Talking Point: Next Month, It'll Be 10 Years Since The Xbox One Reveal Event

I think that's one event people don't want to remember, that one event could of potentially cost Microsoft the whole gen.

The biggest downfall of Xbox

Xbox arguably still hasn't recovered entirely from the complete failure of Don Mattrick.

tv focused more expensive less powerful console was never a good idea

xbox hasnt recovered from this error

I've only started with the series X for Xbox and didn't following gaming media before either so really didn't know all the happenings of the Xbox one launch outside of reading year's after that it was bad. Media wise series X launch with a lot of buzz but they definitely drop the ball often and last year was really poor. Now personally i still have more than i could possibly play but the vibe around the platform was bad. This year they got off to a great start and then just fell flat on their faces again. Hopefully it's just the distraction of ABK because they really need to get back on track. I still think it's time for some new blood to come in and ensure that the studios are running smoothly and being held accountable and have support where needed. Phil sold the dream but now it's time for someone to come in and deliver the dream. He doesn't need to leave, just have some new folk's run things to report to him. Greeny is fun but legit they don't market anything outside of a tweet. He's just gotta go. If it's a budget thing then he hasn't convinced them for a bigger budget yet so still a failure in my eyes.

@Wheatly Very interesting take, indeed.

The reveal that destroyed xbox brand for many years to come... Don mattrick is a legend it took him one event to take down +12 years of work done to make the brand ahead of sony... And sony just had to exchange a game (making fun of xbox DRM and blocking game exchange) to win the gen

Now after 10 years xbox is still to recover from that event and still hated by most of the community....

But to be honest xbox seem to not yet get what gamers want and how to menage their studios to make the best out of them

@Tasuki i was a fanboy and xbox one was that useless ugly console in my room that i never turn on and had to buy a PS4 to poay persona 5 and i used it till i bought xbox series X thinking xbox will turn things around they are trying.... But seem they need alot to catch up and to improve as a gaming company

If they hadn't forced Kinect I think it would still be going strong. People like having a choice. The Xbox One was over priced after they removed the Kinect requirement. At times it feels like they are doing everything they can to kill the Xbox brand.

@Wheatly I get why they started down the path of a new Kinect. The success of the Wii and the first Kinect made Mattrick think it was a good idea. Just let it stand on its own. The pack-in was obviously a bad idea. The price was bumped up $100, cheaper APU was chosen, and 10% of system resources were reserved for Kinect.

I’ve always loved the Xbox One console design but I do remember there being a lot of criticism from people about the way the console looks and perhaps that also didn’t do Xbox any favours back then as well.

So much to unpack here... so many reasons this felt worse at the time than it would be today, but still would be bad today.

1. No choice Game Pass has realized some of the goals that were originally envisioned by the XBone, but its optional and not forced. Forcing things on people has never been a popular thing.
2. Physical DRM: This just was not going to fly. It would not fly today either. I can see the desire for digital lending, but they should had kept that to digitally purchased games and let physical be physical, but they were truly aiming to disrupt the used games market, getting publishers a cut of the pie, at the expense of user freedom. That, again, was never going to fly.
3. NSA Mass Surveillance: The inclusion of the mandatory Kinect, with a camera and a microphone all active, all the time, came at a terrible terrible timing. The NSA mass surveillance of citizens had just been exposed, it was not a good time to force that, period.
4. Price: As if the NSA stuff was not bad enough, it didn't help the device added $100 to the price sticker. Some might complain about power, but slightly less power for the same price would had not been an issue, higher price for less power, that was an issue.
5. TV: I don't think TV was a big deal, In retrospect, despite all the things noted above, their launch lineup was on fire, but they did a terrible job at a first impression by focusing on TV and not highlighting that launch lineup from the second the thing was revealed. Sadly, the cadence did not keep up. After launch, there was not that much of a steady flow of exclusives, and almost everything was some timed deal with a third party.

Mattrick was such an arrogant, out of touch, jerk. Not missed him at all.

