Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Jeff Kelly]

The TV strategy could work if it wasn't just executed terribly. I'd spend serious money on the first 'non-shitty' TV streaming box because while there might be lots of them now they are almost all fucking terrible - even the Apple TV.

The problem is that Microsoft is synonymous with 'half-assed' - people more polite than me would call it 'good-enough'. All of that voice-command, gesture recognition, snap in and TV, TV, TV bullshit doesn't make things better because the execution of it all is just - well - half assed really.

Nothing exemplifies that more than the current PS4 vs. XBox One debate. Sony had a strategy and they executed it perfectly. They also decided early on what the focus of their product was and made sure that the core functionality was perfect. Microsoft had a strategy and executed it haphazardly. They also had no focus for what their product could and should do and what was core functionality that should work perfectly. So everything essentially is half baked, not a single feature works as intended and everything seems only half thought through.

Just like any other Microsoft product of recent years, quite frankly.

Then when their half-baked strategy doesn't work they overturn everything instead of fixing the issues, thereby replacing something only half thought through with something even less thought out. Then after sinking billions of R&D money into it and when it doesn't make any money they scrap it completely and do something else.

[Jeff Kelly]

The XBox One could have been a great product. For that to happen though MS would have needed to listen to and address the concerns of their audience and step out of their own circle jerky echo chamber of 'great idea, Boss!" brown nosing.

It would have required a business unit and leadership equipped with foresight, common sense, a sensible strategy and the willingness tzo execute on it. This would have meant for MS to:

- don't insist on prolonging the product cycle to up to ten years when your loyal audience is already fed up with and desperately awaits the next version of your product
- don't be completely blindsided when your competition somehow doesn't agree with your plans and plans to release a new version of their product well before that ten years are up
- do not play 'catch-up' with your rvival that already has a six months to a year head start just to match their release date
- if you do play catch up then at least don't be completely blindsided by your competition's feature set, hardware setup and pricing especially shortly before the biggest trade show of the year
- do address the concerns and wishes of your existing customer base before adding new features or modifying existing ones
- do have a product strategy and vision and make sure you can build the thing.
- have a COMPETENT PR department and PR strategy
- make sure your middle management and executives are banned from social media and can be reigned in if they are unable to keep their mouths shut

- do build a product people actually want to buy instead of trying to sell them a product your game publishing, media and broadcasting friends would want them to have.

As far as I'm concerned Microsoft has failed on all or most of those counts. Which wouldn't be that much of a problem if MS hadn't already sunk in excess of 10 billion dollars on the XBox without any perspective on how to get a return on that investment.

[Merusk]

The only useful thing they gave was voice control, which is dumb because most people I've talked to hate talking to their phones (for voice commands and dicatation) so I'm not sure where they found people that gave them positive feedback saying "this is the future!!!!!".

All I can figure is Millenials. That coworker of mine is 24 and he thinks it's the easiest/ greatest thing ever.  Being 24 he's also childless and only recently engaged so, yeah.  I'd hate it because I'm already constantly yelling, "Who left the Wii/ TV on?"  Having them turn on in another room? No thanks.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't really get the love for voice activation or gesture recognition. A hundred companies all over the world have spent billions on improving voice recognition and gesture recognition in the last decade alone and it still only works circumstantially and about 80% to 90% of the time.

For me that's still a long way from it working or it even being useful. If it works 80% of the time and wastes my time 20% of the time - eating up any sort of time and convenience benefit - still means that I'm probably too annoyed by it to use it. Especially when the interface that it strives to replace is just as quick and works reliably.

It's also a matter of age in my opinion. I'm 38, I've got a job, family and friends and hobbies. I've become less leinent with stuff that wastes my limited amount of time, time that I probably want to spend doing something else. Fifteen years ago when I was at University and had lots of free time I loved tinkering with technology, reinstalling my OS and replacing components etc. I was more lenient with technology that didn't work reliably but was 'cool'.

Nowadays it feels like a waste of my limited time though.

[Falconeer]

Voice activation is particularly good in certain games, and even in those games only in certain circumstances. But it's very reliable now and as skeptical as I was, I have to admit that it's fairly amazing in those few games. Elite (and possibly Star Citizen) are very good examples, but again, it is heavily dependant on the kind of game you are playing. While I don't mind saying "landing" to get my landing gear out, or "engage!" to get into supercruise (and have the computer voice aptly respond "Supercruise, engaged") I know I would hate a game that required me to speak to attack, or any other gimmicky crap like that.

