Battlefield 4 Receives Patch After Community Testing

Battlefield 4 hasn’t been in the news for a while.  This is likely due to the fact that it’s over six months old now and only receives DLC every few months.  The game still has a pretty strong presence online on most of its platforms as it’s a game that holds more replayability in multiplayer environments than most games like it would.  The biggest reason to hate Battlefield 4 was attributed to bugs, bugs, and even more bugs when the game launched.  Over the course of the following months, though, DICE would begin to patch the mistakes in the code and server performance.  Today, the game is just about as smooth as it can be (though you can occasionally still experience a hiccup).

Now, DICE is rolling out their latest update to Battlefield 4 with a code performance tweak that is reducing noticeable chunks of code lag that is experienced when players move and interact with their environment.  Things like weapons fire and jumping experienced frame lag of roughly 14-15 FPS (or, 1/4 of a second in most cases).  This doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re required to use twitch reflexes to counter enemy fire or evade it then every moment you should have to react should be available.  The resulting improvements of this patch have cut as much as 60% of the frame lag that occurred in certain tests.  We’ll never see zero-lag when online play is the topic of discussion – you’d have to run your games on local area networks to see that kind of performance, but this code improvement will likely be noticeable in-game and can help those players that have the capacity to duck behind cover in a moments notice or swing around to shoot an enemy in a last ditch effort to survive.

2015 Will See Release of Mortal Kombat X For Xbox One, 360, PC

Developer NetherRealm is currently in the middle of their creation process of the next iteration of the classic fighter franchise Mortal Kombat.  Due out in 2015, Warner Bros will publish Mortal Kombat X on both previous-gen and current-gen platforms along with the PC platform.  Warner Bros has made some comments on the game being more expansive than previous versions with new characters (with multiple fighter-styles) and game modes but is leaving most of our questions about the game to be answered at the now-less-than-a-week-away E3 conference.  For a tease of what’s to come check out the 2-minute CG game trailer posted below.

Budget Gamers, Rejoice! Xbox Deals With Gold Coming In June

Next month we’ll be treated to the extension of the popular Games with Gold program from Microsoft, which in the past has treated gamers to two free titles per month just for being an Xbox Live Gold subscriber.  Say what you want about a $60 annual fee for the service, but picking up even a couple of these titles will basically earn that $60.  For those that play most/all of these available titles you’ll earn your money back and then some.  It’s a great program that Sony has also mirrored with their PlayStation 3 console and are rolling out onto the PS4.  But Microsoft isn’t stopping with just free games, they’re bringing about a new discount program for Gold members as well.

Deals with Gold, the name of the new service, is set to launch in June along with Games with Gold on the Xbox One.  The service is going to bring about excellent savings on high-profile games that we all know and love.  We’re not talking $5 off or $10 off a game, but more like 50% off and perhaps more.  The details aren’t fully rolled out but the Xbox execs have pointed toward games like Forza Motorsport 5 and Ryse being available from the get go.  The deals will be made available through what Yusuf Medhi called a “virtual VIP room”, likely an app or tile within the Games portion of the Xbox One dashboard and is only viewable when you subscribe to Xbox Live’s Gold program.

For those of you that still find it hard to shell out $60 a year, you’re probably doing it wrong.  Great discounts can be found on Xbox Live Gold everywhere, except maybe at your local Best Buy or Target retailers.  Microsoft Store, both in-store and online, tend to drop the price of Xbox Live Gold $10-$25 every few months.  Amazon will also offer great online deals on Xbox Live – we’ve personally found it for sale as low as $37.99/year.  If those places are too hard to search through and order from then try keeping an eye out on your Xbox dashboard.  Directly through your Xbox console you can sometimes find great deals on Xbox Live.  This may not be so prominent for non-subscribers and more for extensions for existing subscribers, but the deals have been there time and time again.  We noticed in the last two years renewal memberships for as little as $33 – a crazy bargain that almost dips down to Microsoft employee prices ($25 a year).  An extra hint for current non-gold subscribers: get a 48-72 hour trial for Xbox Live Gold and wait until the end of the period.  Chances are good that you’ll get a great deal for either a 1-month membership or 3-12 month options.  The best deal we’ve seen here is $1 for 1 month.  That’s quite the deal for someone looking for short-term membership options.

