I disagree.

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, June 20, 2013, 00:30 (4172 days ago) @ kapowaz
edited by Ragashingo, Thursday, June 20, 2013, 00:38

Really what this whole story shows me most is that a (relatively) small number of very entitled people can make a lot of noise about something really not that significant/important in the grand scheme of things, and actually get results. Shame we can't change anything that actually matters.

I disagree. Yes, The Internet was short sighted, yes the future was pushed back by a few years, but I don't think The Internet is to blame here. I think the responsibility lies almost totally with Microsoft.

Microsoft had the chance, maybe even a good chance, to usher in this new era of the "fully internet enabled console" but fumbled so badly that they were on their way to losing this generation of the console wars before it even began. If Microsoft hadn't been so damn incompetent they might have actually gotten it done. They were actually offering a good number of benefits far above and beyond what we have today with the 360, but they completely failed to sell it. Instead of an energetic, optimistic view of the Xbone's ability to make gaming easier and better we got months of rumors before the Xbone was even unveiled, followed by a stupidly secretive console reveal (that also focused oddly on TV….), followed by a couple weeks of executives and media guys seeing who could better contradict each other, followed by project leaders saying ridiculous things at E3 like "…buy a 360 if you need to play offline…", followed by what seemed to be a complete lack of empathy or planning for people who needed a non-internet connected console like people in the military, all of which lead to The Internet's fury, Sony's smart E3 announcement, and the Xbone becoming the Xbone 180.

I think maybe Microsoft was afraid of the response to the "radical" new system they had come up with. They thought it was a good idea. They were sure it was the way forward. But They weren't sure enough to commit to it fully. So instead of sending a strong message they tried to hide their message for as long as possible. It's like they thought if they delayed in telling us how the Xbone would work for long enough it would be on store shelves getting purchased and people would love it and everything would be ok. Funnily enough that may have actually worked better than what they did. If they'd just pulled an Apple and kept their mouths shut and launched and sold the console on the same day I bet it would have been a success. There would have been some grumbling and confusion about selling games and so on, but people would also have had a bunch of new features they never had before.

In the end Microsoft blew it by having one of the weakest PR messages in recent memory. The Internet was not to blame for Microsoft's 180, it was just doing its normal thing of mocking and tearing down a failure.