04 June 2011

Nothing starts E3 like a 'self-pwn' - Microsoft trips on shoelaces with announcement

There are times when companies get so big that one division fails to talk to the other before releasing things to the wild.  Major Nelson's recent mention of a new mobile streaming option supposedly allows you to watch the Xbox E3 conference on your smartphone.  To make it easy, a 3-dimensional barcode was posted (which you scan with your phone) to download the appropriate ICal file.  Easy enough, right?  Except for one comment posted by Jose Silva: 'Sigh... Windows Phone 7 does not support .ICS files... Sad!' 

Oh dear! ...and it gets worse.  It seems that some Android phones can't read the ICal file either.  So what CAN read it?  (have you guessed?)  That's right!  iPhone!  According to this wiki, ICal is Apple's standard transport for calendar events.  The thing is, no one apart from an iPhone user would think to post an iCal file although I can accept that many Apple customers think that there is no world outside of 'i-whatever.'  So we can now assume three things: 1. Major Nelson, the illustrious voice of Xbox, is an iPhone user.  2. Major Nelson doesn't check with his own company to see if their own phones can actually read what he's posted.  3. Apple just got a free bit of press thanks to egg on Microsoft's face.

I'd call that a 'self-pwn'....wouldn't you? ;)

2 comments:

  1. It's a silly mistake to make for one thing - but what's worse is that the entire conference was a bit of a self-pwn. Microsoft showed without a doubt that they don't understand the gaming industry of today. In the world of today you can't survive purely on fancy gimmicks like Kinect - a fact that Microsoft seems completely oblivious of. With the recent news of Microsoft's loss of market shares, they are looking more and more like a company that needs to rethink its business strategies in much the same way EA did a few years back.

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  2. I watched some of the highlights from this conference and it was a complete disaster. Beyond 'not understanding' - it seems to me like there has been a complete lack of leadership within Xbox division for quite a while. Whether its because resources have been stripped to focus on mobile developments, I don't know - but it's evident that Xbox is being treated like a cash cow these days. Not a good sign.

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