Things the Xbox One Does Right.

Xbox One had a very poor start. Back in 2013 the VHS player looking console was the laughing stock of the industry. With a bundled periphery that no one wanted and a focus on entertainment not gaming, the £430/$499 price tag was hard to justify. Since Phil Spencer became Head of Xbox in March 2014 however, things have been improving. Sure, there are still things that could be improved but a lot of change has been made. Ignoring the things that the competition also excels in, I’ve put together a list of of all the things that have made Xbox One great up to 2018.

• Backwards Compatibility

In 2015 Phil Spencer announced backwards compatibility for the Xbox One live at E3. Not only was this great news for fans of the console but it was implemented incredibly well too.

It can be safe to assume that with Xbox One’s rocky start, backwards compatibility was never meant to come to the system and so it had to be implemented in a strange way.

The games had to be modified to work on the console and the console itself had to emulate a full Xbox 360 within the machine. This meant that 360 games were slowly compatible over time. While this may seem like a bad thing at first, it did have its advantages. With the announcement of each game being available, gamer’s sense of nostalgia was sparked. Having worked at a retail store I saw the pandemonium every time a popular older game was made available. Black Ops II was a particularly crazy week. If all games were available at once there wouldn’t be that level of excitement.

Not only does the Xbox One play 360 discs but it also has the games available to download. The games are listed alongside your current games and will also be displayed in the “Ready to Install” section if you already own the game. Your cloud saves will carry over and the games often have a slight performance boost.

In 2017 Xbox also announced that original Xbox games would be getting the backwards compatibility treatment too. The list of available games is small at the moment but is definitely set to push our nostalgia buttons in the future.

• The Removal of the Kinect

It might seem odd to put a rectified mistake in a list of “great things” but this was really the start of the turnaround for the Xbox One.

One of the first things Phil Spencer did when he became Head of Xbox was to remove the Kinect as a mandatory purchase with the console. I, personally, enjoyed the peripheral. but the problem was that customers weren’t given the choice.

After removing it from the bundle, the price was reduced and sales of the Xbox One almost doubled. Also worth mentioning is that more system power, that would otherwise have been used for the always connected Kinect, was made available.

• The Elite Controller and the Xbox Accessories App

Alongside the release of Halo 5, Microsoft released the Elite Controller. At launch, the pad was sold at $149/£120 and is marketed towards “Elite” gamers.

The controller offers interchangeable parts, optional paddles, custom inputs, hair triggers and a more comfortable grip. The freedom of customisation is the standout feature here.

Using the Xbox Accessories app, you can set a custom control layout to each of the two options controlled with a switch on the front of the pad. For gamers who change how they play between different games, this is a great feature. Button remapping is supported which can turn the tide of frustrating controls or even allow less able gamers to play. This is a feature that I rate very highly.

Also available is the ability to change the sensitivity of thumb sticks and the dead zone of each trigger. The app is a dream and even includes options to customise the brightness of the Xbox light and the haptic feedback.

The Elite controller includes 3 sets of thumb sticks 2 different D-Pads and 4 optional paddles. The thumb sticks offer concave, convex and precision and the D-Pads are traditional and a sort of inverted dome. I’ve see many friends using one thumb stick raised for precision and having hair lock triggers in place for reaction speed. (Hair lock triggers reduce the amount you have to press a trigger in before the action is registered). The paddles can be mapped to any button and are often used for actions you wouldn’t be able to do whilst using both thumb sticks I.e. melee or jump.

The Xbox Elite controller justifies its higher price tag by being a truly exceptional piece of hardware that gives hardcore gamers an edge.

• Play Anywhere

The Play Anywhere service allows untethered use of certain games across Xbox One and Windows 10. If a game is on the Windows 10 store and on the Xbox store then there’s a good chance that it’ll be part of the service. It is truly exceptional that if a customer buys a game that’s part of this service then they get the game for free on the other platform and their saves carry across. Certain games like Forza 7 even allow cross platform multiplayer between the two.

• Xbox Game Pass

The Xbox Game Pass service is a relatively new program that’s available to all Xbox One owners. The service allows unlimited play of games that are available in the service as long as you are still subscribed.

To utilise Xbox Game Pass, games are downloaded to your console. This is to stop any problems with bandwidth and latency that are created when games are streamed (looking at you PlayStation Now).

On top of the already great service, if you want to own one of the games available then you will receive a 20% discount and a 10% discount on any DLC. The service costs £8/$10 per month, can be cancelled at any time and is adding new games every day.

