Xbox One: From Hardcore to Family Friendly and Why Gamers Complain
I call myself a gamer usually. Though I don’t always have the time to actually sit down and turn up my Xbox 360. I played games enough and are still in the community to understand what’s in gamer’s mind. I’ve been trying to put my fingers on the new Xbox One release and why gamers, especially hardcore gamers, hate it. I think I can relate.
Some say they don’t understand where gamer’s rage come from. After all pricing stays the same and the product become better. But pricing always stays around the same or even less for newer products, or no one will buy them unless something unique justify the price increase. That’s people’s expectation now. The thing people complaining, especially the more hardcore gamer bunch, is the direction Xbox One is going. It’s going from a dedicated hard-core gaming console (by dedicating I mean dedicate on hardware, OS, integration, feature sets, etc.) to a generic ‘a-little-bit-of-everything’ set-top-box. I think gamers felt a bit like getting ‘cheated’. You have to understand those hardcore gamers, they take it very very seriously. When you are playing COD and you’re about to die if not jumping off a platform to avoid the incoming bullets, that one second delay because of Netflix or other features will be the difference between living and dying for them.
Yes there are casual gamers, but they don’t really care about Xbox or Playstation or Wii, hell they are happy enough with a Galaxy or iPhone even. (Which is totally fine, I’m a casual gamer now myself and liking it.)
I think gamers are upset because Microsoft uses its influence and success on Xbox which is popped up by gamers to pursue its other agendas and leaving gamers behind (or marginalized at least). And as we know it, more often than not, Microsoft’s new agenda won’t be welcomed with great success for some time now… So this feels like a ‘omen’ to gamers.
Will the shift on Xbox One get them more sales because of the shift to broader audiences? Maybe. But at what cost? The exodus of most of their core gamers customers?
I really don’t know whether this is a good thing for them or not.