The Xbox One Two Years After the Reveal

The Xbox One came out 501 days ago[1]. The Xbox One has certainly changed my life. It’s the reason, I got a job. That was a big change but lets get done talking about William.

            The Xbox One had all of the hype in world going for the it .Its predecessor the Xbox 360 Dominated the North American market aside from the Wii; but, when your comparing it to its competitors (PlayStation, Wii),the Xbox 360 was king. The Xbox 360 on a consistent basis doubled the sales of the PlayStation 3. It seemed Microsoft had its next console success story in the bag but in the video game industry, there is something called the Third Console curse[2] where a company that does well with their third entry into market gets to high and mighty for their own britches. This happened with the N64 going with cartridges instead of the more institutive and efficient CDs and Nintendo giving third parties[3] to the wolves. Nintendo has a problem of thinking it can supply all of the games for its own console. Sure there games are great but when games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and Assassin Creed come out and it doesn’t land on a Nintendo platform, it makes them look like  a joke. This also happened with the PlayStation 3, it officially was priced at $600 and that was absurd at the time. When one considers that the Xbox 360 was equivalent, if not better hardware wise and it was only priced at $300.  

            The “Reveal” of the Xbox One, was a huge a bummer for me. It was terrible amount of time spent on TV, Sports and NFL partnership, it was absolutely ridiculous.  I am a huge Xbox fan but this made me distraught as a fan and a gamer. This was the future of Xbox? There was even a rumor going around after the reveal that Microsoft was going to sell Xbox Brand, I was worried. The reason I care so much about Xbox was because it was my first console and Xbox was my escapism from my parents’ divorce and all the other bad events that happened. Then just to see, the first steps of Xbox One be such a failure. I see more games on a commercial, then I did on the Xbox Reveal and it was an hour long. Then here are my sources about how terrible the Xbox One[4] Reveal[5] was[6]. The sources are to prove, I’m not just a loner complaining.

            Aftermath, this was the worst public relations damage control, known to man. Here was one of the conversations between the press and a Xbox One representative . Press said “I was wondering, a lot of soldiers overseas want to play Xbox One but they don’t have a reliable internet connection, what do you say to our active duty soldiers”? Xbox One Rep said, “We have a product for people overseas it called a Xbox 360”. This was offensive because it implied that the serving troops aren’t good enough to play on Xbox One and it also proves that Xbox is being represented by a bunch of twerps. A lot of people blame Don Mattrick for leading Xbox into a full blown nose dive. Xbox fired over 40 people for the Xbox One reveal and public relations disaster.

            There is one, a true savior and that is Phil Spencer. Is someone who I have immense respect for. He took over Xbox when it seemed like, it was a lost cause. It had already looked like a failure and it hadn’t even hit the market. Phil Spencer took over between the reveal and E3. Now what is E3 one asks themselves? Wells it’s the super bowl for video games. This is where all of the new games, get gameplay shown and new games are announced. Phil Spencer proceeded to go on stage and show a hour and half of video games straight. I was in bliss and I later went out that day a got a job at the grocery store. The reason this was important, at this point was that the Xbox One was totally a buzz kill and this was the first time that gaming was the priority of a gaming console. He gave me confidence in the Xbox Brand again, I can’t thank him enough. Phil Spencer cares about games and he understands games, not like Don Mattrick. Phil Spencer isn’t a corporate suit, he’s gamer.

            So how is Xbox One doing two years later, well its sold over 10 million consoles and its already outsold the Wii U. It has allowed for games to be made that would not have been made without the Xbox Ones existence and it provides thousands of American jobs and millions of people’s enjoyment.  So next time, you slander a nerd for crying about how his favorite game company closing, just remember how you felt when Friends ended.

            This editorial had a lot of lessons, that we take for granted such as leadership and getting through a rough spot. It shows that, sure we shouldn’t be defined by the stuff we own but I do think there is something to be said about being attached to something we have. So the next time, you look at that plastic machine they call a Xbox and remember it is much more than a machine that plays games.

