Xbox One Impressions and Comparisons with PS4

The Xbox One is finally here!  And I got it!  Here are some first day impressions and happenings.

Hooking up the Xbone was a breeze and the day one patch went up within minutes with no issues.  Anyone worried about that should rest assured.  Kinect was pretty cool too.  I am not, however, impressed with the look of the dashboard.  Always did hate the whole Windows 8/Mobile look and I wish they didn't import the thing straight to Xbone.  The blocky icons and plain backgrounds do noone any favors.  I'm also not a big fan of advertising, and I'm disappointed (but not surprised) to see several just a scroll away.

The interface works a lot like the PS4.  You have your home screen, and any application can be paused and taken back to the home screen, where you can restart it at will or multitask with something else.  It's easy to use here.  Kinect was also fun to give voice commands to, and you can pretty much use your voice to do anything.  Even in certain apps, you don't have to touch a controller to navigate.  Just say the menu options and the machine will do it.  I don't find it more useful than a controller, though.  If my controller isn't within arm's reach, sure, but if I already have it in my hands, then voice commands are pointless.

I'm also very impressed with Forza Motorsport.  It's the only game I've tried at the moment, but I'm already blown away.  The independent trigger vibration was genius, and really helps with the racing.  The graphics are near photorealistic and the lighting effects were stunning.  Great game!

But there are some problems.  Can you believe the machine crashed on me already?  Here's what happened...  Forza 5 needs a whopping 6GB update on day one.  The machine started the installation automatically and after about 6% completion the game was ready to play.  I played it, enjoyed it, but it's not going to last forever.  After a few races, I got a message saying that the next part of the game hasn't been installed yet.  So I checked the progress on the home screen, and it says 15%.  I waited a while, and it still says 15%.  Now, my internet is very spotty, so maybe it conked out and noone noticed.  There were two options on the menu.  I can cancel the install, or I can pause it.  I chose cancel.  Nothing happened.  I chose pause.  The status now says paused.  I tried restarting it but nothing happened.  Worse still, none of the other apps are working either.  Clicking on icons don't do anything.  Naturally, I turned off the machine but when it I turned it back on... nothing.  No image, no sound, nothing.  Panic was setting in until my girlfriend turned the machine off via the 'touch button' on the console (disguised as the Xbox logo, so I couldn't even tell).  She turned it back on, and whew!  It works!  What's also funny was that the install now reads 97%, mysteriously.  A few minutes later (I dare touch nothing else) the install was complete.  It wasn't reassuring.

My next beef with the machine is Xbox Live Gold.  I've heard that a lot of features are locked (like Netflix) unless one is a Gold subscriber.  So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when the video upload feature was locked to non Gold members.  See, the Xbone lets you capture game footage any time, much like the PS4.  But in order to even edit the darn thing, you need a Gold membership?  Is that stupid or what?  Uploading videos need a membership too.  That's just stupid.  Luckily, I was able to use my girlfriend's 1 month trial card.  Problem solved, right?  Not so.  Apparently, uploading the video only gets it to the Xbox servers.  Other Xbone users can view uploaded videos but there's no way to get it onto Facebook.  I searched online and found that maybe, just maybe, there is another way.  This way involves Skydrive, Microsoft's own cloud storage service, which is also an Xbone app.  But it doesn't work!  Everytime I tried to save anything to Skydrive, I would get an error.  The Internet (for once) was no help at all.  It took me a long time to figure it out, but here's what I did....  I went onto Skydrive's site directly from the web.  There, I logged in with my Xbox Live password.  Right away, the site asked me to sign a user agreement.  Aha!  That's it!  Agreement signed, the Xbone and Skydrive connection now worked.  Why didn't the machine just tell me to do this in the first bloody place??  Problem solved, right?  NO!  Turns out that I STILL can't post to Facebook.  There simply is no option!  Now I might have to get the app version of Skydrive for my iOS but that involves updating my iPad to the latest version of the OS which will slow it down and.... GRRRRR!

Stupid Microsoft.  Why make it so hard?

*sigh*  Well, that ended on a sour note.  So I'll stop.

So there it is.  My latest Xbone impression.  And last week was the PS4 write up.  Now I'll try to summarize and compare.

Hate to say it, but the PS4 is the hands down winner here.  It's got a much better looking interface, it never crashed on me and it lets me send videos and screenshots to Facebook first time, every time.  There's nothing complicated about it.  And I don't need a paid membership to do this stuff either!  Oh, and you can't access save files on Xbone for some strange reason.  Don't know why, but you just can't.  Stupid.

BUT!  The Xbone does win hands down for games and graphics.  I dare say Forza looks better than AC4.  I'm not sure that's a fair comparison, since Forza was built from bottom up to be next gen.  However, there's no doubt that Xbone has better games at this point.  I'm loving AC4 on PS4 but it's still a non exclusive game.  While Forza, which is a great game, is an Xbone exclusive.  Until Second Son, there's nothing on PS4 I want from Sony first party.  Oh and things download waaaaay faster on Xbone than on PS4.  The day one patch was bigger than Sony's but it installed in less than half the time.

