After weeks of bad PR, Microsoft two weeks ago finally buckled under the negative press surrounding the Xbox One and announced the removal of the Internet requirement and used game restrictions.
With the announcement came mixed views from both sides as it’s hard to say who exactly the real winner is.
Ups and Downs
The official statement from Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox One will no longer require internet check-ins or have restrictions of used games. However the system will still come with a mandatory kinect and features like not needing to keep the CD in the drive and family sharing have been removed.
As many of you know, between the E3 conference, being made fun of on national TV and articles from soldiers discussing how the system would affect them, the Xbox One was having a PR nightmare.
As I talked about a few weeks ago, I believe Microsoft knew exactly what they were doing with the Xbox One and was willing to lose a portion of their audience in favor of moving forward. But the negative press reached such a point that they knew that any chance of playing the long game with the Xbox One sales would no longer be viable and they had to backpedal.
However, while they are certainly moving things in the right direction, in my opinion the Xbox One is far from being a competitor to the PS4. Let’s start with the big problem: Uniqueness.
Regardless of what you, I and many other people have complained about, the Xbox One was doing something completely different from Sony with the PS4. The idea of having a cloud based system allowing for a disc-less console was a lofty goal.
Many people speculated on the effects of both used games and game prices that the Xbox One would have had, but with the changes we will have to wait a few more years to find out. Now, the Xbox One is more in line with the PS 4, but they are still several steps behind.
The Xbox One still has the issues of requiring the Kinect, the extra $100 price tag and the stigma of being anti-Indie. With Microsoft backpedaling on the Xbox One, it does raise speculation that the Xbox One may run into problems at launch.
While things are looking up for the Xbox One, Microsoft is still not in comparative position to Sony just yet.
Hardware development is a completely different ballgame compared to creating a piece of software. When creating a new console or game device, you have to plan things like hardware specifications and production costs months in advance.
If you discover a fault in a part of the hardware during manufacturing, you can’t institute a patch or change the part right there to fix everything.
At this point it is anyone’s guess outside of the big wigs at Microsoft as to the extent of the cost that these changes to the Xbox One will have.
It has already been revealed that consumers will still need to connect the Xbox One to the internet to download a day one patch to activate the new changes.
My fingers are crossed right now for Microsoft that there won’t be any problems with the patch, or things may go from horrible to disastrous for them.
Views From the Other Front:
On Sony’s end, they are still sitting high on the hog and are handling things brilliantly. It was reported last week that Sony did plan on having their version of the Kinect: The Playstation Move as a bundle on the PS4 and a $499 price tag. However, after seeing all the negative press aimed at Microsoft, they changed their plans.
Now, as with Microsoft, we don’t exactly know the full extent of having to make a change to the launch of the PS4 specifications had on Sony’s plan. However, being declared “the winner of E3” and looked at as the superior console will surely help offset any additional costs for the changes to the PS4.
Honestly, Sony is playing things brilliantly so far: watching their main competitor and making changes move-by-move to come out on top. Recently Microsoft announced that they are going to waive the cost to continue patching games for indie developers, but there still hasn’t been a lot of support for the Xbox One from the indie community.
As it stands I think the motto: “The more things change, the more things stay the same” can be applied here. Microsoft may have earned some good PR for their backpedal, but the Xbox One still looks like the poorer choice compared to the PS4.
For Microsoft to truly bounce back, they need to announce something majorly positive for the Xbox One between now and release to hopefully make people forget about all this. But it is anyone’s guess as to how things will develop. With 2013 past the halfway point, there is still plenty of time for shakeups to hit the console industry before the holiday season.
