Xbox One Review Part 1: The Good

I’ve never been as excited to unbox a piece of technology as I was last Friday during the launch of the Xbox One. Straight out of the box, the Kinect sensor looked sleek and modern, pulling off its hefty size with ease.

The first time I held the controller in my hands felt amazing. It has a matte finish unlike the Xbox 360 controller’s glossy finish. The D-Pad has been improved substantially with the removal of the flimsy disk of a D-Pad from the 360 and adding a secure cross shape that now works great for each input. The analog sticks are smaller as well but the texture surrounding them provides a better grip.

I’m still waiting to see the implemented impulse triggers put to good use, as the thought of getting specific vibrations for specific actions in a game really seems like a more interesting and interactive way of play.

The battery compartment in the back is tucked inside instead of bulging out like before.  It does still use batteries right out of the box and it’s unfortunate that Microsoft doesn’t provide a rechargeable battery.  It’s nice to know that I can replace my batteries easily, rechargeable or not, instead of having to buy a new controller. In contrast, the PlayStation 4 has rechargeable battery built in – and if the battery goes bad, then the whole controller does too.

Now for the Xbox One itself: it’s bigger than big – as a matter of fact it’s huge. But what I was worried about in size completely drifted away with the design. It’s a simple look; pulling off a VCR kind of look is actually not a bad thing.

It’s big for a reason though: ventilation. The design of the Xbox One seems to be constructed with the vents as the starting point. Half of the console has vents for the huge built-in fan, leaving me reassured there will be no such thing as the infamous “Red Ring of Death” the early Xbox 360 had due to overheating issues. Even the power brick looks good, pulling off the same half-glossy, half-matte finish as the console.

In terms of performance and software, the One does nothing short of delivering one of the best user experiences.  Everything is fluid and responsive, with the ability to snap certain functions alongside, such as playing “Dead Rising 3” on the left part of the screen while the smaller portion plays “Man Of Steel” on Blu-ray. It’s pretty nifty, and switching between the two is as easy as double-tapping the Xbox button or giving the voice command “Xbox, Switch” through the Kinect.

The Kinect is now an integral part of the Xbox One’s hardware. Unlike the 360, the One’s just not the same without it and the experience wouldn’t feel as rich and satisfying. The array of commands available at the sound of my voice makes me feel in control and organized.

I actually found navigating with the controller more time consuming than simply stating a command to the Kinect.  For the 360, the controller was the way to go to find what I needed, but the One has changed the game. I find myself talking to my Xbox more than pushing buttons to navigate through the dashboard.

One of my favorite new features is the ability to record segments of gameplay through the console’s own DVR. Every time I have an epic moment in a game, I’m quick to call out “Xbox, record that!” and it records the previous 30 seconds seamlessly as well as letting me know when it has finished recording. When I finish my game I can check out the clip and edit it by trimming or adding some cool effects with Upload Studio, the Xbox’s own video editor. Once I’m satisfied with my video, sharing it couldn’t be any easier; with just the push of a button, I can start uploading it to my account on Xbox as well as to SkyDrive, a free online storage provided by Microsoft, that gives the option to upload video anywhere on the web. Although it’s still not the best way edit video, it’s definitely the easiest and I’m glad Microsoft has made it simple to capture those great moments in gaming.

As for gaming and graphics, there isn’t too much of a difference to what I saw on the 360, but that’s because my main game has been “Call Of Duty: Ghosts” and the developers of the game still have yet to implement a better engine to not only bring in that fluid gameplay they’re known for, but to graphically enhance the look by taking advantage of the new hardware the Xbox One has to offer. Games like “Forza Motorsport 5″ and “Ryse: Son of Rome“ do a better job of showcasing this, but I’m more excited with what the future has to offer in terms of graphics.

