The Xbox One debacle – a Retrospective

The Xbox One debacle – a Retrospective

I am sure I do not need to reiterate the controversy following the recent Microsoft console announcements too extensively. However, for those of you who missed the hilarity that ensued following the official announcements, or have been living away from society and under a rock…

(perhaps some place with less than adequate 3G signal) I shall summarise and provide some context;Microsoft shot itself in the foot over the last few weeks by publically announcing the adoption of intrusive and quite frankly ridiculous DRM policies for their new consoles.  These plans not only disturbed a hornets nest of incredibly vocal gamers online through their attempts to attack, neuter or potentially control the pre-owned games market, the news of an ‘always on’ Kinect attachment also came in the same week that the American public found out they were being spied on by their own government. This almost comical miss-timing is only made all the more amusing when we consider that the SimCity always online DRM fiasco is still very much at the fore front of popular consciousness.

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 The Xbox One with included Kinect

“Companies are out to make money” the savvy and intelligent among us cried out, “they don’t care about you or me.” This abhorrently obvious statement could be found across the internet, anywhere and everywhere the new games console announcements were being discussed. A mantra for the apathetic and those too lazy to really discuss or think about the recent controversies surrounding the announcement of Xbox One’s feature-set. We live within a time where people are all too familiar with the modes of production and industry that surround them; the awareness and subsequent scepticism of the hype-tastic conference showcases and their plethora of buzzwords is expected of anyone who consumes this media.

The most interesting thing about the recent blunders on Microsoft’s part is that they seemed to, if only for a moment, underestimate this aforementioned consumer awareness. For a short period of time Microsoft thought that they were bigger than their customers, they thought that they could tell the customer what they wanted. Yusuf Mehdi went as far as to suggest that Microsoft need to ‘educate’ consumers, observing that we ‘don’t always want the change’ that is thrust upon us for our own good. With rather condescending rhetoric like this, Microsoft were not handling the public relations disaster that the ‘Xbone’ was fast becoming. The issue was only made worse when Microsoft’s Creative Director for Xbox, Adam Orth, tweeted some rather disrespectful comments with regards to the consoles need to always be online:

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Microsofts decisions have caused a lot of controversy    

In a very public display of idiocy, he continued to have a discussion with other twitter users comparing the need to have it ‘always online’ with the need for certain products to need electricity. Needless to say, he is currently dealing with the fact that he no longer works for Microsoft.

The resulting backlash was clear to see within opinion polls and the angry forum posts found across the internet landscape. Microsoft were losing the next console war before it even began.

And then came the U-turn, announcing that they were changing their plans for the system. A buzz-word filled apology was issued by their President of Interactive Entertainment Business; heavy with a touch of spin it read like a pamphlet for a utopian ideal more than a press release for a games console. The key change is that Microsoft decided to give the consumer the choice of the existing physical model and digital distribution.

So what does all of this mean for the games industry going forward? For a brief moment, I thought we were seeing the fall of an industry giant. I stood excited, ready to watch Microsoft destroy itself much like some mad Nero atop the burning roof tops of the empire it had not long ago built; a tragedy in which it was felled by its own hubris, serving as a warning of the future of the industry. The problem with the proposed plans for always-online functionality and cloud based games licenses is that they change the nature of ownership although not necessarily for the better. This transition from physical media that could be shared and re-sold freely, over to purely digital licenses is not necessarily in the consumers’ best interests at the present time. If we look to the obvious comparison between Valve’s Steam and Xbone, they both came at different times and in differing environments. Steam arguably helped save PC gaming, helping to pull it out of a dark ages in which developers publicly doubted its health. It aided in bringing about a renaissance of healthy indie development, digital distribution and episodic content delivery resulting in success stories such as Minecraft, Team Meat and Tell Tale Games. Steam isn’t solely responsible for such events, but its model and approach has led the way.

