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The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

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Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#61

Post by gcb0 »

nemothekid wrote: post #11
gcb0 wrote: post #2

Microsoft remembered it sells (mostly) console, not (mostly) games. pleasing the pirates sells wonders. If you only lived your teenager years in the US or Japan, then you will not understand. But Sony et al sold millions of consoles to other countries where the market probably bought 1 game per 10 consoles sold (numbers vaguely remembered from a playstation1 analysis i read a long time ago)

I'm pretty sure for MS and Sony, they were selling software. Sony was selling every PS3 for a loss 6 years into its product life cycle.

Sony and microsoft consoles at a loss not to profit from game sales, that's just silly.

They did sold consoles at a loss to be the number one console and then make money on the next one after they cornered the market and can extract real profits. Microsoft always did that with windows/office file format lock-in. Sony always did that with media formats lock-in. They would love to sell you at a loss for the chance to corner a market of betamax, minidisc, laserdisc, memorystick, blue-ray... oh wait, see the relation to PS3 there?

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#63

Post by drawkbox »

On the flipside, their no self-publish policy and required publisher agreements (which need to be able to publish 4 titles a year on the device) is pushing a horse (old market) over going to a car (new market).

They would have been better off just applying discounts to titles that can't be resold or shared (who wouldn't buy the same game for 20% off that way?). Change people with the market and benefits, don't try to change them with bad PR decisions. Apple's customers always liked the virtual keyboard due to the benefits of more screen.

A big fail on the always on 'feature' was for many soliders overseas, they wouldn't be able to play in many cases: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JayJohnson/20130611/194155/The_Xb...

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#64

Post by chaostheory »

drawkbox wrote: post #63

On the flipside, their no self-publish policy and required publisher agreements (which need to be able to publish 4 titles a year on the device) is pushing a horse (old market) over going to a car (new market). They would have been better off just applying discounts to titles that can't be resold or shared (who wouldn't buy the same game for 20% off that way?). Change people with the market and benefits, don't try to…

> They would have been better off just applying discounts to titles that can't be resold or shared (who wouldn't buy the same game for 20% off that way?).

Yes. I feel that MS's Xbox division has forgotten, when they chose to focus on the publishers instead of the consumer and developer, that price is what makes DRM stores like Audible ($15 or less for audiobooks that normally cost $25-$50) or iOS (most games are 0.99 or FREE compared to 19.99-29.99 for mobile games on other platforms) successful. Price is also what keeps people coming back to Steam.

> On the flipside, their no self-publish policy and required publisher agreements

This is something else I don't understand. It's easy to see that self-publishing is what made Apple, Google, and Valve app stores so successful. MS even has a Win 8 app store. I don't understand how they couldn't see that this should apply to Xbox as well when both Sony and Nintendo already realize this. Why cater to large video game publishers when their days are numbered due to the app stores?

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#65

Post by lotso »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #35

Try hard as they might, it's impossible to make those "features" sound good. This one is especially amazing: "You could re-sell your physical disc game to Gamestop or any participating outlet that opted into Microsoft’s revenue sharing system." Gee, thanks, Microsoft! It's not like those outlets will pass the cost right onto the consumer or anything (oh wait, they will). It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Lo…

>It's incredible how the Xbox team thought, "Look at that money over there. Let's take it!" What's next, Wal-Mart charging Ralph Lauren every time a customer comes in wearing a Polo shirt (because why should other clothing companies get free advertising in their store)?

Could you explain this analogy because it makes zero sense to me.

>The other issue? For the author to be completely honest, every "benefit" mentioned in the article should have "for a fee" added to the end of it. It's not very fun or innovative to get nickeled and dimed every step of the way. The fact that the public received 3 different messages about digital sharing costs (the three being no cost, a small fee, and the full price of the game) didn't help matters, either.

Could you link to the three different sharing cost messages?

