Worse Launch Marketing: xbox one or series x

[kitler53]

xbox one had 1 amazingly disastrous reveal with too much focus on multimedia, the always online requirement, and of course cost.   but after that stumble MS made a lot of adjustments by removing the online requirement, talking more about games, and eventually dropping the kinect requirement to bring cost in line with ps4.  

so basically it started out horrible by the time the system launched things were mostly good.


series x marketing started out good with their hellblade 2 announcement and leaks around the most powerful hardware.   but since then things have been trending for the worse.  a commitment to cross gen.  a "gameplay" first look with no gameplay and generally looked last gen.  the unreal reveal came just after and made ps5 look better.  halo revel looked bad and many of their other games got confirmed to not be ready at launch.  now halo is delayed.

so basically it started out fine but it keeps getting worse and worse.

[the-pi-guy]

Xbox One easily had the lowest lows. Within the first month they basically tripled down on an unpopular decision and followed it up with confusing messaging with different execs saying different things. 

But I remember it having some interesting exclusives at the end of it, which doesn't feel like XSX is getting. 


I'm still feeling Xbox One was worse overall though.  Tough call though.

[Legend]

Xbox One was a worse product with horrible drm and weaker hardware.

Xbox Series X has had worse marketing though.



All they needed to do with Series X was just market it towards core gamers like they did last year. Focus on power, focus on next gen exclusives.

Instead they took mass market bullet points and pushed them on fanboys. Like how cross gen support has been marketed for months as a great thing. It is great for lots of gamers, but not the ones on forums. Now with the Halo delay, people want it to skip Xbox One for example.


I think Series S might be part of this. How can they push why Series X is great without devaluing Series S?

[the-pi-guy]

I'm going to put a different spin on this.

Relative to how solid what they're offering is, their marketing is easily worse with the Series X.

They've got great hardware with some great features coming up.  They've got a good development team. (Mostly because they bought a large portion of it, but still.)  And I think they're going to see great games.  Avowed, if it ends up being good, might very well be MS's most interesting game for me in decades. 

Xbox One's hardware was a lot weaker.  They did have a lot of studios at the time, but so many of them barely existed. 

But, they've been worse about showing the system's strengths this year. 

They have not had any great showings for games. And again, their biggest showing this year felt like it was dampened by their cross gen efforts.


It's like when they started showing games, they went from "we are making a core console" to "we are trying to make everyone happy, but we are being stretched too thin".

So all their best stuff just feels like a work in progress.



With all that said, after today I actually have a lot more faith in MS now than I ever did.  The Halo delay sucks. But it shows me despite the cost, they are putting in the effort to do good.  Not this past MS that pushed out games to please some execs, but putting the games first.

[DerNebel]

The marketing is definitely more annoying this time around, but the same goes for Sony.

I believe that MS simply isn't ready for a new console launch, which is kind of supported by the rumors we got last year or early this year about them being somewhat behind and devs being annoyed at the lack of knowledge about the Series X. Also by them using PC footage everytime they've shown off a next gen game up to this point.

I think they expected an entirely different reaction to their May showcase and only backpaddled about this not being the real thing and that people should wait for July after the showing left people completely underwhelmed. Cause I can't imagine that they thought a couple CGI trailers and that Halo footage would convince people of the power of their hardware.

They've had all numbers of fancy words to describe how superior their hardware is to the competition, but when it came to backing those up with video proof of what that would actually translate to for consumer, they completely fell on their face and it doesn't look like they'll be ready to show that for another year or so.

Seriously just makes you wonder what they've been doing as they clearly weren't showering the Xbox One with games.

[Xevross]

I think they've been good this time around in terms of marketing strategy and statements, their problem has been just having no games ready which isn't the marketing teams fault. Their showcases are poor because there's not much there and its mostly CGI trailers for games years away. Now the Halo delay because Halo isn't ready. They've been doing the right thing of focusing on games though.

