Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[Zaphod]

MS acquired Skype in 2011 and I expect that provides far more useful info.

Indeed. Somehow I thought it was earlier than that. Probably not part of any long term strategy then.

As for the "listening in" part, I'll just assume you were completely joking. That's obviously not what I meant (not to mention both illegal and useless).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As for the "listening in" part,

I meant in terms of 'while you talk, the AI can learn from user data.' That'd be the purpose of any learning-based solution that builds on its actual users. I didn't mean 'listening to people unbidden'. Although even that isn't really a problem per se. A computer that hears sounds and uses (and discards) them to formulate an understanding of speech isn't the same as a computer that stores conversations and forwards some recordings to people.

 

[Zaphod]

Ah. But the thing is, training voice recognition needs some kind of interactivity. The system needs to know what the user is supposed to be saying. Thus my notion of gameification through Xbox/Kinect, or otherwise "tricking" users into providing training data. I don't really see any reasons for people to "talk to Skype" as such, unless they're using it to actually talk to a person.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Using voicemail transcription through their free Google Voice service was a stroke of genius by Google to improve their recognition tech.

 

[dobwal]

Ah. But the thing is, training voice recognition needs some kind of interactivity. The system needs to know what the user is supposed to be saying. Thus my notion of gameification through Xbox/Kinect, or otherwise "tricking" users into providing training data. I don't really see any reasons for people to "talk to Skype" as such, unless they're using it to actually talk to a person.

There is an opt in setting, that was added in the May update, that allows MS to add your voice samples to their algorithm.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Not sure of the appropriate thread, but

Microsoft to Shutter Xbox Entertainment Studio

http://recode.net/2014/07/17/microsoft-to-shut-down-xbox-entertainment-studios/



They're reversing almost every decision and plan for the Xbox.

Yes, the "entertainment" box is clearly dead. They are continuing with the programming that they've already got in development but the rest of it is gone. The lady lead they got from CBS? gets to stay on but be reassigned with different duties to a different division, and I'm sure that's only because she's under contract and they don't want to pay her to stay home.

Another reason why I think the redesigned Xb0x will be lacking both a Kinect port and a HDMI-in port. They'll try to get the BOM as low as possible to compete on price. TV and Kinect are both as good as dead. Sure, they're still sitting in the corner right now, but they are no longer being fed or watered.

 

[joker454]

How much can they realistically save per box by removing two jacks from the back? I know in quantity 50 million it's a measurable savings to the company, but as far as helping them price compete better would it really help all that much? The cost of the connectors to them must be measured in cents, so what would that realistically translate to on the shelf, $5 less?

 

[3dilettante]

Removing those differentiators may have long-term problems when the consoles do price-reduce down to the mass market level.
Removing Kinect completely would go even further than the camera-optional PS4.

For all the problems at the early stage, having options and a flexible software platform with multiple avenues for differentiation is good once the honeymoon period wears off and people start expecting improvements (or just parity with what has gone before). The early-adoption excuse for missing features or lack of novelty doesn't last forever.

 

[DrJay24]

Leave the ports, make the console smaller without a power brick.

 

[AzBat]

Ah. But the thing is, training voice recognition needs some kind of interactivity. The system needs to know what the user is supposed to be saying. Thus my notion of gameification through Xbox/Kinect, or otherwise "tricking" users into providing training data. I don't really see any reasons for people to "talk to Skype" as such, unless they're using it to actually talk to a person.

There's already an app for that. It's called Voice Studio. You can get achievements for helping improve voice recognition of Kinect.

Tommy McClain

 

[Blazkowicz]

Using voicemail transcription through their free Google Voice service was a stroke of genius by Google to improve their recognition tech.

This helps for the US market only, though. (and indirectly Ca, UK, Aus, NZ..)

Google Voice is US only I think (it's basically a phone carrier? so even if they wanted to be semi-global there's too many regulation and politics issues)

Voice recognition schemes start to be a much harder issue if you want to support 10 or 20 languages, some with not that many speakers or a subset of speakers that uses your services too small to generate a huge amount of calibrating data.

Xbox One has suffered some troubles and delays because of that (I can't give specifics, but we can ask yourselves how it works in Italy or some other country). Perhaps selling a Kinect-less Xbox was good for the countries with bad voice recognition or bad press due to recognition problems early on.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

How much can they realistically save per box by removing two jacks from the back? I know in quantity 50 million it's a measurable savings to the company, but as far as helping them price compete better would it really help all that much? The cost of the connectors to them must be measured in cents, so what would that realistically translate to on the shelf, $5 less?