It took over a decade to build the brand and 45 minutes to destroy it for the next decade. That takes talent. Even Jim can't muster that kind of talent, much as he tries.

The icing on the cake was going into the presentation with "#dealwithit", and exiting the presentation with "We have a box for those people, it's called xbox 360".....Nothing like a bad presentation filled with bad news that starts with getting flipped the bird and ends with pointing downward.

@Krzzystuff I envy you not having to have watched this trainwreck unfold in slow motion. It's one of those things that it just got worse the more you watched it, and you waited for it to get better, and then it just got worse.

There's an irony that the lasting image of that presentation was ending the last, IDK, 1/5 of the show which felt like it was 2/3 of the show was having Activision there drooling over the dog in Call of Doggy Ghosts. That Xbox today is revolving around CoD while Sony grasps at it with it's little Gollum hands when it was that game that sent the Xbox straight to the abyss is just....funny? Sad? Ironic? Tragic? All of the above?

Shew boy talk about a bad day lol.

This event drove me to buy a PS4. That and Bloodborne

I'd say Matrick's time as Xbox head was pretty commercially successful until this showcase. He got Netflix to offer streaming services on a console for the first time ever when streaming was primitive, he pushed the very successful connect device and the kept a good stream of first party and third party games coming in following on from Peter Moore. The Xbox one itself was a decent console. The problem was Matrick was thinking way too far into the future and got wrapped up in all the things this machine could do beyond gaming. The worst part was that his exec team (including Phil Spencer) and the marketing team let him push forward with awful messaging. In the end it lead to his demise. Since Phil Spencer has taken over his a done a good job of rebuilding positive mindshare from a hardware and consumer practice point of view.. but the gaming side.. he and Matt Booty have not been great at all.. Moore and Matrick delivered far better output in their tenures. The next head of Xbox needs to focus on game output - and the effective management of studios and deadlines.

I still remember watching that disaster. Awful, lead me to skip an entire Xbox generation.

@Sam_TSM Nah, it's not age. AAA games on the Xbox One and PS4 Gen to even now in the Series X & PS5 Gen have feel too dependent on rehashes, Remasters/Remakes, & Reboots. For every new idea like Hi-Fi Rush there's a hundred games you've already seen and played before in some fashion. That's part of the reason Indies are such home runs now - they not only haven't stagnated like AAA games, but gotten better, and have more eyes on them than ever as well. These factors along with the rise of the F2P model have left us in a very strange place in gaming overall.

@Sam_TSM It's the focus on graphics above all else, inherited from PC where that's pushed by hardware vendors. It's caused budgets to balloon to push hardware to the edge which in turn caused game design to have to be stagnant to both allow the graphics push and to try to be everything to everyone all the time to get maximum sales to pay for the huge budgets. Games were designed around the game in the past. Now they're designed around the visuals and letting game creators feel like they're making movies, or on the other side, making glorified slot machines.

The industry changed and not for the better. The "indies" are doing the heavy lifting now.

Xbox one was terrible and permanently ruined xbox forever . Had they just made something as simple as an Xbox360 “2” with just a new controller and new parts inside , who knows how things could have been . i honestly think that gaming would have been better today because of tense competition

One of the worst launches ever

It is a miracle that Xbox didn't die from Don Mattrick

More like the day xbox almost died

@nomither6 x1 was just an Xbox 360-2. Problem was it wasn't an Xbox 720, more like an Xbox 575 and with a mandatory spy cam/hot mic from a known government surveillance company and game reuse fees. And a total tool insulting customers.

Still one of the best looking consoles I have seen to date. It was just too far ahead of its time with many features and the reveal was terrible.

@themightyant

What you're failing to remember is that Sony had many of the same features lined up for the PS4 yet because MS went first with the reveal of the Xbox One and Sony saw the huge outcry from the fanbase, they had time to make changes before the reveal of the PS4. So had Sony actually gone first, the same thing could have happened to them. So it wasn't that Sony was super smart or had their hand on the pulse of gamers better than MS, its that they got lucky by MS going first with the Xbox One reveal and made appropriate changes for the PS4 reveal.

