Ok - there is a lot of stuff on the internet elsewhere about this and I don’t want this to become a concern thread - there is enough of that elsewhere. But I am at the point where I simply do not understand how Xbox are trying to launch the Series X - or perhaps why?
If we look at circumstances clearly Covid is hampering things and we all know why there now isn’t a major (or any) first party launch title. Its easy to criticise that but reality is the die was set in 2016/17 when Xbox’s future wasn’t even sure.
So moving on - Halo Infinite is delayed but seemingly that delay didn’t come out of the blue (or shouldn’t have). So since then (and arguably before) there has been a huge huge vacuum around the Series X where information about it, games running on it and indeed anything about its launch (beyond confirming it is launching) is non existent. Now that is understandable up till their big July event but even then it was a list of stuff coming - nothing really about a console launching and what you can do on that console day one. It is bizarre after such a confident start at TGA to be sitting here now having not seen any title running on the console, not knowing the launch line up and really having absolutely no information about the product itself.
It is clear that Sony are somewhat in the same boat BUT they have at least had an event focussed on the PS5 experiences in terms of games that are coming and shown in theory those games on the actual hardware. Its underwhelming compared to normal launches - sure - and we must keep it in mind.
BUT Xbox - they are promoting gamepass and doing that well and creating value. But in probably 2 months time they have a big, powerful and almost certainly expensive box launching - yet even I as someone following this closely has no idea what games I’ll be playing on it at launch (as in SX versions) and how they’ll look and what improvements there will be. No tangible videos to watch and drool over in anticipation. Sony have had that since June. And now doubled down on it at ONL yesterday.
I simply do not understand what Xbox are trying to do - its hard but I can’t shake a feeling they’ve already given up on dedicated hardware entirely and almost abandoned their launch and are just going for a soft launch of the SX into the market without any promotion or event or anything to say -hey the world’s most powerful console is here. Its almost like they’ve decided gamepass and services is it now - perhaps the situation dictates this. But their communication has gone from outstanding and receiving praise all round (remember when Sony were seen as the ones without any PR or comms earlier this year?) to being virtually non existent. Any product launch irrespective of whether you are using hardware as a means to subs and services - requires some promotion and something to whet the appetites of people buying it. Especially a console that is likely to be pushing £500 or more. This even for the real Xbox core like myself needs something, anything to get us hyped. I was more excited for the Xbox One launch because I’d played games on the Xbox One at events - I’d played BF4, COD Ghosts, Ryse, DR3, FM5 and of course seen plenty of footage of these launch titles on youtube. I knew what I was getting. Right now - I have no idea if what will turn up is a £500 Backwards Compatibility box…which surely would be rivalling the WIiU for a ‘non event’ of a launch. I want to understand what they are doing or thinking - even if they just said ‘look Covid has hurt we’re doing our best here’s what we’ve got’. Just anything where they stop pretending they aren’t launching a major piece of hardware in less than 10 weeks time…(probably).
Yeah my title might be confusing - I wasn’t asking for a delay - I was asking HOW they are launching it. Are they just going to put it on shelves and be done with it? Because that’s how it feels now.
Delaying series x affects estimates and financial status of third parties (because… yes! there are series x exclusives on launch window!). There is no way they would delay series X.
Did we had such a mess with the xbox one x release? Because it was released with… Super Lucky’s Tale! And we had to wait one year until something more “AAA-like” to appear (Forza Horizon 4), and almost two years until Gears 5.
I think the fundamental difference with One X was it was in effect a soft launch - it was there for people who wanted the power primarily for multiplats but came with a range of enhanced games day one I guess. I’d say even with the One X we’d had more demos of what it could do by now before it launched and that was a mid gen upgrade.
But I think it is safe tu consider series X a soft launch for the first year or two. Early adopters being those that want power for primarly multiplats, and then most users will need to jump to next-gen for the newest games. This model has worked for other consumer goods for a lot of years, and I don’t see why this would not work on gaming consoles. If in two years we are not convinced on “next-gen” stuff, then I would agree that we have some issues… not necessarily a xbox issue but a game industry problem.
We do know the list of games that will be improved by series x launch (gears 5, forza horizon 4, gears tactics, ori, sea of thieves). We are only missing an up-to-date video trailer, but this will be delivered whenever they can give us a launch date and price (because QoL improvements are the main seller point of series X for now, they need to provide the information side by side; and, in previous console launches, this was done by June in a non-covid scenario). Sea of thieves, alongside Minecraft (which I do expect a series X version - but yet unconfirmed), could be one of the best xbox games to showcase ray-tracing.
If they could, I wouldn’t doubt both Sony and MS delaying into 2021 when their software line up was more robust and work from home was hitting its stride. But the issue were pretty much locked into a 2020 release date with the South East Asia countries handling COVID generally doing an excellent job of actually reducing transmission that their economy and factory lines could re-open very quickly. Sony and MS had those lines already booked, the supply chain has been mostly unaffected and generally, they were stuck. If they wanted to delay now, they would be sitting on sell-able inventory which would be a massive profit loss.
The best way at this point is to launch with what they can. If that is just enhanced versions of games already available, so be it. It’s essentially a soft launch for both manufacturers at this point. If you want one, it’s available but the big exclusive next gen titles won’t be available yet.
If they were to push back Series X then they will lose tons of sales imo. Me for example would skip Series X and just get a PS5. I would then get Series X whenever there’s a price drop. I think many are okay with playing major third party games and whatever content is on gamepass
They probably have a lot on their plate at the moment. I imagine a lot of their time is on fine tuning GAMEPASS for XCLOUD. They probably want to have things in sync with XCLOUD should they need to fall back on something again. HALO INFINITE really did and dealt them a huge blow and it’s one that is turning out hard to manage as news keep coming out that constantly need addressing. Also rumour is Microsoft is out trying to cut new deals for series X launch. Hopefully they are able to address things properly in September.
