Xbox President Says World Has Changed From Offline to Online

[Saltyk]

Okay... I said this yesterday. Microsoft, I'm getting tired of hating on you guys. Why must you keep acting like idiots? Do you have some sort of need to do so in order to live? Can you not survive if you don't kick a puppy or something? Seriously, just please stop. Please. I still won't buy your anticonsumer shitbox, but if you can go a week without pissing me off, I'll not tell people I meet to not buy your console. Sound like a deal? Please?

Microsoft...at this point, silence was truly your best PR. Maybe you should revert to that instead of implying your customers are the ones out of touch with reality. If gamers are upset over something you are doing, don't tell them they don't understand how the real world works. They have a better grasp of it than you do from your high-rise office.

Also, does the phrase "Playstation 4 preorders outselling Xbox One preorders on an 8 to 1 ratio" mean anything to you? You know, as if you were doing something wrong and should SHUT THE FUCK UP?!

Is it really an 8 to one ratio? Could you provide a link? I just checked Amazon's gaming list (5 of the Top 10 are PS4 with only one XBone and three others are Sony products) and I could believe it, I'm just wondering where you found the numbers.

This will also answer the other guy's request for a source.

I feel like an idiot now. I took my sister's word for it, and I can't back up a source. The only info I have is uncertain in any way other than "Playstation 4 is winning by a damn good amount."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2420549,00.asp

The poll mentioned [http://www.cinemablend.com/games/94-Gamers-Favor-PS4-Xbox-One-According-Amazon-Poll-56705.html]

I think that poll speaks even louder than preorders, honestly.

Nah, it's fine. I wasn't trying to be a jerk or anything. I was genuinely curios about the preorder sales. And if you check the Amazon Top 100, it is rather interesting to say the least. I could easily see it being a 4 to 1 ratio, honestly. Hell, when I preordered at Gamestop, I was intentionally vague to see what they would say. The employee asked me if I was there for the PS4, almost hoping that I was. And it was made clear when I confirmed as such that they had been sort of encouraging people to buy it. A friend that has been an Xbox guy for nearly ten years has told me he plans to buy a PS4.

However, that poll... Is unbelievable. I don't think I have ever seen something that one sided. Makes me wonder what the actual numbers are.

Microsoft...at this point, silence was truly your best PR. Maybe you should revert to that instead of implying your customers are the ones out of touch with reality. If gamers are upset over something you are doing, don't tell them they don't understand how the real world works. They have a better grasp of it than you do from your high-rise office.

Also, does the phrase "Playstation 4 preorders outselling Xbox One preorders on an 8 to 1 ratio" mean anything to you? You know, as if you were doing something wrong and should SHUT THE FUCK UP?!

You know, I have been sitting merrily in the 'Sony camp' for at least half a decade now, and life is peachy.

Still, I was hoping for... real competition. A level playing field for the time, love, attention and monies of all God's creatures.

Microsoft decided to change the rules, and not in a good way.

I do not want Microsoft to shut up. I want them apologizing for Metro. I want them to revise their stance, their policies and their philosophy of what makes a gaming console a great gaming console. I want them to drop all that utterly useless marketingspeak, and I want them to stop the nonsense like they abandoned the HD DVD. Oh, wait, HD DVD abandoned itself.

I've been playing Playstation games and systems for 15 years. But, I could still respect the Xbox, even bought the original. I liked the 360 minus a few things like RROD, though I wasn't going to buy another console. But, I just can't pretend that the new Xbox One (seriously hate that name) is anything worth praising. It has arguably one good feature. And we don't really know the details. I can safely say that I am not willing to deal with DRM and online requirements for one good feature. And seriously, who is actually going to use the Xbox One to watch TV except for those hardcore fanboys trying to make their purchase seem worthwhile?

 

[Frankster]

"Being connected to the cloud is going to allow creators to make worlds that are alive. They're going to have communities, you're going to be able to interact with your friends, they're going to be rich, changing, vibrant, in real-time," he said.

This to me, is my idea of a gaming hell.