Xbox One Sales Up In February

Microsoft’s Xbox One saw a jump in sales in February – a month that held next to no gaming interest other than the last-days releases of Thief and Plants vs. Zombies.  Originally the Xbox One had been outsold by its predecessor, the Xbox 360, during the late holiday season and January.  Those tables have turned, showing that the Xbox One pushed out 258,000 units in the US over the course of February.  The 360 managed to sell 114,000 consoles during the same timeframe and may be an indicator that the console is finally slowing down after heavy adoption during the Black Friday shopping time.  The NPD group have claimed that the PS4 “narrowly outsold the Xbox One in February”, but no PS4 numbers have been released.  This could likely indicate a near-tie situation for sales, something that speaks better for Microsoft than Sony at the moment since PS4 had outsold XB1 in January by over 100,000 consoles.

More good news came for the Xbox One in February, including statistics of 2.75 games being sold per console – that is higher than the PS4 currently.  The Xbox One moved 772,000 games in February and the Xbox 360 pushed a whopping 2.46 million games.  That high number for 360 is likely attributed to the lower game prices for 360 games compared to the newer XB1 games that have only been out for a maximum for four months.  The Xbox One also held 5/10 top-selling games spots for February with what is called the “generation eight top-10” (meaning most-recent console sales – XB1, PS4, WiiU).  According to Windows Phone Central, those games include NBA 2K14, Battlefield 4, Thief, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare.  The 360 took six top-spots in the previous-generation console sales list, which included NBA 2K14, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Fable Anniversary, Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, and The Lego Movie Videogame.  Minecraft is in the process of being readied for Xbox One, so expect that title to sell like hotcakes when its launch comes around.

March will unquestionably see a great leap in sales for Xbox One, both in games and consoles, due to the launch of TitanFall.  Both the game and the console can be purchased together for the same price as a stand-alone Xbox One ($499).  The game is expected to rally a lot of sales and get more people buying into the XB1 over the PS4 platform since TitanFall is an exclusive to the Xbox family and PC.  No sales info has been reported yet, but analytic group Robert W. Baird & Co. expect around six million TitanFall games to be sold by the end of 2014, which would mean Microsoft would have to continue their pacing of console sales worldwide to accommodate this number.  It’s very possible that Microsoft will top 10 million before the end of the year once they can launch in many of the markets that they’re currently absent from, where the PS4 is present, but we’re still awaiting word on when Microsoft’s market expansion will come.

Think TitanFall 2 Will Be On PlayStation? Go Home, You’re Drunk

There are analysts coming forward about the plan to push TitanFall 2 on the PS4 in 2017, when they expect the next iteration to come out.  While it may not be the greatest stretch of the imagination ever, thinking Respawn and EA would launch on additional platforms, it’s also the least likely scenario of the possible venture into a sequel of the yet-to-be-released TitanFall.  Michael Pachter, one analyst pushing the idea of a multi-console TitanFall 2 the most, goes on record to say:

“I think that this might be the last exclusive that you see from a third-party for a long, long time. I think that had [EA] known at the time that the Xbox One was going to be $100 more than the PS4, I don’t think that they would have done it. I think that they believed that Microsoft was going to kick Sony’s butt this cycle”.

There is a shred of possibility to the statement of third-party exclusives, but that shred is basically dangling in the .1% category.  It could happen, but realistically it won’t.  The reason why is simple: business competition.  Microsoft bought the exclusivity deal for TitanFall.  This wasn’t EA or Respawn saying “yeah, lets cut 1/3 of our profits and sell exclusively on Xbox and PC”.  No, this was Microsoft being strategic and offering the cash up to keep Sony out of the picture and give Microsoft its first exclusive that really drives the reason to buy an Xbox One way over any reason to buy a PlayStation 4.  There are plenty of good games on both next-gen consoles but the reality is neither have offered up anything that demands your decision to buy one or the other.  The Xbox One has more unique exclusives to its platform, but Sony would likely catch up before the summer of 2014 with games like Infamous: Second Son.  Still, TitanFall is Microsoft investment in itself, just like the Xbox-exclusive Halo was back in 2001 when it launched.  There were hardly any other reasons to buy an Xbox, but it didn’t matter because it had Halo and that’s all that mattered in the world to FPS gamers at the time, and Halo was owned by Bungie and Microsoft went forward to acquire Bungie for the game – a piece of history that we shouldn’t expect to repeat itself, but a partnership is certainly likely.