Just think of it: the games that were available in the early years of the 360 such as “Call Of Duty 2″ and “Grand Theft Auto 4″ look pretty awful now and yet, we thought they looked great at the time. Now fast forward to the end of the 360’s cycle with games like “Halo 4″ and “Grand Theft Auto 5.” All are much better looking games still being played on the same console as developers got a much better sense of how to push the 360 to its full potential. And with the Xbox One boasting an eight gigabyte RAM DDR3 with an 8 Core AMD Custom CPU, compared to the 360′s 512 megabyte GDDR3? Saying the Xbox One is an improvement becomes an understatement; it’s definitely next-gen. That’s what I’m excited for with the Xbox One: games are already looking fantastic, but I can’t imagine how great they will look in the upcoming years.

Xbox One Review Part 2: The Bad And The Ugly

Microsoft has no doubt brought us a great console, but it can still use its improvements. Like every console at launch, it has its problems, whether hardware or software.

The hardware can be easily replaced if broken, but not improved and thus I’m going to focus on the software because that can surely be improved. With Microsoft having a great history of listening to their consumers, it’s a good idea to point these problems out so they can look into them. Now, as Khan said…“Shall we begin?”

Software updates are needed. That’s the main thing that comes to mind when I think of the problems with the Xbox One.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a great console, but there have been things that worked fine on the Xbox 360 that have actually been tweaked for the worse.  For example, the Xbox button on the 360 brought up a quick guide menu no matter where I was on the console, offering fast access to everything including messages, friends, party chat and account info.

For the One, the button does essentially the same thing but it brings up the whole dashboard, which is great – but it has its problems. When I push the Xbox button, it still runs the game or movie in the background and I can go back to it as if I’ve never left.  It’s definitely an improvement, but it actually takes longer to navigate through the full dashboard than to quickly bring up that organized little menu. Thankfully the Kinect allows me to give voice commands to find my place easier, but it’d be nice knowing I had two easy options rather than making one obsolete.

Notifications have also been tweaked for the worse in the form of where are they? All I tend to receive are achievement and Skype notifications, but gone are the days when I’m notified that a friend has just hopped online leaving me checking to see if a fellow gamer has come online myself.

The game invites are practically gone as well; it’s much more like the PlayStation 3 now where I can only send game invites through the game I’m playing and not independently through the Xbox menu. And when I do get a game invite, it interrupts my gameplay instead of the familiar notification popping up on the top of my screen on the 360, which would let me choose to either ignore it and keep playing…or push a button to read the message and accept the invite.

I was playing Call Of Duty Ghosts on the Xbox One and just as I was about to shoot down an unsuspecting opponent, I got an invite to play a game in the middle of the screen rendering me helpless for a couple precious seconds as I tried to clear the notification while the game continued. In doing so, my opponent got away and I was frustrated.

What happens if I am constantly getting game invites either by a clingy friend or an annoying troll who intends to mess up my game knowing it will freeze my screen for a couple of seconds every time? Microsoft could have improved the invites by making them look better and work faster but instead they completely changed it. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And unfortunately, they tried to fix it.

One more thing: slow installation times. Upon trying to install Call Of Duty Ghosts, it was painfully slow and at one point it got me to thinking I had a defective Xbox since it wouldn’t move past 0% (it took about a good 30 minutes before it got to 1%). In total time, it took about an hour and a half to get to 50% in which I could start playing the game while it finished downloading which is a great feature, but I still had to wait long just to get to that point.

Now this is a generation of bigger file sizes (Call Of Duty Ghosts is about 40 gigabytes for the Xbox One), but I thought Microsoft would have anticipated that better. It could be the reason why they were pushing to go with digital games, but most gamers don’t even have that strong or fast of a connection so that wouldn’t have been a viable option as of yet either since downloading games would take even longer.

But if Microsoft continues in the same trajectory as they did in the last generation with the Xbox 360, plenty of updates should be on their way for the Xbox One to further improve the software…or bring some mechanics back into play that were fine to begin with.