Why Change and Competition are good for consumers

[Riku'sTwilight]

In the History of Gaming, innovation has always come first and foremost above what consumers want. When Sony changed the scenery with the PS1, consumers didn't want a CD-playing console, nor did they ask for it.

When the PS2 came around, consumers didn't want or ask for a DVD-playing console. When the Wii came about consumers didn't want or ask for a motion-controlled console, same goes for the 3DS, people didn't want or ask for a 3D-Handheld.

I'm sure you are seeing the pattern here. The long and the short of it is that we, as consumers don't know what we want. That's why companies advertise their products to us, and tell us what to buy, to pick their product over others because it's better in every single way.

Apple is so successful at marketing their products because they tell us that they are better than everything else, and people lap it up.

So when Sony sat back with the PS4 and said "We're not pushing the boat out, you can have more of the same and you'll love us for it" and people did exactly that, Sony were loved.

Microsoft told people to expect better, to push the capabilities of what the internet has to offer and they were critically panned.

Here is my main problem with the critics panning it - a sizeable chunk of them were game journalists - people who get paid to review games, people who get paid to have these consoles in their house/place of work - people who would be buying these consoles anyway, because they have to.

DRM is an ugly word, a word which has been slaughtered lately thanks to Diablo 3 and SimCity, two admittedly horrific examples of bad DRM (On the PC). Does that mean DRM would be the exact same thing on the Xbox One? No of course it doesn't, how could we know? People were scared of the unknown and so shunned something which could have had great benefits.

I kept hearing a lot about how the One was anti-consumer, and I honestly don't see how. Could you still trade, buy and sell games? Yes. Could you still play offline games. Yes (and before people chime in with the once every 24 hours thing, if there was zero broadband around, you could connect to the internet using a mobile network).

I'm from the UK and whenever I turn on my PS3 or 360, they are always automatically connected to the internet, with no lag, no interference and no drop out.

We as consumers have dumbed down the next generation of consoles, wanting zero change and are happy to stick to disk-based games, needing the disk to play a game and physical swapping of disks with your friends.

While the swapping thing might be good for people with close-knit groups of friends who all live in the same town, not everyone has that luxury. My friends are scattered about all over the country, so I can't easily (note: at all) borrow a game from a friend.

People need to go to Specsavers, as their short-sightedness is really playing up.

 

[Benpasko]

Yeah, the people in the military, or people in rural areas without the internet speed to use the Xbone were just being shortsighted. They should all just move to the city or buy an Xbox 360.

Change and competition ARE important. But this wasn't change in the right direction, and it wasn't offering any competition to the PS4 if you look at polls. And just so you know, people who I know that have a 3DS don't use the 3D. People I know with Wiis avoid the motion controls at all costs. I have never played a Kinect game other than Rise of Nightmares, which was an experiment. These features you you people didn't know they wanted AREN'T features people want, aside from maybe the DVD player on the PS2, which is a good feature. I don't know anyone who got offended at a DVD player in the PS2, though.

 

[shrekfan246]

I'm from the UK and whenever I turn on my PS3 or 360, they are always automatically connected to the internet, with no lag, no interference and no drop out.

Good for you.

You're not the rest of the world.

I, for one, never have my consoles connected to the internet, unless I specifically want to download something. This is because I don't have wireless internet, and connecting my consoles to the internet means I can't have my PC connected to the internet at the same time. Since the only two reasons for me to connect my consoles are to use the online stores or for online multi-player and I don't care about online multi-player, I rarely have a compelling reason to connect my console to the internet.

That aside, I do technically have a reliable enough connection that, while an inconvenience, the Xbox One's previous 24-hour connectivity requirement would not generally have directly impacted my game playing. But that's not the point; It's the principle. I'm not going to support a company that believes it can dictate how I play my games. At least not so blatantly. I'm sure Sony and Nintendo want to dictate what I do as well, but at least they try to remain more subtle about it.

You might be ready for an always-online, fully-digital future. Not everybody else is. This is going to be the third time in the last... twelve hours or so that I've repeated that the day I'm unable to buy a physical disk for my games console is the day I stop playing console games. I expect it may just be a holdover of the collector bug I've gotten from my family, but I like to be able to physically lay my eyes on my games collection. I don't want them all just stored on some hard drive that could potentially fail and mean I lose hundreds of gigs worth of data and content.

Maybe instead of calling everyone else blind sheep, you could try to empathize with the fact that not everybody is in your position?

 

[Lilani]

Yes (and before people chime in with the once every 24 hours thing, if there was zero broadband around, you could connect to the internet using a mobile network).

Yes, of course. I'll get right on that...oh wait, until very recently when I got a new job to pay for better Internet access, I didn't have broadband. I had shitty wifi that came with the apartment I'm renting, that would take about five days to download a game that was 3 gigs (given it stayed connected for long enough periods of time). And I was only able to make that switch because I live in a sizable community that has broadband. There are plenty of towns about 50 miles out from where I live which only have dial-up. Dial-up.

