First, some quick info on my gaming background. I'm 20 years old and have had an Xbox 360 for about 5 years now, so I was ready to dive into the next generation. Seriously considered buying a PS4, but for convenience reasons I decided to stick on the Xbox side of things. Its been nice to carry my gamertag over to my Xbox One, with all my achievements and friends from the 360. I've also always preferred the UI of Xbox's over Playstations, and prefer Xbox Live over PSN. I'm also a big Halo fan, so didn't want to miss out on that when it was released later this year (assuming it is).
I had originally planned to get the Xbox One fairly close to launch day last year but I didn't really have the money until now. This price cut is really something I didn't want to miss, so I bit the bullet and bought one. First thing's first, the value is great. The Titanfall bundle is now the same price as the Playstation 4 on its own. I don't know how long this offer will be available so I decided to just go for it. Here's what I thought:
Appearance-wise, the Xbox One is very large. Its taller than the 360, and probably wider too. I don't have too many problems with the design of the console though, and still think it looks great on my desk. The gloss black finish gives it a very modern look, much better than the appearance of the 360 that was previously in its place on my desk. Any larger and it really would be a bit silly though. The Kinect design is much the same as the console- a little bit boxey, but still looks very smart. Its quite heavyweight and feels well-built. The only issue I have with the design so far is that its not particularly easy to find somewhere to place it. I have my Xbox One on my desk, and the camera won't tilt up enough on its hinge to include my face in the picture. I therefore have had to place the Kinect on a few objects so it points upwards enough to include my face. This probably wouldn't be as much of an issue for someone in a bigger room, where you're further away from the camera (I'm using mine in my bedroom). There is a tripod mount for Kinect, which would be very useful if I had the space to put up a tripod in my bedroom!
As for the performance of the Kinect itself, it works very well. Voice commands are great and work 99% of the time if you're speaking clearly. Success rate drops to around 80-90% if you aren't speaking clearly or loudly enough. You just need to make sure you use the specific phrases which the Xbox will recognise. For example, "Xbox, turn on" doesn't work, but "Xbox, on" does. And for those thinking its just a gimmick, I can genuinely navigate the UI more quickly using my voice than I can using a controller- so from that perspective, it really works. Auto sign-in using face recognition is also nice when I power the machine on, and hasn't failed to work as yet. The quality of the image is really nice too, so would work very well on Skype. Also, it performs REALLY well in low light, and has a really wide angle of view, meaning it covers most of the room you're in, which is nice.
The controller is excellent, feels great in the hands and looks really nice too. The D-pad is much improved over the 360 one, and the thumbsticks and triggers feel good too. The bumpers take a bit of getting used to though if you're familiar with the 360 controller. Other than that, there's really not much I would improve at all. The chat headset is decent enough, but the speaker feels a bit small when you put it on your ear. Nothing too irritating, just noticeable when you first use it.
The UI of the console is generally pretty good, although some settings are incredibly difficult to find as they aren't always placed where you'd think would be most appropriate. I do like the main home screen though, and the preview screen of the game/app you're currently playing on works well.
I'm personally not interested in using the TV pass-through function as its designed to be used (and can't use it anyway given that we only have Freeview, which is built into our TV), but it is very useful for something else. I have my Xbox 360 plugged into the HDMI port of the Xbox One so that when I say "Xbox, go to TV" on the X1, it switches to the 360 input. This works really nicely, and stops you from having to keep unplugging HDMI cables from the back of your TV (if you only have one HDMI port).
One small annoyance is the way the friends list is structured. Firstly, I really dislike the way the new friends list looks- just seems poorly laid out and rushed. Not only this but the "following" feature doesn't work quite as I would have liked. Rather than separating your friends list and "following" list, it just combines the two in one list. I liked the idea of being able to "follow" people, as there's some gaming Youtubers which would have been cool to track, but the execution of the feature is so far quite poor. I would assume this is something that can be changed quite easily in the future though.
Titanfall itself is a pretty good game with a fun multiplayer, but personally I don't find it the most interesting thing ever; I mostly just bought this bundle because of the really low price. Titanfall was just an added bonus really. Be prepared to wait literally hours for the game to download and install once you've redeemed the code included in the box though. Storage is a serious issue too- it takes up a massive 40GB of space which is fairly ridiculous given that you only actually get about 400GB of use-able space on the console anyway.
The graphical capability of the console is brilliant. I genuinely feel like the experience is very close to that of a decent PC, and certainly not distinguishable from the performance of the PS4 from what I've seen so far. The detail in Titanfall is really nice, and there's certainly a big step between the last generation and this generation.
Generally I've been very impressed so far. Some general UI improvements and some better games and this device would be perfect.
