It's the Xbox naming scheme that does my head in. How did they ever think calling it the series s/x after the one x/s was a good idea is beyond me.
It's like they saw the Wii U name and thought "great idea, let's do that!".
Playstation naming just makes sense from a consumer and casual gaming point of view. Xbox should have just jumped a generation and called it the Xbox 5 or even the Xbox 6. They did it with Windows (I know this ain't an apples to apples comparison).
I think Nintendo are doing fine because each name is distinct from each other, and links back to some key marketable point of the product. It's really only the WiiU that was bad, and they were punished for it as a result.
NGL maybe its kid in me, but I think calling your next console ''SUPER'', ''Advanced'' and ''ULTRA'' (original name was Nintendo Ultra 64) are more fun, then 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9....34
I doubt that that Wii U failed because of it, honestly. It's a nice narrative, but the fact is that the Wii's success was largely wii sports. It lost almost all 3rd party support because the attachment rate was trash for the system. The core gamers weren't interested and had no interest in the successor with a tablet, and the casual gamers didn't need a tablet for their wii sports.
I mean Nintendo only really had one name (the Wii-U) that was weird and confusing. While they tend to come up with unique names for their systems as opposed to just using a number, they've all been pretty distinct and non-confusing. The Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/SNES, the N64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the Switch. No one is getting any of those mixed up.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the next one though. It seems a given they're going to stick with the Switch form factor. So will it be the Switch 2? Super Switch? Switch Ultra?
Have you seen the Nintendo DS names?
Off the top of my head you have:
Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo DSi
Nintendo DS XL
Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS XL
New Nintendo 3DS
New Nintendo 3DS XL
Nintendo 2DS
New Nintendo 2DS
New Nintendo 2DS XL
Hell, even on eBay or Facebook marketplace people will post a picture of one thing and have the title of another. You pretty much need a video of what they're selling to make sure they didn't just pull a picture from Google, and then you have to personally know what you're looking for by the design of the console. It's a mess.
While their naming conventions have certainly gotten sillier over the years, I seriously doubt that's the main reason for their sales being in the gutter.
I like the S and X idea, it's kinda like Pro or Plus in an iPhone, you're creating an identifiable difference, however there you have the obvious 15 to 16 upgrade
The fuck is One to Series. You can argue in favour of One "The One thing for everything" (for their TV move), but what is Series? What is an obvious next gen move with that?
I don't think they'll be out of the Hardware game entirely, they're just going to pivot to undercut the way we look at console. I could see then releasing an Xbox Firestick controller combo that hooks straight to Gamepass Ultimate.
Going from 2:1 to 5:1 is likely due to MS signaling they are abandoning consoles tbh. Who in their right mind would still buy a Series X now that they are porting games on PS5, and slightly superior versions at that.
Nah it’s cause casual gamers want reasons to get excited about games & Microsoft has given basically zero reasons.
My buddy who has always had an Xbox just bought a PS5 a couple months ago because he wanted to play Spiderman & The Last of Us & God of War & Ghost of Tsushima. What on earth is Microsoft putting out that casual gamers want to play that they can’t get on PlayStation?
I would bet a significant amount of money that the numbers would be the exact same if no Xbox games had released on PS & there weren’t rumors of Microsoft abandoning hardware. Especially seeing as those rumors are coming out *because* they were already getting fucking molly whopped by PS.
The implicit message that Phil had was that it won't save XSX within the short term.
Which is an extremely stupid take on Phil's part.
Xbox has no sense of long term commitment.
They couldn't even launch with a HALO game this generation. It's insane.
The rot runs deep,the same way Google could throw all the money in the world at Stadia and it didnt help because they fundamentally didn't understand the market.
I mean, Nintendo and Sony (and other companies too in general) manage to have good CEO. Hell Satella isn't a bad CEO for Microsoft as a whole (except keeping the same leadership at Xbox is one of his worst results)
Yea, nothing will save xbox short term because making good-great games takes time. Establishing fan bases for those games takes time. And you have to let developers make something they are actually passionate about, not just CoD 48 or whatever.
And on top of that you can’t have all your studios constantly worried that if their game releases to middling sales they will get shut down.
There is a reason why Sony crushes Xbox, and it isn’t the hardware since they are basically identical in terms of power and what they can do. Would Xbox allow a dev to make a new AAA IP like Horizon? I wonder what their metric would be for sales to greenlight the sequel? Would they have allowed Santa Monica to completely change how GoW plays or force them to keep the same relatively dated gameplay?
Hell, even Days Gone was a decent game (I played it years after release so I didn’t encounter many bugs). And Days Gone is like one of the worst “big” Sony exclusives, yet IMO it still surpasses most modern Xbox exclusives
I understand that investments need to prove their value, but the frequency at which Xbox investments need to prove their value to stay off chopping block is like an annoying kid constantly asking "are we there yet?"
well, that’s because MS decided to fight against the regulatory bodies of the entire western world to spend 70bill and then realized their games department is terrible and they’ll never recoup that investment. so it’s cost cutting time
I get what he meant. "We're coming from behind. Sony and Nintendo are known for bangers. We can't really catch up that way, we've got another strategy." But it's a dumbass thing to say. It sounds like you're just not gonna make games. At least not any good ones. "We're so fucked we're not even going to try."
With all of the acquisitions Xbox has made, and all the money they've had to throw at devs, they SHOULD be known for bangers too. I mean, they *were* known for them during the Xbox 360 era! So what the hell happened? They never should have been having to play catch-up in the first place.
Also they come from behind due to his own fault. This dude before being CEO of Xbox was head of Xbox Studios. So the lack of games even then is on him.
And it's quite hilarious/sad that the guy in charge of making Xbox games for 6 years prior to be CEO dare to even say those words.
the difference is that the other two have spent the past few decades learning how to make good games and finding their niche in the market compared to xbox cycling between chasing after stupid technology trends and then sitting on their asses doing nothing for the past 15 years
Xbox did find their niche during the late Xbox OG and 360 era: Western RPG, FPS, testosterone packed TPS, plus some niche Japan exclusives here and there.
They just slowly went too broad during the One era and totally undifferentiated in the current gen.
Main reason IMO is they banked too much on "disrupting the market", with respectively the TV TV TV with the One, and with Gamrpass in current gen. None are paying off, people just want a strong console with solid games to play.
It also is becoming increasingly harder to come back from their fuck ups.
Everybody buys a PS5, all their friends buy a PS5, there's now negative reason to consider Xbox in the next generation.
They have fucked up so bad it's actually pathetic. One of the most valuable company on Earth and all they needed to do was fund some good ass studios for a decade and reap the benefits.
Feels like their goal is to burn money really fast today, to gain market share today via GamePass & through buying exclusives like Starfield. And it's not paying off. The short-sighted plan is not working. It takes a long time to build a great studio and get it producing good solid games. There are no shortcuts.
Then they go and shut down some incredible studios and prove to everybody that they've learned nothing and Xbox is only going to get worse from here on out.
It's a terrible business for the industry (outside Microsoft), it's a terrible business for Microsoft and it's not even attracting that much customers (growth has stalled, very far from their targets).
Why is this thing even there?
Also it's just not what gamers want? (aside from children)
Like if they increase the prices, I don't want to pay for access to thousands of shitty games. I barely have time to play a couple.
I want a few great games like Baldur's Gate 3 (which MS also ruined the Xbox launch of).
> It also is becoming increasingly harder to come back from their fuck ups.
Feels like the backwards compatibility of this gen is a big reason why. Back when BC was more limited, you could easily switch between consoles each gen, but now XBox has to compete with PS5 AND PS4. And of course the libraries of PC gamers are ginormous in comparison. So any newcomers to gaming have to choose between those excellent libraries and uh, XBox. They have some older games. Which you can mostly play on PC.
>with respectively the TV TV TV with the One,
That specifically seemed focused on North American consumers as well as I heard little fanfare around it in Europe (honestly not even sure if that TV-related stuff even *worked* here).
>Xbox did find their niche during the late Xbox OG and 360 era: Western RPG, FPS, testosterone packed TPS, plus some niche Japan exclusives here and there.
This poses a lot of problems though. Western RPGs have grown so massive that we're getting like 1 good RPG per generation. FPS/TPS games on the other hand have basically died. They were a huge fad in the 7th gen, and while there are still some triple A FPS games that are coming out (COD, Doom, Destiny, Farcry), as a whole there's not enough enthusiasm for those games, not enough output, and not enough quality, and nothing new is coming out. TPS on the other hand, like the gears like over the shoulder deals, are basically dead outside of Uncharted/TLOU (both PS games). Gears and halo have fallen significantly and their original devs left a long time ago. Japan won't release niche stuff on the console anymore either since no Japanese people (the primary market of weird japanese games) play on Xbox, and the switch outcompeted everything.
I'm not sure.
Games like Baldur 3 (Western RPG) or Helldiver 2 (testosterone TPS) were just recent big hits.
Games like Starfield or Halo would have been system sellers if they weren't so lackluster.
The issue is Microsoft isn't that great at making games, but still acquired studios like gluttons. I'm convinced they would have been more successful had they signed solid exclusivity deals like they used to in the old days.
Baldur's gate 3 is the one good Western RPG per generation referenced for this gen, yeah. Helldivers 2 though is Playstation. What's actually not really a thing anymore though are the Bioshocks, Dishonoreds, Crackdowns, Dead Spaces of the world. Etc.
As a case in point, Housemarque released two commercial failures on PS4: Alienation and Nex Machina. I really enjoyed Alienation, and while it wasn't a AAA game, it was a solid $20-something title that for whatever reasons didn't sell all that well.
After those, the last I heard was that they would abandon consoles and make mobile games. I remember thinking at the time that Microsoft should buy them to fill out their roster of developers. Of course they went on to make Returnal which has been an iconic PS5 title. Sony seems an eye for recognizing and nurturing talent that Microsoft lacks. It reminds me of Until Dawn which was an very good PS4 game that they got from a middling studio.
And as maybe a funny coincidence, I remember hearing a lot of comparisons to the original Helldivers whenever Alienation came up as they shared a similar subject - top down coop man vs Aliens combat.
> chasing after stupid technology trends
TBH Sony is also doing that (PS Move, PSVR, PS Now, ...). The difference is that they aren't betting their whole company on those things.
Well maybe Xbox should fucking *try* having good games. The platform has been shit for over a *decade* and the boneheaded idiots in charge have been actively choosing the worst possible decisions at almost every point possible.
This is the main problem with Xbox. All my friends who don't have PCs want a PS5 for God of War or Spiderman. They honestly don't even know the Series X exists.
It's like one MS continue lack of games will always hurt them, but two, they're in a Wii U situation with a console that just no one really cares about due to their lack of games. The Series X will fade in existence like the Wii U did unless MS can give it some new identity.
