Microsoft was wrong to listen to fans complaints about the proposed Xbox One DRM and always-online policies according to Jesse Schell, a prominent game designer.
Microsoft had originally announced that the Xbox One would need to always be connected to the internet in order to play games, and that the system would not support pre-owned games, with second-hand buyers having to pay a fee to Microsoft and the game developers in order to ‘unlock’ a second-hand title. These ideas were hastily retracted after intense public outrage at the ideas, but Schell, professor at the Entertainment Technology centre at Carnegie Mellon University and the mastermind behind Disney’s popular MMO Toontown Online, has said that Microsoft should have stuck with their original policies.
Schell told GamesIndustry International that it is important for businesses to reinvent themselves to adapt to the changing world, even if fans are not supportive at first:
“Your customers want you to stay the same, even if it drives you into the ground… The reality is that companies can’t do what the customers want.”
Schell even goes a step further and argues that companies are writing their own death warrant by allowing customers to stall the development of new and adaptive business policies:
“Why is it that big companies fail when the technology changes? It happens in every industry, so what’s the pattern? What are they all doing wrong? … There’s one mistake that they all make, and that mistake is listening to their customers.”
Schell argues that Microsoft made this critical mistake, but that policies restricting pre-owned games will still become commonplace on games consoles at some point in the future:
“Basically, Microsoft said ‘we’re going to be Steam. You like Steam, don’t you?’ They said, ‘we’re gonna do this new thing’, and the customers said no we don’t want that, we hate that, even though it’s what they really want and what they will ultimately buy. So now Microsoft has had to say they won’t do all that stuff, but someone will. That’s how it always goes.”
Schell believes that pre-owned games like this could soon be a thing of the past.
But, according to Schell, caving to customer pressure isn’t the only threat facing games consoles. Schell believes that the growing competition from other entertainment devices could start to impact the market share of games consoles:
“E3 convinced me that they are going to be struggling.” “I haven’t seen anything that made me think, yeah, you’re gonna get that market share back. I’m convinced that all [of the consoles] are going to have a gradually eroding market share over the coming years. Because tablets are going to be eating their lunch more and more, and other platforms are going to start to take off and catch fire.”
However, despite this growing competition, it seems that games consoles are faring well at the moment. Xbox One pre-orders are said to be roughly double the amount that the Xbox 360 had prior to launch, and it seems to be a similar story with the Playstation 4, as Sony were recently forced to introduce a cap to their launch day pre-order guarantee for Europe.
