Xbox Boss More Focused on Regaining Trust Than Beating PlayStation 4

[Arnoxthe1]

Ultimately, I think where Xbox One is suffering the most is its current library, and with Halo 5 cutting splitscreen support, their new games are not really looking that great at all at the moment.

Having said all that, I don't agree with every single thing Phil says but man, he is far and away better than Mattick. By the beard of Zeus.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

And then how will you bend us over next time once you have gained that trust back hm? Reveal that every Xbone and 360 game has a microchip in them and you have the detonator to make them combust?

 

[Arctic Werewolf]

I bought the Xbox Original to play Halo: Combat Evolved. I didn't buy it to wave my arms around in unresponsive kiddie-games and watch television. The Halo franchise is in the dumpster right now and there is no sign of serious improvement any time soon. I'm glad they realize they are still suffering from the initial reception of their crappy TV box, and the ensuing mass exodus from the XBox brand. And I don't want to downplay their efforts to salvage the situation. But what is going to bring me back to Xbox LIVE when I already own a PS4? Cuz Halo 5: Call of Duty Clone With No Splitscreen is not doing it.

It's the games, stupid. Here's the XBox One reveal, because we should Never Forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP4E3xNU9pU

On the other hand, I'm the only one who thought the console itself didn't look half bad.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

How about cutting the Xbone price in half, start developing for the 360 again seeings how its too much work for you to use the amazing graphics you sold the Xbone on, offer full backwards compatibility for the Xbone, and buy Silent Hill and make the first good horror game since Silent Hill 3.

Do that and I won't immediately piss on your shoes if I ever see you.

You make a point about "full BC", I don't think its that easy and "developing for the 360 again", well uhm hate to break it to you but Microsoft does not control the 3rd party developers and publishers decision making so that point is moot, and "buy Silent Hill"? I think you're being absolutely unreasonable with at least 1/2 of your points being something that is out of their hands. Konami (fucKonami) won't sell the IP so there's no point in giving Microsoft shit for that.

Pricing? It'll come down, people seem to forget that the last generation PS3 and 360 both were extremely expensive at the outset and for a good 2 years (how long the XBone and PS4 have been out and only recently have prices dropped).
I own an XBone and a 360 and the graphics overall are much crisper than the 360 versions of similar games so I personally wouldn't complain that much about it, except maybe that developers should be optimizing their games at 60fps first, which is a developer issue and not a console maker issue.

Now complaints that are in fact a console maker issue? Storage options. This is an across the board gripe, Sony and Microsoft both are guilty. If they are going to require us to install games on the hard drives, then give us an option to buy extra storage or use our own USB sticks/drives. If there's a way to do so I haven't found it yet because none of my USB hard drives (I have multiple 1TB drives from different makers) have been recognized by either current gen system and I'm constantly running out of room from the games I own both digitally and physically. Plus patch content (Witcher 3 alone has cut into my storage on PS4) makes that point hurt all the more. If there is a solution to this, and I'm just unaware I'd appreciate a link to how to get the consoles to recognize my extra storage space.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I dunno, are you sure he said anything we didn't already know? This all has a weird political non-speak vibe...

"For me, what we fundamentally lost was the trust of our most loyal customers,"

"Whether it's 'always on,' used games, whatever the feature was, we lost the trust in them that they were at the center of our decision making process. Were we building a product for us, or were we building a product for the gamers? And as soon as that question came into people's minds... what you find is very quickly you lose the benefit of the doubt."

"Have we recovered? I feel really good about the position and the product and the brand right now, but I was at the Gamestop Manager's Meeting about three weeks ago, and I'm sitting with 5000 GameStop managers in Las Vegas, and they'd come up and they still have customers that walk in the store that think that the Xbox One won't play used games,"
"Regaining that trust and that mindshare with the customer, the gamer, is incredibly difficult."

