Dismay as customer finds her
THEY were once confined to the bedrooms of shy, geeky boys as a gateway to harmless escapism. Now video games consoles have become part of consumers’ everyday lives, and boomed into a multi-billion pound industry.
The UK boasts an estimated 33,600,000 active gamers, who spent around £3,800,000,000 on games, consoles and devices last year. Last month alone, consumers spent £137 million on Xbox hardware, software and accessories, trumping rival consoles from Nintendo and Sony. So it was amid great excitement that Microsoft announced the launch of its latest console Xbox One last week, 12 years after its first foray into gaming by releasing the original Xbox.
Yet the reaction from the gaming community was far from the rapturous reception expected. Critics descended on Twitter and the blogosphere to lampoon the hour-long launch. So where did it all go wrong, and how is Microsoft failing to cater for its market?
The primary issue critics picked up on was the console’s desire to market itself as a jack of all trades. Xbox One uses three operating systems to combine live TV, games, films and fellow Microsoft product Skype in a one-stop all-included entertain- ment system package, all controlled via voice and facial recognition.
The release from Xbox rather creepily intones “the more you interact with Xbox One, the more it gets to know you and learns what you like”. In order to start the console up, all users need to utter is the immortal words “Xbox on” and watch it spring to life. The future has indeed arrived.
Jaclyn Wilkins, gaming expert at Charles Russell LLP, maintains the console’s launch was a “significant step” for the next generation of consoles in the
“Gone are the days where the games console is purely for die-hard gamers”
games market. “Gone are the days where the games console is purely for die-hard gamers,” she says. “The consoles of the future will be a key living-room device for everyone.”
James McQuivey of Forrester Research suggests it may even be time to retire the “game console” moniker, arguing that Microsoft should downplay the gaming element to target users previously unacquainted with Xbox.
Yet the die-hard gamers themselves vocally disagreed. Games and entertainment site IGN UK conducted a poll of 76,000 of its visitors to gauge their reaction to the launch. The results were far from positive: 36,004 users, a whopping 47 per cent, voiced their dissatisfaction at the console boasting too many elements they weren’t interested in, whilst 21,946 people (29 per cent) said the launch was “nothing short of a disaster”.
George Charles, of VoucherCodesPro.co.uk, explains that Microsoft could be failing to fully grasp the wants and needs of its customers.
“Microsoft’s president of interactive entertainment told the conference that it’s not just a games console but the ‘ultimate
upgraded to the latest iPhone in February, but was angered to find my new phone is not compatible whatsoever with the new super fast 4G networks. O2 is not able to offer 4G for the iPhone due to a complicated difference in mobile frequencies which each company owns.
“At no point did the customer advisor mention that the iPhone 5 was pretty much the only smartphone which her firm sells which is not compatible – or that the only way to swap was to buy out of my contract at a later date.
“It is completely beyond me why myself and no doubt thousands of other customers in my situation would have to pay such a fee for 4G service.”
the time of the iPhone 5 launch, the only operator that could offer a 4G service was EE. This was because they successfully lobbied Ofcom to allow them to use some of their existing surplus 3G spectrum for 4G use. We never marketed the iPhone 5 as a device that would be supported by 4G on our network. This was because we didn’t know what 4G frequency we would be awarded. Any customer who buys an iPhone 5 from us can receive a 25 per cent reduction on the cost of ending their contract early, and upgrading to a compatible phone once we launch our 4G network. The mobile phone