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[RexNovis]

PS3 had the multiplatform disadvantage last gen and they still did fine due to the incredible first-party titles that came out for the console in its later years. This gen, Microsoft has the multiplatform disadvantage, but that doesn't mean they also can't have incredibly first-party titles that make their console more desirable in the eyes of gamers. Whether PS4's or XO's first party titles are going to be better than the other is totally in the eyes of the gamer and can't be calculated using any kind of mathematical equation.

Microsoft definitely has their work cut out for them this time around due to mistakes in planning and PR snafu's, but it's definitely not impossible and not too late for them to have their comeback. You're right, they probably won't catch up to Sony, and I think most of the execs in the Xbox division know that, including Spencer.

But they're definitely not dead in the water. It can be a close race if they want it to be.

As far as first party goes please see point number 3.
I agree that they aren't dead in the water but the goal at this point for them is really just establishing a respectable margin of profitability not staging a miraculous comeback. That's really all I'm arguing. My post was mostly in response to your equivocations vis a vis last gen. Hopefully it clarified why such a comparison is inaccurate.

No hate intended. Just "enlightenment"

 

[Roshin]

So the whole villainy shared is villainy halved thing was true after all. I guess we should be thankful the backlash to MS was so swift and strong.

He doesn't actually say that at all.

MS had remarkable problems with their communication, but they appear to have learned their lesson and are much more focused now. Let's hope Sony doesn't forget.

 

[FaultTolerance]

As far as first party goes please see point number 3.
I agree that they aren't dead in the water but the goal at this point for them is really just establishing a respectable margin of profitability not staging a miraculous comeback. That's really all I'm arguing. My post was mostly in response to your equivocations vis a vis last gen. Hopefully it clarified why such a comparison is inaccurate.

No hate intended. Just "enlightenment"

And I thank you, good sir, for your very informative and balanced explanation. I think it's safe to say I learned a thing or two from it.

 

[Biker19]

Hear, hear. For anyone familiar with Microsoft's history, none of this stuff really came as any great surprise. I've known all along their "for the gamers" stuff was just lip service so they could extend their monopolies in to your living room without you noticing. That's why it really chaps my ass when people say, "They're not doing it anymore, so why can't we just forget about it and buy XBones?"

Because forgetting who MS really are is what got us here in the first place, that's why.

This. If I was in charge of the Xbox brand, I'd fire the people who were even considering Always Online DRM & for dragging the Xbox brand's reputation through the mud in the first place as an old-school gamer.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Well for example with Kinect being bundled and the rumour Sony was also going to include the camera...

You think The Playroom is there for nothing? It's a game that's literally unplayable without the camera.

The PS Eye on PS3 came with Eye create in the box. It's fairly obvious the original intention was to have the camera bundled. Sony obviously saw the reaction to forced Kinect and wisely removed it.

I bought the Killzone camera bundle anyway. My daughter loooooooooves playroom.

 

[FaultTolerance]

Hear, hear. For anyone familiar with Microsoft's history, none of this stuff really came as any great surprise. I've known all along their "for the gamers" stuff was just lip service so they could extend their monopolies in to your living room without you noticing. That's why it really chaps my ass when people say, "They're not doing it anymore, so why can't we just forget about it and buy XBones?"

Because forgetting who MS really are is what got us here in the first place, that's why.

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

 

[deranged_666]

Regarding the hardware architectures, yes it is true the PS4 has a higher spec than Xbox One, and there is no way the latter will catch up to the former. However, I must point out that hardware and graphics does not automatically affect fun factor. Yes, it can make games look better. But if a particular game is a turd then it's always going to be a turd no matter how much it sparkles.

I agree with what you're saying in general, but the issue Microsoft has is that the same exact games on both platforms will always look and perform better on Sony's machine (unless hobbled by certain circumstances). That's what people are generally referring to when discussing graphical differences between the two. If we can assume that, over the course of this generation, 80-90% of the games developed are available on both platforms, that's a huge percentage of releases that will simply be better experiences on the Sony side. It's fun and engaging to compare graphical quality between, say Halo to Killzone, but it's more meaningful to compare Call of Duty to Call of Duty, you know?

This is the same problem Sony had last generation, and it never balanced out fully. Multi-plats were just better on the 360. I bought a 360 well after I bought my PS3 because of that reason. What saved the PS3 from being a complete failure was the incredible depth and variety of their first/second party exclusives (and ultimately, it was what led me to trade in my 360 and keep my PS3 around at the end of the generation). I feel that Microsoft needs to take a similar approach, but as the poster above me has stated, it will be harder for them to do so since they haven't been investing a whole lot in that idea.

 

[Super Stardust]

Wished Andrew would have re-written this year's E3 script as well.

