Xbox One Console Thread

[SweatyTravolta]

None of the console have particularly amazing GUIs. I wouldn't say any are better than the others, it just depends what you're used to. I know whenever I use my PS4 it's always a faff to find stuff and the last time we tried to do a couch multiplayer evening I just wanted to boot it through the window. That's just because I only use it to play the exclusives though.

The Wii U is probably the easiest to find what you want but that's because you can organise it all into your own folders, so it's more functional rather than amazing.

I have the same problem that K has with the bone in that I need to hard reset it every couple of weeks when things start falling apart. Then I remember it's been in use almost every night for two weeks and don't mind that much.

So yeah, whichever console you use the most and are most familiar with is obviously going to be the best.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, K said:

The Xbox One front end definitely seems flakier than the PS4's, which is weird given that MS are a software company and Sony are a hardware company with a reputation for terrible software. It takes longer to boot up, the suspend-and-resume function seems to be less reliable, and it seems to require the occasional hard reboot when things stop working. They seem to update the UI every so often, but it feels like they're just shuffling things around, rather than really improving them. The PS4 front-end is pretty ugly and is at best functional, but feels more solid.

 

Oddly, I had a go on the 360 the other day, and the front end feels a lot smoother.

There's something wrong with your Bone then because mine is fast as fuck to navigate around. I often have to use the 360 because my son plays Skylanders on it and it's a proper dog. Property slow and cumbersome in comparison. Saying that I do have to do the odd hard reset. Probably once a month or so.

 

Are you on one of the preview builds?

[K]

I was, but I opted out. The most annoying thing is there's frequently a gap between turning the console on (or waking it from sleep) and it logging into my gamertag.

[Clipper]

6 minutes ago, K said:

I was, but I opted out. The most annoying thing is there's frequently a gap between turning the console on (or waking it from sleep) and it logging into my gamertag.

oh yes I meant to mention on Back compatible games I find it a pain that it takes a while for the "virtual 360" to connect your GT so if you press start too quick it doesn't know you and doesnt show save games and in some cases you have to restart the game.

 

 

[Guest]

Really odd problems there.

 

I wonder if K's machine still has some remnants of an old preview build on there that's causing the problems. Mine Wales from sleep and signs me in before I get chance to do anything else.

 

What are you playing on backwards compatibility? I've been hammering RDR the last couple of weeks and it boots up in seconds. Faster than most native bone games. I'm well impressed with it.

[Petrousgyre]

34 minutes ago, K said:

The Xbox One front end definitely seems flakier than the PS4's, which is weird given that MS are a software company and Sony are a hardware company with a reputation for terrible software. It takes longer to boot up, the suspend-and-resume function seems to be less reliable, and it seems to require the occasional hard reboot when things stop working. They seem to update the UI every so often, but it feels like they're just shuffling things around, rather than really improving them. The PS4 front-end is pretty ugly and is at best functional, but feels more solid.

 

Oddly, I had a go on the 360 the other day, and the front end feels a lot smoother.

 

Contrariwise the Xbox hardware seems much the more robust this time round whereas the PS4 is prone to a number of issues - noisy, sticks eroding, perpetually ejecting discs and so forth. Again, completely opposite to what you'd expect from both companies based on their historic strengths.

 

Pretty sure it's not just K's Bone that's sluggish, every One I've tried has had a laggy OS including my own that's never been in preview. Not sure it's slower than 360 in this respect but it's much clunkier than PS4, certainly. 

 

As ever though, if you have to pick one console, get the machine that has the exclusives you're most interested in. Last gen that was easily Microsoft for me - but this gen I'm struggling to care much about endlessly rehashed Forza and Halo along with some fairly middling new games. The dearth of great indie games on the One doesn't make it any more compelling for my money. 

 

 

[Cosmic_Guru]

The Xbox is far slower to boot from cold.  As far as I'm concerned, this is it's only real (i.e objective) drawback.  I much prefer the crisp and colourful plain black / white / purple interface and (to me) logical organisation compared to the drab muddle of the PS4 homepage with that absolute jumble of items below the row of games & apps.  I couldn't even find a half decent PS avatar.  It's a mystery why basic functions such as ordering and sizing game tiles and identifying updates have only just been added to the XB - it's all much better now.  I also really dislike the options and share buttons on the PS4 controller.  

