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Xbox Originator: "Stupid, Stupid Xbox!!"

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-mince-words;-tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes "You can't begrudge Nat Brown for claiming some pride in the birth of Microsoft's game console: '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 love and demand, I am actually still thrilled to see how far it has come...' But in his recent ILIKE.CODE blog post he is driven to lament 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.' Nat goes on to detail a list of Microsoft's past and present strategic Xbox blunders, while tossing some barbs towards Nintendo's and Sony's game console strategies."

19 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Primary Problem? by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's the interface. It sucks. I bought a machine to game on, not one to sell me other crap. Two years ago when they changed to pre metro I boxed up the x-box and games and gave it to my nephews.

    X-Box is doomed. Simply because it's not about gaming, but all about sales.

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
    1. Re:Primary Problem? by maxdread · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And yet you can have it boot directly to whatever game is in the drive. Wouldn't impact your gaming at all.

    2. Re:Primary Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreed. That is why, even though the Xbox is very popular, there is no "halo effect" for other Microsoft products like Zune or Windows Phone.

      People merely put up with the thing because it plays Halo, they have no love for the device itself.

    3. Re:Primary Problem? by Kenja · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bull-hockey. If that was the case, then nobody ever play games on mobile devices, which are arguably the most popular 'platforms' at the moment.

      Are you claiming that a majority of your cellphone screen is advertising space like with the XBOX? If so, you may have malware. What's more, I seem able to run games etc on my tablet without a monthly subscription to "Android Gold".

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    4. Re:Primary Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It sure is a good thing the 360 only plays disc based games, huh?

    5. Re:Primary Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At that point, for people who pirate their media at least (and there are a lot of them admittedly!), what's the point of buying a console that's sold as a "media hub" when it won't actually play anything they have?

      Guess they'll have to start paying for things like normal human beings.

    6. Re:Primary Problem? by Seumas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most mobile gaming is the same shitty game created 500 times with different titles, filled with stupid time-gates to encourage you to spend money on the bullshit "coin duplicators" and other crap that they are constantly peddling to you. Mobile games are, for the most part, of the same quality and mindset as Facebook games. Nothing more.

    7. Re:Primary Problem? by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Live Gold is required for doing almost ANYTHING on the xbox. It's the number one reason I don't buy xbox games anymore.

      Right now, everything is so tightly coupled with Live Gold that not using gold results in a very aggravating experience. Your statement 'mainly Netflix et al' vastly understates that almost any feature that is not a single player game or dvd requires a Live Gold account. Youtube, HBOgo, Netflix, Pandora...

      The way you learn about gold is annoying as well. I'll be looking around the marketplace, find a service that I ALREADY PAY FOR, install it, and then later be told that 'Oh, this feature won't work without gold'

      That doesn't even get into the fact that there are many games where you basically gut the game if you remove multiplayer. As a result the entire experience is one of disappointment as I'm continually faced with 'Oh, I guess that would be nice, or gee I wish I could play this with my friend'.

      I'm not going to reward a company for rent-seeking to provide me services that 1. I already pay for, 2. I'm paying for the internet to transport the data.

      The Live Gold 'feature' is the number one reason I regret purchasing an Xbox and only use it to play single player games I pickup at the flea market.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    8. Re:Primary Problem? by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, the thing I hate, in any modern game on any platform, is 'press start'. Why the fuck do games still have video arcade-style attract screens?

      Off the top of my head, Prototype 2 did it right; it loads your most recent save and starts playing it in the background under the menu. When you click 'continue,' the menu simply goes away and there you are.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  2. Bill needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Didn't think i would ever say this...but have to admit Bill gates leaving MS was NOT the best thing to happen to MS. Srsly though ballmer is just pushing the MS car down the cliff.

    1. Re:Bill needed by YodasEvilTwin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Everyone else long ago noticed how MS flatlined when Bill left, besides the fact that he was obviously a visionary and genius (and not half bad at business either). You may disagree with a ton of things he did, and rightly so on many of them, but you can't look at Microsoft's massive rise and Bill's obvious driving of said rise and go "Yeah, Bill leaving MS was the best thing that happened to them". It's patently ridiculous.

    2. Re:Bill needed by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ballmer is doing a bull run full ahead and don't care a bit about what the customers think. Not only the Xbox live account requirement is evidence of that but also the fact that the Windows 8 UI is something that's best useful for three year old kids and not useful for the advanced users.

      I suspect that Microsoft has had it's peak and now they are into the process and business model that we saw that many big computer corporations were following during the 70's and 80's where you locked the systems through obscurity. Next step would be a CPU class based licensing of Windows.

      The reason why M$ did grow big was that there was not much heavy copy-protection and license key mess in the beginning. People copied the OS from work to run at home as well and so on. It may have been a lost sale, but not many home users would have purchased the full license anyway.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  3. Re:appstore model will not work by toiletsalmon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I disagree. I think most of their arcade games are "shitty" as it is. Plus why should I pay $15 for a title on my xbox when I can get the same game cheaper on four other platforms for less? PLUS, it doesn't cost me $5 a month to take full advantage of my iPad.

    A more open and competitively priced market is exactly the thing that would bring me back, but Windows 8 had proven that they have other plans.

  4. Another one? Sheesh. by goodmanj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh look, it's another retired general bitching about how much better things were when he led the army. File this one under W for 'Wozniak'.

  5. Advertisements even after paying yearly! by Tagged_84 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The number 1 issue I have with MS and Xbox is that even after paying around $60 a year for their service I still get bombarded with advertisements covering upwards of HALF my f*cking screen!!! Where the hell is the money going if it's not going towards paying to have a clean, ad-free service?

    1. Re:Advertisements even after paying yearly! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is nothing stupider than thanking big companies for showing you advertising. "Please sir, can I have a larger, louder, more in-my-face advert? Please?"

  6. Re:Classic Geek Mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there is a more obvious piece of astroturf anywhere I'd love to see it. But the bit about loving what you can do with the Xbox you don't actually own is almost as classic as mentioning Smart Glass and capitalizing it.

  7. Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

    yeah, the more they overdo the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..

    seriously, the bootloader on modern hardware doesn't need all that bullshit.. it just needs to load a binary image and execute it. If a more advanced bootloader is needed, just use the bios loader to chainload in place of the OS kernel. The rest of UEFI is fluff. Your other complaints about outdated POST are easily remedied without making the whole stack suck.

  8. Re:Daily Microsoft bitch-fest by dfghjk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "seriously, the bootloader on modern hardware doesn't need all that bullshit..."

    Just what is "all that bullshit"? People that make these comments have no idea.

    "The rest of UEFI is fluff. "

    Point out some of this "fluff" specifically.