XB1 gets custom backgrounds - PSN struggling

In the newest update, among a few neat additions, the XB1 has gained the ability to set achievement art as the system background. Once you unlock an achievement you can set it as the BG along with your personal color. It was mentioned that in future updates you'll be able to set any image you want through some sort of media center - which knowing Microsoft will probably be a slight pain to setup, but it's still a really nice level of customization for your home console.

In stark contrast Sony has been doing what seems like nothing with it's XMB and in fact to this day simply sending or receiving messages seems to be a herculean task for the system. I get notifications about new messages and then sit at the screen watching the loading icon spin for minutes on end. I try to delete message chains only for nothing to happen. In desperation I go on the phone application to maybe communicate people through that venue and get constant time out errors. The newest update messed the network up so badly that the Evolve beta/alpha had to be pushed back as they simply couldn't get it working.

What is going on? I was an Xbox 360 player throughout the previous generation. Sure I owned a PS3 but only used it to play a few exclusive titles here and there and as such never really interacted with messaging since all my friends were on the other system. I bought the PS4 because I didn't want to spend money on a next gen console only to constantly learn that games would be running a lot worse on my platform of choice. So begrudgingly I left behind the entire Live ecosystem I called home for over 6 years and moved over to PSN. I know I'm not the only person to be experiencing this sluggishness as each time I raid with newly met players in Destiny everyone has exactly the same complaints - that is if we can even hear each other as party chat will drop, mute, breakup or send NAT errors throughout the session.

It feels like Sony is really dropping the ball here. For such a powerful system to be struggling with something as basic as text messaging is completely baffling. I've enjoyed my time with the PS4 and even gotten used to the controller which after years of 360 use cramped up my hands for the first week - but this is one really negative aspect of the system that keeps popping up on a regular basis and really sours the experience. I'm really hoping for a massive overhaul at some point but considering what a mess this 2.0 firmware update was I'm really starting to have my doubts about whether Sony really learned anything from the previous 7 years.

One things for certain

I have come to the conclusion the PS4 definatly seemed like a better prospect before actually going ahead and jumping on board. I love the controller, PS+ is a fantastic value and the system just looks and feels good. But the moment you boot up (or don't as 2.0 still plagues my black box) the problems I had with Sony and the reminder why I switched from Sony to Microsoft last gen rears up louder than ever.

The UI is a mess, the OS functionality feels almost completely and afterthought and I've had more problems with PS+ in the 3 weeks of owning the console than I had the whole time I had an Xbox 360 (4 years). It's not enough to make me jump to the Xbone but the Playstation 4 feels like a great piece of hardware being gimped by the awful server infrastructure and shoddy OS. The UI is terrible as well and the fact they've only just introduced the ability to pause downloads and added MP3 functionality which is not only incredibly limited (and actually doesn't work with my HTC which acts like a USB MP3 player to any other device I tried) shows they are a long way from getting the software right. I really wish and hope Sony do a complete overhaul of their OS but for as long as I remember Sony have always been terrible at creating software.

@yesiamaduck: It's a pretty great system in many ways but the network issues will often interfere a lot of neat moments from happening. One day I was playing Destiny and got a really interesting score, so I hold down the share button and smoothly take a screenshot of the leaderboard. Pressing the guide button instantly pops me up to the XMB and I smoothly navigate to the message system where I attach the picture and put in my text. This has all been very fast and convenient. Yet the moment I press send the magic is shattered as the system struggles to send the message. It hangs the first time, and second, and finally at the third "resend" prompt finally goes through. My friend with whom I'm voice chatting in party chat waits for the message. The notification pops up but no message anywhere. After 45 minutes of us playing and doing other things he says he finally got the message but the image hasn't loaded yet.

This is a perfect example of how all the engineering and speed of the PS4 is squandered because the network couldn't handle sending out text with a compressed JPG in a timely manner.

Early impressions have been really positive. In fact some gamers preferred the ps4 over Xone for its overall performance .

I think that Sony is having a problem with the unexpected which is crowded serves and thats why we get slow service, timeouts and surprise downs.

Since they haven't solved their network's issues yet, i won't be surprised if the network went down after the holiday sales and traffic kick hits their servers.

If it did happen it will seriously hurt their credibility and will shift some consumers toward their competitors.

@humanity: Microsoft ran circles around Sony with the interface last gen, what made you think things would change? Fact is Microsoft deals with OS's, Sony on the other hand might be better with hardware (I say might because they really got there assess hand to them in that area last Gen to).

Either way if your looking to get rid of your ps4 I'd be willing to take it.