The difference here is that console gamers are still not expecting, wanting or needing this change in how they own their games. The £40+ per game model is still, unfortunately, relatively healthy. The ‘triple-A’ games market, with its towering production and marketing budgets is a bloated and grotesque monstrosity, splitting at the seams under the weight of its own misguided expectations.  Companies like EA and Eidos claim that their most recent releases were failures because they did not hit sales forecasts that were set far too high. EA were disappointed that Dead Space 3 only managed to achieve the accolade of best-selling game in February of this year in the US, while Eidos claims that 3.4 million units just isn’t enough sales for the latest Tomb Raider. Of course, piracy and pre-owned games are the first culprits to be blamed for this disappointment. Many, myself included, believe that this dissatisfaction with sales turns to pressure on console manufacturers such as Microsoft to do something about the evil margin-gobbler that is the pre-owned market. Microsoft outright deny that this was the driving force behind Xbone’s questionable feature-set. But who could blame them, “companies are out to make money” after all, right?

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The Xbox Ones new media focused home screen

Calling himself ‘Dude Huge’ over on Tumblr, Cliffy B formerly of Epic Games and the creator of the Gears of War franchise, is one of gaming’s most outspoken big name developers. Having come a long way since making maps for Unreal Tournament, with successful franchises under his belt and a public persona that has bagged him 200,000+ followers on twitter, the big budget games industry has served him well. Having made a name for himself in saying things that the gaming populace do not necessarily want to hear, he has even spoken out in the past in defence of everyone’s favourite industry bad guy EA. He once dared to suggest that the legendary Valve and EA are not all that dissimilar, with the key difference being in their abilities to manage their public image on the internet. And I am inclined to agree with him, at least to an extent, but that is another discussion for another time.

Cliffy B suggests that the current model of big budget console game releases cannot exist alongside the rental and pre-owned markets, not with the money needed to create the quality content expected of developers by consumers. Unfortunately, it does appear that he may only pose this argument in order to defend day one DLC and micro transactions within games.

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Don Mattricks performance has been the subject of much debate

But, aside from own agenda, does Cliffy have a point? Well, yes and no. He is right about the games industry being unable to survive in its current capacity, the production and marketing budgets are just too damn high. This has a knock on effect of ludicrous sales expectations mentioned earlier. However, this does not justify attempts to destroy the pre-owned market, nor does it allow developers to release content that should have already been on the disk, later, and at a premium rate. Nintendo recently joined in on this argument, highlighting their apathy towards the pre-owned market and the fact that if developers endeavour to make a quality product that buyers will want to continue to play years after release, they won’t want to trade it in so quickly. While this perhaps simplifies the pre-owned conundrum somewhat, it is hard to argue with Nintendo bigwig Reggie Fils-Aime. To build further on Reggie’s argument around ‘quality’, maybe the production of more innovative and interesting intellectual properties would lead to better day one sales and retention. Annualized franchises that are all too similar to the previous iteration are going to be traded in, and produce consumers that would happily play last year’s installment, bought used and for much cheaper. Cliffy B more recently defended Microsoft’s decisions surrounding the Xbone, chastising those who held Sony up as a hero, claiming on twitter that Sony had tricks up their sleeves that were yet to be revealed. He quite rightly suggested that these moves by Microsoft to adopt and embrace in digital distribution will aid in opening alternative publishing channels and encourage the indie developers that have been prospering on the PC. Unfortunately, it does appear that Cliffy B may just be supporting the console manufacturer that has nurtured his baby Gears of War for so long, while he has no ties to Sony and thus no reason to be kind to them in the public eye. And while there is substance to this argument from Mr B, there is still the possibility that Microsoft’s forcefulness with ‘always online’ DRM would do more to destroy the consumer experience than to open them up to new avenues of gaming and content exploration.

Companies do indeed need to make money; we live in a capitalist society after all. But capitalism means a free market, in which, as Cliffy B loves to point out, we can vote with our wallets. The way money is made is by making the customer happy. Give them choice, make a quality product, and don’t take the piss with invasive DRM, unfinished products and disrespectful attitudes. And whatever you do, don’t push a regime hidden under utopian spin and think the average internet roaming gamer won’t notice, because they will. And by god, they will let you know about it.

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