Xbox Boss: Xbox One DRM Controversy "Hurt Me Personally"

[Nadia Castle]

Every single time someone makes a stupid decision they insist that 'they just didn't communicate their message'. No-one ever has the guts to admit when they're just plain wrong.

It's the equivalent of Sega insisting the CD 32X weren't absolute disasters, they just 'failed to explain the benefits of charging the customers for two pieces of s**t.' To be honest I'd rather they were idiots and move on.

 

[mysecondlife]

This is getting repetitive. Adam Orth's "Deal with it" should have been early enough warning sign to reverse the decision.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

I'm sure it did hurt you personally, and when I say personally I mean your pay was lowered when everyone refused to buy or preorder an xbox so you and your dipshit finance department decided to stop trying to force people to buy something and assume they'd just be okay with renting everything from microsoft.

 

[Denamic]

Aw, did your feelings get hurt?

Spoiler

Let's get real for a moment. 'The right thing' we're talking about here is not in the favour of the customer. You wanted to stop pirates, and you didn't hesitate to treat all your actual customers like trash and tell them the horrendous DRM is 'a feature.' Your feelings got hurt because your customers didn't like having their rights molested? Cry me a river.

 

[frizzlebyte]

"We build Xbox for the right reasons."

Translation: "Gamers don't appreciate the fact that we know what's best for them."

Microsoft needs to change their name to NannyCorp.

 

[Britishfan]

I think Microsoft genuinely thought they were making something that benefited the consumer, video games manufactures and the industry as a whole. I feel like the saying "Never attribute to conspiracy what can just as easily be caused by incompetence" comes into effect here.

Microsoft were genuinely shocked when we turned round and told them what we didn't like the Xbone before they changed it, because they thought we would like it. They also thought "Xbox One" was a good name. They probably still do.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

I think Microsoft genuinely thought they were making something that benefited the consumer, video games manufactures and the industry as a whole. I feel like the saying "Never attribute to conspiracy what can just as easily be caused by incompetence" comes into effect here.

Microsoft were genuinely shocked when we turned round and told them what we didn't like the Xbone before they changed it, because they thought we would like it. They also thought "Xbox One" was a good name. They probably still do.

Nobody is claiming conspiracy, just sleazy business practices. There was no conspiracy to sneak these things in behind our backs, they tried to cram them down our throats AND tell us we like them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDZvXUv0Lk

See if you can spot the DRM in this video!

 

[Yozozo]

I think Microsoft genuinely thought they were making something that benefited the consumer, video games manufactures and the industry as a whole. I feel like the saying "Never attribute to conspiracy what can just as easily be caused by incompetence" comes into effect here.

Microsoft were genuinely shocked when we turned round and told them what we didn't like the Xbone before they changed it, because they thought we would like it. They also thought "Xbox One" was a good name. They probably still do.

Nobody is claiming conspiracy, just sleazy business practices. There was no conspiracy to sneak these things in behind our backs, they tried to cram them down our throats AND tell us we like them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDZvXUv0Lk

See if you can spot the DRM in this video!

I somehow find it extremely unlikely that a company with such capacity for market research like Microsoft somehow couldn't figure out ahead of time that this was going to be an unpopular announcement. They just didn't anticipate that we'd actually vote with our wallets. They knew what they were doing, they were just hoping that, as usual, the internet was full of rage instead of actual action.

When it was announced, how many people said positive things? I remember an early poll on the forums that were blasting the xbone 10:1 against this move. Yes, we're a die-hard elitist sub group of gaming, but still. Anyone, and indeed everyone knew this wasn't gonna fly. I'm still waiting to even see a Ps4 at my local gaming store right now.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

I think Microsoft genuinely thought they were making something that benefited the consumer, video games manufactures and the industry as a whole. I feel like the saying "Never attribute to conspiracy what can just as easily be caused by incompetence" comes into effect here.

Microsoft were genuinely shocked when we turned round and told them what we didn't like the Xbone before they changed it, because they thought we would like it. They also thought "Xbox One" was a good name. They probably still do.

Nobody is claiming conspiracy, just sleazy business practices. There was no conspiracy to sneak these things in behind our backs, they tried to cram them down our throats AND tell us we like them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDZvXUv0Lk

See if you can spot the DRM in this video!

I somehow find it extremely unlikely that a company with such capacity for market research like Microsoft somehow couldn't figure out ahead of time that this was going to be an unpopular announcement. They just didn't anticipate that we'd actually vote with our wallets. They knew what they were doing, they were just hoping that, as usual, the internet was full of rage instead of actual action.

When it was announced, how many people said positive things? I remember an early poll on the forums that were blasting the xbone 10:1 against this move. Yes, we're a die-hard elitist sub group of gaming, but still. Anyone, and indeed everyone knew this wasn't gonna fly. I'm still waiting to even see a Ps4 at my local gaming store right now.

I have to agree with you, they OUGHT to be able to see this crap coming, and yet they also said that Windows Vista, Windows XP (shudder) and now windows 8 were good things too.

 

[Lightknight]

It ultimately doesn't matter what the Company's reason for making it is if it's not in sync with the consumers. You can make the best licorice flavored apple in the world but if people like regular flavored apples and not licorice flavored apples then the "why" part of you making it simply doesn't matter since the result is still licorice. You shouldn't get personally hurt because it didn't occur to you that most of your customers don't like that flavor.

