This man speaks truth. Imagine if Microsoft had never gotten into the console business what online console gaming would be like today. Even though they have shit the bed with The One, they have done a lot right in the past. No one stays top dog or the fan favorite forever.
There's no doubt that Xbox Live has had some impact on the direction of PSN. But we have no way of knowing how things would have evolved without it. There are all sorts of variables that we know and don't know of that influence business decisions. We have no idea what could have been, but we have a better chance at determining things through hindsight.
Its no doubt that MS's ascension provided Sony some lessons:
- The value and danger of 3rd party reliability
- The downside of extravagant hardware architecture
- The importance of community
- The realities of being a year behind
I think a lot of the services were an inevitability. A number of Sony's strategic weaknesses were exposed by having competition. I think it was less of MS being this big innovative beast, but more of them representing the power of the basics. They mirrored a lot of Sony's early tactics, but K.I.S.S.'d them. While these are all companies out to make a profit (nothing wrong with that), they always seem to keep that money-first/customer second vibe in the forefront.
When I look at MS, the big question to me is how much do they plan to invest in the industry...and I don't mean financially. They always seem to be focused on the masses, on what's trending, on what's proven with relation to games. They sheltered a lot of studios at the beginning of the current gen; studios that could have matured greatly by now. They've got a new untested batch, and I wonder how vested they are in them. They are reaching in areas outside of games, and I'm ok with that; but I prefer the market leader in the games industry to be game-centric. The industry together covers the continuum...Nintendo is like the link to our heritage, guardians of nostalgia, Sony takes a little bit of everything while ever-pushing for new experiences, and MS plays for the masses giving competition to Sony, bettering them in the process. That's how I see it anyway.
But with regards to the topic...a friend has this debate (well more of a discussion) with me often. He says that MS makes money off of Live and basically the Xbox, but not enough to outpace its investment. So in other words you can tout bringing $2.1 billion in revenue, but if you spent $3 billion, then its still a loss. His claim was that this is story of Xbox, and the reason why some feel it doesn't justify its existence. According to him, the 360 has been mostly a loss...and this is likely at its apex of popularity. It won't enjoy the benefits of a year long lead and thus was guaranteed erosion. Given that fact, we surmised that MS assumed they would lose some folks to competition. And if they weren't making enough at the apex, then they'd need to make more money off the folks that they did have...which is where we believed the DRM fiasco and TV wide net casual appeal gained acceptance. Once this proved unacceptable, they reverted back, but my guess is that there will be a strong push to migrate consumers to being online (games like TtianFall being online only, KI's scaleable delivery methods, Fable Legends, Forza's tracks and cars). Games will be more tailored to online. If this is indeed their plight, it seems to me that if the TV strategy doesn't take off; then its going to be difficult for them regain what they had before let along exceed it. They've got stiffer competition this time.