>Compare that with Xbox One, where games are likely to be in the 10-20GB range and $60.00 (formerly with fees for sharing and resale). If you consider sharing to be going over to a friend's house, entering your password, then waiting 3.5 hours for a download to finish to be in some way innovative or interesting, then you are clearly not the target market for this device. Gamers want instant gratification, not waiting around for downloads and jumping through hoops.

I would imagine they would allow you to play parts of the game without needing to install the whole game, similar to Steam.

>The DRM-laden, no-money-left-behind nature of Xbox One in the context of tech in 2013 (a jungle of price fixing, nickeling/diming, credit card storing, and "convenient" subscription modeling) is precisely the status quo that consumers are finally revolting against.

How is it different than Steam, other than speculating that Microsoft would never aggressively discount games as much as Steam does now (even though it took them several years for their store to be well-liked by gamers)?

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#66

Post by billwilliams »

Every time i see a post from medium.com on hacker news it always has some dramatic headline. But then the content tends to be poorly thought out, and more contrarian than insightful. Dear hacker news gods, please don't feed into tabloid techno-journalism.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#67

Post by lotso »

nhangen wrote: post #28

I think the OP here is giving MS more credit than they are due. I don't believe they were trying to build a car, and I don't believe they had a messaging problem. I think they were trying to pull a bait and switch. Pitch a car and sell a faster horse. They got caught, and the Internet won. You can easily get to that conclusion by gauging the HD storage shipping with each unit. Add to that the average speed of Interne…

>You can easily get to that conclusion by gauging the HD storage shipping with each unit. Add to that the average speed of Internet in the US, and you have a poor situation for over the net gaming.

You can add an external hard drive (supports USB 3.0) and it can act as storage for games.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#68

Post by lotso »

iknowno_one wrote: post #43
clavalle wrote: post #5

Don't worry. Valve will come out with a nice car (SteamBox) and will craft their message more carefully to make sure all of the horse lovers don't get spooked before they fall in love with the ride.

I feel like everyone in this thread, including the author of the blog, is retarded except for you. People calling the XBox 1 a car, not realizing that consoles are the horse and Steam/online digital gaming is the car, since you can buy a functional new gaming computer (laptop!) that can play any modern game for $400 or less, a $499 price point on the XBox makes no sense at all.

People don't want the hassle of owning a gaming PC vs a laptop for many reasons.

It's much easier to just buy a console that will last for 8 years rather than worry about your computer getting out of date in 3 years.

It's easier for groups of friends to play on a console because there is local multiplayer support on console games.

Many gamers want to game on their couch and use their game console for other media (video streaming and music).

People will buy what their friends have (hint: it's consoles)

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#69

Post by lotso »

ekianjo wrote: post #45
mxxx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

physical discs are useful for people with always-on-but-still-painfully-slow internet, and it also was a way for MS to compromise and not piss off all the physical disc retailers, who happen to be the same people who will retail the console itself.

Yeah, but they could have sold their console with online retail only, a la Amazon. That would have been really innovative.

>That would have been really innovative.

And a great way to lose out on billions of sales.

Re: The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse

#70

Post by wpietri »

One of the things that I learned from studying Lean Manufacturing was to see a company's primary goal as generating customer value. Extracting enough cash to be sustainable is important, but value comes first.

In this case, I look at the 24-hour thing, and MS's apparent horror of somebody playing for a few days on a friend's license. And I say: that is value being created. Somebody had fun. That's the whole fucking point of the enterprise. They should be happy.

Now they do want to capture reasonable amounts of revenue, so I get why they don't want to sell exactly one copy of a game that gets shared around an entire city. But if some rule creates only a modest increase in revenue while destroying a lot of value (or creating a lot of customer headache), then it strikes me as dumb. And when they do something that may get them no extra revenue at all, or might even drive away paying customers, then it's shockingly dumb. It's being willing to make a pie smaller, as long as you get a bigger fraction of what's left.

There's a financial saying that I think applies: bulls make money and bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered.

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