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

[Rendakor]

Any reason you're not just buying a PS3?

[Fordel]

I feel like less of an asshole buying a 100 dollar mini console for a handful of games instead of like a 300 dollar one. 

That's mostly the thing that caught my eye initially, that the ready to play bundle with all the bits was 100 bucks.


This thing can hook up to a PS3 somehow or something though? Lets you stream the beefier console with the little one?

[Trippy]

For myself, there is a high chance this thing ends up being a Persona box for me. I've never played a Persona game but I keep hearing things about them, so I need to see for myself. Throw me recommendations for other games if you have any. Like what is Freedom Wars about?

Freedom Wars is another attempt by Sony to compete with the Monster Hunter franchise which means it's a 3rd person shooter (with both melee and ranged combat) where you mostly fight giant monsters with bucket loads of HPs in co-op mode (ad hoc or over Internet). There's also PvP but I haven't tried that yet (and probably never will). You can also play solo and bring along AI-controller partners if you don't want to do coop.

When I play LOLconsoleshooters I tend to abuse the thumbsticks since I'm pretty mediocre at aiming with them and the Vita thumbsticks are a bit on the flimsy side so I decided to give the PlayStation TV a try since you use that with either a DualShock 3 controller or a DualShock 4 controller. Note that the DS4's touchpad can act like the Vita front touch screen in some games so the DS4 works a bit better with the PS TV.

[Trippy]

I feel like less of an asshole buying a 100 dollar mini console for a handful of games instead of like a 300 dollar one. 

That's mostly the thing that caught my eye initially, that the ready to play bundle with all the bits was 100 bucks.


This thing can hook up to a PS3 somehow or something though? Lets you stream the beefier console with the little one?

The Vita supports remote play with both the PS3 and the PS4. The PlayStation TV currently only supports remote play with the PS4.

If it is starting to sound to you like the PlayStation TV is half-baked at the moment you would be correct

[Rendakor]

PS3s are down to $250 new, under $200 used and have a way larger library than the PSTV.

[Nija]

I have a near perfect condition PS3 that is the newest version of it, I believe. 3rd refresh? It's about 3 or 4 years old.

Anyways. I'm sure many people are in the same boat. I'd like to sell it but I don't want to go through the hassle of craigslisting it. Ask around to coworkers and stuff, you can probably get one for $200 or less.

[Fabricated]

Trigger Warning: The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/29/7463949/xbox-executives-leaving-microsoft-tv-apps-dead

Almost every single Xbox executive we profiled in this video last year has left the company

lmao

[Jeff Kelly]

You can't argue with results and Spencer's strategy works where the "vision" (if you have visions you should go see a medical professional) of the original team didn't.

The original vision of the XBone was crap for numerous reasons and also for the fact that it was an entirely US focused product even though it needed to be a global product to have any chance in hell of being successful.

Unfortunately Microsoft never learns from past mistake and still wants to do the "one Windiws for many platforms deeply integrated" with Win 10 even though it has already failed thrice.

[Sir T]

And to understand why you have to look at things from M$'s point of view. To them they are always the good guys, competing hard and using tough but fair tactics. And everyone else is out to get them because they are trying to destroy them becasue the OTHER side is evil and wants to destroy them becasue they do so much good.

I spoke earlier in the thread about the book I was reading on the Microsoft internet explorer trial. One of the things Bill Gates always said is that the goverment was trying to destroy Microsoft even though they do so much good. Everyone assumed it was a rather ridiculous propaganda line. In fact it is whaty he believed, that the goverment was in a huge conspiracy to destroy Microsoft. It never entered his brain that he might have actually broken the law or bieng in the wrong. And that was the culture inside Microsoft.

So Microsoft Basically sees those "failures" as the result of the smearing of other companies who cant innovate the way Microsoft can and who have massive amounts of sour grapes. If you point or that Xbone was an inferior product they will jump down your throat with "how can it be since we spend so much money on R&D?? WE WORK TO HELP CONSUMERS!!"

