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

[HaemishM]

Anyone who buys an XBox on release day deserves what they get.

[Rendakor]

The important question is, will my weeaboo games be on the PS4?

Yea, but probably not for a year or two in the US.

[Ingmar]

Anyone who buys an XBox on release day deserves what they get.

People seem to be shitting themselves over Titanfall, I think it is going to sell fine.

[Fabricated]

Anyone who buys an XBox on release day deserves what they get.

People seem to be shitting themselves over Titanfall, I think it is going to sell fine.

That's going to be on PC too.

[HaemishM]

Anyone who buys an XBox on release day deserves what they get.

People seem to be shitting themselves over Titanfall, I think it is going to sell fine.

Duebro shooter with mechs. Color me thoroughly uninterested, though I'm sure it'll sell a squajillion copies and further ruin video games.

[rk47]

[Lakov_Sanite]

We need a symbol for us facist PC users to get behind.

[jakonovski]

I'm pretty stoked about Titanfall.






...please don't break my arm.

[Hoax]

Stoked to play it on PC...

[Jeff Kelly]

What I don't get is just how Microsoft could manage to fuck this up at all.

All they'd basically had to do was to state that there will be a new XBox this year and Kinect will be included in the box and that it's on par with the PS4 performance-wise.

All they had to do at their event was to

- tell people there will be a new XBox
- tell people that Kinect is included
- tell people that Kinect is improved
- tell people that they can control their TV or cable box with the XBox
- keep your mouth shut about all of the DRM bullshit
- show the new call of duty

It baffles me. It baffles me that they allegedly didn't know that Sony was planning a PS4, when basically everyone else did and you can't keep such things secret for long. It baffles me that they included all of that unnecessary bullshit in their PR and presentation that confused people and diluted their message. It baffles me that they hadn't considered making things easier for Indie devs, when that shit is basically easily integrated and done with no fucking effort whatsoever. Just tell devs that they no longer need an actual publisher and reality check and adapt the fees and you're done. Everybody talks like helping indies was such a huge effort, no fucking way. All they need is a relatively cheap dev platform and access to the store without the need for publishers and without ridiculous transaction fees.
Why fuck with a winning formula? Why e.g. change the controller (except maybe the battery compartment) when it's already being heralded as the best there is?

I cannot wrap my head around that. It was basically a done deal. It required a real effort by a lot of people to fuck this up as badly as they did. If they hadn't done anything at all they'd have fared better than they did. Even if they had to scramble because Sony had caught them on the wrong foot, they could have easily launched six months or a year later than the PS4 and would have had a real chance to still come out ahead of the PS4

1. Announce the new XBox
2. Sell it
3. Profit!

As things are the last few months have shown that Microsoft basically has little clue about, well, everything.

They don't seem to know what their competition is up to, even when their projects are already rumored about in insider circles. (Also you can't really keep a project on the scale of a new console secret for too long. Sony had to talk to suppliers, developers and contractors long before the announcement was made or the rumors started)
They don't seem to know much about their own ecosystem or about what concerns their developers. The blanket dismissal of indie developers is proof positive that they don't.
They don't seem to know how their own customers use their console or they simply don't care
For a global brand and for a system that needs a global customer base and mindshare to succeed it's entirely to US centric

I know I repeat myself but how could this happen? And they still have no grasp on things it seems. We've had the E3 and the Gamescom was only last week, why announce the launch date one week after one of the major industry events of the year is over? If there is a valid reason for that why don't you use PAX to do it instead? (Same question goes to Nintendo for announcing the 2ds after the gamescom ended)

What were they waiting for? Tokyo game show? I heard a rumor that until it was clear that Sony made efforts to launch a PS4 nobody at Microsoft had even begun work an a next generation XBox. Why the hell not? I'd expect them to at least have plans for HW and/or SW in development somewhere even if they're not planning to release anything short term, like every other fucking company out there.

[sickrubik]

Announcing the release date for the Xbox One not at a show is probably one of the biggest non-story stories I've seen in a long while.

[Merusk]

Microsoft is a giant, unwieldy company still bloated on old glories suckling at a dying teat and filled with old men. That's how it happens, Jeff.

I haven't had a sense of hunger, drive or desire from the company since '04 at least.  Just a plodding 'stay on this path. It's served us well' approach with tentative feelers in to other revenue streams that's going to kill them in the end.  Seems to be the story for a lot of tech companies after 20-30 years.  Looking at ways to monetize what you know well and is old hat vs. keeping up to date.

[rk47]

Yeah.
Funny picture time.

This thread's depressing.

[Jeff Kelly]

Announcing the release date for the Xbox One not at a show is probably one of the biggest non-story stories I've seen in a long while.

Maybe. You're missing out on lots and lots of free PR and press coverage though.

For example: Sony announced the launch date on the first day of Gamescom which led to literally every news medium out there to cover it even if just in passing with a small news item. Every major newspaper over here mentioned it, even the 8 o'clock news on frigging public television (average viewer age 60) had a news item about it. Microsoft announced the launch date a week later and even a significant number of game related internet news sources haven't covered that yet. Case in point was the last giant bombcast. At one point the guys basically talk about the XBox launch with one guy asking if MS has yet announced a release date and when another tells him that they already did more than one of them basically says that they hadn't heard of that fact yet.

I'd fire the company that handles my PR at that point.

