Well its been about 6 months since I got my XBox One, so what are my impressions of it now? First off I would like to say that Microsoft has done a great job on the dashboard. When the system first launched up until about 3 or 4 months ago, I felt like I was playing a beta console with its countless glitches.
Game support at this point is still rather light. Like PS4, it just seems like there isn't all that much out or coming out in the near future. A bit of a let down for sure. Still, there are some interesting looking games i'd like to try like the new Wolfenstien, and possibly Watch Dogs. Im also interested in the new Transformers game next month, although im guessing it will just be a lazy higher res port of the 360/PS3 version.
Now my biggest let down of the system is the Kinect. This thing sucks! I was a big fan of the old Kinect due to its games. Stuff like Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports 1 and 2, The Gunstringer, and Kinect Disney kept me playing, this one however has next to no game support. The only thing im seeing is a single fighter which looks just ok, a few dance and fitness games, and Kinect Sports Rivals. Kinect Sports Rivals was of interest to me, until I saw what it offered. A mere 6 events I could deal with, what was contained within them I could not. Two old events with less features, a stupd looking shooting game, and a jetski game that would have worked better with a pad don't look that exciting. The remaining 2 events look interesting, but not $60 interesting. Add in some day one DLC that is undoubtably already on the disc and it makes for an instant no-buy. So what is left for Kinect games? Nothing as far as I can see. And no, I don't call games like Ryse, and Forza with their tacked on support to be Kinect games.
Next up is the voice and motion commands. I find the voice commands to be average at best and the motion commands to be useless. I will tell the thing to "play disc" and it goes to music. I say "settings" and it brings me to a bing search. Also, it loves to randomly go to TV even though no cable box is connected to it. All in all, unless you're crazy about using Skype, then the Kinect is one of the most useless things since ROB the Robot. Im glad their removing it from the system. Its holding things way back for Microsoft. This leads me to another issue.....
Microsoft lied to the gaming public. They claimed the system would never be sold without Kinect, 6 months later it is. They said it was important to the XBox One and bragged about how essential it was to the system. Sorry MS, but screaming at my TV and waving my arms around like an idiot are not what I want in a gaming system. My issue now is that I feel since MS did lie to its fanbase, they should offer up some type of apology to them, or even give flat out refunds for all early buyers. If I had the option at launch, I would have opted to pass on Kinect until it actually got some games worth playing. Since they claimed it would never be sold without it, I got the system. I seriously do not expect them to do anything for early adopters. They ignored us when they did their temp price cuts and gave free games, and im sure their going to ignore us now. Needless to say, their attitude towards early adopters has annoyed me til no end and my support of their products is at an all time low. At Least Nintendo had the sense to offer up some freebies with their 3DS price cut. And yes I do understand price cuts and so on happen. However its not expected to be so soon after a system launch. So yeah, the next tme MS releases a system I plan on waiting maybe a year or so.
Anyway, I was going to hold off on buying a PS4 since it had little in the ways of exclusives that I cared about. After MS pissed me off with their price cuts and free Titanfall months after launch, I got a PS4 anyway. So now im gonna be shifting the bulk of my gaming support to Sony, and Nintendo. Any multiplatform games will be bought on PS4. Unless I get both for whatever reason, or find the XBox One version cheap enough.
In the end I like the changes MS has made and their shift towards making XBox One better. I do not like the way they gave their early supporters the finger. As I said, Nintendo did things right. Would it cost MS a lot if they gave all their early adopters maybe a free game or store credit as an apology? Yes, but I think it will cost them more in the long run if they keep losing anymore long term supporters. Lets face it, this past year has been a nightmare for them since they nearly killed the XBox brand. They should be doing all they can to restore it. As a supporter of their consoles since day one on the original XBox, it saddens me to see what they really think of suporters like myself. People can say what they want about Nintendo and the Wii U, but at least they know how to recognize their supporters and want to coming back to buy more.
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