To get back to Pachter and his thoughts on TitanFall 2 being multiplatform:

“I don’t think that you will see EA go exclusive for Titanfall 2. I would guess that this is not a multi-game exclusive deal, it’s just for one – and I think that [the next game] will most definitely come to the PS4.  It probably isn’t going to come out for three years, so it’s probably a 2017 release, but it’ll probably be worth the wait”

This, again, is not the likeliest scenario.  If Microsoft wants to keep the money coming, locking a TitanFall 2 deal would be a big step in doing so.  This all depends on the success of the first game, but at this point it’s kind of silly to assume TitanFall will be anything other than the true Call of Duty killer – one that will destroy that franchise’s popularity and restore balance to the gaming order (something we feel has been long overdue and welcome with great joy).  Microsoft have the cash to spend and the Xbox One is nearing its comeback tour after a first round win going to Sony for consoles sold.  Pachter makes the claims that foresight on the Xbox One’s $100 price difference would have swayed EA from striking this deal and that Sony’s expected demise not coming true changes the winds of favor for future titles in the franchise.  Not true.  This game will launch on PC, and there are a legions of gamers on PC that aren’t buying Xbox One or PS4 and will happily pick this game on via Origin and play the crap out of it.  The PC sales could easily top ten million, though anything is possible either up or down.

The very best EA could hope for between both XB1 and PS4 platforms is maybe nine million, and that’s if every single console owner picks up a copy of TitanFall.  But there’s more – the Xbox 360 will see a TitanFall launch on March 25, and since there’s well over 70 million of those in the world, there’s a chance to cash in heavily on that platform as well.  To be honest, TitanFall on PS3 and PS4 would have probably delayed the game several more months because these platforms are somewhat unique and testing would have taken much longer to get through before being in a comfortable place to launch, meaning we’d still probably be in the “looking ahead” stages instead of being less than one week from launch.  There’s also the angle of the PS4’s dominance being attributed solely because of more market availability and its recent Japan launch.  Having fifty markets for PS4 to the XB1’s mere thirteen is a huge advantage, but the One will pick up the slack this year and it will catch up rapidly with Sony.  TitanFall will ensure that as it has moving power and it’s about to launch in an Xbox One bundle that makes the game essentially free when you purchase an Xbox One.  A deal like that will greatly help the One move all on its own, but TitanFall as a standalone game is going to push millions of console out the door and Prachter’s whole debacle of EA shying away from exclusivity in the future due to PS4’s stronger out-the-gate sales erodes.

In the end, EA lose little or nothing.  Having more potential customers is nice, but there’s a good chance that EA understand the long game that Microsoft is playing and TitanFall will ultimately sell more on the Xbox platform than Sony’s PlayStation platform even if it were released on both consoles to start.  To that end, we recommend you never, ever, ever listen to analysts on gaming trends & predictions.  They’ve been incorrectly forecasting gaming trends for years and, unfortunately, game-based publications have been going along with them.  In the normal business world, it’s easier to work with these kinds of forecasting, but in the gaming world there’s a much greater openness to how business is conducted and to say that a yet-to-be-confirmed TitanFall 2 is a lock-in for PS4 is likely Prachter hoping he’s right to earn credibility rather than being smart about assessing the bigger picture.  Nobody can predict the outcome of the next TitanFall game unless you work for Respawn or the part of EA handling the franchise.  But what you should remember is that Microsoft is able to drop the cash to keep it on Xbox and away from PlayStation and that they will not hesitate to go there after they’ve seen the impact that the game has on their platform.  In fact, Sony won’t have the ability to drop cash on any big sellers in the near future because the rest of their company is becoming a meteoric disaster (TVs, computing especially).  Still, just like Halo over a decade ago, TitanFall will make the Xbox One the better purchase simply because you will want to play this with all your friends.  If you were going to place any bets, you’d probably be better off betting on Microsoft, especially with all the team-play going on between Respawn Entertainment and the Xbox hardware/software engineering groups to improve the console.

UPDATE: If you’re wondering what the next most likely scenario is to Microsoft paying to keep TitanFall an Xbox console exclusive, you’ll likely see Microsoft shell some cash out for a timed-exclusive similar to what Sony is doing for Destiny and what Microsoft has done with Call of Duty in recent years.  Microsoft can pay to delay another TitanFall game by weeks or even months to get people to opt for the Xbox version over the PlayStation version.  We still think Microsoft will go for a console exclusive move to support the sales of its consoles down the road, but in the event they decide they don’t need to then this would be the next most likely scenario to play out in years to come under the assumed TitanFall franchised.