 

[RexNovis]

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

Personally, it's not staying mad so much as maintaining a healthy quantity of skepticism and/or suspicion. A company ethos that would permit the sort of anti consumer action that they displayed doesn't just change over night. Trust must be earned back and it's a long and arduous process. I'd wager many others feel the same.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Personally, it's not staying mad so much as maintaining a healthy quantity of skepticism and/or suspicion. A company ethos that would permit the sort of anti consumer action that they displayed doesn't just change over night. Trust must be earned back and it's a long and arduous process. I'd wager many others feel the same.

Their PR approach is also what did it for me in addition to what they proposed. It sounded misleading, good sounding half truths always clarified and a few days or weeks later once the "good" PR effect had worn off and the clarified version was always far less pleasing than what they originally announced. The "you people blew it... If only you would have been prepared for the super awesome stuff we had in mind and we had to force it on you to delivery it, opt-in was just not possible because... reasons" also did not do them any favor IMHO.

It gets to a point where you feel everything good they announce is deceitful, intentionally misleading you into thinking it's something much better than it actually is.

 

[Vormund]

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

Personally speaking, it's not so much being "mad" but rather having any enthusiasm for the platform extinguished. And I ended up with nearly 100 games on the 360. PS4 is now my primary console platform.I did get a Xbox One a couple of months ago (got a good Titanfall/Forza5 bundle) and honestly I kind of regret it since I barely touch the thing. My WiiU/PS4 and PC get far more use. I do think after all the blunders many people just stopped listening to MS and ignored the Xbox One (rather than outright hate it) and focused their attention on PS4.

Also just regarding the online DRM.... I can't imagine Sony would be looking at online DRM when they already had to suffer through a month long online outage. If they contemplated it before then, they sure as hell would not after that incident.

 

[FaultTolerance]

Personally, it's not staying mad so much as maintaining a healthy quantity of skepticism and/or suspicion. A company ethos that would permit the sort of anti consumer action that they displayed doesn't just change over night. Trust must be earned back and it's a long and arduous process. I'd wager many others feel the same.

I'm always wary when someone mentions a multibillion dollar corporation needing to earn back trust. When a friend screws you over, your friend needs to earn back trust.

But, as cheesy and cliché as this may sound, corporations are not people. Sony and Microsoft aren't our friends. They exist to make money off of us. "For the gamers" is a PR point to make it seem like they're there for us and have our best interests in mind, pure and simple.

Therefore, it's perfectly okay for someone to vote with their wallet and support one side over another for any reason if they choose to, but we shouldn't be pretending that either of them want to take us out for ice cream, or provide us a product or service out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Xbox brand was tarnished due to the greediness of people involved in the business decisions, I realize this. But personally, I'm not going to deny myself an experience on the console just because of some missteps from people who aren't involved in the product anymore.

I like to think they're in the middle of learning their lesson, that they can't just do what they want when they want without repercussion. They've made a lot of changes recently, both policy-wise and organization-wise. That's why I feel okay with owning their new console right now and supporting them in the same capacity that I support Sony and Nintendo. If I detect them slipping back into their old ways, then maybe I'll reconsidering supporting them further. But I feel like I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll repeat their same mistakes again.

 

[RexNovis]

I'm always wary when someone mentions a multibillion dollar corporation needing to earn back trust. When a friend screws you over, your friend needs to earn back trust.

But, as cheesy and cliché as this may sound, corporations are not people. Sony and Microsoft aren't our friends. They exist to make money off of us. "For the gamers" is a PR point to make it seem like they're there for us and have our best interests in mind, pure and simple.

Nobody is claiming that corporations are our friends. Trust is a universal concept it can be applied to everything from electricity and gravity to politicians. Trust by definition is the genuine expectation of cause and effect and when someone or something does not meet that expectation the consequence is suspicion and doubt. This is true regardless of the trusted party. So yes you can trust corporations to conform to an expected outcome one that affirms your own expectation (be it bad or good) and when they don't that trust is broken.

It's not a matter of should corporations be trusted simply because they are in it for the money. it's a matter of what should they be trusted to do. I trusted Microsoft to provide a compelling gaming experience, I trusted them to follow suit with their previous emphasis on performance and gaming experience, I trusted they would continue to emphasize providing a stellar infrastructure. When they failed to meet any of those expectations; when they instead completely disregarded the suppositions and desires of many fans they betrayed that trust in the eyes of those same fans. So now, they have to regain it. They have to prove to their fans that they can be counted on providing the things that were expected from Xbox. Truthfully the length and difficulty of that journey depends on the individual. For me it has just begun. Where as yours:

The Xbox brand was tarnished due to the greediness of people involved in the business decisions, I realize this. But personally, I'm not going to deny myself an experience on the console just because of some missteps from people who aren't involved in the product anymore.

I like to think they're in the middle of learning their lesson,

They've made a lot of changes recently, both policy-wise and organization-wise. That's why I feel okay with owning their new console right now and supporting them in the same capacity that I support Sony and Nintendo.

