MS E3 2012 conference

[Rotmm]

Don't bother arguing ads since 'beta' testers split on the same argument day 1, with no convincing the other side either way....

(beta tester here)

I have no problem with the ads, either the defined ones trying to sell be Coors or the ones linking to Xbox content. And I'm of the belief that the latter are more helpful in introducing me to new content than intrusive.

But of course there are those that want Xbox to be a pure gaming machine and seem unhappy with the move to becoming a media centre or whatever, and the new dash is better for them than either the blades gui (where you had to press down on the controller 4 times to launch your game) or the old NXE (where you had to scroll up one menu to launch your game).

In this one you start the 360, wait for the boot and press A to go straight into your game.... bypassing any ads, media content, links to xbox content, friends lists, etc.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Welcome to capitalism. You want a free market where companies are allowed to make things you want? Then you're going to have to learn to allow them be able to advertise their products so they can reach more customers. If not, then go back to the dark ages where you have more things to worry about than companies selling you products.

BTW, there is one way to turn off the ads: disconnect from Xbox Live. Problem solved.

What total bullshit. There are clearly other options. MS has specifically designed the interface in a way to maximize advertizing that simultaneously degrades the user experience. Guess what, if I turn on my PS3 it doesn't choke me out with ads and promos. It exposes all its functionality and all the content I own in an immediate way, recognizing that if I want to shop I will go to the PlayStation Store. That's having respect for your users. As far as MS is concerned, no matter how much money you give them for hardware, games and subscription services, as soon as you turn on the Xbox you've entered their retail showroom. Being able to easily use the things you own is not even a concern they have anymore. Further degrading the functionality by unplugging from the network isn't a solution, especially since the interface is still hampered by being designed for advertising.

 

[AzBat]

What total bullshit. There are clearly other options. MS has specifically designed the interface in a way to maximize advertizing that simultaneously degrades the user experience. Guess what, if I turn on my PS3 it doesn't choke me out with ads and promos. It exposes all its functionality and all the content I own in an immediate way, recognizing that if I want to shop I will go to the PlayStation Store. That's having respect for your users. As far as MS is concerned, no matter how much money you give them for hardware, games and subscription services, as soon as you turn on the Xbox you've entered their retail showroom. Being able to easily use the things you own is not even a concern they have anymore. Further degrading the functionality by unplugging from the network isn't a solution, especially since the interface is still hampered by being designed for advertising.

Blah blah blah, I didn't say there weren't any other options. Nor did I say this was best way to serve ads either. I'm saying quit crying about the ads. If you don't like them then don't use the box or the service & go use whatever service you do like. You always have a choice. Microsoft gives you a variety of ways to get around them. Just open your eyes & look. BTW, as much as you cry foul over the ads, there are a lot of people that keep using their system & service regardless. Personally I don't have a problem with it. I have come used to it with TV, radio & even movie theaters. Everybody is fighting for eyeballs & as long as there are services that are making money there will be ads. Sony may not be taking advantage of putting ads in their dashboard, but I wouldn't be totally surprised that they sure wished they had. Who knows, maybe they will do it with their next system. Just hope you give them hell about it then.

Tommy McClain

 

[Squilliam]

So long as they don't advertise tampons or something ridiculous there I don't have a problem with the promotion of the services offered within the service itself.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[Brad Grenz]

Sony may not be taking advantage of putting ads in their dashboard, but I wouldn't be totally surprised that they sure wished they had. Who knows, maybe they will do it with their next system. Just hope you give them hell about it then.

Oh, yeah. Any time a company doesn't take the opportunity to degrade the experience they offer for the chance to blast us with ads, they're probably just jealous of MS. It's not that they might care about giving their paying customers a good, uncluttered experience. No, they just didn't think of it!

I bet Apple is just kicking themselves over letting people look at a screen full of apps they own every time they turn on their phone or tablet. Don't they realize they could have sold 90% of that screen and buried everyone's apps and files under 3 layers of billboards?!?! What a bunch of maroons!

The truth is the "Metro" versions of the 360 "Experience" have been awful, no one should be happy about it and there is no sense in making excuses for Microsoft's Advertising first attitude.

 

[RobertR1]

It's pretty clear that MS does a lot more wrong than right by your standards. Why not just move on and ignore MS threads? On here and neogaf, you're always jumping in with tirades and arguments. You've been doing it for years now. At what point do you learn to move on, Brad?

 

[Brad Grenz]

I'm a paying customer of Microsoft products. I don't know why you think my consistent dissatisfaction with the way they're treating their customers somehow invalidates my opinion. Maybe if people stopped making excuses for their behavior, asking critics to "move on" and held them accountable for the way they treat their customers they would change and I wouldn't have stuff to complain about.

