Where’s the Microsoft that hailed the Xbox One as the digital, “all in one” future of our living rooms? Now that the gaming console is available without Kinect, it’s a future that feels increasingly out of reach.
Granted, decoupling Kinect is a shrewd decision to spike sales and reach price parity with the PS4. And with fickle voice commands and a virtually non-existent Kinect gaming lineup, Microsoft hasn’t justified Kinect’s required bundling. Yet I’m worried this is a short term business call that could hobble the Xbox One in the long run.
With Kinect originally bundled with every Xbox One sold, Microsoft had a multimedia and convergence angle over the PS4. The accessory adds voice control, motion gaming, an IR blaster to control your cable box, Skype, interactive fitness classes and much more. While much of its ambition wasn’t realized on day one, the long term potential is enormous; it’s Microsoft’s trojan horse of a gaming console to win over a larger general public. If traditional core console gaming falls out of favor long term, Microsoft would be far better equipped to pivot with a Kinect attached to every Xbox.
Now without Kinect, the PS4 pulls ahead of the Xbox One in several tangible ways. First, raw performance, as evidenced by better frame rates and higher resolutions across several multi-platform titles. It’s a tiny, even negligible factor for every day consumers, but a potential selling factor among core gamers. Also the PS4 trumps Xbox on indie releases as well; Microsoft has been playing catch up with their ID@Xbox division, but their releases are less notable and diverse than Sony’s.
Finally, there’s the user interface, an underrated factor among a mainstream audience. While the PS4 “horizontal ribbon” style UI is a bit simplistic and lacks customization, it works effectively for launching games and tracking online activity. The XBox One’s comparatively complex UI was designed around voice for primary navigation; using just a controller is often awkward. Microsoft is claiming any controller navigation shortcomings will be addressed in future system updates but for now this puts a Kinect-less Xbox at a disadvantage.
In short, power, indies, UI and sales momentum all favor the PS4. What’s left are games. Microsoft will likely focus heavily, if not entirely, on gaming for their E3 keynote this year. They’re betting on their financial strength to shore up more first and third party exclusives than Sony.
Granted, exclusives have spiked consoles sales historically, most notably in the form of Wii Sports several years ago. This being 2014, I wonder if we’re in a changed gaming landscape. Like other forms of media, modern gaming user bases are now heavily fragmented across multiples tastes and platforms. I suspect big budget exclusives – the Halos and Mario Karts of the world – are losing their impact. Titanfall is a prime example; its twist on the multiplayer shooter genre was critically lauded upon release, but the game’s online community is far smaller and less active than the Battlefield and Call of Duty releases from previous years. The incentive for AAA publishers to go multi-platform has never been stronger: as budgets escalate, spreading a release among as many platforms as possible makes strong financial sense. Both the PS4 and Xbox One have similar, PC-like architecture which makes porting easier than previous console generations.
Even if exclusives are still the system sellers they once were, what if Sony comes out of this E3 swinging with a strong showing of their own? What moves does Microsoft have left?
It didn’t have to be this way. Perceptions of momentum aside, the Xbox One has time to catch up without gutting the Kinect this early; Xbox One sales, while significantly less than the PS4, are still strong with at least five million units shipped as of a month ago. The XBox One is even beating the original Xbox 360 sales by 76 percent when comparing each console’s first six months at retail. There are a lot of smaller, yet substantial actions to chase the PS4 on price; they could have packed in a few free games, a year of Xbox Live Gold, or just slashed the console’s price by $50.
Overall, the Xbox One could have been a device with a unique, even visionary ambition if Microsoft had stuck to their initial ambitions. However, sans Kinect, it’s a console without a strong voice and differentiator from its competition.
Tested’s Will Smith gave the Xbox One a second chance as a universal remote after a negative run last month:
As far as I can tell, Microsoft hasn’t changed anything with the way the TV functionality works since the Xbox One’s launch, but my behavior has changed. I use the TiVo remote to navigate to whatever I want to watch, but if I need to pause, play, or even fast forward whlie I’m watching something I use the basic voice commands. “Xbox Pause” and “Xbox Play” are reliable and work well, even though using the voice commands for more complex tasks remains maddening.
But it looks like there’s some serious power concerns that may keep him from using the setup over the long run.
Microsoft promotes the Xbox One as an all-in-one solution for your living room needs: gaming, film, cable TV, even home exercise. But the Xbox One leans on convergence to a fault. It’s a console whose overstuffed feature set, for now, has left it vulnerable on both price and its user interface. While core gamers kept sales strong over the holidays I’m concerned that the console will have a rough future with a mainstream audience.
