Poll: Microsoft's future(s)

[uchytjes]

Unless you have been living under a rock inside the deepest recesses of the world's deepest cave, I'm sure you've heard of the entire debacle surrounding Microsoft's reveal of the Xbox one.

That isn't what this is entirely about. This is about Microsoft's future in terms of good, evil, and neutral. Note that this is pure speculation and is almost completely based off of opinion.

Good:
They take all that they (should) have learned from this reveal and apply it across all their current and future products in the form of integration and communication between devices without angering the consumer through restrictions on their enjoyment and use of their systems.

Neutral:
They take what they think they have learned and use it to attempt improvement upon future designs all the while just spinning their tires and doing nothing that actually improves anything. It still will improve technologically, but the user will still suffer.

Evil:
They bribe the fuck out of publishers to use only their system and snatching up any indie developers that could possibly publish on other systems, thus rooting out their competition and creating a near monopoly on the console gaming market and causing innovation to halt completely.

These are my three predictions, but what about you? What do you think Microsoft will do with the Xbox one and with the future of their company?

 

[Galletea]

I think it will probably do ok anyway. I don't have much faith in people. I'd like to think that they would vote with their wallets and not buy the XBone, but most people wouldn't have been paying attention to the details and will just want the next shooters, so they will pay the ridiculous prices and blindly carry on giving microsoft their cash.

What we could have is the public losing all faith in the games industry in general, but I'm feeling decidedly pessimistic today.

 

[Hoplon]

yeah I mean i wouldn't bet on most people who will have bought it noticing for more than a second.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

How is your Evil option any different from what they have been doing for the last 6+ years?

The only difference now is that they stopped giving a fuck about what anyone thinks of them, and they've dropped any semblance of customer empathy.

Making games has always stuck me as an unfortunately necessary chore for them, like they would much rather be in any other business. Like that surly barrista at your local..anywhere, that dreams of being king hipster in a country you've never heard of.

Now that they have taken great pains to make a console that has actually playing games pretty low on its list of priorities, we finally begin to see this hypothesis tentatively confirmed.

Personally I think its interesting how a popular company decided to up and fuck over so many others, like Gamestop, Red Box, Gamefly, Ebay, Amazon Marketplace, pretty much ALL of their retailers really as well as future collectors of their games.

As a kid my primary source of new games was what my mom picked up at garage sales. Microsoft would have you pay out the ass for that 5 year old game you just got. And you had better have persistent broadband to even think of playing that single player game.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't sought to under-undercut Sony by offering the XBone free with a 5 year contract. Its already got more restrictions and addendum than some of the plans for Smartphones out there.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

The Xbone appeals to the Dew drinking, Doritos eating, FPS and sports game playing dudebros of today.

They don't tend to think about things too much.

A stereotype, yes, but judging by the way the EA and MS conferences went, that seems to be who they're aiming for.


I don't think it will succeed as much as the 360, but I don't think it's going to struggle either.