13 ways Microsoft could improve the Xbox One

Fix the Friends and Party systems

The Xbox One's Party and Friends systems are hilariously insufficient, which, you know, is fucking shocking considering how well they both worked last-gen. But in the process of revamping the UI, something happened and now we need to launch multiple different applications within the system in order to complete the most basic of tasks.

This will supposedly be fixed within the next few weeks, and... man, we're really hoping the solution is a good one. After experiencing exactly how poorly these features worked during the Titanfall beta we're really not looking forward to having to stumble through them when the game actually releases.

Improve gesture-based controls for UI

The Kinect has an incredibly high-quality camera in it capable of reading your freaking pulse, and yet, despite that, we're only really using it for the voice commands. It's time for Microsoft to help improve the gesture-based controls, since they have the potential to change the way we interact with our system--again.

One way? How about letting us wave to the camera to tell the system to "Stop listening." Seriously, needing to say "Stop listening" over and over again is ridiculous, and half the conversations we have with friends over Xbox Live are spent saying "Stop listening." Let us wave that stuff away, and improve the way we interact with the system by letting us easily navigate with our hands.

Give us a more compelling reason to use Kinect

Compelling Kinect games for the Xbox One would be a great start. Harmonixs Fantasia looks promising, and D4 should be interesting, but... that's about it on the games front. Sure, Kinect Sports Rivals shows off the Kinects abilities, but isnt exactly a must-play. Give us that killer app for the Kinect and well never doubt its necessity again. You charged us an extra $100 for it, for crying out loud.

Lower the price on the Play and Charge Kit

The console is $500. The games are $60. Extra controllers are another $60. As of now, Play and Charge kits are sold separately for $25, even though it's the status quo for the competition. Rechargeable batteries should just be a given. There are few things more aggravating then getting a low battery warning in the middle of a Deathmatch and tearing open every electronic device in the house trying to find more batteries. Maybe we expected it last generation, but now we want better.

Add external hard drive support

Sure, we can delete and reinstall games, but thats a pain. We need some sort of hard drive solution, like external hard drive support, even if it comes in the form of proprietary hard drives like the Xbox 360s. Eventually isnt going to cut it when we amass hundreds of gigs worth of game installs and saves within a few months of buying the system.

There's always room for improvement

And if you're looking for more, check out 23 things that annoy us about the Xbox One and 23 things that annoy us about the PS4.