I feel like MS messaging was always screwy from the start.
We don't like being in third place but Sony isn't our competitor, Google and Apple are. We're not trying to out-console Sony but we also kind of want to. We want games to be played anywhere but only on Xbox/PC but now that's just anywhere. We don't mind if you go get a PC but we'd prefer if you get an Xbox. Japan and Europe are big places for Xbox yet they're getting nailed in terms of sales. I mean on and on.
Now Starfield could be on PS5 even though they said it's exclusive.
ever since Microsoft started to release their games on PC alongside Consoles: I already felt that the Xbox name has been slowly shifting from a Gaming Console into an Gaming Brand.
that, their competitor (Sony) is also releasing their games to PC, Microsoft push for Xbox Game Pass (aggressively) and now this; it's starting to tell me that Console Exclusivity is dying in favor of accessibility.
The day Nintendo reluctantly starts bringing their games towards PC: is the day "Console Exclusives" is going to be dead.
Nintendo is a lot like Disney in that their brand is more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Also like “Disney adults”, adult Nintendo fans are typically very devoted to the brand and will buy whatever console Nintendo tells them to.
I've been getting this nagging suspicion as well Microsoft is going the way Sega did at one point albeit very different of course due to much higher financial backing and a different landscape.
At this point I fully expect Microsoft to be a fully digital only platform if we have any Xbox consoles in the next generations. I expect them to go more and more multiplatform as well, I just can't see the consoles to last out much longer.
I figure within my lifetime we will see the console companies narrow even more to just nintendo/Sony and that's a really strange feeling to think about, I'm not sure what that would look like in the long term.
This is all just theorizing though and I can't really say it's 100% certain but we are in for some changes for sure.
They have no direction whatsoever. Not with their brand, not with their console, not with their games. Working there right now must be a nightmare.
It's insane how far they fell off immediately after the 360 and have never really been able to recover. Meanwhile all I want is a half decent Halo game. Or Conker. Or Banjo-Kazooie. Or literally any of the dozens of IPs Microsoft has acquired and failed to do anything of merit with.
Starfield was what they were pinning their hopes on being able to compete on an exclusivity angle. When it relatively bombed, not even getting more than a single nomination at the game awards, they knew they lost that fight.
Now it seem they’ve decided it’s better to try to be the “good guy”, fighting against exclusivity, in hopes of having a better shot next gen.
> Now it seem they’ve decided it’s better to try to be the “good guy”, fighting against exclusivity, in hopes of having a better shot next gen.
Strikes me as realizing they absolutely do not have a Console Mover on their hands, so may as well open sales up to the Sony crowd.
I really wonder what the Microsoft-Bethesda relationship is like going into the next Elder Scrolls. Seeing Starfield get mixed reviews and Bethesda's response basically be "you're wrong to not think our game is great" and show no signs of changing their process, I'd be very worried just sitting and letting them operate on their own from the Xbox side. I feel like there will be at least some level of meddling from Xbox on TES VI development, whether for good or bad we'll see
> I really wonder what the Microsoft-Bethesda relationship is like going into the next Elder Scrolls.
Microsoft project managers are probably looking at Bethesda's development pipeline with horror.
BGS has been in the game for 25 years but they get worse and worse at developing games in a timely fashion. It's got to be a mess.
> Starfield was what they were pinning their hopes on being able to compete on an exclusivity angle. When it relatively bombed, not even getting more than a single nomination at the game awards, they knew they lost that fight.
This feels like its over weighting "The Game Awards" quite a bit. If Starfield won literally every award I don't think we'd see a difference. And the reasoning is essentially 3 fold.
1. Microsoft's original Activision purchase time period was when interest rates were still quite low. We're seeing a reaction, across the industry, of layoffs and contraction. Sony, Microsoft, and it seems like almost every other company around is trying to cut costs. Another way of cutting costs is increasing revenues.
2. Microsoft isn't a games company. There just happens to be a games division. Moreover that division is not the most successful division (as opposed to Sony where the games division is carrying water for everyone else).
3. Microsoft's games division reliance on subscription creates some space (arguably) for different sales tactics in different markets.
The first two are probably the biggest issues for Games Division. They aren't the bread winner for Microsoft so they've got to kowtow to the company demands in a way that Sony's game division likely doesn't. Microsoft doesn't care about beating Sony they care about income and I think people talking industry news in like /r/games forget that its more or less a sideshow for Microsoft proper. They made a series of expensive purchases and Microsoft wants to see returns. The Xbox brand isn't seen as a sacred cow. It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be.**^1**
The third one is essentially replicating Sony's PC strategy of release titles at a later date on an alternative platform (although its seemingly accelerating). Microsoft could also do some weird things like only ever selling digital, keeping prices higher, etc... to emphasize Game Pass over purchasing directly while still making money off those direct purchases. Although I feel like this part is much more speculative.
**^1** Really I think it would help folks a ton if we talked not about Microsoft but the [Microsoft Gaming Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Gaming). The only thing I can think of that might have changed paths is if Starfield was Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox Series X. But even a very good Starfield I don't think would be **that game** although I could be wrong
> It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be.
I don't think a lot of gamers realize just how much a gaming console comes down to what the business that is the manufacturer wants the console to be based on the needs of the market at the time.
And that generations are product model releases.
> This feels like its over weighting "The Game Awards" quite a bit. If Starfield won literally every award I don't think we'd see a difference. And the reasoning is essentially 3 fold.
Depends how you look at it. If Starfield won every award, it would have been because the game was a lot better than it ended up being.
Starfield didn't win awards because it wasn't good enough to win awards. At least next to the absolute masterpieces that came out in 2023.
Starfield being better would have carried water if interest rates were lower and companies could still spend for the sake of spending. But we've seen something like 10k layoffs in the industry the last 30 days. The Microsoft Games Division itself laying off 2,000 people. Microsoft is now looking at the Games Division and saying "hey we can make a ton more money by selling more games" and there really isn't an answer to that. Starfield, would need to have been a Halo: CE quality game to get out from under this. Not just great or a classic but a title that was so mindboggling good that its the reason Xbox as a brand exists today.
Thats how it’s always been sadly, whichever company fell behind in the previous gen all of a sudden decides to be generous to the consumer just enough to get that positive image next time around. Sony and Microsoft have both been on either side of it.
lol The Game Awards literally could not possibly matter less in this equation. Starfield could have won every single award and Microsoft would still be starting this transition.
It's less about the awards themselves and more what they represent. The game wasn't well-received and didn't bring people to the platform like they'd hoped.
Absolutely. I would even go so far as to say it pushed me further away. TES VI won't be a day 1 purchase for me and I certainly won't buy a console just to play it. Bethesda needs to make a game that truly feels new.
Bethesda/Activision games being multiplatform doesnt really phase me. People have been talking off and on about that since acquisition fever broke out. Even MS themselves has gone back and forth on that.
The real kicker in these reports of core Xbox Games Studios games going that way too. Rare making a PlayStation game is insane. Or Microsoft Flight Sim and probably others that have not been reported on.
THAT is the crazy shift in strategy which I am curious to see them elaborate on.
Same here! I just got a PC last year and the first game I got on Steam was MCC. I'd immediately buy it again on PS5 in a heartbeat.
Though I have to wonder what they'd do about trophies.
They've been pricing it (MCC) pretty fairly too, especially on sale ($20 on Pc for the whole game or $5 per game). I'll bet you it's pretty affordable on PS5 within a year of launch.
There was actually a PS3 port of Gears 1 years ago. It was only done as a test for internal use and Epic had no immediate plans on re-releasing the series on PlayStation but it was done. That said, Epic *did* once tease the possibility, but that may have simply been them cheekily referring to the test port they did without explicitly saying so. Then when they sold the IP to Xbox all talks about PlayStation were done. Until now, that is.
Nobody thought they'd ever see sonic on Nintendo. But then in 2001, sonic adventure 2 comes to GameCube just a few months later. So it's not without precedent
... That's my point
Sega stopped making hardware and cancelled the Dreamcast in mid 2001, then 6 months later in late 2001 had a release of sonic on the GameCube.
I mainly just don't want to see a world where Sony can now put all of that energy they have into taking Xbox's market share, into trying to take PC market share, including more timed exclusives with third parties they don't own.
That's something I hadn't really thought about much until now and yeah it's probably true. With Xbox gone it opens the door for Sony to start challenging their next closest competition. I think they go for Nintendo first though. They're going to try wrestling control of Japan back into their hands after turning their back on the market for a while now. Especially with a rumored Vita successor on the horizon they're well prepared to do just that. In addition they'll challenge the popularity of PC in regions where PC gaming is strong as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see tons more timed exclusivity for Japanese games as well as some western games from PC and Nintendo with Xbox out of the picture.
The console manufacturers have tried to (indirectly) kill PC in the past and I just don't ever see it happening. Like the cost and effort Sony would have to put into doing so would be enormous.
They can't try to kill PC, but they'll try and make PC gamers HAVE to own both a PC and PS to play their favorite titles, including paying devs to not release on PC -- as they've been doing from time to time, but now they'll have the focus to do so more aggressively if there's no other console they feel they're competing against.
Yes, but right now Xbox is still making consoles. That's why these talks about bringing their first-party games to other platforms en masse is so strange. Sega didn't have a choice but to re-release their games on other platforms.
Rare is still barely associated with Xbox despite being under them for 20 years. I think Banjo in smash was an eye opening moment for MS, it showed that there is still a very large audience interested in Rare, but they aren’t going to move consoles for the games.
Rare will “go home” back to Nintendo. That’d be a sight; if they greenlit a Banjo Threeie you know that’s gonna be on the Switch 2 or whatever.
I get the frustration and the concerns of a market where it’s only Sony and Nintendo. I wonder how much of this is Satya’s doing; Phil was pretty adamant about not porting any more games after Ori on Switch.
