XBox One, First Impressions

Nightfall

Just real quick, some erratic notes and thoughts...

I've had mine for only 6 hours now but so far it's awesome.

"Xbox, on" and like magic it turns on, as well as your TV and AVR. Sit down on the couch and you're automatically logged on with the Kinect camera.
"Xbox, go to Netflix" BAM! You're watching Netflix and you didn't even have to set down the sammich you wife made for you to find a controller/remote.

I have only played Forza 5 so far but it is awesome. I'm probably too biased to go into detail, I love the Forza series. I'd hate to talk about the negatives like less cars and tracks that they will inevitably sell as DLC. Being a Forza fanboy, though, I just throw them my wallet and say "take what you need". Hence the reason you should not base anything upon my opinion of the game.

After being used to the 360 for so many years, the new menus and how you navigate is quite confusing. I'm sure I will get used to it all.

It sure is a lot quieter than the 360 slim as well. I can very faintly hear something, if the room is dead quiet, from the couch.

The thing is big. I mean big.

If you don't have cable/dish, and you have a 360, there is no need to worry about the lack of backwards compatibility because you can plug the 360 into the Xbox One's HDMI in port. Instant backwards compatibility.

Currently, surround sound is not capable through optical out. Only HDMI. MS has released a statement saying this will be fixed soon.

There are some little things, such as the surround sound situation above, that are either not working or not included. Basically it boils down to because everyone complained about them going digital only, they only had a few months to rewrite the software once they backpedaled what they were going to be doing. <-- That typed out confusing, hope it makes sense. Everything will be fixed, improved, added, etc. in the near future.

Any specific questions I can answer?

AsSiMiLaTeD

Ah Forza, the one game series that makes me occasionally miss my xbox, no PC version...

Nightfall

You always have rFactor and iRacing.

blueboxer

I love the controller and gameplay thus far, but I am having nothing but difficulty getting it to pass thru the cable box. Seems like most of the issues are with the motorola cable boxes and certain HDMI cables.

blueboxer

Well, in terms of graphics the PS4 and X1 are pretty much a tie IMO. I know its 1080 vs 900, but in all honestly I can't detect much of a difference at all. Sometimes I think there is a little more shadowing on the PS4, but overall both are excellent and smooth. However, the online experience and chat remains noticeably superior on the X1 as it was on the previous generation consoles. Where the PS4 takes ranks superior is the lack of a need to buy either a new headset or HOPE that astro and turtle beach come thru with an adaptor of some sort for the previous headsets that were available. For now the PS4's ability to retain the use of previous headsets for both gameplay and chat is pretty convenient and huge IMO. The X1 could offer some great features in terms of integration, but as other forums such as AVS have pointed out is that it has a LOT of issues with passing the signal thru a lot of receivers of various brands and age.

Nightfall

Yeah, the PS4 is a little superior in terms of hardware but when it comes down to real world graphical benefits of the extra power it's almost negligible. They both look *about* the same. I'm finding a lot of things missing from the X1's OS that were in the 360's OS that I anticipate them fixing in the near future.

jflail2

I honestly think I'm gonna wait about a year and see how the game lineup shakes out. X1 had better launch games it looked like, but there weren't many of them on either side.

Nightfall

There never is a ton of launch games, ever in the history of a consoles launch.

jflail2

Agreed. Not knocking this generation of consoles for a small launch line up, I just want to see how everything shakes out prior to diving in.

kuntasensei

Nightfall wrote: »

Currently, surround sound is not capable through optical out. Only HDMI. MS has released a statement saying this will be fixed soon.

Actually, you can output DTS 5.1 via optical now. Just not Dolby, because their licensing didn't come through in time. It will be added next update. But... 7.1 uncompressed via HDMI = SO NICE.

TurboGTU

Have to say that I'm loving the Xbox One so far. Forza 5 is beautiful, but as stated above there are a lot of cars and tracks missing (biggest for me is the missing Gen 2 RX7).

I haven't tried if the One is capable of turning on my tv and receiver. I have a harmony remote for that (I turned off the Xbox On to save power as well). It does seem to work fine with my Onkyo tx-nr515.

I don't have a cable box either, but I hooked up my media center (XMBC) to the hdmi in and it passes the video and audio (2 ch) fine. I don't have anything on there that hasn't been encoded to pro-logic. It's kind of cool when you hit the x button to go to the nexus and see xbmc there on the xbox dashboard. Now that I know it will work, I'm planning to get a raspberry pi to replace my full size computer and see how that goes as well.

Skype with the new kinect has been great, grandparents get to see the baby play and we don't have to try and get her to sit in front of the laptop.

I do have to say I don't care for the netflix interface, I liked the new one they just put out on xbox 360 a lot better.

Zeros

I am enjoying mine as well. Playing BF4 on the Xbox One vs the 360 is like night and day. Its like a whole new game.

For anyone who is moderately handy with a soldering iron, here is a way to mod the included headset to use your aftermarket headsets:

http://kotaku.com/modder-solders-his-own-xbox-one-headset-adapter-1470785121

Hermitism

I just read this and thought I would provide a link.

http://news.yahoo.com/xbox-playstation-tackle-console-launch-glitches-154651652.html

cstmar01

I bought mine a little while ago and love it. I did have issues and still do running my cable box thru as it will freeze on certain stations. Also the stations in the one guide are wrong compared to what they really are so not sure how to fix that. For now I just am running the cable box straight to the TV again and not thru the X1.

