Microsoft conference all about games - contrast to XboxOne release

[charlesr]

Last year all we heard about was how you could watch TV and Skype or snap a game while you are watching the game on cable and seeing your Fantasy football league updates, just after watching something on Netflix and then every few days you might play a game with kinect.

This year the MS conference (and the Sony and Nintendo confs too) was just a constant stream of games coming at you.

Here's what I think happened. MS looked at usage stats on the Xbox360 and it told them:
> 80% of usage is in Netflix or BBC iPlayer
> Therefore people are looking for a box that does Netflix and stuff.
> For the XboxOne we will market it as a media box that plays TV, music and games
> We had also better make sure it's quiet and reliable because that annoyed people on the 360

However, when you look at "Popular on Netflix", or "Netflix recommends" on my machine, all you see is kids TV and kids films because my kids use it far more than I do and they spend more time on the machine in general (whether it's Netflix or games) than I do. Trouble is, the kids are not part of the purchasing process. The adult actually laying down the money for the device and forking out for games has a whole different perspective. Certainly for me, I use it more for games than anything else, but it's dwarfed by the kids watching "Kickin' it" on Netflix and Stampylongnose Minecraft videos on Youtube.

Am I right?

[Asura]

> 80% of usage is in Netflix or BBC iPlayer
> Therefore people are looking for a box that does Netflix and stuff.

This, here, is the leap of logic; it's actually the other way around:

> People bought a box to play new videogames on it
> People later discovered they could also use it for Netflix
> People see that it's convenient, so they do this a lot

[Brad]

You are right IMO.
I probably watch more Netflix on my PS3 than play games on it but if it didn't play netflix i wouldn't care because there are literally hundreds of devices out there, most for well under ?100 that can play netflix. I think my TV even supports it natively. Yes, powerful games console first and foremost, that's what makes it worth more than ?200, everything else is a bonus feature.

[Lebowski]

Id agree on your thinking but i think they also wanted to try and get there box being the most used box under your tv instead of the cable/satalite box as there's massive amounts of money in it, i think the u-turn is because there in massive danger of losing the gaming side of things they had built up, I really wish Microsoft hadn't pushed TV so hard as now we have a box that was half built for TV and cost decisions where made based on now redundant features and hardware (Hdmi pass through kinect ect).

Convenience and ease of use always wins out, i think Microsoft's biggest mistake for its tv bid was not including a remote and its half baked pass through and windows style navigation, yeah voice control is cool but you need to give customers time to transition an apple style remote in the box would have done this and made non gamers a lot more comfortable using it.

[Digfox]

I think the recent leadership change and more successful competitor meant they had to change and more crucially be seen to change. It must be unthinkable, but a possibility, that MS might be less successful this generation and see a reduction in game sold, Xbox Live subscriptions and other digital revenue even if they have a greater control on costs.

I've said this before but I'm sure it's was an open goal they missed in this transition from 360 to One. Two struggling competitors, one particularly financially and the impact of less Japanese/Asian region success being far less crucial than it ever was previously (i.e. loss of prominent devs, loss of sales etc.). And yet somehow they still fudge it up.

In my opinion all they needed to do was bring out a kick-ass gaming machine with as much if not more grunt than the competition and release core-gaming titles with as many exclusives as possible from triple A developers, all tied in to that best of breed online service but with more included content to counter the growing PS+ threat. The console is the great trojan horse into the living room rather than the ideal path and the market changed from when MS clearly saw this monetisation opportunity of the Xbox Dash and thought that's the way the market was going. Again forgetting why they were successful with Xbox 360 in the first place. I still cringe to this day that they built an underpowered machine, forced Kinect on us all, tied up some but not enough system selling exclusives and have done nothing meaningful about PS+. The end result is that as someone that preferred the 360 over the PS3, I don't yet own a One and even when I do, I won't be subscribing to online services or buying multi-plats on it.

Real shame from a company that pioneered all those innovations like paid for robust online, built in storage, achievements, digital games etc. They are doing things better like the rapid software improvements on the OS, recent price cuts and focus back on games but the damage is done. It will take a herculean effort or catastrophe on the competitor's side to be the market leader in units sold this generation.

[originalbadboy]

Whilst obviously this year was more about the games, I don't think MS ignored games in any way last year.

The main show was just more orientated towards the actual console and its features. That kinda makes sense when you are launching a new console, and there was also a separate show last year as well for games (or the console , whichever way round it was , cant remember).

I don't think MS ignored the games last year any more than they have this year. I use my One for Netflix and Amazon Video, with the occasional Bluray playback as well , so the 'non gaming' features are used, as has Kinect. I also see quite a few people on my friends list using the HDMI passthrough as well, so it does get used.