Thats why the poor people who have to patch up and fix every version of windows are the unsung good guys at Microsoft as they have to deal with the same crap that are included in Windows for propoganda reasons and to "help the consumer not to destroy other companies by creating free versions of their products" A large amount of the problems in windows is to make it totally integrated so you cant pull a part out of it, "to help the consumer". It was the key defence at the Microsoft trial that you could not take out IE as it was integrated to windows, but the Judge picked up that they could have and still could rewrite windows so it could be, so he ruled against them (simplified version)

yeah that was 16 years ago, but as evidence to show that is still the attitude at Microsoft they said the EXACT same thing about the always on Kinect on the Xbone. Despite the fact that it was later found they got a massive performance boost by taking the bloody thing out.

So yeah, they keep making the same mistakes in every version of windows because the culture at Microsoft is that they were not mistakes, its that propaganda by evil companies and the US government made people think they were not innovations. If this sounts like a mix betweek a conspiracy site and a cult, well yeah.

[Yegolev]

I think most people are pretty sure they are right most of the time.  There might be some self-delusion but I think the number of people who actually believe that they are evil or malicious is quite low.

[KallDrexx]

And to understand why you have to look at things from M$'s point of view. To them they are always the good guys, competing hard and using tough but fair tactics. And everyone else is out to get them because they are trying to destroy them becasue the OTHER side is evil and wants to destroy them becasue they do so much good.

Oh people still use the M$ thing?  How clever.  No wonder your whole post is very outdated and mis-informed.

[Maledict]

The thing I dislike about MS and the Xbone is that they are pursuing the same strategy they have in other markets - bankroll an inferior product using the insane income from separate parts of the business to establish dominance. That always then resulted in utter crap for consumers - Ms is an incredibly crappy company when it comes to innovating when they have a monopoly. It's not good for gaming in the long run if MS can buy their way to a dominant position through subsidising a bad product off the back of windows sales.

[Sir T]

Yeah. And they even used that power in the programming market. A tactic that they used to scare people from even trying to bring new products on the market was to simply say that they would be including their own version free on windows so the competitor would simply not bother, then Micro$ would not even bother putting it on windows, a practice which coined the term "vapourware"

Oh people still use the M$ thing?  How clever.  No wonder your whole post is very outdated and mis-informed.

Good to know the XBone couldn't work without the Kinect. And there was those statements from Microsoft exects posted in this very thread where they said they were going to "help the consumer" by putting adverts specifically designed to be accidentally clicked on by the consumer.

Want me to go back and harvest all the statements from Microsoft from this very thread that used that kind of phraseology?

Anyway...

[UnSub]

The thing I dislike about MS and the Xbone is that they are pursuing the same strategy they have in other markets - bankroll an inferior product using the insane income from separate parts of the business to establish dominance.

It doesn't always work though. However because of it we've had a few generations of console wars that pushed gaming forward.

That said, MS have completely messed up with the XBone and is currently running around circles. It remains an open question to me whether or not that MS will still be interested in developing consoles if the XBone isn't going to be an all-in-one entertainment hub anymore. It could easily be seen that another round of console R&D in a declining market isn't worth doing and the resources would be better spent elsewhere.

And that's a problem if you like AAA gaming.

[Jeff Kelly]

My only real issue there is that if you basically tried the same strategy for the same type of product for the third time already, each time failing miserably, yet still expect it to work the fourth time around, you've long ago left the realm of sane and reasonable business decisions and are flat and square in "mad as a hatter" territory.

A sane corporate management structure abandons product strategies that provably don't work the third time around, especially when their competition keeps being much more successful in the same line of business by executing different product strategies.

That Microsoft keeps insisting on the "everything Windows, everywhere" strategy regardless of that strategy never having worked in any business for nearly two decades, while at the same time weakening their core business in the process, is utter madness.

