14 DAY TRIAL // Although the early days of the Xbox One will go down in history as one of the best case studies of upper-management incompetence and the dichotomy between businessmen and consumers, Microsoft has been making progress in strides since then, determined to recover from the PR fallout.
One of the most efficient counter-measures was the dedication of the Xbox One team to regular software updates, with the company not missing a beat when it comes to the monthly patch, constantly improving and adding new functions to its next-gen console.
In addition to this, the company's preview program has allowed it to implement changes faster and to make sure that patches work as intended without causing additional problems, and it appears that Microsoft's post-launch support for the Xbox One is going to go down in history as a great example of upper-management competence.
Phil Spencer, the head of the Xbox division at Microsoft, has stressed the importance of regular updates for the console's long-term health.
"Updates have been a key to keeping XB1 features evolving. More work to do but making progress," Spencer has tweeted, adding that the development team has the monthly update feature list already planned all the way through October.
In addition to this, he has mentioned that load and install times are one of the areas that the development team is focusing on, and will soon be addressed in future updates.
"Load times and install times are things I'm focused on, just hadn't timed Destiny," Spencer shares.
Finally, Spencer has confessed that one of the key goals of the entire Xbox One support process has been working to earn the support of original Xbox gamers.
"Thanks. Support from OG XBOX gamers has been a key for us. Working to earn their support," the head of Xbox has tweeted.
Although a case can be made about the fact that Microsoft's focus has also been on multimedia and non-crucial apps that aren't gaming-related, the truth is that the company has been doing a pretty good job when it comes to the content and pacing of updates.
The company's last revealed figures showed that over 5 million Xbox One consoles had been shipped to retailers, 3.9 million of which shipped by the end of 2013. Although it is unclear how many of those had actually been sold to consumers, and how many more since then, Microsoft is still likely behind Sony's 7 million PlayStation 4 sales.
In any case, the latest financial report from the Redmond-based company, related to FY14 Q4, pointed to an increase of 23 percent for its Computing and Gaming Hardware revenue against the same period in 2013, with Xbox platform revenue up 14 percent year over year, during Q2 2014.