#June2013
MOUNTAIN DEW teaming up with Xbox One for “Most Obvious Gaming Promotion In Brand History.”
Mountain Dew is teaming up with Microsoft for a huge push on cheesy products, caffeinated beverages, and the gaming console that is NSA’s data-culling wet dream. It’s a bit of an obvious extension of a collaboration that has been going on for a while now. But this one is going to be HUGE and ENORMOUS and CHEESY.
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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.
Press Start: XBOX Consumergeddon
So, about that new XBOX.
Only a week ago, Microsoft managed to enrage what seemed like the entire gaming sector of the internet with the announcement of the XBOX One. Now, for the non-gamers out there, the window-shopper if you will (otherwise why the fuck would you be reading this?) I should inform you that gamers, on the whole, are a fairly irrational bunch. Whereas most consumers can happily walk away from a product that just isn’t right for them, gamers – as part of their perpetual, existential quest – will desperately search for logic and some sort of conclusion as to why they shall not be purchasing the next new console. If anything, it’s almost as if we’re struggling to comprehend the idea that we’ve been told we can’t have the XBOX One: its list of baffling, anti-consumer ‘features’ being part of an effort to politely tell us to fuck off.
LISTEN: Official ANTHEM of CALL OF DUTY DOG.
Adam WarRock has hung the official anthem of CALL OF DUTY dog for all of our listening pleasure. S’all good.
XBOX ONE’S F**KING USED GAME SALES method revealed.
We now (may) know how the Xbox One’s used games sale mechanism will function.
THIS IS OBI-WAN SPEAK FOR F**KS SAKE: XBOX ONE requires DAILY INTERNET CONNECTION.
Microsoft is engaging in some serious fucking Obi-Wan speak when it comes to whether or not their new console requires an always-on Internet connection. It doesn’t. But does. You don’t have to be connected. But you have to connect everyday. I can’t keep track of this fucking stupidity. And yes I think requiring people to connect daily for a single-player game is fucking dumb.
XBOX ONE: F**k you to BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY. FEE for USED GAMES.
What we know about the Xbox One: no backwards compatability. Used games…for a fee. And it ain’t always on.
Hit the jump for deets.
NUMBERZ!!! Here are the XBOX ONE SPECS. They mean nothing to me.
You like specs? They’re just numbers to me. Hope they mean more to you.
New XBOX is called XBOX ONE, will do stuff.
Hey look at it. [Will be updating throughout the day.]
