Microsoft Was Surprised By Xbox One Outcry

[ryessknight]

"Facepalm" Basing there new console on ios and steam?!? and then being surprized when it blows up horribly in there faces afterwards? Ugh i swear microsoft is run by chimps flinging shit at post it notes these days.

 

[Nazulu]

I reckon this is whats wrong with all entertainment industry's now, they have fuck heads like Penello running it all. I bet they still can't comprehend what happened.

 

[Amir Kondori]

God, these guys STILL are putting their foot in their mouth every chance they get. I could list everything that makes what this guy is saying BS but I have done that too many times already on all the other sites that ran these PR push interviews. Basically Microsoft is so out of the touch with the customers right now it is hilarious and sad.

 

[Slash2x]

THERE IS THE MICRO$OFT I KNOW! Hey we want to make a new product.... Who can we directly ripoff? Ok so we have to make it "different" though..... Hey lets add all these "features" so we can big brother and control our customers lives! This will make us TRILLIONS!!!!! BAHAHAAHAH! What do you mean no one likes it and says we are idiots?

 

[Yopaz]

Sharing of digital games(not on Steam)
Giving of digital games (not on Steam)

Interesting you should praise these two points. The family sharing feature has never been properly outlined. I've heard that it would let a friend play the full game on his console while you're also playing it at the same time, which would be quite awesome. Then I've heard that it's only possible for one person to play the full game which is still pretty great. You could borrow games after someone is finished without having a disc or anything. Then there's the one about that you get to play a 15-45 minute version of the game and then when the time has run out you're transferred to the store where you can buy it if you liked it. Also the owner can't play the game while someone is playing the demo.

I would give praise if it was either of the first two, but it would still be disadvantageous to me since I often play games where I can't connect my consoles to the internet. However Microsoft has been very vague about it so I can't praise it.

I gave my friend Spec Ops: The Line last week. Giving away digital games is even possible on the Wii a console with generally crappy online support. Steam is where I do most of my Christmas shopping for my friends.

 

[Vrach]

"I think the problem was that people got in their minds that what we were trying to do was somehow evil or anti-customer."

Or, or!.. and I'm just thinking outside the box here... you should stop hiring monkeys in your PR and marketing departments. Just a thought.

Also, I'd love for someone at Microsoft, anyone, to explain to me in any possible way how not allowing anyone outside the 31 planned launch countries to use the console was not an anti-consumer idea.

 

[Extragorey]

Again with the Steam comparisons... Even if it were all-digital, there is one major, fundamental difference that they have missed:

Steam has a little feature called "Offline mode" that works forever, even if you never connect your device to the internet again. If you have a connection, Steam will check to make sure the game isn't being played on multiple devices at once, but it never requires a connection outside of a one-time activation.

Why is this important? Here's a few examples:

[ol][li]Youth organizations, community centers, church youth groups, etc. - Many of these are in separate rooms or buildings from their parent organization, and frequently without any sort of internet access, even if the main office or whatever has it.[/li]
[li]Children's bedrooms - Many parents have no problem with their kid having a TV and games in their room, but deliberately do not grant them internet access. One-time online activation is enough of a pain on its own, but to require it every 24 hours makes such a thing entirely unfeasible.[/li]
[li]Unreliable internet - This is a huge problem for college dorms, but even a problem for many people with their own homes and standard ISPs. If there's more than 24 hours of downtime, a daily activation requirement would make the system unusable. Not everyone has the option of simply switching ISPs in this case either, depending on the reason for the downtime and the local competition.[/li][/ol]

But that aside, attempting to copy Steam is a mistake anyway. The whole point of a game console is that it isn't a PC (even if the hardware inside essentially is). What works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other, and if they bridge the gap too much, people will reject the console on the basis that they already have a PC. Make a console a unique product, something that complements a PC with its differences, and people will be more likely to accept it.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. PC sales and Windows 8 sales are already not in the best place right now. Do you really want to try and cannibalize your own sales more than you have to, MS?

I was going to comment, but then I read this and saw that everything I wanted to add to the discussion had been covered. But then I decided to comment anyway, because this comment deserves recognition.

For me, the personal computer (PC) has everything I want in a gaming platform (not to mention a tool for work, study, etc.), so I would never consider buying a console for myself. That said, I recognise the value of consoles for more socially-orientated experiences; that is, I consider a typical usage scenario to be a bunch of friends playing the same game with different controllers - something which PCs rarely support.

Given this more social-orientated mode of play, it seems logical that a major demographic of console users (or, more to the point, buyers) would be those community organisers and youth leaders. Microsoft, however, seem to believe that the only way consoles are used is by one or two people in a living room. This oversight is probably how all of those controversial policies came about.

How they managed to completely miss this market in their initial policy announcements is beyond me, and is rather disheartening coming from the company which also produces the predominantly-used operating systems for PCs.

