Xbox One Brings Microsoft Entertainment Biz Into Question

[Trishbot]

"Have you seen Titanfall? Conversation Over."

And I'll be playing that on PC, or PS4 during it's inevitable port over.

Seriously, I don't even have a PS3. I have an Xbox 360 since launch (survived one Red Ring of Death they told me I had to pay for myself). I bought a ton of games and, early one, supported it as a better value over PS3.

At the end of the Xbox 360's lifecycle, I can honestly claim PS3 is superior in nearly every way... unless you just gotta have that cross-game chat.

I have zero interest in an Xbox One. PS4, however, is telling me EVERYTHING I want to hear.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

So Microsoft wants to move people forward... and the PC Gaming Master Race are complaining? Since when did the PCGMR become Luddites?

Though I dislike those people that go PC IZ TEH GREETEST UND CONSUL EEZ FR MORONZ, this time they do have a point. The Xbone doesn't have any advantages over a gaming PC.

Having your own personal "Jarvis" should be a cool idea. Yet the PCGMR hates it.

Voice and guesture command is still iffy at best, and an active hinderance at worst.

The Kinect can spy on you in your own home! You mean like your cell phone and webcam? Apparently that third thing in your home that can be used to spy on you is the straw that breaks the camels back.

It is sad that people are used to everything about them being online somewhere, but webcams and mobiles can be turned off. The Kinect needs to be watching you to make the Xbone function, and it will probably be sending at least some of what it sees to Microsoft, who could do what they like with it because it's an American company and it's my understanding that civil and consumer rights are still in their infancy over there.

Microsoft has DRM! Like Steam, Origin, and PS4? How dare they!

Steam has DRM, but it makes up for it with convinence and sales. The PS4 won't play disks that aren't authentic and greedy publishers may block used versions of their games. Those are far better then a daily checkup for all games and constantly seeing how many people are in the room. As for Origin, that's even worse then the Kinect.

Microsoft may get cause Gamestop to go under! Like Blockbuster? (And, correct me if i'm wrong, isn't Gamestop the company that people hate because they only get $5 for a trading in a new game and Gamestop sells it for $5 off? Just saying, their days should be numbered. They deserve it).

I don't know much about Gamestop since we don't have it in the UK, but I'm kinda hoping it goes under. It's the publisher's best freind, even if they pretend to be enemies. When Microsoft said that used Xbone games will work "at selected retailers", Gamestop's probably what they meant, and if Gamestop is jumping on this boat, I hope they don't make it to the liferaft when it sinks.

You have to be connected to the interenet once every 24 hours! If you can post on an internet forum, that isn't a problem where you live.

What if it's slow? What if it's intermitent? What if it doesn't work? What if Microsoft's servers go down? Diablo 3 and Sim City have already proven always online doesn't work, and those were single games. Here, we're talking about a console that plays many, many games. God forbid Microsoft sell the amount they're expecting to, but if they do, I garuntee that the servers will go down for a while.

Seriously, when did the PCGMR become the cranky old people shaking their fists at progress? Next thing we know the PCGMR will be flinging wooden shoes at Microsofts servers...

As a diehard 360 fanboy, I will be right there with them.

 

[Entitled]

At least some people might start to stop believing that gamer press and online reactions don't matter at all.

This is not the 90's any more, E3 is not for a few hundred neckbeards, it was watched by millions of people, the same millions of people who are expected to buy a console in it's first months after release. That little sony gag with the game lending instructions? 12 million views.

Even middle school kids and college dudebros know how to use google to type in "Xbox One vs. PS4", and their first findings will originate from hardcore gamer media.

"Supporting indies" is not just something that you do from the kindness of your heart, but simething that you HAVE TO do to ensure that the next generation's Minecraft equivalent selling 26 million units, will come on your platform first and sell the most there, instead of just playing catch-up by directly dealing with the previous generation's Minecraft on a "better late than never" basis.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Anybody who invests in Microsoft at this point is asking to lose money. Microsoft clearly thinks they can strong arm people into going along with whatever they want.

Touch screens are the future! Let's force everyone to adopt touch interfaces!
Cloud connectivity is the future! Let's force everyone to stay connected!

They're a company that doesn't want to create things people want. Their future isn't looking good

Actually, this is around the time when you should be investing in MS stock. Well, to tell you the truth, I'd wait for it to drop a bit further.
You buy when its low.