Its convergence problems start with its $500 price tag. Devices that already carry the same feature set of core streaming services (e.g. Netflix, Hulu Plus) as the Xbox One are $100 or less. Granted, the Xbox One adds on high end gaming, voice and gesture UI integration along with limited cable TV control, but those additions for $400 are a hard sell for everyday consumers. And I doubt we’ll see a price drop anytime soon; the console requires high-end expensive gaming hardware to compete with Sony’s PS4 over next gen gaming. The Kinect, one of the Xbox’s purported main innovations, drives the price higher. Microsoft tacks on additional fees as well: a $60/year Xbox Live subscription is required for most functionality, a policy unheard of on competing tech devices like the PS4 or Roku.
Convergence across diverse activities also adds complexity to the Xbox One’s UI, an extra hurdle for mainstream adoption. Just compare the console’s preferred interaction method – voice – against interaction on competing media and tech devices. From my own testing, Xbox One voice commands largely work. But it still feels like a feature trying to find its footing; about 20% of the time I have to repeat myself or a command takes me in an unwanted direction.
80% reliability is a good start, but that’s 15% short of what it should be given the competition’s astounding performance. Consider the 1 to 1 touch interaction on a modern iOS or stock Android smartphone or tablet. Or the tried and true keyboard and mouse inputs on a desktop or laptop. Even buttons on a remote control for the cable box. These aforementioned devices “just work.” Granted, Microsoft’s voice technology is new and will improve, and there’s a game controller for backup navigation. But historically users outside a tech or gaming enthusiast base show little patience for new input technologies that work unreliably.
Then there’s added Xbox One functionality that’s puzzling. Things like:
“Snapping” an application like a web page or Skype alongside the right side of the screen seems like it would be used in a rare scenario.
Minority Report style Kinect gestures to move around the UI that are slow and awkward.
A Windows 8-like interface that’s visually striking, but occasionally confusing with a menu of very similarly sized and colored boxes doing different things.
Microsoft would argue that ambition takes time and that the Xbox One’s rough patches will be smoothed over soon. And I want the Xbox One to succeed; strong competition from Microsoft’s console leads to better technology from Sony, Nintendo, Apple and Google. However, other living room tech isn’t standing still. Rumors suggest the next Apple TV iteration will be ambitious. Sony’s PS4 runs select multi-platform games at higher resolutions with a more straightforward, gaming focused UI, which could appeal to the core gaming market. Drive can only take a console so far; with Microsoft’s missteps on price and UI, it’s unclear if the company can deliver on its promise.
And make no mistake, a device like Kinect — the device Microsoft is hellbent on shoehorning into our living space — must be seamless if the Xbox One is to capture the mainstream audience Microsoft is lusting after. In short: I have very little confidence in Kinect’s ability to respond quickly, efficiently or consistently and that’s an issue.
But the major issue is this: if you want to purchase an Xbox One, Kinect is being forced upon you. You are paying extra for a device that, two months from launch, feels like a rough, unfinished product. You don’t have a choice and that’s problematic.
I don’t want Kinect to be dropped; it’s got incredible potential. But from all accounts it seems like Kinect is half baked, tech not taken seriously by most gaming developers. What launch XBox One games are even using a fraction of the Kinect’s potential? Without that extra level of polish it feels rushed, rough and something I don’t want to pay extra for. Another reason my preorder is still for the PS4.
A big step in the right direction for catering to indie developers. Microsoft still isn’t out of the weeds: their decision to not make the Kinect required is baffling, and there’s many other moves that suggest a platform without a strong vision. But adding an indie friendly publishing platform is a uniformly great decision.
David Auerbach writing for Slate on Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows an essential part of the internet:
There was no room for a Stringer Bell–style dove to strike out and make a deal with an ambitious youngster like Marlo Stanfield (Google) or a wily long-standing rival like Proposition Joe (Apple) for a share of profits and a shot of innovation. (“It’s not even a thought, man,” Avon chided Stringer.) Why should they cut deals with the riff-raff? They had crushed Lotus, Novell, and Netscape. Office and Windows were stable, profitable behemoths. Sure, Linus Tovalds—aka Omar Little—was a perennial annoyance, robbing Microsoft of server profits by giving away Linux for free, but he didn’t threaten the main business.
Admittedly almost any piece that mixes in The Wire has my attention, but my mind’s a bit blown with this one.
I’m far from a “hard core” gamer, but a mere two days after E3’s start this year, I preordered the PS4. I’m bullish on Sony for two main reasons: indies and focus.
The indie developer factor
E3 pressers lean on the tried and true: AAA first person shooters, racing games and sports. These are the Hollywood blockbusters of gaming, big budget games that rarely deviate from an expected template to avoid alienating fan bases. I’m not above partaking in AAA franchises with better graphics and AI, but those games will always be there. At this point diversity and originality matter more and it’s increasingly smaller budget indie developers that fill this need.
With development and distribution costs dropping, indies are a rapdly growing presence on most gaming platforms. Mobile gaming is dominated by small developer content, and indie games have become huge sellers on Steam. And it’s not just sales; some of the most critically acclaimed games last year (The Walking Dead, Fez, Journey) were decidedly indie.