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare Available Only On Xbox One, 360

The new zany action title Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One now.  The new game in the PvZ series brings a four-player co-op and standard multiplayer to the table with slick graphics and tons of laughable fun.  If you pick up the game at a local game store, you’ll be set back the usual $59.99 for your purchase.  If you can help it, don’t do it.  The game is available on the Xbox Game Store via Xbox live for a cool $39.99, a 33% discount from the disc-based version.  At this price, Garden Warfare is definitely worth the pick-up and can be a pretty good time should you get a couple friends to go in on the game as the cooperative segment really drives the experience.  We’ve added the PvZ: GW co-op gemaply footage from PopCap, the developers behind the game, so you can get a feel for Garden Warfare before shoveling out $40 for it.  The game will also be available on PC via Origin in the near future but will not be available on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 anytime soon since PopCap and Electronic Arts (the game’s publisher) have merely said that the game will be available on “other platforms” at a later time.  Currently it’s expected to surface for PCs closer to summer, which is the earliest you should expect it on any other platform that isn’t an Xbox.

Another Square Enix Failure Like Final Fantasy XIV Would Destroy Company

Naoki Yoshida, the head of Square Enix and Final Fantasy, admits that Final Fantasy XIV (14) is essentially a disaster – an utter failure of an MMORPG that launches this year on PCs and PS4.  In an interview with Kotaku, Yoshida said

“I think it would’ve been good if they tried seeing what happened if they turned World of Warcraft into Final Fantasy. So, because they tried only to make something that was ‘different from FFXI,’ they ended up with not much of anything.”

Not exactly inspiring words considering Final Fantasy is a cornerstone for dramatic and beautiful RPG gaming and has been around for a decade and a half now.  If anyone who owned just an Xbox One was a little jealous of an MMORPG Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn only being on the PS4 and PC, be jealous no more.  According to the guy that is in charge, FFXIV is a bust before it even launches.  Final Fantasy XV is still set to be a multiplatform title, but now the stakes are higher than ever.  Putting that much development into Final Fantasy and knowing it busted is a hurtful truth.  If Square Enix wish to stick around, they’re going to have to improve their Final Fantasy series enough to garner excitement back.  Indeed, a World of Warcraft-like Final Fantasy would be very interesting to come to life.  Looking at a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic is proof that a near-copycat can still be successful, even if it’s not as successful.  Maybe the powers that be should consider that before making another MMORPG for Final Fantasy. 

Yoshida admits to the faults of the company and the importance of coming through with their next game or two in the pipeline, stating:

“We won’t make a mistake like FFXIV again…If we did, it would be like at the level of destroying the company.”

Final Fantasy XIV launched a while back to generally good critic reviews (79/83 metascore on PS3/PC), but its port to PS4 is due this year.  PS4 gamers shouldn’t expect it anytime soon.  But the burning question here is obvious: can a rehash of a game that never really got off the ground succeed when pulled onto a still-young console platform?  The recently-released Final Fantasy XIII released to modest reviews, garnering metascores of just 66/69 (PS3/X360).  Square Enix’s Tomb Raider took us by surprise in 2013, and its Definitive Edition on XB1 and PS4 certainly remains every bit as good, but Tomb Raider still hasn’t achieved critical mass like Halo, Mass Effect, or Zelda have.  Square Enix’s new Thief game is due out late February and could be another off-shoot that keeps things floating for the company should it prove to be a great game and sell well, but there’s no denying that the name of Final Fantasy is the company’s bread and butter which has gotten seemingly soft and lost a bit of its form as of late.  Being a big fan of Final Fantasy II and VIII, and liking XIII, I can only hope the once great franchise will see smoother sailing the future.  There are no guarantees though.

Microsoft Updates 2013 Xbox One Sales, Xbox 360 Still Popular

Last we heard, Microsoft had reported selling “over 3 million Xbox One consoles” before the end of the year.  Microsoft have just now released their quarter 4 revenues and profits.  One note of incredible interest is the new report of sold Xbox One units, which now totals 3.9 million consoles.  Originally it was thought Sony had really gotten off to a great start with a 1 week advance and a more widely available console across the world.  That gap was almost extinguished with this new report, now leaving the difference of a mere couple hundred thousand units.  Sony still has the lead as the end of 2013 but given that Sony was in significantly more markets the lead is less impressive than once thought.  This should come as no surprise given the Xbox One being the best selling console in the United States, a battleground that it has long dominated in the games console market these past several year.