If i want stuff like that, i play an mmo or similar massively multiplayer game. When im having some quality "me" gaming time, last thing i want is to have other people poking me or "interacting" with me.

Oh also i got crappy net connection, and I live in London. So they are deluded in thinking everyone has good net, even if major urban centres.

 

[TheHomelessHero]

I agree, the FUTURE is online, however, in the present we have:

1. Military Personnel with very, VERY limited internet connection at military bases, and like to play games to relieve stress from their difficult daily lives.

2. Hundreds (if not thousands) of Rural areas with very limited internet connections that wont be able to experience the Xbone)

3. Many jobs take place in boats or submarines... what about them? They can't experience the console?

Microsoft... you are alienating so many minority groups, they will eventually add up to the majority...

 

[Signa]

Microsoft...at this point, silence was truly your best PR. Maybe you should revert to that instead of implying your customers are the ones out of touch with reality. If gamers are upset over something you are doing, don't tell them they don't understand how the real world works. They have a better grasp of it than you do from your high-rise office.

Also, does the phrase "Playstation 4 preorders outselling Xbox One preorders on an 8 to 1 ratio" mean anything to you? You know, as if you were doing something wrong and should SHUT THE FUCK UP?!

I think you're misinterpreting who they are talking to. He's pleading with investors, trying to get them to understand where they are coming from so that they will give them money. The consumer doesn't matter any more. I think that's worse than what you're suggesting.

 

[Winnosh]

Actually you know what Don't stop. Keep talking I don't want the ammount of crap on this console to be forgotten by the time it comes out. People have short term memories and this needs to stay in the public eye.

 

[BlackStar42]

...What? Just...what?

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Sony was responsible for hiring Microsoft's entire PR department. Sony are getting massive amounts of goodwill by basically doing nothing and letting Microsoft shoot itself in the balls.

 

[BNguyen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ

I think this video, although it is humorously directed towards the wrong company, fits the bill just right.

 

[Syzygy23]

Why is everyone saying this guy has a punchable face? The still photos and videos, to me at least, make him look more nervous and kinda defeated. I think he knows the Xbone is shit, and that Microsoft is selling a shitty "service", and worst of all it falls on HIS shoulders to try and spin shit into gold while his boss(es) and shareholders glare silently from their boardrooms at him.

It's like Mark Twain once wrote: "But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

Not entirely a 1:1 comparison what with the religious nature of the quote, but Sympathy for the Devil is what I'm trying to get at here. This guy has to go home to his family every night, and if they're intelligent at all then he knows that they know he is being paid to spew utter horseshit in a vain attempt to dupe rubes into signing over their consumer rights. It just strikes me as a sad situation for Mattrick.

I'm still not touching one of those things with a 39 and a half foot pole, granted, I just don't want to punch a man in the face when he's down.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

That's the thing about tablets and smart phones though...I've never once paid for a game on my droid because A) the phone is a PoS and B) I don't consider myself the owner of the free counterparts to those bits of software. As for the world being online...ya could have said the same thing about the world back in 2006...back in 2001...Hell, we had the internet in the 90's too but that's not really the point of console gaming: Console gaming is (was) about convenience and user-friendliness. An always-on console will be a good thing and it will be viable but that's not going to happen until internet service (on both ends) is as wide-spread and, as reliable as modern electrical services. You could be living in a New York City penthouse with enough money for a million beautiful salve boys cars but once thunder strikes, you're very likely to spend the next few hours without internet.

 

[Cecilo]

Why is everyone saying this guy has a punchable face? The still photos and videos, to me at least, make him look more nervous and kinda defeated. I think he knows the Xbone is shit, and that Microsoft is selling a shitty "service", and worst of all it falls on HIS shoulders to try and spin shit into gold while his boss(es) and shareholders glare silently from their boardrooms at him.

It's like Mark Twain once wrote: "But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

Not entirely a 1:1 comparison what with the religious nature of the quote, but Sympathy for the Devil is what I'm trying to get at here. This guy has to go home to his family every night, and if they're intelligent at all then he knows that they know he is being paid to spew utter horseshit in a vain attempt to dupe rubes into signing over their consumer rights. It just strikes me as a sad situation for Mattrick.