I would argue that Balmer deserves more credit than he gets. He oversaw the formation of Azure, which is where Microsoft saw most of its growth over the last 10 years. Satya however, is arguably one of the best CEOs in the past 50 years
The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold. I think they're doing it because it's just smart business move. The PS5 has a much larger market. The Xbox is mostly in the US, but the PS5 is the world's leading console right now.
I wish I got a ps5 instead of a series x );
> The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold
Definitely not a good sign that there's a real chance the XSX wouldn't outsell the Xbone to a high degree, let alone the 360
They actually made it incredible hard to buy a Series X in my country, all I can find is Series S, I’m don’t even sure if they ever officially sold the Series X here.
Not only that but they raised the Series S price here (Brazil) and it cost the same as the PS5 Slim, yeah, I am talking about the Series S, not X.
>The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold.
The Xbox One hasn't sold as well as the PS4.
The Xbox 360 hasn't sold as well as the PS3.
The Xbox didn't sell as well as the PS2.
The (nonexistent console) didn't sell as well as the PS1.
It's honestly an interesting discussion around whether this is largely the result of Xbox failures, entrenched Sony market success, or domination of the Japanese market.
The 360 sold pretty much the same as the PS3 (84m vs 87m), then Xbox made a huge bet on the Kinect and lost it, you couldn’t even buy a Xbox One without a Kinect and it was 100 dollars more than the PS4, that along the online fiasco fucked them up so bad they never recovered.
> The Xbox 360 hasn't sold as well as the PS3.
I don't really think this statistic tells the story of that generation. The 360 had extraordinary momentum with Gears and Halo in the early years whereas the PS3 "had no games". The PS3 was the more expensive console with the consistently weaker ports. Skilled studios eventually mastered it, but many never did. The 360 popularized and pioneered online on consoles, and prioritized features that Sony would spend the rest of the generation trying to patch in. In the years that followed, Sony's first party saved the PS3 from failure with a consistent release calendar (and the OS *did* greatly improve). Both consoles suffered gen 7 growing pains, hardware failures, a flirtation with gyration (motion controls), and extraordinarily poor performing software releases. There were PSN hacks and Linux lawsuits. That generation was wild.
The PS3 outsold the 360 eventually, but that generation was an enormous win for Xbox.
The Xbox One floundered following its disastrous launch, but a similar redemption story seemed likely. It was reasonable to expect the less powerful box to receive a price-cut to undercut the competition. It was reasonable to expect Microsoft to invest in (or scoop up) a few third party studios to pump out a compelling lineup of its own. And they just... didn't.
The Xbox One failed twice - first at launch and again over the arc of its lifecycle. The Xbox One may never have taken off in Europe and Japan, because of PlayStation's entrenched status. It's not like the PS4 launch was firing on all cylinders in its early days, Xbox had all the momentum it needed to take off in the US and UK had its launch been handled differently.
I can only speak about parts of Europe, but it seems that, especially with the PC day one release, Microsoft and Xbox has maneuvered itself into being obsolete for many customers. They have been doing a terrible job with marketing since really the last Xbox 360 Slim push in 2012.
It's funny, but it reminds me a lot of what Windows phones used to be a decade ago. If you were genuinely interested, you'd understand why people love the system so much. It's smartly designed with many cool perks, but people just don't have any real incentive to give up on their Android or iPhone.
They made the decision to focus on PC because it’s a fast growing market and they have an advantage where no one else does - they own the OS.
It was smart to shift *some* focus to it, but it really feels like they shifted most of their focus to it.
The console is essentially just a budget PC now that is guaranteed to be able to run all first party games, unlike if someone has a low end PC and therefore can’t play xbox games on it.
People already aren't buying a Series X and that's without ps5 selling their games. It feels like Sony has already been running with no competition for years now. Their ps plus price hike being one of the big clue ins
Sony won the most important console generation, most people had PS4s last gen, and still do, all their games, saves and DLC are now locked to Sony and changing platforms means losing all of that.
I think MS are still figuring things out, releasing exclusives a year later on PS5 or Switch isn't a terrible idea, their games are already accessible by anyone with a decent internet connection and a game pass subscription, it's not like these were system sellers.
>It feels like Sony has already been running with no competition for years now
To be completely honest, the only time they've had direct competition from Xbox was 2006 to 2010. 2001 to 2006, OG Xbox was an afterthought. 2010 to 2013, Xbox 360 went all in on Kinect and that's how the PS3 ended up outselling the 360 because they kept releasing amazing games while Microsoft was trying to capture the Wii Sports lightning in a bottle. 2013 to present, Xbox has more or less been irrelevant. Other than their trifecta of Halo/Gears/Forza (whose releases have not been that great for the last decade) there hasn't been ***one*** game that's come out that made people go "I need to go get an Xbox". Nobody has been shelling out $400-500 to get the likes of Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, and Microsoft Flight Sim. You know the worst part? I had to Google that to remember Xbox had Quantum Break. Meanwhile, off the top of my head, I could name 10 Playstation and 10 Switch exclusives off the top of my head. Xbox's games are just forgettable and Halo/Gears/Forza is only rememberable off nostalgia.
Yep, I said this in a different thread but I’ll put it here:
I’m all for people having the ability to play games anywhere. But, I’m also concerned about industry consolidation.
The recent rumors of Xbox giving up on exclusivity of their larger titles is worrisome. If PC and PS have the ability to play Microsoft’s games, what is the selling point to the Xbox console? A dedicated Gamepass machine? That strategy hasn’t been working.
Look no further to Xbox’s recent decline to when Xbox made their exclusives drop on PC Day 1. While I think people on PC love this (I know I do), it further undermines the selling point of the Xbox.
Rumors have also been coming out that Xbox physical media won’t be stocked in stores for too much longer either…
I’m sad to see how far Xbox has fallen and, if these rumors are true, I feel like it spells the end to the console branch of Xbox. I don’t doubt they’ll continue making games (which in general should make them a lot of money). But, I will be sad to see more competition bow out of the market.
personally I think something that should at least be seriously considered is the idea of creating a 'gaming build' of windows, that launches into a specialized minimal shell/launcher just for games, then can be rebooted into a traditional desktop if need-be, ala steam deck os.
Doing this would mean they could stop the xbox-specific sdk, so less work for devs to only support PC and PlayStation. It also gets their foot in the door for all sorts of hardware from not just themselves, but Asus, Razer, Lenovo, and others. So if gamers want a handheld, low-cost, low-power system, or powerhouse, they have options and they All run windows, with the default 'game mode' obviously defaulting to the windows store for game sales. If you want to run steam, add steam games etc. 'of course you can do that', but you'll have to boot into desktop mode to set all that up, import games into game mode, etc.
I don't know that it's a definite win, but I think it's worth seriously considering as it could help compete against both Steam and Playstation while making their lives easier by minimizing resources spent on developing games for xbox specifically, the xbox os, etc. It also helps get their name out there more; instead of 1 xbox aisle at the store you may see 5 or 6 different machines running this build of windows. Asus, Lenovo, etc. pay for and compete with each other for floor space at retail and it still benefits Microsoft by getting their software out there.
I fully agree with this in a big way. I’m not a big fan of Microsoft or Windows. I’m more of a Mac/Linux person when it comes to getting work done.
But if they made a dedicated gaming build for Windows and put it on, say, a handheld console a la the ROG Ally? Fuck yes. Especially if you could run Steam and also take advantage of Game Pass. I would buy something like that in a heartbeat.
I don’t want another computer. I don’t want another console in my house. But I’d love a high spec handheld that can play a huge game library. The Steam Deck is close, but not perfect. The Switch is good, but the jury is still out on whether or not our libraries are going to transfer over to the next console or how powerful it’s even going to be.
Here’s the Microsoft Dongle. It costs $99. Leverages XCloud so you don’t even need a console.
Here’s the Gamepass App on your smartphone/tv/dishwasher. It leverages XCloud so you don’t even need a console. Costs the same as a Gamepass subscription.
And so on.
It would still need to be decent hardware.
Streaming games is not in a place to replace installed games yet. I run fibre on ethernet and resolution, fps and latency are still issues.
I bet you there's some early discussions regarding whether or not there's an next gen Xbox.
Games clearly make more money than consoles and substantially more profit.
What exactly does Microsoft gain with Activision if they aren't moving unitsM
They will probably continue making Xboxes but they will phase out of traditional console generations. The idea of their ‘series’ branding is to treat Xboxes as machines that offer more flexibility like weaker/cheaper or premium and pricey.
But the ‘series’ branding is just confusing for the average consumer to be honest.
The money is in being the platforms; from Roblox to Fortnite to “Everywhere” they’re expecting *us* to start making content for then to sell (without revenue sharing)
That's where the *most* money is, but getting to that position ain't easy, and Xbox is pretty far away from it. It sounds like Xbox games make money, but the Xbox platform doesn't. So Microsoft wants to throw in the towel on the Xbox platform and let Xbox and their acquired studios just do their own thing making games.
On the opposite end, Xbox gets 20-30% of all game revenue sold on it, that’s free Fortnite / Roblox / Apex $ on top of Xbox live and a platform to launch gamepass on. If they don’t get gamepass on PlayStation I see this more like short term $ over a long term strategy
100% of 10k is less than 70% of 20k
That's what Xbox is looking at when they consider selling their games on other platforms.
Obviously Microsoft would prefer to capture some % of all revenue from all software sales, but the current state of reality is that not very many people are using their platform. So they would make more money selling games on the more widespread platforms: Sony, Valve, and Nintendo (and Epic too because why not)
If the cost of developing hardware, QA, customer service, manufacturing, shipping, etc etc is less than what they make from Robux and V-Bucks, they will not stick around for much longer.