"I started off making statements like 'we want to win'... But what I quickly realized was you can only control, as a leader, what you can control," Spencer said. "Sony is having incredible success with PlayStation 4, and they've earned that. But for me as a leader of my team and somebody who is interacting with the Xbox community it was much more beneficial and I could have more impact focusing on the product we had."

"I would never question the ability of our organization, but I'll say we're not motivated by beating Sony, we're motivated by gaining as many customers as we can."

Too many words, too little actual information. We don't learn anything new, he hasn't quite learnt anything new probably (i cannot tell from his vague wording), so we remain as equally well off as before. Except with the added knowledge that gamestop managers all bugger off to Las-Vegas for their meetings. Assuming it was unintentional, perhaps he was caught for an early morning, pre-coffee chat and his words became unnecessarily guarded. Who knows?
And of course he is going to be motivated by gaining as many customers as he can, it's his job! ;D

 

[Worgen]

The console "wars" are such an odd thing, really its just an argument over which ui you want when you play your games since games pretty much look the same on each one. This isn't like the snes genesis days when games really did look and play different, or even the ps2,gc,and xbox days.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I don't want the Xbox to recover. The reason it's behind right now is because of that horrible idea to force an always online connection. To add more bothersome DRM to consoles. I want the Xbox to linger in second and then third place for the entirety of the next cycle (that could last way longer then the last cycle.) as a reminder in case nintendo or sony try to pull the same thing.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

PS4 owners forget easy. Remember when Sony ripped the guts out of the PS3 inc backward compatibility? Yeah, people forget that. Plus Sony has had loads of exclusive dlc for games that are multi platform. Yet no one cares until MS does it. MS gets Tomb Rider for a year, people complain and go crazy. Street Fighter is PS4 only - and nothing is said about that. People bitched at MS when they did wrong, yet they changed and yet people still whine like babies. I remember that Sony wanted to sell you PS3 games you already bought and played again for the PS4. No one said anything even though your trophy list shows you already bought and played it.

Look both Sony and MS does dumb crap. An as gamers all we can do is chose the system that hosts the games we love. Whether PS4/XB1/WiiU/PC we should base it on the games we love and not insult others that chose a different system. But all the companies do crap we hate. An the people moaning about what MS nearly did 2 years ago are the same people that whine about the MS3 ending even now.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

PS4 owners forget easy. Remember when Sony ripped the guts out of the PS3 inc backward compatibility? Yeah, people forget that. Plus Sony has had loads of exclusive dlc for games that are multi platform. Yet no one cares until MS does it. MS gets Tomb Rider for a year, people complain and go crazy. Street Fighter is PS4 only - and nothing is said about that. People bitched at MS when they did wrong, yet they changed and yet people still whine like babies. I remember that Sony wanted to sell you PS3 games you already bought and played again for the PS4. No one said anything even though your trophy list shows you already bought and played it.

Look both Sony and MS does dumb crap. An as gamers all we can do is chose the system that hosts the games we love. Whether PS4/XB1/WiiU/PC we should base it on the games we love and not insult others that chose a different system. But all the companies do crap we hate. An the people moaning about what MS nearly did 2 years ago are the same people that whine about the MS3 ending even now.

Probably one of the smartest comments here.

Look, I get it. Microsoft were fucking awful at the start of this generation. Every criticism they got, they earned. But drop the fucking snark everyone. This new guy has done nothing but good for the company. I actually believe they are trying to turn it around. And I desperately hope they do.

Context-I have no horse in this race. I own no next-gen console, and both my housemates have wii-u's, so I can't play either. I just want there to be an actual choice before I go and buy one.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I prefer if they try to beat the PS4. That type of competition is actually really beneficial for us and shows great confidence and passion in their own product.

They failed in the particular objective when they specced the slowest processor, cheapest RAM and cheapest memory controller they thought they could get away with. From now until the next generation every multi platform review is going to end with a note on how the PS4 version is better.

Of course not screwing the pooch so hard during the reveal and launch wouldn't have hurt.

