What's wrong with the name 'XBox One'? Makes as much sense as 'xbox' or 'xbox 360.' Considerably more sense than Atari or Wii... And a focus on TV makes a good deal of business sense as more and more people are dropping cable in favor of streaming shows and movies. Something is going to replace that, for the most part people don't drop a service without replacing it. As far as where the games are...the XBox had 17 games on Nov. 14th (public release date). When it was retired it had 967 games. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games). It has always been Microsoft's strategy to encourage outside development of games.
The announced pricing is indeed high compared to previous releases. I don't worry that it won't come down though. The XBox and 360 did. Furthermore, since the release isn't until November I wouldn't worry about it until we have reality. There's a million reasons to announce a price early knowing you might change it.
DRM and region locking are your strongest points yet, and yet I'm inclined not to worry about DRM until the product is out and irate would-be-sellers have been emailing microsoft for a few weeks. As for region locking being a reason not to buy it at all that doesn't hold up: if you're in the US, Europe, or any of the 21 countries they've enabled you've got no reason not to buy it because of region locking. Do you seriously take your XBOX with you abroad!?
It's a bold move calling the Windows 8 experiment (yes; that's what it is) a failure given the number of copy cat interfaces we've seen. (iOS7 anyone?). Their implementation had kinks to work out, and yet we're already seeing other people improving on it. If someone as big as Microsoft can't afford to experiment with UIs we're in trouble. Forward motion! App development depends on platform adoption, and it doesn't look like W8 tablets have much adoption yet. No sense wasting development hours on something no one will pay for or through. I really don't understand your problem with this: "... the Apps sold in the Windows Store are fullscreen apps ..." Tablets are designed for fullscreen. If they weren't fullscreen would you complain the opposite? Right now all I'm hearing is that you don't like windows changing...not a coherent argument.
In your last paragraph you finally get to what I think is the main point: Windows is your 'home' operating system. And it's changing. And you don't like those changes. You liked Windows development on XP through W7. (Although I'm willing to bet you ignored Vista: changes are hard to get right, and from what I can observe Microsoft usually just goes for it and then adapts in the next version). Experiments aren't always successful, but let's give Microsoft some credit for doing them.
Thank you for sharing your frustrations, but let's be a bit more positive here: we're making leaps and bounds forward, and experiments are the quanta of those leaps and bounds.
It'll pass in time I'm sure, but everytime I hear 'Xbox One' i think 'Xbox 1'. Some people are going to think they get some pretty good deals on ebay..
I don't know why they just couldnt have gone with 'Xbox'. Not like there is one coming out every year (let alone every decade) , like the iPad people will just say 'the new xbox'.
"Xbox One" just seems like some marketing guys idea of a good thing to patronise people and make them think it's 'the only one', 'the single device to do it all' etc.
Exactly -- this is why it was baffling that they spent half the intro event showing features that only work with a separate cable box hooked up to the Xbox, so that you control your cable box via Kinect voice commands. I can completely understand why someone who didn't watch the intro would be reluctant to believe it was mostly about cable television, but it really was.
You make some interesting points, but I don't think it really addresses the heart of the issue.
In terms of marketing, the Xbox One isn't as pleasing to many people as one would come to expect (but then again, Wii U isn't doing much better). I think the naming should have been given a little more consideration, but I don't think that's really anything more than a sub-issue with the platform.
The pricing, however, is. As a marketing team, what needed to be done was addressing the newer generation of consoles and "outdoing" the other competing consoles. The ps4, to be frank, is more superior. I think Microsoft did a splendid job on design and pricing given the time they had to compete with the ps4, so they'll be given credit here. But certainly no real "wins". All of these are foothold attempts, that didn't catch on as much as they expected.
THEN the real issues start. DRM is always considered poorly received. Region locking as well, especially given the prices that are adjusted for European countries. I think the move they made wasn't rash, but it did affect a minority. I'd like to highlight this wasn't the real issue.
Your real issue is
"It has always been Microsoft's strategy to encourage outside development of games."
This is the problem. They reason Xbox 360 has SO MANY fantastic games is the Xbox indie development groups. This has helped Google's Android, this has helped iOS. Creativity is what really fosters a community of gamers. But now that indie developers must get publishers for Xbox One, the market will not be as strong.
All in all, I could nitpick over calling windows 8 an "experiment" or the use of apps in the store, or any of that, but I don't think that's the key issue.
The key issue is that Microsoft is getting competition, and we just witnessed them losing quite a significant chunk of the gaming market. The businesses went from 5+ years of XP, and only about 2 years of Vista, 7, 8, and now 8.1 .
I don't think Microsoft should be punished for moving forward, but instead they should be punished for moving in the direction that people haven't liked.
The announced pricing is indeed high compared to previous releases. I don't worry that it won't come down though. The XBox and 360 did. Furthermore, since the release isn't until November I wouldn't worry about it until we have reality. There's a million reasons to announce a price early knowing you might change it.
DRM and region locking are your strongest points yet, and yet I'm inclined not to worry about DRM until the product is out and irate would-be-sellers have been emailing microsoft for a few weeks. As for region locking being a reason not to buy it at all that doesn't hold up: if you're in the US, Europe, or any of the 21 countries they've enabled you've got no reason not to buy it because of region locking. Do you seriously take your XBOX with you abroad!?
It's a bold move calling the Windows 8 experiment (yes; that's what it is) a failure given the number of copy cat interfaces we've seen. (iOS7 anyone?). Their implementation had kinks to work out, and yet we're already seeing other people improving on it. If someone as big as Microsoft can't afford to experiment with UIs we're in trouble. Forward motion! App development depends on platform adoption, and it doesn't look like W8 tablets have much adoption yet. No sense wasting development hours on something no one will pay for or through. I really don't understand your problem with this: "... the Apps sold in the Windows Store are fullscreen apps ..." Tablets are designed for fullscreen. If they weren't fullscreen would you complain the opposite? Right now all I'm hearing is that you don't like windows changing...not a coherent argument.
In your last paragraph you finally get to what I think is the main point: Windows is your 'home' operating system. And it's changing. And you don't like those changes. You liked Windows development on XP through W7. (Although I'm willing to bet you ignored Vista: changes are hard to get right, and from what I can observe Microsoft usually just goes for it and then adapts in the next version). Experiments aren't always successful, but let's give Microsoft some credit for doing them.
Thank you for sharing your frustrations, but let's be a bit more positive here: we're making leaps and bounds forward, and experiments are the quanta of those leaps and bounds.