Their strategy of making this a smooth transition with everything being forwards and backwards compatible could have been an amazing one if they actually had a few killer games to launch series X with, to still convince people to buy it. Now though its backfiring, their marketing team should never be in the situation of having to launch a console without a single proper exclusive. Its yet another faliure of their game studios and possibly management.

Meanwhile with XB1 it was hard for the marketing to do anything because of the decisions of management about business. The focus on multimedia, the under powered console, being over priced due to forced Kinect. However the DRM stuff and "we have a console for people without internet" was such a huge unforced own goal not quite on the scale of anything we've seen this gen. After E3, their marketing team did a somewhat decent job of making the system look desirable and getting to sell 3M units in the launch period, but that was mainly due to them having a few decent exclusives and the core fanbase buying in.

Its a really close one, I think I'd vote XB1 being worse because of more unforced blunders from people at the top and the marketing team. Series X failures are mainly due to lack of games being ready. Both had bad main shows, but I think XB1's were worse with the reveal event being TV TV TV and the E3 show ending in $499. Also the kinect removal was mid 2014 so its not really comparable as pre launch marketing.

[kitler53]

I'm going to put a different spin on this.

Relative to how solid what they're offering is, their marketing is easily worse with the Series X.

They've got great hardware with some great features coming up.  They've got a good development team. (Mostly because they bought a large portion of it, but still.)  And I think they're going to see great games.  Avowed, if it ends up being good, might very well be MS's most interesting game for me in decades.  

Xbox One's hardware was a lot weaker.  They did have a lot of studios at the time, but so many of them barely existed.  

But, they've been worse about showing the system's strengths this year.  

They have not had any great showings for games. And again, their biggest showing this year felt like it was dampened by their cross gen efforts.


It's like when they started showing games, they went from "we are making a core console" to "we are trying to make everyone happy, but we are being stretched too thin".

So all their best stuff just feels like a work in progress.



With all that said, after today I actually have a lot more faith in MS now than I ever did.  The Halo delay sucks. But it shows me despite the cost, they are putting in the effort to do good.  Not this past MS that pushed out games to please some execs, but putting the games first.

i kind of disagree with this PoV.
 - Always online
 - the bundling of kinect
 - tv tv tv sport sports sports
 - cross gen for 2 years commitment
 - few and poorly managed 1st party studios
 - too many games that are designed around the extended service model (like fable legends, sea of thieves, halo)
 - series s
      --> which i bring up because it holds back console gaming as a way to push their xcloud platform and gamepass.



none of these are hardware related.  these are business management decisions/issues.  MS is still treating xbox not as a product designed for gamers but as a product to push MS corporate initiatives. 

The marketing is definitely more annoying this time around, but the same goes for Sony.

I believe that MS simply isn't ready for a new console launch, which is kind of supported by the rumors we got last year or early this year about them being somewhat behind and devs being annoyed at the lack of knowledge about the Series X. Also by them using PC footage everytime they've shown off a next gen game up to this point.

I think they expected an entirely different reaction to their May showcase and only backpaddled about this not being the real thing and that people should wait for July after the showing left people completely underwhelmed. Cause I can't imagine that they thought a couple CGI trailers and that Halo footage would convince people of the power of their hardware.

They've had all numbers of fancy words to describe how superior their hardware is to the competition, but when it came to backing those up with video proof of what that would actually translate to for consumer, they completely fell on their face and it doesn't look like they'll be ready to show that for another year or so.

Seriously just makes you wonder what they've been doing as they clearly weren't showering the Xbox One with games.

i said (predicted?) this in 2016/17.   

the xbox one x was too late and too powerful of a mid gen refresh to make next gen hardware a easy thing to design for.   you can't release next gen hardware that is marginally better than your last gen hardware which made xbox series x target too high of specs for its own good (aka cost).   and releasing in 2017 too much of their hardware team was still working on the xbox one x giving them a somewhat compressed schedule for their series x.   put on top of that the second series s sku and this team is overworked.  

but again, corporate business decisions were clearly the driver here.  no way the hardware team came to the business and said, "hey, let's make a shaming spec'ed console to release at the same time as our next gen hardware!"   the corporate business leaders mandated it because they thought it would be a good way to sell xcloud.

