NeoGAF

Originally Posted by BruiserBear

Can someone explain to me what the hell they are talking about when they say "holding the button down"?

I've been using the console for the past week and I have no idea.

If you want to view the details of an achievement you have to hold the guide button down for a second to open the achievement app. On 360 you just tapped the guide button. 360 further went straight to the achievement details of the achievement you just unlocked while xbox one takes you to the achievements list

It really is annoying, but not the huge deal they're making it out to be. It reminds me of the PS3, where I also hated finding the details for a trophy I just unlocked

Originally Posted by Backfoggen

MS has some work to do but Edge is being too dramatic here. There are isolated instances where the interface blows and those can be fixed.

They did mention:

There are two bright spots in Xbox One’s future. The first, as previously mentioned, is that all of these problems can, hypothetically, be fixed by app updates rather than a full-scale interface reboot.

Originally Posted by Backfoggen

MS has some work to do but Edge is being too dramatic here. There are isolated instances where the interface blows and those can be fixed.

Pretty much. But Edge knows who their audience is and know what will make them click.

Originally Posted by curb

You don't think the PC version will have controller support?

It absolutely will, but as I've explained to many, many people like yourself over the months, it's irrelevant. Anyone who knows anything about this stuff will tell you, a person using a controller in an online shooter against kb/m users, is going to have no fun. The kb/m has a significant advantage against a controller player.

So can you play Titanfall on a PC with a controller? Absolutely. Will you have a competitive chance against other players using a kb/m? Absolutely not.

Originally Posted by Frumix

Aye, both consoles have terrible UI that needs a lot of polish and improvements.
Although at least PS4 has some kind of idea of what it wants to do and look like while finding rhyme or reason in X1 interface is not as easy.

Nope. The PS4 UI is slick and fast! Its designed to get the fuck out of your way and let you get to your content as fast as possible. Yes there are missing features but those things will come in future updates.

an Achievement list built not around charmingly crafted icons but a slew of previously-released screenshots

Not to nit pick, but this isn't true, at least for DR3. The images used aren't from previously released screens...

Originally Posted by Backfoggen

MS has some work to do but Edge is being too dramatic here. There are isolated instances where the interface blows and those can be fixed.

Agreed, while I prefer the ps4 UI for it's simplicity I haven't had any issues with the Xbox One UI.

I think both Microsoft and Sony have started from opposite ends of the same spectrum. The Xbox One interface is obviously ambitious and wants to coax users to use many of the new features. The PS4 interface takes more of a bottom up approach in that its stripped down nature allows for the UI to be built up rather than torn down.

I think both approaches serve what each company was looking for in terms of perception. Those who appreciate the Xbox's features will laud the UI as something that feels from the future. Those who aren't as receptive will call it a broken mess. Conversely, the PS4 UI may be met as a refreshing throwback to functional interfaces. Others will say its simplicity feels dated and inadequate.

Eventually, I think we'll see both of these UI meet in the middle in terms of ease of use, functionality, and features.

Originally Posted by googleplex

Nope. The PS4 UI is slick and fast! Its designed to get the fuck out of your way and let you get to your content as fast as possible. Yes there are missing features but those things will come in future updates.

Not trying to flame or anything, but it's hard to take something like that as objective when you have Mark Cerny as your avatar.

It's time people recognized the one true next-gen UI that's available today: Steam Big Picture Mode.

Meh, The Xbox One UI works great once you get past the learning curve which I'll admit it has one. The only real complaint is the freinds and party integration which are a step back from 360. Different strokes for different folks I guess. Voice controls work almost flawlessly and everything you need is on 2 pages if you take 10 minutes to set up pins.

Originally Posted by Frumix

Aye, both consoles have terrible UI that needs a lot of polish and improvements.
Although at least PS4 has some kind of idea of what it wants to do and look like while finding rhyme or reason in X1 interface is not as easy.

The PS4 UI is very simple but works perfectly.
There's no problems with it as long as you don't mind minimal UI's.
There's a lot of room for improvements and new features but it's fine already.

