I apologize if I got his feed spammed. We're better than that GAF.
Arthur Gies does not deserve any such pity. He has continually insulted gamers and our intelligence; fled on a bet with a GAFer and never paid up; and Evilore himself called him something like 'the most disreputable journalist in the game industry' after a particularly scandalous event in with Arthur Gies acted like an abominable clown about a certain incident. He continually misled consumers about secret sauce in XBO, the power of the system, secrets around it, endlessly. And on launch night for PS4, Polygon with Gies literally spent hours fucking railing against the PS4, saying Titanfall is better to every game, talking about how lame everything was. He defended EA on the Sim City scandal. If they are trying to provide a service to consumers, and are even remotely desiring objectivity, they'd behave better. They do not. When a XBO game has some minor advantage over a PS4 multiplatform game, even though everything else in that PS4 multiplatform game is superior, they deduct points. When a PS4 multiplatform game is better, even when it's endlessly, massively superior, they rate them equally.
You want people to feel bad for responding negatively to his tweets? He has a responsibility to not behave this way in a visible position on his site that is supposed to serve gamers. If he can't take the heat, stay out the kitchen.
If he would have apologized for some of this behavior and tired to change there'd be no such attitude toward him. He has not.
I can't tell you what Microsoft is thinking internally, but as much as I find these results unsurprising, I also find them unalarming.
Microsoft's problem is price, and it's going to take more significant moves on that price front if they want to get back to consistent sales parity with the PS4. I think they'll be fine with games, though naturally it wouldn't hurt to have several good titles come along and build some momentum, but on the games that matter, they'll be fine. They'll have all the multiplatforms that the audience craves, they'll have a handful of exclusives that can draw additional people in. They might suffer a bit on variety, but they'll trade that off with some superior titles in other genres.
That said, it's not as if the Xbox One is performing poorly, at least not in the US. It's doing quite well. The problem is more of perception locally, as obviously PS4 is doing tremendously well. And as long as Sony keeps the price advantage in these first couple of years, it will keep outperforming Microsoft, and then even if later on Microsoft achieves parity, the die will already be cast, inertia will win out, and Sony will continue to outsell the Xbox One.
If Microsoft wants to come to parity in sales, they need to first achieve price parity, do it quickly, and that likely means removing Kinect from the box. If they're not willing to do that, these results will continue, and maybe they're fine with that.
But that's not the only problem. If they reduced the system to $399.99 tomorrow, it'd still be a system in which every multiplatform game is inferior, in which apps are all locked behind a paywall, in which is poorly competing with PS+ amazing month on month offerings, in which is burdened with a peripheral virtually nobody wants anymore, does nothing for games, and still has yet to have even a single genuinely well received dedicated title yet for the XBO. On top of that, policy-wise, they continue to stand by a damaging ID@Xbox policy that is hugely damaging to small indies.
One issue may be minor, two may be minor. But this shit adds up to a bundle of issues, and the system does not exist in a vacuum. It has to at least MATCH what PS4 is doing in the eyes of the consumer at an equal price, or offer at least something else they value equal in exchange for the losses. Consumers clearly do not see Kinect as viable in that exchange, so what can they do?
This is no easy task to turn this around. What they need is a true series of spark games that ignite people's interests, and then start releasing them in addition to a price cut. Because the only thing going to get people to accept all the downsides versus the PS4 is if the games demand their attention. I think XBO has a better lineup of currently announced titles, but not better enough to overcome how many issues it has versus PS4.