XBox One – A PR catastrophe in the making!
I gotta vent… I wanted to write an article but I’m WAY too tired to do that. I have a massive WTF screaming through my head since the Microsoft reveal earlier.. am I the only one? Ah balls to it, I’ll try and organise my thoughts into a post!
Straight off the bat the console looks ugly.. I mean the Xbox was no looker and the PS3 was a shiny George Foreman grill but the XBox One… it’s a damn satellite receiver from the 1990s for fucks sake! It’s square, has slatted venting and just looks like an awful prototype casing that should have been shelved… In short – it looks like a case you’ buy to make your home build media PC in…. and ironically that seems to be what Microsoft have done!
Scant time was spent on what the gaming prowess of the system is going to be. Sure this is the initial reveal. And I am keeping in mind that Microsoft had just an hour to cram in what they wanted to share with the world about their new baby, the Xbox One. Although whose choice was that? Opting for the maximum “main stream” exposure they could muster seems to be the way the wanted to play it. Day time TV viewers are held in higher regard than actual relevant content it seems.
A stream of information was presented during the event – 8GB of DDR 3 RAM, 500GB Hard disk (non-removable), HDMI In and Out, newly designed 360 controller with programmable feedback triggers, box like a cheap set-top PC etc. They then launched into around 25 minutes of how you can watch live TV on your Xbox One. How you can Skype someone AND watch some TV at the same time! Well consider my mind blown!
Sarcasm aside though it was neat to see the Xbox One switching between the new desktop user interface (UI) seamlessly – a I’ll hazard a guess that Microsoft are using a Windows Virtual Machine and an Xbox Virtual machine that is then managed by the third intermediary OS they mentioned. Switching between apps and games was almost instant. The general UI looked like a slightly tweaked version of the current Xbox 360 dashboard – only this one actually managed to swap between blades and locate your stuff in good time, unlike the current 360 dash. Then they trumped it all by spending a large number of minutes showing just how well you can incorporate your Fantasy Football game in to the system. All this whilst you actually watch the game on another part of the screen AND talk to your buddy over Skype at the same time.
Seriously what the hell Microsoft? Did you NOT watch the Sony PS3 reveal? Did you NOT see them bang on about being able to run multiple apps, switch between them whilst video calling and leaving your game ticking over in the background? Did you not sit back and giggle with heady delight when Sony took the gaming press and public by the haunches, bent it over and went “You take what we give you!”?
This feels like a large collection of middle aged, middle American business men sat around and used the word “leverage” and “social hooks” a lot in focus meetings. They looked at who they think their core audience needs to be – Joe Schmo mythical American who likes to watch Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, whilst talking to his buddies, drinking beer and organising his fantasy sports league! He then takes a break from this to probably pick up the Cheetos from his y-fronts and then shoots people in the face on Call of Duty – which he now has a pet dog in!
It feels like I just stepped back in time to be honest. Microsoft are pushing the unified entertainment system theory again – something I’ve seen tried countless times before. From the Commodore Amiga CDTV to the PS3 it’s been tried many times – maybe Microsoft can achieve this… but maybe they’ll lose a lot of the customers that drive their business in the long run.
So what about some of the burning questions? What about it being always on? What about DRM? What about used games? What about playing old disk games or accessing the hundreds of pounds/dollars/euros worth of content you’ve shelled out for on XBox Live? Once again Microsoft offered no clear and decisive resolutions to these problems – in fact once again Microsoft proceed to bend us over and tell us we should be grateful!
So, the good news. Yes you can buy and sell the products you’ve purchased (well thanks for that.. as they’re mine!). No clear answer as yet to HOW this will work only that “We are designing Xbox One to enable customers to trade in and resell games. We’ll have more details to share later.”. This throws up a question about families sharing a copy of a game – so for instance you buy Need for Speed: Most Wanted and the kids want to play it on the Xbox One in their room can they play it still? The consensus appears to be yes at this time. DRM seems to be unknown completely at this time. Rumours that the game will tie to you user account have been backed with a few “kind of” intimations from Microsoft but again they’re keeping that all close to the chest at the moment.