If I detect them slipping back into their old ways, then maybe I'll reconsidering supporting them further. But I feel like I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll repeat their same mistakes again.

has clearly already ended.

It's perfectly fine to support and even trust them again. That's your own personal decision but you can't act as though others should or must feel the same way. Just as each of us likely had different expectations that we trusted MS to meet just the same we each have different levels of skepticism and concern that MS must overcome to once again gain our support and yes even our trust.

 

[I-hate-u]

Wished Andrew would have re-written this year's E3 script as well.

I agree with this. Shawn's and Sony Pictures stuff was annoying.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

Well I wouldn't necessarily say it's over but they at definitely not going to stage a comeback and take first place. It's not happening.

You're forgetting a couple things when you are comparing the current gen to the last gen.

1. Last gen the PS3 actually had a fairly compelling secondary function: BluRay player. Something that many people were willing to shell out for when the console was released because it was by far the cheapest BluRay player out there. There is no current value add for MS on hardware perspective.
   
   
2. Last gen both consoles had unique architectures lending specific advantages in certain types of computation. The 360s unified ram with EDRam buffer and (comparatively) robust GPU meant developers were able to easily utilize the system and maximize after effects and post processing effects like Anti Aliasing and complex shader systems. The Cell Processor was somewhat handicapped by a weaker GPU and split ram but it had an extreme advantage when it came to simultaneous computation and general bandwidth because of the SPUs on the cell. These were, however, relatively difficult to utilize at first but as the generation went on the first party studios were able to blow people away with their graphical prowess (Naughty Dog, Quantic Dream) and, by the estimation of many, completely trounced anything available on the competing platform. Whereas in this generation there is literally no possibility for the XB1 to have any sort of performance advantage. It is literally weaker on every single hardware aspect by a considerable margin. This is exacerbated even further by the fact that both companies adopted a similar architecture this time except that MS decided to play it safe with DDR3 and use a small esram buffer which cost them a considerable amount of performance via loss of space on their GPU and a bandwidth bottleneck to and from the CPU/GPU. This decision ensured that the PS4 (despite the XB1s very modestly higher clocked GPU) will outperform the XB1 literally 100% (assuming appropriately optimized coding of course) of the time. So there is no recovery performance wise this gen for the weaker console.
   
   
3. Sony heavily invested in first party and "second party" studios last generation. By all accounts they already had a considerably large offering going into the gen. Strong first party has been a consistent focus for Sony. This is not true of MS. Their first party studios are few and those that do exist are seemingly farmed for sequels (see 343i or Black Tusk being forced to abandon their new IP for Gears of War) or slowly lose any and all pedigree they once had (Rare). Instead MS historically relied on exploiting their market share advantage to gain preferential treatment for multiplatform releases. A strategy that is consistent across all branches of their company and, despite being incredibly anti consumer, is relatively effective. It's the business equivalent of being a big stack bulky in poker. The problem is it doesn't really work well unless you're the big stack. So far this gen they aren't and as a result they are struggling to buy and lock even more content to their console as an impetus for people to purchase. The problem is that this is still very short sighted compared to investing in first party studios/content especially considering the undoubtedly higher cost now that they are the underperforming platform. They had a chance to turn things around and start investing in those first parties but instead they've decided to double down on their anti consumer strategy. This is exacerbated even further by lower performance on multiplatform releases. Due to the power performance many are opting to disregard additional or times content in favor of higher graphical fidelity or superior performance. So , in short it's not having the effect they want. Unfortunately it has come to the point that even if MS were to start investing in first party content today we wouldn't see any fruits from that investment for at least another three years. The lack of first party content really stung for MS gamers at the end of last generation especially since it seemed to coincide with Sony truly hitting it's stride with it's first party teams (Last of Us, Beyond, Uncharted, etc etc). That's not something 360 gamers have forgotten when deciding on their next console platform.
   
   
4. Unlike the previous generation consoles MS designed it's entire console and dare I say their entire long term strategy around the appeal of a motion controlled interface device that very few had any compelling desire for. They were hoping to capitalize on the casual gaming market boom that we saw last gen via their new Kinect but failed to realize that (as booms tend to do) it has largely ceased to existing the console market. They believed the Kinect would resurrect the market somehow and were banking on the appeal of the device. This was also made even worse by their decision to seemingly emphasis and focus on multimedia capabilities (TV OneGuide, Skype, etc) that appear to only appeal to small and by all accounts shrinking portion of the market. When Sony offered the market what it actually wanted (a more powerful gaming focused console) we saw a mass migration of what was once the Xbox core audience. So to sun up in an attempt to appeal to and corner a new audience they compelled a significant number of their existing audience to leave and in so doing failed to establish themselves in the new market they were after. That is not something you recover from in a few years and at the current sales trajectory a few years will be plenty of time for the hardware sales gap to become impossible to recover from for MS.
   