That they designed their interface around displaying ads is an objective fact. That paying for Gold is a terrible value is an objective fact. That their poor security left thousands of people vulnerable to FIFA hacks for a year and a half, while they blamed the victims again and again is a fact. These aren't matters of opinion and as people with an investment in the platform, we should all expect better.

 

[RobertR1]

My point is, why are you still a paying customer? You seem to have constant dissatisfaction to everything they do and always up to argue with anyone who likes the service.

Save your money and blood pressure and move on?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Blah blah blah, I didn't say there weren't any other options. Nor did I say this was best way to serve ads either. I'm saying quit crying about the ads. If you don't like them then don't use the box or the service & go use whatever service you do like.

That's true of every complaint anyone has about anything, making much discussion pointless. Instead, we let everyone express their POV including criticisms, whether it's over how lousy a web browser is, the naffness of controls in a game, a complaint about framerates or tearing, hardware prices, etc.

Trying to shut Brad up because you don't agree with him is out of order and contrary to other discussions you're a part of. I guess you're having a bad day?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

My point is, why are you still a paying customer? You seem to have constant dissatisfaction to everything they do and always up to argue with anyone who likes the service.

He's presumably got a vested interest in the platform in terms of library and stuff. It also didn't start that way IIRC. No different to me constantly grumbling about Sony's services, but I still use PS3 because costs to shift platforms, fiscal and non-fiscal, mean the economic choice is to stick. But I still complain hoping they'll change things for the better, and sometimes they do. Although in economics the principal is that the consumer can manage products and services by switching, it's rarely as simple as that, but consumer feedback can help change a service to the way the consumer wants it.

Maybe XB owners are seeing a pattern in Brad's behaviour that I haven't noticed, causing them to be heavy-handed in response, but I personally don't see the problems with him complaining any more than I litter the forum with gripes and whingings.

 

[bkilian]

I'm a paying customer of Microsoft products. I don't know why you think my consistent dissatisfaction with the way they're treating their customers somehow invalidates my opinion. Maybe if people stopped making excuses for their behavior, asking critics to "move on" and held them accountable for the way they treat their customers they would change and I wouldn't have stuff to complain about.

That they designed their interface around displaying ads is an objective fact. That paying for Gold is a terrible value is an objective fact. That their poor security left thousands of people vulnerable to FIFA hacks for a year and a half, while they blamed the victims again and again is a fact. These aren't matters of opinion and as people with an investment in the platform, we should all expect better.

Vote with your dollars Brad. If you keep giving them money, you won't change their behavior. Also, your self evident "facts" are either misinformed or opinion. I'm perfectly happy with the Gold value proposition, as are a lot of people, which makes your "objective fact" very suspect.

 

[NRP]

Actually, I find the ads on the 360's UI surprisingly unobtrusive. They've done a pretty good job balancing this issue imo.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Vote with your dollars Brad. If you keep giving them money, you won't change their behavior.

It's not as simple as that. If he chooses not to subscribe to Live, he doesn't get to play online. If he chooses to switch to another platform, he's lost all his games and has a considerable cost in buying a new device and library. The economy of a change is such that he's possibly stuck with his choice, which is often the way when someone buys a product that doesn't work out for them, like a car or TV - they wish they had bought another but can't afford to change now. In such cases all a person can do is voice their disagreement with the purchase, possibly in the hopes someone will listen and change things for the preference, but more typically just as a rant.

That said, this line:

That paying for Gold is a terrible value is an objective fact.

shows Brad is definitely having a good old fashioned rant and isn't speaking sense. A service with a subscription fee is always of subjective value.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

That paying for Gold is a terrible value is an objective fact.

Uhh, what? I think Gold is a GREAT value. It's hard to take somebody seriously when they can't determine fact from opinion.

That their poor security left thousands of people vulnerable to FIFA hacks for a year and a half, while they blamed the victims again and again is a fact. These aren't matters of opinion and as people with an investment in the platform, we should all expect better.

Also hard to take somebody seriously when they're talking about security flaws on FIFA for the 360 with no mention of PSN's repeated failures.

Oh, and I don't ever even pay attention to the ads, except for the ones for MS products that I actually take a moment to look at to see if there's been something released I want to purchase.

But, right. The ads have made the user experience WORSE FOR EVERYBODY because you don't like them.

Give me a break. This is the most absurd rant I've seen in a long time. If you don't like the fact that MS has changed their business model (starting with the 360 and now moving on with the launch of Win8) to that of a service-based, content provider, then as was mentioned: don't use their products.

If you couldn't see this coming, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Most of us knew, and some of us (like myself) repeatedly said in thread after thread that MS was pushing to own the living room.

What did you think that meant? It meant providing content, at a cost.

This is really an unbelievable discussion.

