Xbox One's Problems Were "Predictable and Preventable," says Former president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division

[Ganoncrotch]

binary solo said:

BMaker11 said:

I mean, it's not like he was the guy in charge when the console was revealed. Also, the only people who thought the XBOne's original vision was a good idea were forum idiots and MS.

Everybody outside of that group saw that train wreck coming a mile away. It'd be different if this was Don Mattrick saying "yea, that was preventable", but the guy who had nothing to do with XBOne and wasn't anywhere near the company when it was revealed? I'd bet a good wager that he was in that 99.9% group that said "DRM, forced Kinect, no used games, etc. is bad"

I think EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square Enix and a few other companies were keeping their fingers crossed that MS would get away with it. MS's DRM plan was never going to directly benefit MS all that much, it was primarily for the benefit of publishers, and some publishers seem to have been very  enthusiastic about it behind closed doors. The number of times game publisher execs tried to demonise the secondary market last gen shows exactly where the DRM motiviation came from. There were certainly some exclusivity deals signed on the assumption that Xb one would be a leading console for the generation, and I can't imagine those deals would have been signed without some knowledge of the shenannigans that MS was planning to pull. Of course that's talking about the DRM debacle.

Publishers were probably a lot less enthusiastic about a packed in Kinect. But even that could have worked if Sony had gone with a $499 launch price for PS4, which is probably what MS predicted. They probably thought "Ha! we'll both be launching at the same price, but we'll have the camera and PS4 won't. Win for us!" The it was..."Please get me my brown pants. On second thought, don't bother I'm off to work for Rovio."

https://www.vg247.com/2014/05/14/xbox-one-kinect-free-bundle-harmonix-reaction/

There were a few Devs who were delighted that every console would have a kinect attached tho, it meant they could create a game and know that at least 100% of the install base of the console would be potential customers, really burned Harmonix with the actually great music evolved title which was left out to dry as Ms rather publically distanced themselves from the Kinect before its launch.

edit - @italic'd I'm pretty sure you mean Zynga?