Yeah, Microsoft will always be ahead of Sony in terms of OS Software and Network capability. Under Satya Nadella one of their biggest revenue drivers is as a cloud provider, and obviously as the worlds primary OS provider they have the chops to stay ahead there as well.

Sony implemented custom themes the other day.

Hey! Define : running a lot worst on your console of choice. Because from my point of view we are very far from the status was between the ps3 and the 360 where the ps3 version would run like shit compared to the 360 one most of the time. The gap has almost been covered in less than a year and was never such a big deal in any case so far anyway. To me, it has always been a matter on content and service. And both of thes has always, in my opinion and own tastes, way better on the MS side of things.

@nashvilleskyline: Well mostly I mean things like "this game will run at 1080p 60 on PS4 and 720p variable on XB1" stuff like that. It's not a huge difference and hopefully they will eventually close the gap within a year or so, but it's something that personally would irk me. Although maybe having a better dashboard would be a lot less annoying in the long run. I plan on owning both systems eventually but considering theres hardly anything out for PS4 alone I'm gonna wait another year probably.

@agentboolen: While in some ways Microsoft had the jump on them (particularly in network-related areas) by the end I'd take the fast XMB any day over the cluttered, ad-covered 360 thing.

I think part of that problem might be the perennial problem where most Japanese developed games (or in this case, network interface) work well enough if you're all living on one tiny island east of China but if you're in a large country like the U.S. it bogs down. Like nearly every fighting game ever, and certainly every Nintendo game ever, have generally been unpleasant experiences online. But typically if your friend lives nearby and the server is located nearby it's serviceable.

I tend to agree with you @humanity. I'm lucky enough to own both consoles and I've found myself to be quite disappointed with the PS4. Actually playing games on the system works great, but all the background OS stuff is messy and slow compared to the Xbox. In addition there just hasn't been much to play on the PS4 outside of a few indie titles and inFamous. I've even bought most of my multi-platform games for the Xbox One just because I prefer the OS-level stuff. Being able to immediately jump back into your game two seconds after turning on the system is huge.

I do wish that we would see more substantial and regular updates from Sony next year, and that they would place more bets on their platform exclusive stuff.

Yeah, PSN is desperately slow. When my phone gets game invites quicker than my PS4, you know something is wrong with the console. But even on my phone, the app regularly times out on waiting for the server to send it a text message. What is so messed up about their system?

Custom backgrounds, as in ones set by the user, freely, from any image source?

Would love to see that.

Hi, I don't own either console, but is it possible that Microsoft allocates more dedicated CPU/GPU cycles to the OS than Sony does and as a result can do more nifty things than Sony can? Remember the conversations around Microsoft basically running 3 OS at once; one for your game, one for snapped application, and one for something else. Then recently there was talk around Microsoft releasing more resources to game, likely as a result of removing Kinect functionalities. I guess what I'm getting at is: is it possible Sony is trying to run XMB very lean on CPU/GPU cycles thus gimping its potential?

I have both systems and far and away preder my PS4. I think the Xbox has made great strides on their OS from release because when it was released it was pretty poor. In the end, I want to start my games as fast as possible and to me the ps4 system is super clean, slick and fast. The Xbox while usually fine sometimes has hurdles you have to jump through. I give it credit for having that standby mode that can make it super fast to pick up a game from boot up but that will come to the PlayStation eventually.

On top of that the new share play feature is damn incredible. I just moved away a few months ago and I haven't been able to play games like towerfall and sports friends with em. We used share play a few days ago and sure there is a little lag but man it works pretty well and it is such a cool feature.

In the end Im like Jeff, I want to play all the games I can which is why I have a ps4 and Xbox one. Right now I buy my multiplatform games on my ps4 because my friends have one, it seems to be the stronger system at least out of the gate and I like how fast it can start a game. I still think the Xbox is awesome though, voice stuff actually works well and some features on it are pretty cool, look forward to grabbing sunset overdrive and master chief collection later this week

Software companies are better at software than hardware companies.

goddammit, i get dangerously closer to buying a 'Bone with each passing day. considering my backlog i shouldn't even fathom it, but forza horizon 2 :(

@ripelivejam: Dood you 'bonin? Yah man, you know I be 'bonin it up in here

I'm amazed its not a feature, insulted almost. The 360 and PS3 were able to do this at launch.

Also, goddamn, Twitter integration? Setting achievement art as a background? This is where their time and effort is going? How about the part where I don't have to download multi-GB patches just to play a retail disc game? D4 and Scalebound seem really promising, but goddamn does it seem like neither Sony or Microsoft give a shit about just making a gaming system that plays games in a timely and reliable fashion. I'm butthurt about next-gen systems all over again, if Kingdom Hearts 3 hits Steam, I don't think I'll need anything other than a Nintendo console going forward.