The Xbone UI (I actually was able to play with it this weekend) is unnusable without Kinect. Terrible all around. They need to improve the overall experience ASAP for both Kinect and cotroller usage.

It is indeed annoying that literally everything the UI does has to be implemented by the metaphor of an app. If you want to use it during another activity, you don't get a quick-access menu, you have to snap it. And this doesn't always make sense. For instance, it is just weird to navigate from the "Games & Apps" app or the "Settings" app back to the homescreen, and have a minimized view of that app and its tiles running inside another tile of the homescreen. In addition, snapping stuff with the controller is cumbersome, and voice commands don't always work reliably, especially with background noise.

Furthermore, the UI is inconsistent and often "suprises" you in a bad way. The "back" buttons in apps sometimes work with a global history, meaning that instead oy navigating upwards in the hierarchy of the current app, it can throw you out of the app into another app. The settings app doesn't support voice commands, etc.

It's just a cumbersome experience, especially when I compare it to the PS4, where the UI is simpler, therefore more intuitive, and therefore more efficient.

Yup, UI is an unintiuitive piece of crap. I don't like it.

Originally Posted by clockpunk

Edge aren't biased against the XBoxOne at all... [/sarcasm]

Might be hard to tell the difference between bias and a company misfiring so often that there simply isn't much if anything good to say about what they're doing. This sounds more like the latter thus far with how often people are citing agreement with how it worked or functioned. I get the impression Microsoft's going for a dogmatic adherence to a single UI for all devices, but forgetting one size can't fit all.

Though as noted, opinions and preferences. storage management limitations alone put me off to this though.

Originally Posted by DragonSworne

I see a lot of posts in here just stating hate for the PS4 UI or that there is something wrong with it without stating why...

Care to elaborate people?

No. It's just an easy out for a few people to say, "well both consoles need a lot of work!" Kinda like the ol' "well if MS isn't gonna allow used games, then Sony is gonna do the same!" It's a great deflector.

I mean, there are some improvements that need to be done with PS4. Pause downloads would be nice. Some added social options and Youtube support would be good. There's some bugs with streaming that need ironing out, such as displaying some UI on the stream that should be blocked by the system (which it does properly 95% of the time). Custom themes and the ability to customize the UI by allowing us to place items/sort via folders would be fantastic.

The list for MS starts with "add battery indicator. Add ability for users to check storage data. Get multiple broken features out of beta including surround sound for TV, resume play after sleep, etc." And the list only gets more dire from there. They have a ton of stuff to fix across the board, and I don't know where they will even start. It's not like users are saying, hey, maybe fix this small thing here and everything should be good. It's more "the party system needs to be completely torn down and work like the 360/PS4, thanks." Will MS even do that? How long would something like that even take? The feature isn't broken per se, it's functioning in a completely different way than users were expecting because that's the way MS designed it. And it's functioning in a bad way that no one really likes at all. Are they really gonna scrap all those months of work and implement a brand new party system across games just to appease some bad feedback? Especially when there's more serious/broken things that need fixing first?

And then there's Titanfall, which will also be out day and date on the PC/360. It is a multiplatform game. MS paid money to keep it off PS4 and PS3, but it's still on a console platform with a nearly 70m userbase, and a platform with a superior graphical/online experience. It will sell the least on the XB1. I will probably play Titanfall, and I have different avenues to play the game that doesn't require me to spend $560, plus the $50 for XBL. I'm certainly not alone in that.

If we're really talking about games and the ability for them to turn around a platform, consider this: there will not be another XB1 exclusive until summer/fall 2014. PS4 has two confirmed in March. Now this could change after the VGX. Maybe MS has a bunch of cards up their sleeves. Maybe Sony does too. We'll have to see.

But yeah, MS has clearly stumbled out of the gate. They have months and months of work ahead of them. None of this will be fixed this year. I'm doubtful a lot of it will be fixed at all, because a lot of this isn't broken...it's part of the new grand vision of what a Microsoft OS should be. Something I will never buy into for as long as possible.

Edge wants Linux consumers want iOS.

As a power user I hate walled gardens like the Xbox One OS, but Xbox One is a mainstream appliance and the mainstream overwhelmingly supports stupidly simple and limited operating systems.

