Xbox One Sucks: Why Don Mattrick can SUCK MY COCK
After having already ruined Microsoft Flight Simulator — one of the biggest franchises in PC gaming history — the Interactive Entertainment Business Division at Microsoft is at it again. This time it seems they are determined to ruin the Xbox after years of efforts to make it one of the best and most popular consoles on the market. If you aren’t yet up to speed on what’s wrong with the Xbox One, I encourage you to check out the below videos.
The biggest issues with the Xbox One are the following:
- You are now forced to take an Xbox Live subscription even if you only plan on playing offline. There used to be a free version of Xbox Live. Microsoft’s motivations here can be nothing more than greed.
- The Xbox One needs an Internet connection to be able to work. You can only play offline for 24 hours and then you need to connect again. Even if the games you play don’t require an Internet connection you still have to connect online with Xbox Live.
- The Kinect that comes with the Xbox One needs to be plugged in and is always on. Even if you’re not playing and even if the games you play don’t require it. Microsoft still isn’t able to tell us why this is the case. Combined with the required Internet connection, we can have some pretty good ideas why this is needed, as explained later below.
- You cannot share games you buy with friends; they will have to pay to be able to play those games. Again, Microsoft’s motivations here can be nothing more than greed.
- You cannot sell your games or return them as the discs get tied to your account once you install them. Yep, corporate greed.
- If you go to a friend’s house to play his games on his console and log in with your Xbox Live account you can only play for an hour. You read that correctly, a fucking hour. Greed can cause corporations to do really crazy stuff.
- The Xbox One has no backwards compatibility with games from the Xbox and Xbox 360. At a time when virtualization is happening everywhere, there is no excuse not to have backwards compatibility. Even if the hardware on the Xbox One is drastically different, which I doubt, Microsoft could have added virtualization to be able to run older games. And this is where greed comes in again: Microsoft doesn’t want people to play their older games on the Xbox One, they want people to go out and buy new games which they can’t share.
These are some of the most boneheaded decisions anyone could ever make at Microsoft, or anywhere else, but it doesn’t surprise me after what I already knew about the Microsoft Flight Simulator debacle. Requiring an Internet connection and Xbox Live subscription drastically limits the markets Xbox One will be available in — only 21 countries at launch. Not to mention that if you live in a country or remote area where it’s either difficult or expensive to have an Internet connection you’re screwed.
At E3 2013 the president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division, Don Mattrick, tried to explain this limitation away:
MATTRICK: “Well, if you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device, I mean, seriously, when I read the blogs, and thought about who’s really the most impacted, there was a person who said ‘hey, I’m on a nuclear sub,’ and I don’t even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub but I’ve gotta imagine it’s not easy to get an internet connection.”
KEIGHLEY: “[inaudible] playing call of duty multiplayer”
MATTRICK: “Hey, I can empathize, if I was on a nuclear sub, I’d be disappointed.”
Well if you can empathize, Mr. Mattrick, then why don’t you make it so that the Xbox One can function without an Internet connection you fucking moron???
Mattrick then proceeds to advise people to get an Xbox 360 instead.
You know what Don Mattrick? FUCK YOU, and SUCK MY COCK.
We all know people are going to be getting the Sony Playstation 4 instead, especially because it doesn’t have this limitation. Microsoft is making it too easy for Sony to catch up with the PS4 and the below videos illustrate this.
Like Paul Thurrott says:
And there you have it: The damage is done not by Sony, which again was quick to capitalize on Microsoft’s Xbox One design decisions, but by Microsoft itself. Having followed Microsoft for 20 years and watched its PR machinations direct the conversation, it’s obvious that Mattrick was obeying a very strict messaging script that required him to communicate key points. But pushing a previous-generation console as a response to very real complaints about a device that has yet to ship was the wrong decision. It just cements the notion that Xbox One isn’t the right product for the right audience.
As if all this isn’t enough, Microsoft employees are on the Internet doing damage control in the form of “Reputation Management,” which is really another word for mass mind manipulation:
Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
Misty Silver didn’t reveal his/her real identity, except to say. “I work for a marketing firm in Redmond that has a contract with Microsoft. I can’t say specifically which division, but suffice to say we are not involved with the Xbox.”
“I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One,” Silver reported.
“Reputation management” is the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
Very despicable behavior from a company like Microsoft. Notice how they use a normal sounding description of “reputation management” for something as evil as mind manipulation and mass deception. Of course, Microsoft denies this:
Microsoft told us, “There is no coordinated or sanctioned effort by Microsoft employees, or anyone paid by Microsoft, to unduly influence Reddit or other online forums.”
But why should we believe Microsoft? Should we really believe and trust a company who says they value our privacy while at the same time secretly giving the NSA access to all our communications for years now, as recently leaked by CIA employee Edward Snowden (who in my opinion is a hero)?? Just check this out:
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
…
Some of the world’s largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.
And now this same Microsoft wants us to trust them with our information in the cloud?? REALLY MICROSOFT????? Perhaps now it’s clearer to you why Microsoft wants the Xbox One connected ALL THE TIME to the Internet, and why you are required to have an Xbox Live account with all your details stored in the cloud. Perhaps now it’s also clearer to you why Microsoft wants the Kinect in your home that is always on, even if you don’t fucking use it at all, watching your every move and uploading all the details online for the NSA and the CIA to collect. From here:
Last week, Microsoft did not present a vision of an Xbox One that can or should be turned off. Rather, the company showcased a console that could be “always-on” and managed to freak out enough people who started envisioning an Xbox One that seemed capable of spying on its users.
