#May2013
E3 vs PR – Part I: XBox One – How Microsoft let their key moment get ‘xboned’
Welcome to E3 vs PR – A blog series on the Gaming Industry’s Most Important Season from a Communications Perspective.
You’re having a bad PR week with the media if you’re one of the following two clients:
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, following allegations of crack-cocaine use caught on tape, or, Microsoft’s Games and Entertainment Division, following the incredibly confused and poorly communicated debut of their next generation platform, the Xbox One (XBO).
I’m a gamer. Have been since I was 3. I’m also an upcoming communications and PR graduate. The lens I’m looking at this industry through is changing radically, but the last week has been bad enough that the popular opinion is all on the same side.
We all threw our hands up at Microsoft’s lack of a coherent set of key messages throughout the eight days since launch. Everything we’ve been taught not to do, they’re doing.
While Microsoft didn’t match Ford and (allegedly) break the law over the last poorly-planned eight days of the XBO PR launch, you’d definitely call most of their actions criminal, from a communications perspective.
A game and entertainment console ‘reveal’ is one of the most critical and risk-laden PR events that can take place in the interactive entertainment industry. A console, like the XBO’s predecessor, the XBox 360, typically lives on the market for a healthy five to six years. That’s before being relegated to second-tier status upon its successor’s launch for the next three or four years.
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NEXT XBOX being revealed May 21. PLUS more XBOX news than your knobs can handle!
Come one, come all into your one-stop for today’s collection of Nextbox rumors. Most significant is the seeming confirmation that we won’t be getting a reveal of Microsoft’s new money-maker until May. Son of a bitch. Previous rumors had pointed towards this month, but for whatever reason it shant come to pass. My guess on the delay? I propose that Steve Ballmer is still scraping the remains of that errant Microsoft creative director who trolled fans off the walls of Microsoft’s floating fortress. You ever see that guy go full Scanners on an employee? It’s terrifying.
