"The Xbox One Could Rise To The Top, If Microsoft Does One Thing"

[kane_magus]

You want to know the exact point I stopped reading this stupid article? I won't even make you guess. It's right there: the second paragraph.

"Microsoft has basically fouled up the Xbox One by listening to the public by recently agreeing to sell the console without the Kinect controller. It did the same listening thing before the Xbox One even launched by taking out the requirement for the console to be online once every 24 hours. While this appeased privacy nuts, it stripped some nice features out of the console. And let's be honest, everyone who buys an Xbox connects it to the internet anyway."

I honestly don't even care what the "one thing" Microsoft could supposedly do to make the X-bone "rise to the top," in this guy's eyes, because it's almost assuredly just as idiotic as the above.

Also, in unrelated news, it looks like Livejournal has once again randomly changed its GUI for no good reason. Go figure.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Yeah the guy's obviously a massive microsoft fanboy. His covering up his fanboyism by trying to make well deserved potshots at Windows ME and Vista (Which he'd be stupid to try to defend otherwise) doesn't make him objective.

"Most everyone was going to connect it to the internet anyway" - was a reason WHY people were well justified in not wanting a forced Kinect bundled with it, not a reason to ignore it.

The 360 was well designed and well received because microsoft went forward from the start looking to make a console GAMERS would want. The Xbone was not because they went forward looking to make a console that advertisers wanted.

The sharing of games with friends and families was distorted by microsoft to look like people would be passing games back and forth for real. As it turned out, it was just a limited way to pass around full-game-trials given you'd be able to play the full game for a couple hours before it locking itself odwn until said friend/family bought it themselves. And apparently you couldn't just re-give them it over again.

Microsoft "telling" the public what they want rather than "listening" to the public about what they want is WHY Microsoft was getting hosed in most of their latest markets from having difficulty getting anyone to adopt Windows 8 (I'm sure they thank god for their new-pc-pre-installed copies) and why the Windows Phone markets aren't dominating and why the Xbone has been performing dismally compared to the PS4. (All of microsoft's efforts thus far has been to make them more like what Sony has done.)

Their whole "one device for everything" was more a reason for them to try to get as many gold subscriptions as possible since even if Kinect let you interact with netflix, etc, you still had to have your monthly Gold membership before the Xbone would let you use it. They realized, FINALLY, people can just as easily, and more cheaply, use all those services without an Xbone or 360.

I think I'm ranting. :p

I'll stop by summarizing that the guy's full of it.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Oh one more thing since I finished reading the article after posting. :P

"So the answer to Microsoft’s problems with the Xbox One? Simple. Stop listening to the public and put everything back the way it was when it was announced a year ago. Then, and only then, will the console be the best of its generation."

He says this because all the changes he's making is alienating most of the early adopters who were "forced" to buy it bundled with Kinect?

1. If they feel they were "forced" to buy it, it probably means they've definitely noticed there was NO use for it to begin with and they find it a waste of money.

2. Putting things back to how it was ANNOUNCED a year ago would annoy a good segment of the early adopters even more - since most of those didn't buy a Xbone until after the first round of changes were made. It was only those drunk on the microsoft juice that loved and defended the original Xbone plans. The rest of us cancelled our initial preorders until some changes were made. And it was because of those cancellations that changes -were- made.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

"So the answer to Microsoft’s problems with the Xbox One? Simple. Stop listening to the public and put everything back the way it was when it was announced a year ago. Then, and only then, will the console be the best of its generation."

So his "one thing" that Microsoft needs to do to get the X-bone to "rise to the top" really was just "stop listening to the public"? Yeah... that's about as stupid as I was expecting, especially considering that it's the same damn thing he said in that second paragraph there at which I'd stopped reading, the stupidity of which was the reason I'd stopped reading in the first place.

Putting things back the way they were before Microsoft finally got a clue and backpedaled on it would piss off way more people than they would get new buyers. There aren't enough X-bone fanboys in the world to support such a moronic idea.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as far as Gold goes, they've at least wised up enough that they're taking all of that extraneous shit like Netflix and whatever out from behind the Gold paywall now, though you still have to pay for Gold to play anything multiplayer or "free"-to-play (http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/14/5717156/mmos-free-to-play-games-xbox-live-gold-paywall). But the thing is that their reasons for hiking up the price (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/397981.html) in the first place back in the day was explicitly because of all the extraneous shit they were adding. If they actually lower the price back to the pre-hike level of 2010, though, I'll be shocked. They are, at least, giving a refund (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/16/microsoft-xbox-live-gold-refund_n_5337772.html) to people who apparently used it only for that shit, it seems, so I suppose I'll give them that much credit.