I have COD and BF4. Haven't played any BF4 yet on it but the COD isn't bad. Terrible spaw points but that is normal for the COD games now it seems like. Can't wait for some other games to come out that take full advantage of the system.

Zeros

Is anyone interested in posting their gamertags? We had a thread a long time ago about them, but many of the guys don't play anymore. I'm looking at you Sherard, Grimster and Bizill.

Cstmar01, Shepx2 and I play BF4 all of the time now on the Xbox One if you are interested in joining us once you start playing.

TurboGTU

cstmar01 wrote: »

I bought mine a little while ago and love it. I did have issues and still do running my cable box thru as it will freeze on certain stations.

This sounds like a similar issue to what happens after a bit with xbmc. I found a link that said if the xbox doesn't receive audio like every 5 or 10 seconds (dont have the link handy, sorry) it will freeze the picture until there is audio again. Might not be, but possible.

cstmar01

Zeros wrote: »

Is anyone interested in posting their gamertags? We had a thread a long time ago about them, but many of the guys don't play anymore. I'm looking at you Sherard, Grimster and Bizill.

Cstmar01, Shepx2 and I play BF4 all of the time now on the Xbox One if you are interested in joining us once you start playing.

Zeros I think I might already have you as a friend on live as I think I saw you in my feed the other day.

I'm getting a little sick of COD so I might end up playing tonight some BF4 for a bit. Not sure how good I'm going to be but would love to play with some people that know the maps.

My handle is BigheadChotaboy old name, but its mine lol.

Zeros

cstmar01 wrote: »

Zeros I think I might already have you as a friend on live as I think I saw you in my feed the other day.

I'm getting a little sick of COD so I might end up playing tonight some BF4 for a bit. Not sure how good I'm going to be but would love to play with some people that know the maps.

My handle is BigheadChotaboy old name, but its mine lol.

Yup, we are already friends. If I am on, I will send you a party invite.

TurboGTU

If you play forza 5 at all, my gt is xtremezx2. Only game I have right now though, saving money for titanfall (sick of bf and cod games).

Shizelbs

My gamertag is Shizelbs. Please add me.
I've got copies of Ghosts, Forza and FIFA

One thing I noticed and am VERY happy about is Smartglas is much, much more responsive when it comes to searching, queuing and playing music.

Polkie2009

The Xbox One will play CDs and__ Blu Rays right?

Zeros

Polkie2009 wrote: »

The Xbox One will play CDs and__ Blu Rays right?

Yes, but you have to install the free apps to play them first.

craigpsu

I may have to upgrade sooner than I expected, my 360 is making some awful sounds.

Shizelbs

TurboGTU wrote: »

If you play forza 5 at all, my gt is xtremezx2. Only game I have right now though, saving money for titanfall (sick of bf and cod games).

Out of the four Xone games I have, I finally got to play Forza. It is incredible.

RamZet

I will get an Xbox One when Halo comes out. I am a giant fan of the Halo universe and wouldnt miss any of the games. Cant wait to see what becomes of DR Halsey, John, Glassman and all the new characters.

In other news xbox360 slim 4gb is only 150 at walmart.com. the units is an awesome media player if you subscribe to xbox music and xbox video.

kuntasensei

To anyone on my friends list who has Forza 5, I apologize for my Drivatar's behavior in advance. He likes to take the inside corner and use other people's cars as a backstop to take turns too fast.

cmy330go

kuntasensei wrote: »

To anyone on my friends list who has Forza 5, I apologize for my Drivatar's behavior in advance. He likes to take the inside corner and use other people's cars as a backstop to take turns too fast.

That seems to be the case with almost everyone's drivatar. I've always been a huge Forza fan, but so far this version sucks hard. The drivatars are crap. It's more like a damn demo derby. I miss the mostly clean racing AI drivers of previous Forza versions. Even turning up the drivatar experience levels only partially helps.

On top of that the driving dynamics seem to be jacked. I've always been impressed with how accurate previous versions were able to capture the character of different cars. But now they don't even feel right. For example the '08 M3 will oversteer at the drop of a hat. And since I own one, and have even driven it on the track, I can tell you for a fact that the old games were far more accurate.

Sorry for the rant, but this pisses me off. Forza is the only reason I ever bought XBox, XBox360 (x2), and now XBox One. I hope they figure out a way to fix it, but I'm not holding my breath.

mccarty250

My family ended up picking up an xbox one. I didn't see a lot graphically superior over the 360 in the first crop of launch games but that's not unusual, I didn't get Forza but I heard that right out the gate that game looked amazing. I'm most looking forward to Titanfall to be honest.

So here's a question for you all, the controller that supposedly has 100+ improvements, do any of you really notice a huge difference? I feel like they could have retained backwards compatibility with the old controllers and the new ones are just a forced sell to buy more new gear. Maybe I'm wrong. I notice a bit of different look/feel but they mostly feel like the controller s.

Shizelbs

I can tell you I really like the individual rumble packs in the triggers when playing Forza.

mccarty250

There you go, I guess that's a palpable improvement but the lack of the ability to use the previous controllers seems to be a 'we want to sell more controllers decision' than anything else. It would be great to be able to re-leverage them.

mccarty250

Nbrowser, I wouldn't rain on your parade as a late adopter that's for sure. I didn't are if i ever picked up a One but I figured my kids would enjoy it so I preordered it for them. When we fired it up day one there were TONS of issues getting profiles set up with the server timing out, tried pulling content and it would time out, etc. I bet their upstream servers were getting hammered but definitely there were some early foibles to the system.