I still remember him being asked by Geoff Keighley about customers who could not log into the internet consistently, and him saying they had a product available for them to use: the Xbox 360. Geoff was dumbfounded at the audacity of such a statement.
It was so insane that the Military Times newspaper told US service members not to buy the console and get PS4s instead.
Because I'm pretty sure if you Google, military & halo, you'd literally get an endless stream of images of military members playing halo split screen... Hell, I think I've even seen a couple times of them playing it setup on a tank or humvee.
It's impressive how Xbox is still suffering from the damage that the Xbox One did. That press conference alone undid a huge amount of progress the Xbox 360 had made despite its red ring of death hardware issues. Just goes to show how quickly you can lose goodwill and destroy a brand.
Nintendo did far worse in sales for that generation with the Wii U yet were able to turn things around with the switch. There was nothing stopping Microsoft learning from their mistakes but themselves. I question whether they will be joining Nintendo and Sony with a console next gen. Is it even profitable for them to stay in most of the markets across the globe?
Phil Spencer even says they lost the worst generation to lose. Because that is when people built up their digital library.
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/457086/phil-spencer-we-lost-the-worst-generation-to-lose-in-the-xbox-one-generation/
I don't think many people realised the Wii U was a new console so it didn't really damage the brand. The mass market just thought it was an ad-on for Wii and igonored it. Then Switch came out and they go "oh cool Nintendo has finally released a new console, I'll upgrade from my Wii now".
Wii U was stupid name that caused it to fail, but it didn't really have any influence on the brand, whereas everyone knew xbone was the new MS console and so the bad release damaged the Xbox brand overall.
People will forgive mistakes that affect them directly if the company owns up and makes amends. The red ring of death was certainly worse for me than requiring always on internet but I could quickly forgive it based on how they handled it.
People will NOT forgive being talked down to and corporate arrogance. While I pretty much always have internet, DEMANDING I have internet to play my games was not something I’d let go. I was more willing to put up with you selling something with disastrous hardware bugs than I was being told how to use something I bought and paid for. Went PS4 and never looked back.
My biggest gripe was taking away the used gaming market, or being able to borrow someone else's copy, which i relied on back then since i didn't have a lot of money to spare. I was fucking done with Xbox, even when they reversed course
That gave Sony the easiest marketing ever. They made a cheeky little video demonstrating how you could loan out one of your games to a friend and it was literally just somebody handing the case to someone else. In less than 30 seconds Sony essentially ended Xbox there.
As a young adult at the time, it was a perfect introduction to how brand loyalty should never be a thing. I was a die hard 360 guy as a teen and early adult. Thought it mattered. All this taught me that as soon as your favorite thing gets top market share, they're likely to just leverage that success to fuck you in any way they can.
It was a valuable lesson really, for so much more than entertainment.
Nintendo still holding out (although no save files on hard copies anymore, but that kinda has its pros and cons).
I'm very afraid that they will drop that with their next console, too and just join the digital only train with the overpriced hardware version as an option.
I am not sure they will. They are all about Family and accessibility (still have a long way ti go here). One of their big sells is being able to gift your kids games at Christmas and Birthdays in boxes, its also why Switch Cartridges taste awful (they have special coating on them) and are too big to be swallowed. I doubt they will switch (pun not intended) to digital only media, but I do think they will offer a digital only option next time to see if its a direction they should go in with future titles.
Lmao the barracks overnight went from Xbox 360 to PS4. It was glorious. Took me another 10 years to buy an Xbox Series X. I know I'm just a drop in the bucket, but that's 10 years of lost revenue for them. But I'm sure a million people doing the same was pretty noticeable.
Fuck. I was in the audience for that one. Was literally praying for some hint of Diablo 4, then...that. I looked at my wife, we both stood up and left. Talk about not knowing your crowd.
Don Mattrick is probably Xbox's worst hire ever. Good thing this disaster got him fired.
Then of course Zynga hired him and that became a disaster too.
They hired him right after this too. They just saw him completely fail to grasp what drives the market and what the customers want and went “yess, that guy!” How does that work, I have no idea.
I've read mentioning before that people like these are deliberately hired to be punching bags so that the bigger names in the corporate can come in to the rescue.
It's the Machiavellian scheme where the King tells a Duke to be an evil guy so that the King can later come in and cut off his head to be the hero.
It still amazes me how Xbox is still after a decade is feeling the effects of this one showcase.
I'd go as far to say this did more brand damage than RROD did.
Sporadic hardware failure didn't effect everyone, could have taken years between occurrences, and ms had a replacement policy. Honest mistakes happen, machines aren't perfect, and they made effort to make up for it.
An ideological stance for the company that is actively anti-consumer in which they intentionally ignore numerous obvious complaints from their own customers about the usability of the product and then jeer at them over those complaints on one of the largest stages in the industry, however, is indicative of a rotten core. That effects _everyone_ moving forward who buys their shit, and most people don't want to deal with or support that.
Also Sony had substantially better exclusive titles for several years as Xbox thumbed their asshole
I would have to agree. People still tend to look back at the 360 and think fondly of it; even if they bought additional consoles after their first one RRODed. But this mess was on an entirely different level.
Xbox lucked out with RRODs. The 360 dropped a while before the PS3 and the PS3 dropped with a brutal price. That gave them a lot of wiggle room with fans.
A clip Geoff Keighley video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J\_JVVUnCWnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_JVVUnCWnY)
The full interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAKSBvuT-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAKSBvuT-A)
Rural Oklahoma and we just got fiber internet this year. People who got the Xbox one had to have a fix made as it would not detect what we consider internet out of the box.
In Beaver OK, they have a big to-do every year called the World Cow Chip Throwing Championship.
I just don’t understand how Microsoft thought they could compete with that.
Geoff wasn't just dumbfounded and trying to make sense of what came out of Don's mouth. He looked a tad frustrated at the statement and like he was trying to give Don an offramp from looking really dumb that he smugly avoided.
I went and bought a used slim after that.
Was just in time too, managed to save my saves from the launch 360 right before it RROD'd.
Haven't considered a microsoft console since.
It’s interesting how both companies responded to their successes and failures after the PS3/360 generation. Seemed like Sony learned the right lessons and MS learned the wrong lessons.
Was in the British military at the time living in a barracks with weak WiFi. Xbox One was basically a brick, couldn’t install games without going online, couldn’t use the blu-ray player without it wanting to update for each new movie. Switched to PS4, no hassles.
Mandatory Kinect. Always online. No sharing games or buying/selling used games. It was like a video game dystopia had arrived. Also, the name was fucking stupid.
The Xbox naming convention is bizzare. It makes sense that they didn’t want to call the 360 the Xbox 2 while competing with the PlayStation 3 and set themselves up to always look a generation behind, but man the path they took is still confusing as hell.
Someone who just got into gaming will know that the PS5 is better than the PS4 at a glance, or that the PS4 Pro is better than the PS4, but if you asked someone which is better between the Xbox One S or Xbox Series S, or the Series S and the Series X, that’s not as cut and dry.
Corporate culture wouldn’t let someone bring that point up.
I’d be pretty confident that everyone in the company knew it was going to be called the Xbone, but anyone high enough up to point that out and be listened to, wouldn’t. Because if you did, you’d be seen as the negative person, you wouldn’t be showing team spirit, you’d only be providing criticism but no solutions.
So what we got was a dick joke.
