The scene opens as aof guys in stuffy suits sit around a board room, their ties loosened a bit to show that theyre working a bit casually. A man leads their discussion from the front of the room, standing next to a whiteboard with ideas circled, crossed out, and some with triple underlines. Theres obviously been some excitement and discussion going on here. Sound fades up as we join in on the conversation

Suit 1: convoluted. Yeah, Im being serious. I think that if we make it totally convoluted and difficult that well get where were trying to go

Suit 2: I dont follow. Dont the kids like things a bit easier in their video gaming consoles these days?

Suit 1: No, thats where youre not seeing the big picture! If we make it as difficult and irritating to use as possible, yet still fully functional for the holdouts, we can force them to use Kinect, because to use the controller would be like trying tospaghetti without hands. Sure, you can do it, but its going to be messy

Suit 3: What Norman is trying to say, Gene, is that we need to force them to use Kinect, because as it stands, this thing only works about half the time in perfect conditions. Were pretty proud of that though, so dont take that as a put down

Suit 1, who we now know as Norman: Exactly! Thank you, Earl!

Suit 2, now known as Gene: I seeand I like that spaghetti idea. Lets get some after this wraps up

Suit 3, now known as Earl: Agreed. To take the spaghetti idea further, lets just imagine each activity on the Xbox One is like following individual noodles through a bowl. Thats our target, lets hit it, team

*Gene, Norman, and Earl pump their fists at the same time and squeeze out determined looks*

A musical montage runs. Gene, Norman, and Earl can be seen sketching, pointing a lot, eating spaghetti, laughing, rubbing their foreheads, and as the song fades out, the three can be seen huddling around the whiteboard with a list of decisions. They look exhausted


Norman: Ill read it back. If we missed anything, please speak up. Ok, so, launching appswe decided to go with annoying Looks right. Navigating categories with a controllerwe went with asinine Seems in order. Kinect accuracywe settled on spotty So far, so good. The party system was hard, but I think we nailed it with far worse than the simple and beautiful system we had on 360. In short, totally convoluted and confusing Finally, we come to speed and overall ease of use and we decided on slow and painful unless you use Kinect, and still kind of slow even with Kinect

Gene: Guys, I dont want to sound too optimistic here, but I think we nailed it in one pass. The kids are going to be raving fans

Earl: Agreed. Phew, that was a looooooong meeting. Im not used to these sessions that go the full hour. But hey, you cant argue with the results

Id call that satire, but this is my actual and honest educated guess about how the Xbox Ones dashboard came about. If Im being kind, its a mess. I dont like the Kinect at this point. Sure, maybe Ill get better as time goes on, but as it is now, using Kinect is embarrassing, even when youre sitting alone in your gaming room. If you really want to feelshow your wife how cool the Kinect is and watch as she laughs at your kind of neat if it worked well $500 console

Resorting to controller is almost preferable to using Kinect. Almost. The way that everything is organized on the Xbox One is beyond. Random tiles flip around in place and theres no cohesion to the style nor experience from one page to the next. I get that you can pin your favorites in place, but any time you veer from your favorites, you better fire up Google Maps, because THE SEARCH IS ON

Not to compare too much to the PS4, but after using Sonys very simple interface, the Xbox One feels outright assaulting to my senses. Theres too much going on, too little organization or control, and stuff that is buried or simply no longer available to view (try finding a game invite if you miss it come through). At this point I just dont like barking commands out to my Xbox, and I dont know that Ill ever like it all that much. Im hoping that the voice commands increase in accuracy though, because nothing grinds your experience to a halt faster than shouting at your Xbox 4-5 times to simply launch a game or snap an app to the side

I love the capabilities of the Xbox One. I think snapping in TV or the Internet to the side of the screen is pretty cool, but fighting to make it all happen really makes me question whether or not I care enough to fight with the console

I was a huge 360 fan in the last generation and only played the PS3 for its exclusives. I figured the same would be true going forward into this new generation, but so far, the Xbox One has been a chore. Please turn this around Microsoft, because I would rather have two consoles that I deeply enjoy, not one that gets relegated to dust collector role until a worthwhile exclusive comes along.