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Latest Xbox One Update releases to Insiders Today (Fluent Design)

The sponsored icons drive me nuts. If they're getting cash for all this BS advertising, make multiplayer online free and drop the price to $30 a year for people wanting GWG. Paying as much as we do now should allow us to hide those stupid sponsored tiles, IMO.
 
Everyone is talking about the Home screen design and I don't see mention of the improvements to "My games and apps". Has anyone had a chance to play around with this yet? I'm interested in your feedback! That screen needed some major speed/organization improvements IMO.
Hrmmm - what improvements (honest question - I didn't notice much beyond the cursor glow, which feels unfinished form a design perspective?). Or are you just talking about general speed improvements? In which case, I'd have to pay closer attention...I haven't been super bothered by the current one, outside of updates sometimes taking awhile to show, but given that I have things set to auto-update, it's a rare occurence.
 
Other than that, this whole backslash demonstrate how useful are the preview / alpha programs. You can get direct feedback from users months before you release a new iteration of a product.
Having these feedback at the end of November would have been a real issue.

But you can also see the danger of pushing out very early build. People on Neogaf won't even notice this UI is still in Beta. Many section are still just place holders. And when alpha users think UI is not what they wanted, instead of giving feedback internally, they'll just posted their negative opinion on Neogaf and Reddit and hope the internet will help kill the UI for them.

I think Microsoft should consider making alpha testers sign NDA like other companies do with close alpha. Or at least avoid push out half baked alpha builds
 
Hrmmm - what improvements (honest question - I didn't notice much beyond the cursor glow, which feels unfinished form a design perspective?). Or are you just talking about general speed improvements? In which case, I'd have to pay closer attention...I haven't been super bothered by the current one, outside of updates sometimes taking awhile to show, but given that I have things set to auto-update, it's a rare occurence.

I was moreso looking for impressions on the sorting (Alphabetical sections rather than the big list of games sorted alphabetically). I was also hoping someone had played around with the options to move games between the console and an external drive. I saw that we can finally "move all" now which is nice!
 
I was moreso looking for impressions on the sorting (Alphabetical sections rather than the big list of games sorted alphabetically). I was also hoping someone had played around with the options to move games between the console and an external drive. I saw that we can finally "move all" now which is nice!
Wasn't the alphabetical sections rather than a big list already in the last dashboard? I seem to remember sorting that way for months and months?

As for the move all/copy all, lots of people seem stoked on it, though I'm not sure I've seen anyone actually *do* it yet with impressions. Just more, in the abstract, it's a great addition.
 
As I mentioned in my previous recap, biggest problem with this update is the Start Screen, which looks like more as a placeholder than a finished section.
This update is quite awesome in other areas, though: Responsiveness, gloss effect, horizontal navigation on the menu bar, to mention some.

Yeah Home is my area of complaint, I like everything else. I'm a bit surprised to see criticism of the new guide, I like it quite a bit more (not that it's perfect, could use some tweaks especially around the "action center" tab).
 

KAOS

Member
Yes the new UI seems to require more steps to get to what we want than the previous one. By having to press home up and select it seems more cumbersome and closer to psn ui which I'm not a fan of. Getting to your friends list shouldn't require more steps than previous UI! To say things take up more real estate on the home screen is understatement. No option of resizing! What's the point of having a wallpaper background if you can't even see it especially when some tabs/portions aren't see through. One of the strongest aspects of the Xbox One UI however has always been the ability to pin favorites. It's sad to see that the number of pins that you could put up has now gone down (although the side pins are now the same amount). Some things might be a matter of getting use to but I really hope they listen to the criticism and improve the UI!
 

Metzhara

Member
Hrmmm - what improvements (honest question - I didn't notice much beyond the cursor glow, which feels unfinished form a design perspective?). Or are you just talking about general speed improvements? In which case, I'd have to pay closer attention...I haven't been super bothered by the current one, outside of updates sometimes taking awhile to show, but given that I have things set to auto-update, it's a rare occurence.