@RIghteousNixon To be fair though, Sony had leaders at the time that could read the room and make popular decisions with customers while Xbox had a leader that said #deal with it and "we have a box for them, it's called Xbox 360".

Today the tables turned and Jim is matrick reborn. But that was quite a moment when Sony had management that listened and Don just doubled down on flipping everyone off.

@RIghteousNixon "It was just too far ahead of its time with many features"

can you please elaborate? The launch PS3 i believe is still the most ambitious console ever released and kinda suffered the same fate as the X1, BUT ONLY because of how expensive it was.

what justified the X1 being $100 more with weaker hardware and forced kinect garbage ? what was ahead about it and what features ??

@themightyant
I dont know how someone like Don matrick was assigned as Xbox head... Basically sony just had to reveal anything and win the gen, a free win

And he didnt just give them a win that gen but also made xbox a public enemy, you can see the hate they get by gaming community and journalist seem to squeeze it, if you go to N4G or Kotaku...xbox being attacked by both journalist and the community is a dialy routine

From where i see it, xbox have to do wonders to get back, they need heavy marketing (xbox suxks soooo much at marketing) and provide legendary exclsuives (good games will be attacked and underrated like with as dusk fall psychornaut 2 hi fi rush high on life....)

And they need to bribe big youtubers and journalist... Yes i said it because i feel sony maybe doing it as all sony games getting always great reviews and marketing done by youtubers, and all sony bad practices nd anticonsumer action are kept hidden and never speak off or lightly spoke about, when xbox for any small mistakes get humilated and aggressively critisized by journalists and youtubers

It su*ks for xbox

That announcement was why I went from 360 to ps4. Even after they backtracked on it, I was convinced they might one day just go back to their original plans with the xbox so I never bought one.

The Xbox Series X however is my console for this gen and I am loving it.

@Boldfoxrd yep , the ps5 sucks; it never fails to amaze me how fast the tides turn . it’s like a cycle .

I cheered when Phil came on at 34mins, lol

Funny thing is, I used the phrase, 'TV, TV, TV' immediately after the reveal when talking to two of my friends (so did I start the meme? ), and the decision was made a couple of days later for the three of us to invest in PCs instead of getting an Xbox One. I actually did still pre-order the Xbox One, but my two friends did not.

However, PC gaming was a fraught experience for me. My first PC cost me £2000, and caused nothing but problems; many a gaming night with my mates became a non-starter because at least one of us (usually me!) just couldn't get a game we wanted to play running. So, about 3 years after getting my first PC, I bought a replacement that cost £2600. Yes, games are cheaper on the PC, but the architecture required to run them? Not so much...

During this same period, I not only bought the Xbox One, but the Gears of War Xbox One, and later an Xbox One X. It was a very expensive period for me, but the thing I truly learnt during that time is that gaming on a PC is not always straightforward, is often very expensive and stressful, and pales in comparison to playing a game on a console wherein it is as simple as insert disc and press play!

It is a perfect example how to damage a brand & product...

Whilst it was a 'disaster' for Microsoft and almost led to them quitting the Console business, it also triggered a 'big' change for them.

By the time the XB1 launched, virtually everything, bar the Kinect bundled in, had been back-tracked and within a few months, even that was gone - along with Don Mattrick and Phil Spencer took over.

Of course it was too late for the 'base' XB1 - too soon to 'end' the generation and too late to change its specs. But that didn't stop them completely changing their gaming business model and are now a very different 'brand' under new management. Unfortunately, some of that 'legacy' is still brought up whenever Fanboys want to take a dig at Xbox.

So whilst this was probably the Lowest point for MS/Xbox, it also triggered them to take gaming 'seriously', merge Xbox from its 'small' separated section off of Microsoft and integrate it in to become MS's Gaming brand everywhere (not just Consoles), build up their OWN first Party Studios and introduced a more Service driven business model.

