http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/natals-leash-slips-microsoft-panics/
Hype is a dangerous beast. It can work for you in amazing ways. But it can also bite you. Hype can also slip its leash and run off and do the exact opposite of what you intend.
The ‘hype’ surrounding Natal has felt ‘forced’ and the rhetoric coming from Microsoft execs is quite absurd. Gamers are natural skeptics because every gamer has been burnt by hype some time in the past. Gamers won’t even trust game reviews anymore. It is only when the product is in their hands, or they hear about it from another fellow gamer they trust, do they might believe it.
It is difficult for gamers to get interested in something that doesn’t have games, has no release date, has no price, and doesn’t even have a name. It is bad enough about all this marketing to get people hyped up about a non-product. Now we have articles saying that you have no right to be skeptical about the hype! It is a parody of a parody!
Creepy Milo kid, Peter “I lie all the time” Molneaux, and the dude who wears sunglasses inside and was responsible for driving EA Chicago to the ground. What a picture!
The entire article is a ‘riot’. Someone asked if I should do commentary on this. But how can I with something this absurd? My favorite part is when he tries to inject Miyamoto as a secret advocate of Natal.
Have you noticed the strange obsession with Steven Spielberg in hyping Natal? “Well, if Steven Spielberg loves it, man, it must be something!” If game journalists acted like game journalists, they would instantly note that Spielberg, who was stuttering his lines (watch the video again, what he is saying isn’t coming from his heart), is saying the similar lines of Fils-Aime when he spoke at E3 2006. One indication of a marketer was someone pushing Spielberg. Gamers don’t give a damn about Spielberg. Maybe if Will Wright was up there, or Sid Mier, or Richard Garriott, gamers would care. But Spielberg has no weight in the game industry. Anyway, the appearance of articles like this is an indication the Natal push wasn’t working.
One of my theories as to why there was a huge Natal marketing push, when there was no product available and none in the near or distant future, was to keep customers away from the Wii. From people I’ve talked to, many have ‘heard’ about Project Natal. “Wow, that looks cool!” they say and then they tell me how they love Wii Fit and can’t wait to buy Wii Fit Plus! So Natal was only reinforcing that motion controls are the future and not keeping people from buying into the Wii.
By reinforcing that motion controls are the future, which makes Wii look more futuristic than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in comparison, the hype dog was biting back. Then, the hype dog slipped its leash and began to run off doing things Microsoft did not anticipate.
With the Natal hype out of control and Microsoft begging us to ‘imagine’ the future of gaming, many people began to ‘imagine’ Natal being the successor console of the Xbox 360.
See:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174762
http://xboxevolved.e-mpire.com/article/3rd_generation_Xbox/4902.html
http://fgnonline.webs.com/
http://www.examiner.com/x-12218-Providence-Video-Game-Examiner~y2009m6d13-Rumor-Next-Xbox-Specs
Remember that Microsoft operates by different rules than most companies. Whereas most companies do not like leaks because the competition might steal them (Apple, Nintendo, Sony, etc.), Microsoft loves leaks. Microsoft is primarily a marketing company. Windows 7 is named so by their marketing department. The internal name of Windows 7 is actually 6.1 (upgraded version of Vista). It is amazing how much ‘leaks’ from Microsoft anyway. Just consider it another form of marketing.
Whether the new Xbox console rumors originate from the Microsoft Marketing Department or not, they are not having the impact Microsoft wants. People will be less inclined to buy a Xbox 360, not more, if rumors of a successor are coming. The current Xbox 360 fans are going ballistic over these rumors.
What amazes me is how there appears to be a coordinated defense of a new Xbox/Natal Console by saying that it is just what Nintendo did with the Wii or DSi. This obviously is not what Nintendo did with either the Wii or DSi. Interesting, when people were criticizing Microsoft traveling everywhere with tech demo ‘Natal’ like a circus elephant, another coordinated defense emerged (amazingly identical from one message forum to the next) that “Nintendo did it with the Wii going everywhere…” Anyone who knows recent history realizes that Nintendo went dark after TGS 2005 and the public appearances by Reggie and Iwata talked nothing but business strategy: Blue Ocean and disruption (GDC 2006: Iwata’s keynote speech was titled ‘Disrupting Development’). ‘Revolution’ controller was always controversial and never received universal hype until after E3 2006 where software was unveiled for the first time and the controller was placed in consumers’ hands. It wasn’t just Reggie, Iwata, and Miyamoto playing tennis up there, there was a fourth person who was a random winner in an AOL contest. Natal is nowhere near random consumers’ hands, and everyone knows why:
It is clear it doesn’t yet work properly. I have yet to see a Burnout video where people are not driving 50 mph when they should be driving 200 mph, and they’re still crashing into walls all the time.
