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Xbox One X is the Perfect Representation of the Tech Industry's Existential Crisis (mashable.com)
A reader shares commentary on the newly launched Xbox One X gaming console: Fundamentally, Xbox One X is the same machine that Microsoft released in 2013. It plays the same games, runs the same apps, depends on the same operating system. You can still plug your cable box into it and watch OneGuide magically sync with your local TV listings. Most of the things you can do look a little better and run a little faster/more efficiently, sure. The actual casing is smaller than the previous iterations, too. It's a gorgeous $500 machine. That's why I keep eyeballing it. My brain screams, "Why do you exist?" The Xbox One X does not answer. This is a familiar problem in 2017. Look around at all the tech in your life and do a quick, informal poll: How many of those items become outdated every year or every few years when a newer, shinier version of the same thing comes along? I'm talking about your iPhone and iPad. Your Amazon Echo and Kindle. Your Pixel and Daydream VR headset. Your Apple Watch. Your Roku, your Apple TV, your Chromecast. Incremental upgrades that push features like 4K! HDR! Wireless charging! Slimmer design! No headphone jack! (Wait, no, that last one is awful.) Breathless bullet point after breathless bullet point. Some of these additions have genuine utility and add value to the product. Many don't, or depend on you also possessing some other piece of incrementally upgraded tech (like the kinds of fancy-shmancy TVs that play the nicest with Xbox One X).
Now fuck off with your idiotic existential crisis.
Get a new Mac Pro. It won't get replaced by a new Mac Pro for like half a decade.
Moores Law is dead. It has been dead for sometime. People are finally noticing. The tech industry knows it too, and are trying to push out useless features to cover the fact that digital computing and electronics has hit a real dead end. All those things people wish for (AI, good VR, etc) aren't going to happen. The computer you have a decade from now will be very similar to the one you have right now. Sorry about that!
You don't have to buy every new generation of every product.
For example, I've got an iPhone because I got in the walled garden before there were other good options. I don't buy a new iPhone every time a new one comes out. In fact, I usually wait 2 to 3-ish full generations to upgrade. By that time the upgrade has enough improvements for it to be worth it for me.
But Apple has no reason to follow my personal upgrade schedule and only release new versions when I am ready to upgrade. For one thing, there's probably plenty of other people who follow a similar plan but are one generation ahead or behind me. For another, there is a pool of idiots who want the latest because it is the latest.
For the XBox One X, there's going to be a lot of people who did not buy an XBox One for whatever reason, and are upgrading now. There's also a set of people who want 4k resolution. But it's not like the XBox One was suddenly rendered inadequate for the vast majority of people merely due to the existence of a more advanced version.
Don't see the point of an XBox One X? Then don't buy one. That applies to every product on the market, no matter how long the feature list is.
This is widespread in the industry.
The greedy douchebags and morons who run tech companies somehow think they're going to grow 10% a year forever (utterly impossible), that every year we're going to replace all of our devices (not gonna happen), that a tiny incremental improvement is supposed to be momentous and compelling (not true), and (in this case) re-releasing the same product in a new package absolves them from creating new products.
The problem is, all of the above is false. I still use my circa 2013 Android Nexus tablet, my XBox 360 works just fine and doesn't require an internet connection and doesn't require that I buy all new games, and I'm afraid to admit just how old my personal cell phone is. My latest tech purchases are a 27" monitor for my home office and a USB charging tower to keep all of my stuff charged (and I got that at TJ Maxx).
I'm not buying a new home theater because companies want to sell me 4K gear that I don't care about. I'm not buying the latest and greatest phone when the one I have suits my purposes, and I have no interest whatsoever in being on a constant upgrade treadmill to keep up corporate profits.
My tech budget is more likely to go on replacing my older iPod, updating my desktop computer (yes, some of us still use those), buying another machine as a Linux box, or getting my PC to display on my big screen from 40 feet away. You know, tweak what I have, but not buy new shiny things because companies want me to.
They had some good years, but most people I know are reaching "peak tech" ... we have enough to meet our needs, other things to spend our money on, and simply don't find yet another iteration of the same thing a compelling reason to spend the money.
