“Stupid, stupid Xbox!” is the rant of one of the founders of Xbox, who claims Microsoft has completely lost its way with the brand, and the only reason they’ve seemingly, note “seemingly” succeeded is because Sony and Nintendo have made bad choices. It’s an interesting read, so I’ve included the entire thing below the break.
Nat Brown is a former Microsoft engineer, architect, and XBox founder who lives in Seattle, WA and writes and consults on mobile. He blogs at his personal site iLike.code, and you can find him on Twitter @natbro.
Here’s his rant, let us know if you agree:
I was a founder of the original xBox project at Microsoft and gave it its name. Almost 14 years after the painful, pointless, and idiotic internal cage-match to get it started and funded, the hard selling of a compelling and lucrative living-room product to Bill (and then Steve as he began to take over), a product that consumers would want and loveand demand, I am actually still thrilled to see how far it has come, how many installed units it has, how it is crushing its original console competitors, how the brand has grown and endured, and especially how great the games have become.
But the past 5 years, and the last year in particular, have been simply painful to watch. Coasting on past momentum. Failing to innovate and failing to capitalize on innovations like Kinect. Touting strategic and market success when you’re just experiencing your competitor’s stumbling failure (yes, Sony, Nintendo – you are, I’m afraid, stumbling failures). A complete lack of tactical versus strategic understanding of the long game of the living room. It culminated for me in recent coverage1 of interviews with Yusef Mehdi and Nancy Tellem and reports of the goals of a new LA xBox studio to create interactive content.
My gripe, my head-smack, is not that the broader content/entertainment business isn’t where you want to go with a living-room-connected device. It absolutely is. Indeed, this was the point of xBox, that was why it was the Trojan horse for the living room, where we could land and be welcomed by millions of console customers with more hardware and better software and network connectivity than the non-console devices (webtv, cable set-tob-boxes) we had been pursuing. No, more and better content was always the point and the plan. My gripe is that, as usual, Microsoft has jumped its own shark and is out stomping through the weeds planning and talking about far-flung future strategies in interactive television and original programming partnerships with big dying media companies when their core product, their home town is on fire, their soldiers, their developers, are tired and deserting, and their supply-lines are broken.
xBox’s primary critical problem is the lack of a functional and growingplatform ecosystem for small developers to sell digitally-/network-distributed (non-disc) content through to the installed base of xBox customers, period. Why can’t I write a game for xBox tomorrow using $100 worth of tools and my existing Windows laptop and test it on my home xBox or at my friends’ houses? Why can’t I then distribute it digitally in a decent online store, give up a 30% cut and strike it rich if it’s a great game, like I can for Android, for iPhone, or for iPad? Oh, wait, I can… sort of. Read some of the fine-print at the xBox registered developer program page (that “membership” would cost you $10,000/year and a ton of paperwork, with Microsoft holding veto power over your game being published), navigate the mess through to learning aboutXBLA (also costly, paperwork and veto approval) and you may end up learning about a carved off little hard-to-find store with a few thousand stunted games referred to as XBLIG where Microsoft has ceded their veto power (and instead just does nothing to promote your games). This is where indie developers have found they can go in order to not make money on xBox, despite an installed base of 76M devices. Microsoft, you are idiotic to have ceded not just indie game developers but also a generation of loyal kids and teens to making games for other people’s mobile devices.
xBox’s secondary critical problem is that the device OS and almost the entire user experience outside the first two levels of the dashboard are creaky, slow, and full-of-shit. From built-in update and storage features to what they have allowed through negligence to appear in games, here are just a few of my favorite confusing and exhausting screens and messages:
Daddy, what’s a Hard Drive? Why do I keep having to choose Hard Drive when I’m playing Kinectimals? Why does Kinectimals take 10m before I can start playing? Can I use the iPad while it’s updating or whatever it’s doing?
Hi, I’m xBox. I’m too dumb to update safely. I’m to dumb to know if more updates or restarts may, may, may, may be needed.
xBox: I’m also too dumb to know if it’s a game or an app. Me: Why should I choose where you put it?
Me: 4MB. Gee, thanks for that info. Wait, what? What are the consequences of being signed out of Xbox Live if I update?
My all-time favorite: each game dreams up an indicator that it uses while writing your save-game data. Saving securely (e.g. atomically) without needing UI sure doesn’t seem like a system-level service Microsoft should have provided for xBox in 2003.
Every time I leave a game, even right after saving in the game, the system presents me with this little scare that I may lose progress. Every. Single. Time.
These messages and many others – impossible Xbox Live sign-in and password recovery, accounting/membership, to name just a few – are made all the worse by the huge amount of time that passes while waiting for content to load. You don’t turn on your xBox to play a game quickly — it takes multiple minutes to load, flow through its splash screens, and then get you playing. It doesn’t surprise me that most people spend more time watching videos or listening to music on xBox, because it takes too long to screw around with discs and wait for games to load.
These are the 2 fronts Microsoft is going to lose on in the living room battle with Android & iOS. It’s not going to be based on whether they have (a more expensive) Netflix, whether they have original TV/video content or interactive kids television shows which integrate with Kinect. They will lose unless these two things are sorted out well and quickly.