Oh, I'm not saying that they would be big drivers of a reduced manufacturing cost. I'm saying that there is an added cost and that the functions they serve are no longer part of the Xb0x strategy, so there's no need for their inclusion in any redesign.

As a result, I expect them to be removed along with any other cost saving measure (no matter how small) that they can make in the redesign because they have to compete on price.

They simply won't be needed, they'll be the vestigial tail of the Xb0x.

I also think that the idea that they'll want to keep them around so that they can add features that are attractive to the 'mass market' once the overall price is reduced enough isn't a great one. Really, for those features to become something appealing they'll need to hit a $199 to $149 price tag and the 360 is just now hitting that. Also, in order for them to be appealing they'll need to spend more money in making them functional. The HDMI-in doesn't work anywhere but NA (or maybe even just the US), and neither does Kinect2 due to localization issues.

For them to get both of the features to work, they would need to invest many more millions in TV deals with content providers globally (HDMI-in) as well as fix the localization issues and actually develop games for the Kinect2. All things they have already thrown lots of money at up to this point and have failed, and have failed so dramatically that they've stopped feeding and watering either of those two pets.

MS is positioning themselves to have the Xb0x compete by focusing solely on gaming and undercutting the competition on price. They've already run "trade in" specials twice so far, trying to motivate purchasing without a true price cut. The price cut is most certainly coming. And, to be honest, most people won't be able to tell the difference in COD or Madden on the PS4 vs the Xb0x and when the Xb0x is $50 cheaper, it just about pays for the game, and that's how they will compete with the PS4.

 

[Rangers]

Using voicemail transcription through their free Google Voice service was a stroke of genius by Google to improve their recognition tech.

I use Google voice...pretty sure it's almost a abandoned Zombie product at this point. They dont update or improve it. And Google has a history of abandoning products.

With good reason I guess, not sure the point of the whole idea of "tie all you various phone numbers together!" when who even has a home and cell phone anymore? Most people just have one cell number. And the texting app is pretty terrible, whereas things like Whatsapp offer great improvement over traditional texting and thus have caught on.

 

[Dave Baumann]

If the system is smart enough to recognize I bought Spartan Assault on Windows 8 in order to offer me the discounted price on Xbox 360 AND Xbox One then it is certainly smart enough to let me redeem it for free, too. These discounts have existed since 2012 so if it hasn't been implemented by now it is almost certainly by choice.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/16/5904785/pinball-fx2-xbox-one-release-date

Update: A Microsoft spokesman replied that "with Xbox One, you are able to transfer add-on content from Xbox 360 to Xbox One for certain titles. We are working with Zen Studios to bring this feature to Pinball FX 2."

So, not a policy issue... more of a fuss about nothing.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Oh, so they underestimated the backlash and are now backtracking? No policy involved there at all!

 

[Rangers]

Yes, the "entertainment" box is clearly dead. They are continuing with the programming that they've already got in development but the rest of it is gone. The lady lead they got from CBS? gets to stay on but be reassigned with different duties to a different division, and I'm sure that's only because she's under contract and they don't want to pay her to stay home.

Another reason why I think the redesigned Xb0x will be lacking both a Kinect port and a HDMI-in port. They'll try to get the BOM as low as possible to compete on price. TV and Kinect are both as good as dead. Sure, they're still sitting in the corner right now, but they are no longer being fed or watered.

I definitely think they need to redesign Xbox ASAP. If I was Nadalla/Spencer this is what I would do:

Realize my box is weaker so that means I have to charge less for it. Getting the price to $350, and then $299 is paramount, in a hurry.

The box is a tank right now. Huge, heavy, glossy, and that's fine if you're 3.0 teraflops, but not if you dont have the power to back it up. You've got to go sleek and lean and mean imo. Nimble Make people go "wow this little cheap thing packs a lot of punch" not "wow this gigantic expensive thing isn't even 1080P" And to get to 350/299 you have to cut out all the unneeded expense possible. MS really made a premium box, but forget the premium guts too it. How ass backwards. They need a small form factor without any unnecessary bells and whistles, now.