I'm still not touching one of those things with a 39 and a half foot pole, granted, I just don't want to punch a man in the face when he's down.

...Now you have made me feel like a horrible person. You are right, I doubt that many of the people presenting the Xbox one actually believe this is a good thing. They are paid to try to make it sound and feel like a good thing, but they surely must know that it is a load of crud. Possibly with the added stress of knowing if they don't do well enough they will lose their job.

 

[Astoria]

Has Microsoft ever considered that some of us don't want to be connected? I play games to be by myself 98% of the time and I don't like being told that I have to be part of this so called vibrant community. I've heard enough of my brother's insults to know it's no community I care to be invovled in.

Microsoft have really cornered themselves with this one. They've gone on about how great these features are so much that they can't do anything else but keep digging the hole and hope Sony does something even worse. It's a shame, I really loved my xbox and 360.

 

[Syzygy23]

Why is everyone saying this guy has a punchable face? The still photos and videos, to me at least, make him look more nervous and kinda defeated. I think he knows the Xbone is shit, and that Microsoft is selling a shitty "service", and worst of all it falls on HIS shoulders to try and spin shit into gold while his boss(es) and shareholders glare silently from their boardrooms at him.

It's like Mark Twain once wrote: "But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

Not entirely a 1:1 comparison what with the religious nature of the quote, but Sympathy for the Devil is what I'm trying to get at here. This guy has to go home to his family every night, and if they're intelligent at all then he knows that they know he is being paid to spew utter horseshit in a vain attempt to dupe rubes into signing over their consumer rights. It just strikes me as a sad situation for Mattrick.

I'm still not touching one of those things with a 39 and a half foot pole, granted, I just don't want to punch a man in the face when he's down.

...Now you have made me feel like a horrible person. You are right, I doubt that many of the people presenting the Xbox one actually believe this is a good thing. They are paid to try to make it sound and feel like a good thing, but they surely must know that it is a load of crud. Possibly with the added stress of knowing if they don't do well enough they will lose their job.

At the worst, the people behind the Xbone are simply apathetic towards gamers and gaming, guys in suits doing their best to appease other guys in nicer suits so they don't get fired, can afford to send their kids to a good school, or a myriad host of other reasons. I don't think any human being alive is one-dimensional enough to sit in an ivory tower, maliciously rubbing their hands together while cackling at the people on the streets below, thinking to themselves "FOOLISH SHEEPLE! THEY'VE FALLEN RIGHT INTO MY TRAP! WHAT A BUNCH OF INBRED BUFFOONS!".

It really sounds to me like Microsoft panicked and went overboard trying to appease the Triple A publishers/developers. In a mad attempt to maintain the current status quo of ridiculous profit margins and unreasonable sales projections, the Xbox One was conceived, and now they have to try to squeeze every last, unpopular drop of value from that sour grape any way they can.

This upcoming console cycle reminds me a bit of Yu gi oh cards and magic cards. When I was a kid, the nerdy kids at my school could be divided into two groups: The Magic players and the Yu Gi oh players. Magic was sufficiently popular enough that the magic card kids were left alone, but everyone always picked on or beat up the yu gi oh kids. Most of those Yu Gi oh kids were decent or great guys and girls, but everyone took the low road with them simply because they backed and supported an unpopular product. (For the record, I preferred magic, but my family was too poor to afford for me to build a deck. 5 bucks for a booster pack? What, did Jesus wipe his ass with those cards or something?)

 

[Alfador_VII]

Is Don Mattrick paid by Sony to discredit the opposition?

IF not, Microsoft need to fire him, or at least get him out of any situation where he ever has to talk to the media or public.

I hope he's not on stage at the next E3

 

[TrulyBritish]

"The world has changed from offline devices to online devices"

Which is why the (region-locked) Xbox One will only be available to buy in 21 countries...

Presumably the world has also become only 21 countries then?
OT: God this man needs to shut up, he's like a one man PR disaster. Can he seriously stop insinuating the customer just doesn't know what he/she/it wants for a second?