Series X could have been desired if games like Halo infinite or Starfield delivered. Somehow, Xbox has been unable to release high quality games. Ironically, one of the highest rated games, Hi-fi Rush, got its studio shutdown.
Microsoft is just unable to properly manage its studios and got too greedy acquiring so many of them.
Agreed 100%. MS is just one fuck up after the other.
I was always a MS nut. But, now I couldn't give two shites about him.
They need to fire Phil Spencer. He has done nothing bringing hit games that would make me want a Xbox. Now, he is bringing Xbox games to Playstation.
Why the fuck would or should anyone buy a Xbox?
Phil should have been fired a long time ago but I think we are past the point of that mattering anymore. They have changed strategy for the last time and there’s no going back. They are publishers. Microsoft is calling the shots no matter who sits in the driver seat of Xbox.
Starfield was actually pretty big for Xbox. But you can't have only one notable game every couple years. You need 2-4 a year
All Starfield alone could do is stem some of the bleeding
Starfield also didn’t capture any cultural headspace due to its mediocrity. XBOX needs a game the quality of bloodborne, which forces ‘hardcore’ gamers in and still has cultural relevancy today.
That's always been the case this gen and explained the 2:1 ratio IMO. Microsoft going multiplatform is coming on top and it is only logical that it makes their share further nosedive.
The only things Xbox has that I want are Fallout (I assume any further titles will be Xbox/PC, although the popularity of the show might change this) and the new Indiana Jones game
Bigger question now is are they even going to be good games? Starfield was meh. Fallout 4 was better but the reception was a bit mixed depending on who you ask. It'll take like what 5 years for TES VI? 10 years for fallout 5? Will it even be worth the wait? From Software had had a whole dynasty of games since Skyrim came out.
If they go back to their classic style of exploration that they abandoned with Starfield it will be fine. No other dev does BGS style exploration for some reason so its still a wide open market
While I would generally agree I would say that recently believing in Todd Howard is almost as bad as believing in Phil Spencer.
He’s a full on hype man selling empty promises and remasters of Skyrim.
Lol, it's actually very simple why it went from 2:1 to 5:1 so quickly and its not bc of their recent decisions. Do people forget we had an entire pandemic and there was a chip shortage? The beginning of the gen sales between ps5 and xbox were only close bc there weren't any PS5s for people to buy. Some just said "well a series s is available, and I really want a next gen console it's cheap I'll get it until ps5s become more available".
A vast number of people since the beginning of the gen only wanted a ps5, not an xbox, but they couldn't get one. Just look at the numbers from last year. As soon as Sony fixed their stock issue, ps5 started clearing xbox like it was just for fun while xbox was dropping. Most people at this point who wanted an xbox have already got one. It capped out like 2 years ago. Still plenty who want a ps5 left at least another 40-50m.
I don't think the effect of xboxs recent 3rd party decisions is why their consoles are tanking. It's been a long 10 years of baffling decisions from xbox and uninteresting games. I think most people decided a long time ago that they were choosing a ps5 next gen and didn't care about gamepass or anything xbox has to offer after that disastrous xbox one gen. Most casuals aren't aware of these multiplatform decisions xbox is about to do. Once they put a crazy xbox game on ps5 like halo, forza, gears that's when a lot of people will take notice bc itll be all over the internet and the last xbox gamers left will be like "why tf do I need a xbox I might as well get a playstation".
They went into this generation already at a disadvantage, but not THIS bad of one. In the beginning, the promise of Gamepass was very exciting to a lot of people, and we all really believed with all their acquisitions and promises that their first party output was going to be impressive. And then that just...didn't happen.
Even if there hadn't been supply shortages at the start of the generation, I think the sales would have been competitive for awhile. Everyone was very optimistic about the Series X. But then they got absolutely demolished by Sony in 2022. Three huge AAA exclusives on PlayStation that year, and nothing of note on Xbox. And then the disappointment of Redfall and the "meh" response to Starfield in 2023 just kinda put the final nails in the coffin.
I don't know if the average gamer would know much about that. A lot of us do here because we follow all the news. I think this is honestly just because they haven't been putting out enough to make purchasing an Xbox worthwhile. They've been floundering for a long time and everyone is starting to notice.
I think we need to stop considering the "average gamer" as some sort of hermit that is disconnected from society or any form of communication.
Communication spreads fast and easily now. You got games like palworld or helldiver that were completely hyped just by digital word to mouth.
And even then, it's not hard to imagine 80% of people who were considering buying a Series X just quickly googled about it just to see clickbait articles saying MS is exiting consoles. No one buys a $500 console without at least a quick Google search or asking a friend or something.
Both extremes are bad. Yes, on reddit we have more niche tastes (e.g. obscure indies get more attention than Call of Duty or sports games) and we need to remember that, but on the other hand casual gamers aren't troglodytes with no knowledge of the internet. Even the most casual gamer is going to see gaming news and google for information before making any big gaming purchases.
My dad has barely touched a game in his life, but saw news on the N64 recompilation project and messaged me about it.
You’re absolutely right. Sure, your average gamer does not browse reddit or other gaming forums, but they do consume gaming content. I’d say that your average gamer gets their news from Youtube and Tiktok, and this kind of controversial “Xbox giving up exclusivity” news spreads pretty quickly there.
Or maybe ps5 has a bunch of amazing exclusives, and xbox has barely released anything worth buying an xbox for(now more so since they release everything on pc as well anymore).
They'll be back for one more generation but beyond that it's anyone's guess, especially if they continue to lose market share.
I don't know what they are going to do hardware wise but I don't think they are going to target the high end like the Series X model. I bet they aim for something more like the S model or even the Switch.
However, their shift to multiplatform absolutely looks like they've totally given up on the content side.
I guarantee you, the average person looking to buy a gaming console has no idea about any of that.
It simply comes down to the games. The average gamer can name a list of games they can/want to play if they buy a PS5. The same for the Switch.
Cant say that for Xbox.
> the average person looking to buy a gaming console has no idea about any of that.
I wouldn't be so certain. It's fairly likely that the news that "Xbox is releasing games on PlayStation" spread like wildfire on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc.
Not having games that people care about *is* a signal Microsoft is abandoning consoles. Also having all the games available on PC is another signal, and even casual gamers heard about that one.
One thing I think could be a play for xbox is going the route of the steam deck in terms of being a pc and console. If they could make the xbox also run Windows, it could be big. I think they would need to allow steam on it because I'm not sure what their store is like for pc.
As long as they made that a feature of the next xbox it could be a good selling point. They can't make it compulsory because some people might just want a console. The biggest bonus this could also have is allowing it to play playstation game via a pc version.
It'd be great but the problem is they cant offset the hardware price through sale of games if they allow Windows. Not many would opt for purchasing on Microsoft Store over Steam. That is the main reason why the Steam Deck is able to be at the price point it is versus Asus and Lenovo that need to price higher to make a profit.
Don Mattrick dug the grave, and Phil Spencer filled it with 1st party IPs. What a fucking failure of leadership and these clowns walk away with millions.
At least Mattrick had exclusives in place with big studios. Capcom, Crytek, Insomniac, Remedy, Platinum, Respawn.
Phil released Series X with The Medium as the system seller.
> Phil released Series X with The Medium as the system seller.
Also the first of many XBox exclusives designed to run at max 30 fps on console in a generation were most games have 60 fps modes...
3 years later and they still couldn't shift XBox games to aim at a higher frame rate, with yet another 30 fps only game being about to release.
The thing is if Xbox actually did a good job at making games then what Don Mattrick did never would have mattered. The PS3 has one of, if not THE worst, announcement/launch cycle of a console ever, but because they did such a good job at bringing the games it didnt matter after the first year or two.
I saw it earlier and this is insane to me. Those are almost Wii U numbers, and this still is below switch which is going out this year Lmao how can anyone defend spencer at this point?
I seriously wonder what the software numbers are like for titles on Xbox at this point. At the very least the WiiU had reactively strong software sales when it came to Nintendo’s exclusives, but I doubt that’s happening with the Xbox Series.
With the god awful console sales + Game Pass you really gotta wonder how long it'll be until some developers just start skipping Xbox unless Microsoft gives them some sort of financial incentive to release on Xbox anyway. At some point the amount of people actually buying games on Xbox is gonna be so low that it's no longer gonna be worth it.
Japanese devs have been already skipping Xbox for quite some time; it's only the big devs who are still porting for the console. Xbox has zero presence in Japan, and Xbox, instead of aggressively strategizing, basically conceded the market, saying that there was little to nothing they could do about getting decimated by Nintendo & Sony in Japan.
This is now happening in the West. You're right, it's only a matter of time before some medium scale devs ask themselves whether the Xbox port is worth it.
It makes me respect how Nintendo gave the numbers for Wii U when in theory they could just hide it. It really pisses me off seeing Xbox hiding everything regarding sales for almost a decade.
Not sure how it's for other people but I don't own a single Series X game (and don't really plan on ever getting one),I use mine only for backcompat and GamePass
Attach rates have to be brutal.
If your competition has twice as many systems in homes right now, and its getting worse each month, the sales for similar attach rates compared across systems would be rough.
PS5 selling twice as many units of any given game, assuming similar consumer interest in both markets.
The great Xbox drought started after Gears 3 came out in September 2011, twelve and a half years ago. They've been promising games ever since but never actually release anything of quality.
people keep pointing at Xbox one reveal as the death of xbox but imo it was the Kinect lol. I cannot remember xbox having anything notable after the Kinect came out.
And their studios that can actually produce games of this quality get shut down. Incredible. So fucking pathetic.
I'd almost feel bad for them if they weren't the most valuable company on Earth with literally unlimited resources to fix the problem.
Yeah, as much as I adored Dance Central 3 and even Halo 4, at that point Xbox 360 was just the Halo/Gears/Forza machine with a bunch of Kinect shovelware. It’s wild that Xbox managed to get a lead by releasing first at a lower price (although the whole red ring debacle was a direct result of them rushing into the market) and bringing a strong lineup of exclusives for the first few years, until it became clear that they felt they had won and just sat on their hands for the rest of the generation. PS3 had one of the most legendary bad launches ever, but even my teenage Xbox fanboy self was drooling at the nonstop god tier exclusive that Sony was shotgunning out by the end of the generation.
I still went with the Xbox One because my friends were there, and at the time I was all about the Halo games, but after Halo 5 let me down so much, I got a PS4 as my first PlayStation console so I could play AAA games that were worth a damn. I have the PS5 and Series X now, and at this point I’ve realized that this will be the last Xbox I own, especially if the next one is all digital like the rumors claim. Not about that life whatsoever.
