An open letter about UX on Xbox One

Dear Microsoft and Xbox staff, this is an open letter from one of your fans.

I bought the Xbox One Day One edition, as I spent my best experiences on board of a Xbox 360 for the past generation, and I didn’t regret about choosing Xbox instead of Sony, as I loved the games, loved the console, its controller, and so on… that’s why I did
bought the Xbox One. But this year, as I’ve got plenty of friends who has the PlayStation 4 I decided to buy both of them as I was able to this generation, so I did it. I still prefer Xbox as gaming platform for a bunch of reasons, but I realized you’re pretty
far away from PS4 user experience, as the UX on Xbox One today is nearly frustrating and horrible.

The problems aren’t having Modern UI on Xbox, in fact, love it, love your system and got a Lumia also, which I like a LOT. The problem is the lack of sense everywhere, launching a console which is absolutely not finished, polished, and for instance, now it’s
not what you said it was going to be (multimedia center, for instance).

I know you will fix that with updates, but I wanted to write a list of bad user experiences I’ve found until today with my Xbox One:

- Dashboard kicks when starting a game (have to start it twice to work)

- Fail loading apps (only fixable by restarting the console) (happens a lot with “My apps and games”, the most important one)

- Fail on text (now displays crappy characters on some places, like “Friends online” or “50Hz” option on configuration

- Terrible loading times for everything

- LAG in dashboard, once the console has been on for a while it starts working as a Pentium II until you reset it (happens a lot)

- Error message displaying that you don’t own the title but the title is inside the console and with perfect conditions

- Error message displaying that the disc has dust, but you won’t get rid of this message until you restart (it’s not the disc fault but the console)

- Fails using the command voice which activates the overlay without saying Xbox (terribly annoying while playing a game)

- Kinect recognizes your head as hand some times

- Headset working only once Kinect recognizes you, if not, the audio is driven through the kinect mic and not by the headset

And that are some of the most annoying things you get trying to use the console. Actually my experience can be resumed as: “If you want to do something else than one single action on your One you will probably need to restart it”. I wasn’t able to play fine
on my console without having to restart it at least once per session, which absolutely destroys the user experience.

But there’s more! UX is not just about the crappy errors you get, is also about how you feel handling the overall console, and here it lacks a lot also:

- Upload has two apps which should be the same! (studio and normal one should be merged! they’re for the same!!!)

- Friends, groups and profile, three apps for the same concept, your environment, also, a mistake under my point of view

- A bunch of individual apps for the system mixed within your own apps or third party apps (too much and mixing different things)

- The overlay layer for invite friends on games is crap, it is really slow and breaks the experience

- The waiting times for each app to load are terrible too, just pick up a Ps4 and look how it works… you’ll be amazed.

- The long press for notifications is weird, some times you’ll get to the message but some times you’ll get the power off action

- Can’t set up my console to log in automatically with my profile (even having the kinect feature which I can’t use because I don’t have a big room for it)

- When having the “slap” app at the side of screen, it automatically focus on it, but if you’re playing this bothers you, it’s preferred to keep focus on game

As you can see is barely difficult to enjoy the user experience now on your console. And even there’s more, as you said this was going to be the powerful multimedia center which actually doesn’t even reads a pen drive yet, neither has blu ray 3D option and
which got Dolby support few weeks ago… Xbox 360 is 80% more powerful as multimedia center than Xbox One is right now, as it doesn’t have almost any option to watch media rather than the TV option or the Audio/Video apps, but no music playing, no video playing
from your own sources, etc…

I enjoyed Forza 5 a lot, DR3 too, Ryse, MGS:GZ, etc… as said the problems are not the game but your own core system! you won’t like to spend 500€ in a console (a hundred more than your rival) and see that it lacks everything and the experience doesn’t worth
it absolutely, having to restart once and once your console, reset your profiles and everything else. It’s true that we are the first ones getting them so we expect to get some bugs with it, but this is not the case, we received a beta console, with all words
on it. As said I’m a proud fan of Xbox, but I’m sad having to say that now a days, PlayStation 4 environment and experience overall is absolutely better than Xbox one, and being honest if some asks me today I won’t say to buy Ps4 but yes to wait and not buy
the Xbox One still as it doesn’t worths getting annoyed each time you want to do something with your console.

Hope that we see an stable version of Xbox One and what we should get from it, not this.

Bests, from an Xbox user, and fan.

:)

 

An open letter about my Xbox 360 experience

Dear Microsoft Xbox Division,

This message is purely informational about my customer experience. Starting this generation of games, I was hands down most excited about the future of Xbox. It was the first console I bought of the new 3. I liked the presentation of Xbox and particularly
the library of games developed for it. I thought the multi-player, co-op were slick. I was sold on the 360 based on my experience with the first box.

I ordered my Xbox early, within the first few months of its release, despite hearing warnings about its reliability.

