The Xbox leadership team has made 3 easily avoidable mistakes in the last 12 months. How does this happen?

Gaming
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  • The Xbox Games Showcase / May

Yeah, Greenberg hyped this short 30 minute event when he shouldn’t have which was an obvious mistake because they keep setting expectations in the opposite direction of what they end up actually delivering. Under promise and over deliver. Instead, Microsoft over promises and under delivers more times than not. In fairness though, the showcase would have been fine but Ubisoft pulled gameplay for AC Valhalla two days before the event so they were basically screwed and not in a good way. I personally came away with three games from the showcase - Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Bright Memory Infinite and The Ascent.

  • The Halo Infinite gameplay demo from the Xbox Games Showcase / July

This is more puzzling because either A) Phil Spencer and others never saw the demo which in of itself is a negative in my eyes or B) saw the demo and liked what they saw which is also a negative in my eyes. It’s almost like they’re nonchalant and sometimes, it’s like, what are you guys doing over there? If Phil never saw the demo, oh man. UGH. Sony/Nintendo dominate and their games do amazing because both companies are strict and crack the whip when they have to. Microsoft and Spencer need to do the same thing at times. Can’t just be letting everyone run a muck with no supervision and an overseer because at the end of the day, all they’re doing is hurting their own brand and fans which is why it puzzles me sometimes from what they say and do or lack there of. It’s almost like they do the opposite of what they should do. Back to the demo, it never should have been shown in that state because when you’re touting the most powerful console and then show that demo running off a PC with all those issues, holy shit!!! Like, what were they thinking? I know gameplay demos take between 3-6 months to make which is insane to me because why not just let the game be closer to being finished and simply take a slice from that finished game, polish it up and show that instead? When was the last time anyone saw Sony/Nintendo show an AAA title with as many issues as Halo Infinite? It’s almost like they can’t see the backlash and disappointment coming. The only positive is that the Craig meme was born and the game was delayed a full year but what if they didn’t show gameplay? What if the Craig meme never happened? Would Halo Infinite have been released on November 10th? My answer without a shadow of a doubt is yes and that right here is the biggest issues and problem in my opinion.

  • Increasing Gold from $60 a year to $120

This is simply shooting yourself in the foot. Such a dumb ass idea. Like come on. Even worse is that above Phil is only Amy Hood and Nadella. So it’s like, who approved this idea which was obviously approved months ago since those 6 month $60 cards were printed up and ready to go already. It’s shit like this that makes a lot of people who aren’t on forums and whatnot just shake their head in disbelief and lose confidence and trust in Microsoft and Xbox. Like I said, it’s basically shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, they reversed it because like with Craig, they had no choice. They added a little bonus saying that the free to play games will be unlocked. SMH. They should have been unlocked when each single individual free to play game was released. I mean come on. Also, Microsoft was going to do this anyway when Halo Infinite launches so big deal, you’re not really getting anything extra or special. In fact, you’re getting something that those who play on Xbox should have already had years ago. SMH.

Overall, for me personally, it all is what it is. I believe that there’s no one at Xbox (unlike Sony and Nintendo) that is there looking over shit, stands up and says, what the fuck are you morons thinking? Oh wait, you’re not thinking, like at all. There’s no filter and I just find it funny sometimes because yes, while developing games is a massive pain in the ass especially now, the above have nothing to do with the game development process and has more to do with overseeing everything, looking at it all, thinking about it and then making a smart intelligent decision.

At times, I look at Microsoft and Xbox like George Costanza from Seinfeld. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be correct which is probably what their biggest issue is. Not knowing what is going to be right (positive) and what is going to be wrong (negative).

Truly sad part is that outside of these three mishaps, Microsoft has done a great job with Xbox for this now current generation. They won me over after revealing the specifications of Series X and once Sony revealed the specifications of PlayStation 5, I went even further into Xbox Series X. The controller and Game Pass added to my decision. Hopefully, once their first party exclusives start releasing and that they’re of high quality, more gamers and consumers in general will be more interested, hyped and positive about jumping into the Xbox eco-system. Having great high quality exclusives can solve any negativity and concerns people may have about Microsoft and Xbox.

All we have to do is hope they don’t screw that up.

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And yet Xbox have just recorded the most successful quarter in its history. How come they are so successful and breaking records if they are so full of mistakes? Me thinks that much of the original post is flawed in thinking things were a mistake when in fact they’ve played out and brought record revenue.

The price hike was a mistake they reversed from very quickly.

I note Sony haven’t backed down from their games price hike though…

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this argument doesn’t make sense. Nintendo keeps making horrible decisions, gets massive backlash, yet sells fucking 30 million copies of a single game that released in 2020. Both things are true, Nintendo making bank and also making bad decisions regularly. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s just that a lot more people are ok with Sony and Nintendo getting away these things because they hold the majority of the mindshare and people just love their platforms more. But when xbox does it, it just hurts them because they are already fighting an uphill battle, it’s bad when they try to make these decisions. Doesn’t mean I think Xbox is doing bad, nowhere close, but just that the reasoning used isn’t sound here.

