Mixed Information on Consoles or How I learned to loathe PR *spin off*

I'm not following the argument then. What did you mean by:

 

doesn't ms have a developer targeted article by a different publication coming out soon.
so it seems, go to the people that are experts in those fields to get particular aspects of the message out.

at E3, bring it all together with games.
with lots of details already seeded.

personally I prefer this, even though would like more deep dive into modifications made etc, which may or may not be inbound.

 

That Microsoft could have had a traditional reveal event and conveyed the technical capabilities of Scorpio in a way they felt most appropriate, followed by the usual interviews with tech sites. This means they have have direct communicated detail and by talking to a bunch of media outlets, particularly technically minded ones, minimises the risk that any technical aspect will be misconstrued for long.

They do?

 

Well based on all your emoticons in your recent posts, I took it to mean you thought this was a "dumb" move by MS.

It could of backfired on them for sure, but in the podcast I linked earlier, MS clearly thought this was a bold move. Whether it pays off on the long run is yet to be known, but so far, it's been mostly positive I think. And as iroboto said, better to get the negative stuff out of the way now before E3 so that the focus isn't "Jaguar evolved/Polaris nerfed system" later noise.

 

That would've been great too.

 

yea, think Arron mentioned it on the major Nelson podcast, pretty sure that's where I heard it.
may be due this coming week.
can't remember who its with, but that's just because I know it will be plastered over the net. Do remember it being a pretty well known technical site though

 

Oh I definitely think letting a third party publish, with no oversight, core details of your new product is dumb. Even with the best intentioned author in the world there is scope if poor communication and many DF articles receive updates and corrections. Communicating details correctly is why there are PR people in the first place

In modern business lexicon "bold" and "courageous" are words commonly used interchangeably with risky and stupid.

We'll see if by E3 the negativity has faded or if it's not reached fever pitch.

Let me be clear, based on what's been revealed I think Scorpio is a great balance of specifications for new hardware but Microsoft's decision to allow a tiny British technical media outlet do their reveal, on Microsoft's dime, with zero oversight, is just mind boggling. Possibly DF did a better job than Microsoft would have but that in itself is not a plus for Microsoft. Could you imagine Microsoft trusting Paul Thurrott exclusively reveal the details of a new version of Windows? Because that's kind of what's happened with Scorpio. Enthusiasm isn't debated, competence is.

 

It was the word used by Major Nelson on his podcast. I'm sure if the article was negatively slanted then he probably wouldn't have used it.

Risky for sure, but it also may indicate how confident (or cocky) they were in what they had at the time.

That said, I wouldn't have minded tech heads reveal either even though most of it would've been over my head. Good thing B3D has a lot of experts that can break it down to something even I can understand.

 

Risky for sure but I don't think Microsoft have any cause to be cocky... yet. They remain second place in a market where they've been in this position for three+ years and their answer is a higher-specification console even though there is no conclusive data that demonstrates performance sells consoles.

Microsoft / DF's reveal of Scorpio comes across like a fait accompli but I just don't get it because it it feels like they phoned it in. Perhaps the technical aspects aren't the most important aspect of Scorpio (which wouldn't surprise me) and this will be become clearer in the run-up to E3.

 

Yes. Gamasutra.

 

Yes, the publication is Gamasutra. Their article will publish this week.

 

At a risk of sounding like an ass, but perhaps we're out of touch with the times? Maybe there is some supporting data that people would prefer this over the traditional model. It's similar to the new teaser for a trailer... or dumping important information on twitter (all annoying, but it doesn't seem to be going away). It's quite possible that marketing techniques are changing before our very eyes, and for something like this mid-gen refresh, which isn't as critical as a generational reveal - perhaps this was the best method and we're just too old to get it? Perhaps this is a cheaper and more effective way to do it, and MS isn't interested in spending more money and that.. Flying DF over for a week with MS was much cheaper than the alternative.

 

A case of damned if they do damned if they don't.

If they waited...DF eventually gets info from devs. Leaks even less complete info which causes speculation.

Microsoft releases info directly to DF...and people are still speculating.

 

Perhaps, although I don't even know how you would measure customer's preference for consuming technical information?

Nobody is "damned". I don't see the advantage to this approach compared to having their own event then speaking to DF, Anandtech, IGN etc. You are limiting technical questions to a smaller group and therefore introducing a greater risk of not covering all technical areas. It really depends on what Microsoft's goals were with this reveal.