@themightyant
i think we are in the same boat just we need to clear some points:

im not sure if journalist getting paid but their is definitely something going on:
1.do those journalist/youtubers use xbox hate to get the most of views and followers to their articles/videos?
2. why do they ignore in a lot of times bad sony practices or approach them in a friendly way (if it was xbox they will masacre them)?
3.are they afraid to lose exclusive access to PS exclusives and interviews so they are always taking sony side?
4. or all of the above

also i dont think hi fi rush deserve more recognition but seem that any game from xbox is getting attacked one way or another (their was just a humor about hifi rush beng a failure and everyone putting it in headlines and discuss it like its a confirmed thing!

finally yes i think xbox need big guns to earn their respect back thats why i said good games won't do the trick they need at least 2 heavy AAA hitters GOTY material game score destroyers each year to make a real comeback

and you know and i know that xbox now isn't capable to make it but they may in the future as they fail and try again till they get it right.

but one thing that always annoyed me....why Microsoft is spending billions on acquisition but they spend like 10$ on marketing, i see playstation everywhere (youtube ads, soccer matches tv.....) comeon lot of poeple doesn't even know xbox you need to make a huge marketing compaign

@themightyant
you need to visit N4G and kotaku then

by bad practices i mean:
*no backward compatibility despite even xbox can run PS 1 2 3 on emulators.
*some backward games are available to play on PS5 but you have to buy them again...
*70$ remaster
*10$ next gen upgrade (big scum)
*blocking games from GP
*paying for big IP to make the exclusives
*buying exclsuive contents in many big AAA games
*PS accounts always getting hacked
*the lawsuit in UK about scamming poeple while charging for games.
*bad porting to PC

for Xbox yes they have the studios and money but i think they still make the same mistakes (redfall recently being always online DRM 30 fps only) and most importantly i don't trust them when it comes to choosing the right project to invest in and games to devolop also i think studios are out of their control and emplyees are somewhere in the building eating donuts

@nomither6

You could just google it as there have been a few articles written about how the Xbox One was ahead of its time and they are spot on. First and foremost was its focus on tv. Modern consoles are used just as much for non gaming entertainment as they are for gaming now. They have absolutely become set top boxes used to control all of the entertainment in one's living room. MS just focused too heavily on it at the time. Another was voice control. People just weren't ready for it, but now we have Alexa's everywhere. Hell, I have one in my kitchen, bedroom and bathroom and using voice control is 2nd nature now.

The Series S is basically very very close to what the Xbox One was feature wise. It combines a UHD Blu-ray player with OneGuide TV functionality, access to apps such as Kodi and the ability to integrate OTA using the Xbox One TV tuner.

@UltimateOtaku91 Whats the excuse for this gen?

Say what you want, but under Don Mattrick xbox actually had high quality exclusives at launch, series x and s had NO EXCLUSIVES at launch. People forget that phil was deeply part of dons team.

@themightyant
"Different approach" i call that total greed why to pay 10$ next gen upgrade when its free upgrade on xbox
And why should i subscribe to 24$ monthly subscription to play a limited selection of old games some i already own?
Why should i pay 70$ for a remaster such as spiderman despite being good or not? Resident evil remakesis 60$ and thats a game changer

Sucks? Yes paying not to benifit gamers or put a game on your service instead paying million so a game isnt on other console service is total dirt

You know what forget about it i swear your wearing a blue shirt adios

@themightyant
I play on all platforms and playing on all platforms doesnt make you neutral... And obviously your not

@themightyant "As for having plenty of time to change everything, the 2 conferences were on the same day (10th June 2013) the Xbox one finished at 10am the Sony one started 6 hours later. "

Don't forget Xbox had their first conference over 2 weeks, almost 3 before the more infamous E3 one with the first unveiling, the above event was 5/21, which went down like a lead balloon for all the reasons represented in gory detail (viewer discretion is advised) above. Sony had 2, almost 3 weeks to listen to the feedback and rumors coming out of Xboxes obviously troubled product and start making plans/adjustments to capitalize on that before the big E3 day.