On another note, it seems consoles are becoming so much like PCs that they're losing focus of why they even had a market in the first place.

I mean, I could also say that smartphones/tablets are bridging the gap more and more between phones and PCs with the features they offer, but at least those devices have the ever-present quality of portability to distinguish them from the desktop market. But consoles are no more portable than conventional computers - giving them a feature set that falls short of a PC's anyway just seems like a way to lose customers to the more versatile platform.

My verdict: focus on the games, not the console. The console's OS should serve to provide direct access to your entertainment library, not to push so much fluff in your face that you need to jump through numerous hoops just to get to the game you want to play.

In terms of software design, Microsoft seem far too focused on the "delighters" (perhaps a misnomer in this case) when they should focus on getting all the "expected" features in first.

 

[MysticSlayer]

You know, most companies don't like coming out and telling their customers that they (the company) are completely out of touch with them (the customer), or that the company really only cares about how or where the consumer spends their money, not on why the consumer spends their money or how the consumer wants to improve the system.

In other words, Microsoft basically just said what no other company is willing to say: "We don't care about you. We care about your money." Well, at least they're honest. Still doesn't make me like them any more. If anything, I like them less after this.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Who the hell is running things at Microsoft? A lobotomized chimpanzee?

Sounds about right.

There are so many things Microsoft continues to get wrong concerned with actually listening to what the consumer wants, it continues to baffle me. I really don't understand either how people are still defending Microsoft and the Xbone.

Every time I read a piece about Microsoft PR, my eyebrows rise a little higher. They're passed my hairline some time ago and I expect them to appear at the back of my neck any time soon.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Further proof that the people at Microsoft don't have an f'in clue how the minds of consumers work? Yawn. Give us some real news.

The reason no one wanted your "like Steam" experience is because no one believed it would actually be a viable competitor. One look at the reaction to Origin should have given them a hint.

 

[theaudioprophet]

This is typical, I realise it's not hard to piss gamers off but MS really should've looked at the console they'd created and burned it and all of it's writings before anyone found out about it. I like my 360 because it plays games, I like games but the fact they're surprised we resisted this tells me I'm just not their target audience anymore.

But whatever, I haven't been to Sony's house in a while.

/petty rant

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Are they trying to ascend to some super saiyan level of stupid?

Sexnifficent statement. Couldn't have said it better myself.

OT: Another piss-poor piece of rhetoric from M$. They CANNOT possibly be surprised at all the shit the Xbone got for its draconian features.

 

[faefrost]

So wait? Let me see if I get this straight? The problem was not that the Microsoft Product Development team made a bunch of wrong assumptions about what consumers wanted or would even vaguely tolerate. The real problem was that we, the gamers and general consumers made wrong assumptions about their product was, what it offered, etc and surprised everyone by how savagely we turned on them based on our flawed assumptions?

Wow!

Even more telling is the fact that this surprised them at all? I mean really? Did none of them start having second thoughts after SimCity? After seeing the shear consumer outrage over that product? That didn't give them even the slightest clue that thy may need to change the approach, fast? Did they somehow not pick up on the steady stream of increasingly hostile questions from fans and the press regarding always online? Even after the "deal with it" controversy? Their Product Development and Marketing people were still so obtuse and insulated from the fans that they still went with that reveal?

 

[Seydaman]

This just in

More bad Microsoft PR!
Hear the rest of the story, in the next half hour!

Are they really this stupid? I mean, come on, they can't be this stupid.

 

[OldFogeyGamer]

"We were surprised" is the corporate equivalent of "it was a joke" on forums.

Do something incredibly retarded? Become "surprised" at the backlash, use "surprise" as proof they didn't really mean all the bullshit they are on record for saying, play the well-meaning "surprised" victim of unfair assumptions.

As long as they can't admit they've learned from their mistake and won't do it again, they'll try to slip it in again in the future. They didn't learn from their mistake in GFWL, they're not going to learn from this either.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Here's the thing about copying steam. You have to do it better. the iPhone wasn't the first smart phone. We had smart phones since 1996. What iPhone did was combined all the shit that worked, and added pretty. There's nothing pretty about Xbox One. Literally nothing.

And to the 'game sharing' that everyone touts? It's of little use to me. Of anyone, really. My cousins game on the same pc. Different screennames. One signs out, the other signs in. different Games. Their library is freaking huge. And guess what? That's perfectly ok. And given that hard drives on PCs won't top out at ten games like early projections of the Xbox One storage, that's a lot of games.

Also, one last bit of fun? I was at my other cousins this week. I missed my games. She let me use her laptop. Two seconds signing on to steam, about thirty minutes downloading the games I want to play, and I was done. Her laptop is completely different than my pc. There was no hassle, just a check from my email to see if it was me. Once it was, everything I ever owned was retrievable.

