If you’ve been reading the internet, talking to other gamers or just paying attention to anything gaming in general you’ll notice that there is sort of a war of words going on where diehard Xbox fans have been pushed into a corner, where the phrase “wait for E3” seems to be the only defense against some of the accusations against the Xbox One. For good reason, too, as the Xbox One reveal was disappointing to just about everyone, which has caused Microsoft to go pretty much silent in the past few weeks, only every once in a while trying to put a few fires out and essentially saying “wait for E3.”
Well, E3 is next week now, officially kicking off on June 11th with Microsoft scheduled to put on a bit of a show on June 10th. Microsoft’s pre-E3 briefing has to not only show off games, but it has to provide clarity and do a lot of damage control that quite simply no one has been doing in the past few weeks. The rumors about the online DRM, how used games will be handled and a few other key topics have only been addressed within the past few days, while the internet has been stewing over them and formulating their own opinions and theories about them.
Microsoft’s gamble with showing off the Xbox One as a full home entertainment system was not a bad idea, really, the bad idea was not showcasing as many games as they could fit in and to provide some clarity on key issues that had been circulating by way of the rumor mill for months beforehand. The presentation itself didn’t give a lot of information and most of the post-presentation rush of information came from local Microsoft reps, with not all of the information being entirely accurate.
Microsoft has had a few weeks to sit and process the world’s reaction to their upcoming console and one would have to think that they understand the need to quickly turn the ship around and start getting some positive press or this is going to quickly become a disaster for them. An expensive disaster. This gives them the unique ability to utilize their E3 showing to not only talk about the games that they didn’t show, but they have to address some of the other issues with the console and they have to address the outrage head on. Ignoring the poor reaction from gamers and media will only cause for more bad press and for them to look like they aren’t paying attention.
In the wake of Microsoft’s announcement we’ve seen Sony capitalize on it, discussing how the PlayStation 4 is for gamers and how much they care about the consumer. It might even have a lot of the features that the Xbox One is getting torn apart over, but it doesn’t matter right now because of the way that they are handling their console’s public image right now. Microsoft need to immediately get ahead of the story and try to turn a negative into a positive.
At E3 Microsoft has a chance to turn this thing around and get into the driver seat, because if they don’t then they might have completely fumbled the Xbox One’s launch with no chance of salvaging it. That is, if the Xbox One is worth saving.