Yeah the little things aren't dealbreakers, but they are unnecessary nuisances that can make online interaction with friends a messy hell at times. It'd be nice if when I accept invitations that they don't stick around and require me to delete them manually....or just sending a simple message at times is like trying to carry a drunk hobo through a field of barbwire. It isn't that Sony needs to catch up for me, but a system that's a bit more intuitive and competent would be nice sooner rather than later.

And now for some reason the idea of Bone Thugs signing a lifetime contract with Microsoft and changing their names to X-BONE-thugs-n-harmony just popped into my head. Thanks guys.

I suppose I should feel lucky since I rarely have any issues with Party chat when I raid with my friends, I just plug in my headphones and it just works.

Ya'll be trippin'. XB1 is straight up hot garbage son. Console Warz!

That's one thing that hits me hard about picking up an Xbox One in the future, the lack of delta updating - downloading only the data that was changed! Right now if there's a 10 gigabyte packaged file in a game that gets updated with 100 kilobytes, the PS4 version gets to download those hundred along with some data to tell it where to put it, but the Xbox One is forced to grab all ten gigabytes.

And the fact that there's so much horrid black crush in games that don't use a custom created upscaler and output :(

About backgrounds though, the dynamic ones already available on the PS4 (Destiny, COD, etc) are a good start but NO JOKE - NO JOKE - a lot of new PS4 owners would happen the moment they made it possible for this backgrounds return:

Say what you will about how difficult the cell was to develop for and the many poor ports the PS3 had, but think Microsoft's 3 years of 99% failure rate give Sony the last gen hardware win by default.

I'd rather it didn't degrade into that. I honestly didn't make the thread to start a "whos better!" battle. I'm wondering what other peoples thoughts are regarding updates, or the lack thereof on the PS4. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses and the PSN is definitely a weakness for Sony. This is especially weird since they started charging for online play, as obviously they were going to do after seeing Live run away with it for years - but you'd think they would backup the infrastructure so that everyone felt pretty good about paying for what was essentially free last generation.

@humanity: You may not want it to, but its going to. It not possible to have this type of conversation without it going there eventually. I've to see one civil. Which is why I tend to stay out of them as a general rule of thumb.

But, I also disagree with 100%. PSN has no issues for me personally. It also downloads 4x faster than XBL for me personally. I also prefer the XBM over the XB1 dashboard. I personally do not like a single thing about the xb1 interface or menu system. I also hate Windows 8 because of that same interface. I own both systems and the only thing my xb1 gets used for is Forza. But, Horizons 2 took me 8 hours to install the game because they refuse to use the disc to do so. Then after that it took 4ish hours to download the patch. Which really just ticked me off and I haven't even turned the system on to play the game since. Now I know network connections to service is vastly different via region. But I just recently downloaded all 39GB of CoD:AW on PS4 in 6 hours. Yet less than half that took me all day on the other service. Yes messages are slow since the last couple patches. That doesn't bother me as much as others apparently. But in a strictly I just use my consoles to play games stand point, PS4 is miles a head of the xb1 right now in my book. The issues I have with the xb1 are even preventing me from buying and playing Sunset Overdrive. Which I was really excited for. But I'm not about to sit there and be frustrated that I can't play it the day I buy it. I also like the simplicity of the xmb. I don't have to mess with all the extra stuff. I just turn it on and play my games. And yes I realize this is disjointed an alll over the place, and one giant paragraph. I apologize. I woke up 20 minutes ago and I haven't had a cup of coffee yet. So I'm just typing things down as they pop into my head.

Yes, its all personal preference. But in the OP you make your opinions on the matter seem like they are fact. To millions of us, everything you posted is the exact opposite. And depending on where you live and your internet provider, your experiences with both online services would be vastly different than someone else.

The PS4 did pull out in front but there does now seem to be a perceptible shift in both the PR intensity and the critical conversation in a positive direction toward the xbox one (this has been most noticeable over the last month or two... pretty much after kinect was sensibly cut adrift). That is quite a big deal when you consider the confirmation bias that early adopter PS4 owners would naturally feel toward their purchase. To hear some PS4 owners now talking about wanting an Xbox one is actually a major win for Microsoft.

I think the current change in tone is also being driven by some of the more casual 'wait and see' crowd starting to think about making a current gen console purchase now that last gen releases are drying up (my girlfriend, who owns a 360, is one of these people). The Xbox one is looking desirable to this crowd, both in terms of price (especially factoring in holiday price drops ) and in terms of brand familiarity.