It was expected.

Microsoft took a perfectly sensible console interface (Blades) that really divided the unit's functionality and resources into easily memorizable and accessable categories, turned it into a incredible clusterfuck of shit spread across a million places hidden under a hideous Metro interface.

And now this.

Bravo Microsoft. You have now officially fucked up everything that made 360 a good console. Bravo.

completely agree I have only played with it for some minutes but some of the problems can't be missed

Originally Posted by sflufan

It's time people recognized the one true next-gen UI that's available today: Steam Big Picture Mode.

lmao no, used twice on my tv before reverting to classic mouse and keyboard.

Article was great until the titanfall shit. fuck off with this dumb shit.

Originally Posted by sflufan

It's time people recognized the one true next-gen UI that's available today: Steam Big Picture Mode.

Lol no.

I think these are totally fair points when you consider:

-This is a massive, global corporation with many many years of experience writing operating systems for consumer electronics.
-The Xbox One has been in development for a long long time.
-They were the market leaders in terms of a stable and robust online platform for the entirety of last generation.

So what happened? Everything points to this console launching much sooner than it was planned to.

Making everything an app was an awful idea. I'm pretty sure that's what Sony did with the last iteration of the PS Store on PS3 where it went from being fairly fast and usable to taking 45 seconds to load up and being crazy laggy.

Originally Posted by pompidu

Article was great until the titanfall shit. fuck off with this dumb shit.

Odd way to end an article by propping up Titanfall once more. This time as a saving grace.

Originally Posted by Burger

I think these are totally fair points when you consider:

-This is a massive, global corporation with many many years of experience writing operating systems for consumer electronics.
-The Xbox One has been in development for a long long time.
-They were the market leaders in terms of a stable and robust online platform for the entirety of last generation.

So what happened? Everything points to this console launching much sooner than it was planned to.

This gets thrown around so often here, but there seems to be absolutely no evidence that suggests it's true in any way. Who in their right mind thought the new consoles wouldn't be out this fall? It's been known for at least a year. All signs were pointing in that direction for longer than that. This was not some decision Microsoft was forced into making earlier this year.

Originally Posted by curb

"Brought to you by Xbox One"

and now, a word from our sponsor.

Originally Posted by chubigans

No. It's just an easy out for a few people to say, "well both consoles need a lot of work!" Kinda like the ol' "well if MS isn't gonna allow used games, then Sony is gonna do the same!" It's a great deflector.

I mean, there are some improvements that need to be done with PS4. Pause downloads would be nice. Some added social options and Youtube support would be good. There's some bugs with streaming that need ironing out, such as displaying some UI on the stream that should be blocked by the system (which it does properly 95% of the time). Custom themes and the ability to customize the UI by allowing us to place items/sort via folders would be fantastic.

The list for MS starts with "add battery indicator. Add ability for users to check storage data. Get multiple broken features out of beta including surround sound for TV, resume play after sleep, etc." And the list only gets more dire from there. They have a ton of stuff to fix across the board, and I don't know where they will even start. It's not like users are saying, hey, maybe fix this small thing here and everything should be good. It's more "the party system needs to be completely torn down and work like the 360/PS4, thanks." Will MS even do that? How long would something like that even take? The feature isn't broken per se, it's functioning in a completely different way than users were expecting because that's the way MS designed it. And it's functioning in a bad way that no one really likes at all. Are they really gonna scrap all those months of work and implement a brand new party system across games just to appease some bad feedback? Especially when there's more serious/broken things that need fixing first?

And then there's Titanfall, which will also be out day and date on the PC/360. It is a multiplatform game. MS paid money to keep it off PS4 and PS3, but it's still on a console platform with a nearly 70m userbase, and a platform with a superior graphical/online experience. It will sell the least on the XB1. I will probably play Titanfall, and I have different avenues to play the game that doesn't require me to spend $560, plus the $50 for XBL. I'm certainly not alone in that.

