badgenome said:
I don't think either of those is a good case of listening to the customers, though. With the PS3, I get the feeling Sony was just listening to themselves and drinking their own Kool-Aid. Much like MS with the Xbone. With the Wii U... well, I don't really know who Nintendo was listening to there. It doesn't look like anything that anyone ever asked for, and they don't even seem comfortable with their own product. |
I think we're confusing "listening to consumers" with not having a good creative vision in the first place. If the X1 was intended to always be on the internet and use cloud computing, Microsoft should have doubled down and made it into a streaming box. Basically, a glorified Roku with an XBox controller and Kinect attached: it *must* have a broadband internet connection to XBox Live to work. But you can also make streaming boxes like this for dirt cheap. We're talking $149 or $99 for the box, and then the subscription.
I don't think too many people would complain about requiring an internet connection if it meant the console was less than half as expensive.
As with the Wii U, I don't think this was a failure of creative vision or anything (and it certainly wasn't because they were listening to a consumer) but because they just assumed they could put hardware out and it would sell on its own without titles. They did that with the 3DS, too. It didn't work for either console because expecting 3D or tablet gimmicks to sell the hardware without titles is idiotic in the extreme. The Wii worked because it was packaged with Wii Sports and, more importantly, had Twilight Princess and a Resident Evil 4 port selling the wiimote LIKE CRAZY within the first few months.
