If you look back at the previous generation between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, arguably the most damaging moment for Microsoft was when PlayStation unveiled the "Used Game Instructional Video", showing how anyone could play used games on a PlayStation 4. In contrast, it had been suggested that Xbox One would be an always-online console that wouldn't allow used games, but that ultimately ended up not being the case.
The effects of the botched Xbox One launch are still being felt to this day, and the Used Game Instructional Video was a killer blow at the time, although former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton has stated it wasn't necessarily meant to be done at Microsoft's expense. Tretton had the following to say in an interview with Axios (thanks IGN):
"I have a lot of friends at Microsoft now and had a lot of friends then, and I wasn't necessarily looking to do it at their expense. I was just feeling really good about it."
The recent Xbox documentary, Power On: The Story Of Xbox, covered the Used Game Instructional Video and Microsoft's reaction to it at the time, with GM of Xbox Games Marketing Aaron Greenberg describing it as an example of "stuff [getting] really ugly".
In fact, the Xbox One's botched launch led to the Head of Xbox at the time, Don Mattrick, leaving the company and being replaced by Phil Spencer, and Mattrick has since revealed he didn't actually want to leave the position.
What do you make of Tretton's comments about the infamous PS4 video? Tell us down below.
Comments 46
9 years later, sony is doing the exact same thing đ
Honestly it was brilliant, funny and deserved. I think MS needed that and the backlash to realise how wide of the mark they were of customers expectations and be forced to hard pivot, else they might have stumbled on with their plans. That dark cloud ultimately gave us Phil Spencer, Game Pass and bought us to the great place Xbox is today.
Though I was one of the people that liked SOME of the benefits of Microsoft's original plan for XBO (e.g. Digital game library sharing) however the cost of these pro-consumer moves was unbalanced by too many anti-consumer ones, most crucially giving them all the control and always requiring online.
Microsoft set themselves up for it though, Sony didn't mean it in a malicious way, it was just pure fun banter and to also make it clear that their system didn't have that flaw which some people may have thought they had.
I never forget the Sony PS4 reveal that year and the chants of Sony Sony Sony from the Audience as they said â And you donât need to be connected online to play gamesâ
My Xbox heart died that year but I had a PS4 and Xbox one, day one for both.
As far as Microsoft and Xbox go since, they been ok ish this generation so far. Console amazing, features amazing, game pass amazing. Games, we need more FH5 big AAA games and some Halo updates in campaign expansion. So games ok ish.
Even though I said the rest is amazing it the new big AAA games that count really.
They knew exactly what they were doing. Sounds like someone is about to be bought by Microsoft! (Iâm kidding btwâŚor am I)
It was a great moment. Itâs always funny looking back at that Xbox reveal and seeing how ahead of the curve Microsoft was with a lot of things and also seeing parallels in how Sony is going about things now. Itâs a shame they dumped their âfamily sharingâ idea though.
Of course you didn't mean it (rolls eyes). What a load of BS!
It was made for maximum damage and it succeeded, a good thing as it forced change at Xbox and stopped Sony from doing it themselves.
In spite of MS changing their DRM policy before the XB1 released the mud stuck and this was a great tool for Sony. Own it, don't walk back from it just because you look like dicks yourself with your own anti consumer policies.
I'm an xbox fan at heart, but this was Genius on Sony's part. I only wish there was a modern version of this from MS for 'this is how you update your game to next gen on xbox'. I know there has been tweets from xbox to that effect. But something in the exact style of this.. with.. just starts game.. would be priceless.
Lies. They wanted to bury xbox after making 0 money during the ps3 gen.
Wow, still some butt hurt shown by a few in here - how amusing.
Microsoft did it all to themselves and absolutely deserved the kicking they got as a result.
The classic for me was the interview where one of the execs was challenged as to what gamers do if they are somewhere offline and were told 'we make a console for them, its called the Xbox'. I bet that guys career didn't go much higher, lol.
Whilst they have done a lot to turn around their rep since then, the games division is still subject to control from the corp head office, who would quite frankly do anything they thought they could get away with. I'm glad Phil is given free reign to control his division because I believe he understands the optics better than many in his corp, and I'm sure we have better treatment as a result.
It's just business in the end. To be fair Microsoft couldn't have set it up any better if they tried. It would have been foolish of Playstation not to take advantage of the situation. It also made for a fun E3! Good times.
