Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi: We Need To Educate Consumers

[rob_simple]

"You can imagine the capability to have different licensing models, different ways that people have to access games,"

That part stuck out for me the most, because he said it as if it was a good thing, whereas I read it as:

"We now have even more control over you, your property, and your ability to use the services you have paid for."

If I was some sort of kneejerk-reactionist, Daily-Mail-subscribing fucktard this is the point where I'd pull out the old 'people seem to forget George Orwell's 1984 was a novel, not a blueprint' line.

Seriously, is anyone else starting to think this is some weird stock ploy where the guys running the show at E3 are going to buy up all of Microsoft's nuked stock and then immediately announce all their bad decisions weren't actually true so they make a fortune?

 

[Dangit2019]

Wow, it's like, Microsoft are living in a bubble.

It just boggles my mind how ridiculously anti-consumer this is, and the sad thing is, it probably won't fall flat on it's arse.

It represents everything wrong with blind, uninformed consumerism.

Is there anything that's right with it?

The profit of the few quality products that slip into success?

 

[Therumancer]

The odd thing is that I hear him talk about educating the consumers, when really it seems like the harshest critics are those that understand this fully. At the end of the day this all comes down to what is better for Microsoft, in terms of giving them more ways to make money and tighter control over more things, as far as the consumer goes there is little or no benefit. We give up control over what we paid for, make it easier for Microsoft to track and monitor us, and potentially fuel all the money we spend on other things (social services, etc..) through them. In return we get what? A new machine that plays slightly better games than the older one? That's a really fair deal.

I find it ironic when I hear "educating the consumer" when it really seems to amount to "selling them our propaganda".

As far as not liking change, it's not so much change people hate, it's giving away this much power and control over what they buy. Not to mention the fact that these changes generally involve more hoops to jump through and pains in the arse. Instead of just popping in a game to play and getting everything out of it, you now need to have a profile, a separate membership, quite probably registration on the site of the company the game was made by, and then have to put in codes and such additionally to get your "Day #1 DLC" and prove you didn't steal the disc, or at least didn't buy it used and Microsoft and it's corperate allies got as big a cut as possible. Even beyond control issues the entire
process is a giant pain in the butt.

People don't dislike change, they dislike annoyance. If Microsoft developed a matter transporter and could have a disc you control in your hands inside of 15 seconds, beamed down from their digital reconstruction satellite, saving you a trip to the store, that would be cool, and nobody would mind. On the other hand that's not the case here, Microsoft wants to license you things you do not own or control and have no physical presence at all for top dollar, and involving tons of spyware and DRM to ensure your not stealing from them. Using a matter transporter would be new and a lot of change, but not many people would care the way they do about these changes.

 

[faefrost]

There's little I or anyone can say that doesn't point out the idiocy of the condescending. However, he is right. People need education.

Consumers have become lazy. A lot of the time, brighter and shinier means worth our dollar, yen, euro, or peso. You give me two things that I couldn't have before and lived pretty well without, and I'll be ok with the five things you take from me. We have had threads already devoted to re-educating the rest of us that the Xbox One isn't as bad as we thought. And unless these were people planted three to five years ago for this very reveal, I'm going to say these are real people willing to deal with what Microsoft wants to take from them. That's their deal, I honestly wish them luck.

But we all have a hand in this. From DLC to even buying games with DRM... Companies are smarter than we think. Medhi's comments not withstanding. We've shown a tolerance for accepting less. A game's not complete, you can buy the game 'the way it was meant to be played' with day one DLC. DRM that isn't even functioning correctly and prevents you from even playing the game. DLC that isn't DLC but it's in the product. They just withheld it from us and made us pay extra for it.

We ate it up. We decry Diablo 3, it sells millions. We decry Mass Effect 3, it sells millions. We decry Simcity, it sells millions. Without a unified front, why shouldn't Microsoft pat our heads and tell us we'll understand when we're bigger when they take away our toys, only to be given back at their say so?

Without at least 90% of gamers saying we will not take your practices any more, and the loss of income that comes with that which will teach that 'we' in the company's mindset doesn't matter as much as 'we' the very people who you expect to give them their income... Why should they even give a fuck that a good majority of us are angry? I hate to say it, but we have lost. We have lost big time. Not due to their practices, but to our own fractured ranks.

At the time of this post, The Xbox One [http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-One-Console-Day-Edition/dp/B00CMQTVK0/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371162147&sr=8-1&keywords=xbox+one] is number one in video game electronics [http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e334/Revolution1980/xboxone_zpsdc1ad974.jpg].