[BananaKing]

Xbox one. That thing was disastrous. Whipped out most of the good will the 360 generation did. Then they basically started copying sonys approach. Remember how many times Phil Spencer used to say "games" everytime he spoke. Specially between 2014 and 2017

[kitler53]

I think they've been good this time around in terms of marketing strategy and statements, their problem has been just having no games ready which isn't the marketing teams fault. Their showcases are poor because there's not much there and its mostly CGI trailers for games years away. Now the Halo delay because Halo isn't ready. They've been doing the right thing of focusing on games though.

Their strategy of making this a smooth transition with everything being forwards and backwards compatible could have been an amazing one if they actually had a few killer games to launch series X with, to still convince people to buy it. Now though its backfiring, their marketing team should never be in the situation of having to launch a console without a single proper exclusive. Its yet another faliure of their game studios and possibly management.

Meanwhile with XB1 it was hard for the marketing to do anything because of the decisions of management about business. The focus on multimedia, the under powered console, being over priced due to forced Kinect. However the DRM stuff and "we have a console for people without internet" was such a huge unforced own goal not quite on the scale of anything we've seen this gen. After E3, their marketing team did a somewhat decent job of making the system look desirable and getting to sell 3M units in the launch period, but that was mainly due to them having a few decent exclusives and the core fanbase buying in.

Its a really close one, I think I'd vote XB1 being worse because of more unforced blunders from people at the top and the marketing team. Series X failures are mainly due to lack of games being ready. Both had bad main shows, but I think XB1's were worse with the reveal event being TV TV TV and the E3 show ending in $499. Also the kinect removal was mid 2014 so its not really comparable as pre launch marketing.

i agree with forwards compatible.  i fully expected it going into this gen.   i'm still disappointed  that ps5 isn't being clear about what level of forwards compatibility they have.  i never expected ps1,2,3 to necessarily work but ps4 should have been at least dang close to 100% forward compatible.

but backward compatible is only good for late gen buyers.  to be able to play "next gen games" on last gen hardware means those games aren't next gen.  as a guy who buys consoles early in the hardware cycle this policy is the biggest "fudge you" to early adapters i can think of.   late gen buyers can always buy these early gen exclusives once they buy the new hardware,.. they aren't locked out of the game just locked out of buying them day 1.  

i think sony is doing this right.  do BC on the games that clearly can support it but also make sure you are working on some titles that clearly couldn't support BC either.

[the-pi-guy]

i kind of disagree with this PoV.
 - Always online
 - the bundling of kinect
 - tv tv tv sport sports sports
 - cross gen for 2 years commitment
 - few and poorly managed 1st party studios
 - too many games that are designed around the extended service model (like fable legends, sea of thieves, halo)
- series s
     --> which i bring up because it holds back console gaming as a way to push their xcloud platform and gamepass.



none of these are hardware related.  these are business management decisions/issues.  MS is still treating xbox not as a product designed for gamers but as a product to push MS corporate initiatives.

I wasn't talking exclusively about their hardware.  I was talking about their software, development teams and management as well.  

Basically I didn't mean their hardware offering, but their ecosystem offering.

And I think it would be hard to argue that their current ecosystem is worse than it was 7 years ago.  

[kitler53]

anyways, i technically voted xbox series x but in my heart of hearts the real answer is probably xbox one.  

the "deal with it" phase of xbox one was a train wreck unlike anything i've ever seen before or expect to see again.  but i still see xbox series x has doing almost the same thing without the salacious moment of, "We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360."

instead of always online their truly stupid decision of this gen is xcloud.  people have lost sight of the forest through the tree but the commitment to cross gen/platform, the series s, the most powerful hardware in the world having just terrible looking game all comes down to xcloud.  MS still doesn't want you to buy their hardware,.. they want you in an "always online" subscription service.  they were just stealthier this time around.


i voted series x in part because i really don't think the series s announcement will go well.  i expect the price to be higher than what the internet is currently hoping.  i expect compatibility with series x game to not be guaranteed.