As a gamer, I recognize I am not likely your target market. I play games for the game. I love a good story and great artistry. Or I love games that are just plain fun. My multiplayer preference has always been cooperative campaign. Though I have a soft
spot in my heart for splitscreen competitive multiplayer with my friends. I never really fell in love with competitive online multiplayer. I just do not have the time to invest to compete at it. I work a full-time job, am a home owner, have a family. I
play games to relax and to enjoy the experience. I mention this, because the demand I place on the machine is likely less than most, because I usually game after the kids are in bed a few hours each week. I grew up with Atari and Nintendo, and video games
are one of several hobbies I have. I do spend money on games though, and try to stay informed about what is being produced and released throughout the year.

I experienced the red ring of death four times this generation. The fifth console I had seemed to last. The first two fell apart during that moment where Microsoft was still denying the scale of the system failures, and I had to pay the repair fee to
ship them in. The last two were covered after the warranties were extended. Each time, I was out my console 2 to 3 weeks, and then was sent a one month Xbox Live Gold card each time, which wasn't perceived as a worthwhile adjustment for the interruption,
since I rarely played online.

Generally, I would like to believe that the hardware hides in the background, allowing the player to immerse themselves in the experience. It was not so with my experience. Mid-story during Mass Effect 1 and then again during Mass Effect 2 I had the consoles
die. Shephard had to wait. It got to the point where I was nervous to invest in any game that lasted more than 6 hours, as the system might die again mid-story. I have felt so turned off by my experience, that I did not care whether I played the new GOW
and Halo 4. Honestly, these had been two of my favorite series.

Further, as you updated the Xbox front page, I felt more and more harassed by ads. Many times, I intentionally left my system disconnected from the internet to minimize the distractions.

My impression of this system has been so negative, that I have gradually sold off all my library and swapped over to a different system for all of my gaming. All I wanted to do was to enjoy these games without needing to worry about whether my system could
play the software (I've stayed away from pc gaming due to the amount of time I think I would want to invest in managing my rig, that I simply do not have at this time.).

Going into this next generation, I am exceptionally skeptical of Microsoft's efforts in gaming. My experience in the last generation was simply beyond poor. It was not respectful of my contribution to the transaction and attentive to my desire to experience
the games that yours and other studios developed and produced.

Maybe many had different experiences than I or were more willing to invest time and money in hardware to endure the failures. Personally, my hope is that as a company you change your approach and recognize the value (not purely monetary) of your customers
and developers. Likely, I am going to watch from the sidelines on this next generation for a long-time.

I am not really looking to criticize Microsoft, but hoped that some honest, non-hyped feedback might be helpful for your role in the industry. Good luck as you go forward.

 

An open letter about my Xbox 360 experience

Hey there



This would be a lot better off in the Feedback forum section due to there being no actual question for any form of support to answer to. You can reach the Feedback forum section by clicking

HERE. I advise posting this up in there.



I hope this helps.

Many thanks,

Cloud

 

+1

It seems is a different company the one behind xbox 360 and xbox one :/

As a developer I know how much work it is to make an OS but the thing is all the bugs were solved in xbox 360 and I don't know but I suppose porting it from 360 shouldn't be such a big deal... And I'm not saying party cross-consoles (that would be awesome).

Thanks for all the great time I had with 360 and the one I'm having with xbox one but please fix all that problems

 

This is a support forum.You would need to post something like this in the feedback forums here forums.xbox.com/.../2604.aspx

 

Thanks, moved to the feedback forum.

 

I totally agree 100%

It was between the Sonys Playstation or the Xbox One for me and I went for the XboxOne and daaam what a misstake I did, the UX is totally stupid, 100% inefficient, the time to download a game into the console took me more then one hour (from the disc), my
old playstation (7 years old) does it much faster (10 min), after have been waiting for one hour and when the download was done I could not get the game to started, did not understand why, I had too look it up, aha ... the game needed to be updated first,
perfect, where do i find the update button for the game, I enter the game and noo, the update button was not there, a lot of bling bling and colors in the Ux that did not help me with anything, okay then, I open the setting and look for help, totally wasted
of time, after 40 minutes trying everything I got so *** of and then it hit me, please no, don't tell me that I need to remove the disc and enter it again, cant be, this guys that did this UX logic cant be sooooo completely stupid, I mean, we are talking about
Microsoft here, a high level quality company with extensive UX experience, I try anyway .... and daam ... then the update option of the game appears, my good, this cant be happening ... I was in the state of chock for 10 minutes here so I select the update
button, 340 MB this should go fast, the system jumps me back to the home screen, I try to find where I can find the update status for the game update... please, please don't tell me that they did it again, it was dame impossible to find the update info regarding
the ongoing update of the game, I was in my second state of chock ... this cant be happening, please someone wake me up....

To Microsoft and the UX team and the Product Management team of the Xbox One console, I say, WTF is wrong with you people ???? are you completely ***, never under my 15 years in the UX industry have I seen something that I can compare with, what are u doing
with in Microsoft ??? I rest my case!!!

Angry Client!

 

Hey there ScarletGuitar!

I am sincerely sorry to hear about the frustrations. In order for us to make sure that your feedback gets to the right place, I recommend posting on our Xbox
Feedback site. This way your suggestions can be seen by the right folks. Once again, I am truly sorry to hear about any inconveniences this may have caused.