So I hope this explanation was sufficiently "enlightened" for you. At the very least I'm confident it is well informed.

Good post, and you didn't even have to go into detail regarding the strength of the PlayStation brand in Europe. You couldn't count out the PS3 based on those territories' collective support alone. Microsoft has no such territory to fall back on. It's the USA and the UK. This generation? Sony is leading well out in front in what were previously Xbox bulwarks. Add Europe and Japan into the mix and yes, Xbox One is guaranteed to be chasing Sony for this gen barring a miracle/cock-up of epic proportions.

Excellent. These two posts need to be linked and quoted when needed, just like Y2Kev's 'Stompdown on 'Market parity benefits everybody!'.

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

You know people aren't necessarily raging mad when they say 'I don't find your product compelling, or the least but desirable' don't you? If a customer doesn't trust them because of their recent (or distant) history, they don't trust them.

 

[RexNovis]

Excellent. These two posts need to be linked and quoted when needed, just like Y2Kev's 'Stompdown on 'Market parity benefits everybody!'.

Aww shucks you're making me blush. Thanks! Going back and rereading it I'm kind of ashamed of all the typos though. Serves me right for writing a wall o' text on mobile.

 

[Death Metalist]

Microsoft made everything easy for them. Jack could have got out and just said " You can share your games and buy used, PS4 is 399$ and won't have online requirement" People will cheer on and say it's the best E3 ever.

Because MS done fucked up, big time.

 

[Vashetti]

Why? It was the best conference out of the 5.

The Powers segment killed all momentum and had no reason to be there, at all.

 

[Melchiah]

The Powers segment killed all momentum and had no reason to be there, at all.

Five minutes killed 1h 45min conference, of which 1h 14min were dedicated to games? Talk about hyperbole.

 

[GladiatoR]

I absolutely love the fact that some people are so desperate to cling to the hope that Sony had DRM too and removed it at the last minute. It genuinely reeks of desperation.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

I absolutely love the fact that some people are so desperate to cling to the hope that Sony had DRM too and removed it at the last minute. It genuinely reeks of desperation.

I just can't believe those shady-looking MS Paint-created slides they hastily shoved in during their E3 presentation after seeing MS's pitch had more than an hour's work put into them.

That's the real mystery here. Get on it, Kotaku.

Spoiler

Caveat: The above post was sarcasm/irony/satire/humour

 

[ironcreed]

Personally, it's not staying mad so much as maintaining a healthy quantity of skepticism and/or suspicion. A company ethos that would permit the sort of anti consumer action that they displayed doesn't just change over night. Trust must be earned back and it's a long and arduous process. I'd wager many others feel the same.

All I wanted them to do is scrap the bullshit and they did. But on top of that, I plainly realize that none of these corporations are out to be my friend and are prone to try and pull shady stunts.

Of course what they were doing was the bottom of the barrel, for sure. But it did not happen, the product is better as a result and it has games and features that appeal to me. In which case, I am not going to deny myself and that is why I just bought one. Pick your poison, I suppose.

 

[Ennoia]

Now BestTV have bring the PR blunder with Xbox One into China, in today's CCG Expo announcement, they post the first promotional video of Xbox One Chinese version, the stupid have reached a inscrutable level: LEARN ENGLISH AND WATCH TV with kinect, this is all you got.

Watch the leaked version here: http://yuntv.letv.com/bcloud.swf?uu=8ee21766e8&vu=873268234f&auto_play=0&gpcflag=1

Since I can't post a new thread, I think this thread the proper place for this.

 

[michaelius]

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

Until next generation ?

Apart from small bunch of Microsoft games there's no real reason to consider xbox over same priced PS4.

 

[FaultTolerance]

Until next generation ?

Apart from small bunch of Microsoft games there's no real reason to consider xbox over same priced PS4.

There are plenty of reasons one would consider Xbox One over PS4, especially when you take raw power out of the equation. Believe it or not, not everyone cares about that.

 

[SeanR1221]

There are plenty of reasons one would consider Xbox One over PS4, especially when you take raw power out of the equation. Believe it or not, not everyone cares about that.

This stance always confuses me because I would assume the main reason people upgrade to a new system is the raw power.

Otherwise, with the amount of gross gen games out, you might as well wait on the purchase of either current gen system.

 

[EGOMON]

I don't blame him, whatever crap MS was cooking at the time everyone was like "Sony too"

 

[icespide]

Well I wouldn't necessarily say it's over but they are definitely not going to stage a miraculous comeback and take first place. It's not happening.

You're forgetting a couple things when you are comparing the current gen to the last gen.

1. Last gen the PS3 actually had a fairly compelling secondary function: BluRay player. Something that many people were willing to shell out for when the console was released because it was by far the cheapest BluRay player out there. There is no current value add for MS on a hardware perspective.
   
