I do not
think I need to tell you guys all the things that have gone on
regarding Microsoft and the Xbox One (X1). If you are reading this,
then you are likely already aware of the controversies surrounding
the X1 since the initial February launch, along with the ensuing
backpedal only a few days ago as of the time of writing. There is no
real point in reiterating all of that here. Having said all that,
with all that has gone on recently, there has spawned what could be
referred to as a reverse-backlash, where people were angry that
Microsoft responded to both its critics and low pre-order numbers.
This movement was born in response to Microsoft cutting some of the
consoles more interesting features, citing that the online check was
necessary to maintain them. While I find these claims dubious, for
reasons cited by both Eurogamer
and Gamasutra,
that's again not the point of this article.
What I
want to talk about is what the Xbox One could have done in the first
design to make the new console more palatable to initial audiences.
To be clear, I will not be focusing on the TV features nor any of the
PR surrounding that. The scope of this article will be solely on the
technology and policies with regards to the gaming side, because
that's ultimately what matters.
I feel that there are five major changes they could have made in the
design they first revealed so that it would have been more
successful. Two of them are changes that have already been made, two
are commonly cited complaints that remain on the console, and the
last one will probably be very controversial, as I am sure I will get
a lot of flak for it. Though I am not an expert in the fields of
business nor engineering, I have some knowledge of programming
and operating systems. I do not have any reason to believe that what
I propose would be particularly difficult. Final disclosure: I am an
unashamed fan of the Playstation brand, so my stake in Microsoft's
success is only in that I wish that the competition they provide
forces Sony to continue improving. Having said all of that, my
proposals to “fix” the original design of the X1 is as follows.
The
first one I would throw out there would have been to remove the
24-hour phone-home scheme. A common criticism Microsoft received was
that a constant check like this, while not terribly problematic for
the vast majority of demographics, could still be an issue in quite a
few circumstances. One of the most notable we have seen talked about
are people serving abroad in the military. Those who serve are
typically given incredibly scarce access to the internet, and solid
access is prohibitively expensive as noted by Robert Rath in his
Critical
Intel column on the Escapist. I do not know if
this is the case in many other countries, but in America the military
is very well respected. When any major companies upset service
members, that company really suffers in PR, which results in lowered
sales. Whether or not that is a good thing is up for debate, but it
does happen and often.
Also
noted by Rath, such an internet check would stifle organizations like
Child's Play, which provide games to hospitalized children. I know
this does directly affect Microsoft's bottom dollar. However, Child's
Play is one of the few things the industry as a whole can point to
when major tragedies happen and games are blamed for them. While
helping sick children is the goal, it has the added side effect of
helping the industry stave off legislation that politicians are more
than willing to impose on it. Aside from these two groups, the
internet check does impact those who travel a lot and people who have
weak connections and limited data caps, which European countries are
very well known for. The infrastructure simply is not there yet.
Perhaps it will be more feasible a few years down the line, when
solid internet becomes completely ubiquitous, this kind of feature
can be considered. As of now, it simply inconveniences too many
people.
The
other primary concern with this feature alone was Microsoft's ability
to maintain servers in all regions constantly. Just the other day as
of the time of writing, Xbox
Live went down for some users for a few hours.
While this is no longer a concern in light of recent events, in the
theoretical where the X1 maintained its initial course, depending on
when a given user last signed on with their console, this could have
resulted in being unable to play games on the console for several
hours. Having a need for the console to ping home to Microsoft's
servers results in an unspoken contract forming between the company
and its users. When mandating that users have to phone home once a
day, Microsoft tacitly accepts the responsibility to maintain those
servers at all times, keeping maintenance times as low as they can
possibly be. This results in an increased cost of keeping those
servers running, as many publishers of tacked-on multiplayer in games
found out the hard way. Just this one feature, which was thankfully
removed, would have caused a lot of problems in terms of consumer
inconvenience and added costs to all parties.
