u/NateGreatGames

I was scrolling through YouTube this morning and came across an ad for Backbone that just came across as really tone deaf and really left a bad taste in my mouth about the brand. The photo here isn’t the exact ad, I tried for about a half hour to get it to pop up again because I was in such disbelief and I wish I had a link to it, but it’s one of those revolving ads that pops up when you start a video.

In the ad there is a person holding a BB Pro much like how it’s framed in the photo I’ve captioned. A guy starts talking about the Backbone and then he bring up reviews (this was a sponsored ad and not some rando YouTube short) and then he says the reviews are mixed, with a lot of the negative complaints being about “quality and longevity” and the tone was very dismissive. That is followed up well the people making those comments are just “haters”, which is where the ad went south for me and I can’t quite remember what he said after that but it gave me like ‘they are just trolls’ vibes.

It’s disappointing, because it’s been documented numerous times the design flaw these controllers have, and the people who make these things have to be aware of it. I haven’t been as vocal or negative as a lot of people have here or on discord about the product. But since I first purchased my first one after seeing a Facebook ad in year one when the product went to market, I have bought 8 of these things. Right now I have one still standing, my second gen lightning PS edition, ever single other has failed with a bad ribbon cable. My Black second gen BB One lightning failed last month, and once I discovered it, I started to jump on Amazon to see how much the cables cost so maybe I can just start fixing them all myself. When they started selling the product at retail I would buy a Best Buy warranty with each one because it wasn’t a if, it was a when when it came to it not working. Unfortunately for this last one my 1 year warranty ran out a few months prior and now you can’t get lightning editions at retail anymore since lighting iPhones have been phased out.

Then later in the ad the person said something to the effect of “ and well, if your’s does have a problem it has a one year warranty so you don’t have anything to worry about, and that’s that.” It’s very “we will treat the symptom so we can keep you coming back, but we won’t fix the problem”

But to put an ad out for product out with one of the highest failure rates I’ve ever seen from a consumer product and then to call people haters for complaining about it, it’s just bad look. I’m sure it probably hurts somebody’s feelings when they read some of these comments lambasting the product, but that comes with the territory and you have to be bigger than that as a company. If you want people to stop bashing the product, make a better product. I’ve spent over $1000 towards buying these things because on a fundamental level it has been the best way I’ve found so far to play video games using my phone. They all have broken, not because of normal wear and tear, but because of a design flaw. I’m not sure what I will do once my last one goes, and the reason I haven’t bought a pro yet is I’m afraid of having the same issue and having to replace for an even higher price tag.

I’m sorry for the lengthy post and this has been the most critical I’ve been on reddit about BB, but this was all trigger because an ad was greenlit calling your consumers haters. Do better.

I updated the app this evening and noticed there was a new section, What’s New. Looks like the developers are attempting to have a stream of new and fresh content whenever you load the app, so far it’s been links to site like IGN, Rockpapershotgun & PC gamer and some links to trailers and videos on YouTube. Guess it’s better than nothing, I just hope with how it’s supposed to update your feed based off the games your playing it will actually source meaningful content, I’m not really jumping in the app to read about movies and play New York Times puzzles. You can somewhat navigate the browser with the physical controls, expect pop ups and web junk aplenty though.

Looks like there was also some updates to the pages for each game in the Backbone game library. It looks a lot neater and has more information about the game and some IGBD ratings. Along with some trailers and the highlights/screen shots. Shows some similar games too. An issue I’ve run into though is when you browse it you might end up with several videos running and trying to talk over each other.

I still miss the early days of the app when it was more of a curation tool for the app stores. They really went into the trenches and found games that would be perfect to play on your iPhone, when you weren’t always aware of what games in there had controller support or not. These days the focus is less on mobile native games and more on streaming, which I get because you can use big name console and pc games to market the product. But it seems when you practically have everything at your disposal to play when you are streaming it from your hardware or the cloud, there isn’t a real strong focus on anything when it comes to what’s being promoted.

Had this notification pop up this evening. Went into the app to claim it but when I hit Redeem now, it takes me to a UBISOFT page where I can input the code, but where do I get the actual code?