1248: OneEighty

So Microsoft reversed its stance on almost everything about Xbox One. I’ll probably write something a little more detailed about this professionally tomorrow, but I thought I’d indulge in some general musings on here while it’s fresh in my mind.

In case you haven’t seen the news yet, here’s the relevant post, in which Microsoft explains it’s backtracking on almost every single contentious policy that it outlined prior to E3, and which had a significant proportion of the game-playing Internet up in arms.

On the whole, it’s good that Microsoft has at least put across the image of being receptive to feedback and willing to act on it, though the ridiculously slow pace at which this news was revealed doesn’t fill me with confidence. Negative public and press reaction alike was already swirling around the Internet even when it was just rumours about 24-hour checkins and restrictions on used games; I find it difficult to believe that Microsoft doesn’t have at least a few social media monkeys on the payroll who would have noticed this sort of thing. And yet they went ahead and announced their plans anyway.

I’m not sure what they were hoping to achieve. They didn’t even attempt to put a positive spin on the restrictions — they were just flat-out restrictions on things you could and could not (mostly the latter) do with your new console and your games. Restrictions that would have made the console completely inoperable in a number of countries on launch — including, amusingly, the homeland of The Witcher 3 developers CD Projekt Red, who were just as surprised to discover the restrictions as the rest of us were.

By posting this “We’re Listening” stuff today, they’re attempting to paint themselves as the good guy; the massive corporation who listens to Internet outcry and responds accordingly in a seemingly positive manner.

However, there are a few problems with this. They’re all hypothetical situations, of course, but none of them bode particularly well for Microsoft in the future. Let’s examine them one at a time.

Firstly is the possibility that the whole thing was a carefully-orchestrated PR stunt, which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Announce a series of ridiculous restrictions on the Xbox One, then a week or two later, announce that you’ve “listened” to the public and relaxed said restrictions, come out looking like the good guy.

Secondly is the fact that if it’s that easy for them to turn off these features on the system — the relaxing of the restrictions will apparently come from a day one patch that — oh snap — you need to be connected to the Internet to download — then it will be just as easy for them to turn them back on again without warning in the future. I’d like to hope that they’re not that stupid, but… well, they announced this shit in the first place, so it’s going to be a while before they earn the benefit of the doubt in my eyes again.

Thirdly is the fact that this was even considered. This suggests that Microsoft is keen to adopt some form of online strategy like this in the near future, and that if it didn’t work like this, it could well be implemented in a much more insidious way.

As I say, most of this is conjecture for now, so I’ll leave it at that. It’s going to be interesting to see if Microsoft sticks to its promises, though, because they destroyed a lot of people’s trust with this whole debacle.