The spying concern wasn’t groundless. The new Kinect can see in the dark, pick out human voices in a noisy living room and read your heartrate just by looking at your face. It was unveiled by Microsoft last week as a fixture of the fall-releasing Xbox One. The thing has to be plugged in for the console to work, and is in some way already checking out what’s going on in the room it’s in.
Even when ostensibly not functioning, the Xbox One can run in a low-powered state, ready to be snapped on at a moment’s notice. That’s something Microsoft was showing off last week as an asset. The only on-switch Microsoft showed for waking the machine from its low-power state was a voice command… “Xbox On.” The Xbox One could only hear that if the Kinect was already, always listening. The idea that the Kinect might always be listening got people reaching for their tin foil or vowing to not let an Xbox One into their home.
Microsoft is now seeking to calm concerns that the new Kinect might spy. “We are designing the new Kinect with simple, easy methods to customize privacy settings, provide clear notifications and meaningful privacy choices for how data will be used, stored and shared,” the Microsoft rep told me.
“We know our customers want and expect strong privacy protections to be built into our products, devices and services, and for companies to be responsible stewards of their data. Microsoft has more than ten years of experience making privacy a top priority. Kinect for Xbox 360 was designed and built with strong privacy protections in place and the new Kinect will continue this commitment. We’ll share more details later.”
If you just rolled on the floor laughing out loud, I completely understand. Microsoft “having more than 10 years of experience making privacy a top priority”??? We know better now, don’t we? Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know exactly how much experience Microsoft has with privacy, and how responsible they are with our data. Microsoft simply cannot be trusted, and neither can any of the other large companies such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Apple. For example, I’ve blogged about Google being in bed with the CIA since 2006, and CIA seed money even helped to launch Google. And the same can be said about Facebook:
Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.
Cloud computing is fucking dead. This is why I’ve always said that P2P solutions will be the future of the Internet. I’ve been writing about this since 2006 and a lot of what Edward Snowden made public was already known:
Let me also remind you of the fact that the NSA in cooperation with AT&T has been getting full access to phone conversations in real time, and were using that to spy on people. Did you know about this before it took place? No, you got to know about it after months when it was already too late. And who tells you they stopped doing it? Answer: They didn’t. And you can bet they are doing a lot more with your data that you don’t know about. They’re even using this to spy on all Internet traffic. It would not surprise me one bit if Microsoft, Yahoo and Google were secretly working with organizations like the CIA or other governmental organizations and giving them access to private data. Just read my interview with Professor Ross Anderson where he mentions how Microsoft, among other companies, has a special unit assisting the government to take advantage of security vulnerabilities in their software.
And here’s a bit of the interview I did with professor Anderson:
Today Microsoft already distributes certain software, such as Media Player and Service Pack 1 for Windows XP, where you have to agree to give Microsoft all rights to make changes to your computer and update it without your knowing it.
Professor Anderson: “This is part of the Palladium strategy, as is WS2003 and, I believe, even the relatively crude copy controls on the Xbox. Everything is moving in the direction of full TC lockdown. There are many components that need to be in place for it all to work, and the MS people are working hard to get them all there.”
Does it make sense to you now why Microsoft is doing what it is with the Xbox One? You’d need an always on Internet connection to be able to remotely install anything on the Xbox One and read data off of it and the Kinect. My interview with professor Anderson was in 2003. We’ve come a long way since then.
Don’t let the PR representatives from all these companies fool you with their denials; they known jack shit about what’s really going on behind the scenes.
Keep in mind that all of this is part of a much bigger global spying policy being implemented by the elite; the NSA Prism program is just a small part of that larger policy. Microsoft has participated in a number of meetings with the Bilderberg group and the names of its executives, such as chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, have appeared on the secret attendee lists many times. If you don’t know what the Bilderberg group is, you may want to read up on them. That the chief research officer of Microsoft would be joining their meetings and be a member of its steering committee shouldn’t be a surprise. Undoubtedly the policies set forth by the Bilderberg group are brought back by Mundie to Microsoft for implementation in their technology, and that’s how gamers end up with the fucking big brother spy console that is the Xbox One.
You have to ask yourself why Microsoft would want to make the Xbox One unplayable in 180 countries. Who in their right mind would make such a decision? Apparently the additional spying capabilities of the console are worth the drastic reduction in market size, and at the same time Microsoft limits gamers and charges them more money to try and make up for some of the lost revenue. Once you understand that, it all starts to make sense.
I for one won’t be buying the Xbox One spy console if Microsoft doesn’t address the issues I listed above, even though I have to admit I was looking forward to getting one in the future. Right now a Sony Playstation 4 looks like a much better option not only to me, but to the majority of gamers out there.
UPDATE 6/19/2013:
It appears Microsoft decided to listen to the complaints and Don Mattrick has posted the following update on the Xbox website:
- An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
- Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.
This is still not enough though. They need to re-introduce the free Xbox Live version and enable backwards compatibility on the Xbox One with older Xbox and Xbox 360 games. Also the one-time system set-up still requiring the Internet should be removed. It should only be required when people actually want to go online with the Xbox and play games online.
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