Axm wrote: Hot dang.
Well first off about the UI I'm surprised someone who is so into UI design can agree with ie. the "My Games" library icon being right next to multiple adverts.
Then take that top row and basically scrap it all and call it the Store, because that's basically all its acting as. Just constant buy that, look at this, sign up for whatever. The whole system UI is just so blatantly geared towards making you buy shit. It's not only annoying but offensive. The PS4 and Switch put all that stuff in clearly designated areas. They don't constantly bombard you and you can get where you want to be in 1-2 QUICK steps tops.
Also the loading from page to page in the Xbox UI is just plain slow and laggy. I always experience this half second delay with a button press. You would almost think its input lag but then you realise everything in the whole UI is slow altogether too. Maybe load less bullshit on the front end so we can just have a nice simple interface like we did with the first gen Xbox 360 blade style UI. Now that was a good UI. Then they went and fucked that one up and it's never been the same since.
It's like they realised at one point they could turn a games console into a advertising and sales machine and had a field day in seeing how far they could go. With the constant balancing act of attempting to listen to user feedback with UI updates to "streamline" while then adding 10 more sales icons into the mix like we wouldn't notice.
And the side bar? It would be great if you didn't need to do so many additional presses to still get what you want. And its of course crazy slow too.
tbh just scrap the entire UI besides the side bar because that's basically all we need to operate the system. Then put it front and center with no other distractions. Maybe that would speed things up and make it look like a games console again.
And ya the controller is great though. Favourite thing about the console and its something I use more often to play PC games than with the Xbox.. >_>
Ya they better reboot Mech Assault or Crimson Skies before I permanently replace its space with the Dreamcast.
Thanks for the reply dood, there's a lot of salient points here too. I hope I can do justice to this without imagery.
The whole 'ad' thing doesn't really both me because the majority (except one on the bottom right) is informing of features/shortcuts (like gold), new games and as a whole I quite like the appearance it all elegantly put together as well as the 'live' presence of it all, it doesn't feel like an desolate/arid place to be). And honestly i have never taken issue with the fact that ad's still there when having a gold subscription, it seems like complaining
The PS4 menu welcomes the idea of all these dynamic themes (which I think is cool and I can appreciate) but the inconsistency of it is what drives me nuts: If you're going to allow these theme devs to drastically alter the look of the OS, you have to go the whole way. It's unreasonable to expect that all apps should have an icon of their own, but most of the stock ones should (i'm looking at you 'PS Store' and 'What's New') because they look so jarring when you have a see-through icon and then a big blue ps store icon that you are not allowed to alter in anyway.
Also, there's just too much noise in the current layout and the way they've listed everything. If you press options on a game tile you get a whole list of jargon, most of which is never applicable.
Then there's the amount of steps it takes to order any of your games in folders. If you want to move things around you have to press options, go down to edit folder, go down again to the icon you want to move, press X, and move one one by one... waaaaaay to clumsily implemented. To do the same thing with Xbox pins (after first assigning pins either through your recent played list/games folder or online/app)
The actual Sony aesthetic stands out too, because unlike Apple, Google, MS they didn't really incorporate flat design. Fair enough, I prefer flat design but I don't want to dictate to others what their tastes should be. If people like gradients and all these wavy lines in the background will all this bizarre sombre music that plays in the background: power to them. But things ought to be clearer (which they've just did in the last update to incorporate some flat/vector-y icons, cool!) but they still don't really follow the principles like the golden rule.
Setting up the thing felt liek a pain as well, waaay too many questions for waaay too many thing like they're not confident on setting up a default that the user can then further tweak.
Also, please Sony: Don't be stingy with not allowing auto updates for games when the console is on standby when not on PS+, this is waaay too much of an inconvenience/nuisance, people hardly have enough time as it is for setting up all this. They're the only one's out of all Steam/Nintendo/Xbox that do this.
In terms of things to come, there's going to be refunds and gifting on the xbone which I'm hoping Ninty/Sony adopt. Unlike sony, xbox is still lacking a basket feature for the store atm... :/
I want to be optimistic here as a whole. I'm glad Sony added external HDD's because I've never liked the thought of swapping the internal unless the internal one was going to have a use elsewhere. PS4 is 500gb atm and my xbone is 1tb (w/ 4tb HDD). Also, we're past the days of the PS3 interface (which I'm still a little gutted they never fixed aspects of). I have nostalgia for the blades/XMB interface too, but the limitations of that interface obviously couldn't handle the load as features/lists grew more prominent. The Ps3 especially (with all this vita card applicatioon, sing star etc etc) is a mess man.
We live in a time now where all the corporate empires like Google, Apple and (depending where you go) MS have really advanced UI with using clean/consistent/legible icons and with design principles/guidelines all organised and considered, the expectation have just skyrocketed.
