Microsoft has been the center of some rather negative views by the public lately, and I feel they should have a chance to defend themselves and explain some of the things that the people are concerned over. So, in lieu of my usual blog post this week, I'm turning control over to a friend of mine from Microsoft in hopes that he'll be able to clear up some of your concerns over the company's latest decisions.
*Ahem*
Hello, readers! My name is not important. I would give it to you, of course, but I've been advised by my friends from the PR department to refer to myself simply as "Mr. X" in the interests of my own protection. I can understand, working for one of the most popular and widely-loved companies in the United States right now, how it might be important for me to keep my identity secret. I mean, it isn't like there's anyone out there who might actually want to hurt a Microsoft employee, right? I mean, we're giving you that patch for Windows 8! You see, Microsoft is a company who listens to their fans and consumers. We read your emails. You asked us things like "Windows XP was the last operating system you guys have crapped out over the past several years that came anywhere close to functioning properly, why don't you just revert to a new version of that?" Or, "What in the nine hells were you idiots thinking when you decided to port a half-assed operating system intended for tablets and phones to PCs without changing anything?" Another popular question people ask is "Just what the actual flying [censored] are you guys smoking up there?"
Well, I'm here to tell you that we greatly appreciate your senses of humor, and we know how to recognize a good satirical joke email when we read one! Turns out, our consumers are really good at it, because we just receive so many of them! ...But in all seriousness, we did actually receive a lot of legitimate negative feedback over the latest operating system. But while we just couldn't nail down why people wouldn't enjoy being forced to navigate their personal computers via a series of pinches, swipes, pokes, loops, and ancient arcane symbols we found in the dusty Grimoire buried under our headquarters, we heard your concerns! And so, we're giving you back the start menu!
Yay!
You see, we here at Microsoft sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into highly unorthodox and unproven research methods to hone our business practices and relationship with our customers to a fine edge; the cutting edge, if you will. In a series of tests involving two groups of subjects with severe short-term memory problems and one group of goldfish, we discovered that when introducing a system or a technology with obvious flaws, a lackluster interface and confusing elements, it created a unanimous feeling of frustration and anger in our subjects. However, if we waited long enough for their short-term memories to forget that Microsoft were the ones who handed that technology to them in the first place, we could later swap that technology for something that worked marginally better at little cost to the company. Given that the somewhat improved technology was at least a little bit better than the previous incarnation they had before they forgot that Microsoft gave it to them, we found that we could actually improve our relationship with those test groups. We were so confident in this method, in fact, that we didn't even include a control group. Why bother? There was simply no way this experiment could be flawed! The kind folks behind some of our research did inform us that the test wouldn't technically be scientific or present any truthful or realistic results if we didn't have a control group, however, so in the test involving the goldfish, we replaced one of the goldfish bowls with a bowl full of goldfish crackers. The results of the tests involving the fish were inconclusive.
Regardless, however, one thing we definitely learned is that if we give a less-than-functional product to our consumers and wait a longish period of time, we can safely assume that they'll accept it as the best they're going to get. Then, when they've likely forgotten that it was Microsoft who gave that sub-par technology to them in the first place, we sweep in and offer them something slightly less crappy, and receive positive response! Of course, the real-world results of this practice have yet to yield any positive feedback, and there is always a tiny possibility that what we're doing is completely asinine and insulting to the public. But it worked in the lab, so we're convinced that it will eventually work!
Let's put all that talk of operating systems and cutting-edge sociological research aside for now, though, because that's not what I'm here to talk to you all about. I'm here to discuss Microsoft's latest revolutionary leap in gaming technology: The Xbox One.
Now, anybody with a connection to the internet can tell you that there have been some concerns raised over the Xbox One. I'm here to assure you, however, that our console is clearly the best choice for the next generation of gaming. Let's take a look at some of the features, shall we?
