Microsoft’s Xbox One console is the
latest machine that seems to assume the worst of the customer before they’ve
even taken it out of the box. Simon Brew takes a closer look…
It all seems so quaint now. In the 1990s,
games consoles and computers to an extent had a slightly different approach to
software. You put the cartridge or disc in the machine and it worked. You
didn’t have to sign up to anything, you didn’t have to be online, you didn’t
usually have to type in a huge number that looked like it was generated by
someone with an aversion to vowels. Heck, you didn’t have to go through a
central menu first or anything either. Games machines worked on an inherent
assumption that you wanted to play games and if one was inserted in the
machine, it just played it. It was a simpler time. Scarily, it wasn’t even that
long ago.
The
Xbox One
Fast forward to now and the simple job of
playing a video game feels like it's getting more and more complex. On a PC,
more often than not you need to install a game through a service like Steam. On
the upside, that means previous tortures such as installing patches and keeping
things up to date have been simplified, but the trade-off has been that we've
surrendered a degree of control. In some cases, we can even be blocked from
playing if we don't download some form of mandatory update.
Remember that UbiSoft, at one stage, tried
to introduce a system whereby its digital rights management for PC games was
‘always on’, requiring constant access to the internet or else you wouldn't be
able to play. It withdrew that system after a massive Furore last September and
yet it seems things may be about to get just slightly worse.
Before we get there, though, we should be clear
on one thing: this isn't a feature about games. It's a feature about the
eroding of manners, goodwill and trust towards consumers, who are increasingly
looking and feeling like the collateral damage, as big companies look to add
another billion or two to their bottom line. We're going to be talking about
the latest big product announcement that assumes, inherently, that you're a
thief and demands you prove otherwise on a daily basis. We're going, bluntly,
to be talking about the Xbox One and what the ramifications of it might be
should it be a success.
The New Xbox
You might be familiar with some of this
story already. Microsoft caused something of a stir with the announcement of
its new, next-generation games console a month or two ago. Entitled the Xbox
One, the unit goes on sale later this year, priced at $637 in the UK and the
warning klaxons were starting to sound when, at the official unveiling event
for the machine, games didn't appear for the best part of an hour. Wasn't games
what the Xbox was supposed to be about, after all?
Still, that in itself was only cause for
initial concern. If every games console that had been written off in the
aftermath of one press conference went on to prove as troublesome as the press
made it sound, then the chances are that there wouldn't be one of them left.
Most notoriously, when Nintendo revealed the design for the original Wii
controller, experts were queuing up to predict doom and gloom. It went on to
outsell both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. It's still early days for the
Xbox One and its new rivals.
However, the Xbox One does seem to dig
itself a deeper hole every time more information is revealed about it. Usually
things get better once details are released. In the case of the Xbox One, the
more details that Microsoft announces, the more concerning the project gets.
The Xbox
Let's get a basic sorted first, though. We
like the Xbox. We like the Xbox 360 especially. Notwithstanding the technical
issues that haunted the console for its first few years, the Xbox 360 was a
tactical masterstroke from Microsoft. It launched early, it was aggressively
priced, and it was attempting to turn around the massive defeat that the
original Xbox had suffered at the hands of the PlayStation 2.
The
Xbox 360
Furthermore, it saw Microsoft breaking
Sony's stranglehold on console gaming, to the point where exclusive titles are
now far more the exception than any kind of norm. After all, Microsoft went out
of its way to woo gamers to the machine and it succeeded. By the time the final
scores will be totted up, the Xbox 360 will have outsold the PlayStation 3.
Microsoft will have turned its previous heavy defeat into a comfortable
victory. That's no small achievement, and it won out thanks to quick thinking,
realizing what the market was after, and then delivering.
“The Xbox One seems to dig itself a deeper
hole every time more information is revealed about it”
Who's Top Priority?
There's a sense now that Microsoft is more
interested in the whims and wishes of big companies than it is the people at
the end of the line who fork out for its products.
Microsoft, over time, has introduced
technologies that have hardly won it many friends. The most infamous was
arguably its decision to opt for product activation, which opened up the floodgates
to how the software market works. Of course, that's how such things work: it
feels as if rights and concessions are taken one slice at a time, generally
introduced with a leaning more towards the proverbial stick than the carrot.
The
playstation 3
In the case of product activation, this is
the system whereby you have to go online and activate your copy of Windows or
Office within a 30-day window. If you don't, your software is restricted. If
you can't get online to do it, then you have to call to ask for permission to
use the software that you legally paid for. In some instances, if you change
too much hardware in your PC, Microsoft may ask for more money off you.
It's the kind of thing that had it been
mentioned at the start of the 1990s, people would have laughed off and said
nobody would ever dare do it. Two decades later, it was seen as an accepted
norm, and Microsoft is one of a number of big companies practicing such
methods.
