Now that we are in December, we are past the final Fall release season where the PS4/XB1 are the main consoles, as we will likely be playing on new hardware by this time next year. I wanted to revisit an infamous piece by Ben Kuchera, that was originally published on Penny Arcade about a week after the infamous reveal of the Xbox One. Penny Arcade ended their article section years ago and the content is no longer available, but you can still read the article on the Wayback Machine.
Lets get the easy joke out of the way first, before we actually dig in to some of the more interesting elements...
In hindsight, this is all hilarious with the concept of the western-developed third party exclusive game dying this generation, and with the fact that Sony would just say "hey, used games are fine" a month later at E3, but it's interesting to see how much of a focus there was by publishers on combating used games back in 2013, especially as in 2019, Gamestop has evolved into a Toy Store that is struggling to survive. Instead, this generation, we saw things like Live-service games/extended support for games, subscription services, and digital distribution murder the used game market without any of the "blowback" that would come from a heavy-handed approach that Microsoft tried to pitch at the time.
While there is a ton to discuss about this, I think the most interesting thing to see in 2019 is the next section of the article
"Twitter is Noise" reads hilariously in 2019. We live in an era where President Shitbag is just blasting out thoughts unfiltered on the platform, and where companies will bend over backwards to fix "mistakes" they make on it. The idea that a company would walk back a decision because people on Twitter are angry was laughable in 2013, but now it's expected on a daily basis! Traditional forms of marketing- TV ads, banners, etc- are falling by the wayside for various types of social media advertisement, mainly centering around "influencers" being paid to promote your products on the platform, or by running accounts that make people think about your brand more on a regular basis (Arbys, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc). High-level decisions at companies are being made based on social media metrics (which don't actually account for any $$$) than they are on traditional statistics like sales.
There are various aspects around the launches of these systems that the article doesn't cover- the at-the-time rise of Facebook gaming, the failure of the WiiU making people think the Wii audience was lost forever and that the industry was going to contract in population, the proliferation of smartphones and the rise of smartphone gaming, the fact that these consoles were launching a little too late but also were launching a weird inflection point for media (ie, the fact that Xbox focused so much on TV)- that were all factors in what happened this generation, and that the rise of game streaming and e-sports would change the industry as well, but it's fascinating to see just how... wrong a lot of people were about a lot of things back in 2013.
Obviously, Microsoft would walk a lot of the stuff back- No more manditory online/Kinect/no used games, but they clearly suffered this generation for the sins they made at the reveal, and that Gaming is stronger now than it has ever been. When both new systems are revealed in the next 6 months, we are probably going to have more articles about why some of the changes they are making won't matter. I just hope that writers take the lessons of 2013 Xbox into account when they write their next piece.
Lets get the easy joke out of the way first, before we actually dig in to some of the more interesting elements...
In hindsight, this is all hilarious with the concept of the western-developed third party exclusive game dying this generation, and with the fact that Sony would just say "hey, used games are fine" a month later at E3, but it's interesting to see how much of a focus there was by publishers on combating used games back in 2013, especially as in 2019, Gamestop has evolved into a Toy Store that is struggling to survive. Instead, this generation, we saw things like Live-service games/extended support for games, subscription services, and digital distribution murder the used game market without any of the "blowback" that would come from a heavy-handed approach that Microsoft tried to pitch at the time.
While there is a ton to discuss about this, I think the most interesting thing to see in 2019 is the next section of the article
"Twitter is Noise" reads hilariously in 2019. We live in an era where President Shitbag is just blasting out thoughts unfiltered on the platform, and where companies will bend over backwards to fix "mistakes" they make on it. The idea that a company would walk back a decision because people on Twitter are angry was laughable in 2013, but now it's expected on a daily basis! Traditional forms of marketing- TV ads, banners, etc- are falling by the wayside for various types of social media advertisement, mainly centering around "influencers" being paid to promote your products on the platform, or by running accounts that make people think about your brand more on a regular basis (Arbys, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc). High-level decisions at companies are being made based on social media metrics (which don't actually account for any $$$) than they are on traditional statistics like sales.
There are various aspects around the launches of these systems that the article doesn't cover- the at-the-time rise of Facebook gaming, the failure of the WiiU making people think the Wii audience was lost forever and that the industry was going to contract in population, the proliferation of smartphones and the rise of smartphone gaming, the fact that these consoles were launching a little too late but also were launching a weird inflection point for media (ie, the fact that Xbox focused so much on TV)- that were all factors in what happened this generation, and that the rise of game streaming and e-sports would change the industry as well, but it's fascinating to see just how... wrong a lot of people were about a lot of things back in 2013.
Obviously, Microsoft would walk a lot of the stuff back- No more manditory online/Kinect/no used games, but they clearly suffered this generation for the sins they made at the reveal, and that Gaming is stronger now than it has ever been. When both new systems are revealed in the next 6 months, we are probably going to have more articles about why some of the changes they are making won't matter. I just hope that writers take the lessons of 2013 Xbox into account when they write their next piece.