That's a comparison to steam that the Xbox One will never, ever beat. I will find access to my games if there is a connection. Free access to games that goes to any pc. Xbox One can never compete with that.

Can you honestly blame them? No really, the amount of shit they got away with this generation with the 360 it's no wonder the Xbox division had so much hubris.

The RROD debacle alone would have fucking killed almost any other brand, so the fact they got away with it as well as charging for Xbox Live and gating everything behind it they probably thought they could do no wrong in gamers' eyes.

This is a comment that I think a lot more people should focus on. I mean, Even with the tremendous sales that the Wii generated, Nintendo still had to admit they were missing out on sales of people who liked mainstream games and not the casual stuff. Their launch title with ZombiU was like "Hey, we can do gore. Accept us again, please?"

If it worked, that's any one's guess. Most likely not since sales are so abysmal. But at least Nintendo got the fact that they DO need to pander to their core audience every now and again.

It's a running joke "So, what 360 are you on?". I parted ways with Apple the second I had to go to my third iPod and never looked back. People take the shit that Microsoft serves with a smile because of HALO and COD!!! Why should the marketing really think that all of a sudden, Xbox owners would start to speak out on getting screwed?

 

[Atmos Duality]

"I think the problem was that people got in their minds that what we were trying to do was somehow evil or anti-customer."

Pretty much sums it up. What they wanted to give us was actually [mostly] pretty neat, but what they told us we were getting sounded like shit. It did sound evil, but that's because you basically told us that it was evil. There may be fault on both parties, but most of it was a failure of PR and marketing.

NO. It was -NOT- just poor marketing. They don't get to hide behind that excuse.

Lets just subtract how they pitched the Xbone; remove the glamor and glitz of the reveal, remove how PR stumbled over themselves day after day during said reveal, and remove the endless knee jerk braying of the internet and muckraking press.

What were we left with, really?

-As a gaming system, utilizing both physical and digital media distribution systems.
-It was a platform that had all the drawbacks of Physical and Digital Distribution systems with few to none of the benefits of either. (consumer's perspective; prior to the "180", supply actually gains relative to demand, but since they're pitching to demand...that isn't a point in favor of any "pro-consumer" argument)

-Because of installs from physical media, they had to implement a 24 hour online DRM check in.
-Because of digital downloads, they had to make serious restrictions to reselling and lending media (no used games or first sale benefits).

Yes, even the game sharing feature; the one thing pre-180 apologists and white knights rally behind, is in fact a new restriction.
To their credit, it's a restriction with potential convenience benefits, but that's just as circumstantial as before.

(the benefits are based on proximity; it's of little/no benefit to me to share the game online if my friend just lives down the street where I can just take a few minutes to lend him/her the disc instead of forcing a lengthy several gigabyte download. It is of much greater benefit if s/he lives 100 miles away however.)

Finally, there is now a new major potential point of failure thanks to the requirement of Internet access.

And that's all the objective failings; I'm not even touching on the speculative potential for abuse.

Steam still needs to check in, it's just every week instead of every day. Trust me, that has bitten me in the ass on so many trips.

Does it? Oh wow never knew it was a set amount of time! My bad, guess I'm partially wrong on my claim then >.<

Odd.
I was on a 10 day fishing trip without internet this summer (just two months ago) with my laptop, and after enabling Offline mode Steam worked perfectly fine all 10 days.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

A lot of what they were trying to do makes sense, it's just you have to have some sort of consumer loyalty for it to work and... well I mean lets be honest, microsofts reputation involves frequently having a dollar sign replace the "s" in their name. It's not exactly the company you would want having total control over your games library. Even if they didn't abuse their power, the knowledge that they easily could looms very large. They want to raise the price of xbox live, what are you going to do about it, not pay the extra 5 bucks a month and lose all your games? You get banned because your name is "Balls Cawkington," what happens to your library?

And that's not even getting into the Orwellian shit they could possibly do with the ever-listening always online Kinect. Maybe it's a bit tinfoil-on-head to think that they care enough to listen in and monitor everybody but the fact that they potentially CAN is pretty weird and scary too.

 

[RicoADF]

Let me just add my thoughts on that. Firstly, you say that if they wanted to be like Steam, they should have just let retail and digital sales coexist peacefully on the same platform?

Only; that's nothing like how Steam is doing things. Keep in mind that Valve received massive backlash back in 2004 for deliberately locking out retailer versions of Half Life 2 (everything had to be registered via Steam).

Steam is so massively anti-retail that any game distribution service can possibly be.

And Valve was right to do that seeing as cutting out the retailers allowed for lower game prices á la the Steam sales. Obviously, if Microsoft wanted to be like Steam they should be as anti-retail as possible. So your comparison there just doesn't make any sense to me. Also, you do know that the original Xbox One would support physical copies and even used games, right?