 

[Nazulu]

I prefer if they try to beat the PS4. That type of competition is actually really beneficial for us and shows great confidence and passion in their own product.

They failed in the particular objective when they specced the slowest processor, cheapest RAM and cheapest memory controller they thought they could get away with. From now until the next generation every multi platform review is going to end with a note on how the PS4 version is better.

Of course not screwing the pooch so hard during the reveal and launch wouldn't have hurt.

I see no reason why they can't just update the damn thing they're so good at throwing millions around. The old ones can be traded in like so many red ringed 360s. Then they can work on a better library and better offers.

 

[MCerberus]

Well if there's a silver lining, Sony's helping out MS with the current auto-load of Destiny

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

I have both the PS4 and XBone and the point of difference is very, very small in my opinion. I tend to play the Bone a little bit more because I prefer the controller and having the Forza franchise, but I must admit Until Dawn has had pride of place at my house at the moment.

I think Phil's idea is correct. You are never going to beat the PS4 this generation. You pissed away all the goodwill you had from the 360. The best thing you can do is what Sony did after they pissed away all their goodwill with the PS2 and that's steadily make the XBone a quality product that deserves to be purchased by people who already own a PS4. Make your exclusive content as good as it can get and people will come.

 

[Strazdas]

Then perhaps they should abandon the Xbone then? If everything that is considered beneficial to the users and gamers is simply too hard for Microsoft to do, then maybe they're in the wrong line of work.

uh what? continuing to develop on the extremely outdated 360 is the furthest from beneficial to the users and gamers.

A reasonable stance to take, things don't tend to switch around once a generation is in progress, the most they can help for is to keep rebuilding trust so that they can beat the PS5

Even though 360 had a big lead at the beginning PS3 still outsold them by the end, despite having architecture no developer wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole. things do switch around once a generation is in progress.

The problem with the Xbox One is that Microsoft's been on damage control since its inception 2 years ago. They fucked up once they went back on the things they at first assured people were integral to the system. Why trust a company when the company doesn't trust their own product?

a person who did it was fired and was replaced with a person with completely opposite view. its a bit more than damage control.

Oh wait didn't they just finish getting outed for putting keyloggers in Windows 10. Right. Nevermind.

They didint. There was a lot of panic but nothing substancial. There are problems with Windows 10 worth talking about. Keylogger is not one of them.

PS4 owners forget easy. Remember when Sony ripped the guts out of the PS3 inc backward compatibility? Yeah, people forget that.

They didnt forget. they didnt care. Less than 1% of PS3 owners ever used the backward compatibility.

I see no reason why they can't just update the damn thing they're so good at throwing millions around. The old ones can be traded in like so many red ringed 360s. Then they can work on a better library and better offers.

You mean upgradable hardware? but then what would be the difference from PC other than MS locking you down and forcing you to pay for things that are free on PC?

 

[Nazulu]

I see no reason why they can't just update the damn thing they're so good at throwing millions around. The old ones can be traded in like so many red ringed 360s. Then they can work on a better library and better offers.

You mean upgradable hardware? but then what would be the difference from PC other than MS locking you down and forcing you to pay for things that are free on PC?

It was just to compete with the PS4 because many bring up the hardware as a main issue.

Also, to add to the things they could improve to rejoin the war, they could make it so they don't lock you down or force you to pay for things. Though I don't what we're talking about here.

 

[Lightknight]

Did anyone point out that regaining trust would also be the way to compete with Sony again? Those two goals aren't mutually exclusive, they're literally the same thing.

I see no reason why they can't just update the damn thing they're so good at throwing millions around. The old ones can be traded in like so many red ringed 360s. Then they can work on a better library and better offers.

You mean upgradable hardware? but then what would be the difference from PC other than MS locking you down and forcing you to pay for things that are free on PC?

It was just to compete with the PS4 because many bring up the hardware as a main issue.

