The Top 12 Annoyances With Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4

The premiere of new consoles is a time full of anticipation and excitement.

It's the beginning of a new era, bringing with it innovative features and new experiences. But after the wave of glee washes away, gamers are soon left with the sense that with a few steps forward, the company juggernauts also took a number of steps back—leaving us with a list of complaints about our next-gen property.

RELATED: Xbox One DVR Will Allow You To Record Commentary for Game Clips

RELATED: Xbox One's DVR Functions Will Require an Xbox Live Gold Membership

RELATED: Microsoft's Xbox One: What to Expect Day One (Video)

Launch lineups are notorious for their lackluster appeal, but that doesn't excuse these companies, who are trying to entice consumers to pay $300-$500 on their product, to not have a variety to play on their platform.

Besides games that were already available on the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Assassins Creed IV, Battlefield 4, CoD: Ghosts) the Xbox One only had Dead Rising 3, Killer Instinct, and Ryse. As for the PS4, that included Killzone Shadowfall, Knack, Resogun, and Contrast.

The same can be said for the Wii, whose exclusives mainly consisted of Scribblenauts Unlimited, Nintendo Land, Rabbids Land, and, of course, New Super Mario Bros. U. It'll be quite awhile before we're a part of a new generation launch, but when that time comes, I hope companies remember that software is just as important as hardware.

Did you think we forgot about the Wii U?

Of course not; despite its earlier release the Wii U is still among the next-generation (now current) consoles. That said, Nintendo has been suffering lately, with proposed plans to rejuvenate the Wii U to a profitable place. One aspect I didn't see on their bulletpoints is the need to revamp their online platform to at least be competitive with Microsoft and Sony again.

If their aim is to stay in the family-centric demographic it may not be important, but to attract more of the game-enthusiast community, simple steps like integrating party chat is a must. Multiplayer seems to be a detail only the developers on the Nintendo seem to care for; when it comes to Nintendo games and the console itself, community isn't a priority.

The Xbox 360 easily detailed how much space was left on the hard drive and what applications took up the space.

The Xbox One, on the other hand, has taken that visibility away from consumers-which they deem a courtesy because "it wants the storage management on the Xbox One to be automatic." But considering how much space one game install takes up nowadays, we're not sure we can trust the Xbox One to handle that for us.

Kinect has been an interesting idea that still has some room to grow.

Having the ability to demand your Xbox One to turn on just by screaming at it is great, but that's just it-I'm screaming. Despite living on my own in a quiet home, I often find myself yelling, in different tones, to get the console to listen to my commands.

I've had many friends relay how despite the claims that Kinect will only listen to the voice of the person logged in, it often picks up on what other people are saying and performs actions accordingly ("Xbox Turn Off," "Noooooo!"). Then there's certain apps, like Netflix, whose voice commands weren't properly field tested, because it's not simple to browse the available catalog after finishing a movie, for example-making the idea of using the Xbox One without a controller still just a dream.

If you enjoy surround sound, the PS4 may make setting that up a bit of a problem.

On the PS3, users were able to have their audio setup to go through an optical cable connected to their surround sound, but the PS4 outputs through both optical and the HDMI. Thus, users get to hear the lovely echo of their TV and surround sound playing at the same time.

The obvious fix is to just mute your TV anytime you turn on your PS4, but it's silly people have to do that.

We touched on this briefly already, but the guide menu that would appear anytime you pressed the logo button on the controller made navigation so easy is a thing of the past, regrettably.

It made turning off the console and sending messages to friends so easy, but someone at Microsoft thought we were better off without it.

PlayStation 3 controllers were wonderful.

They came with rechargeable batteries already built in and a charging cable, so Sony made sure to do the same for the PS4 (take note Microsoft). Where they dropped the ball is taking away the option to turn off the controller at your leisure after holding down the PS button.

This feature was a way to conserve power and prevent accidental button presses, but Sony seems to think that's not as important as having the PS4's controller light bar constantly glowing blue. Personally I've noticed my controller runs out of juice fairly quickly compared to my PS3 controllers, which is largely due to the inability of turning it off when I'm viewing Netflix. Many have complained about the blue light even obstructing their view of the TV when playing games.

But Sony's Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed that no, you can't turn it off nor are they planning to give back that ability.

Having the friends list work as a separate app makes the Xbox One experience less engaging.

On the Xbox 360 I was constantly aware of who was online, and what they were up to thanks to notifications and the guide. Now, however, by making Friends a separate app I have to make more of an effort to view those activities, and that means exiting whatever activity I'm doing. That works for Facebook since a browser can have multiple tabs, but even with the Xbox One's snap option it's not ideal.

Additionally, we no longer receive notifications for when friends come online, a feature intentionally left out since the friends list has expanded to 1,000 people.

A new feature that the PS4 has introduced is name requests, the ability to ask for a friend's full name to show on your friends list.

Considering how silly some usernames can be, especially since we're not even given the option to change them, this is a smart move on their part. But you still have the option to decline them, which is great if it wasn't for how tiresome it is to do.

On the PS3 all friend requests and messages were under Messages, but now there's a separate category titled Notifications that separates requests under their respective type and having to open the message to decline takes up more time than it should. Not to mention that there's no "delete all" option anymore, and it's not entirely clear you need to use the Option button to delete one message at a time.

Let's review the steps required to setup a party chat with your friends on the Xbox One: 1. Go to your Xbox Home page, exiting any app or game you're currently in. 2. Click on your profile on the side. 3. Go to Friends. 4. Select the friends you want to start a party with and click "Invite."

Now if you'd like to join a party already in progress, you must once again exit the game or app, go to the Friends app and scroll all the way to the right to see "Parties." How would you do it on the Xbox 360? Bring up the guide, scroll within the same tab that pops up down to Friends, and invite people without ever leaving the game or app you're in.

Microsoft's made statements that they're working on making it all a simpler process, but again, it begs to question why they didn't test how unnecessarily tedious it would be before launch.

Dashboards are a tricky thing to master.

You have to balance visual appeal with functionality, while still not overwhelming the consumer. But Microsoft and Sony seemed to have a firm grasp on the concept with the Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively.

The 360's integration of ads and submenus made navigation straightforward enough, and the PS3 made it simpler by listing all the necessary options under 10 categories. Yet come the Xbox One, the dependence on apps makes it less user friendly-especially when finding said apps can be a chore in itself.

Then there's the PS4's design; in comparison it looks antiquated and boring. The fact that the PS3 introduced customizable themes and the PS4 stripped that away, with no plans of reintroducing them, is a really boggling move.