How Microsoft plans to make the Xbox great again
Nobody was more surprised by Xbox’s fall from grace than Microsoft.
In its first eight years, the Xbox 360 established the company as a powerhouse in the games industry, and one of the best options for streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu, and Pandora. As entertainment trended away from physical media and cable subscriptions, the Xbox 360 felt like a test run for Microsoft’s plan to one day control the living room.
With each opulent press conference announcing a new product, Microsoft seemed more confident. When it launched the Kinect motion controller in 2010, Wired called the event "the most lavish product launch" in video game history — complete with Cirque du Soleil performers, an animatronic elephant, and an Xbox orb large enough to crush the front row. By the time the company announced the Xbox 360’s successor — Xbox One — three years later, the company was riding a tsunami of success.
In theory, the Xbox One was an improvement on everything fans loved about the Xbox 360: a more powerful Kinect, new hardware that merged the console with your cable box, and lots of talk about the cloud. Microsoft only forgot one thing: the games. During the hour-long kick-off presentation, six minutes were allotted to new game announcements.
Fans felt betrayed and poured their fury into forums and game blogs; critics dubbed the event a disaster.
Leadership tried to pivot, using subsequent press events to announce the return of beloved franchises like Halo and Killer Instinct. But the messaging remained muddied and unfocused, requiring constant backpedaling. Because of the Kinect hardware, the Xbox One cost $100 more than its closest competition, Sony’s PlayStation 4. When Microsoft finally debuted the system on November 22nd, 2013, it landed with a thud. It’s been trailing PlayStation ever since.
Microsoft hasn’t abandoned Xbox, though. If anything, it seems to be doubling down by investing hundreds of millions of dollars, and adopting an audacious strategy to turn hundreds of millions of Windows users into Xbox customers. But first, Microsoft has one priority: win gamers back, at all costs.
Source: theverge
People in corporate world plan events that help in strengthening the company and explaining people about their company plans and motive. Such corporate event is really helpful in reaching your audience, so they must be managed properly according to the aim of the particular event.
ReplyDelete