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One mans bad decision is another’s stroke of genius. People seem under the illusion that what a bunch of gamers say on the internet is word and matters a damn.

A mistake is releasing the WiiU that tanks your revenue. That’s a mistake. Not launching with an exclusive is not a mistake. Because it’s made absolutely no difference whatsoever.

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People still have a hard time understanding that games take a long time to make.

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Thats not the argument here

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Where did I talk about exclusives at launch? I just said it’s possible to do shitty things and still be able to get away with success. EA got entire governments involved for their dogshit lootbox fiasco, yet makes the most money from them, doesn’t mean EA is vindicated from it.

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Regarding the showcases, that is a central argument. People are angry about their not being gameplay, and the state of Halo Infinite ( a game that was in a fine place development wise but needed more time for graphical polish but got put on hold due to covid).

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The OP is referring to what he describes as management mistakes. That’s a bit distinct from general corporate shiftiness. The only mistake the OP outlines that falls into that category is the live price hike which is IMO their only mistake and it was reversed quickly. The other two examples are not about mistakes at all. In fact delaying Halo looks genius now.

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I feel like the first 2 mistakes belong to the same category, but also represents one of the hardest things to do in the game industry: promoting games.

Hype is a seemingly intangible thing. Trying to create commercial hits that catch fire is difficult. Showing off your game in the most flattering manner possible is a tall order when you have 30 seconds.

Trying to resonate with a general audience at E3 versus resonating with your core audience is a balancing act.

Having to deal with a games industry media that has their own biases in terms of genres, consoles, and IPs is tough as well.

All this said, that Spring showcase was an issue of setting up expectations and falling far short of them. A lot of this was avoidable and self-inflicted.

Secondly, when showing off your new console, it needs to have an incredible first impression that makes you feel like you’ve never seen anything like it before. The showcase in the Spring was the opposite of that. Vampire might end up being a great game, but apart from the lighting, everything looked familiar to what we’ve experienced in this last generation from AA titles (visually speaking, again the game might be incredible).

I think someone at Microsoft forgot that showing off demos that touched on the potential of the hardware was how these things were unveiled. The original Xbox had some, showing off the console’s potential. There was good reason for this: games were not ready but these representations could give gamers an idea of what was coming.

Sony didn’t forget and with both the PS4 and PS5 they relied heavily on demos to wow people. The PS4 had an Unreal Engine 4 and a great looking Final Fantasy demo to show what the future may hold. The PS5 used a UE5 demo with geometric detail and lighting we’ve never seen in any game so far.

Had Sony started with Spider-Man Miles Morales, It would have looked too familiar to a lot of people. It would not look like the big jump that people are craving. So it’s an issue of strategy and Sony played it well. Full marks on their console unveil.

It’s sort of felt like Microsoft forgot how to unveil a new console. I’m surprised that Microsoft didn’t have a DX12U demo to show off new hardware features, especially with multiple projects delayed due to C19. There was a ton of focus on numbers and reiterating “most powerful” and that could have been underlined and put in bold font with a tech demo.

What is interesting is the highlight of the Xbox Series marketing thus far is the 2019 GSA reveal, which was a bold proposal made at a meeting (I forget the details and I wish I could find a link) and that demonstrates that maybe this is an area that needs some addressing. It was a fantastic idea and I’m glad Phil and others went along. Sometimes the best ideas are off the cuff, but it seems like the stuff actually planned was not too impressive. And yes I’m sure many plans changed as a result of COVID-19.

Also, am I the only one who thinks the Series S leak turned out to be the best way to reveal it?

The 3rd issue is a completely separate issue that deserves a post-mortem by experts. But in a sense it may have tied to this issue of marketing. Clearly someone at Microsoft was getting impatient with Gamepass adoption. But I feel that the marketing around Gamepass has been quite poor considering how amazing the product is.

I got a Facebook ad from Xbox Canada about Gamepass and in the montage they use the same “oh-oh oh-oh oh-woah” guy singing music they’ve used since 2013 to a bunch of out of context clips that rushed by with a big “$1 to start” text fly by. I personally don’t think they communicate why the service is an amazing value.

I feel like I’m ranting now so I’ll end it here.

I just wanted to give your topic some serious deliberation because I think it’s not a bad topic to bring up. I feel like Microsoft has learned some lessons over the past year and with the delay of Halo Infinite and the reversal of the Xbox Live Gold price increase, that these mistakes were not made in vain.