Another note of interest was the Xbox 360 and its sales performance.  Microsoft reported that not only did they move 3.9 million Xbox One consoles, but in Q4 of 2013 (October-December) the Xbox 360 sold a whopping 3.5 million consoles.  That’s an incredible number given that consumers had a huge selection of consoles and portables to choose from (360, XB1, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U, DS, 3DS, etc).  The 360 drastically outsold the PS3 but the exact difference in sales is not yet known.  The only figure available to gauge at the moment still is the Black Friday sales, where the XB1 and 360 both doubled the sales of their direct competing devices (though the 360 also doubled the sales of the PS4 in the US on that day).  This will give the Microsoft Xbox fanboys a bit of wind in their sales, but it gives a little more credit to Microsoft and the vision of Xbox One being a massive appeal device.  The XB1 was launched in only 13 markets and remains in only 13 markets for the time being, whereas Sony reported being in 52 countries at this time.  Microsoft has said they’re catching up to demand with higher volumes of console production and thus should allow them to open up to all their intended markets in the coming months.

Will 2014 See A Price Cut On The Xbox One?

hour turnaround time for the item to ship.  The console now sells for £409.99, a savings of 20 (close to $32) and is likely to generate a little traffic for the retail site, perhaps until they’re out of stock.  But this begs the question of whether or not the Xbox One is primed for a price drop.  Well, if history and standard business practices are any indication, the answer would be NO.  But the Xbox One faces a unique challenge in that its direct competitor is $100 less.  Even though the PlayStation 4 does not offer a motion camera accessory (the PS Eye, which is not worth investing in right now) the $100 price difference of the Xbox One and PS4 has some consumers complaining and waiting until some kind of deal can be made.  Some analysts have suggested a price drop of some is in the cards for the XB1.  If we were willing to make a wager, a summer price drop could be possible to drive sales during a typically slower season for gaming.  Microsoft currently have no major game titles set to release between June and August and only a few multiplatform titles will be launching leading up to the summer or after.

Still, this is all a long shot because if the Xbox One is selling out its stock regularly then there’s no reason to drop the price.  Microsoft are likely making something on each Xbox One sold at the moment, but dropping the price by even $30 would sting them a bit in the short term.  If you’re waiting for the price to drop because you simply don’t have $500 to spend, getting it for $469.99 seems like hardly worthwhile to hold out for.  But if you’re pinching pennies then that’s your call.  But don’t expect a $100 price drop for years.  Microsoft’s model on the 360 didn’t see it come down from it’s $399 starting price for several years, and the company even found ways to keep the price higher by offering things like limited edition consoles and higher capacity hard drives.  A $100 price drop within the first year would be ridiculous for the company from a business standpoint.  They’re better off making sure their exclusive game launch lineup is secure and compelling since that’s why people buy consoles to begin with.

Seven Ways The Xbox One Can Improve Within 3 Years

If you’re like me, you enjoy your game console very much and use it quite religiously.  Microsoft’s Xbox One is the game console I personally chose because of how flexible it is as a console compared to the PlayStation 4.  Let Sony rant all they want about how gamers come first, but if you haven’t noticed the dead dear in the back of your van that is the consolidation of electronic products, the PlayStation 4 sits in the past whereas the Xbox One places an obvious bet on the future.  That’s not to say that the PlayStation 4 is an absolute failure of a product.  In fact Sony does get some things right with their new console, but the lack of vision and media capabilities make the PlayStation 4 stale for anyone that might even consider doing more than playing Killzone.  Still, consoles can sometimes overcome some of their own hurdles.  The Xbox One had a great launch and, while Sony’s PS4 currently leads sales, the Xbox One has had fewer overall hiccups and launched with a lot more in the software section.  That doesn’t mean the Xbox One is perfect though, and here’s what Microsoft can do to brighten the current and potential customer views.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize – The Xbox 360 went crazy mid-life because of two things: Kinect and software support.  The Xbox 360 went through several iterations and transformations before reaching its fantastic finalized state that is the Xbox 360 Dashboard.  It was perfect for using your controller or voice commands.  On top of that, the operating system’s improvements, or optimization as you might call it, helped make the system somewhat faster overall.  Microsoft is definitely working on this, but it’s important to continue to work on it through the years.  Making the Xbox One’s operating system (or systems, seeing how it uses 2 unique OS installs that has a third to tie them together perfectly) lighter, more responsive, and better organized will help current owners celebrate their consoles as well as entice new owners to choose it.  After all, it is a multimedia powerhouse compared to something like an Apple TV or Roku, and making it simple to use and easy to find all the wonderful things it has to offer only increases the chances of netting more purchases from gamers and media enthusiasts.

