Microsoft managed to alienate a lot of fans earlier this decade, following their emphasis on Kinect in the back half of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle, their used games policy on the Xbox One at launch, the Xbox One being an underpowered machine that was more expensive than its more capable competition, and them lacking much in the way of meaningful content.
However, since then, they have made strides in mending bridges with fans- whether it be introducing the most powerful console with the Xbox One X, or expanding the reach of their first party to address their content problem, or having multiple user friendly policies and services, such as Game Pass, the company has come a long way in appealing fans.
And these are not lessons that they are going to forget any time soon- at least, not if Xbox GM of Games Marketing Aaron Greenberg is to be believed. Speaking to GameReactor at Gamescom, Greenberg said that the company knows it has to earn its fans, and that it has to be humble, and keep its head down.
“Yeah, I think the biggest thing for us is just to listen and learn and in every market we do that,” he said. “I think the fact that we have to earn our fans we know, country by country, is really important, but for us I think that really started to shift last year when we launched the Xbox One X – here in Germany we’ve seen our market share grow, we had actually inventory shortages through holiday of X throughout Europe.”
“So that’s the start, but we’re taking a humble approach,” he continued. “We know we have to earn those fans. We have to earn them with games, we have to earn them with hardware, we have to earn them with services. At E3 we announced basically the doubling of our creator studios, adding five new first-party teams, and it’s great to be able to add a whole new group of great creators.”
It’s good to hear that Microsoft has learned these lessons, and that they don’t intend to forget them- especially with a lot of what Sony is doing these days increasingly coming off as abrasive towards fans, it is good to have a company that can be meaningful competition to them and keep them in check.