 

[geizr]

There's no question that the world has changed but Mattrick's comments miss the mark rather widely. Being connected is great, but being able to function while disconnected is pretty awesome too - and that's something that phones, tablets and PCs will all happily do (minus things like making phone calls or surfing the net, obviously) when they're not connected. They don't just stop working if they go more than a day without phoning home - a mighty difference between the Xbox One and everything else out there.

Nail on the head! This is what Mattrick is NOT understanding. I suppose he'll eventually understand after the market finishes educating him.

 

[thesilentman]

.......................


If he really thinks that the whole world is online most of the time, he needs to visit some countries that are NOT in the Americas. Also, if he really thinks that we have impeccable internet, he really needs to get his head out of his ass and take a look at the United States itself.

How much deeper can these guys dig??

 

[Lovely Mixture]

The world has indeed changed. Corporate executives and PR managers now go for what they want "the customer to want" instead of "what the customer wants."

I wish I could go back to the days when I thought the hatred against Microsoft, EA, and the like was overblown. Nowadays it is only the reality.

Could anyone have predicted this? That the Internet would be used to hinder us rather than help?

I learned it years and years ago. Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, I was walking through the electronics section of my local K-mart and I spied a new sight. On a shelf reserved for the half-dozen computer games the store stocked was a new game called "Half-Life 2". I picked it up and almost squee'd, I remembered Half-Life and it was a great game with many expansion packs. So I begged and pleaded with my mum till she bought it for me. That was the end of the enjoyment I got out of the game for many weeks.

You see, Half-Life 2 was packaged with a vicious and insidious program called Steam, which required that you connect to the internet with your computer to play the game. I was taken aback - why on earth would I have to connect to the internet to play a solely off-line game? Just about the only thing I'd ever used the internet for prior to this was to search for GameFAQs, play Diablo 2 at my brother's house, and do internet research in school.

Days passed while I pieced together what I had to do to play my new game - a game that I was already paying for with doubled chores. I dragged my massive computer down three flights of stairs from my room, hooked up my dad's external modem, and signed on to the internet - since I just had to enter a code to get to play the game. Steam then slapped me across the face again while kicking my dog.

"No, you can't play your new game" it said. "You must download a patch!" Now, prior to this I had downloaded patches before - it was the way of things for gaming for quite some time. But instead of going to my dad's work with a Zip drive disc to download the patch and bring it home, it told me I had to do it RIGHT NOW, on MY MACHINE - before I could even play the thing. Ten hours, it told me, ten cock-punching hours I had to tie up the phone line.

Several days passed till I was able to convince my folks to let me tie it up that long, and I finally played it the next day, almost two weeks after I had bought it. I didn't have any fun. I was seething with rage at the thing. And I never bought another game for my computer - I stole my brother's PS2 ("borrowed" it, but he never asked for it back), and have been a Console gamer specifically because they were ALWAYS off-line for neigh-on a decade now.

That's my story, and its why I can do nothing but shake my head at Microsoft now.

And here I thought Half-Life 2 sucked just as it was, but I think your experience is borderline blackhole kinds of suckage. And in today's market, where the "hype" version of the game is many times the opposite of the "real" version, I can really see no excuse as to why people would use this broken, abandoned mindset. And yet, here came Microsoft to pick up where Steam was practically beaten to death to let go of it.

There's no denying that Steam was AWFUL for the first few years before they worked out the bugs and the broken patches. It's still not perfect, but it has come a long way.

I support Steam now because I believe it is one of the best compromises to the DRM problem along with single-time online activation (which can't solve piracy, but doesn't hinder the user as much as much as SecuROM). But I hope they will do more about banning issues and account stealing which leave people with no games.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Its true, consoles are about 10 years behind PCs - and im not a pc gamer. But there is a correct way and a wrong way to do things. MS cant use DD rules with physical disk purchases. MS could have banned second hand gaming if they had made the game £25 or less to download digitally. Can not expect us to pay full price for a digital game. We are not idiots.