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3 Xbox One Problems Buyers Shouldn’t Care About

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It wasn’t long after Microsoft first revealed the Xbox One, it’s next-generation entertainment console that users first started to complain.

Before launch, the complaints centered on the rumored changes Microsoft might be forcing down users throats. Originally, any Xbox One game would have needed to be installed completely on the console’s hard drive. Microsoft shared that news without filling users in on the details. It eventually found itself accused of trying to destroy used games sales.

Next came the company’s policy towards making sure users owned those games after they’d been installed. Microsoft originally wanted to require that Xbox One owners connect to Xbox One once every twenty-four hours so that the console itself could check to see if a particular user owned that specific game. At the time Microsoft planned to allow users to loan digital games to their friends and family members.

how to fix most xbox one problems in 3 steps (4)

Both issues were solved just before launch, and as Microsoft couldn’t stop saying at last week’s E3 2014 Xbox Media Briefing, the console on store shelves today reflects all of that early feedback from potential Xbox One buyers.

Those two things and a few more were all legitimate issues that should have had Xbox One buyers worried. Now, seven months after launch, new issues are cropping up all the time. To be clear, these aren’t issues in the sense that the Xbox One is unusable, just things that users who don’t have an Xbox One point to as making the console not worth the cost of admission. Unfortunately, they don’t all make sense.

You Can’t Talk to an Xbox One Without Kinect

Set up the Kinect to fix this common Xbox One problem.

This one is a very new problem created by Microsoft’s initial decision to bundle the Kinect 2 sensor with every Xbox One console. To be more precise, the problem stems from Microsoft’s original vision for the Xbox One. Microsoft didn’t intend for the Xbox One and Kinect 2 sensor to be separate items. In an ideal world the two would have been collectively known as the Xbox One.

Unfortunately, plans don’t always work out in the way companies intend. On June 9th Microsoft began selling the Xbox One without a Kinect 2 sensor so that it could hit the same $399 price tag of Sony’s PS4. In theory, educated buyers who want voice control, gesture support and the option to watch live television using the Xbox One’s OneGuide will purchase the $499 Xbox One + Kinect Bundle, or what’s usually just referred to as the Xbox One.

Now, reports are surfacing that users are purchasing the $399 Xbox One and expecting it to control their television with it. That is impossible due to the microphone array voice functionality requires being built into the Kinect 2 sensor and not the console itself.

This isn’t complicated. It’s simple. Microsoft doesn’t need to redesign the Xbox One or introduce some new microphone accessory and third-party microphone support. Microsoft already has a solution for users who want to control their Xbox One with their voice.  Users who want Kinect voice functionality need to purchase the $499 Xbox One + Kinect bundle.

The Xbox One Needs More Power

PS4 vs Xbox One - 12

Last summer there was a lot of talk about the resolution native Xbox One and PS4 games would run at. The thinking goes that the higher the resolution the console runs at, plus the frames it displays per second  it’s able to output to user’s televisions directly correlates to how realistic a game looks. That much is true.

What this comparison has morphed into is a war of words between Xbox One fans and users who think everyone should pick up a PS4 instead.

Game resolution matters, better looking games are one of the hallmarks by which we measure each new console generation. That much hasn’t changed and will never change. That being said, no normal Xbox One buyer, no casual gamer will decide to not pick up an Xbox One to play with their friends and family because they’ll see a bit more shadows on the PS4 version of the same game.

If users based console buying decisions on resolution and powerful hardware alone, the PS3 would have outsold the Xbox 360 2-to-1. It didn’t because at some point, good enough is just that, good enough.

The Xbox One Doesn’t Focus On Gaming Enough

How to Update an Xbox One Controller (1)

Finally, there’s the motto that Xbox One nay-sayers have leveled at Microsoft since it introduced the original Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360. Over the last few years Microsoft has introduced new services and products under the Xbox branding.

The core parts of Microsoft’s Zune music and video service became the Xbox Music and Xbox Video. Roughly a year ago Microsoft hired television executive Nancy Tellum to lead Xbox Entertainment Studios, a video production company that sounds as if it’s intended to rival Netflix’s original programming and make Xbox Live a video content destination.