[sandman]

Oh, and (as I found out the other day) your bone needs to be online to play a blu ray.

 

WTF?

[K]

58 minutes ago, petrolgirls said:

 

Contrariwise the Xbox hardware seems much the more robust this time round whereas the PS4 is prone to a number of issues - noisy, sticks eroding, perpetually ejecting discs and so forth. Again, completely opposite to what you'd expect from both companies based on their historic strengths.

 

 

Yeah, the Xbox seems really sturdy. The drive in particular has a very satisfying and smooth action when it ejects disks. Even stuff like the cables you get with it feel pretty high-end, whereas the PS4's rotting joypads and cheapo (but admittedly pretty good) mic earpiece all seem a bit flimsy. I guess part of that is down to the original idea to make the Xbox a kind of all-purpose entertainment centre, as opposed to the PS4's clear focus as a games machine.

[Yoshimax]

6 minutes ago, sandman said:

Oh, and (as I found out the other day) your bone needs to be online to play a blu ray.

 

WTF?

 

 

It doesn't. I'd put money on you either game sharing or not having your xbox set as home machine.

[Shimmyhill]

1 hour ago, Jon said:

There's something wrong with your Bone then because mine is fast as fuck to navigate around. I often have to use the 360 because my son plays Skylanders on it and it's a proper dog. Property slow and cumbersome in comparison. Saying that I do have to do the odd hard reset. Probably once a month or so.

 

Are you on one of the preview builds?

 

No way is it fast as fuck, its pedestrian at best and everything has a delay before it happens - even bringing up the side bar.

 

Wii U is confutable the fastest and easiest to use UI and its not exactly great so it shows how shocking MS have been as with Sony you expect it to be shit and are pleasantly surprised to find out its 'not bad'

[Petrousgyre]

6 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Wii U is confutable the fastest

 

What? And I don't mean your mangling of 'comfortably' - the WiiU's the slowest OS ever devised. It makes the Bone look like greased lightning.

[Guest]

You know what, I reckon they all have their pros and cons. As long as they all play host to amazing games, which they do, then we're all winners.

[Shimmyhill]

12 minutes ago, petrolgirls said:

 

What? And I don't mean your mangling of 'comfortably' - the WiiU's the slowest OS ever devised. It makes the Bone look like greased lightning.

 

I just mean navigating around it, there is no delay unlike bone or ps4 - outside of the 3 day wait for it to initially load or open the store of course.

 

They are all really poor, feel like Tivo and much like that I wonder how they have made them so bad when they aren't really doing anything you would expect to be power hungry. I guess they just don't want to give up too much precious cpu and ram to the UI so let them run poorly

[Yoshimax]

Lies of Astaroth (some card battling MMORPG hybrid) is available to preorder for free it goes live on the 12th : https://store.xbox.com/en-us/Xbox-One/Games/Lies-Of-Astaroth/9cb58255-60fc-4fd3-91a7-c8033fc48f8f

 

Ben Hur (wot) is available to download now for free : https://store.xbox.com/en-us/Xbox-One/Games/Ben-Hur/92ffdfc9-22ab-4631-8d9a-5d87536fb04a

 

Ben Hur appears to only be on the US store just now so just switch region on the bottom left of the page if you get a game not found message.

[Shimmyhill]

9 minutes ago, Jon said:

You know what, I reckon they all have their pros and cons. As long as they all play host to amazing games, which they do, then we're all winners.

 

Yeah, thats the crux of it - I have all 3 as ever even tho I defiantly wasn't going to.... they all have games that IMO justify having them and thats the most important thing.

[T Pot]

41 minutes ago, sandman said:

Oh, and (as I found out the other day) your bone needs to be online to play a blu ray.

 

WTF?

 

Was it the first time you ever attempted to play one? It needs to connect to get the BR licence stuff, but after that initial view, it never needs to again. I watch blurays offline all the time.

[SqueakyG]

I just had a hell of a time trying to do something more difficult than rocket science, apparently: :Listening to my music while playing a game.

 

I'd never tried to do this on Xbox One before, but I'm playing Forza 6 right now and it has a boring instrumental soundtrack. I want to listen to my own mp3's while driving. (At most times of day I must use headphones to keep quiet for the sake of other people in the house... so I can't just, you know, switch on a stereo).