The next
thing I would have recommended, as they have again already done in
the new design, is to remove the region lock on the system. Region
locks have always been a sketchy part of the industry. The reason
often cited for such practices is the difference in prices between
different regions, meaning that it can sometimes be cheaper for a
person to import a game from outside the country than it is to buy
the version made available in that person's country, even when
including tariffs and shipping charges on imported goods. As a
result, with the exception of the PS3, people who wanted to buy
imported games would need to either modify their existing console to
support games from outside regions, which is easier said than done,
or just buy a console from that region as well.
The
problem comes that in combination with the aforementioned internet
mandate, even imported consoles would not work for countries outside
of Microsoft's list of supported countries, because the servers
simply would not be there. This was evidenced when it was revealed
that Poland, where The Witcher developer CD Projekt is based,
would
not receive the Xbox One on launch day. In
other words, the developers of a game touted quite early on in the
Microsoft press conference would be unable to use the new console to
play the game that they developed. Game commentator John Bain, more
commonly known as TotalBiscuit, also noted that out of the top 25
countries that view his videos, 8
of them would not have had access to the X1 at
launch. While this issue was resolved, and thus is no longer a
concern, it would have again shut Microsoft out of a number of
potential audiences.
While
both of the above issues have been rectified by Microsoft, the next
two are still legitimate concerns that some cite when talking about
the new Xbox. One of the biggest of these issues is the Kinect
included with each and every X1. Let me be clear on this, I am
absolutely not against having a Kinect packaged in. If we are all
being totally honest, devices like the Kinect could never be
successful as add-ons to a console sold separately simply because
developers cannot be sure if a given customer would have it. We saw
this with the 360's Kinect and the Playstation Move and Eye
peripherals from this generation. Guaranteeing that a customer has
Kinect gives developers more freedom to experiment with it. The
problems stem from two different points.
The
first and easiest to tackle is the fact that adding this accessory
raised the price of the console by $100 compared to Sony's new
console. While consumers will likely accept a Kinect bundled in with
their Xbox One even if they did not desire it, raising the price of
the console causes concerns because it forces those consumers who are
not interested to spend more money despite that disinterest. For
consumers looking into which next generation console is the best for
them, this is a tough pill to swallow. I understand that the Kinect
was expensive to develop and produce, but since new consoles are
always sold at a loss anyway, it makes so sense to pass the entirety
of the Kinect's cost onto the consumer. Obviously some of it does
need to be passed on, but I would imagine a $449 system is easier to
market than a $499 one.
The
other issue here is a lot tougher to deal with. Because of the way
the Xbox One's hardware was designed, the system literally cannot
function unless the Kinect is turned on. According to Microsoft
Support, which is honestly suspect given the
schizophrenic nature of their post-E3 PR, the X1 will only activate
when users say “Xbox On” to their Kinect. Given the recent PRISM
scandal, which revealed the Microsoft along with many, many other
companies were giving
information regarding their customers
activities to the NSA, trusting Microsoft with a sensor in their own
home is no longer an easy sell. Others may even be concerned that the
information will be used in a private capacity to sell to other
companies, which Google and Facebook openly admit to doing
themselves.
While I
personally do not believe Microsoft has any ill intent with the
Kinect and have been assured that it will have tons of privacy
options on it by sources working on the device, mandating its use
does leave them at a distinct disadvantage when the conversation has
switched to government spying on a domestic level. Even without the
recent scandals and even with privacy settings, getting consumer
trust will be incredibly difficult. There are benefits to the
inclusion with a Kinect and it does seem core to the design of the
new console, but the way it was included can leave a lot to be
desired.