Let's start with the name. A lot of concern has been raised over our decision to name the new console Xbox One. "But it isn't the first one" people are saying, "How can you call it Xbox One if there was already a first Xbox? Why didn't you choose something cooler? Xbox 720 would have been more creative, and it's not even creative!" Well, let me assure you, a great deal of thought has gone into the naming of this console. We at Microsoft spent a great deal of time trying to come up with the perfect name for the new Xbox. As you know, we considered such names as the Xbox 720, the Xbox Rift, the Xbox Aurora, and The Xbox Next. Actually, in one of the console's earlier design stages when we were considering a system involving a slot that you fed money into in order to continue playing, we even considered dropping the X altogether and calling it "The Skinner Box." We were unfortunately forced to drop that name and design after Research and Development explained to us that it simply wasn't possible to have a console transfer physical dollar bills into our pockets via slots on the console because that technology didn't exist yet.
But let's get back to the point. We came to the decision to name our console the Xbox One based on a new and revolutionary development strategy. Let me ask you a question. (A rhetorical one, of course. You can't talk to a screen, after all. ...Unless you're using an Xbox One, that is! Oh snap!) Have you ever been driving in the car, and noticed that the wheels of the car next to you are moving so fast that they look like they're spinning backwards? Your smarty-pants friends and "conventional scientific information" will tell you that it's simply an optical illusion. We at Microsoft, however, are smarter than that. We've realized that this must be because the wheel is moving so fast in a forward direction that it's actually moving backward, and thus moving forward faster than things that are only moving forward. It's a bit of a tough concept, I know. Believe me. But Microsoft firmly believes that, like those car tires, the only way to truly move forward faster than your competition is to actually move backwards. Has your mind been blown yet? Of course it has! That's why we decided to name our console the Xbox One. Because the most backwards you can get from 360 is 1. Any math nerd knows that.
And on that note, I'll move to addressing the second concern people have had over our console: the design. We've been told that the Xbox One's design is bulky, brick-like and cumbersome. "It's like a cable box, except my cable box is smaller and doesn't watch me when I sleep," some critics have been saying. Well, fear not, for I am here to explain the super-logical reasoning behind our console's clunky design. It all relates to the principle I mentioned before: The only way to move forward faster than everyone else is to actually move backwards. Therefore, the only way to make sure that our console was something entirely new and innovative was to make something that has already existed for a long time and isn't innovative! The reason our console looks like a cable box is simply because it is one! But there's more to it than that! We here at Microsoft know that in order to stay ahead of the competition, you have to watch the competition. We've been watching Apple, the leading company in terms of technology. They seem to be completely obsessed with making everything smaller, thinner, and sleeker. So using that principle of backwards = forwards twice as fast, we decided that our console needed to do the opposite. We made it as big and blocky and cumbersome as we could, and even made the Kinect module bigger to match! It's literally too big to fail! ...Y'know, unless it encounters a partially-foreseen hardware issue, explodes and burns your house down, but we've been assured that it probably won't do that this time.
The third biggest issue people seem to have with the new console is the Kinect. Now, this one is simple to explain. As any good and faithful Microsoft consumer knows, the Xbox Kinect for the 360 was our most popular and innovative console accessory we ever created. It out-performed both the Wii's motion controls, and the Playstation Move system. In fact, it was so gosh-darned successful and amazing that Nintendo and Sony hired an underground ring of Russian hackers to send hundreds of thousands of emails from hijacked American addresses to tell us that our Kinect was probably the worst thing Microsoft had vomitted up since Windows Vista. We know that isn't true, though, because as everyone knows, Windows Vista was such an awesome operating system that the computers of its generation simply couldn't handle it, and we had to dumb it down for Windows 7. Fortunately for all of you, we saw through the Russian lies and realized that our Kinect was probably the best thing we've ever made. In fact, we even programmed an email filter that only allowed the emails containing positive feedback on the Kinect to reach our inboxes. As such, we've decided to build our entire new console (and possibly rest the financial future of our company) on its mighty broad shoulders. As for the concerns that the new Kinect's camera might be watching you in a disturbing voyeur-like manner, we at Microsoft would like you to rest assured that we've taken care of that. Control over the interface that monitors the only slightly-recorded Xbox Kinect video feeds has been handed off to a reliable source we came into contact with via a series of emails with the Nigerian Monarchy. They seemed to be in a bit of a pickle and asked us for our bank account information, but instead we gave them one better, didn't we? Rest assured, good consumers. Microsoft isn't a company full of idiots. It isn't like we gave control over all those in-home cameras to a group who signed every email with "Definitely not the Taliban," right? That would be silly!