It also would have taken them no effort at all. A venue like gamescom would be head over heels to give MS a half hour or hour for the announcement, they wouldn't even need to have their own booth and basically every news outlet that covers the trade show would have put it next to the Sony announcement in their news coverage.

Our PR people would be over the moon if they had an opportunity to so easily reach a lot of people that you'd otherwise have to spent a significant marketing budget to get to.

[sickrubik]

You're right, I haven't seen anything about the XBox release date at all... wait, that's not true at all.

I understand your overall point, and don't disagree, but the extent with which you (and some others) seem to think that this is some big mistake seems a bit... much.

[Jeff Kelly]

Big mistake it's not and if it were the only thing MS had done in recent months it probably would have mattered even less. As it stands a lot of companies think that in the age of the internet trade shows and industry events are no longer as important or relevant as they were a decade ago.

It's another supposed 'misstep' in a whole string of perceived ar actual mistakes both big and small though. It's the 'MS already did this and this and that and now even the announcement is odd and seems misplaced' kind of thing. They could use any positive buzz they can get and with the way they mad ethe announcement it is less likely to hit as many outlets as they would have hit when the yhad announced it at a big industry event.

[Rokal]

It baffles me that they included all of that unnecessary bullshit in their PR and presentation that confused people and diluted their message.

The Connected Vision was supposed to be a selling point, not a non-starter. They were caught by surprise when consumers saw it as a huge negative. There's some serious kool-aid drinking going on in Redmond.

[sickrubik]

Big mistake it's not and if it were the only thing MS had done in recent months it probably would have mattered even less. As it stands a lot of companies think that in the age of the internet trade shows and industry events are no longer as important or relevant as they were a decade ago.

It's another supposed 'misstep' in a whole string of perceived ar actual mistakes both big and small though. It's the 'MS already did this and this and that and now even the announcement is odd and seems misplaced' kind of thing. They could use any positive buzz they can get and with the way they mad ethe announcement it is less likely to hit as many outlets as they would have hit when the yhad announced it at a big industry event.

Well, I don't really see it as a misstep. They haven't lost any media coverage. I've seen it on the news and on the internet blogs/etc. I'm not sure why you would say they lost media coverage on this.

[MrHat]

Xbox, get in the way of my football with useless features I can get anywhere else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmD0vPOd5Rk

[HaemishM]

Who the fuck puts their giant, expensive television on the goddamn open air roof? 

[jakonovski]

Please, their servants are well trained.

[Paelos]

We have an outdoor TV that's huge in Colorado, and it's good against rain, snow, and sub 20 temps.

[Ingmar]

Anyone who buys an XBox on release day deserves what they get.

People seem to be shitting themselves over Titanfall, I think it is going to sell fine.

That's going to be on PC too.

While true, there's a large segment of market that only games on consoles, and it won't be on the PS4. I think it doesn't sell as well as Sony's this time around probably overall, but it isn't going to be a disaster, it will do fine.

[HaemishM]

I think if rumors of Microsoft's manufacturing issues are true, we can expect a good bit of hardware failure in the first gen - even though the hardware is almost identical to the PS4. And if that happens, my God, will I be laughing my ass off.

[MrHat]

Better marketing from Sony.

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

[schild]

It's never really fair to show foreign commercials to other countries. Especially Japanese commercials. Even weird 4:32 long ones.

I thought the Greatness Awaits thing was pretty good.

[Merusk]

Yeah, that was a pretty slick campaign.

[Yegolev]

Alright, there's my weeaboo.

If MS comes up with a way to cause a hamstring injury for Peterson, I'll consider buying one.  How's that for fantasy football?

[MrHat]

They also announced a Vita TV which is a 100 USD streaming device that lets you stream PS4 games to a different TV I think.

[Rendakor]

You can also use it to play Vita games on a TV. There's a $150 bundle as well that comes with an 8g memory card and a dual shock 3 controller.

[Yegolev]

Did they hire some old Nintendo dude to come up with that shit?

I do enjoy my GameCube GameBoy Player, though.

[Fabricated]

Here's a toxic dose of "Games Journalism".

Trigger warnings: Kotaku, NeoGAF

Dev claims PS4 ~50% faster or thereabouts, Microsoft pushes back on NeoGAF.

Not copying/pasting the whole thing but this article features the phrase:

Penello—a frequent NeoGAF poster—has been talking about this quite a bit for the past few days. One of his more interesting posts came just this morning:

~A frequent NeoGAF poster~

Speaking as Fabricated, a frequent F13.net board poster: NeoGAF is for fucking tossers and devs really, really, really shouldn't post there.

[Rendakor]

Not that I like to defend Kotaku, but it's clear you didn't read the whole article. From the third paragraph, emphasis mine:

Microsoft executives were quick to shut this down. Microsoft spokesman Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb and director of product planning Albert Penello have been denying Chmielarz's claims on Reddit and NeoGAF, telling message board viewers that no, the disparity really isn't that wide.

[Fabricated]

Not that I like to defend Kotaku, but it's clear you didn't read the whole article. From the third paragraph, emphasis mine:

Microsoft executives were quick to shut this down. Microsoft spokesman Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb and director of product planning Albert Penello have been denying Chmielarz's claims on Reddit and NeoGAF, telling message board viewers that no, the disparity really isn't that wide.

I did. I was commenting on the frequent poster part.

[HaemishM]

As a frequent f13 poster, I don't give a shit which performs better. Neither is going to be "worth it" for at least a year and based on Microsoft's continued dick-tripping, the Bone will never be worth the money.