Microsoft to address huge pain point with first big Xbox One update
By Jacob Siegal
Thursday, Jan 09, 2014
No console launch is perfect, exemplified most recently by both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but some of the issues with Microsoft’s latest entry are especially bewildering. If there was a trump card in the last console generation, it was Xbox Live. The social features of the Xbox 360 generally blew the PS3 and the Wii out of the water, but on the Xbox One, Microsoft managed to break something that didn’t need fixing.
In an interview with Engadget, Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten was upfront about the less-than-positive feedback surrounding some of the changes Microsoft had implemented to a system that everyone was happy with for the past eight years:
“The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid; some of the social stuff is hidden or harder to use than it was on the Xbox 360,” said Whitten. “So you’re gonna see us come out with an update where, well, we’re going to fix those things.”
Some of the major complaints have revolved around game invites and the obtuse party chat, which many Xbox One owners have complained are not only far more complicated than their Xbox 360 predecessors, but often fail to work at all. Microsoft has a shaky track record when it comes to interface updates (we’re looking at you, Metro), but the Xbox 360 had very few missteps when it came to usability revisions. Hopefully we can expect the same for the Xbox One.
