Machiavellian said:
On this I disagree. MS was coming into the Xbox one era with a lot of good will even with the RROD from the 360 era. I remember a lot of people was very hyped for their showing of the new console. After that conference with Don, everything spiraled all out of control from bad to worse. The focus on the system, the cost of the system with Kinect, The power of the system compared to PS4. When games started to hit and the games had clear very obvious advantages over the Xbox one with the PS4 being 100 dollar cheaper, it was no way any particular gamer cared enough about having Kinect to justify getting an Xbox over a PS. The whole direction that Don was going was just not resonating with console gamers and it was a huge miss, even epic. At MS response was what we know it to be, they got rid of Don, put Phil in charge but as we saw, it took years for Phil to even get the bad taste of Kinect and the Xbox one out of most gamers mouth. The number of studios and games were not coming fast enough and all the while Sony was knocking out bangers after Bangers. While I do agree that software drives hardware, having bad and costly hardware can kill any advantage of software. MS cannot replicate how Nintendo work because Nintendo has a history of content and characters not to mention they do not play in the same retail space. MS direct competition is Sony and as the other poster said they share the majority of the same games. Weak hardware is a big key to what most gamers play which is 3rd party content and thus the weak hardware had a significant problem with MS being able to compete for years. |
Weak hardware wasn't the One's biggest problem, though. The PS3 was "bad hardware", but that too wasn't its biggest issue. Price/messaging/lack of early marketing (all mismanagement by the higher ups) caused a far bigger mess (like the X1), but they overcame that by pumping out high quality, exclusive experiences, eventually getting the price in check, and flipping their messaging on its head. I'm not saying being notably weaker than the PS4 didn't hurt at all, but I'd wager stronger software would have done more for lifetime sales.
The 360's early days were the Crème de la crème of console software and that was the biggest reason it was so desired then. This was despite its initial fail rate. I had several of them go bad and still couldn't live without one. It was simply that good! Constant, strong software overcame shortcomings and Xbox LIVE was top of its class — largely unchallenged by PSN. They lost the plot with the Xbox One and the hardware was a smaller piece of the how.
Where we fully agree is with the Don Mattrick stuff.
Last edited by CGI-Quality - on 01 August 2023 