   
2. Last gen both consoles had unique architectures lending specific advantages in certain types of computation. The 360s unified ram with EDRam buffer and (comparatively) robust GPU meant developers were able to easily utilize the system and maximize after effects and post processing effects like Anti Aliasing and complex shader systems. The Cell Processor was somewhat handicapped by a weaker GPU and split ram but it had an extreme advantage when it came to simultaneous computation and general bandwidth because of the SPUs on the cell. These were, however, relatively difficult to utilize at first but as the generation went on the first party studios were able to blow people away with their graphical prowess (Naughty Dog, Quantic Dream) and, by the estimation of many, completely trounced anything available on the competing platform. Whereas in this generation there is literally no possibility for the XB1 to have any sort of performance advantage. It is literally weaker on every single hardware aspect by a considerable margin. This is exacerbated even further by the fact that both companies adopted a similar architecture this time except that MS decided to play it safe with DDR3 and use a small esram buffer which cost them a considerable amount of performance via loss of space on their GPU and a bandwidth bottleneck to and from the CPU/GPU. This decision ensured that the PS4 (despite the XB1s very modestly higher clocked GPU) will outperform the XB1 literally 100% (assuming appropriately optimized coding of course) of the time. So there is no recovery performance wise this gen for the weaker console.
   
   
3. Sony heavily invested in first party and "second party" studios last generation. By all accounts they already had a considerably large offering going into the gen. Strong first party has been a consistent focus for Sony. This is not true of MS. Their first party studios are few and those that do exist are seemingly farmed for sequels (see 343i or Black Tusk being forced to abandon their new IP for Gears of War) or slowly lose any and all pedigree they once had (Rare). Instead MS historically relied on exploiting their market share advantage to gain preferential treatment for multiplatform releases. A strategy that is consistent across all branches of their company and, despite being incredibly anti consumer, is relatively effective. It's the business equivalent of being a big stack bully in poker. The problem is, it doesn't really work well unless you're the big stack. So far this gen they aren't and as a result they are struggling to buy and lock even more content to their console as an impetus for people to purchase. The problem with this is that this is still very short sighted compared to investing in first party studios/content especially considering the undoubtedly higher cost now that they are the underperforming platform. They had a chance to turn things around and start investing in those first parties but instead they've decided to double down on their anti consumer strategy instead. This is exacerbated even further by lower performance on multiplatform releases. Due to the power performance many are opting to disregard additional or timed content in favor of higher graphical fidelity or superior performance. So , in short it's not having the effect they want. Unfortunately it has come to the point that even if MS were to start investing in first party content today we wouldn't see any fruits from that investment for at least another three years. The lack of first party content really stung MS gamers at the end of last generation especially since it seemed to coincide with Sony truly hitting it's stride with it's first party teams (Last of Us, Beyond, Uncharted, etc etc). That's not something 360 gamers have forgotten when deciding on their next console platform.
   
   
4. Unlike the previous generation consoles MS designed it's entire console and dare I say their entire long term strategy around the appeal of a motion controlled interface device that very few had any compelling desire for. They were hoping to capitalize on the casual gaming market boom that we saw last gen via their new Kinect but failed to realize that (as booms tend to do) it has largely ceased to exist in the console market. They believed the Kinect would resurrect the market somehow and were banking on the appeal of the device. This was also made even worse by their decision to seemingly emphasize and focus on multimedia capabilities (TV OneGuide, Skype, etc) that appear to only appeal to small and by all accounts shrinking portion of the market due to the multitude of other devices that also fulfill those needs often times even better than MS's attempt. So, when Sony offered the market what it actually wanted (a more powerful gaming focused console) we saw a mass migration of what was once the Xbox core audience. So to sum up, in an attempt to appeal to and corner a new audience they compelled a significant number of their existing audience to leave and in so doing failed to establish themselves in the new market they were after. That is not something you recover from in a few years and at the current sales trajectory a few years will be plenty of time for the hardware sales gap to become impossible to recover from for MS.
   

So I hope this explanation was sufficiently "enlightened" for you. At the very least I'm confident it is well informed.

this is a fantastic post. it nails everything

 

[FaultTolerance]

This stance always confuses me because I would assume the main reason people upgrade to a new system is the raw power.

Otherwise, with the amount of gross gen games out, you might as well wait on the purchase of either current gen system.

Features are important, too. There are plenty of things Xbox One can do software-wise that PS4 can't. Snap, suspend/resume, among others. Believe it or not, people do take those things into consideration as well.

There's also online friends, achievements. Some people spent years building up their rep, points, and friend community and aren't all that anxious to just flush it all down the drain and start over.

We're straying from the topic of this thread a bit, but in summary there are more things besides hardware power to consider. You think the common consumer goes to a store and starts comparing both consoles by how many gigaflops the GPU's can do?