[Jeff Kelly]

Their "strategy" - if you can even call it that - has always been about how to get Windows into product or market X instead of how to make a product X that is successful in a certain market, which is an ass-backwards way to try and expand your business. It has also not worked for MS 90% of the time and they've burned billions on that failed strategy.

A sane company would have stopped and tried to find out why long ago, Microsoft doesn't though. Which is insanity.

[Fabricated]

Microsoft's problem is their internal culture, which leads to their fuckheaded approach to everything. They're top heavy and even after changing CEOs twice and the recent firing spree/rearrangement+ dropping stack rating, they're still too top heavy and all of their divisions compete against eachother. They have a top level vision for a unified everything, but their divisions are too busy slashing eachothers throats and there's no communication or proper top-down management to get everyone on the same page. They're so fucking disorganized it's almost like they don't even know what products they already have before launching new ones.

This is how stupid shit happens; like having to change the name of everything involved in Windows 8...a multibillion dollar corporation apparently can't be fucking bothered to check trademarks outside of the US. This is how Microsoft at one point had no less than 3 different public cloud storage services that all did the same thing. This is why they wasted over a billion earth dollars on Skype, and why they're going to rebrand their mature internally-developed enterprise chat/conference system Lync as Skype for Business...and I guaran-fucking-tee that at least the initial version of "Skype for Business" will literally not work with the actual skype network. This is why everything has 20 SKUs and it's confusing as fuck to find what you need.

[Rendakor]

My only real issue there is that if you basically tried the same strategy for the same type of product for the third time already, each time failing miserably, yet still expect it to work the fourth time around, you've long ago left the realm of sane and reasonable business decisions and are flat and square in "mad as a hatter" territory.

The 360 didn't fail miserably. The Wii won that console generation, but the 360 was arguably in second which is really first as far as "real" consoles go. The problem with the XBone is that they went for this "replace the cable box" bullshit instead of just doubling down on the 360's successes (dudebro shooters, really good online play, lower price than Sony).

[Jeff Kelly]

I was talking about the "One Windows to rule them all" strategy. The 360 wasn't part of that.

Also with the billions spent on R&D, business development for the Xbox division and subsidizes on the console itself and the Xbox live ecosystem it's not really a roaring commercial success either. After ten years in the market MS has barely managed to break even on all the money spent on the Xbox.

Then they pissed everything away with TV, TV, TV, mandatory kinect and "this box will run Windows 8 apps" and firing/reassigning everyone responsible for the success of the 360. Because the 360 wasn't part of the Windows ecosystem but the successor had to be.

[Margalis]

Their "strategy" - if you can even call it that - has always been about how to get Windows into product or market X instead of how to make a product X that is successful in a certain market, which is an ass-backwards way to try and expand your business. It has also not worked for MS 90% of the time and they've burned billions on that failed strategy.

This is exactly right.

MS has always used the approach of evaluating everything by potential upside to the company as a whole assuming everything goes well, but without considering why in the world everything would go well. It's the "if this thing catches on Windows will penetrate a totally new market yay" approach, without thinking "wait, why would this piece of junk catch on?"

There are so many MS products hobbled by this. XB1 is an obvious one. Window CE / Windows phone another. Even their search engines have been hobbled by this, returning windows-centric results  - remember when windows search just wouldn't report any real media files? The end result is you use Windows Search or MS Search or Live Search or Bing or whatever they're calling it once or twice, it sucks, and you go back to using google. But an MS exec is thinking "oh man, our search returns windows-centric results so it'll be a gold mine if only it catches on!"

XBox / 360 were not huge financial successes but they did well in their markets (360 much more so), in part because those teams were fairly autonomous. Whereas the XB1 team was much more part of the MS grand strategy. It's classic "imagine if this catches on" MS thinking.