I know this is off topic, but I donât know why when I read "I have a lot of friends at Microsoft..." It made me think of people who say racial things and then say something like âI have a black friend.â Doesnât make it right though what Sony did wasnât as bad as those who end up saying that second line I quoted.
They knew what they were doing and it did exactly as intended. It was a great move and one I was fully behind at the time. Sony smashed it that year and as the article says the effects are still being felt today. Iâm glad it happened, it needed to, MS are in a much better place than back then and Iâm happy to own an Xbox again.
i remember sitting at my dining room table thinking "Wow. Microsoft is going to get BURIED this generation, from day 1." it's probably the earliest a generation's competition has been over maybe EVER. The Sony video was funny and yes a little hypocritical (if Microsoft's restrictive policies had somehow been successful, Sony would definitely have followed suit). we're actually still seeing the fallout from it, as Microsoft nearly bailing on Xbox altogether after this fiasco is the reason we have so few 1st party games coming out at the moment (they literally stopped greenlighting games for about a year). Sony was dunking on Microsoft, of course it was malicious, but Microsoft brought it on themselves, so it's fine.
You mean like how your bro smacks you then when you go to smack him back he says it was an accident? Sorry bro, you still getting smacked.
@Royalblues They destroyed hopes of a better Family sharing plan by Sony mocking the online requirement. Now you can't even play the new Gran Turismo 7 on PS5 without being connected. The hypocrisy of Sony, they did push to mock Xbox and their marketshare of fanboys was enough to force Microsoft to change things when they probably would have been better off not changing things. This happening started my distrust of Sony and I will never buy a Playstation again. For me the joke is on them. Now the online requirement is there for almost everything. Microsoft was ahead of their time, I think it's weird that you think what Sony did was good.
They bullied Microsoft. It was quite direct, any suggestion that it wasn't meant to hurt Microsoft is just a ruse. I have had zero respect for Sony after this move.
The reality was roles got reversed from the previous gen.
Sony came out on form for PS4 and MS dropped the ball big time with Xbox One.
It's situations like these that bring the other company back down to reality.
Itâs funny now apart from Nintendo switch that seems to run seemless games wise.
I have had online issues with both Xbox and PlayStation . So it all went online, log in and DRM in the end anyway.
Competition breeds innovation and good consumer practices. Was it too far? I dont think so. I still owned both consoles enjoyed them and will continue to do so. Xbox fell which ultimately led to Phil and gamepass. As result playstation has to change policy to stay competitive. AAA games works for the casual crowd, for those of us that enjoy gaming we want it all.
@Royalblues I just felt that at the time Sony had enough influence they dictated the last generation. For me it's how they managed that leverage that I don't trust them. Thanks for the follow up post. I agree that Microsoft is going to get there anyways.
Though I'm not that impressed with the family model they are releasing, I'm not even sure why people would pay for it. It seems as though it is dedicated to a "HOME" unit which defeats the purpose in my opinion. I think of it more like Billy has an Xbox and Sally has an Xbox and they can play together with the same games and use one another's games that they purchased. This just says Billy and Sally can use Dad/Mom's Xbox to play their parents games with their profile.
I'm an idiot because I read that headline wrong and assumed it would be about the game Infamous on PS4. đ
Anyway, fair play to Sony when they did this (although it pained me massively at the time). I think Microsoft would have done the same if the roles were reversed.
@Royalblues Not only Sony. When Apple makes a draconian decision against consumers, Samsung is the first in line to make jokes about itâŚ. just to replicate that very thing 2 years later đ¤Śđťââď¸
Yeah, right, of COURSE it was done at the expense of Xbox, that's just shameful they'd try to pretend otherwise.
That said, it was brilliant, deserved, and I miss Jack Tretton and Andy House. And E3. Those were the golden days of Playstation.
Never forget Tretton's "mic drop" at that E3 too.
I don't blame Sony for doing that.. Xbox definitely deserved that..
@RevGaming Oh please, the PS3 outsold the 360 and when it did become profitable Sony were raking cash in by putting out system sellers like Uncharted 2. How much money did the 360 haemorrhage with RRoD again?
@iplaygamesnstuff you really believe a trillion $ company can be bullied ? đ
Lets be honest in that Sony never wanted game sharing either (lost revenue), but hadn't committed to anything yet. Once MS had committed, this video was a stroke of video game magic that could have literally taken MS out of the video game world altogether.
I always thought of it as being a bit of friendly banter.