 

What a nightmare.

• There's a Media Player app that will play music on a USB drive, yay!
• But it has no background functionality. Boo! It stops as soon as you switch to a game.
• The only way to play both together is to snap the media player. This is horrible. It takes up the side of the screen, puts the game in a smaller box, has a loud and unchangeable volume, and takes back focus every time the song changes. Not acceptable.
• I read that the summer update added snap controls for true background media playing... for some apps. The media player is not one of them.
• Groove Music is one of them. So I gave it a try. Unfortunately I don't think you can achieve anything without subscribing (which isn't going to happen). Apparently it should access any mp3s I put into OneDrive... but it didn't seem to work.

[T Pot]

Yeah, you have to wait for the individual apps to be updated to support the background music.

[Mr Do 71]

7 minutes ago, SqueakyG said:

I just had a hell of a time trying to do something more difficult than rocket science, apparently: :Listening to my music while playing a game.

 

I'd never tried to do this on Xbox One before, but I'm playing Forza 6 right now and it has a boring instrumental soundtrack. I want to listen to my own mp3's while driving. (At most times of day I must use headphones to keep quiet for the sake of other people in the house... so I can't just, you know, switch on a stereo).

 

What a nightmare.

• There's a Media Player app that will play music on a USB drive, yay!
• But it has no background functionality. Boo! It stops as soon as you switch to a game.
• The only way to play both together is to snap the media player. This is horrible. It takes up the side of the screen, puts the game in a smaller box, has a loud and unchangeable volume, and takes back focus every time the song changes. Not acceptable.
• I read that the summer update added snap controls for true background media playing... for some apps. The media player is not one of them.
• Groove Music is one of them. So I gave it a try. Unfortunately I don't think you can achieve anything without subscribing (which isn't going to happen). Apparently it should access any mp3s I put into OneDrive... but it didn't seem to work, I couldn't find the mp3s I tried.

 

This app might help? 

 

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/5/12388016/xbox-one-background-music-usb-drive

[SqueakyG]

Thank you so much! That works great. I wouldn't have even thought of going to the store to find a functionality app.

[sandman]

53 minutes ago, King A said:

 

Was it the first time you ever attempted to play one? It needs to connect to get the BR licence stuff, but after that initial view, it never needs to again. I watch blurays offline all the time.

Nope - watched loads before

[T Pot]

Only thing I can think of is you were trying to access online features of a bluray, or it was a glitch. You certainly don't need to be connected to watch movies.

[Yoshimax]

For the second time he's either game sharing or doesn't have the console set as his home console so an online check must be done to ensure he has a license for the app.

[sandman]

Thanks Yoshimax for taking the time to reply, but I have no idea what all that means and its indicative of the problems the system has in that it is a very unfriendly system to use after the 360.

 

I have certainly never game shared and only have the one bone.

[T Pot]

24 minutes ago, Yoshimax said:

For the second time he's either game sharing or doesn't have the console set as his home console so an online check must be done to ensure he has a license for the app.

 

I have two consoles in the house. One isn't set to my home console. Blurays play fine on it in offline.

[Yoshimax]

1 hour ago, King A said:

 

I have two consoles in the house. One isn't set to my home console. Blurays play fine on it in offline.

 

OK then maybe the app needs an update and knows from last time it was online and therefore won't launch; If he told us what happens when he tries we could get somewhere.

 

"do you own this game or app" then we already know.

[Yoshimax]

Sweet Jesus that Ben Hur game is an advert for a remake of the film coming out in a week. It's Somehow borderline playable in a road rashish way. Very easy G's @Varsity

[Varsity]

8 minutes ago, Yoshimax said:

Sweet Jesus that Ben Hur game is an advert for a remake of the film coming out in a week. It's Somehow borderline playable in a road rashish way. Very easy G's @Varsity

 

Already downloaded  Got it queued up as soon as I'm done with Bridge Constructor!

[T Pot]

I think this is the case but I'll ask anyway. £13 credit on my Xbox account. Trying to buy blood dragon for the 360 at £9.99. It doesn't let me use the credit on my account. Is it possible from a 360?