Microsoft is living in a naive dream-world. I have heard people still there arguing that the transition of the brand from hardcore gamers to casual users and tv-uses was an intentional and crafted success. It was not. It was an accident of circumstance that Microsoft is neither leveraging nor in control of. xBox was for years the only network-connected HD-ready device already attached to tv’s that had multi-use potential (games, DVD, Netflix) in the household to justify and amortize its high cost of purchase to the family’s bread-winners. The hardcore/soft-tv transition and any lead they feel they have is simply not defensible by licensing other industries’ generic video or music content because those industries will gladly sell and license the same content to all other players. A single custom studio of 150 employees also can not generate enough content to defensibly satisfy 76M+ customers. Only with quality primary software content from thousands of independent developers can you defend the brand and the product. Only by making the user experience simple, quick, and seamless can you defend the brand and the product. The transition they are seeing (87 hours per month of use, more TV/music use than game use) will continue to happen despite their active “strategic” efforts to encourage it and get more Xbox Live subscribers.
Which brings us to…
Apple is already a games competitor broadly, even if Apple-TV isn’t yet a game platform or a console. Mobile generally and iPad specifically have grown the total hours of game play and grown the overall game market. Only in the last 18-24mo has that overall growth turned from a segment-expanding rising tide to a tsunami swamping the console game vendor profit boats hitched to the docks. It is accelerating. Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill Playstation, Wii-U and xBox by introducing an open 30%-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple-TV. I already make a lot of money on iOS – I will be the first to write apps for Apple-TV when I can, and I know I’ll make money. I would for xBox if I could and I knew I would make money. Maybe a “console-capable” Apple-TV isn’t $99, maybe it’s $199, and add another $79 for a controller. The current numbers already say a lot, even with Apple-TV not already an open console: 5.3M sold units in 2012, 90% year-over-year growth — vs. xBox 360 — about 9M units in 2012, 60% YoY decline.
So, because these two critical issues – user expereince and indie content – are not nearly in order and I see big investments in future interactive content happening, as well as idiotic moves to limit used games or put harder content protection into place than exists in mobile or tablets – i predict massive failure and losses here. And it makes me sad. Because it just doesn’t have to fail, even though it has been punted around poorly for 5 years. xBox just needs somebody with a brain and focus to get the product in order tactically before romping forward to continue the long-term strategic promise of an xBox in every living room, connected to every screen.
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Interesting read.
I do not agree with 100% of it, but I think he makes a lot of sense.
I don’t think Apple can kill that easily Playstation and Xbox. Maybe slowly, but Sony and Microsoft will do a move that will keep them on track. They always did, and will always do. Even Nintendo isn’t dead yet, and let be honest, they aren’t really anywhere close to be a leader nowadays in console. They sell for kids. Sadly, kids do not have money.
so his first problem is its really hard and expensive for every day joes to get on there and publish there own games?
that will change when the next xbox comes out, in fact it HAS TO!
otherwise manufactures are REALLY going to struggle competing with mobiles, and now even ouya and lets not forget the crap valve are working on.
i think its a bit harsh to be jumping up and down on them because the indie service was a afterthought.
no one could predict the explosion of the app store, it has taken everyone by storm!
M$ did not put up the indie service so mom and pop could make XBLA games.
they put it up not to compete, to respond to mobiles ease, nor steam, but as a easier more simplified, cheaper way than to go to retail.
its certainly a far cry from where it should and needs to be, but thats because of the way mobile has exploded, and especially because no one saw this coming.
id like to think manufactures are opening up their systems a metric shit ton more than they are now, just as i said yesterday.
because if there not there there REALLY going to struggle!
as for the second, the pics oh PLEASE give me a break!
who cares if the system asks you where you want to store a download?
maybe, just maybe, your HDD is full, or your saving the remaining space for whatever reason, so that comes in handy instead of you having to go find it and move it later.
pics are just like at my work, sometimes we get support calls of people complaining when they go to rent a bluray it comes up with a message saying this is a bluray, you will need a bluray player not a DVD player to play this.
some people say no shit sherlock, and complain to us that this is a redundant message.
i respond well fine give me your home phone number and you can explain to everyone who complains to us when they end up renting a bluray instead of a DVD.
surprisingly no one has offered me their contact details yet.
for fucks sake it takes 2 seconds to read it and decide, is it THAT much of a trouble?
however i have to agree with the splashscreens.
i dont give a flying ^%$#@#$%^&*%#@%^*^R#@#$%^%#@$%& who made the game, just let me play it!
why cant we skip all the company logos at the start of the games?
ive got a big problem with the consoles turning into entertainment boxes thing this industry is SO obsessed with!
answer me this 1 simple question, why would i go buy the next xbox so i can use it to watch my TV shows and movies when the xbox i already has can do it, my current ps3 can do it, my current phone can do it, my current tablet can do it, my current vita can do it, my current computer can do it, my current laptop can do it, hell even my fucking TV itself can do it!
why would i buy the next xbox when all those devices i already own can do it?
ok they may not do it as well, or have as many features, but will the next xbox have so many netflix features exclusive to itself that it makes the cost of the system worthwhile just for that?
ok, that covers current owners.
what about future customers?
well, theres a great new invention dunno if you have heard about it but its called a smart TV.
it has netflix, facebook, ect, ect BUILT INTO IT SO YOU DO NOT NEED A “ENTERTAINMENT BOX!”
so in a few years time when everyones replaced their old TVs with smart TVs, then what will be the reason to own the new xbox?
remember when TV finally switched from digital to analouge, and to recieve the new channels you had to buy a set top box for your TV?
thats what game consoles are turning into, except TVs these days have set top boxes built into them.
were running around with gas cans strapped to the back of our cars, forgetting theres a gas tank BUILT INTO THE CAR!
one thing that drives me absolutely bonkers with the world today, everyones in the me too camp!
individuality is illegal, everyone has to be the same!
phones, tablets, computers, consoles, cars, they all have to do the exact same thing!
nothing can be specific, offer its own set of features and uses it has to offer all the features other devices have.
soon were going to strap wheels and engines to our phones and use them for transportation!