Penned by Yusuf Mehdi so take the article as you will.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-xbox-fans-inspired-fan-centric-culture-microsoft-yusuf-mehdi
With Xbox now having their conference on Sunday and the rumors of Xbox Fan Fest being potentially a lot larger this year it'll be interesting to see what kind of conference Microsoft puts on this year.
More choice quotes:
About the initial reveal.
About fan reaction.
We're heading into one of my favorite times of the year. Over the next couple of months, we'll finalize our plans for our E3 2017 briefing. As rehearsals begin and we see all the major announcements come to life, there's an air of excitement and anticipation that fills the room that's built around one common feeling: ‘We can't wait to see how our fans are going to react'. That's why I love attending E3 every year. It's one of the opportunities I get to really interact with our fans, and experience the amazing energy and passion they bring to everything to do with Xbox and gaming. Xbox fans really are the standard by which we measure fan-centricity at Microsoft.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-xbox-fans-inspired-fan-centric-culture-microsoft-yusuf-mehdi
With Xbox now having their conference on Sunday and the rumors of Xbox Fan Fest being potentially a lot larger this year it'll be interesting to see what kind of conference Microsoft puts on this year.
More choice quotes:
My learning is that you cannot create fans, you have to earn them. As our team has embarked on the journey to build a fan-centric culture at Microsoft, I have learned so much about how to focus our efforts.
About the initial reveal.
With our initial announcement of Xbox One and our desire to deliver breakthroughs in gaming and entertainment, the team made a few key decisions regarding connectivity requirements and how games would be purchased that didn't land well with fans. While the intent was good – we imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing and new ways to try and buy games, we didn't deliver what our fans wanted. We heard their feedback, and while it required great technical work, we changed Xbox One to work the same way as Xbox 360 for how our customers could play, share, lend, and resell games. This experience was such a powerful reminder that we must always do the right thing for our customers, and since we've made that commitment to our Xbox fans, we've never looked back.
About fan reaction.
In our own experience with Xbox, it was the E3 2015 announcement of Xbox Backwards Compatibility and Xbox Play Anywhere features that elicited some of the biggest cheers from our fans. You hope to get such cheers from a new release of a game like Halo, but to get this kind of reaction for Xbox Backwards Compatibility reminded me yet again how delivering on the things that your fans really value trumps all. In this case it wasn't a great new game that we wanted to sell, rather it was recognizing the value and investment our fans had made in their game library on the Xbox 360 and enabling them to bring it forward that was the delight.