 

Personally, if you look at the last three months, PS4 had one of the best quarters in terms of quality exclusive software, maybe since launch. Horizon, Nier, Nioh, Persona 5...
that's what sells consoles and they would have released even without the existence of a Pro.

MS needs games. Great games, and a lot of them. They don't need a more powerful platform like Sony didn't need one to get those (and many more) brilliant games.

 

Think I disagree with this.
The need is if you have a 4k tv and you really want to take advantage of it, or you have 1080p and want a better visual experience.

For a vr experience maybe x1 is strong enough to give an ok experience, but in the end would it end up hurting vr if it just didn't look and perform well enough.

Are games important, guess the question is more so is how important are exclusives as it will have games and lots of them.
I personally think that MS handle their release schedule badly, but they have always been more of a fall release kinda division, and for exclusives you could argue they had a stronger fall than the competition.
So we don't know until E3 just what they really have, not that I'm expecting a blow out of exclusives.

Trouble is they don't seem to have many marketing rights to leverage also. Show the big AAA's on Scorpio.

 

hmm, I agree with the overall idea here but I'm not sold on that just being the only reason for success. Also, I'm not sure if you meant to reply to my last post or a different post where i think I touched on these subjects. You let me know lol.

just to touch up on the original point before i dive back into the marketing aspects of it, PS4 would be about as successful as Nintendo if it only tried to live off it's 1st party list. They are far and few between. They still don't nearly sell as well as 3P games. So while I agree that 1P is a purchasing decision, when we look at variety or diversity in the catalog, Sony's 1P is a great addition, you still need a strong 3P lineup. Which they've also owned because of that power difference. That's something I think most people forget, people want to hail exclusives as the big thing, but we know what the big chart toppers are over and over again.

Strictly talking about marketing aspect of it: you need to put your best foot forward, when you are the king of power, you trumpet power, when you are the king of exclusives, you trumpet that.

Sony's narrative, whether through it's fan base, or via DF etc, word of mouth, it's all been about power. XBO came out of the gates with exclusives (sadly did not do well here), but if you recall MS was all about 'Have you seen Titanfall?'. That was their counter to the lack of power. Now that the argument of power differential is largely subdued, Sony has been playing up their exclusives, luckily for them, they've all landed, so this is the new argument, and DF compares are pretty much going to be largely ignored now, unless MS can _really_ pull something out for it's 3P titles. I think this interplay will be like this for a while.

A more serious issue is when you are crown of neither (which XBO has arguably not been) and it's detrimental. At least with the release of Scorpio, they gain back a purchasing decision point. So while I agree with your point, this is probably the best that MS can do at the moment. Ideally they will relaunch as many games as possible with smashing graphics, giving users a reason to buy DLC they didn't in the past. A lot of their games have changed since launch, so this isn't necessarily a terrible thing either.

I know a relaunch sounds rather lame, but a relaunch with some new content new, exclusive graphics, 4K + HDR, and some new unannounced/not yet released games at E3 doesn't sound terrible to me at all. I'm looking for all sorts of reasons to replay old but good games. It would appear at least to land into MS hope to turn games into a 'service'. To supplement that, I guess the idea is to be generational-less? I suppose MS is hoping for a Blizzard model here for games to take after.

XBO titles, at least imo, were largely ignored because the XBO market was smaller, but more importantly they didn't have the graphical umph that PS4 games did. But a revisit to a lot of those old titles, could bring back some life.

 

Actually maybe it was as simple is that. Perhaps Microsoft just don't have any news games to show off Scorpio yet, and couldn't persuade third parties to show anything that had cooking. You kinda have to show how your box is better, which is tricky enough as YouTube compression will murder detail in a 4K stream like King Herod at a baby shower.

If don't have games to show at an event then it's not much of an event. Which does make you wonder why Microsoft felt now was a good time to let DF reveal technical details when E3 is just around the corner. Maybe things will be clearer then.

 

I kind of disagree. PS4 had the better version of multiplatform games this gen, as well as a price advantage. I think the power of the PS4 was at least one of the major reasons why it was able to sell so well and then secure exclusives. It's harder to get exclusives when you have the smaller install base. Scorpio's power advantage will help the library IF it helps to improve market share.

 

And it won't. Most people buy cheaper base hardware.