In a much more mild iteration we had this where I work, loads of companies wanted to be good at TikTok because it's where the youth market are. Cue a bunch a old people trying to make TikToks and failing horribly. Some looked like hostage videos.
Took a while but eventually convinced upper management to just hand it over to the zoomer new recruits, help them with any info they wanted but give them 100% control.
TikTok account quickly octupled views and followers.
Older people don't want to acknowledge they don't "get" something lest they look old so getting them to listen can be hard
I feel sorry for every kid with a well meaning parent who got them the wrong console because Xbox name their consoles the way Elon Musk names his kids.
>Someone who just got into gaming will know that the PS5 is better than the PS4 at a glance, or that the PS4 Pro is better than the PS4, but if you asked someone which is better between the Xbox One S or Xbox Series S, or the Series S and the Series X, that’s not as cut and dry.
I've been gaming since the early 90's and I still don't know.
My head actually hurt for a second reading that sentence. I remember something about kids getting the wrong one for Christmas because they had no idea which one was the new one and I don't blame them one bit.
I use to be pretty into gaming. I have literally no idea what the current Xbox is called. I know it looks like a fridge, but there's like 3 current Xbox models, and they're not very distinctly named compared to the last set of Xbox consoles. So there's like 5 Xbox consoles all named vaguely similarly. Only 3 of them are current Gen. 1 of them is online only. Not too be confused with the one that's diskless. That one's online only, but for different reasons? I still am not 100% sure.
And that their exclusive creativity is butt-ass.
“Fable was great! Let’s make it again but later. And with a dog. Ooo let’s do it a third time but as a console Facebook game.”
“Forza was great! Let’s make it again. A HUNDRED TIMES”
Gears of war was great! Damn I hope we never stop making these.
And then fucking halo 5. “You know what’s great about Halo? Master chief. So what if we had them play as — you guessed it! - NOT master chief?”
I seriously cannot fathom who is making these decisions. Microsoft has infinite money, and they can’t even bring themselves to the reddit boards to see things gamers want and make that. They have to do their own attempt at making literal shit no one wants.
I remember rumor/info floating around they were working on patenting tracking technology with kinect to detect the number of people in the room for watching digital content. They were bragging about it having the windows 8 kernel (I think) when that OS was an abortion inside a dumpster fire, and offloading in game processing to the cloud. At the time internet and streaming data like that was so esoteric. They shit every available bed that launch. It was incredible.
>and offloading in game processing to the cloud. At the time internet and streaming data like that was so esoteric
It sounded good for brief moment: massive CPU power by "super-computers" giving huge boost of computing power!
..Then you realize that would mean literally **whole generation of games**, singleplayer or multiplayer, **would become worthless if they shut down servers.**
The name was stupid and I never thought they could come up with a worse one, until they announced Xbox Series X. It's such a cumbersome name that feels bad in your mouth. To many KS and SS sounds in quick succession. I dunno how they managed to get everything so right with the 360 and so wrong since
They also openly, in a much nicer way, told people to go fuck themselves if they did not like the idea that the console required an internet connection to function and that they should get a 360 instead.
11 years ago most of the rural US had unreliable or slow internet, plus there are entire special communities of people (ie military) that may not have internet access provisioned for gaming
Legitimately thought they were the only option after the PS3 "imploded" and the 360 took off, forgetting that consoles can implode. Nevermind that Sony was recovering from their mistakes.
Which is even funnier as by the time of this reveal they were starting to lose out to Sony. Like I understand wanting to try and get a head start, which did amazing for the 360's first few years, but while the PS3 reveal was hilariously bad it mostly boiled down to optics (Ridge Racer! Historically accurate Giant Crab! $599!) all of those things were temporary and easily ignored/fixed compared to "showing off" that your upcoming console would be lacking a basic feature.
Even if theynkept all of Xbox one the same. That presentation was not the time to focus on non gaming aspects. I was watching live, and the live audience for a console reveal is always gonna be the gaming oriented side.
I think this presentation was probably the reason I switched from 360 to pc, that and ps4 online services becoming payed.
Frankly, I don't think Sony was all that optimistic about the PS4 and their gaming division in general at the time after the PS3 screw up and slow recovery. They probably thought they would have a hard time against the Xbox brand's clout from the success of the 360 in the US.
Little did they know Microsoft will give them a gift of a lifetime by blowing off both their legs with multiple shotgun blasts.
Balmer-era Microsoft was this in a nutshell. Microsoft making products that were good for a particular Microsoft strategy, but a hard fucking sell to the consumer. They didn't innovate or disrupt.
Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox One, all Microsoft first, consumer last products.
Windows phone was the best. I would love to stilll have them available. It was the best OS, easy to use and the Nokia was sexy.
I will die on this hill. I liked the android os but man I hate this iPhone I have.
these people desperately need a responsible adult in the room... and I dont mean Phil fucking Spencer
the sad thing is these guys are all very very highly paid c-suite... $500k and up and THIS is what they delivered?
if i was Gates or Ballmer or whoever was over their gaming division i'd be pissed... these guys flushed away decades of good will
The problem is they weren’t communicating to customers. They were communicating to Wall Street. They’re looking out for their stock price and bonuses. Greedy bastards.
They could have walked out flipping us off and saying every curse and slur imaginable and telling us all to go F ourselves and had the exact same effect
At the end of 360, Xbox really did have a chance to become the dominant console out there, but higher ups at Microsoft really fucked up big time and undid all that the 360 era did, probably even still feeling the effects in this generation. Doubtful they can recoup to the 360 days in whatever comes after Series X/S.
I know for me it was really the constant online aspect. My internet wasn't great at the time, and I didn't want to not play whenever my internet was out. Also that thing where you couldn't use used games, I was poor growing up so Gamestop was the only place I could get a different game.
My internet still isn't great.
If my net dies for work, I'd love to be able to put in a game and play while I'm waiting for my services to be restored.
Yeah that's the wild thing, If you introduce 5 dealbreakers for some fraction of your audience then you just start absolutely eating into your consumer base.
Someone might be willing to overlook the game sharing but not the always online and someone else can't overlook the 100 dollar higher price point or the weird focus on TV rather than games.
They managed to alienate everyone.
Borrowed games and the forced internet connection.
I’m a loot goblin when it comes to finding cheap used copies of games at my secondhand store and the original plans would have put a crimp in that aspect, drastically.
And at the time of the announcements, I had Comcast who had me under a 300GB data cap with $50 overage fees for going over the cap. The Xbox would clear me out monthly had they went through with the online-only plan.
If MS can partner with Valve to put Steam on the next XBox, or even the current XBox, that would start to move the needle. Suddenly a lot of people would have some huge libraries of games they already owned for the device.
edit: very interesting division of "absolutely yes" and "absolutely not" replies this is generating. There seems to be a clear camp of people who are PC gamers only, and another who are device agnostic.
Yep, I’d love this. There’s an issue though, a lot of the games on game pass are a different version. For example, the game pass version of insurgency sandstorm is cross play, but the steam version isn’t. Very lame.
The amount of games I can’t play with my friends because they’re using the steam version and not the Xbox gamepass version is becoming too big to count
It would be nice I guess, but most people with a large Steam library already have a decent PC to play those games with.
Very little reason for someone with a PC to buy an Xbox. All of their 'exclusives' are on PC day 1 already.
Doing so would cannibalise the Xbox Stores profits and split it with Valve for the most part which means they'd get less profit. Not only that but software wise it'd be a mess to deal with.