And once again, I think gamers are the ones who made MS think they could strongarm people into going along with whatever. They sold enough 360s through the whole rrod ordeal then raised the price of online while cramming the service full of ads, everyone seemed okay with all that. It seems to me like the 360 fans stuck kick me signs to their own backs. In fact, I'm not all that convinced that the xbone Wont sell well. Even at this point. I'm sure they're going to lose some customers but probably customers that weren't making them that much money in the first place.

Really? Your now trashing 360 fans? I have the Xbox 360 but I don't plan on ever buying the Xbox One with its current anti-consumer policies. Way to generalize a whole audience like they're a bunch of idiots.

 

[Slash2x]

Using a ship as an example. If the Xbone were the Titanic and the consumers are the passengers, the good people of Micro$oft have been bailing water INTO the ship as fast as they could.... The only step they will take it to put and small explosive charge at the bottom of all the lifeboats they can reach.... Because screw the passengers that is why.

I have said it repeatedly, this is their Dreamcast.

What exactly went wrong with the dreamcast anyway? I was just a kid so I didn't know much about gaming industry when I got one to play Sonic Adventure 2 (such a great game) but it appeared to be a solid syetem even if it's gimmiks like that weird memory card thing kinda fell flat.

Oh yeah and in other news the Xbone isn't going to do well...

To be honest nothing on the hardware side (other than price) it was a revolutionary system... That and they forgot to advertise... and charged too much for it.... and had like 3 games at release. Long story short it was not managed properly. Sega just kinda threw it at the market and prayed there were enough fanboys to buy it and keep them afloat. Surprise there were not, and even if there were they did not have enough time to save enough money quickly enough to keep Sega from tanking. And where did all the fans go so quickly? To the PS2 that came out after the Dreamcast and was properly marketed and announced. So people did not know the Dreamcast was out in some areas but knew that the PS2 was coming out. So when told that the Dreamcast was already out people were surprised and already focused on the PS2.

Moral of the story? Do not expect your "loyal" consumer base to keep you afloat when you do not listen to them.

And Sony knows how to sink competitors consoles......

 

[oldtaku]

One thing to keep in mind here is that they're targetting brosumers, and there may actually be enough of those to make XBone work. The guy who thinks it's damn cool that he could be watching an NFL game and have his fantasy football stuff on the side and make a skype call to call one of his bros and taunt him about his losing FFL team and vaguely (or blatantly) call his sexuality into question. And then later he'll play some Call of Duty and Halos and teabag his totally straight bros and maybe click that Mt Dew + Doritos dashboard to win some more Halos.

Gamers (except the really hardcore in denial partisans) have mostly written XBone off, but you're not the audience they're aiming for. Those guys don't post here.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

that this strategy is something a decade too late. The "control the living room" deal might have been groundbreaking and bold ten or twenty years ago, but the rise of stuff like Netflix and Hulu has vastly changed how people consume media.

 

[Entitled]

One thing to keep in mind here is that they're targetting brosumers, and there may actually be enough of those to make XBone work. The guy who thinks it's damn cool that he could be watching an NFL game and have his fantasy football stuff on the side and make a skype call to call one of his bros and taunt him about his losing FFL team and vaguely (or blatantly) call his sexuality into question. And then later he'll play some Call of Duty and Halos and teabag his totally straight bros and maybe click that Mt Dew + Doritos dashboard to win some more Halos.

Gamers (except the really hardcore in denial partisans) have mostly written XBone off, but you're not the audience they're aiming for. Those guys don't post here.

Targetting an entirely new market, and actually selling your product to it's people, are two very different things.

People are often making fun of how Nintendo "just prints money" by aiming at the right masses, but the Wii and the DS were both very carefully marketed to these people, if it would be actually "simple" to conquer a market, every company would be doing it. Just look at the WiiU to see that even Nintendo could miss their intended userbase, let alone Microsoft that has been consistently terrible at this game, with the Zune, or the Surface, chasing vaguely defined stereotypes instead of actual demands.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So far Xbox is the only one of Microsoft's hardware products that hasn't or isn't in the process of bombing spectacularly.

Surface tablet? Bomb
Windows phones? Bombed so bad it put Nokia's very existence into question.
Zune Anyone?
MSN music, remember that?

Microsoft is not happy with this state of affairs.