While
perhaps less critical, another commonly issued criticism of the new
Xbox is that indie developers still cannot self-publish. To be fair,
this is the status quo for Microsoft, as the 360 also imposed this
rule. However, independent developers are becoming much more
influential than they were only a few years ago. Considering that
Sony and even Nintendo have made reaching out to these smaller
studios a priority, lowing the price of admission and allowing for
self-publishing, this seems like an odd policy to maintain on
Microsoft's part. I can respect having a division of Microsoft
Studios at the ready to publish indie games and help them onto Xbox
Live if needed, but to force every developer to use that window seems
like a mistake. It is a perfectly viable method for some and maybe
even most, but not appropriate for all. Independent developers are
very useful in their own right. With lower budgets, it becomes
possible to experiment with new and interesting game design ideas,
which the AAA developers can then adapt for their own use, pushing
the medium forward. In the future, it will be necessary to make it as
easy as possible to release games on a console. There will be a lot
of bad games that we will see as a result, but we will also see tons
of great gems that would otherwise get passed over. Not allowing them
to self-publish will result in turning away quite a few great games
that the competition will easily snatch up and take for their own.
My final
recommendation is going to be a little controversial, but I do
legitimately feel that it would have improved consumer reaction to
the console. In order to better sell the vision of an all digital
console, I feel that it might have been a smarter move to not even
sell discs on the Xbox One. The way Microsoft was trying to sell this
new console as, in a sense, a digital-only service with features that
could have potetnially even given Steam a run for its money, a smart
idea would be to just double down and only make games available as
digital downloads. The way the system was originally sold, and I am
simplifying to a degree, the disc would include a code that provided
a user access to both the data on the disc and a digital version of
the same game. Once the code is input, the disc essentially becomes a
more efficient installer for games that are bound to the Xbox Live
account. It has no real purpose beyond being an extra trip to the
store to buy a game that could just as easily be bought online for
less effort and the same rewards. Since the disc becomes a
redundancy, removing it hurts very little and allows for benefits to
both consumers and publishers.
Since
all purchases would be tied to a given Xbox Live account, there is no
longer a need to check for an internet connection every 24 hours, so
games that would otherwise not need online connections can be played
normally. This alone solves a number of problems, because being
unable to have a connection for a week or even months would no longer
be an issue. While a user would no longer be able to purchase games
or install new ones without a connection, playing a game without
internet in the event that said person is deployed, travels, is a
sick child in a hospital, or something else entirely is still
possible. It would be possible to load game onto the system when
strong internet access is possible to make up for the times when it
is not. For the consumers, this would lead to unlimited and
unhindered access to games and the enabling of the used game
marketplace/family sharing Microsoft had in mind. For the publishers,
it guarantees that nearly 100% of all sales will be legitimate sales,
with no threat of piracy until someone finds a way to hack Microsoft.
The
other benefit this would have is that it eliminates the expectation
that used copies of games can be resold or lent to others. When a
physical product is being sold, the default expectation is that it
can be resold. This is not true of purely digital goods. Digitally
distributed software is almost never expected to have the ability to
be sold to Gamestop or some other third party. When Microsoft allows
discs on their system, they are bringing with them the expectation of
unhindered used games sales. When said expectation is violated so
thoroughly, because the X1 is primarily a digital service, the
backlash was inevitable. It was a case of trying to, and I hate this
phrase, “have your cake and eat it too”. There was no real way to
avoid it. It was bound to happen, which is why I consider allowing
the option to buy discs to be a mistake.
In the
end, this is all incredibly easy for me to say. After all, I am not
subject to any kind of bureaucracy nor I am beholden to shareholders.
All I am is a guy who watches and comments on the industry. It is
extremely easy from my position to make comments like this when I am
not concerning myself with engineering problems or maintaining deals
and agreements with outside parties. Microsoft rightly deserves much
credit for changing in direct response to consumer feedback, which I
whole-heartedly approve of. However, after the number of blunders and
gaffes made only recently, getting back in the good graves of
consumers may be more difficult than simply retracting policies and
improving consumer friendliness. There is still a long way to go, but
also plenty of time to keep improving the Xbox One until launch day,
which I am sure the engineers at Microsoft at hard at work doing.
Either way, this console war is now much less one-sided and much
more-interesting.
