If the people on Microsoft’s Xbox team thought of their audience as human beings, they would have acknowledged some of the elephants in the room—like the Xbox One’s extraordinarily confusing used-games scheme or the privacy concerns regarding the always-on Kinect camera, which have only become more urgent as the nation realizes how thoroughly we are being surveilled. If they wanted to speak to people, Microsoft’s executives would not have ticked every box on their Buzzword Bingo card twice over. They know this talk of an “entertainment revolution” is bullshit, and we know it’s bullshit. Yet still they make us sit through this inane emperor’s-new-clothes charade, as they talk at length to nobody in particular.
This is how these events are done in the game industry, usually. It’s not like Microsoft is the only console maker that condescends to its players. Sony and Nintendo have done it on a regular basis, too. Sony did it just a few months ago, in fact. But last night, Sony changed the playbook. Its executives went ahead and talked about used games, assuring players that buying, trading, and lending software on the PS4 would be as simple as ever. They showcased a wide variety of games, refusing to pigeonhole their concept of the modern-day player (or the modern-day developer, for that matter). They promised not to make your console “phone home” to a nanny server. And they priced their new machine $100 lower than Microsoft’s.
Yet the substance of Sony’s riposte to Microsoft is almost less important than the fact that they made all these announcements with humor and swagger. It did not feel like Sony was talking past us—this was not a grim parade of humorless suits who were deigning to give us their attention. They made jokes and poked fun. The audience responded. What a difference it makes when you acknowledge the existence of the human beings in the room. Sony’s team spoke to us, and not because a technical glitch forced them into it. I bet Microsoft’s people now wish they had spoken to us when they had the chance.