So, used with moderation, it's going to be a cool additional/optional tool for gamers. Also, and this is why it is a big deal, it's going to be hugely important when the Oculus Rift becomes a consumer thing.

[Cyrrex]

The kind of game where I would love some good voice activation would be in a good space fighter piloting sim.  Something where you need to radio commands to AI squad mates as an intergral part of the experience, or even for tasks like moving power to shields, obtaining a lock, or whatever other spaceship system commands I need to give.  Basically, anything that means I don't need to remember 40 hundred different buttons on my keyboard to issue fucking commands.  I should be able to speak to me wingman or my R2 unit and have respond appropriately.  That would actually be EPIC.

[Falconeer]

That's exactly it. That's how this little third party program (Voice Attack) works, and it works great. I guess it's a matter of time days before it becomes standard for sims to have their own.

[Miasma]

I think there was a fairly good video of elite dangerous using voice commands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxhiLpLeFhU

[Bunk]

I actually like some of the voice control on my XBone. I use it to turn the whole system on when I come in to the room and I use it to turn everything off when I go to bed.

Okay, that sounds a bit weak. Still, I do use it for basic navigation on things that don't necessarily require that I pick up and power on the controller - such as switching to TV or Netflix. I like that I can go from watching TV to opening Netflix and continuing to watch a series I had recently watched in just two voice commands, without using a remote.
Also recently discovered that the voice control works really well for joining a Party with a friend while already in a game. Lets me just say one voice command to accept an invite, rather than navigating out of the game to pull up the party interface with the controller.

Motion control? Maybe someday I'll run that fitness game. Otherwise, never touch it.

[Ingmar]

Voice search works basically perfectly on my Android phone, with the caveat that ambient noise messes it up pretty easily. I can't imagine that voice stuff would really work at all in a noisy household on the Xbox, but the technology has come a really long way otherwise.

[Merusk]

It's pretty good on iPhone as well. Even voice to text messaging, which I abuse the shit out of if I MUST send a text in rush-hour, is good enough.  Unless I'm mangling a word due to dialect or odd phrasing.  The most recent example of which was, "Menards, Evendale"  Siri thought I said, Men are even dale.  Slowing down didn't help at all.

[Ingmar]

I just tried that on my Note and it worked. Some other experiments that worked fine:

"daifuku shop San Jose"
"taqueria El Grullense" (I pronounced it properly with the LL being a Y, etc.)
"Jabil manufacturing Shenzhen"

Then I tried some stuff in German and the fail started - probably because it's been 20 years since I had a Gemran class and my pronounciation has gone to hell - but I've been really impressed with it.

[eldaec]

Problem I've always had with voice commands is that the only time I'd ever want to use it is when driving, and then road noise makes it less effective.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Voice recognition has come a long way. Contextual understanding, not so much. In the real world (ie not your man cave/mom's basement/holodeck/private mike & headphone living alone setup) the machine needs to be smart enough to understand the difference between me saying "landing gear" while approaching a landing spot versus me saying "ooo nice landing" while someone else is playing, or "I think I lost my landing gear" while in a dogfight, or a buddy saying "landing gear" while I'm playing just to mess with me, or my wife yelling "landing what?" from the next room, or a friend telling me "you need to drop your landing gear" while I'm approaching a landing zone, or the TV/youtube video in the next room saying "landing gear" in some totally unrelated coincidence, etc.

Voice is a HORRIBLE command interface without intelligence.

[Lantyssa]

As demonstrated by kids to their parents every day.

[Count Nerfedalot]

  yeah!

[UnSub]

Yeah, pretty much every recent move I've seen MS do with the Xbone is tactically popular with gamers and strategically absolutely terrible. Unless something changes dramatically, MS has lost this console generation and probably won't be interested in spending the money required to try again.

I wouldn't say it's strategically absolutely terrible.  Their goal of taking over the living room for entertainment made sense way back, and made sense when they realized how big Netflix and other VOD services would be on them.  The problem is they took to long to execute and didn't notice the market trends for $50 roku boxes, smart TVs, etc.. all providing the same entertainment capabilities, which means no one is going to buy a $500 console for anything other than games (non-game functionality needs to be a bonus instead of core).  They just took too long to realize this and are only now pivoting, but it's probably too late at this point. 

I agree to a point. If people want a home entertainment set-up AND play games, then having an all-in-one box is very attractive.

But anyway... MS has been basically throwing out things as they go. I don't think that really focusing on being a games machine works in an era of Apple offering more for a much lower cost. I also like the Kinect, so when I saw that the Xbone was unbundling it, I saw them giving up the only real thing they had as a difference to the PS4. And even then the new, improved Kinect was never given any real reason for people to use it.