So all these ‘rumors’ of a new Microsoft console are just infuriating the core xbox customers. If you thought Nintendo had problems with its ‘core’ players, just wait and get out bags of popcorn when Microsoft puts out a new console with Natal.
Xbox Games Division has to be in a panic state right now. No one swallowed the stupid Natal hype… because there is no product to buy and none coming soon. Microsoft going on TV shows and demonstrating Natal comes across as very strange and absurd since Natal is just a tech demo with no games and no release date. Why do massive publicity and marketing if you can’t buy it? Most dangerously, Natal reinforces that Nintendo is on the right track with the direction it took with the Wii and that Microsoft is playing copycat. Well, what if marketing releases rumors that Natal is actually the next upcoming Xbox console? That will fire up the hype, right!? WRONG. The core Xbox gamers are up in arms at feeling they will get abandoned just like how Microsoft dropped the original Xbox like a rock. Microsoft has lost control over the Natal hype.
If Microsoft was in control, it wouldn’t be issuing public statements downplaying another Xbox 360 like this:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-sources-play-down-reports-of-new-xbox-in-2010_4
Another rumor is given out by Team Xbox (and for some reason, this rumor is quoted in the article!) that also downplays a new console but not a new SKU. The Team Xbox rumor then ridiculously adds the rumor of stereoscopic 3d. This absurd rumor was either added to smoke out the moles or to mix absurdity with truth. Just like food and poison, when absurdity and truth mix, which is the victor? It is the absurdity. Microsoft, who has lost control of the hype beast as it runs around and does things Microsoft never intended, is trying to shoot it. Microsoft wants people to now think, “Stereoscopic 3d? Hahahaha! This was a stupid rumor. I’m glad we can close the book on this next Xbox 360 console stuff.”
Look carefully at what Microsoft said and how long it took them to say it. 1up’s story has been out for days, and yet Microsoft never responded. Also, it is tradition for console companies not to respond to rumors and speculation. When Microsoft responded to rumors about what it had to show at E3 2008, many of those rumors ended up being true. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
Nintendo is playing a very dangerous game of disruption with its competitors. Microsoft is the most successful company on the face of the Earth at defending against disruptions (since they happen all the time to the Windows operating system). The last disruption Microsoft crushed was the netbook disruption. While Nintendo made its moves with the Wii, Microsoft will make its counter-moves (Microsoft going to perform a classic co-opt counterattack as predicted way back in Shield). Sony is so daft that the way how it is moving, the company believes they are playing checkers instead of chess. I have seen no indication from Sony that they realize they are playing on the chess board of disruption. They think they are playing another game, like technology competition or something.
It was not a poor judgment for analysts to have counted Nintendo out during this generation’s ‘Console War’. It was poor judgment to have assumed Nintendo would be fighting on the battleground chosen by Microsoft and Sony: sight and power.
E3 2009 is remarkable because it clearly illustrates how the console battlefield has now shifted from sight and power to touch and interface. Cleverly, Nintendo has shifted the battlefield to their favor. A battlefield of motion controls is, essentially, going to be a battle of first party games. And we know, of the three, which company has the upper hand on that.
Of course, Nintendo will not fight in the ‘red ocean’ of motion controls. They will easily go to another Blue Ocean, and another, and another. Nintendo is making their competition ‘irrelevant’.
But what I would like to point out is that the twisting change of the Console War battlefield from graphics and processors (easy to do for a PC company) to touch and interface (hard to do for a PC company) is that Microsoft’s previous strengths are now its weaknesses. The Console-PC paradigm I keep referencing is that Wii went the full console route. As Microsoft counterattacks on that route, it will be stretching Microsoft from the PC and Console side. It is going to snap.
Microsoft can’t even execute the Natal hype correctly because unique controllers are a console mainstay, not a PC one. Everyone can see Natal players crash their cars and play uninteresting ‘paint’ software. Despite Natal hype crashing like the cars and doing damage to their new ‘test brand’, Microsoft has to and will launch a re-branded Xbox 360 with some unique controller (obviously, not all those Natal features will make it) as a classic Christensen co-opt counterattack. There was a reason why Spielberg’s script said exactly what Reggie said.
And let us remember that this generation started off with people saying Nintendo was pulling out of the console business and that the company could no longer compete. Now, with this new battlefield and new oceans the company makes, the tables have turned and Nintendo is the colossus walking god-like about with Microsoft and Sony increasingly looking like little dogs following and snapping at the giant’s heels.
Meanwhile, let’s all wave at the Hype Dog as it passes by with the marketers rushing after it.
Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)