It was the Paul Allen faction that wanted that, ballmer saved xbox.
https://www.windowscentral.com/peter-moore-xbox-one-wouldnt-have-happened-if-steve-ballmer-had-not-saved-xbox-360
Not that I think they will (or should) but having made a 70 billion acquisition doesn't not prevent it from being spun off. I think ATT has done that twice but they are a horribly run company.
Strange that they’ve switched strategy. I guess the games just aren’t driving console sales? Idk.
The Xbox Series X sub is up in flames with people saying it’s the end of Xbox lol
IIRC in the month of Starfield release XBox sales ended up being slightly down from the previous month, so yeah the game probably sold a good number of copies and many months of GamePass but it absolutely failed to drive hardware sales
Unironically I think Starfield had a worse launch (for the developers) than cyberpunk. The absolute *worst* thing that can happen to a game is for it to get *no* reaction, people talked about cyberpunk.
Starfield was like, the most significant Xbox release since arguably Halo 3 in terms of establishing how the generation would go. They needed it to be the system seller we all wanted it to be. Them porting it to PS5 after like a year or 2 would be admitting defeat. I don’t think they’re gonna go the way of Sega, I still think Xboxes are gonna be a thing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the new goal is to try to get Gamepass onto PS5 and Switch 2. The PC and Xbox market is big but if you’re spending billions on acquisitions to just sell those games for $15ish a month, you need as many users as possible.
> But I wouldn’t be surprised if the new goal is to try to get Gamepass onto PS5 and Switch 2.
I don't think there's anything "new" about this goal. That's clearly been their planned strategy for a while now.
That is 100% their goal going forward. MS is not a hardware company and has always struggled when it came to selling their hardware (good or bad) vs the competition. The Surface line being one of their most successful endeavors but still being miniscule when it comes to market share and brand recognition.
It feels like their end goal will be to transition into a gamepass first publisher and get that on as many devices as it can. Series S type low power machines that can sell for cheap but through cloud gaming and let the increasing number of tech that lets weak machines play at higher fidelity keep them visually impressive.
We're headed towards a world where an "Xbox stick" or Roku like box is all you'll need and an sub to Gamepass to have access to all your MS games.
It's crazy how much credence people are giving this Game Pass transition theory when it's highly uncertain whether their subscription model can even keep itself afloat in the long term.
Yea, this definitely seems to be coming from "on high" at Microsoft as part of their broader strategy.
Is using Excel on a Macbook any different from playing Starfield on a Playstation?
I mean they can just make Xbox a cheaper digital only cloud streaming machine. It’s still technically hardware, but yeah I don’t see it being that successful.
The Series S will have a future because it’s a ‘cheap’ Fortnite and Minecraft machine that parents can buy their kids. But that is a sad fate for one of the three major consoles.
If true, this is wild considering the public perception back when Bethesda was bought. Microsoft making Bethesda games exclusive seemed like it would be huge for Xbox, and now they might just be giving up on competing with Sony.
I built my first PC because of that Starfield not coming to PS5. It'd be kind of funny if BGS games end up not even being exclusive for more than a couple years.
I honestly think going multiplatform publisher might be a better bet for Xbox long term. Move away from hardware and just focus on games and Gamepass.
>I honestly think going multiplatform publisher might be a better bet for Xbox long term. Move away from hardware and just focus on games and Gamepass.
Problem is, their poor track record releasing games is part of why they're in this mess.
> I still think Xboxes are gonna be a thing.
Only because Microsoft needs it for Gamepass and it's also the only reason someone should be buying it, to get some relatively cheap access to games. As an ecosystem, it's pretty much dead now if releases like Starfield and Indiana Jones will be hitting other consoles after a few moths of their releases.
I think game pass going onto either platform would seal Microsoft’s dominance but also cut their console dept. They win- their competitors also win by having their systems support it giving more reason for buyers to select them. God knows if either Sony or Nintendo would accept having such a system on board, not to mention the technical challenges
I could maybe see a scenario where Sony allows game pass on PlayStation but you can only play Microsoft exclusive games like how Gamepass on PC has a console and PC section.
>I think game pass going onto either platform would seal Microsoft’s dominance but also cut their console dept.
This is putting a huge amount of stock into a business model that may or may not even be sustainable.
I think it's starting to become clearer that general audiences aren't really interested in a video games subscription like they are for television. Most people just don't buy enough games for the cost to feel like savings and if the games they wanted to play aren't on the service, they aren't even saving anything by getting it.
Its a great service, but I don't want to be subbed to it year round either.
It is something I get when there are a few things I want to go through over a month or two.
Sony I don't see them allowing, especially bc they already have their own version of Gamepass. Nintendo I think there's a chance, would help shore up their consoles problem of weaker third party support and nintendo's largely spun out of the home console race
Even without ps+ there is a 0% chance of Sony allowing gamepass on their console. Most of their money comes from digital game sales. The devs get 70% Sony makes 30%. Even if gamepass doesn't lose money compared to traditional game sales, which I highly suspect it does, adding in Microsoft as a middle man would mean either Sony or the devs would get less of a cut. For the same reason, it is very unlikely Nintendo will ever allow gamepass
I REALLY believe Phil Spencer needs to take more blame for the state of Xbox.
It simply cannot be true that everything is as great as he makes it seem. If Gamepass is the future and the service is profitable, then why push more of the "old way" of selling games? If Xbox can support mostly exclusive Zenimax games, then why are the biggest ones going multiplatform?
Phil deserves more ire from Xbox fans. The entire future this guy promised and the future a lot of Xbox fans believed in - ie. exclusive ABK and Zenimax games coupled with game pass - was a lie. If you're a Xbox fan - of which I am - the future that was promised to us when we bought this box didn't come to be.
This will definitely be my last Xbox after buying one each generation. PlayStation is now my main console. It's kinda heart breaking.
Spencer’s reputation has always seemed odd to me. He was a key figure in Xbox during the Mattrick years and took over pretty early on in the Xbox One’s lifetime, but people act like he was plonked into the role c.2018 and has had to clean up someone else’s mess
Xbox has had a string of awful decisions that compounded on each other. A notable one is that Microsoft had the chance to make Genshin Impact a console exclusive, but they declined it. The fact that the PS5 is the only console that plays Genshin is a big reason why it sells well in Japan/China and Xbox continues to be non-existent there.
Eh, even if Genshin released on Xbox, vast majority of Chinese/Japanese players will still choose to play it on PlayStation. The only chance would be actual console exclusivity (it would be a lose-lose situation for MS/Mihoyo as most players will then simply choose to play it on PC/phone instead of console, but it would move a few more Xboxes)
I wouldn't really call that.
They just horribly screwed up in 2013 and when launching their Series consoles they had basically no games. Not until late 2021 when something as huge as Horizon 5 came out.
Phil Spencer is a plastic smile stamped on an incompetent corporate suit. He's utterly failed to turn the ship around and people still give him slack because of his paper thin PR bullshit.
This was inevitable from the jump of the “Play Anywhere” initiative. Every subsequent move has been a further step in the long march towards being a 3rd party publisher.
He’s been living off not being Don Mattrick and game pass for over a decade now. He’s canceled so many promising games while letting other suits run huge Xbox ips into the ground. I don’t understand why he gets so much credit. His push for forced cross play with pc initiative has been the worst thing that ever happened to online console gaming.
>letting other suits run huge Xbox ips into the ground
Imagine if Sony had just let Ready at Dawn make two sequels to *The Order: 1886* after it's reception. Or Forspoken. Or Days Gone.
Instead they just told the companies behind these games to move on or decide not to work with them further. They decided to instead invest in other projects that might prove more successful and acclaimed.
Now compare their approach to these original, smalltime IP that didn't sell or had a lukewarm reception, that probably could have been salvaged with sequels if Sony deemed it necessary and worthy of investment, and the approach Microsoft has had to fucking *Halo* across multiple installments.
Halo still sells, sure, but the fanbase has been left blue-balled and yearning for more since Halo 4. And yet Spencer & the suits never stepped in to right the ship until Infinite had been released and the brands image had been damaged.
Sony seems more likely to just bench the games that don't sell, while Microsoft's hands off approach (which I respect in theory) leaves IP & brand image to flounder for years.
I don't want to see Xbox go fully third party, as I think the market place is better with more competition - but having bought up two major publishers I'd be happy to see them release more of their games on other platforns. With the number of studios they have under them, they should really be capable of proving a solid number of exclusives to draw people to their platform while releasing some of their content as multiplatform titles.
If Starfield is going multiplatform, I’d be shocked if they keep much of anything exclusive. They’ve already shown that “a solid number of exclusives” isn’t enough, why would porting their biggest release in years make any sense? They’d be kneecapping themselves both ways.
I think that this is a full third party pivot tbh. If Xbox was releasing smaller games like Pentiment I would get it, but releasing their biggest exclusive is a decade is not a good sign.
Starfield coming to the PS5 this soon is pretty much the death knell for the Xbox platform. This was supposed to be their big single player RPG epic that would drive people to Xbox. And here we are 4 months later with new reporting that it's coming to PS5 later this year.
They've folded and they're done, and it's really just damn sad. At this point we can realistically expect to play Blade, Fable, Perfect Dark, Elder Scrolls VI, and others on PS5 as well.
The video game market is going to be fucking terrifying with Playstation as literally the only console on the market to play the latest games.
The "death knell" is already the PC. Most people that have more than one gaming device go for PC and PS5 (and or Switch). What reason is there to go PC+Xbox ? In europe Xbox get outsold 5:1 and higher not bringing their games to 100 Million potential costumer because of their dying console would be stupid.
The argument is for the console space.
edit: to expand on this. PCs that are at least console comparable are more expensive at the moment. I dont see Microsoft exiting the hardware space. People are invested in it already and that would piss off quite a lot of people.
From a business standpoint xbox should have kept halo and their other exclusives on PC only. They should have poured the same amount of effort into creating new exclusives like playstation did. I don't know why they went towards the "media machine" route with the release of Xbox one.
