Mark Botwright
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In what has to be the biggest about face in gaming history, Microsoft have caved in, mirrored Sony's stance and announced the Xbox One will have no mandatory daily check-in and disc trading/ownership will be exactly as it is now. Further to this, they're even in such a benevolent mood as to remove region locks too. Hands up, who saw that coming?
Ever since the One reveal, and the news of their altered vision of how we'd game in the future, all the talk had been big on hubris and sorely lacking in self reflection. It goes with the territory that a company whose fortune rests on how it can gauge the technological winds may sometimes steer off course, but so few gamers foresaw them discovering a new continent of happy consumers.
The problems were many, and I can have sympathy for them trying to pre-empt the next big thing. Microsoft have been woeful at trend setting, finding their way in recent years by following what sells in hardware terms with their own perceived incremental improvements. Zune and Surface will never be synonymous with the technology they house. By trying to please everyone, rather than heading for the all digital future they so patently see on the horizon, the blueprint for the One became confused. Without downloads as the sole - or even primary - means of delivering content any thoughts of significantly reduced prices receded, and all that was left for many was a muddle of ideas, trampling over what is currently working to implement something that has yet to be proven. Trust us.
We'll likely never know the full extent to which publishers played a role in this new intended direction, but in an E3 interview the indications were clear that someone may blink. Peter Moore of EA, a company widely caricatured as ranging from vaguely malevolent to outright demonic in gaming circles, took pains to make it clear that they were not behind this push to restrict your consumer rights, stating final publisher agreements had yet to be signed. When EA start to think this is bad PR, you're in trouble.
If indeed the publishers were playing a major part in the planned kneecapping of the second hand games market, a game of brinksmanship with the two console manufacturers was well under way. Each needs the other, but to what extent? Sony's continuance of the status quo presented a major turning point; with spiralling budgets for AAA games prevalent amid the biggest and most powerful publishers, how could the likes of EA and Activision recoup their losses if they only backed one console? If however they back both, the planned cut of each trade-in game on the One needs to be of such low value as to not skew the price difference significantly. If it does misalign them, they effectively undermine the whole Microsoft model. In short, if you believe this was a “who'll blink first” scenario, Sony held their nerve.
I maintain however, that the biggest stumbling block for Microsoft was not the draconian measures they were intending to introduce; those were harsh, but could conceivably come with benefits should they be slightly amended and implemented correctly. No, Microsoft fell down in the most basic of ways, they simply hadn't planned. They not only underestimated the extent to which consumers value the gaming model currently in situ, but they spectacularly failed to have anything concrete in place for after their reveal. It smacked of desperation, a company eager to capitalise on releasing hardware first into the market - gaining the spoils of an early user base that so benefited them in this current generation of consoles.
Sony was the first to show off game footage from their PS4 some months prior to the May One event, and a 2013 release was likely, but everyone always thought the Microsoft console would hit this calendar year too. However the avalanche of evasive interviews - containing vague projections of how the new system would work that even senior executives couldn't seemingly grasp - undermined everything. And it only got worse. Never before has a company so spectacularly failed to own its own story. They weren't leading the consumer - unveiling small titbits of information about key features, keeping consumers eager to know more in the run up to release - no, they were being led by the interviews themselves, having to find more and more ways to creatively say “that's not finalised” or “we're still looking into that”.
When pre-orders are there for the taking, and your main competitor offers an easy to understand alternative, it doesn't matter whether you have the doorway to gaming nirvana lined up; if you can't explain it then you've failed. The best product doesn't always win, the perceived best product usually does. Enticement with such offers like the family sharing plan or upgraded benefits for Live subscribers may have won some around, but the lack of clarification on the former to any degree of absolute detail was damning. There are some firms people are happy to put their trust in; Microsoft may have thought the mountain of good will they've built up with the Xbox and 360 made them one of those firms, they were wrong. People quickly pointed to the fact that this was not the motley crew of likeable faces such as J Allard or Robbie Bach anymore, and the games division that had managed to shrug off the negative connotations of its parent company's image in the eyes of gamers for so long, once again became distinctly Microsoft flavoured; unpalatable to the core gaming crowd, but worse to the tech heads noting their dissatisfaction with Windows 8 and the one-good-one-bad cycle of MS releases.