Whilst Microsoft have tried very hard to kill Xbox with sterling efforts like e74, Red Ring and faulty power supplies it's proved to be far more resilient than anyone within the company anticipated. This time however, there will be no stopping them, every opportunity to damage both the Xbox's public image and infrastructure has been taken, nothing has been left to chance.

One will fall, none will stand.

 

[Reeve]

Perhaps Microsoft's Xanatos Gambit is to ruin the console gaming industry in an attempt to get mobile, tablet and social gaming to take over. They clearly have tablets in mind with Windows 8. Has anyone here had a look at Surface?

The Xbox One looks ugly whereas this^ looks really nice.

 

[el_kabong]

We could see another PS2 or another 1983.

I don't see what my birth has anything to do with this...

Seriously, though. While I certainly want to see XBone stumble, it's only so that Microsoft can learn hard lessons, dust themselves off, and do something better in the future. The last thing needed is for a monopoly from one manufacturer. Good competition and more choices are almost universally good for the consumer.

 

[oldtaku]

One thing to keep in mind here is that they're targetting brosumers

Targetting an entirely new market, and actually selling your product to it's people, are two very different things.

That's for sure - they could totally blow that too. But it's hard to say it's a failure yet just from the gamer reaction. We're not the audience.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I was under the impression, when a company is as low as it can go, that's the best time to invest. The buy low, sell high deal. Even if the whole game division crash and burns, Microsoft as a company won't go under.

That is still a calculated risk, because any company absolutely can go under.

What if Apple turns round and offers iOS to PC OEM manufacturers in two year's time? Or if the next version of Chrome has Windows cross compatibility? What if they get caught using Kinect for surveillance? What if if they're discovered to have committed massive financial fraud in the vein of Enron or Olympus or Parmalat?

Whilst the name and the company likely is too big to disappear, your investment could very rapidly drop to zero if things run against Microsoft for next five years like they have for the last five. But hopefully the share price will go up sooner or later, Microsoft's decline has been nothing like EA's meteoric fall.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

snip

You're right, nothing in the stock market is really without risk. I'd just list Microsoft as a company that's a lot less likely to go down, and yeah, you can certainly do worse.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Though I dislike those people that go PC IZ TEH GREETEST UND CONSUL EEZ FR MORONZ, this time they do have a point. The Xbone doesn't have any advantages over a gaming PC.

It's about $1,000 to $3,000 dollars cheaper for one.

Voice and guesture command is still iffy at best, and an active hinderance at worst.

Kinect 2 is supposed to have tightened all that up.

It is sad that people are used to everything about them being online somewhere, but webcams and mobiles can be turned off.

A half decent hacker/NSA agent can turn those on without you knowing about it. If someone wants to spy on you, they can.

Steam has DRM, but it makes up for it with convinence and sales. The PS4 won't play disks that aren't authentic and greedy publishers may block used versions of their games. Those are far better then a daily checkup for all games and constantly seeing how many people are in the room. As for Origin, that's even worse then the Kinect.

Xbox Live has convenience and sales as well. (There's a free game every week thing going that's been going on for the past little while). Cutting out the retailer and physical disks means they can sell triple-A titles for cheaper.

What if it's slow? What if it's intermitent? What if it doesn't work? What if Microsoft's servers go down?

They've already stated that if the problem is at their end it won't affect the check-in. Also if it's slow or intermitant doesn't affect a check-in that takes only a second or two.

As a diehard 360 fanboy, I will be right there with them.

You are only 500 dollars away from feeling like Tony Stark in your own living room, why not at least try to see the positives?

 

[Entitled]

Though I dislike those people that go PC IZ TEH GREETEST UND CONSUL EEZ FR MORONZ, this time they do have a point. The Xbone doesn't have any advantages over a gaming PC.

It's about $1,000 to $3,000 dollars cheaper for one.

It's $1,000 cheaper than a ridiculously overblown $1500 PC.

It's $0 cheaper than an ordinary gamer PC that is about as powerful as a next-gen console.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

It's about $1,000 to $3,000 dollars cheaper for one.

Really? My PC is a hand-me-down one, and true it has some good tech, but it's still old. Doesn't bother me though. I can still play prettymuch anything, and I don't care about graphics anyway. It won't cost that much if you know what you're doing and you're not going for "Crysis on max settings" level hardware.

Kinect 2 is supposed to have tightened all that up.

"No guys, we fixed it this time, we promise! Buy it and you'll see!"

