It’s not just that on some level. Part of me wonders how things would be different if that RD efforts went toward the ui and hardware.
Editer
4710
Go to the messages section and there’s a “gifts” section in there. You have to actually click A on the gift messages to redeem them.
Oh I do remember going into those gift messages and redeeming them on launch day. But what do I do after that? I assumed that they’d show up in my garage, but the only car in my garage that day was the first car the game made me choose as my free car. And then later the only cars in the garage were the ones I bought. I had assumed that they didn’t want the gift cars in there to unbalance things until later maybe?
I guess you test it out on the closed system (so no choice anyway) first them work out ways to move it onto the windows PC platform later?
Galadin
4714
Isn’t this just assumed with the further emphasis on all internet connectivity is gated behind Gold? Not much different than Netflix also requiring a gold membership?
Not saying it is right, but it does appear to be consistent at least.
Well there are some things that people are just going to expect are not stupidly pay-walled with Live. I have 20+ devices in my house that are internet connected, and MS seriously expect to encourage usage of the XBone by denying basic internet access. They be cray cray.
Yes, most of the cool gee-whiz features of the Xbox One are gated behind Live Gold. It’s great that you can Snap different things while playing a game, or switch from one entertainment app to another quickly, but it’s of very little use without Gold.
People really need to consider the price of Gold in their value calculation for the Xbox One.
I get gee-whiz features being behind Live, particularly if the infrastructure supports those features. However, basic internet access is not one of those things. Same argument for the Hulu/Netflix services, I guess, but this just seems even stupider.
I agree. Microsoft is just shooting themselves in the foot by locking basic stuff behind Live. Hopefully the competition with an improving PSN will pressure them into changing their policies.
Well, what I meant was that almost all the gee-whiz features are useless without Live - including any generic stuff like Snap or whatever - because most of the individual apps are tied to Gold. There’s no sense in having the “premiere entertainment hub” under your TV if most of the functions aren’t useful because you don’t want to pay a subscription. Pause your game and check out YouTube! Oh, wait. Not without Gold!
It’s this need to have a subscription to enable the Xbox One’s basic features that kind of puts me off the whole thing. Microsoft wants me to plug my cable into the box and have it on all the time, even to watch basic TV, but they require a Gold membership to enable the cool stuff they’re crowing about.
The PS4 is just a dumb game box. I’m sure Sony would love it if I used it as an all-in-one entertainment portal, and paid for PS+, but if I don’t, there won’t be constant nagging to pony up money when I use Netflix, or the internet.
In other news, EDGE is not a fan of the Xbox One interface.
This shambling, zomboid clunkiness permeates the entire interface. You have to go into the Games & Apps list to view downloads. Missed game invitations aren’t stored, but lost forever. You can’t view or manage storage, a spectacularly poor decision given that the 500GB hard drive will be approaching capacity by March. The overall sense is of a design handed over to the team behind the similarly unloved Windows 8 interface, rather than anybody who has used an Xbox 360 regularly or had any familiarity with its strengths.
Xbox and Windows are different divisions. Different enough they could almost be considered different companies if you squint a bit while looking at it.
While you could always get a ceo pushing for that much gating in Windows I have to expect that such moves would lead to much friction within the organization.
Visual Aid
Haha, love those drawings of the different companies.
stusser
4722
That cartoon is awesome! I particularly like the Oracle bit.
Anyway, I find locking multiplayer behind a pay gate ala PS4 to be offensive. It’s 2014, everything in my house goes online. My cable box, my streamers, my cellphone, my tablets, my computers, my thermostat, my clock radio, my smoke detector, my lights, my front door lock, all that stuff is connected to the internet. It is downright offensive to charge for online multiplayer. It needs to be free.
And that’s just multiplayer. The Xbone takes it to another level, way beyond offensive, to downright incredulous.
I guess they don’t care about me, because I’m not really a console gamer and don’t own either one. But stuff like this is a major reason why.
This feels good for me to read. At least if Microsoft is aware of the way this interface falls short of the 360 interface, then there’s hope that they will fix the right things. I’m glad I’m not the only person who wants music to play in the background instead of being snapped to the side of your game, taking up screen space for no reason except to tell you what’s playing.
Well, you have to recall last generation. The One will get a massive dashboard redesign that everyone will be super happy with, just like the 360 did.
Then it will get a 3rd and 4th redesign that no one asked for, ending will your gaming content being relegated to a postage stamp sized window while the rest of the screen is taken over with ads for Doritos and Mountain Dew Xtreme Gaming Fuel.
It will get better…before it gets worse.
This shambling, zomboid clunkiness permeates the entire interface. You have to go into the Games & Apps list to view downloads. Missed game invitations aren’t stored, but lost forever. You can’t view or manage storage, a spectacularly poor decision given that the 500GB hard drive will be approaching capacity by March. The overall sense is of a design handed over to the team behind the similarly unloved Windows 8 interface, rather than anybody who has used an Xbox 360 regularly or had any familiarity with its strengths.
They are crazy if they think that the average customer will have 10 games before March. And honestly, even as someone with a decent sized game collection, I don’t really care too much about automatic storage management – it seems like it would be really rare when I’d be terribly inconvenienced by it.
Overall, I think the Xbox One interface is pretty good, actually, largely owing to how flat (in terms of menu hierarchy, not visual style) it feels. You are never that far away from pretty much anything on the console, and to me it feels like a big improvement over the menu-dominated paradigm of most of last-gen (namely, the horrid XMB). The voice stuff also has worked quite well for me so far. There are definitely improvements to be made, but in general I would say the UI is actually a big success.
The One will get a massive dashboard redesign that everyone will be super happy with, just like the 360 did.
Am I the only person that actually liked the blades? The one bit of the 360 revamp I liked was the improved Guide button menu, and I think that might have been on the third or fourth revision.
