Machiavellian said:
This is not about customers reading what the event is about, its about selling a system which is the Series Xbox and games to customers. You do not need to sell to the hardcore, they either already have a Series Xbox or are getting one. If MS focus is only on the hardcore they will totally miss the window to impress customers looking for their next system. Also I believe you are missing my point. I am not making this point on a personal level, I will be watching the event because I like developer lead demos but as a developer I also have been through a lot of these during my career. At one company I worked for they found out real quick how customer's perceived these type of events and they made sure to have a developer lead conference and a customer conference. I did presentations for both events and even though the topic was the same for both, we had to drastically change the content for the different audience. Look towards how Apple does these things to get a better picture. From my point of view this event looks rushed. Its like MS got all this negative feedback from the game awards for not showing anything so they decided to throw this event together. Such events never go very well because it takes months to really get a good showing. During our conference we planned these things for months, show demos to different groups of people and measured a lot of feedback to tighten our presentation. There is always 2 people doing these presentations, one is the developer and the other is the product manager. The developer brings the knowledge of the product, the product manager brings the knowledge of the customer and their expectations. Its a delicate balance that takes a lot of time to get right and I feel this even is way to soon. Now if MS has been working on this for months then that would be great but if its something thrown together since the end of January then I do not have high hopes on its impact. Reading a lot of different forums, even though MS has a lot of stuff coming, its not making a big impression on future consumers. It not hitting where it should and interest is at a all time low. I consider myself a hardcore Xbox consumer since its my main console but MS really do not need to sell to me. I am going to play Redfall, Minecraft Dungeon and Forza because they are coming to GP. MS need to sell to future customers why those games are worth their money because Sony and Nintendo still have impressive games hitting the market as well and lets not forget Sony has PS + Which is getting good content. I still believe it pales compared to GP but it might be good enough. Sony is ramping up production and MS want consumers who walk into a store look at both devices and choose the series console. |
Xbox Series is selling fine. This event is about selling the games which fans will actually get their hands on in the near future, not announcing more titles years away and at the end of the day it's the games which sell the consoles, not games that are releasing 2-3 years from now but ones which are actually coming soon.
You absolutely sometimes need to cater to the hardcore and the hardcore have been asking for an event like this for years, literally, the most people expected was an event which showed off the early 23 titles (Redfall, Forza, Starfield, Minecraft) and at most in terms of new announcements, people only expected Belfry and Hi-Fi and the latter we only learnt about a month ago, still people were asking for an event like this.
Does this showcase suddenly go from sucking to amazing if they included two AA titles (likely CG trailers) in it which are releasing Holiday 23? Lol.
I see your point but I think you care far too much about what others may think so much so that it overtakes what you may think, it's like saying this event will suck because despite me looking forward to it, others may be disappointed because they didn't read the press release and expected an E3 level showcase, Lol. We'll have our "general consumer" event at E3 and these "Directs" will be focused on the hardcore.
Just like most Sony State of Play's and Nintendo Directs...
The event definitely isn't rushed, they hired the person responsible for this event in June 2022, Tina is the new person directing these events. The reason why Microsoft wasn't at TGA's was precisely because they had this event in the works, they did not create this event in just over a month, it takes a lot out of development for developers to create vertical slices, it is likely near impossible for them to have achieved this in just over a month.
