24 hours after the recent microsoft reversal, i am still not convinced they did it for the benefit of the consumer.
realistically, the consumers spoke with their wallets and then microsoft spoke with theirs.
while it is a small victory that those who wanted this got the news they wanted, i still cannot see this as a good thing.
why?
microsoft came out of the gate with announcements about xbox one that basically:
- distrusted their customers
- challenged the intelligence of their customers
- stripped their customers of their basic rights in the marketplace
- allowed them to reap massive financial benefits as their customers basically rented instead of bought everything
if microsoft truly had a vision about taking the gaming “ecosystem” into the future, both guns blazing, then why didn’t they stick by it? why did they do an about-face and lose their gall? because their piggy banks were bleeding.
although i am not a huge supporter of apple, do you think if they would have cowered when everyone wasn’t quite on board with giving up CDs for MP3s, that the itunes franchise would be where it is today?
there are scores of other examples that would be applicable here, but, no sense in wasting time outlining them one-by-one.
we are 6-7 months away from seeing any real comparative numbers in the way of xbox one vs. ps4 intial sales; amazon can only represent a segment of the purchasing consumer. still, i am eager to see what happens.
is it really enough, after microsoft acted so abominably toward their fan base/customer base for them to just flip-flop and basically match their product to sony’s? did they just put on their nice face and say please let us back into your party? please? sugar on top? used games? no 24-check-in? offline play? pretty please? but, we still aren’t apologizing by the way.
while we will probably never know the true reasoning behind this 180, one can only guess that it was done to place MS in juxtaposition with sony, and to make sure their bank account stopped taking a massive hit (and to preclude another hit at launch). if you think MS did this because they care about you, and your heart is just beaming in a halo of golden microsoft suns, keep drinking the kool-aid, my friend. business is about sales, money, profit, nothing else. needless to say, they didn’t care about you in the first place, why do they “care” now?
lastly, if it was really this easy to “turn it all around”, won’t it be just as easy for them to turn it back the way it was? is this just damage control? what are their true intentions? every single interview i have read/watched with MS execs is the same old bullshit – the same opaque answers leaving more questions than there were in the first place. what do you think?
4 v 1 