| Egann said: 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. |
I think so, too. At least, I think that's what Schell is doing. He sounds like a guy who read the Innovator's Dilemma over the weekend or something and fancies that it instantly made him 200% smarter.
Microsoft didn't roll back every single one of its policies because, even though they were supposedly integral to this wonderful creative vision of theirs, they love their customers and sincerely value their input. They did it because they had a disaster on their hands, and whatever they were hearing in terms of preorder numbers vs. the PS4 scared the bejesus out of them. The fact that they reversed on everything so quickly and completely makes it look like they had no creative vision at all (that they could never articulate this "vision" in the first place was very telling). It makes it look more like they were trying to get away with leveraging the Xbox's popularity into a huge power grab that would have permanently changed the dynamic in favor of the platform holder over the consumer, had their fingers burned by white hot consumer rage, and instantly pulled back.
Chalking that up to listening to consumers is laughable. It's called salvaging their console business.
