Jez is Making a Good Point: Xbox is Complaining About Competing With Tik Tok, Social Medias and Video Content, While Doing Nothing About Adressing the Problem

[Doncabesa (Jesse Norris)]

@Jeans

…was surprised that Tomas @falconeerdev1 is pretty much in agreement with the statement from Jez. He talked about the importance of building a community for devs with tools that are way ahead on Steam, compared to the closed environments and poor store experience of console platforms. Xbox store should be more open and interactive. Discoverability is not a priority it seems, and it’s a shame that searching for games, especially new games, is still clunky and kind of a mess sometimes, like the Red Dead Redemption situation we have right now on Xbox for example. Even demos are so hard to find. Why can’t we have a store that is showing us games and better promote stuff that we like ? Anyway, really great talk from Tomas, a lot of different topics and some cool insights from him in this episode.

If it leads to 20,000+ games a year like Steam, then devs will have the exact same discoverability issue that is prevalent there.

[Jeans]

@Doncabesa

If it leads to 20,000+ games a year like Steam, then devs will have the exact same discoverability issue that is prevalent there.

But maybe there could be a middle ground. It’s just the tools and community building that Xbox is lacking. Tomas explained that there’s so many small things that the Xbox store doesn’t allow him to do.

I think it’s safe to say that the Xbox store could be better at highlighting stuff and making some games more visible.

[Titan]

@Jeans

But maybe there could be a middle ground. It’s just the tools and community building that Xbox is lacking. Tomas explained that there’s so many small things that the Xbox store doesn’t allow him to do.

I think it’s safe to say that the Xbox store could be better at highlighting stuff and making some games more visible.

There is a middle ground, but it’s difficult to navigate. Consoles in general have this curated air of slight prestige. There’s a lot more hoops developers have to jump through, but in return gamers get a smoother experience and feel safer while gaming on console platform. Discovery is a big issue. I’m disappointed by how “dead” modern console storefronts feel, but I also really hate how busy, noisy, and bloated the Steam storefront feels. I’d like a richer community feel, but there’s a lot that’d have to go into developing that user experience which I’m not entirely sure Microsoft would invest in. Curious how they’ll tackle the issue with Steam being more of a direct competitor if they go the PC Xbox route. Xbox does a lot through ID@Xbox and they own a lot of developer tools through Playfab, so there’s definitely an effort being made and opportunities there. But I don’t think I, as a gamer, want the full community experience of Steam. Just something “better” I suppose.