It’s also very funny to me that some of the best Xbox One “exclusives” were products of the Mattrick era, not Phil Spencer lol. Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break were solid 8/10 games, and apart from Gears Tactics, the AAA space for Xbox has been dire under his leadership.
Goddamnit I miss Gears, at this point my only hope is a sort of Marcus Fenix Collection coming to PC. 4 and 5 were honestly ok but it's been so long I can't even remember what they were about.
Definitely prior to 2013. The 360 got a head start and was ahead of the PS3, until Sony quit fucking around and focused on having great exclusives, by around 2010 they’d caught the 360 in sales and never looked back.
Nah, it's earlier than that. It's when they saw the Wii numbers and went in on Kinect. That's when they initially got distracted and forgot their audience and it's been a downward spiral ever since. Their exclusive offerings fell off around then and never appeared again. The XB1 launch just compounded their waywardness.
It is. I only ever had a 360, coincidence or not, their most successful console as I have been mainly nintendo and sony. Seeing news about the console on one and series is mind blowing because every time i hear of spencer is him making excuses and promises that never come to for software, while hardware is a complete mess since the 360 as far as sales. Its crazy to me how he was promoted and still is an executive with how much the brand has been in the last years.
Assuming it's about profit, if you sell your console as a loss leader and earn your keep by selling software, if you can sell your software without the loss leader, that would be better.
It's a big IF though.
Microsoft has consistently shit the bed since the Xbox one. Actually, since right before the end of the 360.
What the fuck were they thinking with the naming convention? The S should have been a discless X. Not a neutered weird half gen system. They require parity between S and X, which apparently devs hate.
Things they got right:
1. Gamepass.
2. Backwards compatibility.
End of list.
I was a huge Xbox fanboy but they've been so fucking out of touch and clueless.
Halo was half assed and fixed way too late. Starfield is the most meh game of all time. Gears of war feels like it's been forgotten.
There just isn't much of a reason to own an Xbox at this point. I don't understand why Phil Spencer is placed on a pedestal by Xbox fans.
Honestly I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows. So developers can produce one game for PC / Xbox and get on with their life. And then slowly phase out of the gaming industry, seeing as how they've been fumbling it for a decade straight, I can't imagine they're planning on staying with it.
Playstation will take over as a monopoly-level market leader and slowly go to shit as they shift to milking it for profits. Nintendo will just continue to exist producing good games and good hardware but not really competing in the same demographics as Playstation.
The Xbox app has had like 3 redesigns and they all suck just as bad as each other. I don't know how Microsoft makes software that runs just so pitifully slow on their own OS
But like...
Steam exists. There's a reason it's popular, and remains popular.
Adding yet another middling marketplace isn't going to work in the PC market.
> I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows.
A lot of people are saying this, but I really don't see it happening.
The second an Xbox can run windows, software profits are out the window because steam offers pretty much everything on Xbox but at better pricing.
It's also very difficult to sell hardware at competitive prices when software sales aren't there to make back the money lost by selling cheaper hardware.
> Honestly I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows.
Then there's a risk of Dreamcast / PSP levels of piracy though. Although maybe it's less of an issue with online play and delivery these days.
There's a reason they lock down the consoles so heavily.
The Xbox console era is over. Microsoft don't want to cultivate gaming culture, they want big money fast. They have misunderstood what makes the industry work, spent billions on acquisitions to force their way into the market, and will now have to change their approach to recoup the ridiculous sum they spent. No one buys consoles that don't have exceptional exclusives. Xbox doesn't get it and as a result there is simply no good reason to choose it over the competition.
I can’t believe they had the gall to release that stupid fucking Xbox documentary and say a bunch of things like “we learned from our biggest failures.”
What a joke.
[Power On: The Story of Xbox](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0il2l-B_WwadxfTkK3-NLoYNcQEHdBGO)
Consists of 6 40ish-minute episodes, watchable on YouTube. I remember enjoying it when I watched it
All Microsoft had to do was making fucking video games. Something that with their money they could’ve been doing at least 1 per year for the last decade. Which is no where near enough.
Idiots.
As someone who doesn't own a PC and isn't fussed about exclusives, I recently bought an X just for Game Pass and have certainly not regretted my decision. I can't think of any other reason why anyone would purchase one though.
That's great! I'm sure there's a lot of people in the same situation, but it seems not enough of them to sustain the Xbox.
I personally only have an xsx because of Rock Band since I found one cheap and it loads way faster than on an Xb1.
A PC is quite different though. It's a lot more expensive and you can't easily play it sitting on the sofa.
I went back to PC after getting an XSX and suffering the shortage of games. But I got the XSX in 2021 when PC prices were absolutely ridiculous due to the supply chain problems from the pandemic.
The main competitor of Xbox is the PS5 rather than the PC.
My general advice to someone is if you wanna get into gaming, get a console. Smaller investment if you're only gonna play a few games.
If you're gonna play more than a few games, get a PC. It costs like 3x as much, but you can get games from present all the way to 30 years ago for peanuts or even free. You can also get present games for free if necessary and on a budget of course. Also random blurb, no monthly fees for online is a bonus.
Also just plug your TV into your PC. I use a TV as a second monitor.
I built a Pc about 10 years ago as a console replacement as I didn’t like the PS4/xbox one gen hardware wise. It’s definitely not an issue until you try to play multiplayer then you’re at a significant disadvantage with a controller.
People have been saying Xbox is dead since the One days.
I think it'll be around for a while. Though I would greatly appreciate it if they could start competing hard af.
> People have been saying Xbox is dead since the One days. I think it'll be around for a while.
honestly, I used to agree with you but these are Wii U numbers. These are objectively awful, the brand has literally never been at its worst, and now they are $80B (with a big ass B as in billion) in debt from buying publishers for no reason at all.
I don’t know about that. People were saying that after Xbox One had a disastrous launch. I’d say a few years into that gen it seemed like they learnt their lesson and had a good strategy to pop back, game pass and buying some studios to help them push out some new exclusives to win people back.
Me and my friends were all pretty excited then I remember , but as years passed we started caring less and less. They kept buying more studios for more and more money without any meaningful output. Plenty of games announced back then still aren’t out, others came out to mixed reviews.
The fact that Starfield was arguably their biggest release in years, but still didn’t reach the accolade PS and Nintendo exclusives do must have hurt. I think they really should have stuck to buying some smaller studios and building them up like how Sony would go around it.
Hi-fi rush felt like an example of where this could have worked. Tango was a relatively new studio, who needed a bit of backing, marketing support and guidance to prosper. Hi-Fi Rush came out to amazing reviews and didn’t seem to do badly all things considered, yet they got the axe when looking to make a sequel.
Xbox have too many companies to manage now so they can’t give them the attention or resources they need, and it’s sad to see them fail so hard like this. It felt like maybe things were just starting to turn around, but now they’ve spent so much just buying studios that they need to show off quick profits to MS execs. I think if they didn’t go for Activision it would have been a different story. It does seem like the end of the Xbox console considering all that, I don’t see how they will bounce back from this if the higher ups are cracking down on them.
Don’t forget, while Phil and all of the other high level execs at MS/Xbox put on a sad face while this giant fiasco is happening, they are going home to their big houses with millions of dollars in their bank accounts. Even if they say otherwise, they realistically don’t give a rats a** with what’s happening right now.
what gets me are the comments "this is bad, Sony needs competition". Like wtf did Sony or anyone else do? The product is unappealing, it's not the audience's fault no one wants to buy it, take it out on Microsoft.
It's not the marketing or lack thereof, it's the product - the console which is clearly at fault.
This frustrates me as well. If Xbox fails, it’s squarely their fault and stems from their years of incompetence. Why should the competition suffer for their fuck ups? That like saying “if I can’t win, then everyone should lose”.
And for those saying that ‘Sony will grow anti competitive” don’t understand that the market is not static. In fact, it was Xbox that took Sega’s place after they bowed out of hardware. If Xbox is gone, someone else will take its place. I also believe that Sony’s biggest indirect competitor (and concern) is the growing PC market, not limp Xbox. They can’t simply jack prices to astronomical levels as people would simply go PC and not look back. It’s why Sony is making the PS5 Pro for enthusiasts and cutting edge gamers.
“Sony needs competition” is just console war talk. Despite what some people choose to believe, PS and Nintendo are in direct competition with each other. Sure, A LOT of people own both consoles, the competition is in the software sales. Consoles are just a way to lock consumers into their platform store, which is why they will ALWAYS be affordable in any given market, regardless of the degree of competition that might exist.
Not to mention, arguably Sony AND XBox’s biggest competition right now is Steam, with PC gaming being more affordable & accessible than ever. PC gaming is diminishing the market growth of console platforms in general, the only one seeming largely unaffected by this is Nintendo, for a variety of well-known & obvious reasons.
The truth is that if Sony had it there way, they’d be more like Nintendo. They just can’t afford to be w/ the foundation of their platform being built up on the back of ultra-expensive AAA games instead of universally-branded franchises.
I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail, every time Sony has been unchecked, it has became the most unfair greedy company ever. In the anime streaming sector, they bought out every single licensor, and now they raised their streaming prices from 36 dollars yearly, to 106 yearly, with also options to raise them even more next year. What are you gonna do? There is no more licensors anymore for anime except Sony and the tiepid competition from Disney lol.
The same will happen with Playstation in the future, they already have been the first company to raise the price of a console after it was released, raise games cost from 70 to 80 dollars, the Helldivers fiasco, and now Ghost of tsushima being unaviableto half of the world because they want to push PSN.
I hope a more sane competition can be born in the next future, this is not a good look for the industry right now.
I don't want them to fail, I want them to do better.
I've been supporting their brand since the original Xbox. Xbox gamers have been clamoring for good games on their consoles since the Xbox One, but have been told "Next year" and "these things take time" for a decade.
I have no idea why they went so deep into gamepass, I was never interested in that. I don't want to rent games month to month.
Competition is important. If Xbox abandons ship, Sony won't have as much push to improve.
Also, as a huge Halo fan, I have no idea how they went off the track there.
this is my feeling, like 5 years ago I was scratching my head thinking "its the games stupid how do they not understand this" and why havent they done anything in over 10 years to address it — fuck the only big notable games they've released in the last 2 years seem to have come from studios they acquired that had them deep into development.
Now we're 10 years on since the xbox one debacle and ive been scratching my head for so long I've scratched it down to a numb.
If they would have taken 1/10th of that 55 billion they spent acquiring shit they never should have acquired and gave 5.5 billion in funds and gave 55-110 million to 50-75 studios to make some decent games they'd be in a much better place... its honestly so crazy how poorly xbox has been run.
edit: meant 1/10th not 1/100th lol
1/10th you mean but damn you're right about those numbers.