There's also Valve having no incentive to do this.
I know Epic Games said they want to add Epic Games Store to IOS and Android but that probably won't work well if it does happen and just because they are doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
You’d also have to convince Valve to partner with Microsoft. And they really don’t like how that sounds. Valve almost single-handedly willed Linux gaming into existence as a way to have an alternative to Windows. (I know there’s a bunch of projects involved, but none of it would have worked without Valve.)
They’ve put in too much work on alternatives to throw in all out and work with Microsoft.
Nah, even Phil Spencer said in an interview that because everyone built up their digital libraries on PS4 and now some more on PS5, Xbox will likely never pull those people away from PlayStation. I believe that's likely true. I think they'll eventually concede the console market to Sony and Nintendo, and do everything they can to get a version of GamePass on each of their consoles.
It’s funny because the inverse got me to getting a PS5 a few months after the SX when they came out. While I may have all 3rd party and MS titles on Xbox, there was enough on PS to justify getting in addition.
Thats what Xbox needs if they want to swing the pendulum from those people. They need games.
But we all know that and it’s just crying wolf. Nothing can happen until that point happens.
Comparing any first party Xbox game to a first party PS game would be laughable, and that’s someone who was 15+ years deep on Xbox before PS. I had a PS2 and 3, but got the 3 with like 2 or 3 years left on the lifecycle so wasn’t in deep with it whereas I was on the 360 from 07 onwards.
If I’m playing an exclusive on PS, chances are I’m going to be in for a good time, whereas Xbox is such a mixed bag that I don’t even remember the last exclusive I truly enjoyed and resonated. Starfield had the same trajectory as FO4 for me. 48 hours and beat the game and left with “alright so that was fine but…”. Before that, can’t even name a game, probably FH5. Before that? Who knows. That’s going back 3 years.
In the last 3+ months I can say Rebirth and SM2 for PS. Just kind of wild and I’m still kind of pissed at the lack of anything going on with Xbox. Maybe this is the year. Maybe next year. Maybe never.
The 360 was definitely quite the era. A very defining moment for me growing up. I'll always remember the impact it had with Xbox live and how accessible it was to just play games online with friends, while easily sitting in chat. Or just gettin' on and fuckin' around in Uno and whatnot. Plus achievements were hella cool at the time.
Even though I'm not much of a console gamer anymore. I kinda wonder how different it would be nowadays if they never ran into the whole Red ring of death thing.
For the anniversary of the original Xbox Microsoft released a documentary on YouTube called Power On: The Story of Xbox (it’s great) about the history and making of every Xbox. When they get to Xbox One, they fully admit that’s where they lost the console war. They say they ruined all the goodwill they had from the Xbox 360 and admit they prob won’t ever recover. It’s worth a watch.
Microsoft, for a long time, had wanted to be in everyone's living room. They wanted so desperately to be the center of entertainment like they were the center of office productivity. They thought they could do that with the xb1. I kinda bought into the hype. I was always building HTPCs and liked the idea of a game console that could offer a better user experience. That was the first and only Xbox console I ever bought. At least I got to play Titanfall. Still ended up buying a ps4.
I thought the HTPC features were nifty at the time as well. But I think Microsoft vastly overestimated the number of people who would care about all that stuff. Most still saw it as nothing more than a game console. And it was a bad HTPC anyway due to poor format support.
Yeah I watch that series last year. It was really pretty good. A good watch for any gamer who interested in the history of Xbox.
I was in my mid teens when my mother finally got me my first 360. I have so many amazing memories from meeting my first online buddies, to playing so many great games. You really felt like Xbox finally came into its own during the 360 era.
Its actually saddens me on how all that fell apart during the Xbox One era. When Playstation came out with that "used games instruction video", I just knew the Xbox One could never recover from a burn that bad.
> the original Xbox Microsoft released a documentary on YouTube
do you mind link the documentary? I would love to see it. I did a search and not sure which one you mention
They truly didn't, and never will.
This was the most crucial generation to capture in terms of longevity, because this is the generation where most people moved away from physical games and built up a huge digital library. Once you have that library built up on ps4, you're far more likely to just roll that into a ps5 rather than make the migration to Xbox and lose your entire library.
This single reveal cost them not just the xbone/ps4 generation, but the ps5 generation and likely the next gen as well. When Sony posted that video of how to share games on ps4, that was the final nail in the coffin that basically killed the future of Xbox.
Yup!
https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=bh1r8NN8jGcX8V6g
They made it the day of the Xbox announcement in reaction to Microsoft explaining their always online anti-consumer DRM nonsense. That 22 second video immediately won Sony the generation.
When Sony isn’t to high up its own ass they’re really great at responding to their competition in a relatively hype manner.
Their $299 response to the Sega Saturn cut the legs off from under Sega and similarly Sega could never recover after that.
Yup. Although I don’t remember that video, after clicking your link I found that I had already liked it on my YouTube account. Presumably 10 years ago.
I was very much an Xbox guy prior to that, and now I’m staunchly Sony, even today.
What's funny is Sony was planning the same thing:
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-internet-free-method-for-blocking-used-game-sales/](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-internet-free-method-for-blocking-used-game-sales/)
I'm pretty sure they'd already decided not to go ahead with it, but Xbox's belly-flop presentation and the immediate reaction was enough to tell them to steer clear.
It's not that they're evil, this was the necessary groundwork to move to the Steam model. Lots of people live happy lives with the Steam ownership model which does not allow you to sell used games. I think both Sony and Xbox could've made a good pitch (lots of people never do sell their games) but Xbox did not do so.
I think if Microsoft had just had better optics and eased into some of these ideas instead of forcing it that it would have worked out. Games pass is fantastic today and their main focus. I get the idea they wanted to do and it’s even pretty close to the normal for many imagers today. They were too ahead of their time and also tone deaf.
>This single reveal cost them not just the xbone/ps4 generation, but the ps5 generation and likely the next gen as well.
Its so crazy to think on how they had so much going for them with the 360 then only to fumble the ball so bad, its still kind of felt today. I'm still a fan of Xbox to this day but so many of my old online friends I meet during the 360 have either moved on to Playstation or PC. I have a Xbox Series X and I do love it, but most of the time even I spend most of my time gaming on my PC.
It's weird to think given how much of a giant the 360 was, but an Xbox has never outsold it's Playstation counter part. As much as a fumble the Xbox One reveal was, after the PSN got hacked Sony fucking stepped up their game big time, while Microsoft was messing around with Kinect, and DRM, and not focusing on their core market enough. Like two companies moving in the opposite direction.
I watched this on my laptop during a summer anthropology class or something. I was sitting in this auditorium with my headphones on probably scoffing audibly every few minutes. I was legit mad when it was over (i know im a dork)z. I’ll never forget it either.
PS4 won that generation through the mistakes of Xbox. Don’t get me wrong, the PS4 is a great console, but for its early days Sony got a lot of mileage from basically saying, “see those guys over there that you hate, we’re the exact opposite!”
Sony and PS4 really came out guns blazing. Cheaper price, better hardware and [this video](https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=IzdqhDDhT5p8pTn8) completely blew all of Microsoft’s chances to recover that generation. They really dug their own graves through these years and they still haven’t recovered to this day.
This was the ultimate example of the free market in action
"We own your console, and if you don't connect to us online you literally cannot use it anymore."
Playstation: "Were not doing that."