I think they are indeed talking about speed improvements and to be fair, those are remarkably fast.
As someone with 5tb of content (mostly games), that content usually took up to 2 minutes to populate in the past. This time it takes moments. So... there's that.
This sort of thing is most notable if you turn your system on to play a game IMMEDIATELY that is perhaps not something you've played recently (thus not in your recent played or on a pin for whatever reason.)
Supposedly they also added "Bulk Copy" which, to be honest, would have been nice when I moved to my 8tb drive two or three weekends ago. Talk about an eye gouging experience.
Also, with me experiencing the bug that removed the ability to actually see anything pinned beneath my home screen, you realize just how minimalistic the entire experience is. It is indeed very claustrophobic. Using my (now fewer) pins to get around means you do yearn for more customization in the Pins experience but also had to utilize the "My Games and Apps" much more readily to do anything of value.

I do hope this gets better. I'm not a fan currently and I'm generally not the type of person who's all "Negative Nelly" on these changes. I love the rebrand every year or so as it keeps the console feeling fresh but sometimes I do wonder if the most vocal people in that community are the most blind to how things actually function and process.
 
Here's a post I found really interesting re: how little content is available on the home page now compared to previous iterations (though if I'm not mistaken, some promotional content is wrongly labeled here). Given that the new home page isn't actually customizable until you start pressing RT to get to your blocks, though, it's still surprising how the framing of this as "we heard gamers wanted to be able to customize their home page" isn't actually something that has translated to the homepage through actual customization or through bringing *more* content forward through algorithms. It's less content with the same amount of customization (none).

Maybe that's just to speed it up? But either way, seems like adding the ability to customize it to be as minimalist or all-encompassing as a user wants is a far better option than keeping it minimal with tiles that are not, judging by initial reaction, looked fondly upon/considered functional.
 

borges

Banned
But you can also see the danger of pushing out very early build. People on Neogaf won't even notice this UI is still in Beta. Many section are still just place holders. And when alpha users think UI is not what they wanted, instead of giving feedback internally, they'll just posted their negative opinion on Neogaf and Reddit and hope the internet will help kill the UI for them.

I think Microsoft should consider making alpha testers sign NDA like other companies do with close alpha. Or at least avoid push out half baked alpha builds

Someone rolled in not in preview, but alpha ring would know where it is. Its hard for me to blame MS for this. They also restricted access to a reduced number of Xbox users. But well, worst case I still believe its a cost that well worth to pay.
Having this feedback days before Xbox X release would be much worse for sure.
 

borges

Banned
Here's a post I found really interesting re: how little content is available on the home page now compared to previous iterations (though if I'm not mistaken, some promotional content is wrongly labeled here). Given that the new home page isn't actually customizable until you start pressing RT to get to your blocks, though, it's still surprising how the framing of this as "we heard gamers wanted to be able to customize their home page" isn't actually something that has translated to the homepage through actual customization or through bringing *more* content forward through algorithms. It's less content with the same amount of customization (none).

Maybe that's just to speed it up? But either way, seems like adding the ability to customize it to be as minimalist or all-encompassing as a user wants is a far better option than keeping it minimal with tiles that are not, judging by initial reaction, looked fondly upon/considered functional.


The problem, again, is the Start Screen, which is almost a placeholder as it is right now. I dont think the redesigned guide got that much criticism.
Regarding performance, I suspect that the card system on the guide is due to that (to have lazy loaded resources such as friends, clubs, etc). Its a balance: Thanks to that now the guide is completely smooth. Im not quite sure that the lack of content in the Start Screen is related at all with performance, but just lacks content because its unfinished.
 
But you can also see the danger of pushing out very early build. People on Neogaf won't even notice this UI is still in Beta. Many section are still just place holders. And when alpha users think UI is not what they wanted, instead of giving feedback internally, they'll just posted their negative opinion on Neogaf and Reddit and hope the internet will help kill the UI for them.

