Xbox One Hardware Review

Smooth and Efficient Interface

One of my absolute favorite aspects of the Xbox One is the interface and how user friendly it is to learn. I love multitasking and the Xbox One allows this in spades. When playing games or using apps on the Xbox 360, the only things you could do was to check your friend list and send messages for the most part. To go back to the dashboard on the Xbox 360, you had to completely exit out of those apps, which was quite an inconvenience most of the time. The Xbox One completely changes this by allowing you to move between games, apps, profiles, and the store with total ease. Thanks to this, you can go from playing Ryse: Son of Rome to watching a football game through the ESPN app to watching TV through the TV app, and then returning back to Ryse: Son of Rome without a problem.

The dashboard is a little awkward at first due to its constant changing based on your most recently used apps, but just like the 360, you can pin your favorite apps to the left side of the dashboard that are readily accessible. Rather than go with a very cluttered and ad-filled dashboard as seen with the Xbox 360, the Xbox One features a very simplistic look that is a lot more visually appealing. The separate “My Game & Apps” section allows you to look at your downloaded games and apps without them filling up your main dashboard. This does kind of cause a problem within the My Games & Apps” section as it can become sort of cluttered when you have lots of games and apps installed. The ability to pin to the home screen comes in big time here.

Kinect 2.0

The Kinect first made its debut three years ago as a separate accessory for the Xbox 360, while also being bundled with some variations of the console. Fast forward to now and Microsoft’s latest console has launched with the second variation of the Kinect, which works much better than its predecessor. The new Kinect features a much improved camera that looks absolutely beautiful when using it. Probably the biggest improvement is the new wide angle that it uses, which allows you to use it in much tighter spaces. I had a lot of trouble using the original Kinect due to my living quarters, but this one works like a charm. Lighting is also no longer an issue as the new Kinect can distinguish up to six players at a time in the room, regardless of the setting.

While the new Kinect has a lot of potential for different games and apps, due to the console just launching last month, there isn’t a huge selection of games to utilize all of its abilities on yet. However, you can utilize one of the most useful abilities of the Kinect at pretty much any time, the voice commands. I’ve actually done a short guide explaining some of the most useful voice commands that you can find here. The voice commands seem to be a lot more responsive this time than the original Kinect. Once I got my original Kinect I barely used it outside of a few games, and hardly ever used any of the voice commands. The Xbox One can essentially be run hands free with voice commands when trying to use apps such as Netflix. The commands such as “Xbox Pause” are very simplistic and seem to work with a range of different voice levels and people. Actually, the one I have the most trouble with is “Xbox On” as I guess my southern accent is a little too far to sound more like “own,” but you can learn to adjust quickly enough.

Xbox One Launch Titles

The Xbox One didn’t have what I would call a phenomenal group of launch titles, but it had a pretty solid group of launch games, a few of which were system exclusives. Just like the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One offers a number of the AAA games, such as: Call of Duty: Ghosts, Madden NFL 25, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and NBA 2K14.

On the exclusives front, the Xbox One did launch with a good number more for the system than the PlayStation 4, with a number of games including: Ryse: Son of Rome, Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, Killer Instinct, and Crimson Dragon. There are even some Microsoft exclusives that made their way from launch to now including Lococycle and Halo: Spartan Assault. Needless to say, there is plenty available on the system right now for you to check out if you have an Xbox One. Games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Forza Motorsport 5 do a great job at showcasing the abilities of the next generation Xbox One, both in different ways.