[Hawkbit]

Microsoft's problem is their internal culture, which leads to their fuckheaded approach to everything. They're top heavy and even after changing CEOs twice and the recent firing spree/rearrangement+ dropping stack rating, they're still too top heavy and all of their divisions compete against eachother. They have a top level vision for a unified everything, but their divisions are too busy slashing eachothers throats and there's no communication or proper top-down management to get everyone on the same page. They're so fucking disorganized it's almost like they don't even know what products they already have before launching new ones.

The handful of people I've met that used to work for MS indicate the company actively pits groups against each other, with the idea that competition breeds innovation.  I think they're one of the groups that does a 10% bottom performance culling each year (not 100% positive on that, but I think so). 

[Teleku]

So basically then, 'fear breeds innovation.'   

[Paelos]

So basically then, 'fear breeds innovation.'   

There's two sides to that. Fear breeds innovation, as does boredom. People also make some big advances when they can afford to fail.

[Yegolev]

I don't think fear breeds innovation, it breeds a safety mentality and a mindset of "the standing nail is driven".  Don't take a chance because odds are that you'll fuck up and be on the street.  In an environment of fear, you'd best become a toady of a powerful person and espouse the ideas that have the most buy-in already.

I remember reading somewhere that the guy at 3M who developed the PostIt note spent three years dicking around with it by himself before coming up with something workable.  Is this just a corporate fairy tale from the Brothers Hands-Off?  Not sure but I think that's possibly a great route to innovation.  I don't know anyone that is truly creative when they are stressed or tired.

[HaemishM]

I was talking about the "One Windows to rule them all" strategy. The 360 wasn't part of that.

Actually, the whole history of the X-Box in all varieties has been about making "One set-top box to rule them all," starting with the original X-Box. They've been trying to do that since what... WebTV? The problem they ran into is that their end goal (a Microsoft box controlling the television in every living room) wasn't something consumers wanted and by the time they got to the technology that could DO all that... consumers had already found they didn't want or need one set-top box to rule them all, especially not one that sucked, tracked their every movement and cost $600. They had failed to adapt their end goal to what consumers want, instead trying to force what they wanted on consumers. Which is exactly how they fucked up with Windows 8.

We see how well that went.

[Trippy]

Microsoft's problem is their internal culture, which leads to their fuckheaded approach to everything. They're top heavy and even after changing CEOs twice and the recent firing spree/rearrangement+ dropping stack rating, they're still too top heavy and all of their divisions compete against eachother. They have a top level vision for a unified everything, but their divisions are too busy slashing eachothers throats and there's no communication or proper top-down management to get everyone on the same page. They're so fucking disorganized it's almost like they don't even know what products they already have before launching new ones.

The handful of people I've met that used to work for MS indicate the company actively pits groups against each other, with the idea that competition breeds innovation.  I think they're one of the groups that does a 10% bottom performance culling each year (not 100% positive on that, but I think so).  

Microsoft used to "stack rank" their employees. That ended November 2013. This Vanity Fair article was the first to bring attention to it in the mainstream media (the stack ranking parts starts at the end of page 3). A former Microsoft manager wrote a first-hand experience about how it worked for Slate as well.

[Rasix]

That still occurs here.  It's toxic and the managers hate it.  Plus as you shrink, it gets even worse.  Fired all the shitty people? Productive, above average performers are the new shitty people.  

It works well for me since they can't get me a band promotion.  I'm compared against people that basically work for me.



edit: Err, wait.  Ours isn't equivalent.  It's just on a person/job band system, not divisions.  That's fucking awful.

[Torinak]

Microsoft used to "stack rank" their employees. That ended November 2013. This Vanity Fair article was the first to bring attention to it in them mainstream media (the stack ranking parts starts at the end of page 3). A former Microsoft manager wrote a first-hand experience about how it worked for Slate as well.

I've worked with dozens, if not hundreds, of former Microsoft employees (mostly software developers, some PMs, some managers), and pretty much all of them knew about stack ranking.