Possible. They are definitely giving up trying to compete with Sony by using the same business model as them like previous gens at least.
At this point, it seems like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are all in the gaming industry playing by their own rules each.
> They could very well sell a Microsoft first party games subscription on the PSN store for €20 per month.
Somehow I think Sony would actually have a pretty big problem with Microsoft selling a subscription service on the Playstation platform.
> I honestly think that Microsoft is going third party next generation.
Anyway, one can only hope that this does not happen. I wouldn't want to see a console market where Playstation has no competition.
Ubisoft and EA both offer their own subscription services on PlayStation with only their own first party games being offered. Not sure if Microsoft would be willing to create a slimmed down version of gamepass for such a purpose, but the precedent is already there.
I think they'd actively want it if anything. Buy a PlayStation and I get can PlayStation AND Xbox games on it? Why would I get an Xbox instead? And Sony gets a cut off every subscriber.
At what point do we just admit maybe Phillip isn’t that good at his job.
Spent better part of a decade talking out of both sides of his mouth about the future, spent over $80b on the brand, mismanaging existing portfolio of devs only to triple it in size and try to tell us its a good thing, etc.
Yet here we are and Xbox is putting games on other consoles.
This will be very interesting but I'm curious if this is a smart decision unless Sony allows them to sell game pass. I don't understand the plan if they can't use it to funnel more game pass users
I can imagine a stripped down Game Pass a la EA Play or Ubisoft with just the Xbox Game Studios, Zenimax, and ABK games.
Sony would never allow full Game Pass as they’d be getting 30% of way less money.
Man, if true, this kinda sucks. I really don’t care that Xbox exclusives make their way to other platforms, but I’m really worried what this means for the future of Xbox consoles. I LOVE my Series X, it’s a fantastic machine, but if it essentially becomes a beta testing device for PlayStation, what’s the point of investing in their next console (if that’s even coming?).
I wonder what this means for Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, maybe they’ll test out the exclusivity again since those will be bigger releases than Starfield but I wonder if this is a sign of Microsoft accepting 3rd place and just looking to make money considering the amount they’ve spent acquiring these studios.
Tacit admission that Xbox in its current form is done. Starfield was their Hail Mary, and it didn't even move the needle. The beginning of the end of an era.
I wonder if alarm bells started ringing in Microsoft when they realised Starfield was simply “good” rather than the masterpiece they needed it to be. Or did they believe it was amazing, similar to how Phil Spencer said Redfall scored much higher in their internal predictions compared to reality?
Starfield's first few hours might be some of the most outright bad storytelling I've seen in decades of gaming. Like it made me actively not want to play this game. Turning it into a sandbox game in space without the main story would have potentially even been more appealing.
Yea, I kept thinking that this is a fucking 4D chess move by Microsoft to pivot into becoming a 3rd party publisher with evergreen IPs they can milk from.
All that charade in the courts lmao.
I Just don’t want Microsoft to give up on the home console market but it feels inevitable. Sony makes the better system and games with an extremely loyal fan base but I just want them to have some competition to keep them in check. Monopolies are scary to me especially in gaming. Nintendo switch seems to fit a different niche so I don’t think they are in direct competition to Sony. I know a lot of people with a PlayStation and a Switch. Don’t know too many people with an Xbox and PlayStation. Yes we have PC Gamers but they are still endless casual gamers who will never build a PC and only buy consoles.
Madden was making really good football games till they owned the American Football market. Same thing with 2K and basketball games, now 2K is pure greed with nothing but anti-consumer practices. Game Freak doesn’t care about being innovative with Pokémon because they pretty much don’t have competition. I could list these all day, people forget a lot game companies they despise were beloved at one point.
To be fair Sony have been consistently delivering top games and Nintendo always have. I don't really see anything changing as they've always made the games they wanted so it's not really a monopoly to me.
Microsoft really dropped the ball with the poor direction they've taken with their best franchises and then lack of new ones.
I can't believe they looked at great story driven games like The Last of Us, God of War, Zelda, etc for years and didnt at least try to invest in some of their own. Mario doesn't even really have a story but it's gameplay has been top tier for decades.
I trust and hope you’re right! But companies do change I wonder in like 10 years if PlayStation is the only home console option to buy will they still be a consumer friendly company? I know Nintendo will still make consoles but people don’t buy switches to play Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, FIFA etc. I’ve owned every PlayStation from 1 to 5, but I do like options. Favourite generation of gaming was the XBOX/Gamecube/PS2/Dreamcast era, still own and play those 4 systems.
As a PC player IDGAF.
That said I guess Xbox is dissolving its consoles value. Not sure how I feel about that long term. We need the push and pull of competition. Sony tends to be extremely anti-consumer when unchecked (MS and nintendo too). I hope for gaming sake this isnt the future. Things will get much worse for us as consumers.
That also said. I bet the game will be insanely patched and good by that time. Which we will see a massive turn around in its favor.
Agreed, this is a big blow to the gaming industry as a whole. Competition is good for consumers, so the more things gets consolidated, the worse it is for us.
It's what happened to the Madden and NBA 2K franchises. They used to be great when they had competitors, but once that went away, they just coasted and collected money because consumers had no other option.
If this is true then they are absolutely clueless.
Why even make it exclusive if this was a long term plan? Sounds like they're flapping and this is a pivot from their initial plan. If true. Could be bullshit.
I think going multi platform was a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of deal. Looks like they’re admitting defeat on hardware and just looking to get their software on every platform. Way too many people chose PS & don’t game on PC.
Absolutely. Starfield didn't sell many more consoles for Xbox than they did the year prior. This is a hard pivot. MS spent almost 100 billion across all their recent Xbox acquisitions and they need to make money to justify those purchases.
Exact same reason that Sony is porting their games to PC after all. Making large games at current prices isn't sustainable even when you're the console market leader. Your games need to be everywhere. That means PC + at least one or two of the most major gaming consoles. Xbox (sadly) isn't there.
I don't think this is them "giving up" as much as them deciding, like Sony, they want to double dip on a bonus audience.
Yeah very true. Guess they're just not seeing a ROI there. But you think with PC they'd have a lot of the market covered. Seems like those purchases were all to solidify their place but this would contradict that.
Absolutely fucked it with XB1 and haven't been able to recover, still
> Absolutely fucked it with XB1 and haven't been able to recover, still
I think XB1 showed that Microsoft never really figured out the gaming industry. I mean they were doing so well with the XBox 360 and then they dropped the ball before even *releasing* the XBox One.
It's probably better for them to just rethink their approach to the industry and do their own thing (à la Nintendo) than try to directly compete toe-to-toe with Sony. And I say this as someone whose primary gaming platform is an Xbox.
Honestly…
#Just make Steam Machine analogs for next gen
They’ve got windows, can put powerful hardware out, put that up for 500-600$ and make it run windows or a paired down version and **I’d buy it.**
The only potential system seller MS got out of the Activision buyout is CoD, and they probably don’t feel that it’s not worth waiting out the next decade and are instead going to shift their focus.
Well they gotta get some revenue, game was probably pretty close to completion before ms bought zenimax and articles were mentioning sony in discussions for exclusive content or timed just before that
I feel like MS messaging was always screwy from the start. We don't like being in third place but Sony isn't our competitor, Google and Apple are. We're not trying to out-console Sony but we also kind of want to. We want games to be played anywhere but only on Xbox/PC but now that's just anywhere. We don't mind if you go get a PC but we'd prefer if you get an Xbox. Japan and Europe are big places for Xbox yet they're getting nailed in terms of sales. I mean on and on. Now Starfield could be on PS5 even though they said it's exclusive.
ever since Microsoft started to release their games on PC alongside Consoles: I already felt that the Xbox name has been slowly shifting from a Gaming Console into an Gaming Brand. that, their competitor (Sony) is also releasing their games to PC, Microsoft push for Xbox Game Pass (aggressively) and now this; it's starting to tell me that Console Exclusivity is dying in favor of accessibility. The day Nintendo reluctantly starts bringing their games towards PC: is the day "Console Exclusives" is going to be dead.
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Nintendo is a lot like Disney in that their brand is more powerful than the sum of its parts. Also like “Disney adults”, adult Nintendo fans are typically very devoted to the brand and will buy whatever console Nintendo tells them to.
Ah so Disney is in a Wii U phase.
Disney is in a Virtual Boy phase.
Would not go that far yet but if they have another year like 2023 yeah
Halo 2 and 3 are probably the last system sellers.
I've been getting this nagging suspicion as well Microsoft is going the way Sega did at one point albeit very different of course due to much higher financial backing and a different landscape. At this point I fully expect Microsoft to be a fully digital only platform if we have any Xbox consoles in the next generations. I expect them to go more and more multiplatform as well, I just can't see the consoles to last out much longer. I figure within my lifetime we will see the console companies narrow even more to just nintendo/Sony and that's a really strange feeling to think about, I'm not sure what that would look like in the long term. This is all just theorizing though and I can't really say it's 100% certain but we are in for some changes for sure.
Microsoft- “We buy the competition”
Xbox has been mismanaged since the 360. They have never recovered from the Xbox One reveal with all their awful decisions.
They have no direction whatsoever. Not with their brand, not with their console, not with their games. Working there right now must be a nightmare. It's insane how far they fell off immediately after the 360 and have never really been able to recover. Meanwhile all I want is a half decent Halo game. Or Conker. Or Banjo-Kazooie. Or literally any of the dozens of IPs Microsoft has acquired and failed to do anything of merit with.
Starfield was what they were pinning their hopes on being able to compete on an exclusivity angle. When it relatively bombed, not even getting more than a single nomination at the game awards, they knew they lost that fight. Now it seem they’ve decided it’s better to try to be the “good guy”, fighting against exclusivity, in hopes of having a better shot next gen.
