Microsoft to gamers: You don't know what you want

Ars Technica got a few minutes of Microsoft Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehdi's time and his response to some of the criticisms of the xbone are very interesting:

"We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better."

I'll give him a pass here on the implication that blu-rays and DVDs are somehow not digital but analog. I mean I'll mention it, but I'm not going to make fun of him about it.

"We want to have our offering be differentiated relative to all others," he said. "It has value that is in so many areas that is not in competing systems. … That is a thing that each consumer will choose… and ultimately consumers will decide which is better. It's a big market"

I'll admit the article itself was interesting but it wasn't extremely quotable. Just go read it and then come back. Back? Good.

What a load of horseshit right? Pretty much everything you need to know about this guy is there when he mentions that no one goes to blockbuster anymore because of Netflix streaming. Completely ignoring the fact that Netflix still mails millions of physical DVDs and that Redbox is practically a license to print money. Is the future digital media? Sure why not? But that doesn't mean it's the present.

Lets briefly address the iTunes analogy. Yes, people love buying mp3s on iTunes... I mean not me.. but I've heard other people do. Here's the great thing about digital distribution that he seems to gloss right over. Let's say I buy 3 books, a couple albums and the newest issue of X-men on my kindle. Then I decide to go up to Loren's cabin where it's always 1963 and the internet still doesn't exist. I can still watch my movies and read my books, pretty much till the end of time, or until my son throws the kindle in the lake. Same with my phone or my mp3 player. Yes it's digital and just a bunch of ones and zeroes but I own that copy of whatever that media is. There's no requirement for me to check in with the Amazon servers to make sure my device hasn't been jailbroken of that I'm still drinking my Slurm like a good boy.

Even in the world of video games there's a big subset of gamers that are already used to the idea of "digital" distribution. They're called Steam users and they understand that when they buy a game that's it. There's no trading it to a friend or selling it for 1/10 it's value at Gamestop but they don't have to worry about their internet connection or Valve's servers going down. If they want to play offline they can.

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing on the subject of DRM and Xbox One, it's pretty telling that EA had to issue a press release this morning denying that they asked Microsoft to help eliminate the used game market.

Of course the funny thing here is this new DRM friendly machine might end up killing the PS4 not in spite of DRM but because of it. If you're EA or Activision who would you rather develop for? The company that puts out youtube clips showing how easy it is to give your games to your friends or the company that put a lockdown on that shiz? Poor developer support is what killed the Dreamcast and that machine was the bomb diggity. Who's to say it couldn't happen again with the PS4?