8 Ways Microsoft Saved The Xbox One With Savvy Marketing
Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
The Xbox One – at this point, it really shouldn't be. Buried in a pauper’s grave alongside the Atari Jaguar and the criminally underrated Dreamcast.
And yet, Microsoft’s machine saw it out-perform the opposition for the second-half of 2016, with the amount of hours gamers spent on Xbox One has grown 21% year-on year. Let’s face it, even selling 25 million consoles is a sound business (although the Xbox 360 managed 80 million over its lifetime).
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not the perfect machine. Those initial arguments about 1080p/60fps that spawned on every internet comment thread did a poop-ton of damage. Compared to the PlayStation 4, there are few exclusive games beyond Gears, Halo and Forza.
Even when a game’s development is spiralling out of control and needs closing down (see: Scalebound), the way Xbox handled it was seen by some, as devious and underhand.
Partly, because gaming always needs a villain, as EA, Ubisoft, Konami and now Microsoft – with its monopolistic UWP platform – have discovered, but all told, the Xbox One has seen a dramatic turnaround over the last three-ish years. And that was all down to some seriously savvy marketing miracles pulled off by Microsoft.
Miracles like…