Games, Games, Games – This one is pretty straight forward, too.  Games drive a games console, and while Microsoft made a big hoopla about media capabilities, it also recognizes the need for the best of the best for titles from both first and third party developers.  Games like the coming TitanFall and Halo 5 are unique to Xbox One (and PC, in TitanFall’s case), but what about others?  We know other new entries into the AAA gaming sphere are in the works, including the super cool idea that is Quantum Break.  But what else is coming?  We can’t know what we’ll be playing in 2-3 years, at least not likely, but Microsoft need to make sure they’re spacing their games out perfectly throughout each calendar year.  The holidays is an obvious choice for launching big games to get the best sales, but it’s also important to realize that gamers play all year, and many of them will save/spend the money to get the best that money can buy.  Using scientific ideas like the ripple effect, Microsoft could drop big-budget titles throughout the year and reinforce their games library steadily, instead of dropping big titles with a few months of each other.  This creates the notion that Xbox is a better game release platform if Sony can’t stay in stride, because you’ll always be hearing about some big title that just launched or is launching in 3 or 4 months.  Knowing that something like Halo 5 is launching, followed by Quantum Break 4 months later, and then a new Gears of War entry another 3-4 months after that will greatly benefit the platform.  You as a gamer get a steady stream of excellent games to play that are unique to the platform.  If you ever have gaps, there’s always blockbuster 3rd party titles like Battlefield, FIFA, Call of Duty, etc. to keep you going if those exclusives don’t last you several months.  To close this segment off, there’s the quality of games.  Introducing a Call of Duty clone would be disastrous.  People want to play something new, fun, and unique.  Taking inspiration is definitely fine, but giving a game its own identity is crucial as is delivering an excellent experience all around.  Ryse is a great example of a game that was good but was shorted critically because, while it was fun to play, it didn’t seem like they took it all the way.  Microsoft: build your games out and think big!  We gamers don’t mind waiting an extra couple of months if that’s what it takes to experience something incredible.  Hitting certain milestones on a calendar can prohibit a game from being excellent, something that the old Windows head Steve Sinofsky reportedly did that pissed off developers and killed some cool ideas that would have made their way into Windows.

Actually Get Social – Improve your social aspects.  Finding friends and talking to them can be a huge pain.  Skype is perhaps the most consistent social experience on the Xbox One, and it’s a great addition to the platform, but other aspects like simple in-game voice chatting and invitations to join games can be cumbersome or fail to work at all.  These little things pester gamers and can take away from a good experience.  Heck, just last night while playing Call of Duty: Ghosts my friends and I went through a period of several minutes where I couldn’t hear them or they couldn’t hear me.  Every once in a while, the cycle would repeat, making it hard to have conversations or communicate on what’s happening in-game.  The devil is in the details, and the details need to work as intended.  The Xbox One could use some improved social features and also include Twitter and Facebook integrations that the Xbox 360 had so we can interface with our friends without having to use the Internet Explorer app.  Yes, IE11 on Xbox One is surprisingly good almost all of the time, but it isn’t streamlined and most of us don’t always feel like reaching for a smartphone to type stuff in.  Having a Facebook feed that utilizes something like a notification could be benefit.  A little blue bar pops up and says something like “James Maddison commented on your status update” could be a great way to use the power of push-notifications, to which if you hold the Xbox Button down, as you would with an achievement or party invite, you’ll maybe bring up a snapped version of the Facebook app.  Many of us like to be social and know what’s going on with our friends all around the world.  Food for thought.