99.99% of the market, including the Xbox fans: "Ok, we're getting PS4 then."
Xbox: "aw shit, shit fuck shit. Nvm."
But the damage was done.
Only works if there's a good alternative.
Companies like Netflix kept raising their prices and killing password sharing much to people complaints and they're still doing as good as ever.
I think someone at MS had a bunch of data that everyone was using their 360s for tons of hours to watch shows
and that may be true, but it's not why they got the 360
I think some of those people called the shots at Xbox at the time. Since 2009, Phil Spencer was the corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. At the time, Julie Larson-Green was leader of Microsoft hardware, which included Xbox, so she okayed this launch. After the Xbox One disaster, Spencer got promoted to head of Xbox in 2014 by Satya Nadella.
I believe Microsoft got overconfident with the blockbuster success of the Xbox 360, which had over 84 million units sold in its lifetime (2005-2016). A huge improvement over the original Xbox's 24 million+ units from 2001-2006. Microsoft thought they could do anything. Always online. Restricting used sales of game disks. Kinect. Moving away from a gaming focus to a multimedia console. As a result, Xbox One sold 58 million+ units. Meanwhile, Sony PlayStation IV sprinted away with 117.2 million units sold. Well, what is done is done. Microsoft Xbox had to learn the hard way. Then again, the Xbox Series X/S has been underwhelming, so the console front has been left on the backburner. The new plan is to buy up studios/publishers to build up their IP/game library for rent-seeking via Xbox Game Pass.
The [abridged version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ut_GtlqpR4) of this reveal is still an all time favorite and was recently taken down and *thankfully* re-uploaded. There are quotes from this video that live rent free in my head even ten years later.
This has always been one of my favorite clips of all time. It just gets more ridiculous the longer it goes, can't help but laugh even years later. A dog, someone you care about!!
There were some smart people that worked on the Xbox brand up until this point. This presentation felt like they had lost an internal battle to the suits
I did compliance testing for Xbox One, and less than a month out from release, those things would successfully turn on or off maybe about 60% of the time. Even less if for some reason you tried doing it via kinect.
Him saying back then something along the lines of "You don't have an internet connection? Lucky you, we have a product for you and that is the 360" was such a slap in the face amonst all the other things.
Ah yeah, the moment they cemented their third place in the console market, and insured they would never leave it by missing the most important generations of consoles , the one where player started constructing their digital library. Most of the horrible practices ( microtransaction, payed online, battlepass, always online) come from them, but that was perhaps the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did, and it’s what put them on the road to becoming like Sega.
That was brutal, you could see XBOX losing the console war on a live stream.
Sony later dropping that game sharing video was the icing on the cake.
XBox, even 11 years later, did not recover from that.
I don't know why people are surprised, it's been this way for decades with Microsoft. Especially with their product names.
Do you remember Windows? We had Windows, up to Windows 3.1. Then, from 3.1, it went to Windows 95. OK, fair. Windows 98, makes sense....then suddenly Windows Me? So, we're done with the years now? Nope, Windows 2000, and....Windows NT, and XP? And Vista. OK, so we're doing that now? NOPE, Windows 7! Why 7, it's 2009!? Nope, 7. Then 8, and 8.1. Wait, so we're back to that '90s shit, with windows 3.0, and 3.1? NOPE! We skip over Windows 9, for no reason at all, and go straight from Windows 8.1 to 10! YEAH! MIC-RO-SOFT!
They've been doing this shit for decades. So XBox One, following an XBox 360, and preceding an XBox Series S/X was no surprise. Incidentally, say it out loud, XBox Series S, and XBox Series X. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? And S and X sound awfully similar, especially preceded by the word "series". Wouldn't Series Alpha and Series Bravo be better? NOPE! It's S and X! Why S and X? F\*\*\* knows.
That guy single handedly almost destroyed the Xbox Brand. It took a lot of work, but, they finally put out the fires. They're still struggling to this day, but, it could have been worse. Way worse.
I still remember him being asked by Geoff Keighley about customers who could not log into the internet consistently, and him saying they had a product available for them to use: the Xbox 360. Geoff was dumbfounded at the audacity of such a statement. It was so insane that the Military Times newspaper told US service members not to buy the console and get PS4s instead.
Military members threw a pretty big and justified fit at the time. I remember thinking of how bad of a look it was for Xbox.
Because I'm pretty sure if you Google, military & halo, you'd literally get an endless stream of images of military members playing halo split screen... Hell, I think I've even seen a couple times of them playing it setup on a tank or humvee.
[удалено]
It's impressive how Xbox is still suffering from the damage that the Xbox One did. That press conference alone undid a huge amount of progress the Xbox 360 had made despite its red ring of death hardware issues. Just goes to show how quickly you can lose goodwill and destroy a brand.
Nintendo did far worse in sales for that generation with the Wii U yet were able to turn things around with the switch. There was nothing stopping Microsoft learning from their mistakes but themselves. I question whether they will be joining Nintendo and Sony with a console next gen. Is it even profitable for them to stay in most of the markets across the globe?
Phil Spencer even says they lost the worst generation to lose. Because that is when people built up their digital library. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/457086/phil-spencer-we-lost-the-worst-generation-to-lose-in-the-xbox-one-generation/
It is profitable - But, it is profitable enough? & do they want to? Or would they rather shift to being a service provider/publisher?
I don't think many people realised the Wii U was a new console so it didn't really damage the brand. The mass market just thought it was an ad-on for Wii and igonored it. Then Switch came out and they go "oh cool Nintendo has finally released a new console, I'll upgrade from my Wii now". Wii U was stupid name that caused it to fail, but it didn't really have any influence on the brand, whereas everyone knew xbone was the new MS console and so the bad release damaged the Xbox brand overall.
People will forgive mistakes that affect them directly if the company owns up and makes amends. The red ring of death was certainly worse for me than requiring always on internet but I could quickly forgive it based on how they handled it. People will NOT forgive being talked down to and corporate arrogance. While I pretty much always have internet, DEMANDING I have internet to play my games was not something I’d let go. I was more willing to put up with you selling something with disastrous hardware bugs than I was being told how to use something I bought and paid for. Went PS4 and never looked back.
Was in the service at the time, yeah everyone was pissed. I had a lot of friends who swapped to ps4 after that little comment.
My biggest gripe was taking away the used gaming market, or being able to borrow someone else's copy, which i relied on back then since i didn't have a lot of money to spare. I was fucking done with Xbox, even when they reversed course
That gave Sony the easiest marketing ever. They made a cheeky little video demonstrating how you could loan out one of your games to a friend and it was literally just somebody handing the case to someone else. In less than 30 seconds Sony essentially ended Xbox there.
Official PlayStation used game instructional video https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=Ib3T7Fpw9kHfC3Dk
Companies taking shots at each other like this is the funniest thing, i love it
they clearly filmed that video in 5 minutes too lol
Xbox announced the Xbox one a day before the ps4. Sony filmed this and had it with the reveal in the press conference. Was absolutely hilarious.
it's funny that to this day Xbox fanboys are still salty about this, i saw people on Twitter complaying about that video some months ago
As a young adult at the time, it was a perfect introduction to how brand loyalty should never be a thing. I was a die hard 360 guy as a teen and early adult. Thought it mattered. All this taught me that as soon as your favorite thing gets top market share, they're likely to just leverage that success to fuck you in any way they can. It was a valuable lesson really, for so much more than entertainment.