Sure, the Xbox One UI had big issues when it started, and the majority of that came with the fact that the OS was designed to be navigated primarily with Kinect voices > controller. Whether people liked that or not (i quite liked it for 360, never owned a kinect for XB1), they've shifted away from all that to improve the UI/experience for controller only users as they started selling xbones without kinect. And xbox dashboard atm isn't perfect either (going from game window to home doesn't feel seamless at all + the reduction of some features like snap for favouring performance did upset a few owners).
I totally understand your point of view though and it's totally valid of course, I bought an xbox about a year and a half later after launch? I actually thought the xbone had decent title releases for every year since it launched with the big exception on this year (halo wars 2 and crackdown 3?) scalebound did hit hard for us too but there was a bunch of cool stuff this year I got to try (phantom dust hd) overall though the japanese releases on PS4 earlier in the year did pretty much decimate everything else. I'm just saying overall there's a lot to like about the xbone UI and it's the one I prefer as a whole. Hopefully I explained my perspective of the OS adequately enough.
...
That's enough UI discussion from me today xD. Remember the days DVD's use to have slick/super awesome UI? And now they're all just a jpeg (and often not a good one) with arial font options? What happened? Disc space? The decline of DVD sales? Emphasis placed on blu-rays?
Discussing hardware design is fun too. Personally I like the one I have (OG Xbox, entire matt finish so non of that gloss scuffing) because it's just super robust, silent and ventilates very well. I kinda wanted that after, you know, the early 360 years xD. I understood the advantages of having external power supplies but they are kind of a nuisance I suppose. The very PS4 OG with the totally illegible icons for eject/power and ventilation was a bit of a disappointment and one of the bigger reasons I waited (along with the 2.4ghz only wifi chip because i'm nowhere near my ethernet) but the slim made up for it. The tactile buttons, the removable of that huge-ass LED tunnel on top of the console are things I favour. I can see how people like changing their faceplates prior though...
For controllers, imo both xbox/ps4 had issues with out of the gate. Xbox had super-stubborn shoulder buttons and a lack of 3.5mm headphone jack port. PS4 had the dodgy thumbsticks coating, weirder triggers and low battery life of the controller. Both seem fine now after their revisions though. Overall I prefer the xbone controller as a whole on the ergonomics side/grip, but I think it's subjective for the most part.
Which leads to the switch... oh my words. Interested to hear you hardware experience here @Axm. First of, the engineering of the handheld and joycons is incredible. And let's praise nintendo for adopting a modular design for the handheld innards/components and use of screws (non of this glue guff you see everywhere else, pushing away from planned obsolescence and no chances of proper user repair that you see for every other bit of tech).
I don't own a switch but I borrowed my brother in law's for a while and hardware wise it's currently has the most fundamental flaws out there. Skipping all the wifi/bluetooth/battery reading/plastic stand/ventilation/gyroscope/docking on samsung/LG tv's/plastic build warping issues all aside, the design ethos for this console just wasn't properly considered. They tried going for an omni design approach with the analogue and buttons being totally vertical on the joycon for the sake of 'sharing the joy' (of which I did with street fighter 2... and damn did it not feel right in that setup at all :/). Sad thing though is that the ergonomics side was apparent during the early prototypes for the WiiU controller, which they corrected later for the retail units. They clearly know and are aware of all this.
The lack of a proper dpad in normal mode wasn't as much of a huge letdown, that probably would just take some adjustment for that game. And the sharing the joy-mode clips are just clumsy, impractical and unconsidered additions.
But the analog/buttons need to be diagonal for me to even use it for a standard amount of time. All the 'fixes' for this seem to resort to either buying more accessories like a joypad (which kinda defeats the purpose, also 'dat price dough') and resorting to 3D printing components (as Ben Heck on youtube demonstrated).
So yeah, all I'll say is in true nintendo fashion: I'm sure all their future iterative console designs (XL/mini/*new*) are going to much much more considered on the whole. I think they're working on this quicker than we think, with all the WSJ reports added with the versatility/scaleability of manufacturing these components. I'd have though Nintendo learned the hardway about hardware gimmicks after star fox. Nintendo IP's aren't really a big on their own for me, but I'm super intrigued on the games that could come as well as the game Nagoshi is working on for it atm. Is it a monkey ball game, or a handheld yakuza spinoff? Exciting stuff!
(P.S. Never played crimson skies or mech assault :( I do own the former somewhere though). Also, apologies for anyone reading if I sounded too harsh on anything, again just my critiquing, hopefully it's balanced. But if I did any of the mistakes when i was at uni my tutors would have publicly shot me down for it (as they do) this shyte is taken seriously as is always up for scrutiny! xD
Have you decided on what you're planning to get?
(P.P.S. has anyone tried the steam controller? I've never tried one)
(P.P.P.S. Gamescom hype!)
(P.P.P.P.S. yes I wrote all this during my break-time. No regrets xD)