Mr. Giggles
Member
Man, its posts like these that really make me wish MS had stuck to their guns.
If only to see them run themselves out of the industry
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What if Microsoft had stuck with their original Xbox one plan.
- Thread starter Thewonandonly
- Start date
Man, its posts like these that really make me wish MS had stuck to their guns.
If only to see them run themselves out of the industry
An all-digital console isn't going to do well, relatively speaking, for a ton of reasons. A lot of people wrongfully assume "no one buys physical games anymore, me and all my friends buy everything digitally" but fail to realize that there are still a LOT of people buying games at the retail level in circles which don't resemble theirs. Young children receiving presents from relatives, for example, and by extension Gamestop maintains a steady clientele who burns through games and then trades in 3 or so to get 1 newer game, as they have no way to secure the kind of money a new game costs otherwise. You will also still have people (mostly but not exclusively young children) who will borrow/lend/trade games with friends, and/or want an easier way to bring games to friends' houses (which is kind of a dying trend as games have patch sizes that make this unworkable for visits shorter than a few hours). And don't forget game rental, like via Gamefly. Hell, we still have a Blockbuster clone chain where I live with a healthy library of rentable video games here in Quebec; unrestricted game rental is NOT something any company is on-board with (even EA has added restrictions to its EA Access trials), in fact no media company is happy with its content being available unrestricted at home and has to be forced into allowing it to happen (e.g. vinyl records had legal challenges for release...from sheet music companies, and VHS had HUGE legal complications).
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
I mean, they were times when they were close to doing that even with the policy change. Spencer is the only thing keeping that from happening and even then it's still worrying.
Oh yeah, one thing I will point out is that Destiny is quite cleverly, for all intents and purposes, a digital-only game now, without "technically" being a digital-only game. The base version of the game is short on quite a bit of content brought in by the expansions, and not only are those digital-only, you can't "just" get the DLC for the most part; if you are missing either the first or second DLC pack (or both), the only real option available to you is to buy the entire game again in some fashion. Buying it physically (the "Legendary Edition") gives you the vanilla version of the game on disc, and a single online voucher code which, when redeemed, gives you all three expansions. You still need the disc to play the game, although you'll note that its trade-in value is effectively worthless (like 2 or 3 bucks at best). If you're missing either DLC pack 1 or 2, the only option that will be available for online purchase is to buy the "complete" Legendary Edition pack as well. Short of account sharing with a friend, you can't borrow or rent the full "Legendary Edition" of Destiny.
Dash_Riprock
Member
I can't believe its 2016 and we still blame the consumers whenever a company fucks up.
Gamezone
Gold Member
I think it`s way harder to shut down something like Steam, rather than something very few people still use, like older consoles.
PeregrinSe7en
Member
spencer was a part of that initial plan. he's not quite the good guy you think he is
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
No, he wasn't but he is now. Whether he likes it or not.
Phil Spencer said:
Not seeing him saying anywhere where he wasn't part of it or hated it. Plus, this quote is essentially what Mattrick said. 'If you're disconnected, get a 360, kthxbye'
shadowsdarknes
Member
Microsoft could have still implemented family play and a digital resell market.
But they won't because they know that having control of digital licenses and prices is better for their bottom line.
The original plan was largely just anti consumer crap with some fairy dust sprinkled on top.
But they won't because they know that having control of digital licenses and prices is better for their bottom line.
The original plan was largely just anti consumer crap with some fairy dust sprinkled on top.
You don't have a choice in that position, people need to understand that. Higher management like him have to embrace any direction which comes down from anyone above him and then motivate their team to embrace it.
It's obvious he disagreed with it due to the choices been made when he's been the primary decision maker. I have to embrace decisions every day which I disagree with, but I have to motivate my team to do it.
Voost Kain
Banned
Microsoft didn't fail E3, sony had meh performance in E3, and basically used the attack on MS to try and circle around that. Which succeeded.
Voost Kain
Banned
DO you have proof they lost the COD and it wasn't that the contract expired, a rumor that was going on before the XO came out? Considering XO sales of COD as well, which were not bad, please tell me with those figures how that would make any dev jump ship?
Halo 5 is around 2 million right now PLUS and we have no idea what the goal was so saying underperformed over and over again doesn't mean it underperformed.
Voost Kain
Banned
WTF is this? Guess you want all those guys to have no job?
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
What a trooper.
We will never know for sure but Microsoft only had one direction and obvious decisions to make with or without Phil Spencer. I'll give him Xbox 360 BC so far, thanks Phil. He still has indie policies, shipping an under baked Halo MCC for holiday sales, please be exited we got Tomb Raider when you already had it as examples against him. Early days but lets see what he shows at E3.
