I'm starting to like Microsoft Game Studio corporate vice president Phil Spencer. A few days ago he admitted to Xbox Live's Games with Gold promotion disappointing people and how he's working to improve its offerings, and now he's talking about the Xbox One backlash last summer. To me, it seems like he knows what issues his company has and he's working to represent them better. I'm not a fan of the Xbox One, but that's admirable! Let's see what he's talking about now, shall we?
"I look at last summer and that wasn't a highpoint for me, coming out of the announcement of Xbox One and E3, where I thought our messaging around what we believed in was confused," he said (via gerrenlaquint).
If you need a little reminder, Spencer is referring to the Xbox One reveal that enraged a whole lot of people. Coming off of a per-conference that focused entirely too much on Xbox One and its television and sports offerings, the console's always-online DRM, required Kinect, and no game sharing or selling upset consumers big time.
Microsoft's representatives also failed to communicate a direct message at the time, as if they did not expect the retaliation from the gaming community over their console's features. The mix of perceived “anti-consumer” practices, focus on non-gaming content, and the elimination of gaming staples (sharing, used games), and a requirement to have a persistent internet connection, eventually led to Microsoft retracting the controversial features. A few brilliant jabs from Sony might have helped as well.
“One of the reasons I wanted to be a little more active socially was because I knew the core of why we were in this industry was not an evil reason," Spencer stated.
"I learned a ton last summer as leader of our groups about being true to your core vision about what a product is, not being confusing, and frankly, when you're going to say something to a consumer that might put them off, it's better to just be direct and honest, rather than trying to sugar-coat something that might be controversial.”
Xbox One VS PS4: Phil Spencer Talks About Games with Gold's Future and the Program's "Constraints"
One such popular video of Microsoft's sugar-coating, well, in this case with a touch of salty-coating, was Angry Joe's interview with a visibly upset Larry Hyrb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson, community man for Xbox. At the time, Hyrb was probably dealing with a lot of backlash himself over the company's choices, but the video contributed to the internet pitchfork campaign against Microsoft and the Xbox One.
“I'd rather deal with the controversy of what we're doing, and have an above-table conversation about that topic, rather than trying to sugar-coat it with some other news. And again, my interactions over the last six months, and I really think the interactions of [Xbox chief marketing and strategy officer Yusuf Mehdi] and [Xbox corporate vice president Marc Whitten] and other members of the leadership team - we're meaning to build on what we learned last summer, and just build on who we are as people."
Overall, Spencer's comments sound like a good thing. The Xbox One reveal drama has died down, with the console selling over 3 million units as of December. In order to prevent more backlash, the company definitely needs to be forward about their ideas; and learning from their mistakes benefits not just us but them as a company.
Source: TotalXbox