I think Microsoft should consider making alpha testers sign NDA like other companies do with close alpha. Or at least avoid push out half baked alpha builds

Well, its their job to check all the main communities and see what the feedback is. If it were me, id totally do that, even lurker style. If they dont go out of their little bubble and only visit the xbox forums, then theyre not doing their jobs right. And with the overwhelming negativity, i cant see how they can keep going this with update. Theres not enough time for a complete re-work. Delay it and go back to the drawing board.
 
The problem, again, is the Start Screen, which is almost a placeholder as it is right now. I dont think the redesigned guide got that much criticism.
Regarding performance, I suspect that the card system on the guide is due to that (to have lazy loaded resources such as friends, clubs, etc). Its a balance: Thanks to that now the guide is completely smooth. Im not quite sure that the lack of content in the Start Screen is related at all with performance, but just lacks content because its unfinished.
I hope you're right - but watching the walkthrough video, it didn't sound like there were plans to populate the home screen with more or different content or to make those tiles customizable. It sounded like it was being introduced as "this is it!" to me.
 

borges

Banned
I hope you're right - but watching the walkthrough video, it didn't sound like there were plans to populate the home screen with more or different content or to make those tiles customizable. It sounded like it was being introduced as "this is it!" to me.

Hopefully not! :) that would very, very dissapointing. I mean, the current Start Screen is much better on any aspect compared to this.
 

Synth

Member
You can't force a mixer stream with pinning clubs. I can't say I'm surprised that you're not able to

Whilst I can see the how pinning clubs vs pinning a game would be less beneficial to promoting Mixer, I don't see how it's really any different to being able to pin a person. Clubs are pretty much just a group of people, and Mixer streams can be promoted through clubs also (each has a Mixer tab that shows any members that are streaming).
 
Sigh, so many wasted spaces with Tips/Suggested Friends/Ads promoting Stuff. No wonder they keep on redesigning it.

Looks better but I agree, wow that's a lot of wasted space. One of the first things in the video shows the resume current game button on the main menu... but look how small that is! Make it big and huge and exciting to jump back in. Instead there is a bunch of block text above showing the game name; so exciting /s.
 

Chris1

Member
Whilst I can see the how pinning clubs vs pinning a game would be less beneficial to promoting Mixer, I don't see how it's really any different to being able to pin a person. Clubs are pretty much just a group of people, and Mixer streams can be promoted through clubs also (each has a Mixer tab that shows any members that are streaming).
Yeah I was just being facetious :p
Here's a post I found really interesting re: how little content is available on the home page now compared to previous iterations (though if I'm not mistaken, some promotional content is wrongly labeled here). Given that the new home page isn't actually customizable until you start pressing RT to get to your blocks, though, it's still surprising how the framing of this as "we heard gamers wanted to be able to customize their home page" isn't actually something that has translated to the homepage through actual customization or through bringing *more* content forward through algorithms. It's less content with the same amount of customization (none).

Maybe that's just to speed it up? But either way, seems like adding the ability to customize it to be as minimalist or all-encompassing as a user wants is a far better option than keeping it minimal with tiles that are not, judging by initial reaction, looked fondly upon/considered functional.

He has tips and tricks marked as useful in the original dashboard but useless in the new dashboard, lol

I don't think it's neccessarily a fair comparison because the NXOE has a lot of excessively large tiles which kind of exaggurates how much the important bits at, but I guess the point he's making still stands
 
Hopefully not! :) that would very, very dissapointing. I mean, the current Start Screen is much better on any aspect compared to this.
Just rewatched it and the wording is definitely not suggesting that they have in mind to change what shows up on the home page (until you move down to content blocks). The wording for the home page is pretty specific about "we've added four areas on the dash," and then, paraphraising, "the first one is your most recently played game or app, the next two are suggestions and the last one is an offer for you" and then the strip below that is introduced as "my games and apps, recently used games/apps and offers." There's no mention of "we're working to add more options" and no mention of "we'll allow you to populate this with your own choices."