Despite this, the XBox One seems tone deaf to the indie movement. The XBox E3 presser gave indies five minutes to hustle through two quick trailers, a total afterthought. Microsoft also forces indie distributers through a lot of red tape. For instance, there’s no self publishing and XBox Live often charges expensive patch fees (often prohibitively expensive for smaller dev teams) to keep games updated. It’s bad enough that several smaller studios have dropped XBox One development entirely.
In contrast, Sony has a more indie-friendly approach: a showcase of eight indies in the middle of their worldwide E3 presser. Self publishing. Aggressive courting of indie studios with PS4 dev kits. The results are almost 30 indie game console exclusives to be released by end of 2014. Sony still has to ensure their online stores are set up so gamers can discover indies easily (a major problem on the current gen XBox 360) but overall Sony has an impressive start.
Focus
Sony appears very disciplined, an about-face from their aloof stance during the PS3 debut. They’ve lined their top ranks with gaming veterans like Mark Cerny, Shuhei Yoshida and Shane Bettenhausen. The heavy gaming thrust of the PS4 is also realistic and practical. Don’t battle against Apple TV, mobile platforms or the many other web browsers and Netflix players in the living room; coexist and focus on what you do best: games.
Contrast that with Microsoft where both the personnel and vision is all over the place. Exhibit A: the DRM PR mess that’s followed Microsoft around from E3 to its 180 flip flop last week. There’s also been little added support or push around Kinect’s gaming benefits, even though it’s the main reason the system carries a $100 premium over the PS4. And XBox One’s split screen, live/cable TV focus feels dated. It’s Google TV all over again, tech effectively dead on arrival.
Smaller issues
Issues that have dominated gaming discussion online are pretty overrated. XBox and PS4 disc DRM is now on even terms and within a year or two I suspect digital downloads will be the default anyway. Microsoft’s pre-E3 vision of an all digital future isn’t just fantasy, it’s an inevitability (the rest of the tech industry – most notably Steam – have already moved this way.) While neither Microsoft nor Sony have revealed their next gen digital download policy, I’d wager they will start on similar footing.
I won’t give either system an edge on hardware either; Sony’s supposed superior gaming architecture could easily be nullified by XBox Live’s cloud computing. That leaves the launch lineups exclusive to each console, both of which are fairly weak (though Microsoft’s Forza 5 looks incredible.) And based on previous console gens, it’s a folly to extrapolate launch titles out to the quality of a console’s library years down the road.
Regardless of what happens, the future of console gaming is uncertain as mobile and PC gaming continue to make inroads. The PS4 could soundly “win” over the XBox One in sales for its first year and still be a failure. But if I’m betting now, I think Sony will start out of the gates ahead on Microsoft.
Microsoft doesn’t allow developers to self-publish their games on the Xbox 360, nor will it be allowed on the Xbox One. There’s been much talk about this limitation, but few really understand what it means, or why that decision not only screws over indies on the Xbox One, but the PlayStation 4 and PC as well. Microsoft, in one very broad stroke, has made it much harder for smaller developers to operate in gaming as a whole.
Occasionally I questioned if some of the examples here were a bit hyperbolic. But I’ve been reading so many reports of this from different sources that there’s clearly a lot of truth here. As a article commenter points out, it’s ironic the Microsoft tried this experiment back with 360 and the XLIG. Seeing where they started and where they are now…pretty crazy.
John Teti, writing for The Gamelogical Society on Microsoft’s E3 presser:
If the people on Microsoft’s Xbox team thought of their audience as human beings, they would have acknowledged some of the elephants in the room—like the Xbox One’s extraordinarily confusing used-games scheme or the privacy concerns regarding the always-on Kinect camera, which have only become more urgent as the nation realizes how thoroughly we are being surveilled. If they wanted to speak to people, Microsoft’s executives would not have ticked every box on their Buzzword Bingo card twice over. They know this talk of an “entertainment revolution” is bullshit, and we know it’s bullshit. Yet still they make us sit through this inane emperor’s-new-clothes charade, as they talk at length to nobody in particular.
For a few hours after Microsoft’s presser, right before Sony started presenting, I had already slightly moved away from leaning Microsoft for my next console. All I could think was, you’re not going to address anything the gaming public have been piling on you? Then fuel the fire with endless violent sequels on shooters, and racers we’ve seen before? Little to any indie presence? And then set the price at $500? The presentation was well paced, and there were a few exclusives I could get on board with. But John identifies exactly what left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Tech writer and former Hypercritical podcast host John Siracusa really sets a high bar with his post regarding the likely fates of the XBox One, PS4 for and Wii U for the next console generation. Bottom line, it’s hard to guess who will come out on top now, but I agree completely with John’s belief that there isn’t going to be an “even divide” between these consoles.
If I were a betting man today, I’d say the Wii U will fall far, far short of the XBox One and PS4, both in terms of hardware and games sold. But it’s extremely hard to say now either Sony or Microsoft have the edge. We’ll learn more next week at E3.