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No one and nothing is perfect

/end thread

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  1. Spring showcase they acknowledged the mistake and wasn’t just them ubisoft lied as well put Xbox under the bus they learned from it and the july one they marketed it but was it avoidable yes absolutely

  2. Halo Infinite campaign demo what I would of done Is have someone from 343i ahead of time come out Say hey we need more time to polish halo infinite we are delaying the game to fall 2021 but we want to give u a taste of what you can expect from our ambitious single player campaign

  3. That was pure greed and a complete reverse of what they been doing the past couple of years you could tell this was planned for months at least they listened and reversed it

All in all they could of been avoided very easily it Is what it is but at least Xbox listens to people who give constructive criticism unlike the 2 Japanese platform holders just because of mindshare and nolstgia

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The marketing at Xbox is just… I don’t know maybe it’s the American aspect, but it seems to be stuck in the 00’s. I cringed just reading your qoute.

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No one cares about the May event anymore. It never mattered.

Pretty much everyone agrees that Infinite is going to be better off because of the delay. The reveal has mostly faded into obscurity and will be completely forgotten after it’s released, especially if it’s a great game.

Jacking up the price of gold was an obvious push to get people into game pass. It sucks that they tried, but it’s good that they quickly reversed their decision. Most companies wouldn’t.

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I think the May event is relevant to this discussion because it was such a WTF kind of mistake, and yet no one else from Xbox spoke up and tried to reign in expectations when Aaron Greenberg was out there hyping the event on Twitter and Xbox themselves were saying “first gameplay from Valhalla”.

It wasn’t until the backlash that they went “Oh, our bad. We’ll learn from that”.

But then just months later they’re showing off Halo Infinite and once again, after the fact they were saying “Oh, our bad. I guess Halo Infinite isn’t really ready for prime time now, is it.”

And then just last week, once again, “Oh, our bad. Guess we shouldn’t try and double the price without justification. We’ll learn from this”.

Each situation is different, but also very similar, in that people who are paid a lot of money to run the Xbox division somehow found themselves having to apologize for things that seemed very obvious to everyone who didn’t work at Xbox.

At what point do we say “Who the hell is making these decisions, and why are they still in a position to keep making these bad decisions?”

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I know it’s whataboutism, but if I counted Sony’s mistakes last year, that would be a long and tiresome thread. Is that important in the end ? I don’t think so.

Last year was like trying to make a movie blockbuster with school talents. Announcements were messy. Series S reveal was wild, but could have been bad.

Context changes everything. Where did you hide last year ? I’m curious.

And we already have a thread about that Xbox Live price hike…

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No. Just no. Please stop. It’s in your head, man.

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I feel as though Microsoft has been the most transparent of the big three going into this generation and most (not all) of their messaging has been on point. The social media and marketing teams have done a phenomenal job and handled things like the Series S leak incredibly well.

There are going to be blunders but these are opportunities to acknowledge them and learn from them, which I also think MS has done very well.

The good has most definitely outweighed the bad over the last few years.

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all corporations and at the end of the day are in the business to make money. All of them have made “mistakes” that we could easily list.

Xbox has never been in a better position looking to the future as far as I’m concerned.

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There was a decent amount of actual gameplay at the May event, actually. The issue there wasn’t misrepresenting what would be shown so much as choosing to show smaller indy efforts as the first gameplay glimpse for the new console. THAT was the issue, but yes it was a huge and monumentally dumb mistake. I’m guessing it was what was ready to show, but even still, showing nothing might have been better. And granted, some of those games shown either were great (The Medium, Call of the Sea) or look to be amazing (Scorn, The Ascent, The Gunk).

Their July showcase was also a huge screw up. It was also an issue of stuff not being ready though. I dunno if just not showing anything woulda been ideal though. Announcing stuff worth getting excited about (Fable, Avowed, etc) is good but CG wasn’t ideal. And Halo was…yeah. >.>

So in some sense I can give them a break since their marketing teams might just not have had anything to really work with due to COVID. The Gold price hike stuff, while it makes some sense in terms of what they wanted it to accomplish, was a ruly baffling mistake that I still don’t understand. The same results they hoped for coulda been accomplished way smarter without blowback.

Sony had lots of big mistakes too. Amazingly, it seems to not matter on either side so long as the latest stuff/news shown off is great. XSS and Bethesda stuff overshadowed the May/July stuff. All these companies do things that are sometimes baffling. The Stadia business model is another example. Some of that is them being out of touch with gamers and other parts are that gamers are clueless wrt what options these companies realistically have to pick from given their goals. That is something that we all love to pretend is so simple but IRL stuff is complicated af.

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What are you jibbering about? They are still at Xbox because they’ve made Xbox more successful than it’s ever been in its history. They’ve turned round the ship from dismal to get out the champagne and pop the corks success.

Do you sack people who have just recorded record revenue? Answer is…no.

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