And that was it. Xbox One will come out some time before the end of the year, like everyone already knew.Now, don’t get me wrong, because it sure does sound like I’m bashing Microsoft, but I’m not. I’m sure that the Xbox One is going to be an excellent piece of hardware, and many of the features that the company chose to focus on during the press conference are undeniably groundbreaking and innovative. Also, most of the big games coming out over the next decade will be available on the Xbox One. And they’ll probably be awesome. In fact, as someone who owns both Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, I opt for the Xbox version of games more often than not.
What I am taking issue with here is the presentation. The entire press conference felt very artificially engineered. All of the booming applause that we heard were supposedly originating from the back of the room, presumably from planted Microsoft employees. I know it sounds redundant to continue to harp on comparisons to Sony, but the fact of the matter is, that company is the other major player in this market, putting out a similar product in the same time window as Microsoft and it chose to take a radically different approach with the presentation of the PlayStation 4. Sony directly said, “Hey, we’re about making video games. Here are a bunch of those.”
I feel like Microsoft, as opposed to targeting the demographic that made Xbox a brand in the first place, is approaching the consumer with vast, broad strokes that appeal to everybody on some level. Rather than unveiling a score of new innovations and ideas, we witnessed a presentation largely focused on social media, multitasking, and sports games with a new coat of varnish on them. The company is appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is the same thing Nintendo did when it started a casual gaming approach that the Wii espoused, which arguably led to that company’s decline. Xbox One’s presentation felt like the popcorn movie of the summer, with a lot of flashy explosions and smoke and mirrors, but nothing that will ultimately ingratiate hardcore audiences.
Gamers are the people who will buy next-gen consoles before anybody else. The big names that got thrown around during Microsoft’s press conference — Halo, Call of Duty, Madden — are franchises that have a vast following of consumers who spend a whole lot of time playing those games exclusively. Those franchises are also going to see new games being made for current-gen consoles for years to come. Frankly, I don’t see my neighbor, who only plays Call of Duty, buying a new $500 game console so that he can multitask in a more streamlined way while he plays, especially when he can get the new game on the 360 or pause the game to look at his smartphone when he wants to check out Facebook.
Microsoft came out on top this past generation, but only because it had a head start on competitors. With Sony releasing a comparable console at the same time, only time will tell who had their priorities straight. The first shots have been fired, and the battle will resume in less than three weeks at E3.
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