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[1] As of April 7^th, 2015

[2] Third Console Curse!!! its Real!:source

[3] Third parties: games that are not made by Nintendo but still go on a Nintendo consoles. Such as Madden, Grand Theft Auto, and Call Of Duty   

[4] http://kotaku.com/that-xbox-one-reveal-sure-was-a-disaster-huh-509192266

[5] http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/05/21/microsoft-stumbles-through-xbox-one-announcement-shows-little-answers-less/

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWgUO-Rqcw

The Clash of Two Console Titans

                       

Which console creator was your favorite? Throughout the years, these two consoles manufactures have been duking it out. I am going to compare Sega and Nintendo and their battles in the console generation. I will be walking the reader through the tactics and methods each company used.

.In 1983, the great videogame crash happened. This was when the American consumers got fed up with videogames and thought they were just a fad. It was caused because of too many consoles on the market, and with Atari, the biggest console maker at the time, had no control over what games were made on their console causing too many bad games on the market. This gave video games a bad reputation to the consumer. At this time, savior of video game market the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out. It was advertised as more of a toy and partnering with the Teddy Rubskin Bear Company helped get the NES on store shelves. The next year, Nintendo did not need the partnership and NES was a huge hit. Nintendo did not want to screw this up, so they made very kid friendly games and were very tough on not having explicit content or violence.

After seeing the rebirth of the videogame market, a company that previously dipped their toe in the water called Sega, came out with Sega Master System. This is how the great console war began. The first two consoles to fight were Segas Master System and Nintendos NES. Sega was a more powerful console graphics wise, meaning they had better graphics; but, Nintendo had killer applications (something that moves hardware).  They had Zelda, Mario and Mega Man. The first fight between these juggernauts was a complete victory for Nintendo. At end of day, there were 61 million SNES in the world and only 11 million Sega Master Systems. 

Since that console generation was over, Sega came out Genesis and Nintendo came out with Super Nintendo (SNES). At this point, Sega was on their more aggressive than ever. They came out with   They did have a mascot his name was Alex Kidd, but he was a lame duck of mascots. So, Sega held a contest internally for the new Sega mascot, and they came up with a new edgier mascot who had crazy spiked hair and his name was Sonic the Hedgehog. He would travel faster than supersonic speed (making him faster than Mario, the Nintendo mascot, which was also in advertising).

advertising such as, “Sega does what Nintendon't”. Sega also went for older kids by bringing more violent games to Sega Genesis, such as Mortal Combat with blood. Then, Sega went after the cool artsy crowd. Sega still had a more powerful console but they had an identity crisis.

Sega had more games due to fact that more people given them a chance because of the blitz advertising and word of mouth from the previous generation. Nintendo was the good kid in this whole scenario and just sat on SNES and kept making AAA games.  To describe the game flow, Nintendo would have 5 A+ games a year compared to Segas 20B games. Just like previous generation, they were priced same.  This time Sega had 44% of the market share and was closing in on the console crown, but only God knew what the Sega Saturn was going to do to Sega.

Sega was getting ready to announce their new console, Saturn, when they got word that this new console "PlayStation" was going to have better specifications, ram and memory, then, they rushed to put a second CPU on the console. This made it harder to make games even though it was the most powerful console of the generation. The other big issue was they announced the Sega Saturn release date was for a September 1995 and it had a lot of hype; but at E3 conference 1995, they had a surprise release date of May 1995 and almost instantly ran out of stock. They also, in previous generation, made a bunch of add-ons which confused the average consumer. Plus, with these issues Sega was in trouble.  Nintendo did come out with the Nintendo 64 their console to compete with Sega Saturn. But, Nintendo never made a 32bit console and sega did to stay relevant, they dropped it like a box of rock losing even more consumer support.

 Now if one was to look at how many models Sega and Nintendo made they would find out that Sega had made 9 consoles but in the same time period Nintendo had only made 3.Sega bet was on hardware and Nintendo was on software. This was the first generation since the second generation of consoles where Nintendo was not in the lead since PlayStation came in like a hurricane. This gave Sega about 6% of the market and Nintendo with 20% and with 74% going to PlayStation.  Sega final endeavor was the Dreamcast it was hailed for being ahead of its time but with looming PlayStation 2 it was final nail in the coffin.

This was the console war what started all console wars. This was interesting time in video game history. We talked about Sonic origins. The first time someone booted there GameCube and saw Sonic they knew it was over.