Every once in a while, fate intervenes to give you a far better outcome than what you’d originally planned. You fully intend to do things a certain way, but for reasons out of your control, you don’t — and you wind up thanking your lucky stars that you were thwarted.
This is exactly how Microsoft should feel about the reveal of the Xbox Series S. The company essentially owned the internet for most of the week after the Series S leaked, using an effective combination of crisis management and quick wit to turn a bad moment into a very, very good one.
Had the reveal played out as it was originally intended to, Microsoft would’ve generated far less hype around the Series S. Honestly, we can’t believe how fortunate that leak ended up being for Microsoft.
Below is a series of five videos, four of which were themselves leaked online a short time ago (the Jason Ronald clip was part of it but got broken out later). They appear to be the “official” Series S reveal. They would have likely accomplished the exact opposite of what Microsoft achieved this week.
Aren’t you glad you found out about the Series S in the way you did, and not like this? Microsoft should be glad, too. For all of the spunk the Xbox brand itself exudes, you can still see those old-school Microsoft tendencies bubbling to the surface every now and again.
“It’ll be great to announce this exciting product with a series of not-that-exciting interviews,” someone in Microsoft’s marketing department probably said. “We’ll have one of our own employees conduct scripted interviews with other employees. That’ll ensure there are no genuine moments, and that the interviewer uses our taglines for each console as much as possible. It’ll be a slam dunk.”
No, it would not have been. This could have been downright disastrous.
Whoever leaked those Xbox Series S details must have clued in enough to know what was around the bend, and did Microsoft the solid of saving the company from itself. Maybe they should be in charge of marketing.
The Xbox Series S — along with the Series X — launches on Nov. 10.