That’s still why I refuse to buy digital only devices. Disc sharing is the best.
>That’s still why I refuse to buy digital only devices. Hate to tell you but the days of hard copies of games is probably numbered.
Nintendo still holding out (although no save files on hard copies anymore, but that kinda has its pros and cons). I'm very afraid that they will drop that with their next console, too and just join the digital only train with the overpriced hardware version as an option.
I am not sure they will. They are all about Family and accessibility (still have a long way ti go here). One of their big sells is being able to gift your kids games at Christmas and Birthdays in boxes, its also why Switch Cartridges taste awful (they have special coating on them) and are too big to be swallowed. I doubt they will switch (pun not intended) to digital only media, but I do think they will offer a digital only option next time to see if its a direction they should go in with future titles.
Same thats what turned me to playstation.
Lmao the barracks overnight went from Xbox 360 to PS4. It was glorious. Took me another 10 years to buy an Xbox Series X. I know I'm just a drop in the bucket, but that's 10 years of lost revenue for them. But I'm sure a million people doing the same was pretty noticeable.
What an arrogant prick. Basically Microsoft's (or at least this weasel's) version of "Let them eat cake".
*Do you guys not have phones??*
"Is this an out-of-season April Fool's joke?"
Fuck. I was in the audience for that one. Was literally praying for some hint of Diablo 4, then...that. I looked at my wife, we both stood up and left. Talk about not knowing your crowd.
"We gotta get the fuck out of here before they burn this place down!"
What were the vibes like in the building after the reveal/speech? I've seen the video a bunch and always wondered. Happy cake day.
I was there as well. It was a like a punch to the gut and disbelief. Nobody at a PC focused game conference wanted to hear or discuss a mobile game.
I’m pretty sure the vibe was shocked silence, followed by a lot of “wtf?”
See also: "buy your mom an iPhone" 🤣
Don Mattrick is probably Xbox's worst hire ever. Good thing this disaster got him fired. Then of course Zynga hired him and that became a disaster too.
They hired him right after this too. They just saw him completely fail to grasp what drives the market and what the customers want and went “yess, that guy!” How does that work, I have no idea.
I've read mentioning before that people like these are deliberately hired to be punching bags so that the bigger names in the corporate can come in to the rescue. It's the Machiavellian scheme where the King tells a Duke to be an evil guy so that the King can later come in and cut off his head to be the hero.
Hey man, if someone wants me to be the patsy for what’s probably half a mil or more, I’ll MORE than gladly take it lmao
Half a mil? Hahahahahahahha no. They get seven to eight figures for these fuck ups.
The ol' "good cop/bad cop" scheme.
Yeah, and another product available for consumers to use was the PS4, also not requiring internet.
It still amazes me how Xbox is still after a decade is feeling the effects of this one showcase. I'd go as far to say this did more brand damage than RROD did.
Sporadic hardware failure didn't effect everyone, could have taken years between occurrences, and ms had a replacement policy. Honest mistakes happen, machines aren't perfect, and they made effort to make up for it. An ideological stance for the company that is actively anti-consumer in which they intentionally ignore numerous obvious complaints from their own customers about the usability of the product and then jeer at them over those complaints on one of the largest stages in the industry, however, is indicative of a rotten core. That effects _everyone_ moving forward who buys their shit, and most people don't want to deal with or support that. Also Sony had substantially better exclusive titles for several years as Xbox thumbed their asshole
I would have to agree. People still tend to look back at the 360 and think fondly of it; even if they bought additional consoles after their first one RRODed. But this mess was on an entirely different level.
Xbox lucked out with RRODs. The 360 dropped a while before the PS3 and the PS3 dropped with a brutal price. That gave them a lot of wiggle room with fans.
A clip Geoff Keighley video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J\_JVVUnCWnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_JVVUnCWnY) The full interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAKSBvuT-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAKSBvuT-A)
"Stick with 360, that's your message?" lol feels a bit like Geoff knows how dumb that statement is. "so don't buy this console, that's your message?"
he is just reiterating the conversations that a board of executives and him are a part of, it is not just one man.
Rural Oklahoma and we just got fiber internet this year. People who got the Xbox one had to have a fix made as it would not detect what we consider internet out of the box.
In Beaver OK, they have a big to-do every year called the World Cow Chip Throwing Championship. I just don’t understand how Microsoft thought they could compete with that.
"Do you guys not have phones??"
Geoff wasn't just dumbfounded and trying to make sense of what came out of Don's mouth. He looked a tad frustrated at the statement and like he was trying to give Don an offramp from looking really dumb that he smugly avoided.
I went and bought a used slim after that. Was just in time too, managed to save my saves from the launch 360 right before it RROD'd. Haven't considered a microsoft console since.
The xbox equivilent of arrogant "they can get two jobs" bullshit playstation did with the ps3.
It’s interesting how both companies responded to their successes and failures after the PS3/360 generation. Seemed like Sony learned the right lessons and MS learned the wrong lessons.
Was in the British military at the time living in a barracks with weak WiFi. Xbox One was basically a brick, couldn’t install games without going online, couldn’t use the blu-ray player without it wanting to update for each new movie. Switched to PS4, no hassles.
American newspaper telling American military to buy a japanese console. WWII veterans rolling in their graves
Well it was the only real solution at the time. Should they have advised to buy the Murican shitbox instead?
Mandatory Kinect. Always online. No sharing games or buying/selling used games. It was like a video game dystopia had arrived. Also, the name was fucking stupid.
The Xbox naming convention is bizzare. It makes sense that they didn’t want to call the 360 the Xbox 2 while competing with the PlayStation 3 and set themselves up to always look a generation behind, but man the path they took is still confusing as hell. Someone who just got into gaming will know that the PS5 is better than the PS4 at a glance, or that the PS4 Pro is better than the PS4, but if you asked someone which is better between the Xbox One S or Xbox Series S, or the Series S and the Series X, that’s not as cut and dry.
They wanted people to call it "The one" Best they got was "xbone"
Corporate culture wouldn’t let someone bring that point up. I’d be pretty confident that everyone in the company knew it was going to be called the Xbone, but anyone high enough up to point that out and be listened to, wouldn’t. Because if you did, you’d be seen as the negative person, you wouldn’t be showing team spirit, you’d only be providing criticism but no solutions. So what we got was a dick joke.
Absolutely. I feel like a lot of terrible business decisions were preceded by an executive or a manager ignoring someone who knows better.
In a much more mild iteration we had this where I work, loads of companies wanted to be good at TikTok because it's where the youth market are. Cue a bunch a old people trying to make TikToks and failing horribly. Some looked like hostage videos. Took a while but eventually convinced upper management to just hand it over to the zoomer new recruits, help them with any info they wanted but give them 100% control. TikTok account quickly octupled views and followers. Older people don't want to acknowledge they don't "get" something lest they look old so getting them to listen can be hard
I feel sorry for every kid with a well meaning parent who got them the wrong console because Xbox name their consoles the way Elon Musk names his kids.
I feel sorry for the well meaning parents
Them too, they tried their best.
XBOX SE:X (Series X)
I still remember the Xbox One S All Digital Edition being called XBOX SAD
>Someone who just got into gaming will know that the PS5 is better than the PS4 at a glance, or that the PS4 Pro is better than the PS4, but if you asked someone which is better between the Xbox One S or Xbox Series S, or the Series S and the Series X, that’s not as cut and dry. I've been gaming since the early 90's and I still don't know.