So did Microsoft. The chatter, at the time, was that yes, this above media event was a disaster, but, of course, "that was for investors, and media, and general audiences so of course it was about TV and football, but E3 was coming up in weeks and that would be gamer focused and all about the gamer features, just wait for E3, that'll be the event they show us the box for gamers! " If MS had listened to the feedback in May, and course corrected for E3, they could have changed the optics and messaging, made the prediction true, and delivered an E3 X1 unveiling targeting gamers. But, no, Matrick wasn't listening, knew he was "right" (and the guy STILL believes he was "right"(!)) and doubled down on selling his tv box with kinekt and physical DRM.

Sony meanwhile had the same nearly 3 weeks to listen to the feedback and retool their messaging and planning to be able to take advantage of Matrick pouring gasoline all over One Microsoft Way. They were no doubt going to do just that anyway after the disaster May X1 reveal, but Matrick handed them the ultimate gift by being totally tone-deaf between May and June, not listening to the feedback while Sony did, doubling down on the unpopular concept, making it worse, and then being flippant about it to the media that questioned it.

The physical DRM thing was not possible to be totally cloistered in an MS vacuum. These things are done with publishers in advance. Publishers had been very vocal about the problem of physical resale around that time, and wanted to do anything to stop it. I find it markedly implausible that Sony was not also a part of those conversations with partner publishers and the goal of physical DRM considering how prominent even publicly that topic was in the industry at the time. Even in the incredibly off chance that Sony was not a part of that conversation (which is about as likely as finding out that we live in an alternate universe created by sentient machines) They would have been aware of it from conversations with partner publishers tipping them off about the direction and making plans one way or another.

Not knocking Sony on any of that. The physical DRM thing was what the INDUSTRY wanted. Matrick took the hit for making it public, and Sony, at the time, had competent, grounded leadership in Kaz, Andy, Shu, Jack that could actually read the room and deliver what people wanted. Not like their leadership today. Sony did it right, MS did it wrong. It's what that lead to that's an insufferable mess of armored war ponies and ABK nightmares.

@TakeItEasy #4, all of the above.

There's absolutely an unspoken handshake with some publishers. They don't say anything. But yet it's very clear an outlets access to them comes with a short leash and the publication is expected to portray them positively. It's not stated in words, yet it's very clear. Sony and Nintendo are two of those. MS at least many years ago, was not.

Plus sewing discord and arguments is how media makes all their money. Doesn't matter if it's video game blogs or major news outlets, the money is made from conflict, period.

And Bias. PS is more popular, more famous, more globally available, with more nostalgia attached to it, and with the solid reputation of their games, it's more easily overlooked that everything they do automatically has good reasons and is well meaning, etc. It doesn't hurt that from 1995 to 2005 and then from 2007 through 2017 or so they really were the "good guys" overall against overbearing competitors. It buys them a lot of leeway in terms of benefit of doubt in the public/media mind until they burn one bridge too many. Trashing Xbox means trashing a modern product. Trashing Nintendo or Playstation tends to be trashing people's fondest childhood associations and becomes personal.

In terms of games reviewing high, though, all the above plays out, but there's a simpler factor involved. Sony generally applies their Hollywood know-how to make general audience, mass market blockbuster games. It checks off all the box, is inoffensive, non-polarizing, everything for every one products that is naturally built to sell high and score high for the same reason Transformers and Marvel movies sell big. Microsoft games tend to be more niche, more divisive, more experimental. That's going to split reviews right off the bat, because it's not often a "made to sell" mass market product. Sony seems tied to a model that every game needs to be a mass market box office smash at launch. That requires a certain type of game. MS seems happier making a bunch of niche games to satisfy a bunch of different groups one at a time. TBH I kind of like that latter idea better, for me "mass market" never means much and usually isn't for me at all. But it's just a different market approach. The result is all of Sony's games come away commercial and critical smash hits because they're engineered specifically to be that. MS's games, at least so far, aren't engineered for that result. That's a marketing miss, but a satisfaction hit if you're in the niches they serve.