The inability to unveil concrete details was an absurdity, particularly in light of the fact that the actual box was shown. Naysayers and potential consumers chose to hit the company with the stick they'd been handed; if the physical form of a product - i.e. the games - matters so little, and we're moving towards paying for services and licenses, then you can't show one without entirely detailing the other. You've shown us the wrong thing. Every interview became about the hidden subtext of answers; no longer questioning for something to be said but to read between the lines for loopholes and vague language. And with each fudged executive utterance, whatever restrained consumer confidence - that perhaps this bright future had indeed been planned meticulously - rapidly evaporated.
You can't blame Microsoft for trying something new, the lure of a portal to content in your living must have been appetising, and for once getting in the pre-emptive strike to Apple or Google capitalising wholly on that market and building a monopoly must have seemed too great to miss. Timing however plays a major part, and in the looming shadow of a world economy wrecked by men in suits playing fast and loose with their own unacknowledged civic responsibility, the correct corporate image has never been so important. Moving to a licence based future is probably inevitable, but consumers need to be drawn there of their own free will, enticed by the myriad benefits, not shooed there with derisive remarks and the threat of its inevitability. Few companies could ever get away with curtailing consumer rights definitely, and attempting to offset this by dangling the imaginary carrot of a mere potential benefit that is as yet unfinalised.
The irony is that for once the ire was slightly dissipating, thanks to the proposed family sharing plan, but even with that golden opportunity, the obfuscation and general lack of a coherent and meticulously detailed message proved fatally undermining. Once people assume it's too good to be true, they stop hearing your words and you've lost them.
Had Microsoft - on the day of the reveal - locked down the plans for trade-in, named the participating retailers, outlined the maximum cost for retail games, clarified who'd be paying a fee and when to reactivate a licence, detailed the price structure this may all have been different. People would still have (rightly) moaned, the downfall of an empire would have been predicted, but at least the message would be clear and a more informed choice could therefore be made. No one fancied having to double check a powerpoint presentation in order to work out how you can play your own games or where, but at least it would have been a choice based wholly on what the final product would have been. As it is, we'll never know.
The u turn may win back the wavering Microsoft faithful - generally those more allied with the pad design than the company's ethos - but there's still the small matter of a bundled peripheral that no one seems to want and a fairly big price difference. And without the perceived ideal of being constantly online, the much vaunted power of the cloud looks more and more like marketing speak that's set to fall by the wayside.
But credit where credit's due, eating humble pie in such a public and humiliating manner is never easy, and Microsoft have certainly chowed down.
Ever since the One reveal, and the news of their altered vision of how we'd game in the future, all the talk had been big on hubris and sorely lacking in self reflection. It goes with the territory that a company whose fortune rests on how it can gauge the technological winds may sometimes steer off course, but so few gamers foresaw them discovering a new continent of happy consumers.
The problems were many, and I can have sympathy for them trying to pre-empt the next big thing. Microsoft have been woeful at trend setting, finding their way in recent years by following what sells in hardware terms with their own perceived incremental improvements. Zune and Surface will never be synonymous with the technology they house. By trying to please everyone, rather than heading for the all digital future they so patently see on the horizon, the blueprint for the One became confused. Without downloads as the sole - or even primary - means of delivering content any thoughts of significantly reduced prices receded, and all that was left for many was a muddle of ideas, trampling over what is currently working to implement something that has yet to be proven. Trust us.
We'll likely never know the full extent to which publishers played a role in this new intended direction, but in an E3 interview the indications were clear that someone may blink. Peter Moore of EA, a company widely caricatured as ranging from vaguely malevolent to outright demonic in gaming circles, took pains to make it clear that they were not behind this push to restrict your consumer rights, stating final publisher agreements had yet to be signed. When EA start to think this is bad PR, you're in trouble.
If indeed the publishers were playing a major part in the planned kneecapping of the second hand games market, a game of brinksmanship with the two console manufacturers was well under way. Each needs the other, but to what extent? Sony's continuance of the status quo presented a major turning point; with spiralling budgets for AAA games prevalent amid the biggest and most powerful publishers, how could the likes of EA and Activision recoup their losses if they only backed one console? If however they back both, the planned cut of each trade-in game on the One needs to be of such low value as to not skew the price difference significantly. If it does misalign them, they effectively undermine the whole Microsoft model. In short, if you believe this was a “who'll blink first” scenario, Sony held their nerve.
I maintain however, that the biggest stumbling block for Microsoft was not the draconian measures they were intending to introduce; those were harsh, but could conceivably come with benefits should they be slightly amended and implemented correctly. No, Microsoft fell down in the most basic of ways, they simply hadn't planned. They not only underestimated the extent to which consumers value the gaming model currently in situ, but they spectacularly failed to have anything concrete in place for after their reveal. It smacked of desperation, a company eager to capitalise on releasing hardware first into the market - gaining the spoils of an early user base that so benefited them in this current generation of consoles.
Sony was the first to show off game footage from their PS4 some months prior to the May One event, and a 2013 release was likely, but everyone always thought the Microsoft console would hit this calendar year too. However the avalanche of evasive interviews - containing vague projections of how the new system would work that even senior executives couldn't seemingly grasp - undermined everything. And it only got worse. Never before has a company so spectacularly failed to own its own story. They weren't leading the consumer - unveiling small titbits of information about key features, keeping consumers eager to know more in the run up to release - no, they were being led by the interviews themselves, having to find more and more ways to creatively say “that's not finalised” or “we're still looking into that”.
When pre-orders are there for the taking, and your main competitor offers an easy to understand alternative, it doesn't matter whether you have the doorway to gaming nirvana lined up; if you can't explain it then you've failed. The best product doesn't always win, the perceived best product usually does. Enticement with such offers like the family sharing plan or upgraded benefits for Live subscribers may have won some around, but the lack of clarification on the former to any degree of absolute detail was damning. There are some firms people are happy to put their trust in; Microsoft may have thought the mountain of good will they've built up with the Xbox and 360 made them one of those firms, they were wrong. People quickly pointed to the fact that this was not the motley crew of likeable faces such as J Allard or Robbie Bach anymore, and the games division that had managed to shrug off the negative connotations of its parent company's image in the eyes of gamers for so long, once again became distinctly Microsoft flavoured; unpalatable to the core gaming crowd, but worse to the tech heads noting their dissatisfaction with Windows 8 and the one-good-one-bad cycle of MS releases.
The inability to unveil concrete details was an absurdity, particularly in light of the fact that the actual box was shown. Naysayers and potential consumers chose to hit the company with the stick they'd been handed; if the physical form of a product - i.e. the games - matters so little, and we're moving towards paying for services and licenses, then you can't show one without entirely detailing the other. You've shown us the wrong thing. Every interview became about the hidden subtext of answers; no longer questioning for something to be said but to read between the lines for loopholes and vague language. And with each fudged executive utterance, whatever restrained consumer confidence - that perhaps this bright future had indeed been planned meticulously - rapidly evaporated.
You can't blame Microsoft for trying something new, the lure of a portal to content in your living must have been appetising, and for once getting in the pre-emptive strike to Apple or Google capitalising wholly on that market and building a monopoly must have seemed too great to miss. Timing however plays a major part, and in the looming shadow of a world economy wrecked by men in suits playing fast and loose with their own unacknowledged civic responsibility, the correct corporate image has never been so important. Moving to a licence based future is probably inevitable, but consumers need to be drawn there of their own free will, enticed by the myriad benefits, not shooed there with derisive remarks and the threat of its inevitability. Few companies could ever get away with curtailing consumer rights definitely, and attempting to offset this by dangling the imaginary carrot of a mere potential benefit that is as yet unfinalised.
The irony is that for once the ire was slightly dissipating, thanks to the proposed family sharing plan, but even with that golden opportunity, the obfuscation and general lack of a coherent and meticulously detailed message proved fatally undermining. Once people assume it's too good to be true, they stop hearing your words and you've lost them.
Had Microsoft - on the day of the reveal - locked down the plans for trade-in, named the participating retailers, outlined the maximum cost for retail games, clarified who'd be paying a fee and when to reactivate a licence, detailed the price structure this may all have been different. People would still have (rightly) moaned, the downfall of an empire would have been predicted, but at least the message would be clear and a more informed choice could therefore be made. No one fancied having to double check a powerpoint presentation in order to work out how you can play your own games or where, but at least it would have been a choice based wholly on what the final product would have been. As it is, we'll never know.
The u turn may win back the wavering Microsoft faithful - generally those more allied with the pad design than the company's ethos - but there's still the small matter of a bundled peripheral that no one seems to want and a fairly big price difference. And without the perceived ideal of being constantly online, the much vaunted power of the cloud looks more and more like marketing speak that's set to fall by the wayside.
But credit where credit's due, eating humble pie in such a public and humiliating manner is never easy, and Microsoft have certainly chowed down.
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