Partnerships That Matter, Partnerships That Deliver – Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL is a great example of how far the Xbox has come and the pull it has in big industries like the NFL, MLS, and more.  Having apps like ESPN and NFL on the Xbox One is quite awesome, but there’s a bit of a problem with them.  I put in a TV provider, Comcast/Xfinity, into my Xbox and ESPN allowed me to see their live programing across several of their channels.  When I tried to do the same with NFL, I couldn’t watch any live programming from the channel nor was I able to enjoy something like Thursday Night Football or get any access to live games on Sunday.  I understand you maybe can’t have it all, but when you spend millions upon millions of dollars to drop in a partnership with an organization as big as the NFL, please deliver something more than just a highlights channel and don’t cut us off at the knees and prevent us from watching more content through our Xbox One just because we don’t have one of the four available partnered service providers.  It’s tacky and annoying.  People like watching sports, it’s no secret.  Buying a subscription to MLB.com ports over to your Xbox 360, and likely will port over to your Xbox One when the app is launched (assuming it will be).  It’s not drastically expensive and you can watch live games or games on demand.  It’s an excellent service.  Why can’t we do the same for the NFL or MLS?  Heck, Microsoft directly sponsors the Seattle Sounders FC and the Seattle Seahawks (Bring has a HUGE patch on the practice jerseys of the Seahawks), and Microsoft’s Xbox, Surface and Windows ads are all over NFL and MLS games.  So, like the other mainstream sports, can we please have access to games live?  Working out a deal with the NFL where a user can pay $25 a season to watch their team live or on-demand through their Xbox One/Xbox Live would be hugely helpful.  A lot of people can’t afford cable/satellite or opt not to because it’s a bad investment for how much they actually use it.  The organizations get more cash, people get what they want, and the Xbox gets more use – everybody wins in this scenario.  Oh, and why hasn’t the Xbox One allowed DirecTV integration yet?  It’s only the largest satellite TV provider in the United States by a country mile and often has more network-based perks than cable (though cable networks like Xfinity seem to offer better On-Demand services).  Lets get this tidied up, shall we?

Easy Access To Cooperative/Competitive Game Leagues – MLG is a great gaming league that holds perhaps the largest gaming competitions anywhere in the world.  MLG supports the likes of Call of Duty, Halo, and more when doing competitions.  Perhaps Xbox Live can introduce some tournament style tie-ins to Halo 5 or TitanFall that would let you and your friends sign up for a scheduled tournament that has prizes for the best performers and multiple tiers of skill levels so that not just the elite can enjoy all of the spoils.  I mean, I’m pretty good at Call of Duty and Battlefield, but I’m not the best.  But taking 5 other friends with me to an online Ghosts tournament would be pretty fun.  Set up single or double elimination brackets.  Schedule the time for which the tournament matches will be played and get everyone into the match.  This may take some work as not all games include spectator modes or easy game lobby setups, but it can be done and it might be beneficial for Microsoft to implement something like this in all of their exclusive games as well as approach certain other developers on titles that would have a competitive appeal to gamers.  If your team doesn’t show up to the slotted time, auto-win for the other team.  Whatever – it’s the Xbox team’s job to figure this stuff out if they try to implement it.

Console Expansion Pack – Who remembers the glorious N64 console?  Anyone?  Yeah, you do.  Playing Super Mario World 64, Mario Kart 64, and Goldeneye was all I wanted to do in junior high/high school – at least, until Halo: Combat Evolved came out.  Those games were excellent, yes, but something interesting happened mid-life of the N64.  Perfect Dark was launched, and with it the option to plug in a cartridge, something that may have intentionally been designed to be upgradable, to allow for more graphically-intense games to be played on the console.  This replacement module took the 64-bit graphics card out of the N64 and replaced it with a then-whopping 128-bit card.  It made the new 3D games stand out a bit more and allowed for greater graphical density and lighting effects.  Back then, it was the bee’s knees, and it was simple to implement.  The Xbox One doesn’t seem like a console that has removable parts outside of its hard drive, which isn’t sanctioned by the manufacturer but is definitely possible if you should want to upgrade your hard drive to a 1TB option or a solid state drive (though it’s not exactly a huge performance boost, maybe 20-25% at best as it stands).  The Xbox One, however, could evolve like its predecessor, where Microsoft launched a total of 2 hardware revisions after the first-generation 360 was launched.  This included the Xbox 360 S (Slim) and Xbox 360 E, which made its way onto store shelves in the summer of 2013.  The S and E models actually opted for improved processors.  You wouldn’t necessarily notice it with games, but navigating the operating system and using certain applications seemed smoother and more responsive.  The Xbox One should definitely go this route as its using the x86 AMD-produced processors to power the console.

