"I think we've found a great balance," says Xbox exec Xbox One's divisive online and pre-owned strategies were designed to balance the needs of consumers, publishers, retailers and Microsoft itself, a senior Xbox executive has said. Xbox chief marketing and strategy officer Yusuf Mehdi told Ars Technicahe believes the company has "found a great balance across all of those dimensions". "But there are tradeoffs," he acknowledged. "We do want to support everyone in that system, beginning with the consumer. But we want publishers to get paid for the great IP they work on. We want retailers to be able to drive and sell our products and make a profit. So we are trying to balance across all those." The backlash to Xbox One's pre-owned strategy, which severely limits the way games can be distributed following the original buyer's initial install to their hard drive, and the fact that the console will require an internet connection for mandatory online licensing checks to be carried out at least once every 24 hours, was "as expected", Mehdi said. "We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better," he said. "As you go into a digital world, what's happening is publishers are choosing to have different business models, and consumers are saying 'Hey, if I can't resell the title, provide me a different way to get value to get into your game.' And we think the market will be efficient in finding good models that work for consumers." Further commenting on criticism of its new Xbox One policies, Mehdi said: "I think it's fair to say there's a segment of consumers at this show in particular who really pay attention, who are very passionate about all aspects of gaming, and that we listen to closely. In a broader set of community, people don't pay attention to a lot of the details. We've seen it in the research, we've seen it in a lot of the data points. "Amazon is saying [Xbox One] is one of their best-selling consumer products. We're seeing the same thing from other retailers. It's very clear there are a wide variety of other consumers that love to game that are excited about what we have to offer with Xbox One." On Monday, Microsoft announced a November launch window for its new console and an Xbox One price of £425 / €499 / $499. Source: Computerandvideogames