I mean, that's it. Before we accepted day one DLC, on disk DLC, always online, DRM... all these buzz words that we willingly accepted to play with the new shiny... if any company came out with a console like this, it would have been laughed out of existence. If you told gamers of 2003 they get to have the next game system, but they don't own it, they'll have to pay for an upgraded internet service just to have enough bandwidth to run it, and when the company decides it's done with the system it'll turn into a brick because no servers to connect? You would have been run out of business even before the first product went out. The backers would have saw the response and ran for the hills, not willing to lose their money on such an obvious loser.

But now? Just look up to the links. We don't care. We're willing to be robbed and told to allow it without any resistance. And we listen.

Mehdi couldn't be more right. We need an education. We need a united front. Because our Luxury just changed ownership from us to it, to it owning us. And we're ready to pay 500 dollars for the license transfer*.

*Pun intentional

I think I am a bit more of an optimist that you. People and consumers are as a group brighter than we will often give them credit for. For the most part they reject shit. They don't fear change nor do they avoid it. But they do not like change simply for changes sake. Or change for someone else's sake. They do not however resist change if they perceive a benefit to themselves,a nd will surrender some previous points in exchange for the new benefits. iTunes is a great example of that. The shear convenience of cheap easy and portable songs where you could just buy what you wanted more than made up for the DRM in the consumers eyes. But this is also where MS has so badly fluqed up the XBone. There are no real perceivable benefits to the consumer. At least none that they can perceive. Instead what they see is a crap ton of negatives being badly wrapped up and shoved at them as supposed benefits. SONY by all appearances understood this this console generation, and seems to be poised to reap the benefits of it.

MS will do a decent business. And they will sell out day one preorders. Every console does. They skew the initial numbers to insure they get good press in that way. What will be the determinant is what the 60 day sales are, and how the 3rd party devs are moving. Right now I think they are nervous about the XBox One.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

What about the extra $100 you'll be paying for the Xbox One, over the PS4? Again, Mehdi doesn't see a problem with that. The Xbox One will deliver so much increased value over the PS4 that a piddling $100 will be neither here nor there. "Ultimately consumers will decide which is better," Mehdi said. "It's a big market."

Sounds familiar. I wonder where we heard that line before?

"Obviously, it's a higher-risk strategy?as all new inventions are?but if the PlayStation 3 lives up to its total potential, I don't think anyone will be worried about Nintendo or Xbox's cheaper price." Sony CEO Howard Stringer, in 2006, in defence of the $599 price point of the PlayStation 3. We all remember how well the PS3 sold before the price cut, don't we? ;P

You sir are a genius. And how long did it take you to find that quote? Probably not long, but you've done more work than any Microsoft employee tasked with researching and developing the XBone. If Microsoft survive this next console generation (and it's looking grim), you'll be able to cut and paste Mehdi's quote and attach it to whichever console developer is too arrogant to learn from others' mistakes.

 

[Whitbane]

"You can even digitally loan copies - up to a limit of ten - and there could be other, as yet undefined benefits."

Jesus, tell us some of the other benefits. Feeding us these little bits of drivel isn't going to do anything. The console is coming out this year, for fucks sake, learn what the hell it can and can't do.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

No, Yusuf, no.

You only need to cut out the crap, get your head (and ears) out your ass and start listening to what the people actually want. It's nice you got ideas and such, but, alas, right now I think you're full of shit, and that's pretty bad when you're a major player in consoles, games and gaming content delivery platforms.

I get how your perception got warped, with all that marketingspeak clinging to you like an oil film, that shit never gets off completely, and it all too readily rubs off. I know that. I am aware of that.

Still, with the Windows 8 nonsense not quite over, you come up with the Xbox one and I just cannot but doubt that you are of sound mind. If, say, 95% of all that nonsense you spout makes me believe you don't get me and you don't want my money, I simply don't feel like giving you my money. I think we need to educate you about that one, Yusuf. Pay attention.

 

[Dangit2019]

and exclusive NFL

I'm Australian, I couldn't care less.

Speaking as someone, who, on the occasion, does care a bit about American football, it still goes back to "I already have a TV and an 'imput' button on my remote". It solving a problem that doesn't exist..

 

[4Aces]

Come one people, clearly the Xbox is going to place highly the massively diverse console market. Yusuf is practically drooling over position #2 in such a large field (of three).

Realistically we need to see the full specs of these things to determine which console will win for hardware. We already know PS4 just won in all other regards, though their cloud is a little delayed (early 2014). It is interesting that both went with AMD CPUs considering Intel chips are better for games, which they have been promoting throughout the decade, as have all objective reviewers.

One word of caution though, is to find out what their exact flavor of SSD is in each of these to find out if you are only risking a 5% failure rate (best case) or a 30%+ within the first four months of operation. SSDs are fine when you have a backup drive with your OS on it, but as the only drive it is very risky. I think there are going to be a lot of teething issues with the first releases considering how relatively cheap both consoles are. 500GB SSDs are expensive unless they are of low quality, even with enormous purchase order margins.

