Before the announcement of the Xbox One, I was willing to bet £100 that Microsoft was going to take this generation by a landslide, with increasing reliance on multimedia use in consoles and software diverse from traditionally PC based technology being hard and expensive to develop for, I expected Microsoft to make use of their multi-form corporative knowledge to develop a cheap and high spec machine that would spell the doom of the future Sony console, which like every other product of theirs would be expensive and overly specific.
But with the announcement, well, need I spell it out? Even after the ‘changes’ the console is:
Too expensive
Lower spec/inferior performance of games
Lack of ‘true’ exclusives
No killer apps/brand identity
Xbox Live’s lacking competitiveness to PS+ value
It’s doing better than I thought though; fans are rabidly defending it and it doesn’t seem to have gone away yet, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough to restore the faith of thousands of gamers that no longer feel that Xbox are on top of their game. It’s hard to say if they were ever on top of their game, when they entered the race, the usp of a working and game-catered online service solidified them in the games industry, but they never did well. They are currently covering losses that have been incurred and trailing them since inception. The games industry is harrowing and disastrous in business terms, as all of the popularity in hardware is fleeting. There is no science to a successful console, look at Sega. They made a decent console and almost every game that came out on the Dreamcast was killer, but they still snuffed it.
Businesses think that because the games industry has survived the Video Game crash of ’83 and the recession which has been raging since ’08 that there must be some serious money to be made, but there isn’t. It’s all small returns in the games industry, but big businesses can’t understand the short life expectancy of consoles and to a larger extent the games software themselves, let alone that every product sees a small return from their small fanbases. Not even video game companies that have been in the business for decades seem to get that either.
Microsoft are under the mistaken impression that at any minute, their money is just going to shoot up from their little videogame venture and that it just takes time to make a profit. Hey, everyone else can’t have survived if it’s this hard and un-fruitful eh? They can’t possibly conceive how hard companies like Nintendo struggle to stay afloat, despite impressive sales and consistent good quality.
How can they, when they have no idea how to make a game? Do any of the people at Xbox have any experience whatever? There are no inhouse teams at Microsoft developing games. There are only third party companies they have coaxed into submission with their wallets, they have no idea how to handle or treat their teams or properties in any respectful manner. Halo is no more a Microsoft product than Mario is. There is no true loyalty with Microsoft because they have never given anything to anyone, even the Sony have brand identity with their games, what does Microsoft have?
The Xbox One is not on my Christmas List, but neither is the PS4. I’ve only recently bought a Wii-U.
What’s the difference if I’m not buying a PS4, why go on about buying the Xbox One then?
The difference with the Xbox One is, that I don’t intend to. And it seems, that neither do most people.
Sticks and Stones for the Xbone
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