 

[GladiatoR]

Features are important, too. There are plenty of things Xbox One can do software-wise that PS4 can't. Snap, suspend/resume, among others. Believe it or not, people do take those things into consideration as well.

There's also online friends, achievements. Some people spent years building up their rep, points, and friend community and aren't all that anxious to just flush it all down the drain and start over.

We're straying from the topic of this thread a bit, but in summary there are more things besides hardware power to consider. You think the common consumer goes to a store and starts comparing both consoles by how many gigaflops the GPU's can do?

And do you think the common consumer goes 'shit son, on the Xbox One I can snap things. I also don't want to lose my virtual accomplishment points'?

 

[ps3ud0]

Personally, it's not staying mad so much as maintaining a healthy quantity of skepticism and/or suspicion. A company ethos that would permit the sort of anti consumer action that they displayed doesn't just change over night. Trust must be earned back and it's a long and arduous process. I'd wager many others feel the same.

Completely agree - whatever genuine reasons MS had to enter the console space disappeared when J Allard retired. What remains at Xbox isn't what started it and when such a company openly displays such anti-consumer behaviour its not something easily forgotten.

I think MS have got a harder task with the XO than Sony had with the PS3 potentially because some of their backtracks sound so hollow especially with the people that they still retain.

Regards the topic, hopefully MS get it together to maintain a singular voice as they still seem to allow their execs to mix the message...

ps3ud0 8)

 

[FaultTolerance]

And do you think the common consumer goes 'shit son, on the Xbox One I can snap things. I also don't want to lose my virtual accomplishment points'?

I think a lot more care about that than care about Microsoft's PR blunders and hardware specs, yes. Quite a lot more. Not everyone is an enthusiast. Some people just want to play video games and don't care about all the drama surrounding it.

And that's perfectly fine. It's also perfectly fine that some of us do care about stuff like that. It takes all kinds.

 

[icespide]

And do you think the common consumer goes 'shit son, on the Xbox One I can snap things. I also don't want to lose my virtual accomplishment points'?

despite your snark, it is a legitimate possibility that a common consumer (whatever that means) could hear about these features and actually think its pretty neat and base their purchase decision on that

 

[Mastperf]

Features are important, too. There are plenty of things Xbox One can do software-wise that PS4 can't. Snap, suspend/resume, among others. Believe it or not, people do take those things into consideration as well.

There's also online friends, achievements. Some people spent years building up their rep, points, and friend community and aren't all that anxious to just flush it all down the drain and start over.

We're straying from the topic of this thread a bit, but in summary there are more things besides hardware power to consider. You think the common consumer goes to a store and starts comparing both consoles by how many gigaflops the GPU's can do?

Common consumers don't usually buy $400-$500 consoles.

 

[SeanR1221]

I think a lot more care about that than care about Microsoft's PR blunders and hardware specs, yes. Quite a lot more. Not everyone is an enthusiast. Some people just want to play video games and don't care about all the drama surrounding it.

And that's perfectly fine. It's also perfectly fine that some of us do care about stuff like that. It takes all kinds.

If some people just want to play videogames, just stick with the old systems because you can still play all the big titles, including destiny, watch dogs and Call of Duty.

So that only reinforces my point.

No one is comparing flops, but if you're dropping 4 or 500.00, and the sales person tells you the cheaper console has more power behind it, what do you think the average consumer will do?

 

[Neuromancer]

Out of curiosity, how long do you feel we are supposed to stay mad at them?

I'm not mad at MS any more, I moved through all the stages and have been at acceptance for a long time now. That said, forgiving and forgetting isn't in my nature (especially since we never got anything close to an apology from them) so I plan on passing on the Xbox One altogether. Maybe next gen they can do something to get back into my good graces, if they work really hard at providing a system I can get excited about.

 

[FaultTolerance]

If some people just want to play videogames, just stick with the old systems because you can still play all the big titles, including destiny, watch dogs and Call of Duty.

So that only reinforces my point.

No one is comparing flops, but if you're dropping 4 or 500.00, and the sales person tells you the cheaper console has more power behind it, what do you think the average consumer will do?

If you feel that strongly that your point must be reinforced, don't let me stand in your way. Your opinion is as valid as anyone else's.

 

[DSN2K]

Sony have been quite open about their wait and see approach to the industry. They very rarely lead out the door and they are smart to.

 

[FaultTolerance]

I'm not mad at MS any more, I moved through all the stages and have been at acceptance for a long time now. That said, forgiving and forgetting isn't in my nature (especially since we never got anything close to an apology from them) so I plan on passing on the Xbox One altogether. Maybe next gen they can do something to get back into my good graces, if they work really hard at providing a system I can get excited about.

The silver lining of this whole situation is if Microsoft seriously intends to stay in the console game, you know they're going to pull out the big guns for their next console as to not be outshined by Sony again.