• Xbox One S

The original Xbox One is an example of how not to design a console. It has touch buttons that are always accidentally pressed, hollow internals and it rivals in size to the very first Xbox. But worst of all, it just feels wrong. The fact that it’s so empty yet so big, can only be used horizontally and still has a power brick left gamers feeling uneasy when it was first announced and for the longest time gamers were waiting for the “slim” version of the console. And boy did they deliver…

The Xbox One S is more than just a “slim” iteration. It is a complete revision in everything that could be changed without introducing an entirely new console. It introduces an entirely new design, ditches the power brick and is 40% smaller than the original design. The console can also now stand vertically, something that should be paramount in the design of a console.

With the introduction of the Xbox One S, the Xbox brand took its first steps into 4K and HDR content. The console includes a 4K Blu Ray drive, HDMI 2.0 support and upscaling abilities for all games. With the technology industry moving forward and the amount of people who use their consoles for media consumption, the introduction of 4K and HDR support is always welcome.

Also introduced alongside the console (and included in the box) was a reimagined Xbox One controller. The pad has texturised grips and Bluetooth capabilities that allow connection with a PC without an adapter.

Worth mentioning is that there was also a slight increase in GPU power, allowing for minor improvements in gameplay in some games.

Released at £249/$300 (500GB)/£300/$350 (1TB)/£350/$400 (2TB), the console released at a fairly priced rate but has since decreased in price substantially.

• Xbox One X

The Xbox One X took all the advantages of the S and improved upon them.

Up until the unveiling of the console I was fully expecting it to go the same way as the PS4 Pro and be a very large console but Xbox went and made it even smaller (only just). Though the console is a lot heavier, the fact that it takes up such little room is much more important. The air ventilation has switched from the back and top to just the back allowing for objects to be placed on the console without concern and the disc drive has been moved a lot lower to accommodate for the smaller design.

The Xbox One X has not only changed in design but in power. It has been crafted with 4K in mind and it really delivers. Plenty of games that are “Xbox One X Enhanced” run at native 4K and have improved textures, lighting and load times. The difference is incredible to experience.

In the same vein as the Elite Controller, it may only appeal to hardcore gamers as the price is quite high (£450/$500). If you’re the kind of person that more power and better design would appeal to then the Xbox One X will not let you down. With more and more games becoming Xbox One Enhanced every day it is the perfect time to invest in the console.

• Home Xbox

With the Xbox One came a feature where you could link an Xbox Live account to a specific Xbox One to be used as a home console. When this is done, anyone using that Xbox has access to all the games that the home xbox user owns. Because of this you can share your games with all of your friends if you set your home console to each other’s systems. The service only lets you switch your console 5 times but this is understandable and does not detract from a great idea.

• Media Support

From a console who’s original message was all about multimedia, you’d expect it to deliver in that department. Thankfully (apart from the USB music player) it does.

The Xbox One contains support for almost all media formats and has a designated Media Player app to read them. I’ve watched a lot of content via a USB through this feature.

The console also supports UHD Blu Ray (S&X models only), Blu Ray, DVD and CD.

• Xbox Live And It’s Integration.

Xbox Live has always been the strong bastion of the Xbox brand. It’s robust and easy to use online service has proved time and time again why it’s the king of multiplayer and with Xbox One it’s no different. Parties are easy to form and games are easy to form invites to. There’s clubs, LFG support and tournaments dedicated to certain games and player bases. The service remains fast and with the Xbox One’s updates has become very simple to use.

The price for Xbox Live Gold has remained the same for years (£40 per year) but it is well worth the price. At this stage, buying an Xbox One without Gold is almost like buying a console without a controller.

• Overlays.

Over time, Xbox One has had updates that add helpful overlays to your system UI. An overlay can be used to display who’s talking in a party, your progress through achievement tracking and streaming settings. This small addition has been very useful to me, especially with achievement tracking and it is often overlooked.

• Conclusion.

There are many more things that make this console great that I haven’t mentioned simply because other competitors excel at them too. On the other hand there a lot of things that make this console bad, but this isn’t an article about those things. It’s to celebrate all the positives.

Though the Xbox One had a lot of catching up to do it has now firmly cemented itself as a strong contender in the console wars. It’s view on services and customer feedback is unparalleled and is a welcome sight to see. I look forward to the future and with all the mistakes that Xbox have learned from I can only imagine their next console being even more successful.

For a detailed look at the “Things The Xbox One Does Right” check out my other article here.