Just got a series x after skipping the xbox one completely. I probably would have opted for the series s, but the bulk of my 360 collection was on discs and the back compat support is a big selling point for me. Just had some thoughts about the system, controller, and UI and if anyone had tips for someone getting back into the ecosystem for the first time since the 360. Hopefully this is the right place for something like this and doesn't ruffle too many feathers.
Controller just feels bad to me. I always liked the 360 controller, and picked up an xbox one controller for PC, but this just feels like a step backwards. It just feels clickier and louder than the xbox one controller. The textured back is nicer, but feels a little rough compared to the PS5 controller. I'd consider an elite controller as I really liked the paddle add-on for the dualshock 4, but have heard nothing but complaints about the quality of the series 2 controller. Is this overblown, or something that I'll probably have to return controllers to get a good one?
The UI is taking a lot of getting used to. I know that this isn't an issue for people that came from the previous generation, but there's a lot that doesn't make immediate sense to me especially with the way that the different generations are handled. Not being able to quickly tell what games were in quick resume was odd to me. Adding a home screen group for the quick resume games was great to solve that, but I still feel like the UI leaves you guessing too much. I know their strategy is to just throw all the games at you, but the ways they let you slice the games list is strange to me. Why do I care about a separate games list for xbox one games and xbox one x enhanced games? And then there is even a different wording for the series editions of games being 'optimized' rather than 'enhanced'. It's very confusing at first glance.
It does look like there's a lot of customization that can be done, so there's probably a lot that can be improved once I spend a little more time on it. I also do appreciate the way they separate out owned content vs game pass vs ea play stuff. This is definitely a one-off issue, but it's odd that there are separate titles for the Rare Replay versions of games, and the XBLA / 360 versions of those games. I own a copy of both Viva Pinata games, and then also have the Rare Replay of them as well. Just another one of those little confusing things where I'm not sure if they are the same thing where launching either from the UI will just take you straight to the same game, or if one will open up the game through the Rare Replay launcher.
It was also pretty frustrating trying to move data to an external hard drive. Obviously I wanted to move all of the non-Series games to the external drive, but trying to move just those titles was a huge annoyance. There wasn't an easy way to tell which titles could be played from the external drive while I was in the copy / move UI. Not a huge deal since once it was done I switched the default install location, but making the change after I had already installed some things to test the system out was a big mistake.
Ads on the UI is still a frustrating thing. I hated when they added it to the 360 dashboard, and still hate it here. I totally get surfacing some stuff that points to things on your store, or dlc / content related to things that I already own, but just straight up ads for amazon prime tv shows bothers me. I removed a bunch of the home screen groups because they mostly looked like ads.
Probably my fault on this one, but I'm sure that I had been using cloud saves on the 360 back in the day. I had hoped that I could just launch some of those games up and pick right up where I had left off. Unfortunately it acted like I didn't have any cloud saves. Maybe they had been removed after my gold had lapsed back in the day, but I had to go back to my 360 to start moving saves back to the cloud. After that, everything seemed fine. It makes you appreciate modern UI changes when you have to go back to the 360 dashboard and upload saves to the cloud 1 game at a time. It did let me correct another issue when I was back on the 360. When I launched my first 360 game on the series x, it loaded up the 360 interface and reset my profile pic to one of the original pics. Not a huge deal I thought, but when I went to change it back to my cool mega man gamerpic, it wasn't available. Nothing that would've made me too upset, but it was just an odd thing. When I was back on the 360 though, I was able to select the original pic again and it was fine.
On the other side of the coin, game pass is nice. When I knew I was going to be getting a series x, I started to make a list of the xbox one exclusives that I never got to play that I wanted to pick up. However, after getting the system and finding a game pass deal, I realized that there was really only 1 game that I was really looking forward to playing that wasn't on game pass (Dead Rising 3). I'm not certain I'll stick with game pass, but for now it'll be nice to try out the MS first party things that I haven't had access to. The third party / multi platform stuff is less attractive as the back catalog stuff that I was interested in I likely already bought on PS5. But having access to older 360 stuff (maybe with better framerates / visuals / auto hdr?) and xbox one games that I missed is what interests me the most. I can definitely see it influencing purchases in the future though as I was somewhat interested in Hades (no save transfer turned me off buying it day 1 on PS5) but with it being available for 'free' there's no issue. I'll likely play new indie releases on the series x if it's on game pass or buy it later on PS5.
The integration with bing rewards was also a surprise. I knew there was more integration because of the cards that surfaced through the website, but didn't know that they actually rewarded for playing games / earning achievements / etc. Pretty nice to get even more reward points for just playing games.
Huge kudos for the overall back compat though. Regardless of nitpicking over UI issues and legacy cloud saves, being able to play original xbox games is amazing. I could only wish that PS would get their act together in this aspect. Even if they only allowed digital ps1/ps2 games would be better than the current situation. I bought plenty of PS1 / PS2 digital games to play on the psp/vita/ps3, and those are basically just wasted at this point. If those were in the MS ecosystem, I could possibly be playing some suikoden on my series x right now.
Honestly, I feel like this is where I should talk about the actual series x games, but I haven't really tried one yet. I installed a Forza Horizon, Halo Infinite and Master Chief collection, and a couple other game pass titles, but outside of the 1st party stuff, I feel like I already know what the current gen stuff is going to be like.
Overall I'm pretty happy with this system. I do wish their game sharing would allow me to share games with multiple consoles, as I could've seen a series s being used on another tv. I'll appreciate the console more as I settle in to the UI, but for right now I'm just having fun playing some Sunset Overdrive and waiting for a sale on Jade Empire. Again, any tips on good home group setups, or experience with the elite series 2 controller, or just solutions to some of the things that are obvious to someone that's owned the system for a few years would be great.