So yeah, strategy on the run. Next step is very heavy discounting of the Xbone to buy market share.

[HaemishM]

If people want a home entertainment set-up AND play games, then having an all-in-one box is very attractive.

Or it would be if the box itself wasn't an unattractive piece of shit duct-taped together by a design team trying to make an unrealistic deadline with design decisions made by a marketing team insisting on doing everything possible to extract the most money from consumers for the least value. There's lots of things that could make an all-in-one attractive. Microsoft just chose not to do most of them and the ones they did do they did poorly.

[Yegolev]

Well, I already have Netflix on 360, PS3, Wii U, all my phones, all my computers, and even just the TV itself.  I don't really see the entertainment vacuum.

[Fabricated]

In Nintendo news: Mario Kart 8 sells well, Nintendo still eats $97 million loss. WiiU sales were up, 3DS was down.

Oof.

[Lakov_Sanite]

In Nintendo news: Mario Kart 8 sells well, Nintendo still eats $97 million loss. WiiU sales were up, 3DS was down.

Oof.

Nintendo deserves what they get for having so many fucking same titles and characters.  Even disney knows you need new properties in addition to whoring out your old characters.

[schild]

That's tough for a company that hasn't had a new idea since the 90s.

[Teleku]

I so wish Nintendo would pull a Sega and just declare themselves a game company, open up their franchises to everybody, and get the fuck out of hardware.

[schild]

I think I say that every time I buy a Nintendo product. Which is, at most, 5 times a year.

[Fabricated]

That reminds me, there's a youtube video where a dude basically whines about the recent Nintendo downturn and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. I think I'll rewatch it.

[HaemishM]

Links?

[Fabricated]

Links?

Trigger Warning: Bad production values and cringe-inducing "story" gimmick. When Bob originally started this video series he put in some goofy shit at the beginning as an actual gag, but like most things on the internet a group of people who really, really unironically like it showed up and encouraged him to do more. So enjoy him talking to characters inserted with After Effects.

Link skips the opening. Thank me later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhLgtYGbY#t=140

[Phildo]

Oh hey, it's Moviebob.

[HaemishM]

Jesus, he should have skipped the fucking cutesy tinkerbell character stuff.

[Fabricated]

I love how it's all basically, "Nintendo is just so awesome and such a great old-school business full of heart the stupid new game industry has destroyed them!" and not "Nintendo hasn't had a really new idea on the software side for decades and clearly just lucked out on the cheap hardware factor last generation".

Also because Nintendo isn't doing well that means the games industry is dying. Like the whole industry. Because Nintendo.

[Phildo]

Moviebob is much better at movie reviews, go figure.

[Malakili]

I love how it's all basically, "Nintendo is just so awesome and such a great old-school business full of heart the stupid new game industry has destroyed them!" and not "Nintendo hasn't had a really new idea on the software side for decades and clearly just lucked out on the cheap hardware factor last generation".

Also because Nintendo isn't doing well that means the games industry is dying. Like the whole industry. Because Nintendo.

I feel like the Wii U's problem is marketing as much as anything.  We picked one up and are loving it.  The games are are the usual - which is great - and no more stupid motion controls unless you want them. So many people don't understand that it's a new system though.  But a lot of the core of people that bought the Wii don't even realize the Wii U is a new system.

[Rasix]

Grandma and grandpa don't give a shit.  Neither do all of my wife's friends that basically bought a Wii and used it like a board game. 

There's nothing shiny, new, and cheap to draw in the people that made the Wii a big seller.

[Rendakor]

I feel like the Wii U's problem is marketing as much as anything.  We picked one up and are loving it.  The games are are the usual - which is great - and no more stupid motion controls unless you want them. So many people don't understand that it's a new system though.  But a lot of the core of people that bought the Wii don't even realize the Wii U is a new system.

They had this problem with the 3DS as well; it was a little worse there because they released so many iterations of the DS (original, Lite, i, i XL) that no one realized this was a real, new system. If they had just called it the Wii 2 or made up a new nonsense word it would have sold better.

[schild]

Fuck that, that's thinking way too hard about it. How about "you can only play so many games of Wii Bowling and buy so many games you never finish." The Wii's killer app was bundled with the goddamn hardware. No one cares about that killer app anymore. Viola, the Wii U blows ass.

As the owner of one, I can confirm that it's basically like playing the SNES again with shinier graphics and absolutely none of the good third party software.

What a piece of shit.