A half decent hacker/NSA agent can turn those on without you knowing about it. If someone wants to spy on you, they can.

Well great. Thanks for the nightmare fuel. This is why I keep my webcam unplugged.

Xbox Live has convenience and sales as well. (There's a free game every week thing going that's been going on for the past little while). Cutting out the retailer and physical disks means they can sell triple-A titles for cheaper.

They only did that to try and turn back some of the bad PR from the Xbone, and even then I only knew about it because of a post I saw on a forum. For a service with so many ads, Live sure is crap at promoting cheap stuff. And oh yeah! Remember when EA made it's own digital distribution system and didn't charge full retail price for digital games? You don't, because that's not how it works.

They've already stated that if the problem is at their end it won't affect the check-in. Also if it's slow or intermitant doesn't affect a check-in that takes only a second or two.

I'm calling bull on that. If the thing that recives the check-in signal goes down, it won't be able to check in, so it's bricked. And it only takes a second of slow or spotty internet at the right time to cut the connection.

You are only 500 dollars away from feeling like Tony Stark in your own living room, why not at least try to see the positives?

There are positives, like the new Halo and the family share feature, but there's so much consumer-hating, coporation-backing, bordeline illegal practices, that we can't enjoy the good bits. I WANT to like it, but there's so much bad stuff I can't.

 

[dmonkoff]

Anybody who invests in Microsoft at this point is asking to lose money.

I've looked into Microsoft's numbers on the NASDAQ stock exchange and their value has dropped by about 3% over the last few days, starting from June 10th.

Still, the Entertainment and Devices Division[footnote]Which includes the Xbox brand, as well as Mediaroom, Windows Phone and Skype

You know,I don't understand anything in economics, but I'm pretty sure that if you look at bigger time period, you'll see that microsoft's stocks grow like never before...

 

[GonzoGamer]

Anybody who invests in Microsoft at this point is asking to lose money. Microsoft clearly thinks they can strong arm people into going along with whatever they want.

Touch screens are the future! Let's force everyone to adopt touch interfaces!
Cloud connectivity is the future! Let's force everyone to stay connected!

They're a company that doesn't want to create things people want. Their future isn't looking good

Actually, this is around the time when you should be investing in MS stock. Well, to tell you the truth, I'd wait for it to drop a bit further.
You buy when its low.

And once again, I think gamers are the ones who made MS think they could strongarm people into going along with whatever. They sold enough 360s through the whole rrod ordeal then raised the price of online while cramming the service full of ads, everyone seemed okay with all that. It seems to me like the 360 fans stuck kick me signs to their own backs. In fact, I'm not all that convinced that the xbone Wont sell well. Even at this point. I'm sure they're going to lose some customers but probably customers that weren't making them that much money in the first place.

Really? Your now trashing 360 fans? I have the Xbox 360 but I don't plan on ever buying the Xbox One with its current anti-consumer policies. Way to generalize a whole audience like they're a bunch of idiots.

What do you mean now? If that's what you call trashing (never move to NY 1st of all), I've been trashing 360 fans for years.
Why?
Because I saw all this shit coming from years away and now I have a Cassandra Complex...well, not really a complex, because you don't have to be a market analyst to figure it out. If a big corporation has a large group of consumers who will willingly buy a defective product, you can bet the board of directors will want to take full advantage of their brand loyalty.

And to be clear, I don't blame all 360 owners. But if you willingly bought a defective product, then bought another replacement when it broke (rather/in addition to getting it fixed for free), then you're setting a bad precedent. Same if you continued to pay for online while they raised the price and crammed it full of ads. By doing that, you set a bad precedent. Not really trashing anyone, just pointing out that capitalism has devolved into looterism since people seem to not have noticed that this has been slowly happening to every industry since the 80s.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

snip

You know,I don't understand anything in economics, but I'm pretty sure that if you look at bigger time period, you'll see that microsoft's stocks grow like never before...

Yes, I know. Almost 25% growth overall since the beginning of this year actually. Largely due to the success of the divisions I mentioned. And I'm no expert either, I just had a quick look. I'm just pointing out that since E3 their stock has dropped somewhat. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not.

But you are right, it's probably just a momentary dip. In the long run it likely won't matter. Like I said, Xbox is only a small part of Microsoft. It's effects on the company's overall success should be relatively minor and if the XBone fails, it probably won't change very much beyond Microsoft maybe pulling out of the games biz.