Naturally, these services and others like OneDrive are included in the Xbox One because that’s what makes sense, but some are treating this as irrefutable evidence that Microsoft has abandoned gaming. From where sane users sit that’s both wrong and overly dramatic. What Microsoft has done is spread the Xbox brand into other areas where its previous branding failed. It hasn’t necessarily decided to put more effort behind those things to the detriment of new Xbox One exclusive games.

The Xbox One includes these services plus things like Internet Explorer on Xbox and OneDrive because it makes sense to surface those services in the living room on its console. Complaining about the company doing so is like complaining about the iPhone having video support or the Apple TV being able to play podcasts from the iTunes Store.

Overall, the Xbox One is a decent product. It’ll evolve and transform over time. So too will gamers and entertainment lovers. In an ideal world complainers would save their outrage and vitriol for when bigger issues crop up like those requirements to check in online every that complaints forced Microsoft to gut.

The Xbox One is available on store shelves now beginning at $399 for the bundle that excludes the Kinect 2 sensor.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. dilkeejeezie

    06/16/2014 at 2:23 pm

    Yea they took out the sensor out of Xbox One but I work at an electronics store and customers buying x more xbox ones with the sensor. I think it’s the idea of them having choices and seeing what they’re paying for. But I like using the sensor. Additionally I have both ps4 and xbox one there is difference in resolution. Same in Ps3 and xbox 360. Most Ps3 games were 720p but xbox 360 looked better at 1080. Not the other way

  2. jeremy

    06/16/2014 at 9:11 pm

    They didn’t remove the kinect 2 sensor just to hit a target price of $399. They removed it because of all the problems it has. If I am playing a game or watching a movie and my dog walks in front of my couch, it will fast forward the movie, minimize my game etc. It will also pick up animals, stuffed toys or even pictures and consider them people and try to log them in. If it doesn’t recognize the person (which how could it) it will just randomly log someone in.

    Plus, the entire reason for the Xbox ONE name is that it is supposed to be the ONE system you need to control everything. If you have it linked to your cable box sure it will change the channel (sometimes). If you say Xbox change channel to ESPN or NBC or anything like that it will do it, but once you go outside that you are in trouble. For instance if you say Xbox change channel to ESPN U or NBC sports it gets confused and you might end up on an entirely different network. Until you finally give up and grab your remote that the Xbox was supposed to render obsolete.

    All of this plus the Kinect is a serious memory hog. It will lag your system out at certain times performing certain tasks. So much so that I have my Kinect still, it is sitting in the box doing nothing at all. I found myself wishing I had waited until the cheaper ones came out without the Kinect since I don’t use it at all.

    Yes, you are right. If you want all of the stuff that Xbox claims it can do you have to have the Kinect, but know this. It comes at a price. I read this and assumed that the author had not had enough experience with the Xbox ONE system.

  3. vijisathya

    06/16/2014 at 10:41 pm

    Keep up such an important list all time

  4. Jason

    06/17/2014 at 1:08 am

    Jeremy I have not had any of the issues your describing. The Kinect has never confused either of my dogs or my cat as hand gestures. Stuffed animals??? Pictures??? Come on really?
    TV voice commands rarely fail either. ESPN, U,2,3 all are recognized.
    The memory thing doesn’t make any sense either being the Kinect is locked on how much system resources it can use. If you have too many apps open in the back ground that will slow your system down other than when your in a game.
    Perhaps you need to set up your Kinect again because after the march or April update ( don’t remember which one) the Kinect has worked flawlessly 95% of the time.

  5. jacob

    06/17/2014 at 4:59 am

    I have never had the problems with kinect picking up animals. I like it voice commands are awesome makes for fast switching from game to game tv station to tv station and from app to app. Mine works great!!!!!

  6. Kris

    06/18/2014 at 8:45 am

    Kinect functionality has been a high point for me. It works great most of the time. My wife and mother in law love the TV control, and its great for switching between apps, games, and TV. Not sure what is wrong with Jeremy’s Kinect. Sounds like someone sold him a busted webcam. If it doesn’t work right, bring it back to the store. That’s what I do with products I purchase that don’t work. Spreading FUD on the internet just makes people look stupid to the folks that know better.

  7. Cara

    06/20/2014 at 2:15 pm

    I paid for a game in the xbox store and it wont download what am i supposed to about it do i just lose my money or can it be fixed

  8. Einstein

    06/20/2014 at 2:15 pm

    Please proof read your articles this is bad. Thoughts are jumbled and incomplete and so is use of english language.

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