Microsoft's use of stack ranking in a zero-sum fashion was highly toxic, and pretty common of how companies use it. Punishing the bottom group of performers every year when comparing them against a smallish set of peers creates a strong disincentive to help others on one's team and sends a message that the company doesn't know how to hire or manage people. Pretending that it's a secret makes it even worse, because good performers who don't know how to work the system end up getting screwed. I know of multiple cases where superstars and near-superstars found it much easier and better to just leave Microsoft for a competitor rather than try to figure out how to work within Microsoft's screwed-up evaluation system. There was no official way for Microsoft to recognize that some teams are just incredibly strong ("everybody wins") because it was all zero-sum, so the strong teams tended to dissolve (and head to competitors) over time.

[Jeff Kelly]

What irritates me is that by the time MS and the silicon valley IT companies really got into stack ranking the system was already dead and buried and on the way out. After it blew up quite spectacularly in GE's face and led to countless lawsuits and a re-evaluation of Jack Welch's reign as head of GE it was shown that the system didn't work and that the benefits Welch had shown were largely statistical trickery and outright lies. It was also heavvily used to profile employees for gender, race and age - hence the lawsuits. It also destroyed the corporate culture of GE and led to a huge employee turnover rate.

By the time there also existed a lot of studies that demonstrated the lack of effectiveness of stack ranking and how negatively it affected company culture, teamwork, turnover rate and employee morale. Yet MS implemented the system anyway and it took them over a decade and experiencing all of the negative effects to scarp it. That#s although the people responsible for bringing it to MS could have realized after thinking it over that stack ranking might be a bad idea.

What I don't get is not necessarily why MS has lots and lots of bad ideas, that could simply be par for the course in a volatile business like software. I don't get why they fall in love with those bad ideas, marry them and have kids with them and only let go of them after a messy divorce and a multi-year long custody battle. MS simply can't let go of ideas or products that don't work unless it has spent billions and decades on multiple attempts at it. They also do lots of stuff that at one point should have been shot down by common sense as "this shit won't work, ever".

[KallDrexx]

GE had a reason to use stack ranking though.  They wanted to reduce their workforce, and with that purpose it makes *some* sense.  It doesn't make sense once you want to keep the number of employees the same or grow though.

[Yegolev]

Companies have terrible ideas all the time, since these come from the leadership within that company.  An idea might be shown to be bad but since it belongs to someone, that someone will defend it so that they do not look bad also.  There isn't a free marketplace of ideas anymore than there is a free marketplace for refrigerators or television; ultimately it is mostly driven by politics and you will have to trust that the leader is competent or has enough opposition from good ideas that the shit is driven out.

[HaemishM]

If the person who came up with the idea is anyone from middle management level up, ideas aren't bad until the person who came up with the idea is already gone from the company, or the idea has failed so spectacularly and publicly that even the shitstain who thought it up and fought for it to the death realizes it was a bad fucking idea.

This is the Way of the Corporate Douche.

[Rokal]

The one E3 game announcement for Xbone that seemed to interest anyone on F13, Phantom Dust, has been put on hiatus and the developer shut down. You can rest assured that your pennies are now safe and you will not have a reason to buy an Xbone for the next several years. Unless you want to play rehashes of dudebro shooters.

[Trippy]

That article implies it's still being worked on.

Also fix your link.

[Rokal]

Fixed the link. I'd take the "development continues" claim with a grain of salt. It's what publishers say when they don't want to rile up fans or investors over a cancelled project: better to let interest fizzle out due to lack of news than to confirm that something anticipated will never see the light of day. Alternatively, we'll see Phantom Dust (despite the developer of the game shutting down, MS presumably being unhappy with the results, and the game starting over from scratch) right around the same time we see The Last Guardian, another game that is "still being actively developed" despite not having been seen or talked about for over 6 years at this point. Literally, Sony PR just confirmed today that it is "still being worked on" despite having let the trademark lapse a second time and the major staff on the project leaving the company years ago.