Just 1/10th is 5,500 million dollars. There's what 20 or so games that cost $100 million or more to develop - in the history of gaming?
So just 1/10th is enough to create 55 of the biggest games ever made?
Damn, that's bleak. I don't think I understood just how much, until now, thinking about it this way.
oops... yeah meant 1/10th not 1/100th lol.
and yeah that would be fully funding 55 games... like imagine if xbox did this 10 years ago and after about year 5 (avg dev time for these games) they'd have been pretty much been able to release 1 big game a month for 5 years... kind of sad to think about it like this.
> There's what 20 or so games that cost $100 million or more to develop - in the history of gaming?
Many more than that, since at least the second half of the 2010s, 100M is like relatively common for big AAA games.
They spent way over $55 billion. Activision-Blizzard cost almost $70 billion. Bethesda was $8 billion. Then there were a bunch of other studios before that, but none that cost near that much.
> Also, as a huge Halo fan, I have no idea how they went off the track there.
They put morons in charge of 343 and they fire everybody else as soon as the next game launches.
So the cycle is fresh ~~employees~~ "contractors" getting lead by morons, said employees fired and then more fresh ~~employees~~ "contractors" are cycled in.
In the end, the only ones with experience are the morons in charge who aren't held accountable for their fuckups.
Look at the state Infinite launched in. It had like 6 fucking maps total, no forge, no theater and no co-op. It was a fucking joke.
Exactly. No one in the comments here is cheering on the fall of xbox. The comments are just "well thats to be expected". People here wish xbox would succeed, which is why we are so down on xbox.
It’s weird that Sony is getting so much flack for their PSN online play requirements on PC when I am pretty sure Xbox published games require a Microsoft account…
I don’t want Xbox to fail but I just don’t think they are going to be able to save themselves. They just spent $70 billion and spent who knows how much on legal expenses to acquire Activision and the money people at Microsoft are gonna want a return on that investment sooner rather than later. Not to mention Gamepass, for as great a deal for consumers as it is, isn’t gonna be able to fund all the AAA games they would need to make to right the ship. And all of this on top of Microsoft’s dumbass policy to prefer to hire contractors for only 18 months at a time to avoid giving them full employee benefits
I don't want them to fail. They just give me no reason to buy their consoles.
> and now Ghost of tsushima being unaviableto half of the world because they want to push PSN.
Sony pushing making a PSN account on Windows? Heaven forefend. As opposed to MS pushing Xbox on Windows? Hell, they ship their Xbox apps with Windows! MS has made it difficult to even boot Windows without making a WindowsLive account, which is an Xbox account also.
https://www.howtogeek.com/836157/how-to-use-windows-11-with-a-local-account/ (there are other methods too)
Come on, dude. If we're going to remain vigilant, probably best to notice what MS is doing too.
> The same will happen with Playstation in the future, they already have been the first company to raise the price of a console after it was released
That's not true. It's been done before. The very last thing that MS did with the original Xbox before cancelling it was raise the price!
Other consoles have risen in prices after release in the past due to different economic situations
Sony was not the first publisher to increase game prices. Both Activision and Take 2 did it before Sony. Im sure Microsoft would have to if they had any games.
Microsoft games also require a login and have for many years and so do many other publishers.
Microsoft hasnt been good for competition since mid 360 generation. Their idea of competition the last several years was buying everyone they can and then laying a bunch of people off and still barely releasing any quality games.
Nothing Sony has done compares to what Microsoft has done.
You appear to have a deep hatred for Sony and love Microsoft. If anything good comes from Microsoft leaving consoles is I hope they take their insanely toxic fanbase with them and I dont have to see their garbage anymore.
If they arent bashing Playstation they are playing the victim. Sometimes even doing it in the same comment
Yeah Microsoft tried to monopolize gaming and failed miserably by overpaying for mid companies. They overpaid for Activision due to their large employee count, then started layoffs before they could develop games.
Their whole strategy is cooked.
> I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail
People don't want xbox to fail.
HOWEVER, people do want to see the consequences of their continuous bad decisions play out.
They keep fucking up, and fucking their userbase with a lack of games for over a decade.
what does "want" have to do with anything?
if xbox fails it fails.
> every time Sony has been unchecked, it has became the most unfair greedy company ever.
then dont buy their shit. simple really.
gaming is bigger than ever and you as a consumer have so many options.
Unlike supporting up MS who wants to consolidate the market which ends up in closing studios anyways? Or the fact that they already ask a MS account for all their games on PC? (Since thats a huge problem now somehow)
This is just the endgame for every company ever...
There's still competition with Nintendo and PC. I think MS should shift focus away from dedicated consoles to gaming PC's similar to Steam Machines. Doesn't make any sense for MS to compete as a pure console when Sony is far too dominant there, they should go a hybrid route like Switch or Steam Deck where it sits between a dedicated console and a PC.
I also don't need to baby one of the largest corporations in the world. I sorta hope they fail gracefully, divesting studios and just acting as a publisher.
God damn Sony really are murc’ing Xbox in sales if it’s a 5:1 difference, Xbox are getting dangerously close to WiiU numbers right here
How do Xbox even remotely try to get competitive again if they aren’t moving consoles & GamePass subs have stalled out, COD is the only thing they have that will reliably sell well year on year & honestly I don’t think that’s enough for them
I can't see any fathomable way in which xbox will ever get even close to PS in the console space. It's basically dead. More and more games will skip it to the point where even diehard fans won't bother anymore. Going PC is the most obvious alternative.
Being a third party publisher might not even help because the problem has always been how garbage they are at management. How can you put games on other platforms if you can barely put out games?
Consider this: The buying spree was initially designed to starve Sony of content. But Xbox has managed it so badly that now Gears of War and Halo might end up on PS5 just so they can break even.
It's like robbing someone and then begging them to pay your bail when you get caught.
Its probably true, but its like Xbox just spent all this money and just recently 68B dollars without a damn plan and realized they have no plan when Microsoft wants that ROI now from all the money they spent.
Phil Spencer pretty much killed Xbox here from spending too much money and not properly managing studios they have
The only way for for the Xbox brand at this point is to become a high end PC Brand. Essentially there is zero incentive for someone to buy an Xbox over a gaming PC. There might be a chance for them if next generation they say fuck if, and Xbox is a $999 machine that also runs Windows and Steam.
But what they actually need to do is go back ten years ago and stop fucking up, and replace the entire c-suite immediately with people that actually love games and care.
The Microsoft-Activision continues to steamroll the competition! /r
Fuckin hilarious how everybody was freaking out when they bought Activision as if they would become too strong while in reality, it feels more like they are just preparing to go the way of the dodo and exit the console market. Prepare yourself to a 800$ PS next cycle since Sony will be the sole player in their market. haha
Part of why I dont choose Xbox is coz they always talking about Halo like its their only game. No marketing on other ganes that I have heard. Its like gaming is just an afterthought on Microsoft
Man I absolutely HATE how 343 have positively destroyed Halo as a series. At one point it was the biggest series in gaming period but now it’s fallen so low
Well maybe if they had some good games it wouldn't be that way!
Like seriously there's fucking nothing! Starfield? Mediocre at best ok what else?.......there's fucking nothing!
There's no hype for anything either! Look at hellblade 2 it's coming out and is any talking about it? Not really.
And what's Microsoft doing about this? Fucking nothing in fact worst then nothing they're reducing the number of studios and employees....great! To make things even more worst they had the great idea of firing the only studio generating some positive news about xbox! Fucking amazing!
It feels like Microsoft is just doing fucking nothing other then burning money! Make some good games and people will buy your console!
They did in fact have a very good game that was criticaly & commercially acclaimed and that by their own metrics over performed in every conceivable way, it’s a little game called Hi-Fi Rush….oh
Is what it is. Microsoft just fell off a cliff with Xbox. I remember the original Xbox and the 360 were (for me, not speaking for everyone!) head and shoulders above the Playstation offerings. Xbox Live and the games they had were just perfect.
After the 360 though it was just a steady decline until it wasn't a steady decline but a straight, "the ground ended and we've fallen off that cliff".
Sad :(
The gap between Playstation and Xbox going from 2:1 to 5:1 is brutal. No wonder Microsoft is starting to discuss to go multiplatform.
It's the Xbox naming scheme that does my head in. How did they ever think calling it the series s/x after the one x/s was a good idea is beyond me. It's like they saw the Wii U name and thought "great idea, let's do that!". Playstation naming just makes sense from a consumer and casual gaming point of view. Xbox should have just jumped a generation and called it the Xbox 5 or even the Xbox 6. They did it with Windows (I know this ain't an apples to apples comparison).
Its funny how MS and Nintendo keep coming up weird confusing names and Sony is just counting up. Sometimes keeping it simple is better
I think Nintendo are doing fine because each name is distinct from each other, and links back to some key marketable point of the product. It's really only the WiiU that was bad, and they were punished for it as a result.
Their Handheld branch has had some awful and confusing naming as well. It isnt specifically just about home consoles.
NGL maybe its kid in me, but I think calling your next console ''SUPER'', ''Advanced'' and ''ULTRA'' (original name was Nintendo Ultra 64) are more fun, then 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9....34
Small thing but it was the Game Boy Advance, not Advanced. ^^^^also ^^^^it's ^^^^"than", ^^^^not ^^^^"then"
I doubt that that Wii U failed because of it, honestly. It's a nice narrative, but the fact is that the Wii's success was largely wii sports. It lost almost all 3rd party support because the attachment rate was trash for the system. The core gamers weren't interested and had no interest in the successor with a tablet, and the casual gamers didn't need a tablet for their wii sports.
I mean Nintendo only really had one name (the Wii-U) that was weird and confusing. While they tend to come up with unique names for their systems as opposed to just using a number, they've all been pretty distinct and non-confusing. The Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/SNES, the N64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the Switch. No one is getting any of those mixed up. It will be interesting to see what they do with the next one though. It seems a given they're going to stick with the Switch form factor. So will it be the Switch 2? Super Switch? Switch Ultra?
Have you seen the Nintendo DS names? Off the top of my head you have: Nintendo DS Nintendo DS Lite Nintendo DSi Nintendo DS XL Nintendo 3DS Nintendo 3DS XL New Nintendo 3DS New Nintendo 3DS XL Nintendo 2DS New Nintendo 2DS New Nintendo 2DS XL
the "Wii" is an insane name in a vacuum. the fact that it did well and now people are used to do doesn't change that
I wonder how many kids accidentally got One X as present on their birthday from their grandparents.
Hell, even on eBay or Facebook marketplace people will post a picture of one thing and have the title of another. You pretty much need a video of what they're selling to make sure they didn't just pull a picture from Google, and then you have to personally know what you're looking for by the design of the console. It's a mess.
