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Jesse Schell: Listening to customers was Microsoft's big mistake

B

Barack Lesnar

Banned
@____@ said:
... Notice O was talking about tiers and extras... You get free games by preordering those. That isnt the case with MS. Also, in terms of spouting false info and hoping noone checks it, do you really want to go back to your Skyrim claims if yesterday? Talking about a gurantee of multiple times more sold on the 360 and provoding a link that was dated 7 months before Skyrim was released? Yeah.
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Who cares if you get Rayman Origins or the previous Xcom free with it? What does that have to do with the price of Rayman Legends and Xcom The Bureau? Take a look at the prices for pre-orders for major future and past releases on Steam and you'll see I was 100% right about them either being MSRP or 10% off. You're wrong, feel free to open up Steam and double-check.

That Skyrim claim is almost certainly true. Ask any sales-ager what they think.
 
@

@____@

Banned
Heavy said:
Who cares if you get Rayman Origins or the previous Xcom free with it? What does that have to do with the price of Rayman Legends and Xcom The Bureau? Take a look at the prices for pre-orders for future major and past releases on Steam and you'll see I was 100% right about them either being MSRP or 10% off. You're wrong, feel free to open up Steam and double-check.

That Skyrim claim is almost certainly true. Ask any sales-ager what they think.
Click to expand...

If it's true then you obviously wouldn't have any problem providing said number. Also, what does getting a free game matter? Really? On Steam you're able to sell the free game for one. Also, it's a free game which is something MS doesn't provide for preorders.

Also, just as I said yesterday, I may be a junior but I've seen enough of your posts over the last year to know what I was getting into when I started discussing these things with you. You're truly a master of making claims without offering substantive proof and moving the goal posts. I figured I'd at least attempt discussing said topics but it's obviously useless because this is what you do so it was wrong of me to expect anything different.
 
D

Dragon

Banned
Heavy said:
That's not even close to being true. There has to be a promotion/coupon code out. They also don't carry Ubisoft games, who have a huge PC presence, in the U.S.


Very rarely. Almost every big new game is MSRP or "10%" off. You're twisting the truth.

And I just checked Xcom, it's 10% off, which is what I've been saying. So you're wrong, again.

E: You're wrong about Rayman Legends, too. Lmao. It's $39.99, which is its MSRP. I can't tell if you're just spouting BS hoping that someone doesn't go check if it's true or what.
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GMG is awesome, your post is not. In fact you come off like a smug asshole, stop and be nice.
 
B

Barack Lesnar

Banned
@____@ said:
If it's true then you obviously wouldn't have any problem providing said number. Also, what does getting a free game matter? Really? On Steam you're able to sell the free game for one. Also, it's a free game which is something MS doesn't provide for preorders.

Also, just as I said yesterday, I may be a junior but I've seen enough of your posts over the last year to know what I was getting into when I started discussing these things with you. You're truly a master of making claims without offering substantive proof and moving the goal posts. I figured I'd at least attempt discussing said topics but it's obviously useless because this is what you do so it was wrong of me to expect anything different.
Click to expand...

So since you were proven wrong about the prices, you moved the goalpost to Rayman Origins and the old X-com releases as free games.

Then since you had nothing else to retort with whatsoever, you used your second paragraph, which is lengthier than the previous one, to dish out personal attacks. Classic Internet argument.

Dragon said:
GMG is awesome, your post is not. In fact you come off like a smug asshole, stop and be nice.
Click to expand...
I made the GMG official thread, I'm aware of how awesome the site is. That doesn't change the fact that what I said is right.
 
G

GreggTheGrimReaper

Member
tumblr_lf71fl2miT1qgu4xjo1_400.jpg
 
B

BladeoftheImmortal

Member
Interfectum said:
Yeah but the trade-off there was you could re-sell physical XB1 games whereas Steamworks title you cannot. And I said earlier that the 24 hour check-in was the biggest difference they had and that killed them in the press (ie bu bu military can't play).
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You couldn't sell them. You could trade them in at an authorized reseller.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
PSGames said:
You understand that's because Steam's version was actually worse than MS's version? Can you resale a Steam disc bought game? Can you share your library with 10 other people?