 

[Zxrophantom]

Sony's conferences have always been pretty bad (in terms of overall structure). Even when they owned MS that year, the rest of the conference was kind of up and down. People just remember the reveal + the slam at MS.

I love Sony, but I've never thought they put on great E3 conferences. The sad thing is, Sony DOES show a lot of good stuff! I saw more things at the Sony conference this year that I wanted to play than I saw at MS (granted, most of them were third party, and not all exclusives). But the thing is, MS had a much better conference in terms of structure/flow.

So while I personally think more great games were shown at the Sony conference, most viewed the MS conference as being overall better (because in terms of the actual presentation and speakers, they were!). But again, I just didn't find this surprising at all. Because Sony has really yet to put on an E3 conference where it had a good flow. For me it's expected at this point. They probably just need to go the route of Nintendo and have it become a scripted digital event. Or, just get someone that is better at editing their shows down.

I don't know if i agree with that. I feel Sony always had decent conferences and only their formal habits or over long shows sometimes do them in. Which includes trying to throw in 20 to 30 minute segments that are not stage worthy. Aside from that they have had pretty great shows and one of the few to always try to bring something new to the show such as a new IP or service. Sony has many different cards to play which often benefits having something to show at a conference. How these cards play out is a different story such as the Vita and Playstation now being up in the air but they were exciting reveals. Also Sony did more than dump on Microsoft last E3, having all the indie devs playing on stage was a great moment.

Sony had quite a few moments like that last year, so i think that was an overall great showing from them. I would not personally judge the overall conference heavily on pacing. Sure it's never good if you have bad pacing but if the content is still gold i don't think you lose much points in my book. The only time it can truly hurt is when the content does not overcome the pacing, which has happened to Sony a few times.

 

[a916]

Five minutes killed 1h 45min conference, of which 1h 14min were dedicated to games? Talk about hyperbole.

There was a 30 minute lull in the middle (it definitely wasn't 5 minutes because I kept looking at my watch).

That said, I don't think it killed the conference, I only remember the best parts.

 

[Jimmyfenix]

Well I wouldn't necessarily say it's over but they are definitely not going to stage a miraculous comeback and take first place. It's not happening.

You're forgetting a couple things when you are comparing the current gen to the last gen.

1. Last gen the PS3 actually had a fairly compelling secondary function: BluRay player. Something that many people were willing to shell out for when the console was released because it was by far the cheapest BluRay player out there. There is no current value add for MS on a hardware perspective.
   
   
2. Last gen both consoles had unique architectures lending specific advantages in certain types of computation. The 360s unified ram with EDRam buffer and (comparatively) robust GPU meant developers were able to easily utilize the system and maximize after effects and post processing effects like Anti Aliasing and complex shader systems. The Cell Processor was somewhat handicapped by a weaker GPU and split ram but it had an extreme advantage when it came to simultaneous computation and general bandwidth because of the SPUs on the cell. These were, however, relatively difficult to utilize at first but as the generation went on the first party studios were able to blow people away with their graphical prowess (Naughty Dog, Quantic Dream) and, by the estimation of many, completely trounced anything available on the competing platform. Whereas in this generation there is literally no possibility for the XB1 to have any sort of performance advantage. It is literally weaker on every single hardware aspect by a considerable margin. This is exacerbated even further by the fact that both companies adopted a similar architecture this time except that MS decided to play it safe with DDR3 and use a small esram buffer which cost them a considerable amount of performance via loss of space on their GPU and a bandwidth bottleneck to and from the CPU/GPU. This decision ensured that the PS4 (despite the XB1s very modestly higher clocked GPU) will outperform the XB1 literally 100% (assuming appropriately optimized coding of course) of the time. So there is no recovery performance wise this gen for the weaker console.
   
   
3. Sony heavily invested in first party and "second party" studios last generation. By all accounts they already had a considerably large offering going into the gen. Strong first party has been a consistent focus for Sony. This is not true of MS. Their first party studios are few and those that do exist are seemingly farmed for sequels (see 343i or Black Tusk being forced to abandon their new IP for Gears of War) or slowly lose any and all pedigree they once had (Rare). Instead MS historically relied on exploiting their market share advantage to gain preferential treatment for multiplatform releases. A strategy that is consistent across all branches of their company and, despite being incredibly anti consumer, is relatively effective. It's the business equivalent of being a big stack bully in poker. The problem is, it doesn't really work well unless you're the big stack. So far this gen they aren't and as a result they are struggling to buy and lock even more content to their console as an impetus for people to purchase. The problem with this is that this is still very short sighted compared to investing in first party studios/content especially considering the undoubtedly higher cost now that they are the underperforming platform. They had a chance to turn things around and start investing in those first parties but instead they've decided to double down on their anti consumer strategy instead. This is exacerbated even further by lower performance on multiplatform releases. Due to the power performance many are opting to disregard additional or timed content in favor of higher graphical fidelity or superior performance. So , in short it's not having the effect they want. Unfortunately it has come to the point that even if MS were to start investing in first party content today we wouldn't see any fruits from that investment for at least another three years. The lack of first party content really stung MS gamers at the end of last generation especially since it seemed to coincide with Sony truly hitting it's stride with it's first party teams (Last of Us, Beyond, Uncharted, etc etc). That's not something 360 gamers have forgotten when deciding on their next console platform.
   