Again, the customization really just comes down to the blocks/tiles a step or steps down from the home page. There is mention that the game hubs will see updates soon, so maybe the content accompanying specific games gets more interesting, but really, I think that if the home page becomes customizable, it's going to come from the negative player feedback, I don't think it's something they've been actively working on already.
 
Yeah I was just being facetious :p

He has tips and tricks marked as useful in the original dashboard but useless in the new dashboard, lol

I don't think it's neccessarily a fair comparison because the NXOE has a lot of excessively large tiles which kind of exaggurates how much the important bits at, but I guess the point he's making still stands
Yeah, exactly. Some of the content is disingenuously marked, but nonetheless, it's surprising that given that "customizability" and "personalization" seem to be the buzzwords they are going with alongside "speed," it seems problematic that there's less tiles on the home page and that, despite the guide being snappier overall, it also requires more clicks. I'm actually okay with the guide right now in the Alpha for the most part (aside from some of the organization), but the home page really seems to be...working counter to what they are proposing unless it's needed to be uniform and minimalist like that to keep things moving fast?
 
Suggested friends. I'd be happier with an "assholes you blocked" section complete with snippets of their hateful messages and fuckery. A wall of shame of sorts. A little RIP graveyard. LOL
 
Guys just keep dropping your feedback. This is in preview for a reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV7UHULZJc0 Mike Ybarra is currently Answering Questions
"That won't be suggested friends all the time, in fact rarely when we launch. It will be things like Club LFGs, tournaments you're in, etc."
And then he reconfirmed that it'll be "algorithm-based" content. Which I consider very different than customized tiles.

Still things that I don't really want. I'd rather just be notified of tournaments through the current method (the pop up warning that it's about to start) and clubs can be built into the blocks for individual games, so using one of the most prominent tiles on it seems unfortunate (to me at least).
 

Bsigg12

Member
Wanted to bring this to everyone's attention because bandwidth caps are a thing. Alpha members will be getting a ton of updates going forward so if you're limited I would suggest going back in the Insider tiers.

https://news.xbox.com/2017/08/09/fans-can-join-xbox-insider-program/

Table2.png
 

naitosan

Member
I'm liking this new dashboard more as I spend time learning to use it. It's going in right direction however it's not without fault.

Like someone said, this is in preview for a reason. Let's do our job by providing feedbacks. Excited to see some changes soon!
 
Guys just keep dropping your feedback. This is in preview for a reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV7UHULZJc0 Mike Ybarra is currently Answering Questions

Listened to this, seems like they are listening and changes will be coming. Said they have seen the forum and reddit threads and are combing through everything. Will be interesting to see how it develops.

Glad I heard that there will be less gray/black elements in the UI like the guide for example.
 

dr_rus

Member
The UI in the video looks like a hot mess, reminds me of a weird website with no clear structure and lots of ads on it. Well, at least their "fluent design" is doing better here than it does in Windows 10 apps.
 

vg260

Member
"That won’t be suggested friends all the time, in fact rarely when we launch. It will be things like Club LFGs, tournaments you’re in, etc."
And then he reconfirmed that it'll be "algorithm-based" content. Which I consider very different than customized tiles.

Still things that I don't really want. I'd rather just be notified of tournaments through the current method (the pop up warning that it's about to start) and clubs can be built into the blocks for individual games, so using one of the most prominent tiles on it seems unfortunate (to me at least).

I listened a bit to that part, and I still don't care for it either.

I don't want an algorithm deciding what content is front and center on my console dash. I want to specify the aps/tools/games I want to see, which is the actual stuff I use.
 

