It may come as a surprise to see the co-founder of the iconic console writing a blog post called “Stupid, Stupid Xbox!!”
However that is exactly what Nat Brown, who worked on the original Xbox and even came up with the name, has done.
His post starts off positively enough as he says: “I was a founder of the original xBox project at Microsoft and gave it its name.
“…I am actually still thrilled to see how far it has come, how many installed units it has, how it is crushing its original console competitors, how the brand has grown and endured, and especially how great the games have become.”
But then the praise stops and he criticizes Microsoft for:
- coasting on past momentum.
- failing to innovate and
- failing to capitalize on innovations like Kinect.
He says: “[T]he past 5 years, and the last year in particular, have been simply painful to watch.
“My gripe is that, as usual, Microsoft has jumped its own shark and is out stomping through the weeds planning and talking about far-flung future strategies in interactive television and original programming partnerships with big dying media companies when their core product, their home town is on fire, their soldiers, their developers, are tired and deserting, and their supply-lines are broken.
“xBox’s secondary critical problem is that the device OS and almost the entire user experience outside the first two levels of the dashboard are creaky, slow, and full-of-shit.”
Brown also criticizes the time it takes for games to load and the large numbers of warning messages that players have to contend with.
He writes: “You don’t turn on your xBox to play a game quickly — it takes multiple minutes to load, flow through its splash screens, and then get you playing.
“It doesn’t surprise me that most people spend more time watching videos or listening to music on xBox, because it takes too long to screw around with discs and wait for games to load.”
Accusing Microsoft of “living in a naive dream-world” he concludes:
“[E]ven though it has been punted around poorly for 5 years. xBox just needs somebody with a brain and focus to get the product in order tactically before romping forward to continue the long-term strategic promise of an xBox in every living room, connected to every screen.”
Harsh words indeed.
Read the full blog post: Stupid, Stupid XBox!!