There were benefits.
Click to expand...

The check-in policy was completely unrelated to the ability to resell (in you'll recall, the original stance was that licenses could be revoked only by authorised retailers) and, as a matter of fact, it would appear that game sharing is coming to Steam.
 
D

Demon Ice

Banned
I don't understand the people who think all of those features on the XB1 could not have been accomplished without the ridiculously restrictive DRM.

It wasn't even anything groundbreaking. It was a shittier, more restrictive version of Steam with 0 consumer benefit.
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
Jesse Schell said:
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
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I don't appreciate having this transparently irrational demand attributed to me by a guy who needs this to be true in order to justify his anti-consumer agenda.

A more accurate simplification would be that I want more of the same but better. You know, kind of like what Sony is doing.
 
C

charlequin

Banned
PSGames said:
Can you share your library with 10 other people?
Click to expand...

It is seriously ridiculous that we have to have a conversation about the Xbox One with the idea that this policy was ever real still clouding the air. We saw exactly what happened with a significantly less generous and more inconvenient version of this on PS3. It was not a real policy and would not have shipped in the form people are discussing.

ManteoMax said:
I'd be interested in seeing how business schools teach this as a case study. My perspective is that a company can probably lead the change (isn't this what Apple did to phones with the iPhone?) if it has a completed product that you can demonstrate in full immediately, and have rock solid responses to all questions at the time they're asked.
Click to expand...

It's not just a PR thing. One of the first rules of marketing is that real marketing starts at the point of product design. The way you sell a disruptive invention is by having a real, concrete benefit that it brings people and harping on that.

One of the examples people always bring up is that phones got away with a much more restrictive application licensing approach than other platforms (all digital, no resale, no sharing, mandatory account, etc.) What this analogy always ignores is that there were three concrete benefits which were used to drive this success:

  • Smartphones became central to many people's lives in a relatively new way, which meant that apps on them had a huge innate value compared to software on most other platforms.
  • Smartphone app pricing was extremely aggressive, which meant that app stickiness was now based on being able to use it all the time rather than on how much you paid for it
  • Smartphone platforms have infinite backwards compatibility and cross-loading support, so every app is guaranteed to be a one-time purchase that'll work on future phones, on multiple phones and tablets at once, etc.

(You can make a similar list for Steam, and about how it leveraged a brand-new pricing and availability model as a tradeoff for less flexibility in other areas.)

The Xbox One caused such revulsion because its selling points were minuscule and the disruptions to the standard console use-flow were huge.
 
Yoshi

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
So Jesse Schell hates consumer rights? Interesting. It was not a mistake to stop fucking over customers and the result is, that I will now buy an Xbone and would never, ever have bought an Xbone without that step.
 
A

Anura

Member
This "entitled gamer" BS needs to stop being spouted from companies and press.

The company needs our money, but we don't need their product. It's not our job to justify us purchasing the product, that's the company's job.

If I don't l like Dante's hair or the dumbed down fighting, I certainly don't have to buy it. Same with the Xbox 1 and its policies
 
M

Myshkin

Member
If the people at Microsoft could see the future while their customers couldn't, then why did MS not foresee the customer backlash, the low preorder sales, etc.?
 
H

hooijdonk17

Member
Epic Fail. One of the worst, truly worst evaluations of the situation I've seen.

Microsoft wanted to be Steam? Fuck that. Steam is a delivery platform, a company can't be a delivery platform. They could have wanted to be Valve, but we all know how well that would go, as in, you know, Satan aspiring to become a preacher or something..

Microsoft wanted to be Apple. And people who want Apple already have it. So Microsoft came out with the iBOX and the iLive, and people said WTF we alerady have this shit, where's our gaming console?

