I... kind of feel like this is pretty much aimed at the people who won't, in fact, ever have their minds changed. o.O And I don't even think this group is particularly large anymore, at least not enough to really have a noticeable impact on the sales of the console. The wider media has given the console a great deal of slack, and there are also plenty of people who just aren't CURRENTLY interested in an Xbox One for reasons outside of the launch 30 months ago, but at the same time aren't going to grab bystanders and scream in their face; "Run away! Run away before it 24 hour checks yoooou!" Between the group of people who want it, and the group of people who virulently hate it, there's also a group of people who just... well, don't want it. Not the hate train, but the apathy train, as I heard someone put it once.
And while I agree both companies should remain open to equal criticism- my current bugbear being that the FAR easier PS2 and PSOne backwards compatibility, with access to all the digital titles I bought on PS3 from those generations, show no signs of materializing, and even this is mostly because War of the Monsters is still a lot of goddamn fun >.
On the PR front, there were some other minor stumbles here and there post-launch. Rise of the Tomb Raider being an obvious example. I don't speak of the timed exclusivity itself- both companies do it, etc, etc, etc- but rather how its announcement and disclosure was handled. In the same way the pre-launch, post-E3 silence from Microsoft allowed irritation and anger for its original policies to fester, and rumor to spread like wildfire, the fact that it didn't come out and say 'Boom, Yes, Coming To PS4 Eventually' from the get go kept people arguing about 'How Exclusive It Was' weeks and perhaps months after significant negative buzz would normally have settled down... basically, they pulled off the wax strip reeeeally slowly.
Even dropping the Kinect, while on the whole definitely a positive from the PR front, did draw some ire from the people who had been REALLY on board with the whole 'Everyone buys a Kinect = 100% adoption rate = more and better Kinect games!' thing, both because that seemed to be off the table now, and because Microsoft's PR leading up to it had pretty adamantly denied it would happen. =P Again, dropping it was the right thing to DO, but their assurances leading up to it did set them up for some backlash.
Even Microsoft's approach to announcing sales- and yes, 'Sony Did It,' and it sucked when they did it too!- was going to have a pretty big impact for a site where tracking sales is a pretty important aspect. I'm pretty irritated that no shipment numbers whatsoever have effectively turned the console's progress into a big '?', especially since people will be able to claim pretty much any number under the sun with no means to really disprove them. And no, not simply to compare sales to the PS4, but also to track what Microsoft's efforts, titles and tactics are having on their sales in general. I'd really like to know how Halo, RotTR, and assorted deals this year match up against their overall holiday period sales last year; not even having shipment numbers with which to guesstimate sales just really sucks. :/
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TL;DR: Basically I'm saying that both consoles are largely in the same boat; to some people, one is going to be the obvious choice, not even close, simply due to personal preference and prioritizing certain aspects over others. (So, no, not fanboyism.) For others there'll be more uncertainly, perhaps to the point where picking up both consoles early in the generation is an inevitable requirement. And of course there are people who are going to hear 'Sony' or 'Microsoft' and make their judgement based on that alone. The article seems to be aimed at the third group (or more specifically the ones on the Sony side)- ultimately an uphill fight to say the least- and, I'm concerned, might gloss over people who are actually critical about other aspects of the Xbox One, be they current or post-launch stumbles of the past, even if they're on a personal 'I'm not interested currently because so and so.' =P
Zanten, Doer Of The Things
Unless He Forgets In Which Case Zanten, Forgetter Of The Things
Or He Procrascinates, In Which Case Zanten, Doer Of The Things Later
Or It Involves Moving Furniture, in Which Case Zanten, F*** You.