Companies are in for a serious pinch if people start realizing they have most of what they need and see little benefit in buying new stuff. Because these days, the business model is based on the impossible notion they'll keep growing forever, and consumers will buy one of everything every year.
No sane person should be surprised that consumers no longer see the need to buy this stuff.
you're probably bang-on with your target audience of Millennial Ameritards.
Stop being a Boomer twat. (Normally I wouldn't be so blunt, but if you're going to start with generational ageism then I'm sure you can cope.)
Conspicuous consumption has a long history and is not limited to the Millennial generation. There are entire classes of vehicles that exist primarily to serve as status symbols, and those cost considerably more to produce or purchase. Arguably, the same is true of houses... and let's not forget the yachts.
So before you blame this waste on the new generation, maybe look to see if their parent generation did the same thing. Of course they did.
So, by all means, stop pointing to a young generation as the harbinger of civilization's end when their behavior is nothing more than a new tune on an old harp.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
So this new Xbox has updated graphics, updates on RAM, processor, GPU. But it also will play all XBox One games (aka "full backwards compatability"). If Microsoft hadn't done this, people would have been whining about the XBox being "out of date" and "old" and "not powerful enough". So they update it, don't dick over people who bought XBox one games, and it's an "existential crisis"? I have an Xbox One, it's a fine machine. Whenever my 360 dies (which is mostly a video streaming machine at this point), I'll replace it with whatever's on the market.
Also, you don't have to buy it.
Yes, I am getting a new iPhone, however my old iPhone is a few major numbers behind, the battery is dying and the cost and hassle of replacing it, vs getting a new shiny phone now with a few generations of new features makes it worth it. However I will not be getting the iPhone 11, 11s, and probably not the 12 or 12s or what ever names the decide to call it. Because while my personal buy strategy it to get the newest and best, I tend to keep it for a long time, so the next time i get the newest and best, I am once again treated to the luxury of having all the cool new features.
Also by that time, I can decide if Apple is worth it, or not. The iPhone X just barely won out from the Note 8, just because I already had an iPhone... In 3 or 4 years I may switch to an other brand, as Apple may not spark my interest any more.
However in a world of incremental upgrades, you just need to stop your instinct on getting the newest and best every time it goes out, because you are just getting a feature you can get by with means, you are perfectly fine with skipping a generation. But these incremental upgrades vs. Major releases also have the advantage for the non-fans who keep track of the market, means they can get new device now, and not panic that next year it would be unusable, because of lack of support.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The point of the X1X is 4K and HDR. While to some people that is not a big deal (especially if you do not have a 4K/HDR TV), it is nevertheless a technological jump from 1080p, just like the jump from 480i 4:3 to 720p 16:9 when the 360 came out.
But why does the X1X seem like less of a deal then the 360 was? Because lots of stuff are NOT changing. It's the same cpu (but faster). It's the same UI interface. It runs the same games, has mostly the same features (the One S can play 4k BluRay too). Know what? That's GOOD. Because last time we had a technological jump (720p 16:9), the 360 was all new, and that meant everything from the original Xbox was completely obsolete. No game compatibility, accessories, controllers, keypads, headsets, etc. Nada. Same issue with 360 to Xbox One (until some amount of backwards compatibility came along, but no hardware compatibility).
So for me, this is a big deal for consoles: adopting newer technology (4K/HDR) without making every previous console purchase (controllers, steering wheels, HDDs, cables, and most notably, GAMES) completely obsolete. I think the "dump everything you had and start over" paradigm for consoles is finally dead, and I for one welcome that shift to a "better experience" with the newer hardware, but able to keep older stuff. (And dropping older platforms only when they get 2-3 updates behind, so people have to upgrade maybe once every ten years, not every 3). And for those who do not want to upgrade, they can still play newer games but with "less fluff/detail", and not be forced into upgrading to be able to play at all.
The fact that the PS4 doesn't play UHD BluRays is why I don't own a PS4 (in any form) yet.