And now they act surprised and blame the consumers for resisting change?

Fuck off Microsoft. The change already happened, that boat is gone, if you'll sell us something sell us what we want, or go away.
 
C

Cynar

Member
UnluckyKate said:
People are still comparing Xbox One to steam ? That was stupid 4 month ago, it's still so stupid god how can you pretend be in this industry and not understand it
Click to expand...
Yup. It's sad really because some people actually believe it to be true. You can see examples of this in this very thread.
 
E

Eusis

Member
Opiate said:
Completely agree. I've already rephrased that post a couple times, but it can be summarized this way: yes, the concept of a gaming company being trapped by its audience is a real thing, and it happens frequently. But in the specific case of the Xbox One, I think it was just a bad product. Evidence: the Xbox One reveal seemed to please no one, not just its established base.
Click to expand...

Interfectum said:
Yup. The focus on cable TV (lol wat) and 'always online' killed them from day One. They thought they would win back hardcore gamers at E3 but no game could break the narrative that was forming around the system. Thinking back on Xbox One even now makes me cringe... it's amazing how badly the fucked up the reveal of this thing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think when you look at many of Microsoft's recent products and how they were received for the most part it becomes clear that Microsoft more often than not has just been making products no one wants. Frequently bad ones it seems, but sometimes they're just not offering what their actual consumer base wants, and the rest are either satisfied elsewhere, as we saw with Surface with only Surface Pro seemingly well liked (it's probably the one area where Windows 8 really makes sense, whereas everywhere else it's just sort of "Uhhh, what?"), and XB1 was doubly worse because it offered dubious, sounds-too-good-to-be-true boons in exchange for startlingly restrictions on ownership. Nevermind how the Kinect thing came just as the NSA outing happened and that for being such an expensive console it's not even set to be the strongest on the market.

I think cases like the Wii or even in a sense the PS1 are cases where change may have drawbacks but can be more beneficial in the end or at least more profitable, Nintendo showed there was huge demand for new, potentially more intuitive ways to control a game, and the PS1 forced the CD issue and while this brought in significant load times it also allowed much larger games and much cheaper ones as now we weren't blowing so much just to make the delivery mechanism. The XB1 didn't really look to have those advantages, maybe if it were a true Steam clone, but instead it took parts of it, then threw on restrictive crap that ignored why some of us opted to go with Steam versions of DRM-laden games rather than just getting those games outside of Steam.
 
M

Myshkin

Member
Burai said:
We should be thankful for the leak. We were able to call Microsoft out on their bullshit before it was too late.
Click to expand...

Actually, MS is the one who benefited here. Let's just hope they learn something; Schell certainly isn't teaching them anything.

MS should be on its knees kissing the feet of the people who didn't preorder, and thankful for the sort of widespread preorder system possible nowadays that saved them from a catastrophic launch. Absent that, they were quite willing to go merrily along assuming that the months of consumer backlash would eventually dissipate in the face of their media juggernaut and astroturfing.

Any gamer who isn't in the industry can easily see what happened. Trend trackers at MS told their eagle about digital catching on, but also that they couldn't sell a new console without retailer support. So the eagle commanded that both digital and disc be supported (and TV too). A thousand people who understand technology cried out about all the problems it would create. They were told to shut up - the eagle has given us our marching orders! This kind of thing happens when you have an eagle who doesn't understand technology.

The XBox works with publishers to sell their wares. But the X1pre180 was designed to lower the value of everyone's products, much like what would happen if a convenience store decided to pile up manure at the entrance. Let's hope that the people at MS obsessed with manure have less influence now, but I doubt it.

FStop7 said:
So now that there's a 5 page thread about this article how much longer will it be until the author or another journalist takes to Twitter to bitch about NeoGAF and "The Internet"?
Click to expand...

Maybe Gies will tweet something. I think Schell might be smart enough to keep his mouth shut and cut his losses at this point. But I'm no psychic, maybe he'll go full Fish.
 
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