Looking back, was Don Mattrick the source of Xbox One PR disaster?

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Darth Tigris said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Darth Tigris said:
The disaster was the leaks and the way the internet obsessed over them. MS lost the ability to control the message about the One. Seriously, the reveal could've shown a full scale holodeck in action and afterwards all people would've wanted to know about was used games and DRM. It became all people wanted to know about when it wasn't even supposed to be this big of a thing.

Listen, I dig a good leak too, but I quite clearly see how destructive they can truly be when let loose on the world with zero context.

But MS itself transformed it into a shitstorm. They could have used all those new features as an INCENTIVE and REWARD for users CHOOSING to stay online and with Kinect turned on, without trying to force always online, Kinect always on and without trying to kill used games market and cutting off users that for any reasons don't want or just cannot be always online. All those new things offered without trying to force the users in any way would have been a TOTAL PR victory and an excellent launch for those new features. But no, too fair and too simple, paranoid and power-hungry Lardmer couldn't live without trying to take control of his users lives...

I have no idea how complicated it would've been to execute and maintain BOTH strategies with one console, or how confusing that message would be for consumers in general, but I'm guessing it wouldn't have worked out as cleanly and neatly as we or MS would've liked.

As someone that got Google Fiber two weeks before the One launched, I sure would've loved the original plan personally, but c'est la vie ...

I don't know practically, but conceptually it would just have been "if you're offline for more than a given time you cannot use anymore the advanced features", while for Kinect it's simply "if you turn it completely off you can't use voice wake-up" (this one is quite obvious and surely simple to implement too). As for used games, it would be simple too, once the new owner registers his used copy (and he should, to have full control of it outside of offline SP), the old owner's privileges are deactivated and he keeps only the achievements and stats he gained while still owning the game. Not having his copy anymore to regularly check it online with his online account, most of the privileges and features would be lost anyway a few hours after giving away his copy, only one user at a time, owning the physical copy and being the last to have registered it could have full rights and privileges. Imposing, say, a week as minimum period before being able to register a game with another account could prevent tricks to abuse the system, while used games stores could be asked to pay a small fee if they need to unlock the system after a shorter period.
Having ditched all because users didn't want FORCED always online and crippled user games market looks more like a Ballmer-style retaliation rather than a true implementation problem. What makes me suspect it, besides conceptual simplicity, is also the far milder approach MS started having once Ballmer was gone. And here we're back to Mattrick and the OP, I think he was clumsy, but mostly innocent apart that, as thinking the troubles were solved (or better, the initial causes of the troubles, as the PR backlash lasted a lot longer) just because he went away would mean largely overestimating the power he had in the company.