BMaker11 said: ganoncrotch said: He thinks it is predictable 2 years after the fact, should start helping fight crimes with those kinds of psychic powers. 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"

The all in one vision was a good idea but DRm and such was not and forcing kinect was a bad idea, its a good piece of hardware but it cost them sales.

Lol! Yeah, I guess even Rovio didn't want him

Without a doubt the all in one concept was a good idea, but it was also not new. Playstation has never just been a games console. The original PS used the fact it can play music CDs as a selling point. Both the PS and XB 7th gen consoles had several multi-media functions that made those consoles so much more than mere gaming machines. The fact MS went all in trying to attract non-gamers to a brand that is inextricably and permanently linked to video gaming was a mistake. It wasn't as big a mistake as DRM and force bundling Kinect, but it was still a mis-play. They even had an object lesson from what Sony did with PS3 to tell them that going after a non-gaming audience is a bad idea. Sony put Blu-ray into PS3 not to make gaming better but to win the HD TV and movie format war. The fact people could say, at the time, that PS3 is one of the cheaper Blu-ray players on the market did not at all help Sony sell PS3's at the price it launched. Because above all else game consoles only sell to gamers. Some Xbox fans did buy a PS3 and use it pretty much exclusively as a Blu-ray player. But again even though used only for non-gaming purposes it still required the person to be a gamer to be aware that PS3 was a viable option as a Blu-ray player.

So yeah, conceptually all in one is a good, albeit not original, idea. But the marketing strategy was rubbish, and completely lacked self-awareness.

They were predictable and preventable. I don't know why they ever thought people would be ok with a PC type of DRM environment set with console pricing. Luckily they changed their tune or as I said back then, I would not own an Xbone.

Even worse than that attempted strategy imho is the complete and utter disarray the Xbox marketing was back then. Every other day it seemed you had different big wigs giving different accounts on features and policies. They did a very poor job of communicating with people that no, you actually don't need the Internet and yes, you can play used games.

They have rebounded so nicely though, amazingly even. Makes you wonder if they'd had this leadership and vision from the start where they'd be right now.

LOL these consoles will last 5 or 6 years at most. Don't kid yourselves people.

You have a point playstation kinda started the all in one thing but Microsoft was trying to expand that since now not as much people buy blu rays as before and they would download the movie etc. But yeah playstation started it and Xbox tried ot expand it.

I do wonder sometimes about how much group-think happens when some corporate decisions are made. MS and Sony aren't the only big companies that have made bone-headed decisions which turned consumers off and lead to market failures, or at least severe market-share contractions. Even Nintendo's Wii U strategy was predictably bad going all in with a tablet controller, being that it was neither as innovative or as user friendly as the Wiimote. Though many of us saw the seeds of Nintendo's home console demise at exactly the same time some people were predicting Wii would achieve sales of 250 million and that Nitnendo home consoles would dominate for multiple generations. Any analysis of the games that were selling great and the games that were not selling great on Wii would tell you the Wii strategy was likely to have a short-term effect. And it turned out to be so short term it couldn't even sustain Wii as the dominant console on an annual sales basis for the entire generation.

MS made a similar mistake with Kinect. When you saw the sorts of games that were selling well with Kinect, and the fact that no core games could effectively transition to Kinect as the principle UI, it was clear that Kinect could never be a gamer-centric strategy and it would always only be a peripheral point of difference. It is also interesting to note that PS Move was arguably the best motion control tech for full adoption into core games, but for a number of reasons (including stupid copycat backlash shit), it failed to strike a chord with consumers and developers were unwilling to put effort into integrating PS Move into core games. It would be interesting to consider what effect CoD transitioning to PS marketing exclusivity would have had if it happened at the time PS Move was being launched. Making CoD playable with Move may have done a lot for the fortunes of PS Move. Some 3rd parties did integrate Move but not enough, and not in games that would give Move the chance to become popular with the mainstream. Bioshock Infinite is an example of a Move enabled game, and it is fun to play it with Move.

Then we had illumiroom that got some people salivating. Another quirky interesting technology, but hopelessly impractical in the consumer environment.

And that brings us to VR/AR. It seems like more game companies are supportive of these techs, but both of them have some major obstacles to overcome in order to become mainstream consumer devices. And I think they will both fail to overcome all of those obstacles. VR and AR are really cool ideas, and they capture the imagination, and when people play/use tech demos they like it a lot. But when people are faced with actually paying cash to own one of these devices they will turn away in large numbers. On this front MS is actually playing it smart. They are positioning AR as primarily not a consumer device and pretty much not at all a gaming device (even though they're demo's have included gaming, and they are firmly sitting on the sidelines with VR. And watching as Sony commits a lot of money to a device with a very uncertain chance of success.