Xbox One: Initial Thoughts And Impressions

It’s difficult to overstate the pleasure of switching the Xbox One on from standby. “Xbox: On” I say, as I walk into my living room. The menus are on screen, not quite before my backside hits the sofa but certainly before I’ve settled in comfortably. It’s fast and it’s intuitive and it doesn’t even feel prohibitively weird to be barking commands at consumer electronics after you’ve done it a few times.

The new Kinect is a big part of that process, obviously. Not only does it house the microphone that listens to your commands, it’s home to the camera that sees your face and logs you in to your Live account. If there’s more than one person present with an account on that machine, it defaults to whoever it sees holding a controller (or possibly the most frequent user? It was difficult to work out the process). If nobody has picked up the controller yet, or it’s unclear who to pick, it displays a selection screen. Smart, slick, fast and helpful.

Kinect also keeps an eye on your controller. In certain games, you can use motions with the controller to perform in-game actions, even though there are no motion sensors inside the new Xbox One controller. That’s because it beams out an IR signal that Kinect’s trio of gently glowing red spots are watching. So it works similarly to the Wii Remote and sensor bar to know roughly what your controller is doing.

That might initially seem like a gimmick but, again, it’s put to subtle and useful work by the system. If Kinect notices that your controller isn’t moving and it isn’t taking any inputs – while watching Netflix for example – the Xbox One puts it into a low-power state and conserves battery life. Another small, subtle thing that we will probably all fail to even notice in a few months but it makes the overall experience a little bit more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. The Xbox One’s menu system will be immediately familiar to anyone who uses Windows 8 or any of the variations on its tile-based system. That’s not necessarily bad but without the intuitive pointing options of a mouse or finger, it’s laborious to navigate. If you’re adamant about not using Kinect, or unable to practically rely upon it for navigation, then the home menu on Xbox One is a bit of a chore.

Compare these two scenarios. In scenario one, you walk into a room and say “Xbox: On”, pick up your TV remote and hit the on button. By the time you’ve sat down on the sofa, the menus are fading up onto the screen. “Xbox: go to Netflix.” Wait a few seconds for the app to load up your Netflix account. “Xbox: Select. Select One. Play” and now there’s an episode of Modern Family playing on my screen.

In scenario two, you walk into a room, hit the Home button on the controller and turn on your TV. Kinect is unplugged so you’re not signed in automatically – it boots to a generic, bare-bones, menu screen. It’s five button presses to get up to the “Sign in” option and sign into my account.

My personalised home screen is now loaded but I need to find Netflix. Luckily, it’s an oft-used app so I’ve already pinned it to my menu – otherwise it’s a trawl through every app I’ve installed to find the bright red Netflix tile. Pinned items are in a handy section over to the left but it’s still four button presses to start it up. Because we signed in, it knows what content to load and signs me right into my account but it’s still another two button presses to play Modern Family and that’s only so few because it happens to be the first option on my menu.

So Kinect and voice commands aren’t essential but they are definitely encouraged.

It’s full of little quirks too. If you want to watch a Blu-ray, you’ll need to download the Blu-ray Player app from the app store (it’s free). Likewise, if you want to listen to an audio CD. TV functionality being limited in the UK (and of limited use, anyway) kind of takes the wind out of the sails of one of the console’s biggest pre-launch boasts, too.

The Upload Studio app is needed if you want to edit or share your recorded gameplay with anyone, it’s not just a part of the Game DVR app that’s pre-loaded. That Game DVR application can’t be used to grab screenshots, either, only video. Upload Studio sends your clips to an activity stream for friends to watch on their consoles or to SkyDrive so you can grab links and download them or share on social networks from mobile or PC apps. It’s useful but not incredibly convenient for how I’d prefer to use the system and the lack of a still screenshot option is a bizarre omission.

Likewise, the lack of streaming options seems a big miss for the console, made even more noticeable by the rampant success of the PS4’s streaming capabilities and the interesting and novel things people are doing with it.

Some of the functions and apps that are built in really are useful though. Snap is something that has the beginnings of a tremendously useful system. Essentially, you can put just about anything in a sidebar next to your main program. You can Skype with someone while you browse the internet or you could watch Sky Sports News (if you have a TV device with an HDMI output) while you play FIFA 14. You could play a game, with its walkthrough in a browser window right there on your TV or you could have Game DVR in your sidebar while you set up those YouTube hits of the future.

If you’re willing to submit to the practical necessity of Kinect usage, and you give it a little bit of time to learn the voice commands, it’s a smooth and slick experience. Voice recognition seems much improved, with some anecdotal evidence that it’s faring much better with strong local accents this time around. I had some difficulties in the first few hours, which may have been because I was suffering from a head cold so I was a bit stuffed up. Since then, it’s been functioning perfectly, with only occasional repetition of commands needed.

If you’re determined that you’ll never speak to your tech then navigation around the home menus will probably take a little more work and some learning before you’re entirely comfortable with them.

The range of apps and their functions feel a little bit unfinished but what is there is a great start and there are one or two elements of the user interface that have got a very bright future ahead of them. Get a screenshot function and live-streaming into there and all the major problems would be smoothed over for me but there is still a way to go in order for this system to feel quite as fully featured as its predecessor, regardless of the futuristic bells and whistles.