In the rush to get ahead in the console wars, it seems like there’s no line that developers aren’t willing to cross. Today, Microsoft offered an apology shortly after showcasing the gameplay trailer for their upcoming console, the Xbox Series X.
Back on May 7th, Xbox revealed a live stream that showed a first look into “next-gen gameplay,” treating audiences to a variety of different trailers. Advertised as a gameplay preview, this live stream got a solid following for its audience before people started to get suspicious.
Instead of the gameplay that Xbox had promised and advertised repeatedly, the vast majority of the event ended up being dedicated to trailer after trailer, mostly from third-party publishers that would be releasing their games on the system around release.
One of the largest issues to come out of this was the “gameplay” trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which offered nothing in the way of a peak into gameplay. Instead, it served as another cinematic trailer – a quite good one, even, but not the gameplay trailer that was expected.
Xbox has accrued a great amount of negative backlash in response to this, with fans taking to the recording of the live stream on YouTube and other social media platforms to make their displeasure known. As of writing this, the live stream’s posted video has almost 35,000 dislikes, leaving the total ratings of the video about 43% negative responses.
In response, Aaron Greenberg of Xbox Games Marketing took to Twitter to fess up to the complaints and admit that they had misled their audience.
“Had we not said anything and just shown May Inside Xbox show like we did last month, I suspect reactions might have been different,” Greenberg stated in response to a user pointing out the dishonesty. “Clearly we set some wrong expectations and that’s on us. We appreciate all the feedback and can assure you we will take it all in and learn as a team.”
On one hand, it’s fantastic to see Greenberg not only owning up to Xbox’s mistake, but doing it swiftly, humbly, and publically. However, at the same time, it’s not as if this was some small mistake that slipped through the cracks.
Xbox was well aware of what would be shown, and they were aware that it had been promised to be primarily gameplay. While the apology is nice, it doesn’t quite make it an acceptable move from the company.
Either way, there’s been enough negative backlash that there could be some switches coming in the future. With E3 and practically every other notable gaming conventions canceled, it’s up to publishers to reveal their releases to the gaming community. Hopefully, as we move forward, there won’t be as many miscommunications.
