After several months since the release of Gears of War 4 on Xbox One and PC, the Xbox Live App for PC is still an unmitigated mess. Even after using the various troubleshooting pages on their official websites, the Xbox App continues to have its functionality crippled after every update for the app or the operating system itself. It seems as if both the app and OS are developed by two teams that lack a particular skill set that is needed: communication.
Every time there is a major update with Gears of War 4, the Xbox App has an issue of the Teredo adapter not working or the server connection being block by an imaginary program or outward force. It’s almost as if Microsoft doesn’t know how things like TCP/IP or server connectivity works. Steam is able to do this with no problem. No ports to open or external software needed to play. It just works. All you need is your PC, a network connection, and the internet. With Xbox Live this is not the cause. The are so many factors like software adapters, firewall policies, and antivirus software that will completely ruin your experience because you can’t talk with your​ Xbox counterparts.
I know some of these issues can pop up on Steam, but they’re so few and far between it isn’t really a giant widespread issue. If Microsoft would ditch their current setup for something like Steam or even Battle.net, things would be better. No more having to enable and disable things I never knew even existed in this OS or edit and restart Group Policies. I’m tired of fixing a problem Microsoft should have fixed over a year ago with at least the Anniversary Update. Sod off, Microsoft.
Addendum: While writing this, I updated my main PC to the Creators Update. It seems they might have fixed it or people who hadn’t updated to the latest version of Windows 10 were being blocked from server connectivity on Xbox Live (Wow, seriously). This doesn’t absolve them of this problem as it’s likely to rear its ugly head again after the next round of updates.