Of course you also need to maximize what power you do have there. DX12, removal of Kinect reservation, that's all awesome. Make sure you're reducing overhead in every area as much as possible. Try to get closer to PS4 in multiplatforms, which also they seem to be making progress on.

And then of course, keep the games flowing.

If you're going to keep Kinect around as an add on, make it family games/holiday sales targeted. Basically like I feel it was on 360.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Oh, so they underestimated the backlash and are now backtracking? No policy involved there at all!

Yeah, clearly. Especially since some titles already have the functionality and others have been announced with it.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Yeah, clearly. Especially since some titles already have the functionality and others have been announced with it.

And yet it was originally denied Zen as an option despite their repeated requests and clear warning about how unpopular that decision would be. And then after two days of bile on the Xbox Wire comments section and Zen forum, just as Zen predicted, MS is suddenly actively working to make it happen... It was not revealed to be a technical limitation, just like I said, and was instead a shitty policy MS was forced to reverse after yet another unanticipated backlash. That is the sequence of events here.

 

[eastmen]

I definitely think they need to redesign Xbox ASAP. If I was Nadalla/Spencer this is what I would do:

Realize my box is weaker so that means I have to charge less for it. Getting the price to $350, and then $299 is paramount, in a hurry.

The box is a tank right now. Huge, heavy, glossy, and that's fine if you're 3.0 teraflops, but not if you dont have the power to back it up. You've got to go sleek and lean and mean imo. Nimble Make people go "wow this little cheap thing packs a lot of punch" not "wow this gigantic expensive thing isn't even 1080P" And to get to 350/299 you have to cut out all the unneeded expense possible. MS really made a premium box, but forget the premium guts too it. How ass backwards. They need a small form factor without any unnecessary bells and whistles, now.

Of course you also need to maximize what power you do have there. DX12, removal of Kinect reservation, that's all awesome. Make sure you're reducing overhead in every area as much as possible. Try to get closer to PS4 in multiplatforms, which also they seem to be making progress on.

And then of course, keep the games flowing.

If you're going to keep Kinect around as an add on, make it family games/holiday sales targeted. Basically like I feel it was on 360.

The thing about it being big is its also almost completely silent . You put it next a ps4 and you will hear the ps4 .

As for price , that should happen as they shrink the chip. The apu is about the same size as the ps4's apu but the esram is denser and should allow the xbox apu to become smaller with each micron drop over the ps4 apu. Couple that with the ram price diffrences.

I think when they go to to 20nm maybe next year we will see them start to have a price advantage. As it is now , they have some big titles coming later this year that should help them

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I definitely think they need to redesign Xbox ASAP. If I was Nadalla/Spencer this is what I would do:

Realize my box is weaker so that means I have to charge less for it. Getting the price to $350, and then $299 is paramount, in a hurry.

The box is a tank right now. Huge, heavy, glossy, and that's fine if you're 3.0 teraflops, but not if you dont have the power to back it up. You've got to go sleek and lean and mean imo. Nimble Make people go "wow this little cheap thing packs a lot of punch" not "wow this gigantic expensive thing isn't even 1080P" And to get to 350/299 you have to cut out all the unneeded expense possible. MS really made a premium box, but forget the premium guts too it. How ass backwards. They need a small form factor without any unnecessary bells and whistles, now.

Of course you also need to maximize what power you do have there. DX12, removal of Kinect reservation, that's all awesome. Make sure you're reducing overhead in every area as much as possible. Try to get closer to PS4 in multiplatforms, which also they seem to be making progress on.

And then of course, keep the games flowing.

If you're going to keep Kinect around as an add on, make it family games/holiday sales targeted. Basically like I feel it was on 360.

I'm sorry I quoted this entire message just to respond with "Yep!", but I couldn't find a good place to splice his thoughts.

We are in complete agreement on this one. I think the only place we disagree is that you seem to still think there's a possibility for a future for Kinect2 on the Xb0x, and I think that is a done deal and MS is focusing their entire efforts regarding Kinect2 on the PC because they've realized while it's a great piece of hardware and tech, there's no legitimate gaming nexus for it.

Otherwise, we seem to be in complete agreement, and if MS understands what we both clearly understand, they'll be able to position the Xb0x to compete with the PS4. It really seems like they have, considering the moves they've been making lately.

(I still disagree with everything they've done since the One reveal, but if they are going to salvage anything out of this, they need to take the steps that we've outlined. They have no other choice.)