The fact that it has taken us this long to get a basic home screen (and at that I think it's still in testing; I'm an insider and can't tell if it has released for the general audience yet), is ridiculous and says it all. As someone who likes the Xbox App for Xbox Play Anywhere and Game Pass, let's be real without those I wouldn't give it a passing glance. Microsoft MASSIVELY needs to step up their game. I don't know if it's a lack of funding or software engineers or what but it needs to improve. My last major hope is the promised Battle.net integration and the singular Xbox launcher we have moving forward will incorporate the battlenet team as well. So we get both a massive overhaul to pull in Battle .net and a better team moving forward to do updates. Regardless Microsoft has more than enough money (more than ever now as we keep seeing with record earnings calls). If they are actually interested in growing in gaming then they need to put their money where their mouth is. Let's just be optimistic and hope that they've finished investing in IP and content library. Now they're investing in talent (maybe singular studios to help round out development teams, individual dev teams, and overall Xbox experience teams. Especially that last one. They desperately need far more support for all the Xbox platform teams if they insist on Xbox existing native across all platforms (Console, PC, Cloud, and even mobile eventually when the courts break up the duopoly globally). They spent 70ish billion on content, they better be able to spend at least a 100th of that on the user experiences that deliver said content.
On social experiences, on top of bringing clubs to the PC app, I really just want Xbox Wire integration native on console, PC, and the mobile app. There's actually great updates and interviews on there and after doing so they could even expand it with a dev forums space where developers can talk to gamers directly on the Xbox platform. It's really not even that huge of rocket science. Just use the resources and tools you already have Xbox!
I agree with you. The Xbox app is not good enough and changes come too slowly. I have to hope they are working on a newer and better interface for the next Xbox/handheld, but if they launch a handheld with this garbage they should rightfully be laughed off the stage. Phil if you read this get moving and invest heavily in the frontend. As it looks now you just don't care enough to make it a robust experience, which is weird given cloud and digital sales are your bread and butter. Why is this app so bad still?
This is the biggest head scratcher. Is the all powerful software giant Microsoft really that unaware of the necessity of good shopping UX for their digital storefronts? This has also been the problem with the Microsoft store for the longest. Going to the golden standard (Steam), something you'd thing Microsoft would mouth water over is the fact it's one massive ad and their (Steam) users either don't notice or don't care. Something as simple as offering customers a bundle automatically for all dlc when they try to buy a game that gives a slight discount on the total purchase. Steam does a lot to keep you in their storefront and encourage you to make more purchases. Why doesn't Xbox? We're seeing some of these moves on the Xbox console MS store (the for you bundles and individual sales), but the PC MS Store and Xbox App are somehow still in the stone ages. In a lot of ways I'd say they DISCOURAGE making purchases and staying on their platform (which would also hurt GP sign-ups). This always feels like Microsoft's downfall. They neglect the consumer experience way too much.
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