Poll: So, how many of us are actually a little disappointed?

[Raine_sage]

Oh god I'm so happy it wasn't just me. Now I feel vindicated and less like a terrible person when I say I was definitely looking forward to them launching and seeing what happened. Not just to see how many people did or didn't buy it at the outset but also because I wanted to see how well the servers would handle the strain come day one. I was looking forward to an epic level downtime, or barring that the first time something went wrong in general with the system.

Mostly I'm disappointed they changed their minds so easily. I mean, for awhile there after release they were actively rebuffing consumer concerns. Don't want to check in online? Stick with the 360. Don't have internet? Hah sucks to be you. After all the vitriol directed towards the people who didn't fit their "ideal consumer image" it just seems really weird to me that they just now realize alienating over 50% of your old consumer base was a bad idea. Shouldn't that have been really obvious from the start?

What I assumed was going to happen was they were going to rebrand themselves as a luxury product. Er, well more than they already are. Step up and try to be the ferrari or the Apple of game consoles. Expensive, and marketed almost exclusively to a very narrow target market with lots of disposable cash. Between that and the now mandatory live subscription it would make up for the low sales. Like a guy who sells 500 2 dollar sunglasses and the guy who sells one pair of 1000 dollar sunglasses both make the same amount of money, one just has to sell fewer units to do it.

Did they get some kind of new data that made them realize "Oh snap our target market still isn't big enough to support this model. Abort abort!" Eh I'm just unsatisfied, now I just want to know what it was that not only made them change their minds, but change their minds so rapidly. To the point where four days earlier it seemed like they were perfectly fine with riding the console into the ground on a wave of bile.

 

[Shinsei-J]

It was like watching a man fight a bear, bare handed.
You know the bear was going to win and eat him but I didn't want the man to surrender.

I was also kind of hoping that the spectators would see the man being eaten and decide to never fight the bear at all.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Yeah, I'm disappointed. It's like all those movies where the disaster is prevented minutes before it happens. I always want to see what would happen if it isn't prevented. I can't believe I don't get to see that even in real life.

 

[Nieroshai]

I could imagine a few people being disappointed. The Sony fanboys will be; that goes without saying. Who I think will be disappointed are the people who really liked the idea of family sharing. That entire idea has been discarded in the wake of this announcement.

Or made unnecessary by the nature of physical disc sharing. Games still install to the hard disc completely, and even back then had to be installed to port profiles from the cloud. As the Sony video shows, sharing is simple. Hand it over. Without proving your identity first.

 

[The White Hunter]

I am quite disappointed. I liked the idea of being able to buy a disc, install it, and never worry about that disc again. I liked the idea of giving up to 10 friends access to my entire library. I liked that my games would roam with me from console to console without lugging a bunch of discs around.

Thanks a lot, internet. This is why we can't have nice things.

Duck and cover, mate. Barricade your Escapist inbox.

Who knows, if you're lucky, your comment might pass unnoticed.

I noticed it, but I'm hardly gonna jump down his throat over it. Though others might.

Frankly I'm still not likely to buy one, if only because it's more expensive (£430 is too much) and only one of it's exclusives vaguely appeals to me (Titanfall). I was kind of interested in the new features it was offering such as the sharing, and I'd like to see them implement that for digital purchases and tempt people that way to make the leap to a digital format, though it needs to be done by being more friendly to the consumer, offering sales and good prices.

The daily connection would likely not affect me otuside of the odd week where my ISP decides to cut a wire somewhere for teh lulz, but I don't think it would have been good for the industry to have it go down that way.

Something good happened here today and I hope we can progress beyond this.

Oh and sharing library, you can kind of do it already, sign in on your PS3 at another persons house and all your digital stuff can be downloaded and used there indefinately. I believe the system cap there is 5.

 

[Darks63]

Yeah I was hoping it failing would force capcom to release DR3 multiplatform, but considering their(Capcom's)contempt for a big part of the market share i can just live without their products.

 

[Gecko clown]

This kind of thing is a conundrum. Now that this has happened the Xbone may do alright and everyone can move on with their lives. However, from this, nobody has learnt a lesson (apart from you fuck over everyone at once). If MS had gone ahead with this console and completely flopped then perhaps the gaming industry would have taken a good long look at its DRM policies.

Although it could have gone the other way, frat boys are a legitimate market, and then companies would be all aboard the DRM express next stop: the bank.

Its probably safer this way, but its quite annoying to see MS probably getting away with their awful, awful, law-breaking, 1984-esque policies.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Who I think will be disappointed are the people who really liked the idea of family sharing. That entire idea has been discarded in the wake of this announcement.

Steam has picked up that idea though, so it's not that bad. As far as I'm aware there are no concrete details on how it will work (Or any information other than three lines of code in the beta client), but it shows promise.

Personally, I still believe that the xbox one should be shunned even with these changes. Microsoft haven't learned anything. This is just a ploy, an empty gesture to calm the masses from their point of view.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Of the three possible scenarios (Xbone w/DRM Succeeds, Xbone w/DRM crashes, Xbone wout/DRM), we ended up with the best one.

I disagree. Perhaps I've flooded my brain with Game of Thrones but if someone in a position of power had shown such clear contempt for the people they're supposed to provide for and look after, those people would have mounted their head on a pike.