@themightyant I see your point on hardware, but it's just a near impossibility Sony wasn't involved in developers pleas to end used games. Game stop gate was the industry swear word at the time. Dlc and season passes began mostly because if it. We know Sony didn't have a hardware lockout solution but that doesn't mean they didn't have a solution or that they didn't have a bad solution (and it's not like hardware lockouts are a slam dunk, see also 10NES).... If Sony DIDN'T have a physical DRM planned they were ignoring developers completely. And that's not likely given they were bending backwards for devs after the PS3 debacle.

We don't know what their solution was or if it was a sucky one (I mean they're the ones that picked CSS for DVD 😂) but for that time period saying they didn't have one while the industry begged for it and ms delivered it would imply they were tone deaf and incompetent. Jim, I could believe that. Kaz, Andy, and Shu, no.

But they were smart, read the room, cut it probably at the chagrin of publishers and here we are in their Monopoly as a result.

@NEStalgia finally a wise man i like your analysis and i spoke what is in my mind better than i ever would

@NEStalgia and by the way, about your point on "hollywood know how" thats very precise and those games are made to target the general audience (gamers and casuals"
While i don't like cinematic games ( i was actually fascinated by those type of games in my teen years)now i feel limited and chained on those games, do this do that you cant go here go there, cutscene press x.... I feel that my gameplay experience will be so similar to others that i can just watch it on youtube and finish it.

But its true that those games are loved by moat poeple and they will continue to have success and sony is good at those

In the other hand xbox will excel in my favorite genre which is RPG because of bathesda and obsidian, but they have to make cinematic games to make those casuals and also gamers that love the genre to their platform (hellblade can be the one along perfect dark and maybe indiana John's)

The only thing I liked about the 2013 dashboard was it being Windows 8 like (as getting into dual screens in consoles, phones, dual app/games being a thing, syncing data between devices, casting my phone to the TV so it's useful for apps not on the TV I can use then the TV version of the app being the only way to do things, and picture in picture more these days) and Kinect was used better then for gestures I think...... well besides being for those select games........ maybe I don't know yet I haven't looked enough at it.

Other than that yeah the event was....... and the messaging was..... as bad as people say it was. Like I use apps with the Xbox but making it a box for media I mean if people wanted a Nuon (DVD player game console that's niche) or something else to have a media hub device or fit in with streaming) then sure but they didn't. People wanted a console. Many times customers see a media remote and go why would i need that.

I see need for it but do I use it myself no not really the buttons/touchpads on whichever PS/Xbox are good enough and the UIs work well. The Xbox One/360 I prefer the layout of then any past Sony PS2 & 3 UIs for watching DVDs/Blu-rays. PS4 was good enough too and using the touchpad is fun. XD

Still having an Xbox One looking 360 E was nice (the design is what it is I don't mind it or hate it I'm indifferent to it) at least to have a later 360 model that lasts which is a plus.

So other than the dashboard that went away sigh and

I hate how the internet portrays that event.
Everything that MS said that day has happened, and we're all fine with it.

>Everything is always online
>Physical/used games are nearly irrelevant
>Our consoles serve as convenient multi media devices to the point where standalone DVD players just don't exist

All that has happened while Microsoft has been the only platform that truly respects digital ownership and game preservation.

The Kinect was apparently gimmicky *****, but I guess we have plenty of space for more expensive and less functional gimmicky ***** like, VR, the switch as a console, and dumb adaptive triggers.

I'd much rather have the 3rd or 4th gen Kinect than any of the crap we have now.

Don was RIGHT!

@themightyant i don’t think the launch ps3 was bad practice at all . they did the right thing for gamers , people just couldn’t afford it & that’s on them , not sony

Hands down the WORST xbox console ever by microsoft. The xbox 360 will be hailed to be the best xbox console and the series s/X are also failing at that too.