Microsoft may well narrow the install base gap over the next six months or so but I'd expect Sony to maintain their lead. It'd take a series of high profile Xbox exclusives to overturn things and I don't know if enough of those exclusives exist?

I'll admit the system side of things is aweful on PS4. Messages (fucking text) take several minutes to appear after you get the notification and network problems were widespread after 2.0 came out. I can't compare to the Xbox one but from what I've heard on the bombcast this past year it sounds like their interface has been a mess since day one. For me, that's kind of secondary though. All the games I want to play (Persona 5, bloodborn, bunch of third party titles) are coming out on PS4 and it was cheaper/more powerful so I went with that.

I own both now, thanks to my wonderful wife, but damn if Playstion 4 lacks in everything but the games. I am thoroughly enjoying my time playing Destiny on it, but only seeming to have 15Mbps download & 12 Mbps upload vs. EVERYTHING else in my house sitting at around 105 Mbps download 76 Mbps upload really fucking bites.

I am really glad I have both though, as Playstion Network seems to have enough problems, and frequently enough as well, that its great to fall back onto Xbox One Destiny when it goes down.I really hope they fix this in the future, but if the PS3 is any indication, I won't get my hopes up.

I love my ps4, but I also hope to someday have the time and space to also have an Xbox one for halo

It wouldn't be such a bummer if they weren't charging for it like last gen.

The PS4 UI is still pretty awful, even after the update. Yeah, I can arrange my library now, but the images still take PS3-level amounts of time to appear once I find the game I want. It still takes longer than my Xbox One to download the same amount of content. I just dont understand why Sony cant get their shit together.

I love that I've been trying more often to get more achievements, just so I can have the wallpaper. If they add transparent tiles at some point, XONE home screens are gonna look just awesome. And I have both next-gen consoles.

Just chiming, since most people are going to be compelled to comment if they have a negative comment. I've had no problems on the PS4 or PSN. Power off my PS4 completely every time, and it starts up fast still. And install times, which I was really worried about from past anecdotes, are very fast.

So yeah, just a voice for the positive experience too!

But you did make a thread and completely ignore the huge update that Sony just released that added themes, additional library features, additional voice commands, background music options, you tube support, the ability to share games online, and the ability to play any local co-op multiplayer game online.

Can I play the single player campaign of my friends copy of Sunset Overdrive without needing to own the game itself? Then maybe that's something worth thinking about being saying something like this:

Yeah, PSN can be slow sometimes. It is a problem, and it's something that Sony needs to improve. That might have made a better topic for a thread, and would have been less "console wars-ish." Instead, you started with "Microsoft lets you put achievement art as your background, but Sony has done nothing for their customers," and you suggested this less than a month after the biggest PS4 update yet.

@sterling: Well I was hoping to get some feedback from the community on the matter. Nothing I said was stated as fact but rather as personal experience although I can see how being on the other side of the fence one could interpret the tone as such. From the replies I can see I'm not alone in the issues I've described but it's great that you've never experienced them - honestly I'd really love to be in your shoes as I'm enjoying my gaming on the console otherwise.

I'm still utterly baffled that it took them about a year to patch in pausing updates... I'm even more baffled that the system launched without being able to do that in the first place.

They had seven-ish years to take the best stuff from the 360, and yet it's still inferior to that old console. It's not something that breaks the system for me, but the little things add up. Messages take forever to send, are incorrectly timestamped, and on occasion don't send at all. Trying to send images sometimes just straight up forces me to shut down the system to stop that loading circle.

Why can't I check a box to make all games inverted like the 360? Why do I have a fancy video system with no way for the people on my friends list to see them/send them links in messages? Why do uploads to facebook and twitter fail so much? Why does the store decide to just time out from time to time? Why is there no way to group all of my games in folders? Why can't I remove the Sony video/music services from that bar on the dashboard? etc etc etc etc.

I said it in a blog when I bought it that the menu seemed unfinished, and ten months later I feel exactly the same way about it.

Hmm. I think Microsoft, being in the position that it is with Xbone and the fact that it is a software company, probably has something to do with them getting more frequent updates. It seems like maybe Sony is doing bigger but less frequent updates while Microsoft does the opposite.

But I haven't had any big issues with my PS4 and I'm still glad I bought it on launch. The PSN speed (specifically the rate at which the store loads) can be pretty bad but that was, and still is, a thing that started when they updated the PS3 PSN store to one of the newer designs. There was a period of time where it was great, loaded quickly and was snappy. Then they pushed the current PSN UI out onto PS3 (before the PS4 was announced I think) and good lord does it bog down. Takes forever for it to load on my PS3 and I'm shocked that they still haven't done something about that. Clearly it was designed for the PS4 as it loads at a more reasonable rate on there.