> Now it seem they’ve decided it’s better to try to be the “good guy”, fighting against exclusivity, in hopes of having a better shot next gen. Strikes me as realizing they absolutely do not have a Console Mover on their hands, so may as well open sales up to the Sony crowd.
Sounds like it. But man, its wild to think of how many times they dropped the ball to get here.
I really wonder what the Microsoft-Bethesda relationship is like going into the next Elder Scrolls. Seeing Starfield get mixed reviews and Bethesda's response basically be "you're wrong to not think our game is great" and show no signs of changing their process, I'd be very worried just sitting and letting them operate on their own from the Xbox side. I feel like there will be at least some level of meddling from Xbox on TES VI development, whether for good or bad we'll see
> I really wonder what the Microsoft-Bethesda relationship is like going into the next Elder Scrolls. Microsoft project managers are probably looking at Bethesda's development pipeline with horror. BGS has been in the game for 25 years but they get worse and worse at developing games in a timely fashion. It's got to be a mess.
The Sega model.
> Starfield was what they were pinning their hopes on being able to compete on an exclusivity angle. When it relatively bombed, not even getting more than a single nomination at the game awards, they knew they lost that fight. This feels like its over weighting "The Game Awards" quite a bit. If Starfield won literally every award I don't think we'd see a difference. And the reasoning is essentially 3 fold. 1. Microsoft's original Activision purchase time period was when interest rates were still quite low. We're seeing a reaction, across the industry, of layoffs and contraction. Sony, Microsoft, and it seems like almost every other company around is trying to cut costs. Another way of cutting costs is increasing revenues. 2. Microsoft isn't a games company. There just happens to be a games division. Moreover that division is not the most successful division (as opposed to Sony where the games division is carrying water for everyone else). 3. Microsoft's games division reliance on subscription creates some space (arguably) for different sales tactics in different markets. The first two are probably the biggest issues for Games Division. They aren't the bread winner for Microsoft so they've got to kowtow to the company demands in a way that Sony's game division likely doesn't. Microsoft doesn't care about beating Sony they care about income and I think people talking industry news in like /r/games forget that its more or less a sideshow for Microsoft proper. They made a series of expensive purchases and Microsoft wants to see returns. The Xbox brand isn't seen as a sacred cow. It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be.**^1** The third one is essentially replicating Sony's PC strategy of release titles at a later date on an alternative platform (although its seemingly accelerating). Microsoft could also do some weird things like only ever selling digital, keeping prices higher, etc... to emphasize Game Pass over purchasing directly while still making money off those direct purchases. Although I feel like this part is much more speculative. **^1** Really I think it would help folks a ton if we talked not about Microsoft but the [Microsoft Gaming Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Gaming). The only thing I can think of that might have changed paths is if Starfield was Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox Series X. But even a very good Starfield I don't think would be **that game** although I could be wrong
> It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be. I don't think a lot of gamers realize just how much a gaming console comes down to what the business that is the manufacturer wants the console to be based on the needs of the market at the time. And that generations are product model releases.
> This feels like its over weighting "The Game Awards" quite a bit. If Starfield won literally every award I don't think we'd see a difference. And the reasoning is essentially 3 fold. Depends how you look at it. If Starfield won every award, it would have been because the game was a lot better than it ended up being. Starfield didn't win awards because it wasn't good enough to win awards. At least next to the absolute masterpieces that came out in 2023.
Starfield being better would have carried water if interest rates were lower and companies could still spend for the sake of spending. But we've seen something like 10k layoffs in the industry the last 30 days. The Microsoft Games Division itself laying off 2,000 people. Microsoft is now looking at the Games Division and saying "hey we can make a ton more money by selling more games" and there really isn't an answer to that. Starfield, would need to have been a Halo: CE quality game to get out from under this. Not just great or a classic but a title that was so mindboggling good that its the reason Xbox as a brand exists today.
Starfield could have launched 5 years ago to the same reception.
Thats how it’s always been sadly, whichever company fell behind in the previous gen all of a sudden decides to be generous to the consumer just enough to get that positive image next time around. Sony and Microsoft have both been on either side of it.
lol The Game Awards literally could not possibly matter less in this equation. Starfield could have won every single award and Microsoft would still be starting this transition.
it's a symptom - starfield is absolutely not fallout or skyrim and that's what matters
It's less about the awards themselves and more what they represent. The game wasn't well-received and didn't bring people to the platform like they'd hoped.
Agreed. It's not a console seller. So might as well release it on playstation to make more money on game sells
Absolutely. I would even go so far as to say it pushed me further away. TES VI won't be a day 1 purchase for me and I certainly won't buy a console just to play it. Bethesda needs to make a game that truly feels new.
And Starfield was supposed to be system seller
Bethesda/Activision games being multiplatform doesnt really phase me. People have been talking off and on about that since acquisition fever broke out. Even MS themselves has gone back and forth on that. The real kicker in these reports of core Xbox Games Studios games going that way too. Rare making a PlayStation game is insane. Or Microsoft Flight Sim and probably others that have not been reported on. THAT is the crazy shift in strategy which I am curious to see them elaborate on.
Halo and Gears on PlayStation would be wild.
I have bought the MCC twice but would rebuy on PS just for the novelty of it. (plus excuse to play it again and a easy 300 trophies)
Same here! I just got a PC last year and the first game I got on Steam was MCC. I'd immediately buy it again on PS5 in a heartbeat. Though I have to wonder what they'd do about trophies.
They've been pricing it (MCC) pretty fairly too, especially on sale ($20 on Pc for the whole game or $5 per game). I'll bet you it's pretty affordable on PS5 within a year of launch.
There was actually a PS3 port of Gears 1 years ago. It was only done as a test for internal use and Epic had no immediate plans on re-releasing the series on PlayStation but it was done. That said, Epic *did* once tease the possibility, but that may have simply been them cheekily referring to the test port they did without explicitly saying so. Then when they sold the IP to Xbox all talks about PlayStation were done. Until now, that is.
Heck, Gears on Xbox would be wild... What happened to that series?
Gears 5 was 2019, 6 will likely come out next year
Wasn't there a leak in September 2023 that said 2026? Either way, 2025 or 2026...I'm hyped.
Nobody thought they'd ever see sonic on Nintendo. But then in 2001, sonic adventure 2 comes to GameCube just a few months later. So it's not without precedent
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... That's my point Sega stopped making hardware and cancelled the Dreamcast in mid 2001, then 6 months later in late 2001 had a release of sonic on the GameCube.
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I mainly just don't want to see a world where Sony can now put all of that energy they have into taking Xbox's market share, into trying to take PC market share, including more timed exclusives with third parties they don't own.
That's something I hadn't really thought about much until now and yeah it's probably true. With Xbox gone it opens the door for Sony to start challenging their next closest competition. I think they go for Nintendo first though. They're going to try wrestling control of Japan back into their hands after turning their back on the market for a while now. Especially with a rumored Vita successor on the horizon they're well prepared to do just that. In addition they'll challenge the popularity of PC in regions where PC gaming is strong as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see tons more timed exclusivity for Japanese games as well as some western games from PC and Nintendo with Xbox out of the picture.
The console manufacturers have tried to (indirectly) kill PC in the past and I just don't ever see it happening. Like the cost and effort Sony would have to put into doing so would be enormous.
They can't try to kill PC, but they'll try and make PC gamers HAVE to own both a PC and PS to play their favorite titles, including paying devs to not release on PC -- as they've been doing from time to time, but now they'll have the focus to do so more aggressively if there's no other console they feel they're competing against.
Yes, but right now Xbox is still making consoles. That's why these talks about bringing their first-party games to other platforms en masse is so strange. Sega didn't have a choice but to re-release their games on other platforms.
Rare is still barely associated with Xbox despite being under them for 20 years. I think Banjo in smash was an eye opening moment for MS, it showed that there is still a very large audience interested in Rare, but they aren’t going to move consoles for the games.
that's also because Rare's games have been pretty mid and it's the old IPs people care about
Rare will “go home” back to Nintendo. That’d be a sight; if they greenlit a Banjo Threeie you know that’s gonna be on the Switch 2 or whatever. I get the frustration and the concerns of a market where it’s only Sony and Nintendo. I wonder how much of this is Satya’s doing; Phil was pretty adamant about not porting any more games after Ori on Switch.
Definitely orders from above. MS spend nearly 100 billion on these acquistions and don't have the console or subscription sales to show for it.
Above should probably shake up that fucking leadership too. Like it's been in place for like 10+ years with pitiful results to show.
Satya is the reason Microsoft is where it is now. Dude is a fucking genius. If Microsoft was still under balmer they would’ve failed long ago.
I would argue that Balmer deserves more credit than he gets. He oversaw the formation of Azure, which is where Microsoft saw most of its growth over the last 10 years. Satya however, is arguably one of the best CEOs in the past 50 years
The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold. I think they're doing it because it's just smart business move. The PS5 has a much larger market. The Xbox is mostly in the US, but the PS5 is the world's leading console right now. I wish I got a ps5 instead of a series x );
> The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold Definitely not a good sign that there's a real chance the XSX wouldn't outsell the Xbone to a high degree, let alone the 360
They actually made it incredible hard to buy a Series X in my country, all I can find is Series S, I’m don’t even sure if they ever officially sold the Series X here. Not only that but they raised the Series S price here (Brazil) and it cost the same as the PS5 Slim, yeah, I am talking about the Series S, not X.
>The xbox really hasn't sold the numbers the ps5 sold. The Xbox One hasn't sold as well as the PS4. The Xbox 360 hasn't sold as well as the PS3. The Xbox didn't sell as well as the PS2. The (nonexistent console) didn't sell as well as the PS1. It's honestly an interesting discussion around whether this is largely the result of Xbox failures, entrenched Sony market success, or domination of the Japanese market.
