There is no question as to who is ‘winning’ this current console gaming generation. With an almost 2:1 lead, the PlayStation is sitting comfortably ahead of the Xbox One. However, as the last generation taught gamers, investing in console gaming is not a sprint but a marathon. With patience, persistence, resources and resolve, Microsoft is still making a case for the Xbox One, and perhaps this fall, the console will put forth its best effort to date.
The Xbox team has been steadily chipping away at many of the early gripes gamers had with the console. Over the past 24 plus months, the Xbox team has been adding features, squashing (albeit slowly) bugs and polishing user flow routinely each month with updates and patches.
With its upcoming Windows 10 update for the console, it looks like the Xbox team is finally addressing one of the longer standing issues with the console, speed.
ICXM is reporting on a Reddit user named Dieklobrille who recently posted some results from a series of test comparing gaming console UI speeds. The comparisons included the current Xbox One layout versus that of the Windows 10 Xbox One OS (v290915) layout and that of the PlayStation 4 OS (v.300). As a result, the Xbox One with Windows 10 interface came out as the fastest among the three.
Dieklobrille does offer a lengthy disclaimer to his or her testing:
Disclaimer:
Just for testing purposes sometimes I did the same task twice on the consoles – and the results were always a little bit different due to variable loading or delay times. I just wrote down all the times from the very first test. So this is just for fun and nothing that people should take too serious, especially since this is still in Beta. The measurements were done quick and dirty. People may get better or worse times depending on their button click performance, HDD and internet connection. I should add that I’m on a 50 Mbit connection with a 13 ms ping. The main reason why the NXOE is faster on pretty much everything is the new Guide that gets pretty much instantly snapped and performs very smooth after today’s update. It scrolls instantly; there is no delay between switching from party to friendslist and the overall menu transition animations are much shorter. The PS4 UI is also super smooth and the differences are pretty minor here. Only the task times with the current public Xbox One UI sometimes are really bad. The overall experience really is not comparable to any of the other two consoles, because sometimes you just need to wait for something to load way too long. That said, the OS team at Xbox has done a pretty good job with the NXOE – especially with the focus on social interactions being accessible in a matter of seconds.”
Now, it should be noted not everyone will experience the same speed or connectivity as Dieklobrille. However, if the tests are half as accurate, current Xbox One owners updating their systems this fall are set to experience a UI that is much faster than now. Based on the numbers the new Xbox One UI experience will be arguably better than the PlayStation 4’s system update release as well. Adding further credence to Dieklobrille’s study, the site ICXM also ran similar comparisons and agreed with the results.
While the Windows 8 user interface was arguably great for touch, Microsoft quickly found that it couldn’t be applied to everything, especially devices without touch. The new layout will take some time to get used to for current Xbox One users, but if the trade off is speed, it’ll probably be a welcomed update.
