No Matter What Microsoft does, the Xbox One is Doomed to Fail
gamerheadlines.com
gamerheadlines.com
After June, when MS started to sell kinect less XBone, the playing field was on level for MS and PS4. Unfortunately PS4 has a runway lead.
The only thing now decides, which console to buy, is what exclusive are on and which console are your friends on. The exlusive part is looking more blurry, while with the early lead most probably, your friends will be on ps4.
Interesting what steps MS will take in coming months, but expect some exclusive and price cutting are in the offering.
Sony got a standing ovation at E3 for allowing people to trade physical copies of games. Microsoft blew it and gamers shouldn't have to explain why they aren't spending $400 on another console just because Microsoft made things better.
How could Microsoft have allowed itself to get into this situation? Wow!
Will Xbox do better now that Uncle Fester [1] (aka Steve Ballmer) has "retired"?
You know why users complain? Because there are a bevy of things about which to complain. The author sees this as "can't be pleased". On the contrary, users can be pleased but Xbox started so far in the hole that they'll be a while digging out. Their Kinect argument harkens back to the IE days with the DOJ: "Kinect is so integral to Xbone that we can't unbundle it!" Six months later, in response to low sales and pricing complaints, what do they do?
If bought on launch day, that extra $100 gets you a Kinect whose voice recognition engine, on a good day, might hit 80%. More often than not it will leave you asking yourself, "why didn't I just pick up the goddamned controller?" as you repeat the same command three or four times.
Most annoyingly there are a number of things that worked wonderfully on XB360 that are broken on Xbone. Their later fixes to the party system took it from "plain broken" to "sucks less than it used to", and it's still a move backward from the 360. Users still occasionally need to power cycle the box just to get the microphone to work. And speaking of voice parties, where in the hell is my wireless headset? I'm astounded that it's going to be close to a year before that piece of hardware comes out (and I've heard nothing to say it will ever come out, but I don't pay a lot of attention).
Without writing a line item list of "reasons I wish I didn't spend $500 on an Xbone", I'll summarize. Every Facebook/Google/Whatever article on HN will have someone in the comments who thinks they're clever by pointing out that "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product!" Haha, yeah, you're a real smart guy. But the Xbone comes across as a product that I not only paid dearly for, but I'm still the product. What did Microsoft do to make me happy? Not much in comparison to what they did to make game publishers and content providers happy.
Finally, why I scroll through the comments on the article page is beyond me, I know better by now. But this time it paid off with this gem that may state the case better than my paragraphs of text: "Fighting a losing battle...where even your own fans want you to lose just so they can justify how mad they are at you".