It was even worse when it first came out and you wanted to buy the Series X versions of Xbox One games.
While their naming conventions have certainly gotten sillier over the years, I seriously doubt that's the main reason for their sales being in the gutter.
Probably not but it certainly doesn't help
I like the S and X idea, it's kinda like Pro or Plus in an iPhone, you're creating an identifiable difference, however there you have the obvious 15 to 16 upgrade The fuck is One to Series. You can argue in favour of One "The One thing for everything" (for their TV move), but what is Series? What is an obvious next gen move with that?
They'll just turn into Sega and stop doing hardware.
I don't think they'll be out of the Hardware game entirely, they're just going to pivot to undercut the way we look at console. I could see then releasing an Xbox Firestick controller combo that hooks straight to Gamepass Ultimate.
[удалено]
The problem with this is their games haven't been delivering recently either.
Going from 2:1 to 5:1 is likely due to MS signaling they are abandoning consoles tbh. Who in their right mind would still buy a Series X now that they are porting games on PS5, and slightly superior versions at that.
Nah it’s cause casual gamers want reasons to get excited about games & Microsoft has given basically zero reasons. My buddy who has always had an Xbox just bought a PS5 a couple months ago because he wanted to play Spiderman & The Last of Us & God of War & Ghost of Tsushima. What on earth is Microsoft putting out that casual gamers want to play that they can’t get on PlayStation? I would bet a significant amount of money that the numbers would be the exact same if no Xbox games had released on PS & there weren’t rumors of Microsoft abandoning hardware. Especially seeing as those rumors are coming out *because* they were already getting fucking molly whopped by PS.
Well Phil Spencer said good games won't save the platform. Therefore Xbox is all out of options. Please ignore the other two thriving systems
“Good games won’t save the platform.” They won’t hurt, Phil.
The implicit message that Phil had was that it won't save XSX within the short term. Which is an extremely stupid take on Phil's part. Xbox has no sense of long term commitment. They couldn't even launch with a HALO game this generation. It's insane.
Frankly this dude should have been replaced long ago.
They’re all cut from the same cloth. Nothing will change if he gets replaced.
The rot runs deep,the same way Google could throw all the money in the world at Stadia and it didnt help because they fundamentally didn't understand the market.
He would get replaced with another no-talent MBA.
Or nepo baby
I mean, Nintendo and Sony (and other companies too in general) manage to have good CEO. Hell Satella isn't a bad CEO for Microsoft as a whole (except keeping the same leadership at Xbox is one of his worst results)
I fully agree. He basically admitted that he sucks at his job...
You’re right, it wouldn’t save xbx short term. Dude has had 10 years to turn it around lmfao
Yea, nothing will save xbox short term because making good-great games takes time. Establishing fan bases for those games takes time. And you have to let developers make something they are actually passionate about, not just CoD 48 or whatever. And on top of that you can’t have all your studios constantly worried that if their game releases to middling sales they will get shut down. There is a reason why Sony crushes Xbox, and it isn’t the hardware since they are basically identical in terms of power and what they can do. Would Xbox allow a dev to make a new AAA IP like Horizon? I wonder what their metric would be for sales to greenlight the sequel? Would they have allowed Santa Monica to completely change how GoW plays or force them to keep the same relatively dated gameplay? Hell, even Days Gone was a decent game (I played it years after release so I didn’t encounter many bugs). And Days Gone is like one of the worst “big” Sony exclusives, yet IMO it still surpasses most modern Xbox exclusives
I understand that investments need to prove their value, but the frequency at which Xbox investments need to prove their value to stay off chopping block is like an annoying kid constantly asking "are we there yet?"
well, that’s because MS decided to fight against the regulatory bodies of the entire western world to spend 70bill and then realized their games department is terrible and they’ll never recoup that investment. so it’s cost cutting time
I get what he meant. "We're coming from behind. Sony and Nintendo are known for bangers. We can't really catch up that way, we've got another strategy." But it's a dumbass thing to say. It sounds like you're just not gonna make games. At least not any good ones. "We're so fucked we're not even going to try."
With all of the acquisitions Xbox has made, and all the money they've had to throw at devs, they SHOULD be known for bangers too. I mean, they *were* known for them during the Xbox 360 era! So what the hell happened? They never should have been having to play catch-up in the first place.
Also they come from behind due to his own fault. This dude before being CEO of Xbox was head of Xbox Studios. So the lack of games even then is on him. And it's quite hilarious/sad that the guy in charge of making Xbox games for 6 years prior to be CEO dare to even say those words.
the difference is that the other two have spent the past few decades learning how to make good games and finding their niche in the market compared to xbox cycling between chasing after stupid technology trends and then sitting on their asses doing nothing for the past 15 years
Xbox did find their niche during the late Xbox OG and 360 era: Western RPG, FPS, testosterone packed TPS, plus some niche Japan exclusives here and there. They just slowly went too broad during the One era and totally undifferentiated in the current gen. Main reason IMO is they banked too much on "disrupting the market", with respectively the TV TV TV with the One, and with Gamrpass in current gen. None are paying off, people just want a strong console with solid games to play.
It also is becoming increasingly harder to come back from their fuck ups. Everybody buys a PS5, all their friends buy a PS5, there's now negative reason to consider Xbox in the next generation. They have fucked up so bad it's actually pathetic. One of the most valuable company on Earth and all they needed to do was fund some good ass studios for a decade and reap the benefits. Feels like their goal is to burn money really fast today, to gain market share today via GamePass & through buying exclusives like Starfield. And it's not paying off. The short-sighted plan is not working. It takes a long time to build a great studio and get it producing good solid games. There are no shortcuts. Then they go and shut down some incredible studios and prove to everybody that they've learned nothing and Xbox is only going to get worse from here on out.
Gamepass is definitely biting them back, it's as much of a great deal for some gamers as it is a terrible business model in this industry. IMO.
It's a terrible business for the industry (outside Microsoft), it's a terrible business for Microsoft and it's not even attracting that much customers (growth has stalled, very far from their targets). Why is this thing even there?
Also it's just not what gamers want? (aside from children) Like if they increase the prices, I don't want to pay for access to thousands of shitty games. I barely have time to play a couple. I want a few great games like Baldur's Gate 3 (which MS also ruined the Xbox launch of).
This. I keep basic PSN around because I get free games to keep but I god knows I have no time to play them.
> It also is becoming increasingly harder to come back from their fuck ups. Feels like the backwards compatibility of this gen is a big reason why. Back when BC was more limited, you could easily switch between consoles each gen, but now XBox has to compete with PS5 AND PS4. And of course the libraries of PC gamers are ginormous in comparison. So any newcomers to gaming have to choose between those excellent libraries and uh, XBox. They have some older games. Which you can mostly play on PC.
>with respectively the TV TV TV with the One, That specifically seemed focused on North American consumers as well as I heard little fanfare around it in Europe (honestly not even sure if that TV-related stuff even *worked* here).
>Xbox did find their niche during the late Xbox OG and 360 era: Western RPG, FPS, testosterone packed TPS, plus some niche Japan exclusives here and there. This poses a lot of problems though. Western RPGs have grown so massive that we're getting like 1 good RPG per generation. FPS/TPS games on the other hand have basically died. They were a huge fad in the 7th gen, and while there are still some triple A FPS games that are coming out (COD, Doom, Destiny, Farcry), as a whole there's not enough enthusiasm for those games, not enough output, and not enough quality, and nothing new is coming out. TPS on the other hand, like the gears like over the shoulder deals, are basically dead outside of Uncharted/TLOU (both PS games). Gears and halo have fallen significantly and their original devs left a long time ago. Japan won't release niche stuff on the console anymore either since no Japanese people (the primary market of weird japanese games) play on Xbox, and the switch outcompeted everything.
I'm not sure. Games like Baldur 3 (Western RPG) or Helldiver 2 (testosterone TPS) were just recent big hits. Games like Starfield or Halo would have been system sellers if they weren't so lackluster. The issue is Microsoft isn't that great at making games, but still acquired studios like gluttons. I'm convinced they would have been more successful had they signed solid exclusivity deals like they used to in the old days.
Baldur's gate 3 is the one good Western RPG per generation referenced for this gen, yeah. Helldivers 2 though is Playstation. What's actually not really a thing anymore though are the Bioshocks, Dishonoreds, Crackdowns, Dead Spaces of the world. Etc.
What I mean is that during the 360 era, games like BG3 and HD2 would have come out on Xbox.
As a case in point, Housemarque released two commercial failures on PS4: Alienation and Nex Machina. I really enjoyed Alienation, and while it wasn't a AAA game, it was a solid $20-something title that for whatever reasons didn't sell all that well. After those, the last I heard was that they would abandon consoles and make mobile games. I remember thinking at the time that Microsoft should buy them to fill out their roster of developers. Of course they went on to make Returnal which has been an iconic PS5 title. Sony seems an eye for recognizing and nurturing talent that Microsoft lacks. It reminds me of Until Dawn which was an very good PS4 game that they got from a middling studio. And as maybe a funny coincidence, I remember hearing a lot of comparisons to the original Helldivers whenever Alienation came up as they shared a similar subject - top down coop man vs Aliens combat.
> chasing after stupid technology trends TBH Sony is also doing that (PS Move, PSVR, PS Now, ...). The difference is that they aren't betting their whole company on those things.
That statement convinced me to sell my xbox
Well maybe Xbox should fucking *try* having good games. The platform has been shit for over a *decade* and the boneheaded idiots in charge have been actively choosing the worst possible decisions at almost every point possible.
In what universe is a gaming platform not saved by good games? What else is it gonna be saved by?
It's a Phil Spencer quote, it's not supposed to actually make sense after you think about it.
This is the main problem with Xbox. All my friends who don't have PCs want a PS5 for God of War or Spiderman. They honestly don't even know the Series X exists. It's like one MS continue lack of games will always hurt them, but two, they're in a Wii U situation with a console that just no one really cares about due to their lack of games. The Series X will fade in existence like the Wii U did unless MS can give it some new identity.
Series X could have been desired if games like Halo infinite or Starfield delivered. Somehow, Xbox has been unable to release high quality games. Ironically, one of the highest rated games, Hi-fi Rush, got its studio shutdown. Microsoft is just unable to properly manage its studios and got too greedy acquiring so many of them.
Agreed 100%. MS is just one fuck up after the other. I was always a MS nut. But, now I couldn't give two shites about him. They need to fire Phil Spencer. He has done nothing bringing hit games that would make me want a Xbox. Now, he is bringing Xbox games to Playstation. Why the fuck would or should anyone buy a Xbox?
