Why Microsoft needs a fresh user base for the Scorpio to succeed.

The moment is almost here and as gamers all around the world count the hours, we get near to the final unveiling of Microsoft's new console, up until now called Scorpio (which is a kick ass name so they should keep it). Now the question is... how can Microsoft convince gamers that their new console is the real deal after the Xbox One lost the battle against the PS4?

The answer is easy... They need a fresh user base with a more open mind. 

Take a moment to think about what happened to the Xbox One. Regardless of how dumb the initial pitch was and how their PR disaster hurt the console's launch, it managed to recover and sold relatively well. Some people thought that they were going to have a comeback in the console race, especially after the console had a really strong Christmas 2016, but once January 2017 came it all deflated and has been practically inert ever since. You want to know why? Well prepare yourself.

The main reason the Xbox One lacked the strength to close the gap was because its user base was really narrow in their gaming selections and that limited not only the amount of players, but also the opportunity of having a good variety of games, which most often than not turn into direct sales of the console itself. Sadly the Xbox One carried the effects of the blight of 2008 and that really hurt the potential of an otherwise awesome console.

What was the Blight of 2008?

I like to call "the blight of 2008" to that period in the previous generation of consoles where all the attention in the market shifted to two three genres which were first person shooters, racing and sports games. Every other genre was basically ignored and month after month the leaders in sales were games in the genres previously mentioned. Don't take me wrong, I love those types of games too, but on those days they were like a giant black hole that was swallowing everything. It was so bad that even the once proud Japanese companies started imitating their Western counterparts in a desperate attempt to have better sales. It was the couple of years that had sad incidents like the president of Square Enix giving his infamous "ultimatum" about them catering to the west and the death of many good games because of  poor sales. This went on and on with many franchises been either changed or dumbed down until the current consoles came and brought back the balance we had enjoyed for the previous 20 years and had momentarily lost in the days of the blight.

So what does the Xbox One has to do with the blight?

It makes me sad to say it, but it seems that some people believed that we are still living in the days of the blight and so they didn't supported anything that went away from their comfort zone as if they were still living in 2008. I am not pretending everybody to buy every game, but sales numbers show that the Xbox One user base was basically saying "meh we just want shooters, racers and sports", which is a thing that discouraged most third party companies of releasing good exclusives for the console and made the Xbox landscape to be based almost entirely of multi-platform games with some few exclusives thrown there now and then.

Don't believe me? Check out these articles:

79% of UK Final Fantasy XV sales were on PS4, 21% Xbox One

ReCore News: Sales Gone Bad? Microsoft Finally Made Their Move

Poor sales continue as Quantum Break hits Steam

You see? Those are examples of one multi-platform and two exclusives not performing well on the console in terms of sales. They were all good games so those failures were uncalled for.

Then what Microsoft needs to do to fix this?

What Microsoft needs to do from today on can be divided in two things. First they need to win over people that fled to other consoles because of the lack of the games they wanted and second, they need to re-educate they loyal fans to support more types of games than they did with the Xbox One. They need to immediately state that the console will be powerful, sexy and with lots of different games to support that power. Otherwise, they may have another Xbox One situation on their hands and that would be really devastating for the Xbox division within Microsoft.

Some Things That The Lizard Squad Situation Can Teach Us

If you tried to play any Xbox360/XboxOne/PS3/PS4 games with an online component on Christmas day or a day later, you may have been one of the many gamers worldwide that found themselves feeling like a modern gaming version of the guy from Cast Away. This is most especially true (and somewhat cruel) if you got some of the hottest new games/consoles as Christmas presents. Now that most of the dust has settled, we have to admit that even though it was hell on earth for some people, there are some good things to learn about this whole DDOS attack fiasco. As you read, look for the lessons in red even though you may disagree with some of them.

First, take a moment to check your entire game library...

If you take some time to look at your library of games, there is a high probability that you have a lot of games that you haven't really touched in a while even though you haven't finished them. You know why is that? It is because those abandoned games are mostly offline and part of you doesn't want that as you are accustomed to playing online and making progress in order to stay in par with your peers be it in aspects like your character level, rank, equipment/items or just the social value of the online experience.

The thing about all this is that competition/cooperative online based gaming is not the only type of gaming that exists and you may have forgotten that even if the online service is off, you are not necessarily stranded as you may have some offline options that otherwise you would be missing out because of the way you pressure yourself to an online only experience. It is good to let go every now and then and enjoy all the games you have even when they are not an always connected (and prone to attacks) experience. Of course before you scoff at the screen and say that The Gamertologist is an antisocial prick, know that this does not imply that you should just become an offline gamer, it just suggests that there are more games out there that you can play to make the best of such a situation where the online service fails because of stuff like the recent DDOS attacks. Well... now that the so called "Distributed Denial of Service" attack has been mentioned, there is another important thing to point out.

A DDOS attack can be more serious than you think...

The first time we saw the explanation of what happened to the two big online gaming networks during the attack, many people classified it as a simple thing that shouldn't take a lot of time to fix, when in fact recovery can be pretty difficult once the attack happens. There isn't a magical instantaneous fix to a DDOS attack and this is because this type of attack is relentless. You can either prevent it before it happens at full force or suffer the consequences.

Picture this, imagine that you have your own small server with a service that accepts let's say 5000 people connected at once. Now imagine that a group of hackers start sending 5000 simultaneous connections to your server and fill each and every one of your available spaces so now your server thinks it is full and doesn't let anybody else in. You then get aware of the situation and you summon your security crew in order to fight back to dismiss those fake connections, but each time your people manage to clear some of them, more keep coming.

This is the equivalent of a handful of knights fighting an endless horde of orcs on a bridge. Unless you somehow close that bridge they will keep coming, but you won't be able to do that unless you can slay a great number of them and win some much needed time in order to been able to run and set the barricades. So once it happens you can only destroy the bridge (shut off the service) and re-build it (bring the service back again) once the battle is over.

But those orcs aren't even supposed to be able to get near you...


O.k we now agreed that the attacks were not as simple as we thought, but what about the companies themselves? Why is their security not strong enough to prevent or at least minimize the impact of these kind of attacks? The Christmas day incident was completely unnecessary in so many ways that it isn't even funny. This is even more disturbing if we consider that Lizard Squad gave a warning almost a month before Christmas day, so they were either too skeptic or just too lazy. All This means that companies are low-balling their online services, attempting to win a million while spending a cent.

If they are acting like this, then we must pressure them to put some more effort into their network security systems, just so that we don't have to live through those types of annoyances on a service that isn't free. Now on the broader side of things,what's really worrying about the situation is that these types of incidents shows a pretty weak side of the so called digital gaming era and this can mean only one thing...

"Online Digital only" total dominance has been set back for a while because of the attacks.

The lizards have managed to make a really nasty dent the iron clad trust that consumers used to have on these services and that means that the online digital only gaming environment is not be the safe happy place we thought it was. It has become a very nice and convenient service yes, but it has shown that if we ever fully dependent on it there is such a high risk that you may wake up one morning and find out that you have lost all of your games because X group of hackers woke up on the wrong side of their beds.

What Lizard Squad did can never be justified, but we can still at least take the few things that we could learn from the situation and give them some thought. It not only makes you a smarter consumer, but also makes you a wiser gamer and a more conscious tech user that wont be swayed by fads or smoke and mirrors. In any way, we as consumers have to be alert, not only in order to be ready for these kinds of happenings, but also to know the underlying causes and fight against them.