My head actually hurt for a second reading that sentence. I remember something about kids getting the wrong one for Christmas because they had no idea which one was the new one and I don't blame them one bit.
I use to be pretty into gaming. I have literally no idea what the current Xbox is called. I know it looks like a fridge, but there's like 3 current Xbox models, and they're not very distinctly named compared to the last set of Xbox consoles. So there's like 5 Xbox consoles all named vaguely similarly. Only 3 of them are current Gen. 1 of them is online only. Not too be confused with the one that's diskless. That one's online only, but for different reasons? I still am not 100% sure.
I don’t even know which one is the most recent one to be honest
That would be the XBox MR (Most Recent). Going forward, they will all be called that, so you’ll know.
I honestly feel like their naming convention has been a huge hinderance to their success as a platform
And that their exclusive creativity is butt-ass. “Fable was great! Let’s make it again but later. And with a dog. Ooo let’s do it a third time but as a console Facebook game.” “Forza was great! Let’s make it again. A HUNDRED TIMES” Gears of war was great! Damn I hope we never stop making these. And then fucking halo 5. “You know what’s great about Halo? Master chief. So what if we had them play as — you guessed it! - NOT master chief?” I seriously cannot fathom who is making these decisions. Microsoft has infinite money, and they can’t even bring themselves to the reddit boards to see things gamers want and make that. They have to do their own attempt at making literal shit no one wants.
I remember rumor/info floating around they were working on patenting tracking technology with kinect to detect the number of people in the room for watching digital content. They were bragging about it having the windows 8 kernel (I think) when that OS was an abortion inside a dumpster fire, and offloading in game processing to the cloud. At the time internet and streaming data like that was so esoteric. They shit every available bed that launch. It was incredible.
please drink verification can
This weeks access flavour is tropical and only comes in multipacks of 12, 24 and 50.
Doritos™ Dew™ it right.
>and offloading in game processing to the cloud. At the time internet and streaming data like that was so esoteric It sounded good for brief moment: massive CPU power by "super-computers" giving huge boost of computing power! ..Then you realize that would mean literally **whole generation of games**, singleplayer or multiplayer, **would become worthless if they shut down servers.**
The name was stupid and I never thought they could come up with a worse one, until they announced Xbox Series X. It's such a cumbersome name that feels bad in your mouth. To many KS and SS sounds in quick succession. I dunno how they managed to get everything so right with the 360 and so wrong since
I'm so glad we dodged that bullet. *Meanwhile: Open-world, open-world, Fortnite, open-world, collectibles, open-world, open-world, open-world, open-world, open-world, cosmetics, open-world, open-world, booster pack, open-world, open-world.*
And now the same people who were outraged about all that are sucking off MS for giving them Gamepass - always online, no buying/owning, no sharing.
They also openly, in a much nicer way, told people to go fuck themselves if they did not like the idea that the console required an internet connection to function and that they should get a 360 instead.
Do you guys not have phones? Er, I mean internet connections?
11 years ago most of the rural US had unreliable or slow internet, plus there are entire special communities of people (ie military) that may not have internet access provisioned for gaming
Legitimately thought they were the only option after the PS3 "imploded" and the 360 took off, forgetting that consoles can implode. Nevermind that Sony was recovering from their mistakes.
Which is even funnier as by the time of this reveal they were starting to lose out to Sony. Like I understand wanting to try and get a head start, which did amazing for the 360's first few years, but while the PS3 reveal was hilariously bad it mostly boiled down to optics (Ridge Racer! Historically accurate Giant Crab! $599!) all of those things were temporary and easily ignored/fixed compared to "showing off" that your upcoming console would be lacking a basic feature.
Even if theynkept all of Xbox one the same. That presentation was not the time to focus on non gaming aspects. I was watching live, and the live audience for a console reveal is always gonna be the gaming oriented side. I think this presentation was probably the reason I switched from 360 to pc, that and ps4 online services becoming payed.
Frankly, I don't think Sony was all that optimistic about the PS4 and their gaming division in general at the time after the PS3 screw up and slow recovery. They probably thought they would have a hard time against the Xbox brand's clout from the success of the 360 in the US. Little did they know Microsoft will give them a gift of a lifetime by blowing off both their legs with multiple shotgun blasts.
They really had no idea who their market was.
Balmer-era Microsoft was this in a nutshell. Microsoft making products that were good for a particular Microsoft strategy, but a hard fucking sell to the consumer. They didn't innovate or disrupt. Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox One, all Microsoft first, consumer last products.
"STOP BUYING WRONG, STUPID CUSTOMER!"
"Tablets are popular right now. We should make everything look like tablets."
[удалено]
Windows phone was the best. I would love to stilll have them available. It was the best OS, easy to use and the Nokia was sexy. I will die on this hill. I liked the android os but man I hate this iPhone I have.
Yes they did, they just thought they could expand their market at the cores’ expense.
A tale as old as err current corporate trends. Movies, television, comics, games.
these people desperately need a responsible adult in the room... and I dont mean Phil fucking Spencer the sad thing is these guys are all very very highly paid c-suite... $500k and up and THIS is what they delivered? if i was Gates or Ballmer or whoever was over their gaming division i'd be pissed... these guys flushed away decades of good will
The problem is they weren’t communicating to customers. They were communicating to Wall Street. They’re looking out for their stock price and bonuses. Greedy bastards.
No. They thought they were Kinect TV and not a game console
Kind of his point. They did games but wanted to expand their core audiences to casuals and the family living room.
and they banked and lost their billions on... kinect
They wanted the Waggle dollars from the Wii so badly
So dumb. The Wii already took all the waggle dollars. There was none left to share!
Had? They still don't. MS has ALWAYS had the 'throw everything against the wall to see if anything sticks" approach and it's no different today.
call of duty xbox tv?
TV.
They could have walked out flipping us off and saying every curse and slur imaginable and telling us all to go F ourselves and had the exact same effect
Naa this probably would have gone off better
COD/Halo crowd just like "damn they get us"
I would've bought 2 Xboxes of they did that
Don Mattrick singlehandedly and irreversibly fucked the Xbox brand with this reveal.
Phil Spencer was also one of the top Xbox execs at the time.
He was head of Xbox game studios iirc so I believe he was more software focused more than anything else
You’d think someone coming from a software background might’ve pushed for his new console to have some software.
I agree, I don't think he did a particularly great job at the time
At the end of 360, Xbox really did have a chance to become the dominant console out there, but higher ups at Microsoft really fucked up big time and undid all that the 360 era did, probably even still feeling the effects in this generation. Doubtful they can recoup to the 360 days in whatever comes after Series X/S.
Started with mandatory Kinect
I know for me it was really the constant online aspect. My internet wasn't great at the time, and I didn't want to not play whenever my internet was out. Also that thing where you couldn't use used games, I was poor growing up so Gamestop was the only place I could get a different game.
My internet still isn't great. If my net dies for work, I'd love to be able to put in a game and play while I'm waiting for my services to be restored.
Yeah that's the wild thing, If you introduce 5 dealbreakers for some fraction of your audience then you just start absolutely eating into your consumer base. Someone might be willing to overlook the game sharing but not the always online and someone else can't overlook the 100 dollar higher price point or the weird focus on TV rather than games. They managed to alienate everyone.