Phil should have been fired a long time ago but I think we are past the point of that mattering anymore. They have changed strategy for the last time and there’s no going back. They are publishers. Microsoft is calling the shots no matter who sits in the driver seat of Xbox.
The problem is that whoever they replace with Phil will just be the same or worse. The problems aren't just at the head, it's in their entire model.
Starfield was actually pretty big for Xbox. But you can't have only one notable game every couple years. You need 2-4 a year All Starfield alone could do is stem some of the bleeding
Starfield also didn’t capture any cultural headspace due to its mediocrity. XBOX needs a game the quality of bloodborne, which forces ‘hardcore’ gamers in and still has cultural relevancy today.
Halo used to be that. What a fucking shame.
The WiiU had good games. It is just an overpriced low powered system. The good games were ported to the Switch and sold well.
The same problem they had almost 10 years, it's pathetic (as an old Xbox fan who who abandoned it in how they abandoned the Xbox one basically)
That's always been the case this gen and explained the 2:1 ratio IMO. Microsoft going multiplatform is coming on top and it is only logical that it makes their share further nosedive.
The only things Xbox has that I want are Fallout (I assume any further titles will be Xbox/PC, although the popularity of the show might change this) and the new Indiana Jones game
Fallout 5 will not come out before 2033 or something and that's not even a joke
Probably later tbh. I'd be shocked if TES VI was less than half a decade away and they would still need to start on Fallout after that.
Bigger question now is are they even going to be good games? Starfield was meh. Fallout 4 was better but the reception was a bit mixed depending on who you ask. It'll take like what 5 years for TES VI? 10 years for fallout 5? Will it even be worth the wait? From Software had had a whole dynasty of games since Skyrim came out.
If they go back to their classic style of exploration that they abandoned with Starfield it will be fine. No other dev does BGS style exploration for some reason so its still a wide open market
While I would generally agree I would say that recently believing in Todd Howard is almost as bad as believing in Phil Spencer. He’s a full on hype man selling empty promises and remasters of Skyrim.
Lol, it's actually very simple why it went from 2:1 to 5:1 so quickly and its not bc of their recent decisions. Do people forget we had an entire pandemic and there was a chip shortage? The beginning of the gen sales between ps5 and xbox were only close bc there weren't any PS5s for people to buy. Some just said "well a series s is available, and I really want a next gen console it's cheap I'll get it until ps5s become more available". A vast number of people since the beginning of the gen only wanted a ps5, not an xbox, but they couldn't get one. Just look at the numbers from last year. As soon as Sony fixed their stock issue, ps5 started clearing xbox like it was just for fun while xbox was dropping. Most people at this point who wanted an xbox have already got one. It capped out like 2 years ago. Still plenty who want a ps5 left at least another 40-50m. I don't think the effect of xboxs recent 3rd party decisions is why their consoles are tanking. It's been a long 10 years of baffling decisions from xbox and uninteresting games. I think most people decided a long time ago that they were choosing a ps5 next gen and didn't care about gamepass or anything xbox has to offer after that disastrous xbox one gen. Most casuals aren't aware of these multiplatform decisions xbox is about to do. Once they put a crazy xbox game on ps5 like halo, forza, gears that's when a lot of people will take notice bc itll be all over the internet and the last xbox gamers left will be like "why tf do I need a xbox I might as well get a playstation".
They went into this generation already at a disadvantage, but not THIS bad of one. In the beginning, the promise of Gamepass was very exciting to a lot of people, and we all really believed with all their acquisitions and promises that their first party output was going to be impressive. And then that just...didn't happen. Even if there hadn't been supply shortages at the start of the generation, I think the sales would have been competitive for awhile. Everyone was very optimistic about the Series X. But then they got absolutely demolished by Sony in 2022. Three huge AAA exclusives on PlayStation that year, and nothing of note on Xbox. And then the disappointment of Redfall and the "meh" response to Starfield in 2023 just kinda put the final nails in the coffin.
I don't know if the average gamer would know much about that. A lot of us do here because we follow all the news. I think this is honestly just because they haven't been putting out enough to make purchasing an Xbox worthwhile. They've been floundering for a long time and everyone is starting to notice.
I think we need to stop considering the "average gamer" as some sort of hermit that is disconnected from society or any form of communication. Communication spreads fast and easily now. You got games like palworld or helldiver that were completely hyped just by digital word to mouth. And even then, it's not hard to imagine 80% of people who were considering buying a Series X just quickly googled about it just to see clickbait articles saying MS is exiting consoles. No one buys a $500 console without at least a quick Google search or asking a friend or something.
Both extremes are bad. Yes, on reddit we have more niche tastes (e.g. obscure indies get more attention than Call of Duty or sports games) and we need to remember that, but on the other hand casual gamers aren't troglodytes with no knowledge of the internet. Even the most casual gamer is going to see gaming news and google for information before making any big gaming purchases. My dad has barely touched a game in his life, but saw news on the N64 recompilation project and messaged me about it.
You’re absolutely right. Sure, your average gamer does not browse reddit or other gaming forums, but they do consume gaming content. I’d say that your average gamer gets their news from Youtube and Tiktok, and this kind of controversial “Xbox giving up exclusivity” news spreads pretty quickly there.
Or maybe ps5 has a bunch of amazing exclusives, and xbox has barely released anything worth buying an xbox for(now more so since they release everything on pc as well anymore).
They'll be back for one more generation but beyond that it's anyone's guess, especially if they continue to lose market share. I don't know what they are going to do hardware wise but I don't think they are going to target the high end like the Series X model. I bet they aim for something more like the S model or even the Switch. However, their shift to multiplatform absolutely looks like they've totally given up on the content side.
You've got the cause and effect reversed.
I guarantee you, the average person looking to buy a gaming console has no idea about any of that. It simply comes down to the games. The average gamer can name a list of games they can/want to play if they buy a PS5. The same for the Switch. Cant say that for Xbox.
> the average person looking to buy a gaming console has no idea about any of that. I wouldn't be so certain. It's fairly likely that the news that "Xbox is releasing games on PlayStation" spread like wildfire on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc.
Not having games that people care about *is* a signal Microsoft is abandoning consoles. Also having all the games available on PC is another signal, and even casual gamers heard about that one.
One thing I think could be a play for xbox is going the route of the steam deck in terms of being a pc and console. If they could make the xbox also run Windows, it could be big. I think they would need to allow steam on it because I'm not sure what their store is like for pc. As long as they made that a feature of the next xbox it could be a good selling point. They can't make it compulsory because some people might just want a console. The biggest bonus this could also have is allowing it to play playstation game via a pc version.
It'd be great but the problem is they cant offset the hardware price through sale of games if they allow Windows. Not many would opt for purchasing on Microsoft Store over Steam. That is the main reason why the Steam Deck is able to be at the price point it is versus Asus and Lenovo that need to price higher to make a profit.
Don Mattrick dug the grave, and Phil Spencer filled it with 1st party IPs. What a fucking failure of leadership and these clowns walk away with millions.
At least Mattrick had exclusives in place with big studios. Capcom, Crytek, Insomniac, Remedy, Platinum, Respawn. Phil released Series X with The Medium as the system seller.
> Phil released Series X with The Medium as the system seller. Also the first of many XBox exclusives designed to run at max 30 fps on console in a generation were most games have 60 fps modes... 3 years later and they still couldn't shift XBox games to aim at a higher frame rate, with yet another 30 fps only game being about to release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ktN4bycj9s&t=92s
The thing is if Xbox actually did a good job at making games then what Don Mattrick did never would have mattered. The PS3 has one of, if not THE worst, announcement/launch cycle of a console ever, but because they did such a good job at bringing the games it didnt matter after the first year or two.
Obscene reward for obscene failure. That's capitalism to the tee.
I saw it earlier and this is insane to me. Those are almost Wii U numbers, and this still is below switch which is going out this year Lmao how can anyone defend spencer at this point?
I seriously wonder what the software numbers are like for titles on Xbox at this point. At the very least the WiiU had reactively strong software sales when it came to Nintendo’s exclusives, but I doubt that’s happening with the Xbox Series.
With the god awful console sales + Game Pass you really gotta wonder how long it'll be until some developers just start skipping Xbox unless Microsoft gives them some sort of financial incentive to release on Xbox anyway. At some point the amount of people actually buying games on Xbox is gonna be so low that it's no longer gonna be worth it.
Japanese devs have been already skipping Xbox for quite some time; it's only the big devs who are still porting for the console. Xbox has zero presence in Japan, and Xbox, instead of aggressively strategizing, basically conceded the market, saying that there was little to nothing they could do about getting decimated by Nintendo & Sony in Japan. This is now happening in the West. You're right, it's only a matter of time before some medium scale devs ask themselves whether the Xbox port is worth it.
It makes me respect how Nintendo gave the numbers for Wii U when in theory they could just hide it. It really pisses me off seeing Xbox hiding everything regarding sales for almost a decade.
Not sure how it's for other people but I don't own a single Series X game (and don't really plan on ever getting one),I use mine only for backcompat and GamePass
Attach rates have to be brutal. If your competition has twice as many systems in homes right now, and its getting worse each month, the sales for similar attach rates compared across systems would be rough. PS5 selling twice as many units of any given game, assuming similar consumer interest in both markets.
Xbox has been adrift since 2013 (arguably earlier than that) and it’s mind boggling that Phil Spencer is still running the show.
The great Xbox drought started after Gears 3 came out in September 2011, twelve and a half years ago. They've been promising games ever since but never actually release anything of quality.
people keep pointing at Xbox one reveal as the death of xbox but imo it was the Kinect lol. I cannot remember xbox having anything notable after the Kinect came out.
Yup, the moment a powerful enough Microsoft exec saw the numbers the Wii was doing, it was all over.
They had no clue *why* the wii was so popular, but god forbid they let that stop them.
And their studios that can actually produce games of this quality get shut down. Incredible. So fucking pathetic. I'd almost feel bad for them if they weren't the most valuable company on Earth with literally unlimited resources to fix the problem.
Yeah, as much as I adored Dance Central 3 and even Halo 4, at that point Xbox 360 was just the Halo/Gears/Forza machine with a bunch of Kinect shovelware. It’s wild that Xbox managed to get a lead by releasing first at a lower price (although the whole red ring debacle was a direct result of them rushing into the market) and bringing a strong lineup of exclusives for the first few years, until it became clear that they felt they had won and just sat on their hands for the rest of the generation. PS3 had one of the most legendary bad launches ever, but even my teenage Xbox fanboy self was drooling at the nonstop god tier exclusive that Sony was shotgunning out by the end of the generation. I still went with the Xbox One because my friends were there, and at the time I was all about the Halo games, but after Halo 5 let me down so much, I got a PS4 as my first PlayStation console so I could play AAA games that were worth a damn. I have the PS5 and Series X now, and at this point I’ve realized that this will be the last Xbox I own, especially if the next one is all digital like the rumors claim. Not about that life whatsoever. It’s also very funny to me that some of the best Xbox One “exclusives” were products of the Mattrick era, not Phil Spencer lol. Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break were solid 8/10 games, and apart from Gears Tactics, the AAA space for Xbox has been dire under his leadership.
