It's one thing to alienate and disenfranchise your current customers. It's another thing entirely to do it 3 times in one week. And that thing is called "A Day in the Life of Don Mattrick". I'm sure behavior like this was acceptable, perhaps even encouraged, when he was the President of Worldwide Studios for Electronic Arts, but Microsoft needs to put their foot down and tell him that this is not alright, if they wish to still have a console division.
Being anti-consumer whilst working at a publisher is par for the course, especially one that produces the same 4 sports franchises year after year after year, often with little incentive for current owners to upgrade, and rapidly plummeting second-hand value on the previous year's release, but for a console manufacturer, it's far less appropriate. To have their President of Interactive Entertainment Business* spout things like "If you don't like our policies for next gen, buy our current gen system!" with a smile on his face not only harms the potential install base of people who don't currently have an X360, but also hurts the likelihood of current owners sticking with Microsoft into the next generation. This will not only damage Microsoft, but also the bottom line of any studio already contracted into making a 3rd party exclusive.
To follow that up with "we're over-delivering value" upon being called out for charging $100 more than your competitor just shows how anti-consumer this man really is. He is awash in a sea of his own ego and hubris, when his accomplishments at Microsoft are akin to scratching an author's name off the cover of a book, and replacing it with your own. The 360 released two years before his arrival at Microsoft, had an entire year where it was the only 7th generation console, and came in under the release price of the PS3, yet nearly all the credit for the success of the 360 is given to Mattrick.
According to Wikipedia, with a citation to an xbox.com piece on how 2010 went for the 360, in the 3 years that he oversaw the console division, the number of installed units went from 10 million to over 50 million, and XBL membership increased from 6 million to over 30 million. Now, these numbers certainly sound impressive and look like a vast improvement, but the installed base to XBL membership ratio stayed at a consistent 60%. In the 3 years he oversaw the division, they apparently could not find a way to increase their sell-through rates on subscriptions. More importantly is how much of that install base increase was due to price drops, expansion into new markets, increased supply, purchases of replacement consoles, and purchases of additional consoles by people who already had one. I have had a friend who had 3 X360s die in the span of a year, and another who had no issues but had one in his living room, bedroom, and his kid's room. I've also known event organizers and gaming cafes with 20-30 each, with the ones owned by event organizers spending much of the year in storage. If these are typical stories, then the increase in your install base is not nearly as impressive as the numbers would seem.
He's also widely credited for the success of the Kinect, one of the fastest selling terrible peripherals in history. It brought in a large amount of money to Microsoft, and allowed them to fill the marketplace with shovelware so bad that it made Wii Sports look like a solid game by comparison.
And then there's the matter of the Xbox One. The X1 has been getting slammed left and right on forums, twitter, reddit, and even in the commercial-shill laden press. Instead of reassuring people that this product is, in fact, for you, instead of catering to those who have had week long or longer power and internet outages after a hurricane, winter storm, tornado, earthquake, etc, he reestablishes those points in such a way that it seems as though he wants you, the end user, to feel bad for even questioning their practices and price point. That's terrible marketing, and a stain on the company as a whole at this point.
While it may not placate everyone, I feel like MS could earn back at least a small amount of trust from the public, fans or not, if they just removed Mattrick, and had the interim executive announce that they are going to review and reconsider their announced policies regardless of whether or not they actually do or plan to. Mattrick has been a PR disaster for the past month, and if they really want to sell 10+ million X1s, this is the easiest way to go about it. Fire him, get him to resign, it doesn't matter how you do it, what matters is that you get it done. Your move, Microsoft.
*As an aside, this is possibly the most falsified sounding title I've heard in the industry. More terrifying than that is that it is his actual title. Did they let him name his position? It sounds absolutely absurd.
Being anti-consumer whilst working at a publisher is par for the course, especially one that produces the same 4 sports franchises year after year after year, often with little incentive for current owners to upgrade, and rapidly plummeting second-hand value on the previous year's release, but for a console manufacturer, it's far less appropriate. To have their President of Interactive Entertainment Business* spout things like "If you don't like our policies for next gen, buy our current gen system!" with a smile on his face not only harms the potential install base of people who don't currently have an X360, but also hurts the likelihood of current owners sticking with Microsoft into the next generation. This will not only damage Microsoft, but also the bottom line of any studio already contracted into making a 3rd party exclusive.
To follow that up with "we're over-delivering value" upon being called out for charging $100 more than your competitor just shows how anti-consumer this man really is. He is awash in a sea of his own ego and hubris, when his accomplishments at Microsoft are akin to scratching an author's name off the cover of a book, and replacing it with your own. The 360 released two years before his arrival at Microsoft, had an entire year where it was the only 7th generation console, and came in under the release price of the PS3, yet nearly all the credit for the success of the 360 is given to Mattrick.
According to Wikipedia, with a citation to an xbox.com piece on how 2010 went for the 360, in the 3 years that he oversaw the console division, the number of installed units went from 10 million to over 50 million, and XBL membership increased from 6 million to over 30 million. Now, these numbers certainly sound impressive and look like a vast improvement, but the installed base to XBL membership ratio stayed at a consistent 60%. In the 3 years he oversaw the division, they apparently could not find a way to increase their sell-through rates on subscriptions. More importantly is how much of that install base increase was due to price drops, expansion into new markets, increased supply, purchases of replacement consoles, and purchases of additional consoles by people who already had one. I have had a friend who had 3 X360s die in the span of a year, and another who had no issues but had one in his living room, bedroom, and his kid's room. I've also known event organizers and gaming cafes with 20-30 each, with the ones owned by event organizers spending much of the year in storage. If these are typical stories, then the increase in your install base is not nearly as impressive as the numbers would seem.
He's also widely credited for the success of the Kinect, one of the fastest selling terrible peripherals in history. It brought in a large amount of money to Microsoft, and allowed them to fill the marketplace with shovelware so bad that it made Wii Sports look like a solid game by comparison.
And then there's the matter of the Xbox One. The X1 has been getting slammed left and right on forums, twitter, reddit, and even in the commercial-shill laden press. Instead of reassuring people that this product is, in fact, for you, instead of catering to those who have had week long or longer power and internet outages after a hurricane, winter storm, tornado, earthquake, etc, he reestablishes those points in such a way that it seems as though he wants you, the end user, to feel bad for even questioning their practices and price point. That's terrible marketing, and a stain on the company as a whole at this point.
While it may not placate everyone, I feel like MS could earn back at least a small amount of trust from the public, fans or not, if they just removed Mattrick, and had the interim executive announce that they are going to review and reconsider their announced policies regardless of whether or not they actually do or plan to. Mattrick has been a PR disaster for the past month, and if they really want to sell 10+ million X1s, this is the easiest way to go about it. Fire him, get him to resign, it doesn't matter how you do it, what matters is that you get it done. Your move, Microsoft.
*As an aside, this is possibly the most falsified sounding title I've heard in the industry. More terrifying than that is that it is his actual title. Did they let him name his position? It sounds absolutely absurd.
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