What about always on? Ah, now… this is where things get a little muddy at best. In principle NO you are not required to have the Xbox One connected to the internet at all times. That said it will need to contact XBox Live once a day (according to this Kotaku article) to verify its license files…. Once… A … Day… Microsoft do also mention an offline mode, but again no details are given on this. The general thing appears to be “No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet.” so yeah.. that clears that up….. The non-replaceable 500GB drive, in a system designed to be a PVR, that requires every game to be installed (and every game is on a Blu-Ray so sizes will balloon!) and be the centre of your media empire seems ludicrous. Sure you can add more storage via USB 3 but no word on how much or if this means memory pens or if it’ll take external drives over USB.
Yet the biggest kick in the balls is yet to come – no backwards compatibility. “Oh boo hoo it’ next gen!” I hear you call. It might be next generation BUT I’ve invested a lot of time and money on Xbox Live and, unless I want to keep another legacy console about, that’s about to be chucked to the wind. Now I know PS4 has not backwards capabilities either but Sony are coming from an entirely custom built processor and architecture to the standard PC build. They’ve also made small references to access older content via GaiKai. Microsoft are moving from a legacy of PC builds to what appears to be another PC build console. It angers and perplexes me that these purchases are lost now unless I keep another box around. What impact will this have going forward on people being willing to part with $10 – $20 per digital arcade release, when they know they’ll have to kiss them goodbye at some stage. At least with a PC and Steam/Origin you know that game will be their for as long as the service providers are!
Anyway, I’ve rambled and ranted enough. I just feel, and many others seem to as well, that Microsoft dropped a massive “Thanks, I’ll call you in the morning” on those that have stuck with them over theses past years. They have their sites on a different market now and games are just a small, insignificant, part of that – a means to justify their current ends. The message seems to have gotten diluted, obfuscated and lost. PR seem to be having a nightmare trying to lock down exactly what the system can and can’t do. How it will impact gamers who have invested time and effort in the Xbox eco-system is unclear. It feels very much like they produced a flashy show to appeal to those demographics that’ll be watching a national broadcast on TV – then as an after thought they could then mop up questions from the games press and Xbox subscribers via scraps of information put out through outlets… outlets like this one in fact. What’s happened though is that many different versions of the features included, or indeed missing, from the Xbox One have been strewn around the internet. Microsoft’s reveal and the bullet points they want everyone to be buzzing about are getting lost under the tide of bemused journalists and consumers trying to piece together a cohesive picture. It’s such a contrast to the Sony event where the messages were slick and clear with boundaries clearly defined about what we know and what we will know in the coming months.
All the sports, video calling, IE browsing and futuristic talking to your TV stuff just seems like it’s not meant for me as a core gamer – as a family gamer. Or indeed as someone whose doesn’t just want to watch sports and tweak my fantasy sport league on my 50″ TV whilst I chug a brewskie with my bros. A real sense of exclusion is what I’m trying to grasp at here. They went from being the under dogs to almost embodying what they derided all those years ago with the Sony release of the PS3. Xbox was, and rightly so, The people’s champion. Flying in the face of the arrogant and dictatorial Sony with their media enhanced console experience. Sony realised this and went hat in hand to developers and core consumers this time out and asked them how they could best build the platform they needed to drive gaming. PS4 has similar features to the Xbox One tacked on, but they were’t presented as main features. Nothing in the Microsoft conference screamed “next-gen”. We’ve seen it all before, just a little slower and less integrated on the XBox 360 or PS3. Sure you can talk to you console, it’ll recognise you, and then load things you tell it too but that technology is here, now. Nothing left you with that “WOW!” factor you should be getting from a next generation console reveal.
Microsoft come out swinging for the fence and we all wanted them to do something spectacular.. in reality they’ve taken their bat and ball and gone to play in a different park leaving a confusing field of players wondering what’s next.
I agree – it really seems more like the actual consumers are an afterthought with this console. Bought your games already? Too bad – give us more money.
It will be good for parents, just shouting “Xbox, turn off” from the kitchen will disable the console, no more having to pull the plug with physical force.
I understand you’re tired. This was hard to read because of all the grammatical errors in it…
I read it and heard his heart. How shallow you must be!
Thanks TrollyPolly – it was a little unprofessional putting that article up BUT, as I mention above I just had this raw need to purge myself after the event – I just needed to let out the way I felt I, well all core gamers, had just been treated.
Really appreciate your thoughts and understanding and you saw the article for its worth – keep on
Yeah fair comment really. It was reasonably unprofessional to put up an article in the state it was. I shall tidy it up and make it a little more legible It was purely a gut reaction and as such I just wanted to capture it – raw.
Thanks for the honest feedback… keep it up
This launch fully justified my decision to splash out on a new GFX and sell off my 360 and games collection (which I’ve since rebuilt on Steam for a fraction of the price that even second hand 360 games go for, which will no doubt be even more expensive on the One once you are granted “permission” to play what you’ve legally bought).
When I watched the PlayStation 4 launch, I did feel as though I should start putting money aside for it. But the Xbox One is a heightened collection of all the reasons I gave up on the 360. It was a terrible play by Microsoft which is all the more frustrating as nearly every feature they’ve implemented is exactly the kind of thing their core
audience have been worried or complaining about online.
I can’t help but feel they’re trying to poll a market that simply isn’t there. The “family” market that already has a Nintendo Wii in the corner of the room gathering dust and didn’t bother with the Wii U. People who don’t need their TV viewing revolutionised as there are already a number of perfectly decent set top boxes that give them the access to the content they need and at a fraction of the price. Who have a decent
sports package already, who don’t use Skype.
Whether the market for the Xbox One exists long term will be interesting to see, but
there appears to be little/no support for this console. It’s one of the few times where there appears to be little or no agitated debate across various comments sections or forums.
One interesting point to note is that I’ve also heard on Kotaku that the TV integration only works in the US. Which means over 30% of the One’s demonstration was irrelevent to the worldwide market outside of the US.
I can’t help but think you guys have missed the point some what and are living in the past. Reading this article was like listening to my dad talk about an iphone review and complain that it didn’t focus enough on how good it was for making calls.
We live in a world of multi function devices, that is the next gen. Microsoft aren’t trying to compete with sony anymore, they are fighting against apple tv, google tv and smartphones. These are the emerging markets that are knocking on consumers doors, admittedly apple/google tv may not be pushing into the UK just yet but they will and Microsoft are simply fighting back with the Xbox brand.
Sure, my gut says I want a pure hardcore games machine and all that media rubbish is a waste of time, but that turned out to be the reason a lot of people chose the PS3 over the xbox as it was a better all rounder despite the xbox being better for online gaming.
The X1 is still focused on games, the deals are still there for exclusive content and franchises and lets not forget that it will be a windows based OS so porting to and from PC will be slicker than to the PS4.
The Sony reveal was a shambles with no real facts, a lot of talks about their vision and dreams and content played on a PC. The Microsoft reveal could have focused more on games and yes is frustrated me that all the game play was pre rendered footage rather than game play, but i’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens at E3.
I’d call it a tie at the moment, we know a lot more about the 2 major consoles and for once they have come out with clearly different strategies, that has to be refreshing surely.
I do agree it’s ugly though
I rarely watch tv anymore so that conference was bad for me. With all the afer conference rumors, It left a horrible aftertaste that annoyed me as a console gamer. I know E3 will be all about the games, but whatever faith i had left for the xbox to impress me will be gone if its mostly kinect, dancing and exercise games.
no if there competing against anyone should be hardcore pc gamers ever saw the graphics on then compared to a game console remember days of Nintendo and then u got super Nintendo graphics and better controllers were the thing show me where the graphics will wow me and something like us bein in the game of a photo of us running with the sword and doin whatever we do or something that wows us its all about twitter or posting videos of u shooting some guy that probably a million other people shot but in the nuts whoopty do whenever they decide to make consoles more realistic then ill buy and they will only tell u they wont make gta 5 so they can sell on the current consoles they want people to waste there money just to make them money on a console they lost a lot on so far every new console since gta came out has had the others on it if the newer came out around the same time just wait til ps4 comes out then there be release dates for it everywhere