This is what should have happened to Microsoft. We needed them to fail to serve as an example to others who would try and do the same. Microsoft are supposed to provide us with the means to play games, not restrict our ability to do so. If the one succeeds, I'm certain we'll see the DRM and anti-gamer/pro-publisher policies return before too long, and probably under a different guise.

Business people are smart, ambitious, ruthless and most importantly, they don't give a fuck about you. Remember that.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I don't hope it fails but in my eyes it's curtains for me and microsoft. The fact they tried to pull the shit they did is enough to force me away from them for good. Say goodbye to maybe 100 purchases microsoft, say goodbye to another 5 consoles because your hardware was broken shit, even when new...you only have yourself to blame.

Looking forward to getting back into bed with sony...just hope the ps4 doesn't have the issues the ps3 has otherwise i'm going to start playing with my cock all the time instead of gaming

 

[BQE]

You can count me among those people who wanted Microsoft to learn a much harsher lesson. I'm sure that they took a pretty deep wound from all the events beforehand, but still, this sort of aberrative behavior should never even come close to seeing the light of day. Jim Sterling's emergency vid on this captures my thoughts pretty succinctly. I feel like they've already let the world know their intentions and they are just biding time until they feel they can get away with it. It's nothing personal against Microsoft though, I'm sure the same thought crossed Sony's minds as well.

We just can't afford to have something like this happen as consumers.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

why would i want them to crash? learning from their mistakes is a great thing for a huge company to do

 

[Madman123456]

No. They where oblivious and that was the biggest point i had. Internet whining has finally penetrated their thick thick skulls and so they pulled out quickly. Many potential customers are still not ready to have the console connected to the internet every day, either they can't or they simply wont.

Yusuf Mehdi said that they needed to educate the customers; well, you had enough opportunity to do so and failed. Microsoft failed in a way that astonishes me. Is this a company that consists of many adam orths?

The internet told them that their presentations failed so astoundingly bad that they will probably serve as as an example of how not to do it in "Management 101".

Even their later "defenses" where badly constructed; the publishers get to decide if there even is a used games fee? Well, we know EA would've been jumping onto that.

I'd say "good for you, Microsoft!" but i'll be staying vigilant. There are still a few reasons to hold your money back for a while...

 

[PhantomEcho]

The first lesson I learned in "Management 101" was:

"90% of companies fail because they're run by morons who have no business in business. That means there is all of a 10% chance that the owner(s) and administrator(s) of your company have even the slightest clue of what makes a company work. Don't be like them."

It's a lesson I took to heart. It's one I'll spend the rest of my days repeating to the people who work for me.


Microsoft is just another massive corporation whose upper management can't see beyond the bottom line. They're so focused on broadening their demographic and maximizing their profit margin that they completely forget that making money means people actually have to WANT and BUY your product.

Developers have forgotten this. The Recording Industry has forgotten this. Hollywood has forgotten this. The list goes on, and on, and on.

DRM, the massive abuse of 'copyright law', and all these other anti-consumer policies you see going around are just a sign of the stagnation and rot festering within modern business practice. The new digital reality means that our world no longer operates by the old rules. People expect their companies to work differently. They consume their media differently. They look at ownership differently.

While I disagree with a certain court ruling here in the States which declared that 'corporations are people'... I do admit to them being 'living things'. They're born... they mature and grow... and when they fail to adapt to the changing world around them, or are deemed no-longer necessary, they die off.

These wild flailings we're witnessing right now are failed attempts at corporate evolution.

I, for one, am not at all disappointed to see how this plays out. I don't believe for a second that it's over... that Microsoft has really 'evolved' beyond it's tyranny. But at least it's grown a little. It changed course on a design decision so bad that it should really have gotten every manager involved with it shit-canned just for greenlighting the idea.

That's a bold step. If you see Don Mattrick fired from his position at Microsoft in the coming weeks... you'll know that at least SOME form of growth is taking place. Whether the next evolution will be in the favor of consumers? All we can do is wait and see.

 

[EHKOS]

I feel the exact same way. Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!

 

[Cranky]

Aww man, I was hoping it'd be down to just Sony and Nintendo in the future.

 

[KOMega]

To be honest... Ya I kinda wanted to see it crash and burn.
But I'd rather not see someone fall so far back in the race.

 

[smithy_2045]

Yeah, I'm disappointed, because now my choices are between two consoles that give practically nothing new over the current generation. Fuck you internet.

 

[Mr Fixit]

I'm disappointed for two reasons: 1, because now some people will buy the console that these assholes were willing to subject to all sorts of anti-consumer crap, and they'll be free to try again next time with more tact rather than being left in the dust by companies that intend to provide for their consumers and 2, because there were a couple of features, sharing and discless play, that some people actually wanted the Xbone for, which will now be removed instead of supplemented, which I think is stupid. And in fact, I'm beginning to think MS has done this out of spite to lend false credence to their assertion that you get the whole system or nothing and can't give and take good and bad features.

I could not have said it better myself. Microsoft could have easily made the sharing an actual feature by having it come with a Gold subscription, allowing those that wanted to be online have the nice features of the Xbox One & those that wanted to be offline wouldn't care about the sharing anyway. This all or nothing attitude is nothing more than an attempt to shift the blame back to us the consumer.

I've had a lot of fun with my xboxes over the past decade & I for one do not want to see the Xbox brand fail completely, but the Xbone can fuck off.