I think they could have just taken some of their games and tried to remaster them and release them free as enhanced. For example GEARS 5 add a BR mode and spruce up the graphics somewhat even HALO CE could have been remastered with raytracing added. Certainly some of the old titles like RYSE, NINJA GAIDEN BLACK, JADE EMPIRE could gain new life If remastered with raytracing.
Another thing is the series X launch marketing was all based on HALO INFINITE. The mountain dew and others must have cost alot. It’s not easy after planning things one wzy to all of a sudden make a new path with games and marketing.
Mircosoft has always promoted this as more of a continuation of Xbox than a hard cutoff. The entire plan was for people to just upgrade at their convenience instead of trying to force people into new hardware and accessories. That is why they have focused on Game Pass and BC.
It’s Sony that has been promoting a clearly defined generation cutoff and yet they haven’t really done a great job in selling this IMO. They just have a lot trusting fans that don’t need concrete proof.
All new generations tend to start out pretty weak anyway.
They are going to sell Series X in November because the hardware is done. It’s really just that simple.
How are they going to launch it? They’ll put out a release date, price, and probably show games…then release it.
I’ll also say this…we have gotten more footage of Series X games than we have of PS5 games. I think that people forget games that have been shown…sure you want more, no doubt. But it’s not as dire as poeple make it seem.
I think the issue is we’ve seen nothing other than possibly BC titles very early on running on the hardware. And no actual showcase of how games take advantage of the hardware. Sony haven’t shown much but R&C at least looks nice with good graphics and a few nice features. Nothing ground breaking but we’ve had absolutely nothing close to equivalent on the series X. Some extended gameplay showing off power and features is surely a must. I just think Xbox won’t show anything like that. They almost seem to want to launch as quietly as possible.
Going to say I think when it comes to this stuff. All fans of a specific platform or developer right now, it’s easy to look at their platform of choice and believe what they are doing is uniquely weird right now. It’s also easy as a fan of a specific platform to believe that the other platforms right now are handling things better be it communication, momentum etc and their platform of choice has gone missing or are botching things.However frankly, I do not believe this to be true.
The long and short of it is that all platforms right now have had abnormal messaging, marketing and news cycles and it’s entirely due to covid. We are only just now getting a reveal of the new Call of Duty this week when usually that would have happened end of May. In general for the whole industry this has now been the year where you least know about any gaming products or projects releasing beyond early 2021 at best. While Sony has shown and revealed games they are clearly playing it close to their chest in terms of release schedules because they have no idea what could be delayed. Sony much like Microsoft has yet to reveal the price of their system, what games you can actually play day one and even the marketing they have started doesn’t focus on graphics or how the games look but new controller features. I say this to say I’ve seen both fans of ps wondering what Sony is doing and i’ve also seen impartial observers who think both haven’t delivered enough info at all.
Now of course, It can be argued that covid has impacted Microsoft a bit more than others maybe, in particular due to Halo needing to be delayed. But long and short of it is still it’s covid as the main factor. It’s a factor that extends to marketing and PR as much as anything else too. Covid has limited the traditional avenues for which both would usually start advertising their systems, the vast majority of ad spend and commercial buys are usually for marketing during sporting events and those just aren’t happening either at all or large quantities. A long marketing cycle is also just expenses neither company want to have especially when there is a chance covid related stuff could still suddenly require them to delay the systems or lead to lagging sales down the line due to a recession. Add that in the past few years it’s been shown that many tech products, games etc have been very successful and without a long marketing cycle preceding it.
Microsoft (and Sony) will likely very much pick up the marketing soon, in what will likely be short and sweet 2 month marketing campaigns/build ups for the mainstream (which may still leave enthusiasts unsatisfied compared to prior gens cause the focus by now won’t just be on enthusiasts).
What I am sick of and this goes for Sony as well is the delays and confusing messaging.
If MS are confident in their product announce pre-orders and the price. It’s frustrating and in this world crisis people need to budget and know what they are going to need when the console hits.
Sony are the same, this - who blinks first with the price, is alienating the fan base for me. As the release gets closer its becoming less and less exciting. XSX has shown nothing yet other than CGI. Phil (who I think is brilliant for Xbox) has known for 7 years how much they have fallen behind Sony unit wise. There doesn’t seem to be any real preparation this time round and I don’t think the pandemic can be blamed completely.
Halo was maybe their Hail Mary but surely they should of had back-ups in case of this. That is business 101.
The events we have seen and I have been totally hyped, but they are so underwhelming and thats for both companies. The PR heads at MS and the twitter hype ‘insiders’ ideas of ‘megatons’ ‘game changers’ are certainly not my idea for being blown away at all. Maybe as I get older these things aren’t what they used to be.
Where is all these footage from XSX? we had… Gears 5? Halo Infinite and almost everything else was PC.
As far as i saw it, PS5 has gotten waaay more footage.
unless you mean we saw more games coming to XsX than games coming to Ps5.
I said this in another thread but it’s equally relevant here:
I know it’s kind of hard right now, but honestly, we just have to be patient. It’s August. We already know they’re having another showcase in September, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they had one more after that before launch as well. By the time the Series X is coming out, we will have seen PLENTY of gameplay footage.
But yes, I agree that the wait has been exhausting, and I’d say we’re probably at the low point of hype for next-gen. But it will only build from here, leading up to launch day.
People forget quickly, but we knew next to nothing about the Nintendo Switch, for example, until less than SIX MONTH before it came out. We didn’t see a proper amount of games, pricing, or release date until about 2 months before launch. And even then everyone thought it was going to be a flop. Just have patience.