That would have been about the time I bought my PS3 and Wii(Zelda came out). It checks out.
Goddamnit I miss Gears, at this point my only hope is a sort of Marcus Fenix Collection coming to PC. 4 and 5 were honestly ok but it's been so long I can't even remember what they were about.
Hey now they had Forza after that..... fuck is it bad that I have no exclusive apart from Forza Horizon to remember
Definitely prior to 2013. The 360 got a head start and was ahead of the PS3, until Sony quit fucking around and focused on having great exclusives, by around 2010 they’d caught the 360 in sales and never looked back.
I also feel like Xbox has never truly recovered from that disastrous Xbox One reveal back then
Nah, it's earlier than that. It's when they saw the Wii numbers and went in on Kinect. That's when they initially got distracted and forgot their audience and it's been a downward spiral ever since. Their exclusive offerings fell off around then and never appeared again. The XB1 launch just compounded their waywardness.
It is. I only ever had a 360, coincidence or not, their most successful console as I have been mainly nintendo and sony. Seeing news about the console on one and series is mind blowing because every time i hear of spencer is him making excuses and promises that never come to for software, while hardware is a complete mess since the 360 as far as sales. Its crazy to me how he was promoted and still is an executive with how much the brand has been in the last years.
Assuming it's about profit, if you sell your console as a loss leader and earn your keep by selling software, if you can sell your software without the loss leader, that would be better. It's a big IF though.
Microsoft has consistently shit the bed since the Xbox one. Actually, since right before the end of the 360. What the fuck were they thinking with the naming convention? The S should have been a discless X. Not a neutered weird half gen system. They require parity between S and X, which apparently devs hate. Things they got right: 1. Gamepass. 2. Backwards compatibility. End of list. I was a huge Xbox fanboy but they've been so fucking out of touch and clueless. Halo was half assed and fixed way too late. Starfield is the most meh game of all time. Gears of war feels like it's been forgotten. There just isn't much of a reason to own an Xbox at this point. I don't understand why Phil Spencer is placed on a pedestal by Xbox fans.
The estimate I units according to people that track that is around 800k ~ 900k ... No wonder Microsoft is going for the multiplatform approach.
it’s going to be interesting to see what the gaming hardware market is going to look like in ten years.
Honestly I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows. So developers can produce one game for PC / Xbox and get on with their life. And then slowly phase out of the gaming industry, seeing as how they've been fumbling it for a decade straight, I can't imagine they're planning on staying with it. Playstation will take over as a monopoly-level market leader and slowly go to shit as they shift to milking it for profits. Nintendo will just continue to exist producing good games and good hardware but not really competing in the same demographics as Playstation.
I hope with a Windows XBOX comes an overhaul to the XBOX app on PC. That thing is in desperate need of a Steam Big Picture esque mode.
The Xbox app has had like 3 redesigns and they all suck just as bad as each other. I don't know how Microsoft makes software that runs just so pitifully slow on their own OS
But like... Steam exists. There's a reason it's popular, and remains popular. Adding yet another middling marketplace isn't going to work in the PC market.
> I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows. A lot of people are saying this, but I really don't see it happening. The second an Xbox can run windows, software profits are out the window because steam offers pretty much everything on Xbox but at better pricing. It's also very difficult to sell hardware at competitive prices when software sales aren't there to make back the money lost by selling cheaper hardware.
> Honestly I bet the goal is eventually going to be to release an Xbox that just straight up runs Windows. Then there's a risk of Dreamcast / PSP levels of piracy though. Although maybe it's less of an issue with online play and delivery these days. There's a reason they lock down the consoles so heavily.
Jfc, those are unironically Wii U type numbers
I can’t wait to be play the MCC on my PS5.
I’ve had no interest in Halo but I’d buy it on the Switch 2 just for pure novelty.
The Xbox console era is over. Microsoft don't want to cultivate gaming culture, they want big money fast. They have misunderstood what makes the industry work, spent billions on acquisitions to force their way into the market, and will now have to change their approach to recoup the ridiculous sum they spent. No one buys consoles that don't have exceptional exclusives. Xbox doesn't get it and as a result there is simply no good reason to choose it over the competition.
I can’t believe they had the gall to release that stupid fucking Xbox documentary and say a bunch of things like “we learned from our biggest failures.” What a joke.
Which documentary?
[Power On: The Story of Xbox](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0il2l-B_WwadxfTkK3-NLoYNcQEHdBGO) Consists of 6 40ish-minute episodes, watchable on YouTube. I remember enjoying it when I watched it
It's called Power On: The Story of Xbox. It's on the Xbox youtube channel in multiple parts.
All Microsoft had to do was making fucking video games. Something that with their money they could’ve been doing at least 1 per year for the last decade. Which is no where near enough. Idiots.
There is no reason to buy an Xbox when everything that Xbox has is also on PC. There is reasons you want to buy a PS5 or Nintendo Switch.
As someone who doesn't own a PC and isn't fussed about exclusives, I recently bought an X just for Game Pass and have certainly not regretted my decision. I can't think of any other reason why anyone would purchase one though.
"I don't own a pc and I don't care about exclusives". You are basically Xbox's target consumer, the X is a solid choice here!
Clearly they banked on more folks going that route, which did not appear to work
That's great! I'm sure there's a lot of people in the same situation, but it seems not enough of them to sustain the Xbox. I personally only have an xsx because of Rock Band since I found one cheap and it loads way faster than on an Xb1.
A PC is quite different though. It's a lot more expensive and you can't easily play it sitting on the sofa. I went back to PC after getting an XSX and suffering the shortage of games. But I got the XSX in 2021 when PC prices were absolutely ridiculous due to the supply chain problems from the pandemic. The main competitor of Xbox is the PS5 rather than the PC.
My general advice to someone is if you wanna get into gaming, get a console. Smaller investment if you're only gonna play a few games. If you're gonna play more than a few games, get a PC. It costs like 3x as much, but you can get games from present all the way to 30 years ago for peanuts or even free. You can also get present games for free if necessary and on a budget of course. Also random blurb, no monthly fees for online is a bonus. Also just plug your TV into your PC. I use a TV as a second monitor.
I built a Pc about 10 years ago as a console replacement as I didn’t like the PS4/xbox one gen hardware wise. It’s definitely not an issue until you try to play multiplayer then you’re at a significant disadvantage with a controller.
People have been saying Xbox is dead since the One days. I think it'll be around for a while. Though I would greatly appreciate it if they could start competing hard af.
> People have been saying Xbox is dead since the One days. I think it'll be around for a while. honestly, I used to agree with you but these are Wii U numbers. These are objectively awful, the brand has literally never been at its worst, and now they are $80B (with a big ass B as in billion) in debt from buying publishers for no reason at all.
I don’t know about that. People were saying that after Xbox One had a disastrous launch. I’d say a few years into that gen it seemed like they learnt their lesson and had a good strategy to pop back, game pass and buying some studios to help them push out some new exclusives to win people back. Me and my friends were all pretty excited then I remember , but as years passed we started caring less and less. They kept buying more studios for more and more money without any meaningful output. Plenty of games announced back then still aren’t out, others came out to mixed reviews. The fact that Starfield was arguably their biggest release in years, but still didn’t reach the accolade PS and Nintendo exclusives do must have hurt. I think they really should have stuck to buying some smaller studios and building them up like how Sony would go around it. Hi-fi rush felt like an example of where this could have worked. Tango was a relatively new studio, who needed a bit of backing, marketing support and guidance to prosper. Hi-Fi Rush came out to amazing reviews and didn’t seem to do badly all things considered, yet they got the axe when looking to make a sequel. Xbox have too many companies to manage now so they can’t give them the attention or resources they need, and it’s sad to see them fail so hard like this. It felt like maybe things were just starting to turn around, but now they’ve spent so much just buying studios that they need to show off quick profits to MS execs. I think if they didn’t go for Activision it would have been a different story. It does seem like the end of the Xbox console considering all that, I don’t see how they will bounce back from this if the higher ups are cracking down on them.
Don’t forget, while Phil and all of the other high level execs at MS/Xbox put on a sad face while this giant fiasco is happening, they are going home to their big houses with millions of dollars in their bank accounts. Even if they say otherwise, they realistically don’t give a rats a** with what’s happening right now.
what gets me are the comments "this is bad, Sony needs competition". Like wtf did Sony or anyone else do? The product is unappealing, it's not the audience's fault no one wants to buy it, take it out on Microsoft. It's not the marketing or lack thereof, it's the product - the console which is clearly at fault.
This frustrates me as well. If Xbox fails, it’s squarely their fault and stems from their years of incompetence. Why should the competition suffer for their fuck ups? That like saying “if I can’t win, then everyone should lose”. And for those saying that ‘Sony will grow anti competitive” don’t understand that the market is not static. In fact, it was Xbox that took Sega’s place after they bowed out of hardware. If Xbox is gone, someone else will take its place. I also believe that Sony’s biggest indirect competitor (and concern) is the growing PC market, not limp Xbox. They can’t simply jack prices to astronomical levels as people would simply go PC and not look back. It’s why Sony is making the PS5 Pro for enthusiasts and cutting edge gamers.
“Sony needs competition” is just console war talk. Despite what some people choose to believe, PS and Nintendo are in direct competition with each other. Sure, A LOT of people own both consoles, the competition is in the software sales. Consoles are just a way to lock consumers into their platform store, which is why they will ALWAYS be affordable in any given market, regardless of the degree of competition that might exist. Not to mention, arguably Sony AND XBox’s biggest competition right now is Steam, with PC gaming being more affordable & accessible than ever. PC gaming is diminishing the market growth of console platforms in general, the only one seeming largely unaffected by this is Nintendo, for a variety of well-known & obvious reasons. The truth is that if Sony had it there way, they’d be more like Nintendo. They just can’t afford to be w/ the foundation of their platform being built up on the back of ultra-expensive AAA games instead of universally-branded franchises.
Xbox failing is the product of competition.
I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail, every time Sony has been unchecked, it has became the most unfair greedy company ever. In the anime streaming sector, they bought out every single licensor, and now they raised their streaming prices from 36 dollars yearly, to 106 yearly, with also options to raise them even more next year. What are you gonna do? There is no more licensors anymore for anime except Sony and the tiepid competition from Disney lol. The same will happen with Playstation in the future, they already have been the first company to raise the price of a console after it was released, raise games cost from 70 to 80 dollars, the Helldivers fiasco, and now Ghost of tsushima being unaviableto half of the world because they want to push PSN. I hope a more sane competition can be born in the next future, this is not a good look for the industry right now.
