The fact customer service is not up there is a crime.
This is rather fun. I’ll say this, depend which one they can’t do it, at least they will admit “defeat” if they are like “Sorry, we can’t do that.” Better than take it than avoid it.
Interesting read, and thanks for using Xbox and not XBOX throughout as it makes it so much more readable!
The feedback system is surprisingly neat. I’m most interested in that there’s a platform category for the ASUS ROG Ally. Xbox is treating it more first party than expected. It’s what makes the top 10 more disappointing than expected. There could be more detailed specific feedback about real issues (and there are if you scroll the pages), but what we get is the same stuff people shout on Twitter. On a meta level I’m not really sure exclusives are “feedback”. Whether Xbox does or doesn’t have exclusives doesn’t directly impact the user experience. The idea is that they could indirectly worsen the experience by degrading third party support or some hypothetical future where Xbox completely dies, but there’s no actual suggestion of that and instead these past few years the Xbox ecosystem has gained more third party support. It’s just noise to me at this point. I’ll always say exclusives haven’t helped the market grow and should be left behind, but even for those cling to them Xbox is just too big now. Any exclusives strategy would be wildly inconsistent. People say “Single player games” as if the gamers would accept Elder Scrolls VI exclusive or Xbox’s iconic IP aren’t largely multiplayer.
Dead horse though. It’s not like all games aren’t exclusive at all now. The same can kinda be said with the rest though. Backwards compatibility is something we know they might have something cooking for, but it’s also bogged down by licensing issues. Family plan was originally proposed by Xbox but fell through for “some” financial reason after a limited testing phase. It doesn’t matter what, but we already know Xbox wants it but couldn’t make it work. It gets better as you go down the list and even better through the pages. There starts to be actual feedback and requests. Not wishes or what feels like individuals deciding what’s best for the business. I’m personally hoping the HDR request and playtime hours (pure hours) measurement option come to pass. Those are actual realistic improvements to my user experience on Xbox that would benefit me.
Eh, maybe? That forum is the same one Microsoft uses for ALL of their products. There is still a page for Skype with open requests. You can still go to the Skype page. Skype is dead. Xbox current has 3000 feedback posts, but the highest is Microsoft Teams with 22,000. I’m not a big teams bro, but I don’t think Microsoft has responded to everything top there. Those feedback forums have existed longer than Xbox, and I’m pretty sure they’re famously hated for not responding to all of them.
Xbox has already kinda explained with the insiders subreddit and weekly feedback thread there explaining why just because a suggestion is top voted, doesn’t mean they can make major decisions based on them. Similarly Xbox has tens of millions of users on their own console, idk how many on PC, and hundreds of millions across all gaming platforms combined: how much weight does a post with up votes in the thousands have in making major financial decisions? Maybe Sharma will make a post about how Xbox fans are heard and “We can’t make any promises or complete any requests immediately.” or “Xbox fans are heard but there’s still the silent majority of 10s of millions console games and hundreds of millions across all platforms to think about.” We know the Xbox Games Showcase is coming and some stuff like backwards compatibility were already teased so many an easy win there.