 

[ryessknight]

"Facepalm" Maybe SOME of the the things there doing are intresting ideas , well mostly cloud tech, but 1: the worlds network and the tech ,and this is big micro , ARE NOT READY FOR IT NOW! And 2: Also micro heres another thing... YOUR DOING IT ALL WRONG!

 

[Madman123456]

Microsoft needs to be educated on how to conduct press conferences. I feel the backlash would have been much smaller if people knew that you could loan games without paying the "used games fee". "Allow me to demonstrate what you can do with this machine: You can loan your games to your buddy and you don't even have to take them with you!"
I assume that you can still play the game while you're loaning it out and the loaner game will appear in the library of the friend like the games steam lets you play for free for some time.

*if* the xbone can dial a 56k modem and if the cost would stay managably low even if the xbone has to call home to enable these admittedly useful features then maybe they could have turned this around. Still, not buying the damn thing.

You don't tell people that they have to be online once per day and if they don't like it they can suck it up and then later tell them that this home call is used to enable features that might be kinda useful to some of you out there.

Furthermore, i do not trust microsoft. There will be daily updated ads on the dashboard or something that makes my experience crappy.
That is if the damn machine even works right, microsoft can't always be trusted to deliver a machine that wont red ring, if the servers work right and can be reached and if my own connection doesn't explode.

 

[RicoADF]

"In a broader set of community, people don't pay attention to a lot of the details," said Mehdi. "We've seen it in the research, we've seen it in a lot of the data points."

Translation: Our target demographic is idiots and stupid fanboys who won't care that we are screwing them over.

I will give him this, he is right about the market will decide. And judging by the number of PS4 to Xbone pre-orders, MS is not going to like what it has chosen.

At my local EB I asked about the XBone and apparently they have had no preorders, but PS4 is doing well.... Then again they have been warning people about the online requirement and unable to resell games.

Captcha - "most interesting man" - why thankyou captcha, I think...

 

[mbarker]

It looks like the only customers MS wants are Rich dumbies. Core players don't really matter in the long run. It's obvious that MS is a group that respects their customers.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

There's plenty of benefits in cloud connection, Mehdi claims.

Are there? Please, go on.

You'll be able to take your library with you wherever you go, so long as there's a decent connection.

I can take my current library with me wherever I go, whether there's a connection or not. Try again.

You can even digitally loan copies - up to a limit of ten -

I can loan people my games now, without any limits. Still not impressed.

- and there could be other, as yet undefined benefits.

...seriously? They've got nothing else? They can't even make something else up?

"You can imagine the capability to have different licensing models, different ways that people have to access games," says Mehdi.

Oh, I can imagine that, can I? Isn't it your job to imagine that and then explain why it's good for me? And yeah, maybe I can imagine it, but why should I? I've got no problems with the way I access games now.

As to what those different ways could be or what they might mean for the industry, Mehdi was reluctant to go into details.

So basically, "just trust us." No. No, I'd rather not.

As for DRM and used games, limits and potentially fees are a necessary evil, Mehdi claims, as Microsoft needs to keep publishers happy as well as consumers.

Tell you what: get back to me in a year, when the PS4 has pounded the Xbone into the dirt, and then we'll see for ourselves how happy Microsoft has kept those publishers.

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

The fuck do we need to educate the customers for? If you can't present your product as something we want, we're not going to buy it. Get educated.

 

[LoLife]

So basically what Microsoft is saying is the reason why gamers don't like the Xbone is because gamers are backwards, uneducated rubes......... it would of been less insulting if Microsoft just said #dealwithit ^^

 

[Akytalusia]

yes, lots of people will buy it because they don't pay attention to the details and will see it as just the next xbox. but you haven't looked past that microsoft, shortly after all these people buy it, the vast majority of them will be demanding refunds when they realize what they bought. what will you do then, i wonder.

 

[Extragorey]

If anyone is uninformed, it's all the sheep who are just gonna buy the XBone because it's the latest thing, and who haven't heard or read a thing about it.

Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that Microsoft are forgetting basic business principles.
The customer is always right. PR 101, guys.

 

[Astoria]

The thing is all this digital stuff takes away the one advantage consoles have over PC, you just put in the disk and away you go. If you have to do all this messing around with being online, going through cloud blah blah blah you might as well go PC and get Steam. It's better and probably cheaper in the long run.

 

[wulfy42]

Maybe someone can answer a question for me. Have xbox 360 games been pirated alot in this generation? I don't know anything about pirating really, between steam, humble bundles and GoG, I just don't see why anyone would bother...but I figure there must be a ton of pirating going on right now for microsoft to want to put in all these protections. I have heard about pirating being an issue for PC games, but never really heard about it being a problem for Xbox/Ps3 games before.


So has piracy been a big issue for Xbox games lately or something?

There has to be some reason for the crazy online requirements etc.....right?