If we're really talking about games and the ability for them to turn around a platform, consider this: there will not be another XB1 exclusive until summer/fall 2014. PS4 has two confirmed in March. Now this could change after the VGX. Maybe MS has a bunch of cards up their sleeves. Maybe Sony does too. We'll have to see.

But yeah, MS has clearly stumbled out of the gate. They have months and months of work ahead of them. None of this will be fixed this year. I'm doubtful a lot of it will be fixed at all, because a lot of this isn't broken...it's part of the new grand vision of what a Microsoft OS should be. Something I will never buy into for as long as possible.

You're right. Half-working features can be worse than nonexistant ones in a way because there's less incentive to fix them, let alone completely overhaul them. With so many things to fix, I don't think the Xbox One UI can reach a fundamentally usable level by at least the end of 2014.

You're also right about exclusives. Other than Titanfall, nome of Microsoft's exclusives have a definite release date other than "2014/15". And this time around it seems like they won't be able to fall back on better versions of multiplat games or lower price. They are in a bad spot.

The whole idea of Metro is horrible. I have it on my desktop and it's awful. I have it on my tablet, and despite being supposedly designed for a tablet, it's still awful. I can't even begin to imagine using it with a controller, and if kinect commands are as bad as everyone make them sound out to be, then what is Microsoft even doing? As you said, one size does not fit all. The entire concept reeks of design by committee.

It's a real shame that the people who made Xbox great are no longer with Microsoft and what seems to be left is suits who are using the carcass of Xbox to siphon as much money as they can.

Originally Posted by Special C

Meh, The Xbox One UI works great once you get past the learning curve which I'll admit it has one. The only real complaint is the freinds and party integration which are a step back from 360. Different strokes for different folks I guess. Voice controls work almost flawlessly and everything you need is on 2 pages if you take 10 minutes to set up pins.

Agreed, they need to fix the friends and party system, its not bad but there are so many obvious improvements that can be done.
Otherwise, The Xbox One UI works really well but has some flaws as all UIs do.
I actually spend a lot of time with it and find it so much more faster and smoother than anything else I've used, the complaints are exaggerated.

Originally Posted by googleplex

The PS4 UI is slick and fast! Its designed to get the fuck out of your way and let you get to your content as fast as possible. Yes there are missing features but those things will come in future updates.

I feel the exact same way about the X1 interface.

I've had no problems with it, just needs more features. I literally say "Xbox go to (insert game/app here)" and it instantly launches.

I don't even have to interact with the UI.

Originally Posted by travisbickle

Did any reviewers actually use this UI two weeks ago when they were calling it "too future" and the "greatest experience ever"?

IIRC, they were under the guidance and sometimes supervision of xbox 'engineers'.

Originally Posted by Derrick01

Making everything an app was an awful idea. I'm pretty sure that's what Sony did with the last iteration of the PS Store on PS3 where it went from being fairly fast and usable to taking 45 seconds to load up and being crazy laggy.

Store loads instantly on PS4.

The assassination of good OS by the arrogant Microsoft.

These "opinions" had more impact when we were in the pre-launch months were rumors and second hand knowledge spread like wildfire. Now the system is in the hands of the general public so these kind of articles may appeal to those on the other side who haven't used an XB1, but those who have one can kind of shrug at this because I'm using it right now with no issue.

I hate the UI for both PS4 and Xbox One, but at least Sony didn't take huge steps backwards in functionality from last gen.

Originally Posted by ReturnOfTheRAT

Odd way to end an article by propping up Titanfall once more. This time as a saving grace.

Its fucking annoying, its not the next coming of christ ffs. With that said, the os looks like fucking ass. metro can die in a fire, im sure it works fine though.

The random paragraph about Titanfall is so weird.

Originally Posted by BruiserBear

This gets thrown around so often here, but there seems to be absolutely no evidence that suggests it's true in any way. Who in their right mind thought the new consoles wouldn't be out this fall? It's been known for at least a year. All signs were pointing in that direction for longer than that. This was not some decision Microsoft was forced into making earlier this year.

Yeah I'm more inclined to think they were just behind schedule in development, rather than they moved up the launch date.