It was a mind boggling mistake, in my opinion.
I'm hoping BR players with dual outputs come down in price soon. I don't want another box to hook up, but I want that 4K BluRay goodness. (No, Netflix and other streaming services don't come close to it in quality.) The dual outputs are necessary because I want lossless 7.1 and my receiver is too old to pass through 4K. (I won't be upgrading the receiver until things settle down a bit more.)
The author is just now noticing that the industrialized world has a problem with corporate exploitation of mass production for their own selfish benefit? It not only funnels undeserved profit into their pockets, it also costs society hundreds of billions of dollars in wasted productivity that should have been used for something constructive. We don't need our vehicles to be redesigned every year, yet they are. We don't need new varieties of underarm deodorant every six months, yet we have them. We don't need "new" but-no-better-than-last-year toothbrushes, yet indeed we still have them. Want to buy another of the same toothbrush that worked perfectly well? Sorry, buddy, we "retired" that one for a new design that cuts a few corners and gives us better profit margin. The list goes on, and permeates EVERY corner of our lives. What could have been accomplished for society if all that human effort had been focused on something truly beneficial for society? The promise of mass production was the ability to cheaply replicate items, but when those items are replaced so quickly with new ones the savings to society are lost, and worse yet the profits from this wasteful process keep flowing into the pockets of those abusing it.
This author saw one tree and failed to notice the forest. This problem is much MUCH more pervasive than he comprehends. The problem isn't just with abuse of technology: the problem is abuse of mass production of every sort.
Tech keeps advancing, and tech companies keep putting out new and (sometimes) improved products.
There are some people -- call them aficionados, technophiles, early adopters, hardcore gamers, audio nerds, fanboys, [fill in the blank] -- who will always buy the latest and greatest offering in a given market segment. And there will also be people (generally, a much larger proportion compared to the gotta-have-the-latest types) who wait for the second or third generation when many of the early kinks have been worked out and the price has dropped. And then they hold onto the thing for several years/product cycles before upgrading.
With respect to the new Xbox, the more incremental update is just a sign that gaming consoles are getting to be more mature tech . Nothing really new in that regard. That's how technology products often progress. As for tech in general, we perhaps have more things or at least more choices now, so maybe it feels like there is more to keep up with. But there is really no obligation to have one of everything, nevermind having the latest of everything.
I jumped off that band wagon a while ago, and the amount of money I've saved has been miraculous. Not that I was ever obsessed with the latest shiny as some people are, mind you, but it's amazing how transitioning through later stages of your life really puts things in perspective.
Now, when a new technology comes out I take a good hard look at it and ask, "How does this new thing help me that my previous stuff couldn't?" and "Does do those improvements justifying spending the X amount of dollars on it, that could otherwise be spent on other things, like a mortgage payment, etc?"
It's shocking how much those two questions have curbed my spending. It also opened my eyes to... well... just how *shit* the technology industry has become. It's all so much crap. Frivolous nonsense that provide nothing of genuine value compared to what existed before.
That goes not just for consumer goods, but for pretty much *everything*, including servers, operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, etc.
And then the sadness kicks in because I realize the overwhleming majority of other people *don't* see these things, so the slow moving trainwreck of technology happily marches on. New javascript frameworks coming out on a weekly basis, IOT crap that somehow manage to leak more information than they collect, Google and their push to allow websites to access bluetooth devices directly, Apple with the steady march to making computers into very expensive disposable appliances, Microsoft and their... well... nothing especially new there I guess.
But it's basically universal. There is virtually nothing revolutionary happening today. The best we've got is people making better use of technology that has already existed for decades (ie: AI) because the processing power has reached the right level to do so. Everything else is either trivial incremental nonsense, or a complete reinventing of the wheel that ultimately gives you nothing new than you didn't have before... just a shiny new packaging.
But enough people buy into it to keep the train chugging.
In 5-10 years Microsoft is going to be who people think of when they want or need Linux. We are already at the point where new systems can be built that are agnostic of the of the underlying OS using Microsoft frameworks and runtimes.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock