I have been railing against what Microsoft is doing with the new XBOX One because I care. I'm an XBOX fan and up until now it has never really let me down. I am, as Keith Stuart says in his great piece in The Guardian, a "veteran Xbox fan," a "super engaged gamer" and one of the "super-engaged "geeks" who buy in early to new technologies and share them with family members."
And that's why I'm so unhappy with all of this.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article:
'"Microsoft has a corporate desire to own the living room, first identified in the mid-90s: it is not addressing consumers' needs but Microsoft's desires," says analyst and author Nicholas Lovell. '
and:
"It's the super-engaged "geeks" who buy in early to new technologies and share them with family members – it is difficult to bypass these self-appointed brand advocates to reach the mass market."
and the one I've been thinking the most about:
"Every one has a primary screen – a tablet or a smartphone – which is personal to them, but each household also has a single shared screen – the TV."
The second screen is the TV, and the first is your phone or tablet - not the other way around. I don't need a hub, I need a way to share stuff to my second screen from the hub already in my pocket - my phone. Could the idea of a media "hub" be as outdated as centralized computing on terminals was in the mid 1980s? In other words, not totally dead but well on it's way?
I think it may be. And I don't want to spend $500 betting that it's not.
Xbox One: Microsoft's shocking discovery that gamers aren't data [by Keith Stuart, guardian.co.uk]