Originally Posted by UNCMark

I hate the UI for both PS4 and Xbox One, but at least Sony didn't take huge steps backwards in functionality from last gen.

This is the bigger deal. The UI isnt unusable or crappy IMO. The feature regression is whats most apparent and the real headscratcher.

Originally Posted by BruiserBear

yup




Sure, but as I just pointed out, and your conveniently chose to leave out of your quote, the number of people that prefer shooters on a controller dwarfs the number of people that would prefer a kb/m, so the Xbox One version is the only version that meets all those requirements.

High end visuals with a smooth framerate, and a controller using player base to compete against.

I totally see your point. However, putting it on 360 means maaaany people will use that to evaluate the game, a kind of $60 demo option if you will. And as any game company will tell you, having a demo option is a great way to kill sales and hype.

If it was truly an x1 exclusive, with insane levels of hype, now that would drive a lot of people into spending $560 to play (or $580-$610 if they need to buy gold as well).

As far as the PC version goes, you can segregate kb/m players from controller players. Which I hope they do, because if this is truly a great game (a big if), then I'd like to mess around with it.

Originally Posted by Frumix

Aye, both consoles have terrible UI that needs a lot of polish and improvements.
Although at least PS4 has some kind of idea of what it wants to do and look like while finding rhyme or reason in X1 interface is not as easy.

Nah. The PS4 UI isn't terrible, it just needs better organization. Games should be on their own row. File management isnt a "setting" where it is hidden under. File management needs to be more clear and less clunky to navigate. The Share feature should have its own streamlined app on the UI. During game the interface does what it does but outside of a game, it should be more robust. Other than that, it is almost there

I feel like ms honestly fucked up their ui to encourage desperate users to try the inconsistent voice shit.

Originally Posted by BruiserBear

This gets thrown around so often here, but there seems to be absolutely no evidence that suggests it's true in any way. Who in their right mind thought the new consoles wouldn't be out this fall? It's been known for at least a year. All signs were pointing in that direction for longer than that. This was not some decision Microsoft was forced into making earlier this year.

Come on, it's clear that the OS is half baked.

Cerny said that work on the PS4 began in 2008, not long after the PS3 release (where Sony got caught with its pants down, and was out a year after the 360 and a million sales behind). PS4 was announced in Feb, the Xbox One was 3 months later, in May. PS4 release date was announced on August 20 and the Xbox One followed almost 2 weeks later, 4th September.

Microsoft said in 2010 that the 360 still had 5 years of life left, helped by the release of the Kinect.

Microsoft were clearly rushed to get this out of the door. They pushed back the launch in some territories because they couldn't get Kinect localised fast enough. They were unprepared, either through mismanagement, technical issues that couldn't be surmounted or simply thinking they had more time than they did.

Originally Posted by BruiserBear

This gets thrown around so often here, but there seems to be absolutely no evidence that suggests it's true in any way. Who in their right mind thought the new consoles wouldn't be out this fall? It's been known for at least a year. All signs were pointing in that direction for longer than that. This was not some decision Microsoft was forced into making earlier this year.

There were articles about mumblings from within the industry that MS was caught by surprise by Sony's schedule and that they were about half a year behind with everything.

I've recently got a windows phone and after a bit of getting used to, I love the Metro interface...for touchscreen devices. I would not want to use Metro on anything that doesn't have a touchscreen. I assumed that Metro would kind of make sense if used with Kinnect, is this not the case?

And yeah, no file manager on my phone either - odd for a phone, but to not have one on a games console is going to cause problems when that HDD starts reaching capacity.

Originally Posted by FairXchange

Store loads instantly on PS4.

Yeah it doesn't seem like it loads like an app now, or if it does the extra power from the new system makes it so it doesn't matter.

The problem across the board is the Metro ideal doesn't work well outside of very controlled conditions. Since MS applied it to all of their products, instead of focusing on what would make said products work best, they screwed up everything at once.

Respawn’s shooter, still the most impressive next-gen title, arrives in March largely unchallenged by Sony.

I guess Infamous SS is nothing compared to a likely 720p, multiplayer-only shooter that will also be available on the 360 and the PC.