   
4. Unlike the previous generation consoles MS designed it's entire console and dare I say their entire long term strategy around the appeal of a motion controlled interface device that very few had any compelling desire for. They were hoping to capitalize on the casual gaming market boom that we saw last gen via their new Kinect but failed to realize that (as booms tend to do) it has largely ceased to exist in the console market. They believed the Kinect would resurrect the market somehow and were banking on the appeal of the device. This was also made even worse by their decision to seemingly emphasize and focus on multimedia capabilities (TV OneGuide, Skype, etc) that appear to only appeal to small and by all accounts shrinking portion of the market due to the multitude of other devices that also fulfill those needs often times even better than MS's attempt. So, when Sony offered the market what it actually wanted (a more powerful gaming focused console) we saw a mass migration of what was once the Xbox core audience. So to sum up, in an attempt to appeal to and corner a new audience they compelled a significant number of their existing audience to leave and in so doing failed to establish themselves in the new market they were after. That is not something you recover from in a few years and at the current sales trajectory a few years will be plenty of time for the hardware sales gap to become impossible to recover from for MS.
   

So I hope this explanation was sufficiently "enlightened" for you. At the very least I'm confident it is well informed.

Fantastic post.

 

[Melchiah]

There was a 30 minute lull in the middle (it definitely wasn't 5 minutes because I kept looking at my watch).

That said, I don't think it killed the conference, I only remember the best parts.

Here's the link for the conference: http://youtu.be/ozo1EYAjkNM
Games were shown...
from the beginning to 0:04:00
from 0:08:00 to 0:59:00
from 1:17:15 to 1:20:00
from 1:28:45 until the end
...that's about 1h 14min worth of games in 1h 45 min conference. In that context, those few minutes of Powers (1:20:00 - 1:26:40), and everything else inbetween didn't seem bothersome to me. That goes for those 15 minutes (1:01:45 - 1:17:15) of Shawn Layden as well. The longest lull was less than 20 minutes.

 

[Alienous]

They're never going to live down that past glory, are they?

At least it explains their lacklustre display this E3. They're clearly still far too happy with themselves making the obvious choices, and having their competition falter around them. You didn't screw up, we get it. Message to Sony: Get over it.

 

[Jimmyfenix]

They're never going to live down that past glory, are they?

At least it explains their lacklustre display this E3. They're clearly still far too happy with themselves making the obvious choices, and having their competition falter around them. You didn't screw up, we get it. Message to Sony: Get over it.

I don't see the problem with talking about past e3.

 

[Alienous]

I don't see the problem with talking about past e3.

Nice... ?

 

[Louis Cyphre]

If you look at what they needed to do, blowing everybody out of the water and get them back on the xbox hype train, the presentation from MS was way too much under the radar.

Small cheap conference room, low key presentation, sure shown allot of games, but a large part was either times exclusive or a CG trailer, both sporting 2015 release dates (this goes for Sony as well)

If you are still on the fence on which console you want to buy, MS conference this year changed nothing.

Sony just continued on where they left off and I felt their presentation, even though it was not focused 100% on games, was a lot better in keeping the hype train alive by showing What's coming, where they are putting focus and present a roadmap. MS was just a bunch of games.

Yeah, I hate it when that happens.

Wished Andrew would have re-written this year's E3 script as well.

This post pretty much nailed it.

 

[Rembrandt]

Might be OT, but weren't a lot of people saying there was no way Sony changed their scripts or had backups because it was planned months on advance. I could have sworn I seen people saying that when people said Sony going last kinda gave them am advantage. Too lazy to scourge, though.

 

[Liberty4all]

I think we did pretty well at E3 this year.

As for the competition, well ...

Around mid 2007, WE rose from depths many predicted would be impossible to emerge from.

Its certainly possible for a company to turn its fortunes around in a relatively short time span.

The key to success IMHO is to deliver what consumers want. Sometimes consumers have to punish corporations that forget that, ourselves included circa 2006.

 

[xxracerxx]

Might be OT, but weren't a lot of people saying there was no way Sony changed their scripts or had backups because it was planned months on advance. I could have sworn I seen people saying that when people said Sony going last kinda gave them am advantage. Too lazy to scourge, though.

Not months. He is saying they re-wrote parts of the script the weekend before the presentation, not after MS had their conference presentation.