However, offering graphical upgrades could be an excellent and inexpensive way to keep your system graphically fresh without making owners antsy for something new.  After all, we’re old the One is expected to be a 10 year console.  This doesn’t mean that the next Xbox will have to wait 10 years.  Look at how bad the graphical content was on the 360 and PS3 compared to their PC counterparts just before these new generation of consoles were released (Tomb Raiders re-release on January 28, 2014 is a good indicator of the jump you get just from upgrading your hardware, and it could be even better).  Side-by-side comparisons of games like Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 vs Battlefield 3 on PC were gigantic.  Heck, previous-gen consoles maxed out at 720p resolution with medium detail and a 24 player cap.  At that time, a $700 PC could play Battlefield 3 with 64 players, Ultra detail settings, and 1080p resolutions.  Those same PCs can do that with Battlefield 4 (That’s how mine transitioned with a $200 Radeon 7870 GHz Edition from ASUS graphics card and a 3rd gen i5 processor – runs at a near-constant 60FPS @ Ultra detail and 1080p), and the games are absolutely gorgeous.  Don’t get me wrong, games on the Xbox One like Ryse and Forza 5 are sharp and the games coming out should look even better, but in 3 years the graphics industry in gaming could have twice the amount of detail in the best games that we see today, and having to sacrifice those visuals and experiences for 6-10 years (when another console could come out) seems kinda silly.  If you’re going to make us wait another 8 years or so, then make your machine upgradable.  Software improvements will help add some extra headroom with your launch console, but maybe adding a slot for a companion GPU to run alongside the APU would be a great way for owners to pay $99 and push the graphics capabilities of the Xbox even further.

This can be done MUCH EASIER than on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.  The reason is the new hardware, which put both the XB1 and PS4 back onto PC-based tech and why AMD makes the chipset, not IBM or some cellphone-based CPU manufacturer.  Adding a GPU would essentially put the console into a state similar to AMD’s Crossfire or Nvidia’s SLI mode, where the added GPU supports the APU, currently inside both the PS4 and XB1, and give you perhaps 50-100% more power.  It would all depend on the part you added in, but believe me this is definitely possible.  Will it happen?  Maybe not, but Microsoft should be looking into ways to do this.  On the developer side of things, they could implement a switch tool that would scan the hardware and see what resources are available and make the game run at a higher or lower detail set based on what you have in it.  Sound difficult?  It shouldn’t.  Your PC games have been doing this for decades.  Those game developers scale their games for 720p, 900p, 1080p, 1440p, and everything in between those resolutions and everything above, like 4K.  You can even determine how high or low you set the graphical detail in game, turning up lighting effects or turning down spell casting effect and choosing whether you want to run heavier or lighter anti-aliasing effects to make the game look more/less smoother to improve the look of the game or improve the consistently of your frame rate (everyone aims to run at a sustained 60 frames per second performance level).  Even more interesting is the fact that game developers already build their console titles to look incredibly beautiful from the get-go and scale it back until they get visual settings that let the game run smoothly and look best where they think it’s most important to look best.  So if developers are already doing this, making two different visual settings to account for a base Xbox One console and an upgraded Xbox One system would seem to be pretty straight forward.  Your existing Xbox One console likely isn’t capable of this because of the design, but perhaps a second-gen Xbox One that could come out in 2-3 years could offer a slot internally that could fit a small dedicated GPU with some extra graphics oomph.  Even just another 50% power could make for a noticeable improvement, because these consoles are pretty mighty as-is.  Graphics aren’t everything, but they are what we see and we like beautiful things.  This is a pretty sizable way to increase the legitimacy of your product without having to fully launch a new one.  If anyone from Microsoft’s Xbox division is reading this, just think about it.  Please?

Quick Patch and Upgrade Cycles – The old yearly Xbox 360 dashboard update was nice, but perhaps it’s better to not hold back all of your cool updates.  Now that the Xbox One features a low-power state that can allow it to download updates and fixes while you’re not playing or using the console, pushing for a quarterly update cycle would seem more prudent.  Address little things like disc read errors or glitchy chat features in a timely manner.  If you have it ready today, why wait several months to push it out?  Making your system better bit by bit has several advantages and resolves frustrations with the XB1 console owners quicker.  Otherwise it’s like waiting to fix the terrible spawning system in Call of Duty: Ghosts until the next game comes out.  Why wait?  Make this happen now and people might actually continue to play your game instead of getting so mad about something they quit playing and advocating for your product altogether.

Well, after all of that, I think it’s time to wrap this all up.  Feel free to add comments or your own ideas if you’d like.  After all, Microsoft says they listen to their users.  Gathering ideas and publishing them publicly is a great way to let them know what they can do to please their followers and rope in new customers.