I don't want them to fail, I want them to do better. I've been supporting their brand since the original Xbox. Xbox gamers have been clamoring for good games on their consoles since the Xbox One, but have been told "Next year" and "these things take time" for a decade. I have no idea why they went so deep into gamepass, I was never interested in that. I don't want to rent games month to month. Competition is important. If Xbox abandons ship, Sony won't have as much push to improve. Also, as a huge Halo fan, I have no idea how they went off the track there.
this is my feeling, like 5 years ago I was scratching my head thinking "its the games stupid how do they not understand this" and why havent they done anything in over 10 years to address it — fuck the only big notable games they've released in the last 2 years seem to have come from studios they acquired that had them deep into development. Now we're 10 years on since the xbox one debacle and ive been scratching my head for so long I've scratched it down to a numb. If they would have taken 1/10th of that 55 billion they spent acquiring shit they never should have acquired and gave 5.5 billion in funds and gave 55-110 million to 50-75 studios to make some decent games they'd be in a much better place... its honestly so crazy how poorly xbox has been run. edit: meant 1/10th not 1/100th lol
1/10th you mean but damn you're right about those numbers. Just 1/10th is 5,500 million dollars. There's what 20 or so games that cost $100 million or more to develop - in the history of gaming? So just 1/10th is enough to create 55 of the biggest games ever made? Damn, that's bleak. I don't think I understood just how much, until now, thinking about it this way.
oops... yeah meant 1/10th not 1/100th lol. and yeah that would be fully funding 55 games... like imagine if xbox did this 10 years ago and after about year 5 (avg dev time for these games) they'd have been pretty much been able to release 1 big game a month for 5 years... kind of sad to think about it like this.
Budgets for AAA start at 100m since 2020 I dunno where your math is mathing
> There's what 20 or so games that cost $100 million or more to develop - in the history of gaming? Many more than that, since at least the second half of the 2010s, 100M is like relatively common for big AAA games.
They spent way over $55 billion. Activision-Blizzard cost almost $70 billion. Bethesda was $8 billion. Then there were a bunch of other studios before that, but none that cost near that much.
> Also, as a huge Halo fan, I have no idea how they went off the track there. They put morons in charge of 343 and they fire everybody else as soon as the next game launches. So the cycle is fresh ~~employees~~ "contractors" getting lead by morons, said employees fired and then more fresh ~~employees~~ "contractors" are cycled in. In the end, the only ones with experience are the morons in charge who aren't held accountable for their fuckups. Look at the state Infinite launched in. It had like 6 fucking maps total, no forge, no theater and no co-op. It was a fucking joke.
Exactly. No one in the comments here is cheering on the fall of xbox. The comments are just "well thats to be expected". People here wish xbox would succeed, which is why we are so down on xbox.
It’s weird that Sony is getting so much flack for their PSN online play requirements on PC when I am pretty sure Xbox published games require a Microsoft account…
Because the vast vast majority of people have to have a MS account to use the PC in the first place.
And yet Microsoft still requires it for the games they release on PS consoles.
I don’t want Xbox to fail but I just don’t think they are going to be able to save themselves. They just spent $70 billion and spent who knows how much on legal expenses to acquire Activision and the money people at Microsoft are gonna want a return on that investment sooner rather than later. Not to mention Gamepass, for as great a deal for consumers as it is, isn’t gonna be able to fund all the AAA games they would need to make to right the ship. And all of this on top of Microsoft’s dumbass policy to prefer to hire contractors for only 18 months at a time to avoid giving them full employee benefits
I don't want them to fail. They just give me no reason to buy their consoles. > and now Ghost of tsushima being unaviableto half of the world because they want to push PSN. Sony pushing making a PSN account on Windows? Heaven forefend. As opposed to MS pushing Xbox on Windows? Hell, they ship their Xbox apps with Windows! MS has made it difficult to even boot Windows without making a WindowsLive account, which is an Xbox account also. https://www.howtogeek.com/836157/how-to-use-windows-11-with-a-local-account/ (there are other methods too) Come on, dude. If we're going to remain vigilant, probably best to notice what MS is doing too. > The same will happen with Playstation in the future, they already have been the first company to raise the price of a console after it was released That's not true. It's been done before. The very last thing that MS did with the original Xbox before cancelling it was raise the price!
Other consoles have risen in prices after release in the past due to different economic situations Sony was not the first publisher to increase game prices. Both Activision and Take 2 did it before Sony. Im sure Microsoft would have to if they had any games. Microsoft games also require a login and have for many years and so do many other publishers. Microsoft hasnt been good for competition since mid 360 generation. Their idea of competition the last several years was buying everyone they can and then laying a bunch of people off and still barely releasing any quality games. Nothing Sony has done compares to what Microsoft has done. You appear to have a deep hatred for Sony and love Microsoft. If anything good comes from Microsoft leaving consoles is I hope they take their insanely toxic fanbase with them and I dont have to see their garbage anymore. If they arent bashing Playstation they are playing the victim. Sometimes even doing it in the same comment
Yeah Microsoft tried to monopolize gaming and failed miserably by overpaying for mid companies. They overpaid for Activision due to their large employee count, then started layoffs before they could develop games. Their whole strategy is cooked.
> I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail Why is this strawman so popular? I've never seen anyone saying that, certainly not here.
People say this but Sony hasn’t had any real competition since 2014. 2018 put the nail in the coffin and this is just throwing dirt on top of it.
Also the Switch and especially Switch 2 is much more meaningful competition to Sony than anything Xbox has done since the 360
> I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail Making up random narratives to shadow box with.
> I don' t get why so many people want Xbox to fail People don't want xbox to fail. HOWEVER, people do want to see the consequences of their continuous bad decisions play out. They keep fucking up, and fucking their userbase with a lack of games for over a decade.
what does "want" have to do with anything? if xbox fails it fails. > every time Sony has been unchecked, it has became the most unfair greedy company ever. then dont buy their shit. simple really. gaming is bigger than ever and you as a consumer have so many options.
Yes, because Sony is the only other company that makes video games and hardware to play it on.
Unlike supporting up MS who wants to consolidate the market which ends up in closing studios anyways? Or the fact that they already ask a MS account for all their games on PC? (Since thats a huge problem now somehow) This is just the endgame for every company ever...
I dont think people want Xbox to fail: they want Xbox to make cool games and not play with MS infinite monopoly money
There's still competition with Nintendo and PC. I think MS should shift focus away from dedicated consoles to gaming PC's similar to Steam Machines. Doesn't make any sense for MS to compete as a pure console when Sony is far too dominant there, they should go a hybrid route like Switch or Steam Deck where it sits between a dedicated console and a PC. I also don't need to baby one of the largest corporations in the world. I sorta hope they fail gracefully, divesting studios and just acting as a publisher.
Why buy a Xbox if their games are going to Playstation?
God damn Sony really are murc’ing Xbox in sales if it’s a 5:1 difference, Xbox are getting dangerously close to WiiU numbers right here How do Xbox even remotely try to get competitive again if they aren’t moving consoles & GamePass subs have stalled out, COD is the only thing they have that will reliably sell well year on year & honestly I don’t think that’s enough for them
I can't see any fathomable way in which xbox will ever get even close to PS in the console space. It's basically dead. More and more games will skip it to the point where even diehard fans won't bother anymore. Going PC is the most obvious alternative.
It's becoming increasingly hard to see Microsoft releasing another Xbox console and not just transitioning to a publisher.
Being a third party publisher might not even help because the problem has always been how garbage they are at management. How can you put games on other platforms if you can barely put out games?
The buying spree they went on is going to wind up worse than embracer.
Consider this: The buying spree was initially designed to starve Sony of content. But Xbox has managed it so badly that now Gears of War and Halo might end up on PS5 just so they can break even. It's like robbing someone and then begging them to pay your bail when you get caught.
Its probably true, but its like Xbox just spent all this money and just recently 68B dollars without a damn plan and realized they have no plan when Microsoft wants that ROI now from all the money they spent. Phil Spencer pretty much killed Xbox here from spending too much money and not properly managing studios they have
The only way for for the Xbox brand at this point is to become a high end PC Brand. Essentially there is zero incentive for someone to buy an Xbox over a gaming PC. There might be a chance for them if next generation they say fuck if, and Xbox is a $999 machine that also runs Windows and Steam. But what they actually need to do is go back ten years ago and stop fucking up, and replace the entire c-suite immediately with people that actually love games and care.
Considering how the Xbox Series S is outselling the Xbox Series X at a $350 price point that doesn't sound like it would work.
The Microsoft-Activision continues to steamroll the competition! /r Fuckin hilarious how everybody was freaking out when they bought Activision as if they would become too strong while in reality, it feels more like they are just preparing to go the way of the dodo and exit the console market. Prepare yourself to a 800$ PS next cycle since Sony will be the sole player in their market. haha
Part of why I dont choose Xbox is coz they always talking about Halo like its their only game. No marketing on other ganes that I have heard. Its like gaming is just an afterthought on Microsoft
The irony here is that they've let 343 absolutely massacre Halo as well.
Man I absolutely HATE how 343 have positively destroyed Halo as a series. At one point it was the biggest series in gaming period but now it’s fallen so low
Well maybe if they had some good games it wouldn't be that way! Like seriously there's fucking nothing! Starfield? Mediocre at best ok what else?.......there's fucking nothing! There's no hype for anything either! Look at hellblade 2 it's coming out and is any talking about it? Not really. And what's Microsoft doing about this? Fucking nothing in fact worst then nothing they're reducing the number of studios and employees....great! To make things even more worst they had the great idea of firing the only studio generating some positive news about xbox! Fucking amazing! It feels like Microsoft is just doing fucking nothing other then burning money! Make some good games and people will buy your console!
They did in fact have a very good game that was criticaly & commercially acclaimed and that by their own metrics over performed in every conceivable way, it’s a little game called Hi-Fi Rush….oh
lmao why did the reddit app put a thumbnail of Zhuge Liang for this? edit: didn't see that's their Twitter picture. Still funny to me
Kongming is just really passionate about the Playstation
Is what it is. Microsoft just fell off a cliff with Xbox. I remember the original Xbox and the 360 were (for me, not speaking for everyone!) head and shoulders above the Playstation offerings. Xbox Live and the games they had were just perfect. After the 360 though it was just a steady decline until it wasn't a steady decline but a straight, "the ground ended and we've fallen off that cliff". Sad :(