Also, to add to the things they could improve to rejoin the war, they could make it so they don't lock you down or force you to pay for things. Though I don't what we're talking about here.

You know how fans of other consoles will jump into threads about the competing consoles just to make the owners feel bad for liking them? Well, Strazdas is a computer fan who wants to make you reconsider owning a console at all (as opposed to making you feel bad). That's what he's talking about. He views consoles as all locked down and hindering to consumers. Strazdas, correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not saying you're trolling, I'm just establishing that you believe consoles to be the inferior product and are taking the opportunity to both respond helpfully to the discussion as well as enlighten people about the idea that computers are less restrictive.

Though you and I have had this discussion a few times since I have both a gaming PC and gaming consoles of various types and use them for a variety of reasons. I prefer consoles in my bedroom and living room whereas my PC is reserved for my office. The device I choose for any particular games depends on where I prefer to play that type of game. Anything isometric or an RTS will automatically go PC regardless. But something like an online FPS will go on the consoles because I prefer living room/bedroom playing for shooters, I prefer more reliable lobbies with better matchmaking, and it's nice to be able to play with my wife on the same screen or one room over. Anyways, my stance is and has always been that both types of devices, consoles and PCs have their advantages and disadvantages. Some day PCs will begin to affordably bridge many of the gaps but that day simply isn't today.

 

[Nazulu]

Did anyone point out that regaining trust would also be the way to compete with Sony again? Those two goals aren't mutually exclusive, they're literally the same thing.

Yeah, I kinda did. I was going to say that but I changed my mind to what I posted instead. Felt like I was saying more.

You know how fans of other consoles will jump into threads about the competing consoles just to make the owners feel bad for liking them? Well, Strazdas is a computer fan who wants to make you reconsider owning a console at all (as opposed to making you feel bad). That's what he's talking about. He views consoles as all locked down and hindering to consumers. Strazdas, correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not saying you're trolling, I'm just establishing that you believe consoles to be the inferior product and are taking the opportunity to both respond helpfully to the discussion as well as enlighten people about the idea that computers are less restrictive.

I wasn't 100% sure what he was explaining. If Strazdas misunderstood or was having a go at consoles, so I just went back to the point.

Strazdas, you should go into more detail about the locking and forcing, as well as all negatives of a console. But you needn't concern yourself with my decision, because they haven't made anything I'm interested in for years now. Even Nintendo's new oh so amazing line-up looks like rubbish to me.

 

[Lightknight]

Did anyone point out that regaining trust would also be the way to compete with Sony again? Those two goals aren't mutually exclusive, they're literally the same thing.

Yeah, I kinda did. I was going to say that but I changed my mind to what I posted instead. Felt like I was saying more.

You know how fans of other consoles will jump into threads about the competing consoles just to make the owners feel bad for liking them? Well, Strazdas is a computer fan who wants to make you reconsider owning a console at all (as opposed to making you feel bad). That's what he's talking about. He views consoles as all locked down and hindering to consumers. Strazdas, correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not saying you're trolling, I'm just establishing that you believe consoles to be the inferior product and are taking the opportunity to both respond helpfully to the discussion as well as enlighten people about the idea that computers are less restrictive.

I wasn't 100% sure what he was explaining. If Strazdas misunderstood or was having a go at consoles, so I just went back to the point.

Strazdas, you should go into more detail about the locking and forcing, as well as all negatives of a console. But you needn't concern yourself with my decision, because they haven't made anything I'm interested in for years now. Even Nintendo's new oh so amazing line-up looks like rubbish to me.

I mean, he isn't concerned with your decisions. It's just information on the freedom of PCs that ought to be out there. So he isn't trying to control you or anything. He's just a dude that's passionate about computers and knows his stuff on them.

Consoles are basically like cell phones that are locked down to only be accessible through one provider. He's not wrong there. It's just that I find them significantly more plug-and-play/user friendly and much more supported of a platform than PC which may frequently require you to troubleshoot your own environment.