Nothing to regret buying the system for though. I thought the Xbox 360s interface was decent when it was the colored slides. Then they borked everything up and gave it the metro look and made tons of room for those juicy advertisements. I much preferred PS3s XMB and probably still do over the current PS4 one. It was just a lot more flexible and gave you lots of organization options plus had stuff like Dynamic Themes.

I'm glad the PS4 is doing as well as it is as I think Sony deserves the success because of the decisions they made from the start. I do hope to pick up an Xbone ASAP but that is just for the exclusives. Same goes for Wii-U.

I'll tell you this: I picked up my PS4 as my main platform this generation, but I already want out. PSN is awful. It sucks at basic functionality like sending and receiving messages. I am paying for PlayStation Plus as it is required for online play and I get zero value out of it. The online service is worse than a standard PC. On Xbox Live you get options and streamlined services that make it an enjoyable experience worth paying for. On PlayStation you get timed out, have waiting times much longer than any other form of digital communication and the entire service is regularly down. What is it exactly, that I am paying for?

I am picking up my Xbox One soon. Not because I am switching already, but because I always get all consoles in a generation. But believe me, I will keep a very close eye on whether or not PS4 remains the clear choice as a better platform in terms of performance because that is the only thing it has going for it. The second Xbox games are up par in performance, I'll make the switch.

Arguably the PS3 was supposed to be a slightly more powerful machine last generation but that didn't overturn the dominance of the 360 (in US/UK at least). A big part of last generation was the platform release dates and the corresponding effect on building a high 360 install base before the PS3 even came out.

Release dates don't come into it this time around. Current gen machines seem *approximately* comparable so it seems unlikely that minor resolution differences or slight performance variations will be important. I think that this generation will be decided by PR, user experience, pricing, and system exclusives...

@james_hayward: Not comparable. Last generation the PS3 was the more powerful machine on paper. The 360 had undeniable better performance overall for the vast majority of games. Right now, the PS4 is not only more powerful on paper, but also in practice. I'm talking so far, it can still change. Apparently the toolkits for the Xbox One aren't as good or whatever. I've been told that matters a bunch as well. They will probably get better at some point.

@humanity: I think the common perception of MS having more experience as a software company (and now also having their own dedicated cloud services with Azure) and Sony being more of a hardware company is once again showing up in this generation with their online services.

I have both consoles, and I'm not sure what you guys are saying, as the PS4 updated as well, prior to the One update where you can change themes, and it gives you different music for each, which I think is pretty cool. Both dashboards are fine.

Be that as it may, I don't think that the power variation between consoles is going to make a big difference to the vast majority of consumers, even if things change and the Xbox One catches up. Price, exclusive game experiences, and peer influence (what console do my friends have..?) are surely bigger factors for most people than output resolution or FPS.

Really these updates are somewhat picking up where the last generation left off. Playsation and Sony were somewhat known for long overdue updates whereas Microsoft and Xbox were a bit quicker on the draw to update and redo the overall style and infrastructure of the menus. Hopefully the pattern isn't going to hold. I'd rather see two constantly updating and warring companies than a stagnant system and a evolving one.

However change isn't always good. The Xbox could update too often or even remove functionality with an update. For instance last generation they removed HD DVD functionality with an update which, if you think about it, is a bit crazy.

Not disputing that. But clearly I was talking about myself in my OP, not the general consumer. The power difference matters to me. Exclusive games do as well, of course, but like I said I always own all consoles. I'm talking about my 'main' platform. My go-to multiplatform machine. It is currently the PS4, but man do I wish I could go Xbox right now.

I don't understand people who have an issue with the PS4 UI or even the PS3 UI for that matter the XMB was lightyears beyond the mess that the 360 dashboard was.

@hurricaneivan29: I too, have no complaints about the PS4 UI or network. I don't have an Xbone so I can't compare, but for me everything runs smoothly, the system boots quickly, and anything big I want to download I just set to download after I'm done for the night and let it download in standby mode. The 2.0 update did make it so my system couldn't come out of standby, but the 2.1 update fixed that.

Also I just wanted to mention that I tried out the Playstation Now service with Of Orcs and Men and I was really surprised how well the game streamed, there was one point when I lost connection and everything looked like a 320p video for a minute, but otherwise it worked great.

@the_vein: My downloads, even while playing other games go by fast. I don't do standbye really ever so I didn't have that wake up problem. Glad to hear they fixed it though.