A little more than a year ago I told my friend to get an Xbox One, and he did. (http://tinyurl.com/l9uf5sa)
A year later he is glad he did, but my real take away was that for the casual gamer there's just not a huge difference between the Xbox One and PS4 like there is for people who are more hardcore.
The vast majority of the time he uses the Xbox as a media machine.
My friend uses his Xbox almost every day, but the vast majority of the use is for Hulu, Netflix, or some other non-gaming media. He likes to put Pandora on when he's working from home. He likes to rent movies from the Xbox service. His wife and he sometimes watch stuff on Crackle or rent/buy Blu Rays (he did not previously have a Blu Ray player). The Xbox's main purpose is as a conduit to online media and it serves the purpose well for his needs.
Owning the Xbox lead to him giving up his cable subscription
He gave up cable soon after buying the Xbox and has not looked back. His explanation is that his wife and he had cable so that they could easily just put on something to watch on their big screen TV with minimal hassle. The Xbox media features served this purpose fine, so they ended up cutting the cord. I found that mildly interesting because the Xbox marketed itself in large part as a compliment to cable, but those features didn't interest them.
That is not to say that he didn't use the Xbox for games at all
Over the course of a year my friend played about a dozen games and got a gamerscore in the 8,000s (starting at 0.) The majority of his time was spent with 2D games like Guacamelee Turbo Championship Addition and Volgarr the Viking, though he did play a bunch of Titanfall and some Master Chief Collection. He got really into both Trials: Fusion and Peggle 2 (both 2D playing games) and put over a hundred hours into each. His most-played "modern" game would probably be Diablo III, but that's also 2D playing. He denies favoring one style of game over another and instead says that a large part of the reason he's played a lot of 2D games has to do with the Games with Gold program, and that he doesn't buy games when he has perfectly fun free games available. He really likes Games with Gold. He's not super particular about the games he plays as long as he likes them, and he's liked most of what Games With Gold offered (though he did not care for Crimson Dragon or Chariot.)
His wife has played some dance/fitness games but mostly just uses the console for Netflix and Hulu.
He likes the online features but gets annoyed when there are issues, such as voice chat dropping out.
Not much to say here. He and I have played a fair amount of online multiplayer this year, and he gets annoyed when there are voice problems (which have lessened recently.) He believes that if he's paying for Xbox Gold it just needs to work. Hard to argue.
Is he glad he bought the Xbox One?
Yes. He wanted a gaming console and a media device and it's worked for both purposes. He doesn't really care about console war stuff, he cares about whether he's enjoying the product. He wants to play more Master Chief Collection (and hasn't encountered the bugs because he plays single-player and co-op) and he's really enjoying Geometry Wars 3. There's enough stuff on the console for a casual player.
Is he upset about the price drop?
No. He had the console for over 6 months before the price dropped, and he saved enough money not paying for cable that he actually came out ahead during that time vs waiting to buy it when it hit $350.
What about Kinect?
He thinks of Kinect as a somewhat nice little gimmick. His wife has used it a little for the dancing stuff. I'm not sure he understands how useless Kinect looks to be over the next few years.
Would he have been better off with a PS4?
Probably, but only slightly and only really because of the price. In terms of functionality the two consoles both do what he wants. The Xbox interface is better for media in some ways, while Ps4 offers 2 games a month vis PS+.
The Big Takeaway?
For casual players what matters is price and the system their friends are playing on. Although users at a site like this wouldn't really compare buying a game console to buying a DVD player, in some ways it can be. Does it play games? Does it handle media okay? Cool, play on. None of the modern consoles are like the CD-I or 3DO that people will regret buying in a couple of years.
Log in to comment