This is the same thing with Win8. They had good reasons for making the OS that way. They believe it was how the future was going to look. But clients still wanted keyboard/mouse friendly desktops that organized things in ways that made it easy for them to find applications. Win8 ruined that to force something onto pc users that they simply didn't want. The end result is the customer feeling like they're being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It isn't rocket science.

 

[SilverLion]

I'm worried. With all Microsoft's talk of "it was the right thing to do" "We just didn't explain ourselves correctly" "WWWWAAAAAAAHHHH YOU COCKSUCKERS DON'T APPRECIATE OUR GENIUS!!!!" it makes it sound like they're just biding their time until they can reinstate all these hated features. Imagine going to bed one night and the next day: "NO INTERNET CONNECTION DETECTED STOP ALL YOUR CONSOLE ARE BELONG TO US STOP" This is another reason I'm never going to buy an XBone in the future, and probably not going to ever buy a Microsoft console ever again. They don't care about the colossal backlash, when they see a mistake they don't think about correcting it, they see about "correcting" it.
I'm worried. If this is how one of the major console manufacturers is allowed to behave without any real repercussions (how many millions has the XBone sold again?) then it speaks volumes about the future of the games industry as a whole.
Not to mention that the Xbone is inferior to the PS4 in every single way on an objective level, that also doesn't help.

 

[Lightknight]

I'm worried. With all Microsoft's talk of "it was the right thing to do" "We just didn't explain ourselves correctly" "WWWWAAAAAAAHHHH YOU COCKSUCKERS DON'T APPRECIATE OUR GENIUS!!!!" it makes it sound like they're just biding their time until they can reinstate all these hated features. Imagine going to bed one night and the next day: "NO INTERNET CONNECTION DETECTED STOP ALL YOUR CONSOLE ARE BELONG TO US STOP" This is another reason I'm never going to buy an XBone in the future, and probably not going to ever buy a Microsoft console ever again. They don't care about the colossal backlash, when they see a mistake they don't think about correcting it, they see about "correcting" it.
I'm worried. If this is how one of the major console manufacturers is allowed to behave without any real repercussions (how many millions has the XBone sold again?) then it speaks volumes about the future of the games industry as a whole.
Not to mention that the Xbone is inferior to the PS4 in every single way on an objective level, that also doesn't help.

Exactly,this is the most concerning part of the subject. They believe they were right and the product was good but we were just too dumb to "get it". Going XBO now means building up a library that will be in the same hands later when they do it again. If they do.

 

[Sarge034]

And the DRM bullshit hurt me personally. Can I get an outrageous salary now with a free license to fuck up simple things at will now?

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Didn't communicate "it" the right way?

A.K.A., you didn't disguise Microsoft's DRM intentions with enough meaningless corporate drivel and so consumers actually figured out what those intentions were? Oh, the horrors!

 

[Amir Kondori]

I HATE this type of nonsense. You did it for the right reasons for Microsoft, not the right reasons for gamers. You did it to exert more control over your platform to cut down on piracy and out of region selling, and especially to eliminate used games sales, which Microsoft does not see a cut of like they do with new games.

There is literally nothing "right" about this for gamers who only gave up options. They would have given up the option to play offline. They would have given up the option to buy a used game. They would have given up the option to sell their used games. They would have given up their option to lend their buddy a game, or to borrow a game from their buddy.

If this guy came out with a real mea culpa I would at least have some respect for him, but instead he is boo hooing that us gamers just don't understand but Microsoft was screwing us over for "the right reasons"?

This guy can get bent.

Seriously.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Xbox head Phil Spencer claims he was hurt personally regarding the Xbox One's DRM/always-online controversy since he believes Microsoft builds Xbox "for the right reasons."

The right reasons for the customer or the distributors Mr Spencer?

Funnily enough, you go high enough up the corporate ladder in these companies and you'll hear them using the term 'customer' to describe their shareholders and distributors, not the actual people who buy their products, which is insane, but when you get that high up you are so far removed from the actual product your company is producing that all your work revolves around abstract monetary amounts and making figures look good on presentations to obscenely rich business folks.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The way Microsoft reps go on about it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Xbone was designed for curing cancer and decontaminating drinking water.

As opposed to a machine which they marketed variously as an expensive set top box for NFL fans, a 500 dollar corporate tax write off, a tv for people too lazy to use a remote, and a gaming device with barely any games which at one point you couldn't play without an internet connection.

 

[Callate]

F#&@%d if I know. Are there people in Microsoft's game division who sincerely wanted to build the XBox One the way they did out of reasons that were motivated through a sheer love of the medium? Yeah, quite possibly; I doubt the structure could hold for very long if it consisted entirely of drones out to make money in a process with long cycle portions where their business isn't going to make much money and vultures happily speculate that it never will. Sounds like a great way to engender burn-out, quite frankly, and god knows there's enough of that in the video games business as there is.

That said, it does take a certain level of self-delusion and tunnel-vision to belong to a company like Microsoft and be sufficiently unaware of Microsoft's reputation that you utterly fail to see how the measures you're proposing are likely to be interpreted. At best, Microsoft has often seemed toxic in its desire to destroy its competition, overly-willing to tell its customers what they ought to like, and ready to try to use its financial and market clout to force everyone and everything attached to go its way kicking and screaming. At worst, especially of late, they seem to be all of the above combined with a rather pathetic inability to recognize that they no longer have the clout to make everyone do that, that their market does indeed have competitors now, and that their customer base has other strong alternatives for nearly everything they might want to do.

You may have a bright and shining vision for the future, but it pays to be sure the people necessary to accomplish that vision actually share it.