RedEyesBlackGamer said:
Eclectic Dreck said:
Games For Windows is their black eye in this. People hate that service. Microsoft wasn't going into this with a clean slate in terms of digital services. They have one and no one likes it. So why should people be excited about a new platform where they hold all the dice? This was compounded my their horrible PR covering the Xbox One. No one knew anything concrete and sources would contradict each other. That just added fuel to the fire. They are the company that charged a 50$ fee for full use of their digital platform on their console when their competitors offered theirs for free. Why should people have trusted Microsoft not to take advantage of the situation? It is supposition to say that they would have copied their mistakes for Games For Windows. It is also supposition to say that they would have turned out a service to rival Steam. The used games angle was largely secondary to the always-online requirement. That burned the bridge before they even started to try to cross it. The always-online requirement, their horrendous PR, and their spotty track record all combined to create a situation where they couldn't win with their current product.
The supposition I make is actually
predicated upon the notion that Microsoft would attempt to maximize their profits. If Valve and various studios along the way are to be believed, the sales result in an
increase in profits for them. Combine that with the fact that the end game would be utterly divorcing game sales from retail chains, a move which frees them to freely modify their prices as they see fit in order to maximize a return, and you have the core of the argument.
Though, your post does shed some amount of light on part of Microsoft's real problem. I can point out any number of things wrong the current system and find things that were good about the proposal but that pales in the face of the fact that the new system was
different. Microsoft of all companies should know just how hard it is to sell someone on
anything different - see the launches for Windows, Windows 95, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Office 2013 and so forth. Each was met with a violent backlash and in cases were it was not carefully managed (Windows Vista) they were forced to eventually resort to a scorched earth solution. Microsoft simply handled the Xbox one announchement as badly as possible. Even if they came to the public with something
unambiguously good, they still would have garnered a negative reaction if they had as confused and clueless a message as this.
The cloud bit is, perhaps, the best example. They simply limply waved at the notion of cloud - something they do a lot these days. Yet in my day to day life (I work in IT), I have to regularly explain what the cloud is to people; few, it would seem, actually know anything about the idea the word is supposed to represent. That Microsoft offered no useful answer as to what they were going to do with the service (any details on that front came from third parties) while simultaneously pointing to it as a key advantage was a failure of messaging so complete that entire product lines have failed for less.