Consumer Confusion=Sales Strangulation

HDTV=Easy User Understanding? Simple connections? Get the thing and go?

Hell no. 18 flavors of ATSC digital television standards. Another vast pile of letters in display names that adds endless confusion for the casual consumer if/when the buying decision actually comes. Cable-types that freak out all but the most heartily ready to decipher and plug and spaghetti behind their equipage. And on.

Game Consoles?
Used to be easy. Plug in "Wun-ah-them-Nintendo TAPES" and it went.

Now we go around again and add confusion and cables and all by selling new gadgets that are big piles better than previous ones, but still don't let Joe-Sixpack and his kids keep it out of the way of mommy.

Or do we?

Was the most ingenious decision yet on the part of the game console manufacturers brought to us today by Bill Gates and his X-Boxen Crew?

Wireless controllers have been around and working well for a number of years. But EVERYONE (minus the designers, manufacturers, and marketers of the things) knows that peripherals just-don't-farking-sell! Hell, not well.  [We'll riff on game peripherals later.]

And along comes the detail on Xbox 360 today.

Wireless connectivity for its controllers is built in. WiFi works if you have it. All the cabling requires is a single plug (in some cases) and backward compatibility is fine.

But back to those wireless controllers? With the Nintendo (NES) generation now having kids and wanting to play--how much less resistance to the clutter will there be if the controller is no more bothersome than the myriad remotes on the coffee table? Mom, Girlfriend, Whoever won't be tripping over four cables "no mo-wah!" The machine doesn't have to be understood. It doesn't get in the way of the persons who would be carping most.

Complaints and confusion matter deeply.

Gonna ship a thing-a-ma-whatsit?

Have it something that is comfortably understood, set-up, and does its shit in a single sentence.

[Unlike Me. Editorial Ends.]

Comments

[Henning]

Give please. We play the hands of cards life gives us. And the worst hands can make us the best players.
I am from Wales and learning to write in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "hair clipper replacement blades."

Thanks for the help ;), Henning.