Your Internet connectivity ≠ the rest of the world's. Microsoft also thought people without Internet were a disposable part of their consumer base, and what happened? They pissed off the military, because service members overseas don't have consistent (if any) Internet, either. And that pissed off the main stream media, which lead to an unprecedented amount of pressure from outside the gaming community against a games console.

Coca-Cola also thought it was making a smart change for its consumer base when it made New Coke. And guess what happened? People wouldn't drink it. The main thing people wanted from Coke--that classic Coke taste--was gone. You can change what the Coke bottle is made of, you can change the shape of the bottle, you can change the logo, hell you could even probably change the color scheme to an extent and people would still love the taste of Coke. But if you change the ONE THING people want from it, then you've got a problem. That is why they reverted back to the original Coke recipe, and now every container of Coke is called "Classic Coke."

The ONE THING that people want from the xbone was to be able to play games under any circumstances, just like they could with every other console before it. Microsoft took that away, and people wouldn't stand for it. Even the people who did have good Internet hated it because they knew if they had the nerve to do something like move, or take it to a friend's house, or be on a tour of duty overseas they wouldn't be able to play the games they own on the console they also own.

Nobody is trying to say all changes are bad. We're just saying that not all changes are good, and that's exactly what happened here. It was a bad change, that doesn't stand up on its merits, and simply being a change doesn't add anything to those merits.

 

[tilmoph]

Customers didn't want or ask fora monochrome red brick with limited 3d capabiltiy, but Nintendo gave us the Virtual Boy. Customers didn't want or ask for a cd based Genesis extension, yet Sega gave us Sega-CD. Customers didn't want Pepsi-flavored Coke, and yet Coca-cola gave us New Coke. The point is, sometimes new ideas work, sometimes they could work and are poorly implemented, and sometimes they're just crap. XBox1 Classic was category 2; neat features, awful, terrible, anti-consumer implementation.

The problem with OPs example are that changes in format from cartridge to CD, from CD to DVD, and from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD didn't have any negatives attached, while adding new feature. Playstaion let you use it as a cd-player, a feature my friends and I used frequently when I was a kid and we were hanging out. It did not change I played my games. I did not change my ownership of my games. It did not make my PS1 (side-note, why was it abbreviated PSX back in the day?) seize up and refuse me access to games I bought. PS2 (the last console I owned) upped the ante by acting as a movie player as well as a gaming console. My mom liked that since it saved her the cost of buying an extra device. Still none of the changes mentioned earlier.

So you see, change can be good, change with trade-offs can work out and even be good, change in which the bad outweighs the good, either by the nature of the change or in the way the change is brought about, is bad.

 

[Hazy992]

Where has this idea come from that innovation and uniqueness automatically means quality? Switching to CDs and DVDs as a format is clearly beneficial as it provided more storage space, and as such bigger games. How does DRM and 24 hour check ins benefit the consumer? Honestly, how? It doesn't, it only benefits the publisher. Oh you can share games with people? Oh that's right but it was AN OPT IN SYSTEM FOR THE PUBLISHER. Do you honestly think that publishers like EA and Activision would allow consumers to share their games with 10 other people? Really? If you do I actually kinda admire your optimism.

And why are people suddenly so quick to blame other gamers for MS taking the share feature out? Why don't you blame them, because from where I'm standing there is no reason the Xbox One couldn't still have this feature, but as an option. Surely they could have some sort of opt-in game registration system that still facilitates sharing of games?

You might have a decent internet connection, I might have a decent connection but there are plenty of people who don't. What about people in rural areas? What about people in the military, or in countries that Xbox Live isn't supported? Just TS? If you gave even the slightest shit about gaming as a medium you shouldn't be supporting such practices on principle.

I'm quite frankly astounded that for once gamers were unified and managed to make a real change in a company's anti-consumer policies, and we're now getting calls of 'this is why we can't have nice things!' Truly astounded. People will defend literally anything in this industry.

The long and the short of it is that we, as consumers don't know what we want.

I want a system that doesn't take away my right of first sale, doesn't treat me like a thief and doesn't believe that I don't own my own property. Is that really so much to ask? Is maybe being able to share games sometimes if the publishers allow it really worth giving that up?

 

[Soulrender95]

The Xbox one was not going to be the digital utopia your imagining, the one really cool feature of sharing with your friends across country? it still had several major limitations the big one being Publishers could opt out and you know what? I think most of them would have, and apparently it wasn't even the full game being shared it was a tarted-up demo mode.

Change is only good when it adds something to the experience of gaming, dvd drives being added meant more game space and thus bigger and better looking games, connecting every 24 hours added no end benefit to the consumer, it did not "enhance" the game it was an unnecessary hoop to jump through, Motion controls were and still are a novelty and at the end of the day the majority of people used the control pad accessory when the game let them.

The Kinect and the ability to shout commands at the console does not enhance the game and let's face it when the console can be turned off with a simple voice command how long do you think it will be in some online game before some clever fellow shouts out's Xbox off ? even if it's just there team that gets shut down they'll still do it because they can. I can live without that innovation thanks.