5 Easy Ways Microsoft Could Have Avoided Pissing Everyone Off

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I think Microsoft needs to hire some smart PR people. Earlier this week, there was a significant backlash caused by Microsoft's decision to increase the price of an Xbox Live subscription. This could have easily been avoided if Microsoft had made a simultaneous announcement about new features or improvements to its XboxI think Microsoft needs to hire some smart PR people. Earlier this week, there was a significant backlash caused by Microsoft's decision to increase the price of an Xbox Live subscription. This could have easily been avoided if Microsoft had made a simultaneous announcement about new features or improvements to its Xbox Live service. Instead, users must now pay more, with the reasoning being "because we said so".

In order to justify the increased cost, MS didn't need to make any drastic or significant changes to its service. They could have made any of the following improvements to make Live users feel good about spending an extra 10$ per year.

Increase in friend count

This isn't an issue for me, but I've heard on various podcasts that the friend limit (currently at 100) is restricting. Some people (mostly internet-famous people) have to routinely deny friend requests simply because they don't have enough space. Although I'm sure there is a valid technical reason for this limitation, it shouldn't be a problem that they can't find a workaround for. Especially if they're pulling an extra 10$ per user per year.

Bring Back 1 vs. 100 (or a similar community based show)

Sadly, this show was canceled back in 2009 due to monetary issues. Although one of the most expensive aspects of a show like this is securing a good host, I think users would be happy if a no-name person were hosting as long as they were entertaining. Maybe they could even run a contest to find the next host?

Improved chat

The audio quality of XBL chat isn't unbearable and works well enough most of the time. That said, the service could definitely use improvement. People I'm playing with still sound like they're using a fast food headset to chat. This is especially apparent if you use fancy headphones instead of a standard XBL headset.

Reduced/less obtrusive ads

I still can't comprehend how ad space has proliferated while live fees seem to go up. PSN is a free (though not so great) service, and you'll rarely see as many non-gaming ads as XBL. If you're going to increase the price of live, please reduce amount of obnoxious ads a gold member must look at while browsing the dashboard. At least gaming ads (especially for XBL games) make sense. Seeing Old Spice or McDonalds pasted across your dashboard is just ridiculous.

Switch to real currency

Since I'm not Microsoft's business analysist, I don't know how much money they make off of the ridiculous points system they've implemented on XBL. What I can say is that I've been stuck at a 200 point surplus for the past few weeks since everything I buy is more than 400 points. Switching to real currency may not increase revenue for Microsoft; it would however, make a lot of XBL users very happy. Maybe happy enough to forget about a price hike in the service.

Regardless, Microsoft should have announced a new feature or improvement in Live when news of the price hike was released. I would feel comfortable paying more money per year if I were given some justification by Microsoft. What about you? Are there any features that would make you feel good about paying an additional 10$ annually?

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Alex Martin

September 03, 2010 19:00

They are improving the audio quality. And is that really what the dashboard looks like in America? It's nowhere near as cluttered as that in the UK.

I agree with you about 1 vs. 100 -- I hope they do something with the Primetime thing. That was far more interesting an idea than Twitter or Facebook apps.

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Bryan Harper

September 03, 2010 19:50

While the friend count thing's never been a problem for me (I'm a huge dickwad and my GS is under 9000) I agree there. Far as 1v100 goes, I think "cancelling" it was the wrong move. If you keep it special, as in an event once or twice a year, the demand to play will increase tremendously and they won't just be bleeding off MS Points.

Fidelity will always be an issue with voicechat over any network, but ask anyone with experience: with the sheer numbers of people utilizing the VC, even increasing the bitrate on transferral a tiny bit (multiplied by X users X times a minute) would be terribly expensive and potentially lag-generating. I'm not sure there's much to be done there; VoIP (Teamspeak, Skype, Ventrilo) all sound fantastic because that's what it's dedicated to.

I always seem to have that odd 180 or so point "hanging chad" myself. I always found the MS Point system to be needlessly complex. And as far as the invasive ads go, I must not have been on Xbox Live enough because that's HIGHLY annoying and INCREDIBLY stupid. I guess it can help offset the cost to run the network (As I still don't think $5/month's super profitable with everything that's going on for your typical account owner, something absolutely nobody's giving any thought to when complaining about the price hike) but I can see why people would be frustrated at that; I would be.

Good suggestions! Hopefully someone's reading.

David McThistlepants

September 04, 2010 00:49

The one positive thing I've seen the MS point system used for is sales. I got a 2000MSP card for $15, which is essentially "Get $20 for $15," and was awesome. Its been ages since I've seen that, but I get one every time I do. But yeah, there are better ways they could have done this.

Personally, I like what others have said and strip the non-gamer aspects out of gold and keep, (or reduce!) the price, and have a "Diamond" membership with all the bells and whistles added. Only problem with that is Netflix' inclusion rate on 360's would plummet. Sooo...yeah.

September 04, 2010 06:26

I think any cheaper version of the Gold to only include gaming or what not would have to include gratuitously MORE advertising to make up for lost revenue.

Surely you didn't think Microsoft was PAYING ESPN to be included on the dashboard, didja? How far do you think $5/month stretches per subscriber these days, exactly?

Just a thought, may be wrong. Don't think I am, though.