In the end though, having a less than stellar launch line up and a slower connection is better than needing a paid membership just to access some key features.  I know Sony has their Plus program mandatory for online play, but they make up for it by giving us two free games.  I signed up for Gold and got zip for free. Indeed, features get taken away without it!  I have no doubt that Sony's gaming lineup with match up over time, and already, after the day one scramble, their servers are a bit faster.  However, some of the Xbone's bone headed features, like Skydrive or lack of access to save files, is something too cumbersome to ignore.

Don't take my word for it though.  The next gen console wars have yet to truly heat up.  But right now, Sony definitely has the better machine.

The PS4 is Here!

Yup.  And I'm a proud owner of a PS4.  This blog will be about my initial impressions.

In what has to the best launch ever, I got my preorder machine with no fuss, muss or line ups.  This was a far cry from the PS3, or even the Xbox 360.  It looks like console manufacturers have learned their lessons.  It seems like the Xbox One launch will be smooth too.  Anyway, about the PS4...

Setting up the machine to the TV was a breeze, along with setting up the Playstation camera (sold seperately, but I got one).  When I turned on the machine for the first time, the visuals already blew me away.  I haven't see a crisper background in my life, even though it's just a menu at this point.  This was also when the trouble started.  As everyone knows by now, there was a huge day 1 patch to the machine.  You need this before you can do any kind of online stuff with it and it is 350mb approx.  Sony, naturally, got their servers bogged down by all the PS4 owners doing the same patch, so no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get the patch downloaded.  Eventually, I had to go online with a PC, download the patch onto a USB stick, then use the stick to update the PS4.  For all of Sony's faults, at least they gave us this option.

By that time, it was getting late, so all we could do was hit the Playroom.  After a quick update (not nearly as big) for the Playroom, my girlfriend and I gave it a shot.  Playroom itself is nothing more than a tech demo to show off the controller and the camera.  So as it is, it isn't much.  We had some fun with two player air hockey using the controller's touch pad and played with some very cute robots with the camera's augmented reality feature.  Basically, robots appear on the screen, superimposed on an image of out living room via the camera.  Then we interact with these robots.  We can pet them or hit them, and they react accordingly.  To be honest, it's not that impressive.  But it is funny, and the robots were cute.

The next day, I woke up early to further test out the machine.  I bought into the PS Plus program and downloaded, for free, Contrast and Resogun.  Resogun is a side scrolling shooter with trippy visual.  It adequetly shows up the PS4s lighting muscles but I'm not sure if I should be impressed. It does look very, very pretty when the screen is packed full of enemies and bullets but, again, I'm not sure if this can't be done on the PS3.  Probably not, because the light show looks a little TOO pretty.

Next up was Contrast.  If there ever was a diamond in the rough, this game would be it.  It's got an unusual story involving a girl and her imaginary friend who has the power to fuse with shadows.  Unfortuately, I've see this premise already with Lost In Shadows on the Wii.  Graphically, aside from sharper than usual images via higher resolution, the game doesn't look next gen.  And when it moves, the frame rate doesn't really keep up.  Not as much as I could tell anyway.

So basically, it was up to Assassin's Creed 4 to really show off the power of the PS4.  Can't really expect much too, since the game also came out on the 'last gen' consoles.  The game plays great, as expected, but it doesn't use any of the controller's PS4 specific features (except the ability to scroll the map using the touchpad which is actually more cumbersome than using the analog).  I notice things in the graphics that the PS3 likely couldn't handle.  Weather effects were top notch, especially when it storms.  I also noticed crisper shadow effects than the older machines, too.  And I think (because I can't tell for sure) the 1080p resolution made it look sharper but there's nothing I can truly point a finger to.

So far, the only difference in performance I've noticed are much shorter loading times, and a very quick transition between game and the PS4's menu.  This is actually a bonus in one respect, because the sharing feature just won't be the same if the PS4 interface lags.  I've posted an image and a video on Facebook and both went off without a hitch.  The video capture feature was quite impressive.  At any time, I just hit the share button on my controller and the last 15 minutes of game play would be recorded for me right there.  All I had to do was give it a slight edit, which basically involved setting a start and an end to the video, crop it, then post it to social media.  All this was done in seconds.  The editing options could use a bit more features, however.  When previewing my video, it would be nice to be able to fast forward or rewind.

All in all, anyone looking for a true next gen experience should wait a year before picking this up.  As it is, the only difference between this and a PS3 would be the difference between a high end gaming PC and basic one.  For me, I'm loving it.  The machine is smooth, it's an improvement, and I can't fault the experience for being too much like last gen.  And I have every confidence that it would only get better.