Microsoft: Xbox One messaging wasn't 'open' and 'complete' enough

Microsoft: "I think we've learned a lot of lessons. And I think it's something that you're going to see a lot more from us, frankly, is engaging more with the community. I think it's the number one thing I'd want to do if I went back, was have the conversation more open and more complete."

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Microsoft has faced an uphill battle ever since debuting Xbox One with confusing new restrictions. While the company has since reversed the most egregious policies surrounding their next-gen console, there's still a lot of work to be done to win over the hearts of the hardcore--something Microsoft is keen on doing.

"I think the key for us is, we love core gamers. They're the people that have built Xbox and Xbox Live. That's the place where we need to do a better job showing up, and we need to engage more," Microsoft's Marc Whitten said. Going forward, Whitten promises that Xbox will "engage" more with the community.

"One of the things I think we learned was that we didn't talk enough, and we were incomplete in a lot of how using the system would work," Whitten told IGN. When Microsoft unveiled Xbox One, many of its executives had frustrating, vague, and sometimes contradictory statements on exactly how the system would work. "I think we've learned a lot of lessons. And I think it's something that you're going to see a lot more from us, frankly, is engaging more with the community. I think it's the number one thing I'd want to do if I went back, was have the conversation more open and more complete."

Perhaps the biggest casualty of Microsoft's policy reversal with Xbox One is the death of the family sharing plan--a feature that promised to make your games library accessible on up to ten devices. A new petition asks Microsoft to about-face yet again, restoring the functionality promised by an always-on device.

Whitten doesn't guarantee that the feature will come back, but he did say "if it's something that people are really excited about and want, we're going to make sure that we find the right way to bring it back."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    July 12, 2013 4:30 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Microsoft: Xbox One messaging wasn't 'open' and 'complete' enough.

    Microsoft: "I think we've learned a lot of lessons. And I think it's something that you're going to see a lot more from us, frankly, is engaging more with the community. I think it's the number one thing I'd want to do if I went back, was have the conversation more open and more complete."

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      July 12, 2013 4:44 PM

      What the hell does "engaging the community" even mean. It's a statement a vague statement similar to what he's saying they'll do a better job at avoiding. Why not just say, hey we really screwed up with our messaging. I mean we did a really bad job, from now on we will be upfront with the feature set and make sure our information is clear and precise. Instead he says we're engaging the community now which implies they weren't engaging their customers before, so what the hell were you doing before. I feel like his whole statement is disingenuous and really admits no mistakes were ever made. To me his apology/revelation is no better than previous vague and useless statements.

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        July 12, 2013 5:11 PM

        [deleted]

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        July 12, 2013 5:15 PM

        Sony has been "engaging the community" by simply being more open and forthright with the interviews and discussions on the behind the scenes thinking on what they wanted to achieve, how they went about it and so on.

        I guess the strict term "engaging the community" has an essence of fluff about it but I see the angle.
        Microsoft very much treated the Xbox One launch / PR like a big big business announcement more than anything. Forgetting their primary audience (me) was covered in cheetos in a long dressing gown listening to them, not a business suit at the other end of a table.

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          July 12, 2013 7:12 PM

          Don't forget that most of the message has been turned upside-down, between backtracking on the always-on requirements, Don Mattrick skipping off to become CEO of Zynga, and Office Ribbon champion, "Windows 8 was not built to spite you", hand-waving-at-Surface-while-baking-recipes-to-turn-the-page Julie Larson-Green now being the head of "Devices and Studios". Even the name "Devices and Studios" demonstrates how little they seem to care about core console gamers.

          I cringe at the idea of Julie Larson-Green attempting to lead a press conference in the same way that Don Mattrick did. And Larry Hryb was a part of the problem of the bad messaging since the XBox One unveil; even if he was the messenger, he was a bad messenger.

          As Jeff Gerstmann said over 3 weeks ago, "Have they hired a crisis PR firm yet? Have they fired their existing PR firms yet?"

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            July 13, 2013 9:57 AM

            The other problem is that they completely ignored the indie developers. None of them have seen the Xbox One hardware or had discussions with Microsoft about the designs except Minecraft and Superbrothers.

            Everyone else was completely cut off. If you want interest from the community, you need to be engaging with those guys as well as us.

