Two Things That Kind of Piss Me Off About the Xbox 360 "Elite"

…Or more specifically, about the announcement of the "Elite".



First: Let's talk about the high margin of return. External 120GB drives routinely sell for US$65-$90. Microsoft's selling its new add-on for around $180. There's profit, and there's gouging, and once an application (something IPTV-related, maybe?) debuts that requires much more than the paltry 13GB of usable capacity on the current-gen Xbox 360, Microsoft will have officially embarked into the realm of the latter.



Thing No. 2 that burns me:

"I think at the moment we have the widest available connections on the system. If you want to get great HD, I think we've got a good solution for that ... At the moment, everything you might have seen is just looking at our experimentation back in Redmond, not really a product that we're thinking about announcing."

That was said by Chris Satchell at Microsoft's game developer group, all the way back in January. Now, I understand that Microsoft didn't want to hurt sales of the "regular" Xbox 360 models between then and the present. But there comes a point when deliberate obfuscation hurts consumers. And it's pretty clear console companies don't understand this.



Let me clarify it for them. The point where you stop helping your cause and begin actively hurting consumers occurs when:

A) If properly informed, some consumers would prefer to wait for your more advanced future product, as opposed to buying your current-generation model.



B) There is overwhelming and detailed information on said future product from semi-legitimate sources (see: rumors.)



C) There is no competitive reason to deny rumors about future product. (This is to say,

confirming longtime, persistent rumors adds nothing to competitors' ability react to your future product. If they're any good to begin with, they're already listening to the rumors and preparing accordingly.)



D) Denying consumers information about the future product -- in this case, by categorically contradicting these rumors -- causes consumers to make an uninformed buying decision.

In other words, once the rumor mill reached fever pitch about the Xbox 360 Elite, Microsoft should have stepped up and gone ahead and announced it. Instead, some consumers were duped. This could include people like my girlfriend, for instance, who may conceivably have waited for the Elite before buying her 360 Premium.



Microsoft, of course, isn't alone here in treating consumers like they're the enemy. Sony, in the course of a few short months, has already established a solid track record of not only ignoring consumer needs, but the needs of developers, retailers, stockholders, and the press. Did I leave anyone out?



These companies need to behave a bit more like the big hardware vendors in the PC space. Intel and AMD, for instance, publish roadmaps of where they're headed well in advance of future models. They react quickly to feedback, and don't ram unneeded features down consumers' throats.



They understand that customers, the retail channel, and the entire damn ecosystem involves knowing what's coming out and when -- not thinking so short-term and trying to squeeze out a few months' more of sales of an old model through duplicity before they roll out a replacement. They're not as arrogant as the console companies, are more willing to work with partners, and most importantly customers, to deliver products that meet current and future needs.



Customers deserve an informed choice, not obfuscation.



Funny, I wrote nearly 500 words on this, and I'm not nearly as irate about the PR game around the Elite as I am about Microsoft's shitty support around the brief Xbox Live outage this weekend. More on that later, perhaps.