You also say that Microsoft's inability to predict backlash proves that they are completely out of touch with the consumers. Maybe that's true, but I can personally say that I think a lot of that backlash was quite simply unfair.

It's a value proposition right? It's Microsoft saying "here's our new console, it does require internet connection but that's only so we can give you digital features you've never been offered before - the ability to give and share games etc". It's up to each and every consumer to decide whether that's a decent trade-off, and it wouldn't have surprised me if a lot of people would simply pick the PS4 instead. But the aggressive response it triggered did surprise me.

See, the original Xbox One's digital sharing was way less restrictive than that of earlier generations, than that of Steam, Origin and even the PS4. Anti-hack internet connectivity was the only way to justify that kind of liberty to publishers.

So it was a trade-off. They defined their consumer market as everyone with a decent internet connection so that they would be able to enhance the way digital sharing works. And for me with an Internet connection, the advantages clearly outweighed the disadvantages.

Is it anti-consumer to define their market for their new product as just people with Internet connection? Not in my opinion, unless they'd be lying about the fact that it does require Internet connection. But they didn't, in fact they seemed blatantly honest about it, and in the end it's their product and their choice which market segments are interesting to them.

In summary; Microsoft offered something different which in some ways was better, some ways was worse. Ultimately, it's up to each and every consumer to make that choice - but Microsoft shouldn't be demonized for going for a digital distribution model with their own hardware. And I would have greatly preferred if I had the choice between two consoles doing things radically different (Xbox with enhanced digital sharing, PS4 with unrestricted offline) over the choice between two glorified PC's that are exactly the same.

I agree in some areas xbox was trying to beat Steam at it's own game and some of the ideas were great indeed. However, like it or not the online requirement is not a small cost and requiring Kinect to be plugged in also wasn't a small cost. The horrible PR didn't help and then for the whole "USA is spying on foreigners" coming out about the same time that a massive US corporation is releasing a console with a camera that they admit is watching and listening at all times was seriously bad luck/bad timing.

In order of priority:
Always online - Lets face it, this was the big white elephant in the house. Always online doesn't work and from the consumers perspective it's a bad thing. Yes it gives some nice features and when your online anyway it really doesn't matter. However, those online features could just be optional things for those that go online, they don't need to force the whole game online to work. And while your net may stay up what happens when they shut their servers down? As someone who has PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, PSVita, Wii, Xbox 360, PC and every game I've bought on each platform I still own (never ever sold or given away a game of mine, their all in my collection) the Xbox One was not looking appealing that they would one day turn off the servers (and they would) when they decided it wasn't popular enough, then the console and all games on it would literally be useless. I am not and never will be interested in such a system. Yes I play MMO's (Free to play ones) and will put a few bucks into them, but their a different matter to a whole system and all its games being able to disappear one day. I also spend my money accordingly on them (that is to say not alot as their finite life gives them little value to me).

Kinect - This one has 2 issues, 1) not everyone has the space to use one (or even have one sitting to one side), so for some that would literally make the system unusable when it required it to be plugged in. 2) As with mentioned above about the spying on foreigners and just in general privacy concerns having it required and always watching and listerning was a dumb idea on their part. There was no way this was going to fly to the public in general, especially since in alot of European and other nations it would literally be illegal, thus making the system unable to be sold there (may explain the fact only 13 countries are getting the thing).

Now that they have removed both issues the Xbox one is competing and I may get it one day, but due to the bad PR mentioned above it wont be day 1 anymore, I don't trust Microsoft, and at the end of the day that's what all of the above comes down to. Trust is earned, not a given, and Valve has spent 10 years earning and continues to do it well. Microsoft on the other hand hasn't been good at it even with their OS, considering how often the EU has smacked them down with fines, so for them to then turn around and say "deal with it", and tell people if they don't like it then stay with the 360, well frankly they burnt their bridges. There's no defending that and I have no sympathy for them, their a bunch of greedy corporate pigs that want to have total control so they can force you to buy the next system in 10 years time. And before you say their a business and businesses exist to make money, making money doesn't require you to punish and step on your customers, if anything you earn more by working with them in a mutually beneficial partnership that both sides are happy. Valve, Sony, Nintendo and many others know and understand this and thats why their successful, Microsoft doesn't and their suffering for it (not just with the xbox).

Wow this has got to be one of my longest posts here, I hope it's of use and helps you understand where some of us were coming from and why Xbox One was not Steam nor as good as steam even though it had some features that could have given steam a run for its money if it had of been done correctly.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

snip

Was it perfect? By far, nope. Not very. Was the intent neat? Yes definitely. Don't get Microsoft's paternalistic implementation confused with the idea they were going for. The CORE FEATURES they were trying to implement were cool, they just went about it in the worst way possible. That's what I meant.