I was fortunate enough to be able to play the Xbox One before release and at the midnight launch. Rushing to get home, unboxing the console, and setting everything up was a memorable experience, but once I got through the initial setup, the future of entertainment on the Xbox One seemed to be an unforeseeable disappointment. While some opinions and topics can be debated, I’m going to give you the top 5 things the Xbox One can improve going into 2014.



5) Game Installation

After finishing the initial console setup, I planned on diving straight into the Battlefield 4 multiplayer with a friend. When I launched the game, I received a notification stating that the game required to be installed to the hard drive. After an hour of waiting impatiently, I gained access to the single player campaign. While I’m more of a multiplayer kind of guy, I couldn’t resist waiting another moment to experience the next generation of Battlefield. Another hour passed and it’s almost 3 in the morning. My game finally installs successfully and I attempt to jump into a multiplayer match. Sadly, Swedish game developer DICE was unprepared for the amount of traffic on their servers and also released an unfinished game that barely worked online, but that’s something I’ll talk about more in the future.

Requiring an installation for a game that may take hours is unacceptable. While the exact reasoning behind installing games to your hard drive is unknown, it seems fair to ask for possible improvements or various options in the future. I may want to access specific sections of their games first before fully installing. For example, I could choose to load Halo 5’s multiplayer before single player or vice versa.

4) Marketplace

Purchasing expansions, full games, and other forms of media online makes having entertainment in your home much easier and sometimes will save your more money. The Xbox One’s marketplace is currently bare, but it’s expected to have more and more downloadable content as more media becomes available. Unfortunately, there are a few things that were promised that aren’t available yet. One of the things I was looking forward to most was being able to rent games through the dashboard. Digital game rentals are not available at this moment in time so I had to purchase a subscription to Gamefly instead. The other marketplace feature that’s not necessarily missing, but difficult to find, is the demo section. I always downloaded trial version of games or demos before I considered buying them. As of December 5th, 2013, there are only a 4 demos that are up for download.

A few other things that I believe are important, but haven’t been large parts of the Xbox Marketplace are gifts and sales. Just recently, Microsoft started to do substantial sales, but nowhere near the magnitude of what you’d see during a Steam sale. Being able to gift games, downloadable content, and other items is also very important to having a digital marketplace. As of now, it is unknown if Microsoft will look into this, but it would be a welcomed feature by all Xbox One users.

In the future, Microsoft should look into having a more accessible marketplace that consumers can easily navigate through. Advertising free products is crucial when it comes to marketing so it’s questionable why it’s so difficult to find game demos and trials. Making simple purchases is one of the main reasons why people shop digitally, but since the Xbox One’s marketplace is difficult to use, they could potentially lose consumers in the long term.

3) Kinect

I’ll be honest and say I purchased the Xbox 360 Slim bundled with Kinect when it first became available to the public. Being able to play games with my voice and body was very appealing to me and I had several opportunities to play with friends locally. Since the launch of Xbox Live back in 2002, local gaming has died down quite considerably over the years. Kinect games like Kinect Adventures and Dance Central allowed me to have one of those casual, but memorable moments with friends and family that I haven’t played with since the old Nintendo 64 days.

While I had plenty of fun with Kinect 1.0, there were some underlying issues that effected how viable it would be to the hardcore gamer. There were issues with latency, body tracking, and voice commands. Also, Kinect 1.0 required being in a perfect sized room with little to no obstructions.

Kinect 2.0 is a very big improvement over its predecessor. Voice commands work with very few issues and body tracking is fluid. I have yet to experience any issues or lag with Kinect 2.0 and I’m using it ways that I never expected to before making my purchase.

Since Microsoft bundled Kinect with every Xbox One console, developers can make it a viable accessory for gaming. On the Xbox 360, we saw many games that only used body motion, but on the Xbox One, games like Battlefield use Kinect to enhance your experience. You can lean while sitting down to look around corners and you can also turn your head to look around in a vehicle. Using these features subtly enhances games and makes it practical for hardcore gamers.

I absolutely love Kinect 2.0 more than I ever anticipated, but there’s always room to improve. The voice commands work well, but it doesn’t encourage natural communication. Most commands require a very specific command to make it work. For example, if you want to play Ryse: Son of Rome, you must say “Xbox, go to Ryse: Son of Rome”. When I first got my console, I was attempting to do the same command with “Xbox, play Ryse” or “Xbox, launch Ryse”. The other problem that I ran into frequently was how Kinect listened to me while watching a show on Netflix or Hulu. If the show is too loud, the audio coming from the TV will drown out my commands and Kinect won’t hear any of my commands.

Microsoft should focus on optimizing how Kinect listens to commands. The voice commands should allow gamers to do more natural wording by having a variety of voice commands that do the same action. As for the other issue regarding the TV drowning out your voice, the only solution I came up was to use a pair of gaming headphones.

2) New Games

In 2001, Halo defined the original Xbox. Ever since, only a few first party titles including Gears of War, Forza, and Fable have made a similar impact. Most of the popular games you see gamers playing today, like Call of Duty, are available on multiple platforms. Respawn Entertainment’s recently revealed game “Titanfall” is slated for release this spring and Microsoft is investing heavily into this new franchise.

Another apparent issue with the Xbox One game selection has been a problem since the very beginning of the Xbox brand. It’s undeniable that Microsoft owns the shooter market for consoles. As for other genres like racing games and party games, it’s debatable. Sony has a very strong lineup of action adventure titles and Nintendo always thrived on platformers.

Having a large selection of tools available for talented developers to take advantage of can help the Xbox One greatly as well. Microsoft already has developers taking advantage of Cloud Computing. This new tool is open ended so developers can use it any way they see fit. For example, Turn Ten, the creators of “Forza”, use Cloud Computing to track your driving behavior and use that data to make a driver with artificial intelligence that mimics your behavior. Other gamers will be able to race against the virtual version of yourself and you can earn experience and money while you’re offline. On the other hand, Respawn Entertainment’s “TitanFall” will use Cloud Computing to manage the enemies with artificial intelligence.

If Microsoft wants to be competitive in this next generation of console wars, they need to have a stronger focus on exclusive games that feature a variety of different genres. Indie developer support is also a huge factor going into 2014. If the support for developers is there and new, original games come to the forefront of Xbox One, you can expect to see a very successful console as well as satisfied consumers.

1) Party and Friends

One of the most important parts of online gaming is playing and interacting with your friends. With the Xbox One, there are plenty of issues that really interfere with that social interaction. First of all, the party system itself is broken. It’s almost impossible to have a party without some sort of interruption. Gamers have been experiencing frequent disconnects, join in session issues, and even some can’t start a party at all.

One of the most mind boggling problems with the party system is how some games cannot be played with a large party. In Ryse: Son of Rome, there is a multiplayer mode called Gladiator. In this mode, you and one other player fight off wave upon wave of increasingly difficult barbarians while completing objectives in the Colosseum. The issue here is that if you have a party with more than 2 people, you won’t be allowed to play the game online. The only solution at the moment is to start a Skype call using the provided application, but there are several glitches related to that service as well.

As I stated before, interacting with your friends is very important to the online gaming experience. The friends list and activity feed on the Xbox One is one the most difficult to manage parts on the dashboard. While the favorites list is a very useful feature, it’s still difficult to find the information that you want when you need it.

In the future, Microsoft should improve upon the friends section of the Xbox One dashboard. It could be difficult to navigate through due to the new, but foreign design, but the older guide menu from the Xbox 360 was faster and more efficient to use. As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

What do you think Microsoft should improve on the Xbox One? Discuss this article on our forums now!