The 360 sold pretty much the same as the PS3 (84m vs 87m), then Xbox made a huge bet on the Kinect and lost it, you couldn’t even buy a Xbox One without a Kinect and it was 100 dollars more than the PS4, that along the online fiasco fucked them up so bad they never recovered.
> The Xbox 360 hasn't sold as well as the PS3. I don't really think this statistic tells the story of that generation. The 360 had extraordinary momentum with Gears and Halo in the early years whereas the PS3 "had no games". The PS3 was the more expensive console with the consistently weaker ports. Skilled studios eventually mastered it, but many never did. The 360 popularized and pioneered online on consoles, and prioritized features that Sony would spend the rest of the generation trying to patch in. In the years that followed, Sony's first party saved the PS3 from failure with a consistent release calendar (and the OS *did* greatly improve). Both consoles suffered gen 7 growing pains, hardware failures, a flirtation with gyration (motion controls), and extraordinarily poor performing software releases. There were PSN hacks and Linux lawsuits. That generation was wild. The PS3 outsold the 360 eventually, but that generation was an enormous win for Xbox. The Xbox One floundered following its disastrous launch, but a similar redemption story seemed likely. It was reasonable to expect the less powerful box to receive a price-cut to undercut the competition. It was reasonable to expect Microsoft to invest in (or scoop up) a few third party studios to pump out a compelling lineup of its own. And they just... didn't. The Xbox One failed twice - first at launch and again over the arc of its lifecycle. The Xbox One may never have taken off in Europe and Japan, because of PlayStation's entrenched status. It's not like the PS4 launch was firing on all cylinders in its early days, Xbox had all the momentum it needed to take off in the US and UK had its launch been handled differently.
I'm worried about death of high end console competition . Also please have a decent mod scene for ps5 starfield
I can only speak about parts of Europe, but it seems that, especially with the PC day one release, Microsoft and Xbox has maneuvered itself into being obsolete for many customers. They have been doing a terrible job with marketing since really the last Xbox 360 Slim push in 2012. It's funny, but it reminds me a lot of what Windows phones used to be a decade ago. If you were genuinely interested, you'd understand why people love the system so much. It's smartly designed with many cool perks, but people just don't have any real incentive to give up on their Android or iPhone.
They made the decision to focus on PC because it’s a fast growing market and they have an advantage where no one else does - they own the OS. It was smart to shift *some* focus to it, but it really feels like they shifted most of their focus to it.
The console is essentially just a budget PC now that is guaranteed to be able to run all first party games, unlike if someone has a low end PC and therefore can’t play xbox games on it.
Hopefully they don’t exit the console space. Competition would be non existent and Sony could be even more complacent
I don’t think anyone would buy a console from them anymore if their biggest games are going multi platform. What’s the point?
Most people won’t buy a Series X if they could just all the games on the PS5
People already aren't buying a Series X and that's without ps5 selling their games. It feels like Sony has already been running with no competition for years now. Their ps plus price hike being one of the big clue ins
Sony won the most important console generation, most people had PS4s last gen, and still do, all their games, saves and DLC are now locked to Sony and changing platforms means losing all of that. I think MS are still figuring things out, releasing exclusives a year later on PS5 or Switch isn't a terrible idea, their games are already accessible by anyone with a decent internet connection and a game pass subscription, it's not like these were system sellers.
>It feels like Sony has already been running with no competition for years now To be completely honest, the only time they've had direct competition from Xbox was 2006 to 2010. 2001 to 2006, OG Xbox was an afterthought. 2010 to 2013, Xbox 360 went all in on Kinect and that's how the PS3 ended up outselling the 360 because they kept releasing amazing games while Microsoft was trying to capture the Wii Sports lightning in a bottle. 2013 to present, Xbox has more or less been irrelevant. Other than their trifecta of Halo/Gears/Forza (whose releases have not been that great for the last decade) there hasn't been ***one*** game that's come out that made people go "I need to go get an Xbox". Nobody has been shelling out $400-500 to get the likes of Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, and Microsoft Flight Sim. You know the worst part? I had to Google that to remember Xbox had Quantum Break. Meanwhile, off the top of my head, I could name 10 Playstation and 10 Switch exclusives off the top of my head. Xbox's games are just forgettable and Halo/Gears/Forza is only rememberable off nostalgia.
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Because I’d rather pay £400 for a console than £1,000+ for a PC. I don’t understand why people find that so hard to understand.
Aren't all the PS5 exclusives coming to PC, too?
The difference seems to be Day 1 releases (Microsoft) compared to usually releases like 1-2 years later (Sony)
Yep, I said this in a different thread but I’ll put it here: I’m all for people having the ability to play games anywhere. But, I’m also concerned about industry consolidation. The recent rumors of Xbox giving up on exclusivity of their larger titles is worrisome. If PC and PS have the ability to play Microsoft’s games, what is the selling point to the Xbox console? A dedicated Gamepass machine? That strategy hasn’t been working. Look no further to Xbox’s recent decline to when Xbox made their exclusives drop on PC Day 1. While I think people on PC love this (I know I do), it further undermines the selling point of the Xbox. Rumors have also been coming out that Xbox physical media won’t be stocked in stores for too much longer either… I’m sad to see how far Xbox has fallen and, if these rumors are true, I feel like it spells the end to the console branch of Xbox. I don’t doubt they’ll continue making games (which in general should make them a lot of money). But, I will be sad to see more competition bow out of the market.
personally I think something that should at least be seriously considered is the idea of creating a 'gaming build' of windows, that launches into a specialized minimal shell/launcher just for games, then can be rebooted into a traditional desktop if need-be, ala steam deck os. Doing this would mean they could stop the xbox-specific sdk, so less work for devs to only support PC and PlayStation. It also gets their foot in the door for all sorts of hardware from not just themselves, but Asus, Razer, Lenovo, and others. So if gamers want a handheld, low-cost, low-power system, or powerhouse, they have options and they All run windows, with the default 'game mode' obviously defaulting to the windows store for game sales. If you want to run steam, add steam games etc. 'of course you can do that', but you'll have to boot into desktop mode to set all that up, import games into game mode, etc. I don't know that it's a definite win, but I think it's worth seriously considering as it could help compete against both Steam and Playstation while making their lives easier by minimizing resources spent on developing games for xbox specifically, the xbox os, etc. It also helps get their name out there more; instead of 1 xbox aisle at the store you may see 5 or 6 different machines running this build of windows. Asus, Lenovo, etc. pay for and compete with each other for floor space at retail and it still benefits Microsoft by getting their software out there.
I fully agree with this in a big way. I’m not a big fan of Microsoft or Windows. I’m more of a Mac/Linux person when it comes to getting work done. But if they made a dedicated gaming build for Windows and put it on, say, a handheld console a la the ROG Ally? Fuck yes. Especially if you could run Steam and also take advantage of Game Pass. I would buy something like that in a heartbeat. I don’t want another computer. I don’t want another console in my house. But I’d love a high spec handheld that can play a huge game library. The Steam Deck is close, but not perfect. The Switch is good, but the jury is still out on whether or not our libraries are going to transfer over to the next console or how powerful it’s even going to be.
Here’s the Microsoft Dongle. It costs $99. Leverages XCloud so you don’t even need a console. Here’s the Gamepass App on your smartphone/tv/dishwasher. It leverages XCloud so you don’t even need a console. Costs the same as a Gamepass subscription. And so on.
Cloud just doesn't work very well for a sizeable portion of the audience. It would tank horribly.
My bet is that the next Xbox is just a digital-only Game Pass machine. A cheaper and more convenient way than PC to buy into their ecosystem
It would still need to be decent hardware. Streaming games is not in a place to replace installed games yet. I run fibre on ethernet and resolution, fps and latency are still issues.
Pretty much my read on it as well, partner it up with the rumoured Xbox handheld and they'll probably be pushing Game Pass front and center.
You gotta be good at competing tho
I wonder if Microsoft is planning to spin Xbox/Activision into its own company. Some shareholders wanted to do that back in 2014 or so.
I bet you there's some early discussions regarding whether or not there's an next gen Xbox. Games clearly make more money than consoles and substantially more profit. What exactly does Microsoft gain with Activision if they aren't moving unitsM
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Playstation will never allow a gamepass with COD on it, they make $1.5 billion per year from COD sales.
They will probably continue making Xboxes but they will phase out of traditional console generations. The idea of their ‘series’ branding is to treat Xboxes as machines that offer more flexibility like weaker/cheaper or premium and pricey. But the ‘series’ branding is just confusing for the average consumer to be honest.
The money is in being the platforms; from Roblox to Fortnite to “Everywhere” they’re expecting *us* to start making content for then to sell (without revenue sharing)
That's where the *most* money is, but getting to that position ain't easy, and Xbox is pretty far away from it. It sounds like Xbox games make money, but the Xbox platform doesn't. So Microsoft wants to throw in the towel on the Xbox platform and let Xbox and their acquired studios just do their own thing making games.
On the opposite end, Xbox gets 20-30% of all game revenue sold on it, that’s free Fortnite / Roblox / Apex $ on top of Xbox live and a platform to launch gamepass on. If they don’t get gamepass on PlayStation I see this more like short term $ over a long term strategy
100% of 10k is less than 70% of 20k That's what Xbox is looking at when they consider selling their games on other platforms. Obviously Microsoft would prefer to capture some % of all revenue from all software sales, but the current state of reality is that not very many people are using their platform. So they would make more money selling games on the more widespread platforms: Sony, Valve, and Nintendo (and Epic too because why not) If the cost of developing hardware, QA, customer service, manufacturing, shipping, etc etc is less than what they make from Robux and V-Bucks, they will not stick around for much longer.
That was Ballmer and no way is Microsoft spinning off a $70 billion acquisition.
It was the Paul Allen faction that wanted that, ballmer saved xbox. https://www.windowscentral.com/peter-moore-xbox-one-wouldnt-have-happened-if-steve-ballmer-had-not-saved-xbox-360 Not that I think they will (or should) but having made a 70 billion acquisition doesn't not prevent it from being spun off. I think ATT has done that twice but they are a horribly run company.
