8 Ways Microsoft Saved The Xbox One With Savvy Marketing

Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

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The Xbox One – at this point, it really shouldn't be. Buried in a pauper’s grave alongside the Atari Jaguar and the criminally underrated Dreamcast.

And yet, Microsoft’s machine saw it out-perform the opposition for the second-half of 2016, with the amount of hours gamers spent on Xbox One has grown 21% year-on year. Let’s face it, even selling 25 million consoles is a sound business (although the Xbox 360 managed 80 million over its lifetime).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not the perfect machine. Those initial arguments about 1080p/60fps that spawned on every internet comment thread did a poop-ton of damage. Compared to the PlayStation 4, there are few exclusive games beyond Gears, Halo and Forza.

Even when a game’s development is spiralling out of control and needs closing down (see: Scalebound), the way Xbox handled it was seen by some, as devious and underhand.

Partly, because gaming always needs a villain, as EA, Ubisoft, Konami and now Microsoft – with its monopolistic UWP platform – have discovered, but all told, the Xbox One has seen a dramatic turnaround over the last three-ish years. And that was all down to some seriously savvy marketing miracles pulled off by Microsoft.

Miracles like…

8. Ditching Don Mattrick

Marketing objective: Creating a brand ambassador.

Don Mattrick was the poster-boy for everything wrong with the games industry. A smug, stuck-up suit with shark eyes only on the bottom line.

This was a guy who had never picked up a controller in his life, much less played games on a regular basis – and Microsoft expected gamers to warm to him.

Want a console that isn’t always online? Want to play pre-owned games on your console? Mattrick had the perfect response: "We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360."

Which, as you’d expect, seriously endeared him to the gaming community…

He even attempted what we humans call empathy, saying, "Hey, I can empathize, if I was on a nuclear sub, I'd be disappointed."

Mattrick had to go. This was Microsoft’s first marketing coup: Installing a genuine brand ambassador; a figurehead who could actually relate to gamers.

Enter Phil Spencer. #InPhilWeTrust, etc. Because at least Spencer knew what a video game was, and who played them.

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Word-wrangler and video gamer on the rocks. Once completed the original Resident Evil in 1 hour 4 minutes. Prefers Irish coffee over any other kind. Former movie trailer writer, now rehabilitated. Wrote the viral videos for the movie Watchmen. Likes sarcasm, cynicism, smoking and you.