New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

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VideoGameCritic
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New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby VideoGameCritic » August 6th, 2016, 2:53 pm

So I went to install Just Cause 3 (43 GB) and of course was told I needed more space. Normally I'd go to the disk management screen, but there's a problem - it's gone. Microsoft decided to overhaul the whole Xbox One interface just for the sake of making things harder and less intuitive.

Apparently you now have to select individual games and select "manage" in order to uninstall them. That sucks because you have to poke around looking for the biggest installs. And once I cleared enough space, there was another problem. Apparently there's a whole queue of "updates" waiting to be installed for games I haven't played for years. So now I'm fighting the tide, trying to disable/delete these installs so they don't fill up my disk. But there's really no fine-grained control. If you don't want new updates for a game you basically have to uninstall the whole damn thing.

Microsoft has been pushing the consoles toward a PC model, and it's ruining everything that made consoles great. The current "install from disk" paradigm is not working. And if you think it is, wait until your hard disk fills up.

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby VideoGameCritic » August 6th, 2016, 2:56 pm

Oh great - now I have a mandatory update for the game that's another 5GB!!

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ptdebate
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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby ptdebate » August 6th, 2016, 9:34 pm

I don't mean to sound contrarian, but I've consistently enjoyed the improvements made to the Xbox One interface. At the start it was awful because the only way to navigate around was by using your voice. Now they've gotten a lot closer to the Xbox 360 model where you can navigate everything with your controller. Thank god! I hated talking to my TV and looking and sounding like an idiot.

In the latest update, I like the fact that you can adjust the size of the icons for your games and applications. I have somewhere between 30-40 games installed on my Xbox One so this makes navigation a lot less of a chore. It's also a breeze moving games between internal and external storage. My recommendation to you is to leave your console online at all times (so that updates are downloaded while you sleep and not when you're trying to do something else) and hook up a cheap external drive to double (or triple or quadruple!) your available storage. That way there's no need to uninstall anything!

Yes, yes I agree that the new consoles require more of the user than old consoles. But if you play ball with them, you'll find yourself banging your head against the wall a lot less!

Truth is, these console also do a lot more than the old ones. I understand that you may feel like an underserved demographic though. Unfortunately the fact is that most gamers these days enjoy the online-enabled features of their consoles.

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby Sut » August 7th, 2016, 7:40 am

Similar story with PS4, I leave it in rest mode and all updates and patches are downloaded overnight so pretty much plain sailing. Obviously apart from new game purchases.

Surprisingly for me, it's making me consider going all digital for the next generation. For the ease ptdebate describes with his digital games. A year ago I would never have contemplated that, but after going digital for music, books and film, it's the next logical step for me (and I would have a lot more room!).

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby VideoGameCritic » August 7th, 2016, 10:39 am

You will have more room but nothing to show! People who keep physical media may have a lot of junk lying around, but that junk it worth big bucks! Digital media will never be worth anything in terms of money.

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ActRaiser
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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby ActRaiser » August 7th, 2016, 12:30 pm

I don't mind the new interface although for me the voice controls seem to have dropped in quality a bit. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?

+1 for keeping your systems online. It's far fewer hassles overall. Plus, how else does one watch Netflix?

Plus, if your systems are online and you pay for Xbox Live or Playstation Plus you're constantly getting free games. Heck, I've got a huge backlog of games that I know I'll never get to play.

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby ptdebate » August 7th, 2016, 4:57 pm

ActRaiser wrote:Plus, if your systems are online and you pay for Xbox Live or Playstation Plus you're constantly getting free games. Heck, I've got a huge backlog of games that I know I'll never get to play.


This! I just got Yakuza 5 for free on PSN. That just came out like a few months ago!

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby Steve » August 8th, 2016, 4:47 am

I don't mind the new interface although for me the voice controls seem to have dropped in quality a bit. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?


Are you referring to the Cortana aspect of the update? If so, I would agree, but much more than "a bit". Cortana is terrible at voice recognition. I tried it for a few minutes and it was so laughably bad, I disabled it and went back to regular Kinect voice commands (which work fine).

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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby ActRaiser » August 8th, 2016, 11:37 pm

Steve wrote:
I don't mind the new interface although for me the voice controls seem to have dropped in quality a bit. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?


Are you referring to the Cortana aspect of the update? If so, I would agree, but much more than "a bit". Cortana is terrible at voice recognition. I tried it for a few minutes and it was so laughably bad, I disabled it and went back to regular Kinect voice commands (which work fine).


Heck, I didn't even try Cortana. I think some of the Xbox navigation/TV controls seem to have regressed a bit. Maybe, I need to re-run the mike setup stuff again. I wonder if it got reset during one of the updates?

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BlasteroidAli
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Re: New Xbox One Interface is the WORST

Postby BlasteroidAli » August 23rd, 2016, 6:14 am

Well the playing of music in the back ground is on the dash board albeit through a complicated way. You have to save your music to stick and play it through one of the usb ports.
For Kinect remember say everything with an American accent. Just pretend you are John Wayne and everything will work just fine. I have not bothered with cortana. It was useless on my PC so I would think it would be useless on xbox. It was pretty good on my windows phone. That was about it.
I am with the critic on this one. i preferred it the way it was before and to be honest I preferred the windows 8 version of the dash.


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