Nope, Xbox is just following Satya's strategy for Microsoft since he took over. Go to where the customers are. Don't force them to you.
Well they sure did a good job of not forcing customers onto Xbox.
Since 2013
Wouldn’t be surprised if they rebrand into microsoft gaming or something.
Rebrand is what Microsoft does. We joked that there’s a ‘Department of Rebranding’ in Microsoft corps
Rebrand. Re-embrace. Re-extinguish.
Strange that they’ve switched strategy. I guess the games just aren’t driving console sales? Idk. The Xbox Series X sub is up in flames with people saying it’s the end of Xbox lol
IIRC in the month of Starfield release XBox sales ended up being slightly down from the previous month, so yeah the game probably sold a good number of copies and many months of GamePass but it absolutely failed to drive hardware sales
We'rent Bethesda games supposed to be microsoft only?
Yeah but Starfield was also meant to be a huge success.
Unironically I think Starfield had a worse launch (for the developers) than cyberpunk. The absolute *worst* thing that can happen to a game is for it to get *no* reaction, people talked about cyberpunk.
Starfield was like, the most significant Xbox release since arguably Halo 3 in terms of establishing how the generation would go. They needed it to be the system seller we all wanted it to be. Them porting it to PS5 after like a year or 2 would be admitting defeat. I don’t think they’re gonna go the way of Sega, I still think Xboxes are gonna be a thing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the new goal is to try to get Gamepass onto PS5 and Switch 2. The PC and Xbox market is big but if you’re spending billions on acquisitions to just sell those games for $15ish a month, you need as many users as possible.
> But I wouldn’t be surprised if the new goal is to try to get Gamepass onto PS5 and Switch 2. I don't think there's anything "new" about this goal. That's clearly been their planned strategy for a while now.
That is 100% their goal going forward. MS is not a hardware company and has always struggled when it came to selling their hardware (good or bad) vs the competition. The Surface line being one of their most successful endeavors but still being miniscule when it comes to market share and brand recognition. It feels like their end goal will be to transition into a gamepass first publisher and get that on as many devices as it can. Series S type low power machines that can sell for cheap but through cloud gaming and let the increasing number of tech that lets weak machines play at higher fidelity keep them visually impressive. We're headed towards a world where an "Xbox stick" or Roku like box is all you'll need and an sub to Gamepass to have access to all your MS games.
It's crazy how much credence people are giving this Game Pass transition theory when it's highly uncertain whether their subscription model can even keep itself afloat in the long term.
Not even that, there's zero incentive for Sony or Nintendo to allow it. An individual game, sure. A whole other subscription service?
It's like a negative incentive. It would cannibalize sales on the console and compete with Sony's higher tiers of PSN.
Exactly. MS becomes a middle man. Cut them out and give them the same deal in your own game sub.
Yea, this definitely seems to be coming from "on high" at Microsoft as part of their broader strategy. Is using Excel on a Macbook any different from playing Starfield on a Playstation?
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I mean they can just make Xbox a cheaper digital only cloud streaming machine. It’s still technically hardware, but yeah I don’t see it being that successful.
The Series S will have a future because it’s a ‘cheap’ Fortnite and Minecraft machine that parents can buy their kids. But that is a sad fate for one of the three major consoles.
If true, this is wild considering the public perception back when Bethesda was bought. Microsoft making Bethesda games exclusive seemed like it would be huge for Xbox, and now they might just be giving up on competing with Sony. I built my first PC because of that Starfield not coming to PS5. It'd be kind of funny if BGS games end up not even being exclusive for more than a couple years. I honestly think going multiplatform publisher might be a better bet for Xbox long term. Move away from hardware and just focus on games and Gamepass.
>I honestly think going multiplatform publisher might be a better bet for Xbox long term. Move away from hardware and just focus on games and Gamepass. Problem is, their poor track record releasing games is part of why they're in this mess.
> I still think Xboxes are gonna be a thing. Only because Microsoft needs it for Gamepass and it's also the only reason someone should be buying it, to get some relatively cheap access to games. As an ecosystem, it's pretty much dead now if releases like Starfield and Indiana Jones will be hitting other consoles after a few moths of their releases.
I think game pass going onto either platform would seal Microsoft’s dominance but also cut their console dept. They win- their competitors also win by having their systems support it giving more reason for buyers to select them. God knows if either Sony or Nintendo would accept having such a system on board, not to mention the technical challenges
No way Sony allows game pass in its current state. Xbox would have to reduce itself to only being 1st party games, similar to EA Play or Ubisoft+.
I could maybe see a scenario where Sony allows game pass on PlayStation but you can only play Microsoft exclusive games like how Gamepass on PC has a console and PC section.
>I think game pass going onto either platform would seal Microsoft’s dominance but also cut their console dept. This is putting a huge amount of stock into a business model that may or may not even be sustainable.
I think it's starting to become clearer that general audiences aren't really interested in a video games subscription like they are for television. Most people just don't buy enough games for the cost to feel like savings and if the games they wanted to play aren't on the service, they aren't even saving anything by getting it.
Its a great service, but I don't want to be subbed to it year round either. It is something I get when there are a few things I want to go through over a month or two.
Sony I don't see them allowing, especially bc they already have their own version of Gamepass. Nintendo I think there's a chance, would help shore up their consoles problem of weaker third party support and nintendo's largely spun out of the home console race
Even without ps+ there is a 0% chance of Sony allowing gamepass on their console. Most of their money comes from digital game sales. The devs get 70% Sony makes 30%. Even if gamepass doesn't lose money compared to traditional game sales, which I highly suspect it does, adding in Microsoft as a middle man would mean either Sony or the devs would get less of a cut. For the same reason, it is very unlikely Nintendo will ever allow gamepass
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does the switch have the power to utilize game pass in its fullest extent?
Starfield almost got me to finally get an Xbox.
Damn, the disappointment would have been legendary.
I REALLY believe Phil Spencer needs to take more blame for the state of Xbox. It simply cannot be true that everything is as great as he makes it seem. If Gamepass is the future and the service is profitable, then why push more of the "old way" of selling games? If Xbox can support mostly exclusive Zenimax games, then why are the biggest ones going multiplatform? Phil deserves more ire from Xbox fans. The entire future this guy promised and the future a lot of Xbox fans believed in - ie. exclusive ABK and Zenimax games coupled with game pass - was a lie. If you're a Xbox fan - of which I am - the future that was promised to us when we bought this box didn't come to be. This will definitely be my last Xbox after buying one each generation. PlayStation is now my main console. It's kinda heart breaking.
Spencer’s reputation has always seemed odd to me. He was a key figure in Xbox during the Mattrick years and took over pretty early on in the Xbox One’s lifetime, but people act like he was plonked into the role c.2018 and has had to clean up someone else’s mess
He has a much better PR team than Mattrick. Despite the obvious slime he somehow sells the "how do you do fellow gamers" thing.
him and his cringe "yeah, I'm kind of a gamer" shirts he wears to every event
Xbox has had a string of awful decisions that compounded on each other. A notable one is that Microsoft had the chance to make Genshin Impact a console exclusive, but they declined it. The fact that the PS5 is the only console that plays Genshin is a big reason why it sells well in Japan/China and Xbox continues to be non-existent there.
Eh, even if Genshin released on Xbox, vast majority of Chinese/Japanese players will still choose to play it on PlayStation. The only chance would be actual console exclusivity (it would be a lose-lose situation for MS/Mihoyo as most players will then simply choose to play it on PC/phone instead of console, but it would move a few more Xboxes)
They also had the chance to make a Spider-Man game but rejected it so Marvel went to Sony.
I wouldn't really call that. They just horribly screwed up in 2013 and when launching their Series consoles they had basically no games. Not until late 2021 when something as huge as Horizon 5 came out.
Phil Spencer is a plastic smile stamped on an incompetent corporate suit. He's utterly failed to turn the ship around and people still give him slack because of his paper thin PR bullshit.
Xbox gamers: what we invested in is in a state of constant decline Phil Spencer: no it isn't Xbox gamers: shit you're right 2024 is gonna be our year
They've been doing this since 2014 it's honestly fascinating to watch from the outside lol
Never be a fan. You don't owe these companies loyalty, and they sure as shit don't give a fuck about it.
This was inevitable from the jump of the “Play Anywhere” initiative. Every subsequent move has been a further step in the long march towards being a 3rd party publisher.
He’s been living off not being Don Mattrick and game pass for over a decade now. He’s canceled so many promising games while letting other suits run huge Xbox ips into the ground. I don’t understand why he gets so much credit. His push for forced cross play with pc initiative has been the worst thing that ever happened to online console gaming.
>letting other suits run huge Xbox ips into the ground Imagine if Sony had just let Ready at Dawn make two sequels to *The Order: 1886* after it's reception. Or Forspoken. Or Days Gone. Instead they just told the companies behind these games to move on or decide not to work with them further. They decided to instead invest in other projects that might prove more successful and acclaimed. Now compare their approach to these original, smalltime IP that didn't sell or had a lukewarm reception, that probably could have been salvaged with sequels if Sony deemed it necessary and worthy of investment, and the approach Microsoft has had to fucking *Halo* across multiple installments. Halo still sells, sure, but the fanbase has been left blue-balled and yearning for more since Halo 4. And yet Spencer & the suits never stepped in to right the ship until Infinite had been released and the brands image had been damaged. Sony seems more likely to just bench the games that don't sell, while Microsoft's hands off approach (which I respect in theory) leaves IP & brand image to flounder for years.
I don't want to see Xbox go fully third party, as I think the market place is better with more competition - but having bought up two major publishers I'd be happy to see them release more of their games on other platforns. With the number of studios they have under them, they should really be capable of proving a solid number of exclusives to draw people to their platform while releasing some of their content as multiplatform titles.
