are coming from.
It has some great ideas like the way perks are handled, but the combat does get repetitive. I think as a first game, it's not that bad. The combat system needs to be fleshed out more. A real combo system would make it a much better game. Eventfully you just get tired of doing the same exact thing against the same exact enemies. By the end of the game I had dozens of executions but I felt like I was seeing the same ones over and over because I only used the health and XP perks. They also needed a few more characters models. I must have killed the fat guy with the shield 500 times.
It's not a great game by any means, nor is it terrible. Brad used the perfect word, competent. Everything works the way it is supposed to and works well enough. It just needed more.
I think the average person who isn't consumed by metacritic and Internet forums could have a good time with it.
It does however look incredible. Might be the best looking launch game on either platform.
Your definition of premium is very different from mine. There is absolutely nothing premium about the PS4, the dual shock 4 or the packaging that it comes in.
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