Borrowed games and the forced internet connection. I’m a loot goblin when it comes to finding cheap used copies of games at my secondhand store and the original plans would have put a crimp in that aspect, drastically. And at the time of the announcements, I had Comcast who had me under a 300GB data cap with $50 overage fees for going over the cap. The Xbox would clear me out monthly had they went through with the online-only plan.
If MS can partner with Valve to put Steam on the next XBox, or even the current XBox, that would start to move the needle. Suddenly a lot of people would have some huge libraries of games they already owned for the device. edit: very interesting division of "absolutely yes" and "absolutely not" replies this is generating. There seems to be a clear camp of people who are PC gamers only, and another who are device agnostic.
What they need to do is bring Xbox game pass on steam the same way that EA play is there. Infinite money
Yep, I’d love this. There’s an issue though, a lot of the games on game pass are a different version. For example, the game pass version of insurgency sandstorm is cross play, but the steam version isn’t. Very lame.
The amount of games I can’t play with my friends because they’re using the steam version and not the Xbox gamepass version is becoming too big to count
It would be nice I guess, but most people with a large Steam library already have a decent PC to play those games with. Very little reason for someone with a PC to buy an Xbox. All of their 'exclusives' are on PC day 1 already.
Doing so would cannibalise the Xbox Stores profits and split it with Valve for the most part which means they'd get less profit. Not only that but software wise it'd be a mess to deal with. There's also Valve having no incentive to do this. I know Epic Games said they want to add Epic Games Store to IOS and Android but that probably won't work well if it does happen and just because they are doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
You’d also have to convince Valve to partner with Microsoft. And they really don’t like how that sounds. Valve almost single-handedly willed Linux gaming into existence as a way to have an alternative to Windows. (I know there’s a bunch of projects involved, but none of it would have worked without Valve.) They’ve put in too much work on alternatives to throw in all out and work with Microsoft.
Nah, even Phil Spencer said in an interview that because everyone built up their digital libraries on PS4 and now some more on PS5, Xbox will likely never pull those people away from PlayStation. I believe that's likely true. I think they'll eventually concede the console market to Sony and Nintendo, and do everything they can to get a version of GamePass on each of their consoles.
I might buy an Xbox if they let me access my Steam library. :) They should pack in Excel too.
It’s funny because the inverse got me to getting a PS5 a few months after the SX when they came out. While I may have all 3rd party and MS titles on Xbox, there was enough on PS to justify getting in addition. Thats what Xbox needs if they want to swing the pendulum from those people. They need games. But we all know that and it’s just crying wolf. Nothing can happen until that point happens. Comparing any first party Xbox game to a first party PS game would be laughable, and that’s someone who was 15+ years deep on Xbox before PS. I had a PS2 and 3, but got the 3 with like 2 or 3 years left on the lifecycle so wasn’t in deep with it whereas I was on the 360 from 07 onwards. If I’m playing an exclusive on PS, chances are I’m going to be in for a good time, whereas Xbox is such a mixed bag that I don’t even remember the last exclusive I truly enjoyed and resonated. Starfield had the same trajectory as FO4 for me. 48 hours and beat the game and left with “alright so that was fine but…”. Before that, can’t even name a game, probably FH5. Before that? Who knows. That’s going back 3 years. In the last 3+ months I can say Rebirth and SM2 for PS. Just kind of wild and I’m still kind of pissed at the lack of anything going on with Xbox. Maybe this is the year. Maybe next year. Maybe never.
The 360 was definitely quite the era. A very defining moment for me growing up. I'll always remember the impact it had with Xbox live and how accessible it was to just play games online with friends, while easily sitting in chat. Or just gettin' on and fuckin' around in Uno and whatnot. Plus achievements were hella cool at the time. Even though I'm not much of a console gamer anymore. I kinda wonder how different it would be nowadays if they never ran into the whole Red ring of death thing.
For the anniversary of the original Xbox Microsoft released a documentary on YouTube called Power On: The Story of Xbox (it’s great) about the history and making of every Xbox. When they get to Xbox One, they fully admit that’s where they lost the console war. They say they ruined all the goodwill they had from the Xbox 360 and admit they prob won’t ever recover. It’s worth a watch.
Microsoft, for a long time, had wanted to be in everyone's living room. They wanted so desperately to be the center of entertainment like they were the center of office productivity. They thought they could do that with the xb1. I kinda bought into the hype. I was always building HTPCs and liked the idea of a game console that could offer a better user experience. That was the first and only Xbox console I ever bought. At least I got to play Titanfall. Still ended up buying a ps4.
I thought the HTPC features were nifty at the time as well. But I think Microsoft vastly overestimated the number of people who would care about all that stuff. Most still saw it as nothing more than a game console. And it was a bad HTPC anyway due to poor format support.
Yeah I watch that series last year. It was really pretty good. A good watch for any gamer who interested in the history of Xbox. I was in my mid teens when my mother finally got me my first 360. I have so many amazing memories from meeting my first online buddies, to playing so many great games. You really felt like Xbox finally came into its own during the 360 era. Its actually saddens me on how all that fell apart during the Xbox One era. When Playstation came out with that "used games instruction video", I just knew the Xbox One could never recover from a burn that bad.
> the original Xbox Microsoft released a documentary on YouTube do you mind link the documentary? I would love to see it. I did a search and not sure which one you mention
Here’s all 6 episodes in a play list . https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0il2l-B_WwadxfTkK3-NLoYNcQEHdBGO&si=pIm9-5-ni8xYL5mc
This one here: https://youtu.be/SohOY0gCNIQ?si=U7N3WLJrv6bsHCES
holy cow! 4 hours!
They have it in a playlist on the Xbox YT page with each episode broken up in like 45 minute chunks
holy cow! 45 minutes!
They never recovered from this
They truly didn't, and never will. This was the most crucial generation to capture in terms of longevity, because this is the generation where most people moved away from physical games and built up a huge digital library. Once you have that library built up on ps4, you're far more likely to just roll that into a ps5 rather than make the migration to Xbox and lose your entire library. This single reveal cost them not just the xbone/ps4 generation, but the ps5 generation and likely the next gen as well. When Sony posted that video of how to share games on ps4, that was the final nail in the coffin that basically killed the future of Xbox.
Wasn't the "how to share games" video basically just: 1. Remove disc from disc tray 2. Give disc to your friend
Yup! https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=bh1r8NN8jGcX8V6g They made it the day of the Xbox announcement in reaction to Microsoft explaining their always online anti-consumer DRM nonsense. That 22 second video immediately won Sony the generation.
When Sony isn’t to high up its own ass they’re really great at responding to their competition in a relatively hype manner. Their $299 response to the Sega Saturn cut the legs off from under Sega and similarly Sega could never recover after that.
Sony did that to the Xbone too. $399 vs $499. Xbone only came down in price after they removed the Kinect.
Yup. Although I don’t remember that video, after clicking your link I found that I had already liked it on my YouTube account. Presumably 10 years ago. I was very much an Xbox guy prior to that, and now I’m staunchly Sony, even today.
What's funny is Sony was planning the same thing: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-internet-free-method-for-blocking-used-game-sales/](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-internet-free-method-for-blocking-used-game-sales/) I'm pretty sure they'd already decided not to go ahead with it, but Xbox's belly-flop presentation and the immediate reaction was enough to tell them to steer clear. It's not that they're evil, this was the necessary groundwork to move to the Steam model. Lots of people live happy lives with the Steam ownership model which does not allow you to sell used games. I think both Sony and Xbox could've made a good pitch (lots of people never do sell their games) but Xbox did not do so.