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        July 12, 2013 7:52 PM

        "Engaging the community" means spying on them with the Kinect.

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        July 14, 2013 2:45 AM

        It's not vague at all, it's why companies have community managers. It's listening to your most devoted fans and responding to them with information that tends to spread to the wider base of gamers online. Massive benefit, and MS failed to do anything like that until recently with XB One.

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      July 12, 2013 5:51 PM

      The Microsoft guy that did their E3 presentation did a horrible presentation. Lots of pauses in his talks made him seem unsure about xbox one, unsure that they could do a whole presentation without addressing the drm prism issues brought up before E3. Microsoft needs to hold a live town hall meeting and just come clean before anyone will trust them after being the first ones to sign up for prism. They need to assure the public that the damn camera or mic is recording you, thats creepy, and makes me wonder if some of the exploits on Windows computers were known and not dealt with because they were always meant to be backdoor entries. Microsoft needs a come clean no fuzzy talk live town hall streamed live over the internet.

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        July 12, 2013 5:52 PM

        isn't recording...

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        July 12, 2013 6:58 PM

        Wasn't that guy Don Mattrick?

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        July 13, 2013 10:07 AM

        [deleted]

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        July 13, 2013 10:22 AM

        They have too many old, baffled managers who only know buzzwords and how to communicate with shareholders and their fellow managers about how they're going to efficiently monetize the Xbone and the nifty "always online" bullshit features to help enforce DRM and control piracy. Oh, and cloud...stuff...because cloud is really cool right now!

        They needed to bring in a visionary mental masturbator like Peter Molyneux to churn up the masses with fantastic dreams of the cool shit we'll get to do on our Xbone, show some prerendered bullshit videos that get everyone's juices flowing and then the consumers will be babbling like maniacs about cloud computing and cloud storage. And crap like always online will seem like an acceptable sacrifice for cool fucking shit.

        Not much different from how Apple got their fans to buy into their walled garden and limited interfaces. It's an acceptable sacrifice for cool shit like Garage Band on the iPad, never mind that Joe Blow never composed a song in his life and never will, but fuck man...Garage Band is hot shit!

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      July 13, 2013 9:51 AM

      They had 2 very big press events to get their message proper. They fucked up both.

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      July 13, 2013 10:42 AM

      The Family Sharing thing was never going to happen--at least, not as Mattrick & pals described it. No way on earth that Microsoft was going to interest game developers in giving away its games to nine out of ten xb1 owners...;) Not only that, but it would constitute a *massive* copyright violation and put Microsoft on the hock for untold sums of cash. It was revealed later that the "shared library" involved *demos* of the library games--letting your ten pals *demo* the games in your library--for limited amounts of time, after which Microsoft was going to solicit *purchases* of the *Full game* form the "sharers." That's the only explanation I've read to date that makes sense--and actually the only thing Microsoft could have done legally. Oh--did I forget to mention that Microsoft gets paid for every game that sells--and wouldn't do so well by trying to give away 9 out of every ten games its game developers were trying to sell.

      But...human nature being human nature, people still want to believe in a free lunch...! But, that's Microsoft's fault, 100%, for trying to be cute and too clever by far. That's *why* Microsoft pulled the plug--can you imagine all of the uproar that would have resulted if they had continued with the farce of "ten of your buddies get you games for free!" BS when the truth came out! Mattrick would have been lynched, then beheaded, and then drawn and quartered for good measure...;) Microsoft had to call a halt to all this marketing gone wild and crazy.

      The launch of the xb1 has to be the worst product launch I've ever seen. The fact that Mattrick hailed from EA at one time is evident, though, isn't it?

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        July 13, 2013 12:35 PM

        I also found it amusing how the family sharing thing was really vague until they canned the whole thing, and then they started talking about it saying that yeah it would have been great to share with 10 friends blah blah.

        But there was never any chance it would have worked like that.

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        July 15, 2013 7:45 AM

        "It was later revealed," in a fucking pastebin that any dickhead can write to.

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      July 13, 2013 5:24 PM

      They shared their message. It wasn't anything most gamers wanted to hear. People who support what MS wants to do are clinging to the idea that they will have another 360 generation in terms of a core gaming experience, when MS is clearly more interested in being a media provider this time around, while at the same time shaping gaming into their own idea of what it should be for people, not listening to what people actually want.

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