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wilco on 17 June 2013
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The Fury said:
wilco said:
The Fury said:

You seem to be mistaken that MS need to please anyone but the gamers. No gamers on your console, publishers won't sell games, they'll produce less for it and spend less time on it. Retailers will notice your console games don't sell well and dedicate more space to the ones that do.

Please gamers, then please everyone else.

On your points, 1 isn't an option, they'd alienate too many people too quickly. In option 2 though you are right, they are in a weird middle ground and they aren't quite a TV box but it is hard to enter such a market like that when established companies already hold huge ground.

You seem to be mistaken in thinking that they need to please ALL gamers. There are many different kinds of gamers, microsoft needs to decide which audience they are targeting and stick with that. If microsoft feels digital download is the future, they should target internet connected gamers and let that be the end of it, the kind that are used to being strictly digital. Physical discs is just a waste of time for that audience. People forget how big of a deal it was when microsoft chose to go broadband only with the first xbox. A LOT of people still had dial up back then, myself included. But they made the right decision.

Also, you think microsoft isn't alienating people already? Atleast by getting rid of the optical drive they could alienate them and save money at the same time. I'm sure apple alienated people when they released touch screen devices without input keys, but guess what? Forward looking individuals saw the value in it and they bought it anyways. The console does not need to be for everyone.

Pleasing ALL gamers and even those who aren't considered gamers is their goal however you mistook my meaning. When I say gamers, I mean potential customers. A customer will buy games but if you do not have enough customers your product will not succeed, regardless of if you attempt to secure a certain audience. Included in this certain audience are those that would be alienated.

You are saying they should not have gone for that bigger audience/customer base but a far far smaller one but one more likely to spend the cash? but that is against their intended goal and not something they would have done. They want to be in the living room of the family home, not the bedroom on a 20 something guy in a shared household (disposable imcome or not).


The audience of people with internet access is not a small audience. Most people in the US and UK have internet access. Microsoft should be focused on trying to hold on to those markets as well as growing and gaining market share in the rest of Europe. I don't mean to sound harsh but trying to cater to people in the amazon rainforest or people living in the amish community is not smart business. Sony is an established brand in many countries that are less developed, it makes sense for them to cater to that segment, it doesn't make sense for microsoft. And if we are talking about people with slow internet access, lets keep in mind that internet speeds are increasing. If ms is making a future proof console then they can assume that in a few years 20 GB+ will take less than 30 minutes on an affordable plan, after all very few people had HD tv's when the xbox 360 was released but that didn't stop them from making a HD console. Even if state legislators never get their heads out their rear, we can still assume that ISP's themselves will eventually get with the times. And even if that doesn't happen the OS should still allow for downloading to not be a big deal.