@Would_you_kindly Not money but they still have more players. Their fanboys puppeted what Sony said. It was widely known that there was an outcry and Microsoft folded the always online and family plans due to what this article is talking about. I feel this whole process bullied those features away. Just my opinion, I know others share the same opinion.
@Shigurui Um. 360 made more money. Ps3 did not.
I haven't mention anything about the games.
@RevGaming Not only did 360 not turn a profit, MS have never made a profit on any version of console hardware. This was even confirmed as recently as last year when Lori Wright, the VP of Xbox business development said so in court during questioning in the Epic vs Apple trial.
Competition is good for gamers, the console makers usually become disillusioned after they 'win' generation, like ps3 after ps2, or xbox one after xbox 360.
Nowadays xbox is more customer oriented than playstation, that's why xbox series x (with switch oled) is my main console this gen.
Honestly, this was a burn that wrote itself. It was ridiculously low hanging fruit and impossible to resist.
Omg why does everyone feel the need to apologize for everything. It was a great, well-timed, perfectly executed ad.
@Shigurui Um. Who cares? They made money in general through sales and gold.
Sony made nothing through anywhere.
Stop capping.
@Titntin that was an interview with Don Mattrick and i believe it was Geoff Keighley who was interviewing him and you can see Geoff is taken aback by the answer which was "we have a console for them, it's the Xbox 360"
Personally, i was ready to go fully digital with XB1 and liked some of their ideas around being able to share a digital library and things such as that
I can see why overall it wasn't great though as the always-online thing isn't great for people in areas where broadband connectivity isn't as reliable as it could or should be
Both platforms still have an issue with day 1 downloads, required full game installation, always online designs, and no family groups.
I recently shared a story on here about how I tried to put my old PS4 upstairs, where my connection (on base PS4 at least) was less than 1mbs, and the console effectively became unplayable as a result. Wasn't helped by the archaic cloud save service.
MS completely deserved the criticism they got before the launch of the Xbox One, but it still baffles me how Sony came out of it unscathed.
@RevGaming Lmao, you seem to care but hey, keep moving the goalposts there when facts don't suit you.
Funny enough, after all these years and people fanboying for PS4 as hard as they could, Sony has turned around and done all the things they were criticizing Xbox for back then. I mean just look at GT7, the game is pretty much unplayable without an active internet connection.
@Shigurui but... you're wrong.
Playstation lost money during that generation. They were selling buildings and downsizing by the end of it.
LoL Sony being like... "Big Bro Xbox, I never meant anything against you when I made that Game Sharing video 9 years ago... I swear.. Just wanted to show the new players how to share their games..."
Xbox "Uhhh huhhh... Yeah, sure"
PlayStation "Yeah so anyways, now that that is water under the bridge... About that Chip Priority.... anyway you could help your little bro out with some extra chips maybe??"
Xbox "Oh hmmm well since you never meant anything about that game sharing video a while back, let me take a look.... So I checked on the chips for you Pee Station, and yeah, yeah I don't have any extra chips at all... Using all the ones that we have right now...Thanks for letting me know about the game sharing ***** though. Can you please get the hell out of my bedroom now? Thanks."
@VOODOO85 Yeah, it seemed pretty shocking at the time!
Like you, I didnt see it as the end of the world as im 100%always online anyway, but the messaging was poor and it needed more thought. I thought MS got more of a kicking than it deserved.
Felt similar with the GT7 story recently.. Its exactly the same as GT sport, which has been online only and had mtx for the last 5 years.
The internet likes a good rage at something
@RevGaming Not wrong at all. You seem to be getting confused between Sony the company and Playstation, a division of the company.
PS3 hardware became profitable after 4 years and had an 11 year production run, 7 of which it turned a profit. Look it up for yourself. We done now?
@Shigurui You know I meant Playstation lol. Common now...
Yes, the console (the hardware) was profitable, but they lost money elsewhere. Playstation made no profit for Sony that gen. Hope it's clear. One more gen like that and they would've closed playstation.
Go to statista and watch the net income.
Why is it important for you that sony made profit from ps3 during that gen?
@RevGaming No I didn't know because you flip flop all over the place, going from gold profit to building sales. You fail on every level to put a concise argument together.
For the record I don't care about about PS3 profit. I couldn't care less if Sony and MS fell into an abyss tomorrow. Point is you claimed PS3 was a complete loss, I just wanted to show it wasn't.
@Shigurui I never said consoles. I said ps3 as in general. Stop blaming me for your mistakes.
Ps3 was a complete loss...
Nvm dude. Go on with your day.
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