And finally, the biggest concern with the new Xbox One: The always-on DRM and game-sharing features. Now, it's no secret that nobody was a fan of the always-on DRM status originally announced for the Xbox One. After all, who wants to have to be signed in and connected to the internet to play a single-player game, right? Well, we here at Microsoft have heard your concerns. Instead of being always on, your console simply has to be connected to the internet once every 24 hours. It's totally different! Our studies show that the primary concern with having your Xbox always connected to the internet is that you won't be able to relocate the system in your house because your ethernet cable doesn't stretch that far, or your wifi signal doesn't reach that room very well. So, unlike other always-on systems, the Xbox One allows you a full 23 hours of disconnected functionality! During that time, you're free to take your Xbox One anywhere! Move it around the house, take it into the back yard. Allow your daughter to have a tea party with it. Move it anyplace you want to! Leave that ethernet cable disconnected and that wifi behind for a full 23 hours every day! Just make sure you plug it back in and make sure it's online so that it can check for updates that may or may not even exist, and you're fine! You definitely still have to pay for an Xbox Live account, but why wouldn't you want to do that? Don't worry. Your Xbox One's connection to its home server at Microsoft is an important function that allows it to transfer its Kinect's video feed to a secure database owned by our Nigerian friends.
Now, we here at Microsoft understand that some people may not be able to afford an Xbox Live account, or have the available bandwidth to have their Xbox connected to the internet. That's why we've made sure that you're still able to play your games even if the Xbox hasn't updated. In the case that your Xbox One goes a full 24 hours without an internet connection, it will allow you a super-generous one full hour of use before it shuts down and demands an internet connection! Trust us, this system is flawless. Our studies tell us that internet outages and service disruptions stopped happening approximately four years ago, so there's no possible way this could go wrong.
As for games, it is true. Xbox One registers your games to your Xbox Live account, so used games will be a thing of the past. This falls in with our super cutting-edge principle of backwards is forwards twice as fast. In the past, when you bought a game, you owned that game. We ran into a bit of a brick wall with our theory here, because in order to apply it to games, we'd have to make sure you never had any games. And our studies tell us that's bad for business. But it turns out, we just weren't looking at the theory the right way. In order to apply the backwards theory to games, we have to apply a double negative. Ready to have your minds blown again? In order to make our theories work, we have to sell people games without actually allowing them to own the game. It's revolutionary. Of course, it won't save on plastic or discs or anything because we're a real American company and we're not concerned with any of that namby-pamby nature stuff. What it will do is make sure that if our servers and games go down in the future, we take all of you with us. It's like we're making you all the captain of our Microsoft ship, so it would be an honor to go down with it!
However, we've heard your feedback on your inability to loan your games that you purchased with your hard-earned money to your close friends who might enjoy and also want to purchase that game, and we've come up with some solutions. First of all, you're completely allowed to hand that game off to your friend! Just make sure that your friend has been on your friends list for a full 30 days (because real friendships take a full month to flourish, all our research on what it's like to have friends tells us that) and also make sure that you never want to play that game again. Because it belongs to that person afterwards. Because it's less like loaning and more like selling. But that's fine, it's practically the same thing. Sure, this will probably do irreparable damage to companies like GameStop and GameFly who rely on the ability to rent and sell pre-owned games to survive, but our sources tell us that they're probably owned by the same Russian hackers hired to try and tell us that the Kinect was a bad idea.
In conclusion, I hope this has put all your concerns over our new console to rest. We here at Microsoft understand that our consumers want the best, but expect the mediocre, and that's exactly what we intend to give them.
Your friend,
Mr. X
Microsoft: Backwards is the new forwards.
((The preceding blog post was a work of satire. I do not actually know anyone from Microsoft. All information and content of the above post was created in the name of humor, and is likely entirely true. Please don't sue me.))
-The Sarcastic Soul-
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