Xbox One: Microsoft's Mixed Messages

An analysis of the Xbox One reveal.
Confusion reigns in the wake of the Xbox One reveal yesterday. Cast an eye over the games news today, and there are conflicting reports about everything from shared accounts to pre-owned to the nature of the console’s online requirement. The event itself was boldly top-line – here’s what it looks like, here’s what it does, here’s how it changes things – but in attempting to present a simple message, so much crucial information was glossed over that total confusion and speculation have sprung up like weeds in the cracks in our knowledge. The Xbox One is supposed to be an easy-to-understand, all-in-one solution – but currently Microsoft’s messaging is anything but unified.

It's genuinely not clear to me at this point whom the Xbox One is aimed at.

It's genuinely not clear to me at this point whom the Xbox One is aimed at. Is it an entertainment box that plays games, or a games console that caters for entertainment? Sony was very up-front about that when it presented the PlayStation 4 to the world back in February: it was pitched very much as a machine designed around both gamers and developers, a games console with other features. For the first 30 minutes of the Xbox One reveal it was essentially pitched as a live TV and sports viewer with a really impressive interface and super-quick, integrated Internet connectivity.

There’s nothing wrong with that as a product - if it works like the conference showed it working, it will be a great product – but it’s confusing to everyone who still sees Xbox as primarily a gaming brand. To announce a new games machine and then not actually show any games save an already-announced Call of Duty, a live-action teaser for a new Remedy game and new EA sports titles is a confusing message.

A tangle of obfuscation has sprung up around crucial issues that were passed over in the conference.

Microsoft has outright said several times that it’s saving all that stuff for E3, but that’s a strange decision. Why do half a reveal now, and half in a few weeks? Gamers are the people upon whom Xbox’s brand is built, and they, not the mainstream consumer, were surely the people tuning in excitedly to watch last night. Microsoft has plenty of lip-service to the importance of gaming to the Xbox One, but at the same time it hasn’t really shown anything to back it up. This has sent out mixed signals.

The real tangle of obfuscation, though, has sprung up around crucial issues that were passed over in the conference: technical specifications, internet requirements, and pre-owned games. I don’t know enough about tech specs to find the holes in Microsoft’s information, but this is the Internet, and there are plenty of people who have.

On the subject of the console’s internet requirement, the information wasn’t vague so much as completely contradictory. Don Mattrick came out and said it wasn’t always-online – but then an FAQ turned up on the Xbox website turned up with the spectacularly conflicted phrasing “it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet.”

"You do not require an always-on connection to be able to use Xbox One," said Xbox’s UK marketing director. "It is clearly designed to be connected to the Internet, and hopefully from what you've just seen you realize some of the benefits that brings. But if your Internet connection drops, you will still be able to play games, still be able to watch Blu-ray movies, and still be able to watch live TV.” But then it emerged that the console will still need to connect to go online at least once every 24 hours, according to another Microsoft exec Phil Harrison, and possibly more often – we still have no clear idea how this works.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this: either Microsoft’s various executives don’t know what the deal is with the internet connection requirement, or they couldn’t get the message straight in time for yesterday, settling on vagueness instead of reassurance. Both would be massively uncharacteristic for a company as thoroughly marketing-trained as Microsoft. Either way, the fact that Mattrick and co spent the entire conference talking about other things suggests that they were rather hoping nobody would mention it – not an effective strategy when you’re trying to integrate something that’s clearly going to be unpopular.

Surely the best way to approach these issues would have been to be upfront about them and be ready with reassurance.

Another unpopular and unclear issue yesterday was game-sharing and pre-owned sales, which was handled with the same total lack of clarity from Microsoft representatives. After a few hours of back and forth, of talk about sharing games with family but not with friends, of being able to take a game round to a mate’s house and play it but not leave it there, of mandatory hard-drive installs and purchases tied to and apparently verified through Xbox Live accounts, the company eventually settled on a message: “We have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail. Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.” That's not good enough.

Surely the best way to approach these issues would have been to be upfront about them and be ready with reassurance about things like server infrastructure and ownership rights, not to purposefully ignore them and then say conflicting things when the press inevitably pushes you on the issue. This is exceptionally poor information management, and points to the broader lack of specifics that surround this whole reveal. We were shown plenty of vision, but no detail. Right now the Xbox One still feels amorphous, despite the fact that we've seen the box.

The last time that a major console reveal inspired such bewilderment was when Nintendo debuted the Wii U at E3 2011. A combination of unclear second-hand reportage and Nintendo’s obfuscating insistence on showing off the controller rather than saying anything at all about the box or its technical specifications meant that many people weren’t clear on whether it actually was a new console, and that misperception carried on right up until launch.

Microsoft is facing a different set of potential misperceptions: it’s not for gamers, it’s not as powerful as the PS4, it won’t let me play used games, it won’t let me use it if it isn’t connected to the Internet. Unless these questions are cleared up well before release the Xbox One will be launching into an atmosphere of confusion, or even suspicion, from many of the people who could be its early adopters and evangelists.