JoeLT

Member
The sponsored icons drive me nuts. If they're getting cash for all this BS advertising, make multiplayer online free and drop the price to $30 a year for people wanting GWG. Paying as much as we do now should allow us to hide those stupid sponsored tiles, IMO.
Now with Play Anywhere and Gears 4, Forza, Minecraft and soon to be Halo users all playing together on Xbox Live between Windows 10 and PC it only makes sense. It's odd that one person can use party chat, send invites, join games all while they're not paying but as an Xbox One user you have to pay. Feeling as more multiplayer cross play with Windows 10 games come out we'll see online become free.
 
Good to know. Im not data capped, but also I dont want my Xbox to be unusable most of time updating OS.
For what it's worth, I've been in Alpha for months and this most recent update is the only one I remember having to wait for it to install before playing, as the auto update seems to do a really good job of upgrading when I'm not active.
 

JoeLT

Member
Now that PS4 has a verified user system, following AND friend requests I think it's time Xbox fixes this. The current system is garbage, I love the idea of following people like Major Nelson and Phil Spencer, but I don't want them to be the same thing as what the system considers a "friend". PlayStation and Facebook use this system, I'm confused why they would go with a Twitter system for Xbox. It makes no sense and it's garbage.
 

zou

Member
this is the first UI since the original one I don't hate. And it's actually fast so far.

if they manage to keep it this fast until release, this might actually be a great update.

edit: and they finally fixed the fucking context menu bug in the games app that's been there since the first major dash release.
 

Jumeira

Banned
Now that PS4 has a verified user system, following AND friend requests I think it's time Xbox fixes this. The current system is garbage, I love the idea of following people like Major Nelson and Phil Spencer, but I don't want them to be the same thing as what the system considers a "friend". PlayStation and Facebook use this system, I'm confused why they would go with a Twitter system for Xbox. It makes no sense and it's garbage.

Erm, xbox one had all that ages ago and doesnt need the old style 'handshake' friends system. Its fine, seems like a decent solution to see someone's activity without gaining full access to them (if they dont want it). Dont want multiple choices to connect with a friend, no need to complicate things.
 

JoeLT

Member
Erm, xbox one had all that ages ago and doesnt need the old style 'handshake' friends system. Its fine, seems like a decent solution to see someone's activity without gaining full access to them (if they dont want it). Dont want multiple choices to connect with a friend, no need to complicate things.
Facebook and PSN beg to differ, or are those over complicated? Followers and friends should be two separate things.
 
If it's an app I should be able to remove it. I don't want or need it. Opinions though.

This is a Fall update.



That sounds like a definitive opinion.

You can tho!!!

1.) go to desired "app", in this case the psnow "app".

2.) press x to go into the app. Immediately back out, killing the ad and returning it too just the psnow logo.

3.) highlight the app and press options. Add to folder.

4.) In the folder select screen, select a folder with more than 5 files. Push the app aaaallll the way to the back of the bus, never to be seen again.

I put it in my adventure game folder that has 26 games in it... I'll never see that again.
 

malfcn

Member
I've got to make a submission.

Pressing down after Nexus should go to Apps, not store.

And watching shared content in a conversation should let B go back, not close the guide.
 

munroe

Member
You can tho!!!

1.) go to desired "app", in this case the psnow "app".

2.) press x to go into the app. Immediately back out, killing the ad and returning it too just the psnow logo.

3.) highlight the app and press options. Add to folder.

4.) In the folder select screen, select a folder with more than 5 files. Push the app aaaallll the way to the back of the bus, never to be seen again.

I put it in my adventure game folder that has 26 games in it... I'll never see that again.

Lol that's not removing it, that's just hiding it but it's still on the system.
 

Alx

Member
Is "Xbox on" supposed to work with Cortana in this preview ? I couldn't get it to work even once (kinect lights up, nothing happens, light goes off, then never lights up again).
 

Novocaine

Member
Is "Xbox on" supposed to work with Cortana in this preview ? I couldn't get it to work even once (kinect lights up, nothing happens, light goes off, then never lights up again).

Don't you have to say "Hey Cortana Xbox on"? I dunno I turned Cortana off, it didn't work as well for me.
 
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