 

[Svensk Viking]

I don't pay for Live, and I don't think it's odd with people complaining about Live's cost...
It's an additional cost that really adds up over the years. Three years for 40 USD each and voila, you're up in 120 USD(and most people probably get Live for the normal 60 USD a year)
All that, while other console owners(and PC gamers) get free online

Some may feel this is silly, but the Live fee is one of the biggest arguments for me not to get the next Xbox

 

[Arwin]

I'm guessing that you still have a single ad-box on each (Main, Games, Music, etc) screen, even if it's only a MS advert.

The rest of what people call advertising is generally a tile pointing you to a new film release that you can rent or a piece of MW DLC. While technically that is advertising, it doesn't really feel like it to me.

I am personally fine with links to stuff that is on the service. But if I pay for a service, I don't expect that service to then still have adds for irrelevant crap. I definitely understand that complaint, but importantly (for me) that does not affect me. If it did, it would be very bad, because in Europe I don't get a whole lot beyond online play for my Gold subscription (some demos a weak early, and now Internet Explorer).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Oh, yeah. Any time a company doesn't take the opportunity to degrade the experience they offer for the chance to blast us with ads, they're probably just jealous of MS. It's not that they might care about giving their paying customers a good, uncluttered experience. No, they just didn't think of it!

I'd imagine Sony are far more concerned with the fact that they are consistently losing money as a corporation. If they can't sufficiently monetize the Playstation brand and it's online services, then it doesn't help.

I'm quite certain that in the situation that Sony is in, they are quite jealous of Microsoft's ability to not only get far more revenue from Xbox Live Gold than they do with PSN+, but that on top of that Microsoft are able to generate an advertising revenue stream that Sony are unable to for whatever reason.

Fact is, Sony could desperately use the ad revenue. One may point to the Playstation brand as being profitable, but if the overall company isn't profitable that it behooves them to do whatever they can to become profitable as a company. If I was a shareholder in Sony, I would be seriously questioning why they haven't made efforts to gain some ad revenue from a prime source.

Offering online services for free just means they are adding more losses onto losses already being sustained by the company. At least have some ads to help offset the costs and potentially increase their revenue stream.

Regards,
SB

 

[RobertR1]

He's presumably got a vested interest in the platform in terms of library and stuff. It also didn't start that way IIRC. No different to me constantly grumbling about Sony's services, but I still use PS3 because costs to shift platforms, fiscal and non-fiscal, mean the economic choice is to stick. But I still complain hoping they'll change things for the better, and sometimes they do. Although in economics the principal is that the consumer can manage products and services by switching, it's rarely as simple as that, but consumer feedback can help change a service to the way the consumer wants it.

Everyone has their criteria for value. My most precious commodity is time. This wasn't as much of a case 5 years ago and certainly not 10 years ago. As I get older, I'm always looking to be more efficient and buy more time.

So I'm willing to pay for a service that, as a whole, saves me time.

I also don't waste my time on services which I feel are inadequate. Take the Wii for example. Bought it, enjoyed a couple of games on it and then realized the platform has no future for me and sold it. I did rant about it a couple of times but saw that pattern of Nintendo not doing much that I found no value in. It was an easy decision to cut my losses and move on.

Same thing with the PS3. The service isn't worth my time so I've stopped paying attention to the content on it. I ranted about it a few times because unlike Nintendo, Sony were willing to compete but when things like "no cross game/party chat possible" came out, I realized it's not the console for me and moved on. Again, cut my losses (a little diff since I use it as a BR player).

So I did 2 things. I voted with my wallet, cut my losses and stuck with a service that caters to my needs and saves me time. Ultimately, it's upto you to determine where your biggest value is.

If you, Brad, others really want to rant, do it on official message boards or write to the PR departments of your companies. It'll likely have better visibility than buried deep in a thread that's been take off topic.

 

[Rotmm]

But if I pay for a service, I don't expect that service to then still have adds for irrelevant crap. I definitely understand that complaint.

I also understand that. However, I buy a newspaper and there are ads in there. Buy a magazine and ads. Go see the new Bond film and 15 minutes of ads after I've paid £9 to watch it. Subscription TV service? Ads.

The reality is that companies that provide all of those goods and/or services need advertising revenue to keep the end-user costs down. I expect the same is true for Xbox live. There is going to be a huge cost to run the data centres, development teams and other forms of infrastructure for the Xbox Live service. Sure, Sony absorb most of those costs (though as we know they pass a lot of them onto the developers, hence no or late demo's, etc) but I think if they didn't have to launch for $599 then they would likely have not talked about free multiplayer either. I do suspect, now that they understand the costs involved, that PS4 will have a online model that had more in common with Microsofts than different.

But yea, if having a single ad-box on a dashboard screen means MS can keep the Live price low then I'm happy to have it there. Of course I live in the UK which, while not as advanced in digital media as the US, still has a significant number of media related offerings which make Live even more attractive to me.

If I lived in another European country where digital media services were still too weak for companies like MS to see any value in working with them, then maybe I'd feel different.