Why The Recent Moves By Microsoft Are Positive But Still Not Enough For Me To Purchase An Xbox One S or Scorpio Yet

It is no secret that Microsoft and the XBox One got off to a rocky start with consumers in the press. The history is abundant as such there’s no need to rehash at this point but suffice it to say that although well behind their chief rival Sony and the Playstation 4 in terms of sales, The Xbox One and the new Xbox One S have been moving in the right direction. With the 2017 release of Scorpio, Microsoft has managed to keep interest in their current systems as well as raise the level of interesting curiosity in their new hardware without appearing to harm their current system sales. That being said they still have a lot of work to go in my opinion for consumers such as myself who haven’t bought into the system.

I first played the original Xbox on a press loaner and then purchased a system for myself several months after release. The system was so buggy it would not even open the CD tray out of the box so I returned it the same day that I purchased it and use my credit or another purchase. When the Xbox 360 was announced I waited a bit for the Red Ring of Death issues to be addressed and purchased the unit approximately one year after launch. This unit promptly Red Ringed on the days after purchase and into went back of the funds eventually going toward a Wii system. The other unit we purchased at the same time for my father-in-law worked fine for a few months before it to had issues and had to go back.

As such we waited until the black system came out as my wife really wanted to play Dance Central and we purchased a unit that had no issues.
The biggest problem was that once the novelty of the Kinect wore off, there really weren’t that many games that interested me that were exclusives to the system.
I play my games first and foremost on PC and use our Playstation 4 and Wii U for exclusive titles like cannot play on any other platform.

When the Xbox One was announced my comment to a Microsoft rep that asked about my interest in the system was that I am going to need to see exclusives beyond Halo and Gears of War that interest me to make me want to purchase a system. To date, Microsoft has failed to do this sufficiently to my taste in order to just five purchasing system. I explained it is this… I don’t need Killer Instinct as I have Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter V and only have casual interest in fighting games. Racing games really don’t do that much for me so again were down to Halo and Gears of War. And before you think that I am not aware of all these other titles that are out there I am but remember many of them are also available on PC. Many of the pending Xbox One exclusives are also said to be coming to the PC, and as such I still do not have the motivation to buy the system. For me I can play the games much better on my PC than I can on any console, crappy port of Quantum Break excluded. By contrast Sony and Nintendo have given me several exclusives that I could not play elsewhere that have held my interest such as Until Dawn, Bloodborne, Uncharted 4: A Thieves End, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Super Smash Bros, and so on.

I will admit that Gears of War 4 looks good but I became bored of the first two games in the series and again I am back to the point of needing a couple of true exclusives that are specific only to the console that interest me.

I understand that my viewpoint is not shared by everyone however it has nothing to do with Microsoft making a bad system is more to do with my PC and Playstation 4 offering me things of greater interest to me and asked such that is where I made my investment in hardware.
We have staff members that have an Xbox One and use it for various gaming reviews and while they like it just fine many of them are still drawn more toward the PC and PS4 for the majority of their gaming.

I will continue to monitor one Microsoft does not only as it is what we do but see if they will expand upon the growing momentum with the new range of exclusives that are console only that with their renewed interest in gaming on PC and possible move to the cross-platform play, it is likely that my PC will continue to be the system of choice for any Microsoft exclusive that catches my eye.