For reasons you’ve no doubt already read about on our front page, I’ve been taking some time to focus on building paige aiden Media into a full-fledged, tax paying, business these last few weeks. I won’t go into much detail on that process here, -you’ll soon be able to read that elsewhere soon enough, my master plan called for a slight update to the office I built a year ago to run enConnected from. Most of the process probably won’t be of interest to most of you here, but it’s during this process that I realized something: Microsoft’s pure entertainment consumer story still stinks like a cab drivers armpit.
Take my situation for example. paige aiden’s newly revamped office is mere steps away from my living room right now. This will change effective the soon as I’ll be renting a small office in a neighborhood building to act as a new headquarters. In this headquarters I’d like to add some way to get my fill of entertainment. Being able to listen to music while I work would be great, so too would video playback. Since I’m already so in tune with Microsoft’s services, I’d like to not fork over money to anyone else for all of this.
If you think this sounds like a job for the Xbox 360 you’d be right except, well –it isn’t. You see, I’ve already got one Xbox in my living room, and as it turns, that’s a problem. Because all of my content is attached to my Xbox LIVE account, if I’d like to watch that video I purchased at home, I’d need to connect my second Xbox at the office to that same account. Problem is, I’d have to load my profile on a flash drive and literally carry it with me to avoid running the restore process from each Xbox at least once a day. No, dice.
There’s always the possibility of buying another Xbox and using a separate LIVE ID for the new office. Unfortunately, Microsoft just silently axed Xbox LIVE Gold Subscription discounts for families, so that would cost me the normal $54 a year or $10 a month. Sadly that would mean paying full price. That’s not exactly a winning scenario either.
Lastly, there’s the price of the Xbox itself. In an age of smartphones that can stream to television sets and streaming devices the size of hockey pucks that cost $69, does it really make sense for users to actually purchase multiple Xboxes for a situation like mine for a minimum of $199? Absolutely not.
Simply put, Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE advances in pure audio and video entertainment have the service all dressed up with really nowhere to go. Not everyone wants or needs to play video games –I certainly don’t need to. What I want is a low-cost hardware solution for just watching Netflix and enjoying the shows I’ve already paid for –preferably without the hassle of moving my account between Xboxes. The fact that Microsoft hasn’t made it there yet, kind of worries me. It’s not like this is an unproven test ground. Microsoft has moved millions of units these two years simply by connecting people to entertainment services. Hell, their own metrics show that half of all Xbox LIVE activity is now happening in an entertainment application.
In the end, I’m left to look elsewhere. No, I’m not signing up to pay for a two-year service contract for Xbox LIVE in exchange for a $99 Xbox 360 S. No, I’m not paying again for a service I already have at home. No, I’m not going to maintain two separate media libraries. And no, I’m not about to carry around my profile on a flash drive on my keychain like this is 1864 instead of 2013.
How can we be this close, but yet this far? How can this still be an issue?
Come on Microsft. You’ve got Apple waiting in the wings, itching to take a stab at televisions. Roku is making some of the best set-top boxes ever seen. Yet, Don Mattrick is busy declaring you have no intentions of creating a media only device?
Contrary to popular belief, wars aren’t won by those who show up. They’re won by the ones who’ve used strategy and cunning to ensure losing was never even a real possibility.
Many of you have messaged in to let me know that “roaming profiles” which was introduced recently, gets around the restoration requirement for your Xbox LIVE accounts on every Xbox. This should clear the way for one account being used on multiple consoles without any of the complaints I’ve listed here other than the base cost of an Xbox 360. Thanks to Matt Akers and Matt Faraca for calling me on this, you can bet I’ll be picking up an Xbox 360 tomorrow to try this, and I’ll update you all on my progress after.