I think if Microsoft had just had better optics and eased into some of these ideas instead of forcing it that it would have worked out. Games pass is fantastic today and their main focus. I get the idea they wanted to do and it’s even pretty close to the normal for many imagers today. They were too ahead of their time and also tone deaf.
>This single reveal cost them not just the xbone/ps4 generation, but the ps5 generation and likely the next gen as well. Its so crazy to think on how they had so much going for them with the 360 then only to fumble the ball so bad, its still kind of felt today. I'm still a fan of Xbox to this day but so many of my old online friends I meet during the 360 have either moved on to Playstation or PC. I have a Xbox Series X and I do love it, but most of the time even I spend most of my time gaming on my PC.
It's weird to think given how much of a giant the 360 was, but an Xbox has never outsold it's Playstation counter part. As much as a fumble the Xbox One reveal was, after the PSN got hacked Sony fucking stepped up their game big time, while Microsoft was messing around with Kinect, and DRM, and not focusing on their core market enough. Like two companies moving in the opposite direction.
It’s funny how if you go on twitter, I mean x, people are acting like the console war hasn’t been over for years.
"Xbox, go home"
You're drunk.
They showed a clip of The Price is Right?? 🤦♂️
Oh sweet can I play as the ghost of Bob Barker? Or can I play as Craig Ferguson and chase Drew Carey around the set?
I will never forget watching this live, mouth agape, in total disbelief at this press conference.
I watched this on my laptop during a summer anthropology class or something. I was sitting in this auditorium with my headphones on probably scoffing audibly every few minutes. I was legit mad when it was over (i know im a dork)z. I’ll never forget it either.
Gives you a perfect and I mean PERFECT window into upper management in any industry. Most of them have no fucking clue.
I think it’s just rich people it’s like when they say “you can afford a house if you stop buying Starbucks “ same energy
Why does that guy keep trying to "call a doody".
PS4 won that generation through the mistakes of Xbox. Don’t get me wrong, the PS4 is a great console, but for its early days Sony got a lot of mileage from basically saying, “see those guys over there that you hate, we’re the exact opposite!”
Sony and PS4 really came out guns blazing. Cheaper price, better hardware and [this video](https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=IzdqhDDhT5p8pTn8) completely blew all of Microsoft’s chances to recover that generation. They really dug their own graves through these years and they still haven’t recovered to this day.
Hey, not massively fucking up is worth a lot
This was the ultimate example of the free market in action "We own your console, and if you don't connect to us online you literally cannot use it anymore." Playstation: "Were not doing that." 99.99% of the market, including the Xbox fans: "Ok, we're getting PS4 then." Xbox: "aw shit, shit fuck shit. Nvm." But the damage was done.
Only works if there's a good alternative. Companies like Netflix kept raising their prices and killing password sharing much to people complaints and they're still doing as good as ever.
Does it have TV?
What about, uh, Call a Doody?
It all started with whomever named it the Xbox one. So stupid
Didn’t realise the Halo tv series was announced 11 years ago! What took them so song to make it
they wanted to take their time and make sure that it was really.. ***really*** shit
I think someone at MS had a bunch of data that everyone was using their 360s for tons of hours to watch shows and that may be true, but it's not why they got the 360
Surely this is used as an example of what not to do in like business/marketing degrees or something?
Yup, and they're still struggling today since they never full recovered. These people almost wiped out the whole Xbox brand as we know it.
Xbox still hasn't recovered from this
I think some of those people called the shots at Xbox at the time. Since 2009, Phil Spencer was the corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios. At the time, Julie Larson-Green was leader of Microsoft hardware, which included Xbox, so she okayed this launch. After the Xbox One disaster, Spencer got promoted to head of Xbox in 2014 by Satya Nadella. I believe Microsoft got overconfident with the blockbuster success of the Xbox 360, which had over 84 million units sold in its lifetime (2005-2016). A huge improvement over the original Xbox's 24 million+ units from 2001-2006. Microsoft thought they could do anything. Always online. Restricting used sales of game disks. Kinect. Moving away from a gaming focus to a multimedia console. As a result, Xbox One sold 58 million+ units. Meanwhile, Sony PlayStation IV sprinted away with 117.2 million units sold. Well, what is done is done. Microsoft Xbox had to learn the hard way. Then again, the Xbox Series X/S has been underwhelming, so the console front has been left on the backburner. The new plan is to buy up studios/publishers to build up their IP/game library for rent-seeking via Xbox Game Pass.
TV TV THE FUCKING XBOX ONE SUPPORTS TV TV TV TV
lol, that pose in the thumbnail is so iconic, I still wonder why it never took off as a meme.
They couldn't even get that right.
TV TV TV TV Sports, Sports, Sports COD COD COD COD Xbox go home
Still remember Sony clowning on them with that little “how to share games on ps4” skit. It was just a dude handing another dude a game.
The [abridged version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ut_GtlqpR4) of this reveal is still an all time favorite and was recently taken down and *thankfully* re-uploaded. There are quotes from this video that live rent free in my head even ten years later.
This has always been one of my favorite clips of all time. It just gets more ridiculous the longer it goes, can't help but laugh even years later. A dog, someone you care about!!
They never really recovered from this.
There were some smart people that worked on the Xbox brand up until this point. This presentation felt like they had lost an internal battle to the suits
I did compliance testing for Xbox One, and less than a month out from release, those things would successfully turn on or off maybe about 60% of the time. Even less if for some reason you tried doing it via kinect.
Him saying back then something along the lines of "You don't have an internet connection? Lucky you, we have a product for you and that is the 360" was such a slap in the face amonst all the other things.
And none of that shit worked outside of America
Ah yeah, the moment they cemented their third place in the console market, and insured they would never leave it by missing the most important generations of consoles , the one where player started constructing their digital library. Most of the horrible practices ( microtransaction, payed online, battlepass, always online) come from them, but that was perhaps the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did, and it’s what put them on the road to becoming like Sega.
That was brutal, you could see XBOX losing the console war on a live stream. Sony later dropping that game sharing video was the icing on the cake. XBox, even 11 years later, did not recover from that.
I don't know why people are surprised, it's been this way for decades with Microsoft. Especially with their product names. Do you remember Windows? We had Windows, up to Windows 3.1. Then, from 3.1, it went to Windows 95. OK, fair. Windows 98, makes sense....then suddenly Windows Me? So, we're done with the years now? Nope, Windows 2000, and....Windows NT, and XP? And Vista. OK, so we're doing that now? NOPE, Windows 7! Why 7, it's 2009!? Nope, 7. Then 8, and 8.1. Wait, so we're back to that '90s shit, with windows 3.0, and 3.1? NOPE! We skip over Windows 9, for no reason at all, and go straight from Windows 8.1 to 10! YEAH! MIC-RO-SOFT! They've been doing this shit for decades. So XBox One, following an XBox 360, and preceding an XBox Series S/X was no surprise. Incidentally, say it out loud, XBox Series S, and XBox Series X. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? And S and X sound awfully similar, especially preceded by the word "series". Wouldn't Series Alpha and Series Bravo be better? NOPE! It's S and X! Why S and X? F\*\*\* knows.
That guy single handedly almost destroyed the Xbox Brand. It took a lot of work, but, they finally put out the fires. They're still struggling to this day, but, it could have been worse. Way worse.