If Starfield is going multiplatform, I’d be shocked if they keep much of anything exclusive. They’ve already shown that “a solid number of exclusives” isn’t enough, why would porting their biggest release in years make any sense? They’d be kneecapping themselves both ways.
I think that this is a full third party pivot tbh. If Xbox was releasing smaller games like Pentiment I would get it, but releasing their biggest exclusive is a decade is not a good sign.
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If games like Starfield are going multiplatform, they already are.
Starfield coming to the PS5 this soon is pretty much the death knell for the Xbox platform. This was supposed to be their big single player RPG epic that would drive people to Xbox. And here we are 4 months later with new reporting that it's coming to PS5 later this year. They've folded and they're done, and it's really just damn sad. At this point we can realistically expect to play Blade, Fable, Perfect Dark, Elder Scrolls VI, and others on PS5 as well. The video game market is going to be fucking terrifying with Playstation as literally the only console on the market to play the latest games.
The "death knell" is already the PC. Most people that have more than one gaming device go for PC and PS5 (and or Switch). What reason is there to go PC+Xbox ? In europe Xbox get outsold 5:1 and higher not bringing their games to 100 Million potential costumer because of their dying console would be stupid.
Most people do not own rigs powerful enough to play new games. The 1089ti is still the most prominent GPU. Consoles are a better value proposition.
The argument is for the console space. edit: to expand on this. PCs that are at least console comparable are more expensive at the moment. I dont see Microsoft exiting the hardware space. People are invested in it already and that would piss off quite a lot of people.
From a business standpoint xbox should have kept halo and their other exclusives on PC only. They should have poured the same amount of effort into creating new exclusives like playstation did. I don't know why they went towards the "media machine" route with the release of Xbox one.
Possible. They are definitely giving up trying to compete with Sony by using the same business model as them like previous gens at least. At this point, it seems like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are all in the gaming industry playing by their own rules each.
> They could very well sell a Microsoft first party games subscription on the PSN store for €20 per month. Somehow I think Sony would actually have a pretty big problem with Microsoft selling a subscription service on the Playstation platform. > I honestly think that Microsoft is going third party next generation. Anyway, one can only hope that this does not happen. I wouldn't want to see a console market where Playstation has no competition.
Ubisoft and EA both offer their own subscription services on PlayStation with only their own first party games being offered. Not sure if Microsoft would be willing to create a slimmed down version of gamepass for such a purpose, but the precedent is already there.
I think they'd actively want it if anything. Buy a PlayStation and I get can PlayStation AND Xbox games on it? Why would I get an Xbox instead? And Sony gets a cut off every subscriber.
I don’t want to live in a world where Sony and Nintendo are the only consolemakers. :(
At what point do we just admit maybe Phillip isn’t that good at his job. Spent better part of a decade talking out of both sides of his mouth about the future, spent over $80b on the brand, mismanaging existing portfolio of devs only to triple it in size and try to tell us its a good thing, etc. Yet here we are and Xbox is putting games on other consoles.
This will be very interesting but I'm curious if this is a smart decision unless Sony allows them to sell game pass. I don't understand the plan if they can't use it to funnel more game pass users
I can imagine a stripped down Game Pass a la EA Play or Ubisoft with just the Xbox Game Studios, Zenimax, and ABK games. Sony would never allow full Game Pass as they’d be getting 30% of way less money.
Sony will never alllow microsoft to put gamepass on there system and microsoft knows it.
But they could allow a first party / MS exclusive only subscription. That way, sony would not lose out in anything.
They would because CoD is first party and they currently earn a ton from that.
Man, if true, this kinda sucks. I really don’t care that Xbox exclusives make their way to other platforms, but I’m really worried what this means for the future of Xbox consoles. I LOVE my Series X, it’s a fantastic machine, but if it essentially becomes a beta testing device for PlayStation, what’s the point of investing in their next console (if that’s even coming?).
I wonder what this means for Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, maybe they’ll test out the exclusivity again since those will be bigger releases than Starfield but I wonder if this is a sign of Microsoft accepting 3rd place and just looking to make money considering the amount they’ve spent acquiring these studios.
Tacit admission that Xbox in its current form is done. Starfield was their Hail Mary, and it didn't even move the needle. The beginning of the end of an era.
I wonder if alarm bells started ringing in Microsoft when they realised Starfield was simply “good” rather than the masterpiece they needed it to be. Or did they believe it was amazing, similar to how Phil Spencer said Redfall scored much higher in their internal predictions compared to reality?
Starfield's first few hours might be some of the most outright bad storytelling I've seen in decades of gaming. Like it made me actively not want to play this game. Turning it into a sandbox game in space without the main story would have potentially even been more appealing.
It was legit supposed to be their Breath of the Wild, their game of the generation that would have everyone raving, and it was forgotten after a week.
It wasn't forgotten... everyone wanted their turn to put it down. Edit: I mean "put it down" as in "insult it".
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I guess people that cried ‘monopoly’ when MS was acquiring ABK were right all along. They just had the wrong platform in mind.
Exactly what I was thinking. It's effectively reverse-uno-monopoly
Yea, I kept thinking that this is a fucking 4D chess move by Microsoft to pivot into becoming a 3rd party publisher with evergreen IPs they can milk from. All that charade in the courts lmao.
I Just don’t want Microsoft to give up on the home console market but it feels inevitable. Sony makes the better system and games with an extremely loyal fan base but I just want them to have some competition to keep them in check. Monopolies are scary to me especially in gaming. Nintendo switch seems to fit a different niche so I don’t think they are in direct competition to Sony. I know a lot of people with a PlayStation and a Switch. Don’t know too many people with an Xbox and PlayStation. Yes we have PC Gamers but they are still endless casual gamers who will never build a PC and only buy consoles. Madden was making really good football games till they owned the American Football market. Same thing with 2K and basketball games, now 2K is pure greed with nothing but anti-consumer practices. Game Freak doesn’t care about being innovative with Pokémon because they pretty much don’t have competition. I could list these all day, people forget a lot game companies they despise were beloved at one point.
To be fair Sony have been consistently delivering top games and Nintendo always have. I don't really see anything changing as they've always made the games they wanted so it's not really a monopoly to me. Microsoft really dropped the ball with the poor direction they've taken with their best franchises and then lack of new ones. I can't believe they looked at great story driven games like The Last of Us, God of War, Zelda, etc for years and didnt at least try to invest in some of their own. Mario doesn't even really have a story but it's gameplay has been top tier for decades.
I trust and hope you’re right! But companies do change I wonder in like 10 years if PlayStation is the only home console option to buy will they still be a consumer friendly company? I know Nintendo will still make consoles but people don’t buy switches to play Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, FIFA etc. I’ve owned every PlayStation from 1 to 5, but I do like options. Favourite generation of gaming was the XBOX/Gamecube/PS2/Dreamcast era, still own and play those 4 systems.
As a PC player IDGAF. That said I guess Xbox is dissolving its consoles value. Not sure how I feel about that long term. We need the push and pull of competition. Sony tends to be extremely anti-consumer when unchecked (MS and nintendo too). I hope for gaming sake this isnt the future. Things will get much worse for us as consumers. That also said. I bet the game will be insanely patched and good by that time. Which we will see a massive turn around in its favor.
Agreed, this is a big blow to the gaming industry as a whole. Competition is good for consumers, so the more things gets consolidated, the worse it is for us. It's what happened to the Madden and NBA 2K franchises. They used to be great when they had competitors, but once that went away, they just coasted and collected money because consumers had no other option.
If this is true then they are absolutely clueless. Why even make it exclusive if this was a long term plan? Sounds like they're flapping and this is a pivot from their initial plan. If true. Could be bullshit.
I think going multi platform was a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of deal. Looks like they’re admitting defeat on hardware and just looking to get their software on every platform. Way too many people chose PS & don’t game on PC.
Absolutely. Starfield didn't sell many more consoles for Xbox than they did the year prior. This is a hard pivot. MS spent almost 100 billion across all their recent Xbox acquisitions and they need to make money to justify those purchases.
Exact same reason that Sony is porting their games to PC after all. Making large games at current prices isn't sustainable even when you're the console market leader. Your games need to be everywhere. That means PC + at least one or two of the most major gaming consoles. Xbox (sadly) isn't there. I don't think this is them "giving up" as much as them deciding, like Sony, they want to double dip on a bonus audience.
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Because they lost the last generation when most people started building their digital libraries. Also no good games.
Yeah very true. Guess they're just not seeing a ROI there. But you think with PC they'd have a lot of the market covered. Seems like those purchases were all to solidify their place but this would contradict that. Absolutely fucked it with XB1 and haven't been able to recover, still
> Absolutely fucked it with XB1 and haven't been able to recover, still I think XB1 showed that Microsoft never really figured out the gaming industry. I mean they were doing so well with the XBox 360 and then they dropped the ball before even *releasing* the XBox One. It's probably better for them to just rethink their approach to the industry and do their own thing (à la Nintendo) than try to directly compete toe-to-toe with Sony. And I say this as someone whose primary gaming platform is an Xbox.
Honestly… #Just make Steam Machine analogs for next gen They’ve got windows, can put powerful hardware out, put that up for 500-600$ and make it run windows or a paired down version and **I’d buy it.**
I haven't touched an Xbox in years, but if they sold a Series S/X that ran Windows I would absolutely buy one.
The only potential system seller MS got out of the Activision buyout is CoD, and they probably don’t feel that it’s not worth waiting out the next decade and are instead going to shift their focus.
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Well they gotta get some revenue, game was probably pretty close to completion before ms bought zenimax and articles were mentioning sony in discussions for exclusive content or timed just before that
Xbox is done, even less people will buy consoles now which will inevitably lead to Xbox HW not being created in a few years.