Halo 5 greatly underperformed, that is a fact. Halo fans were burned with Halo 4's CODied gameplay, MCC being broken as hell and lack of features at launch with Halo 5 and the announcement of no splitscreen did not help. Microsofts Xbox One announcement and original vision also had an efefct on Halo's sales as many Halo fans switched to the PS4 as they disliked what Microsoft tried to do.
They keep kneecapping themselves for new games. Halo 5 marketing was ridiculous. Hunt the Truth, wow this is pretty good, plays game, uh huh. You just lose trust again with stuff like that.
Microsoft has been closing down studios left and right with no warning. If anyone is working for Microsoft and not on the Office team they really really need to make sure their CV is up-to-date, it would be irresponsible to not plan for alternate work at this point.
It was hilarious watching clueless American games journalists insist Sony would be doing it, too, in complete ignorance of how drastically that would affect their home market.
Voost Kain
Banned
Halo 5 didn't sell because it's an exclusive, exclusives have been doing worse this gen since it started each year. Halo 5 is at 2 million where it may have been around 5 million in 2012 with this same time frame. Look at Halo Reach, Halo 4, Halo MCC. Yes, issues with the latter may have had a impact on Halo 5 sales but not likely as much. I doubt MS were expecting Halo 5 to be hitting 2 million by the end of the year witht he current trends and the other games releasing within its window by the time september came around.
Hyperbole
Voost Kain
Banned
Huh?
IN japan it would have made more sense with their better internet speeds, and usually vendors having digital games at cheap prices.
The contract expired. MS didn't get the new one. After years of partnership. That should tell you something.
Main Halo games on the 360 sold 3M+ within a couple of weeks.
For COD, I don't understand what you're arguing. The deal between AB and MS did expire, but it could have been renewed. It didn't have to go to Sony at that point.
The fact the Halo 5 underperformed means it underperformed. I can't show you some internal sales expectations, that doesn't mean they didn't exist.
Maintenance
Member
As long as there are corporations/people with power there will be bootlickers.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
Initially I thought it would have worked. But nah, it would have been a disaster. I still would have bought it though. I am all digital anyway.
Its shame that they couldn't think of a middle ground, and scratched everything they had. Because there were so great feature like family sharing.
Its shame that they couldn't think of a middle ground, and scratched everything they had. Because there were so great feature like family sharing.
The Artisan
Member
i don't know about that. that's a little harsh.
KinofChaos
Banned
LOL
Why do you think that is?
I honestly don't think it would have turned out any worse than it has today.
Unfortunately we'll never know how things would have been.
I'd like to know how many (or what percentage) who own an Xbox One or PS4 nowadays don't connect to the internet at least once a day for example....
kingwingin
Member
i dont think the 24 hour check in would bother a lot of people but personally, i want to be able to pull my Xbox out of the closet in 20 years and still have access to my games
I don't think it would either, but you wouldn't have thought that going by what people were saying on the internet. It was ironic really, people on the internet (likely obsessed with social media and connected daily) were complaining about being connected daily.
I appreciate what you're saying about being able to play your Xbox in 20 years, but for me personally most games are reliant on patches to get the most of them. What if hypothetically you want to play a game that you've since deleted from your hardrive, and so you'd have had to re-download your patches etc to get a playable experience, that won't change with the way things are now, or how they could have been.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't feel any of the recent consoles will be as useful in 20 years, as say pulling out an N64 out of your loft today.
They are too reliant on being online, and I don't feel having digital games would have made that worse. Games are pretty much installed to the hard drive regardless anyway, and all patches, dlc etc is on the harddrive.
The only real negative is the implications of selling a game on, which for me isn't a factor as I'm all digital only, but I can see that many gamers rely on buying and trading used games.
stan423321
Member
The tricky part is that you don't need to believe Valve (or MS regarding 360, or released XB1). You can just go offline and check if games work, and in most cases they will. And if you don't touch a thing they will keep working. Not so with original XB1.
NoMoChokeSJ
Banned
Microsofts poor communication of what their vision was really hurt them initially. Their messaging was super inconsistent which led to a lot of misinformation and IMO, fan boy hysteria. For example... the TV, TV, TV rhetoric that many pushed after the first reveal. The fanboy misinformation of it not being a game console first and formost, to this day has not been universally criticized. I would've rather seen MS stick to their guns and fail, then to see them buckle to gamers who really didn't even have an interest in the console in the first place.
The even larger elephant in the room is that regardless of MS's vision for the XB1 ecosystem their console was still significantly weaker.
The even larger elephant in the room is that regardless of MS's vision for the XB1 ecosystem their console was still significantly weaker.