PS5 is on track with PS4 ? Switch is going to BE surpassing all of the previous ones, so I cant agree with that.
I downloaded the Heroic launcher for Epic, Amazon and GOG games:
Took 2-3 minutes to setup but now I can access all those games super easy on the Deck too and they also provide compatibility statements and game profiles.
Ironically the more difficult ones are Battle NET and MS Store. I personally downloaded XBPlay to play on xCloud and stream all my games from my Series X locally but it’s mainly Microsoft and Activision holding the launchers back.
Pretty sure Wii and 3DS combined sold a lot more than Switch. Nintendo only has 1 system now so sells a lot less boxes than before.
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Watching people trying to cook numbers to say the console market isn’t shrinking is amusing.
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I think it’s the business overall. Being on track isn’t growing especially when you consider their highest sales is still the PS2 which Ryan announced as 160 million before leaving. Also, PSN numbers are not growing. They are now forecasting selling 18million for 2025 when originally, they had said at the start of they were pushing for 30 million annually. From 30 to 25 to 20.8. That’s quite a miss if you ask me. I doubt they will even manage the 18 million next year unless they have strong in demand titles and GTA is looking like ending of next year now. Nintendo is definitely doing fine but they have had to put everything to just one hybrid while they have in past generations had both handhelds and consoles. Still I think their strategy isn’t bad. I do think Sony is doing well just that the console industry isn’t really growing, so many layoffs and studio closures that analysts are now saying there will be less games in the future.
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Console sales continue to take a hammering, with April hardware sales down 47% in Europe. This is due to strong strock levels of PS5 boosting the market last year, and the Nintendo Switch benefiting from the Mario movie and a special edition Zelda Switch https://t.co/lHwmIma4wO
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) May 15, 2024
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I believe it’s selling slightly less than ps4 overall but regardless, on par isn’t growing
and Switch while selling well had to consolidate both their handheld and console divisions together so overall aren’t selling more consoles than they used to either
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I’m late to the party when it comes to this thread because this news put such a bad taste in my mouth that I honestly didn’t feel like playing videogames or discussing it or anything like that.
I was really getting into Pentiment, too. But it reminded me of exactly why this bothers me. It’s a great game, though it may not be a blockbuster hit. Made by a mid-sized team. An experimental title that Game Pass could support and offer gamers. Not unlike Hi-Fi Rush.
So all of the reasons why I supported acquisitions, something that Xbox leadership hinted at, are gone.
All the excitement that Game Pass offered as a revenue, distribution, and monetization model in where smaller and more experimental titles could appear from 1st party…that excitement is gone.
This on top of the obvious. That talented people on capable, proven, and talented teams lost their jobs because… Because no reason, really? No reason overly associated with the team or their games. If HFR and Redfall sold a few million more copies it could have changed the math taking it from a studio closure to cutting X percentage of staff. Sure.
And then, for me, is the other side of the equation where fan lboys and gaming grifters who spent all of their time telling us that these games don’t matter and that above average games are actually garbage and not worth even trying out, are crying foul.
If you spend your life slagging Xbox and it’s games what do you think will happen to the people who make the games when you want the games to fail?
Like you want Xbox to leave the industry. Okay fine, they leave and tens of thousands of people are out of jobs. You can’t get mad at Microsoft for letting those people go because you wanted Xbox to be unprofitable. You told people that HiFi Rush was not a game worth playing or buying a console for because it’s just an indie game. It’s just a cartoon game. You told people that Redfall was the worst game of 2022, misleading hyperbole so you can get clicks, so what do you think would happen to the team? Do you think teams stick around when they have the reputation, one that you generated and hoped would stick, of releasing the worst game ever?
I mentioned fanboys that engage in console war nonsense, but I’m also including YouTube gaming grifters that aren’t specifically focused on Xbox but because it makes the money they will do it. But we’ve seen them do the same to Suicide Squad. If Rocksteady faces anymore layoffs I’m going to pin it on these YouTube grifters. I watched some playthroughs on YouTube and the comments are full of people who are stunned and say that the game looks actually pretty good. Stunned because they were told otherwise.
So I have a lot of ire for Microsoft, and a lot of ire for the fact that our industry is full of juvenile fanboys and grifters that go out of their way to tarnish the reputation of games, developers, and hardware which leads to a real world ramifications.
And yes a part of my anger against the latter is rooted in my fandom of the Dreamcast where I saw a fantastic console get run through the mud by fanboys and the Media to the point where SEGA had to drop out of the console market and shut down a whole bunch of fantastic studios. I don’t want to compare the situation because Microsoft has more than enough money to keep these studios alive for another decade and SEGA was at the end of its rope. So to be clear I am not pinning this all on fanboys. But rather it’s their same garbage sentiments and statements that exist now that existed back then. A whole bunch of false narratives to slag games because they aren’t featured on their box. The fact that we haven’t grown as an industry is what pisses me off. There are way too many gamers out there that are juvenile. And I’m referring to grown men. Both on YouTube and in gaming media.
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Not in hardware units sold it hasn’t.
The revenue growth is from increased monetization via online subs, MTX, DLC, etc.
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Microsoft Gaming can’t be trusted, Xbox can I don’t want to see no more acquisition until Phil and Sarah have full control without the bigwigs breathing down their neck.
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I’m not sure it should totally be gone. Obviously they’re going to put more focus on titles and IP that they think will be more successful, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop getting smaller games like Pentiment or experimental games like Grounded. In fact, if I was them, I would tell every studio to carve out a small team to work on experimental stuff.
Games like Grounded are exactly the kind of games they should be looking for, and having small teams focus on creating easy to digest and play social games should be encouraged because those are the types of games that go viral and often don’t cost a lot.
Those are my thoughts anyway and I’m sure plenty of people here will say “eww” to that idea. 
I agree with pretty much everything else you said though. The culture around Videogames is gross and often nauseatingly disingenuous.
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I think we should be more hopeful that the bigwigs get enlightened properly on the games industry also hopeful that Phil and his team can prove they don’t need the rest of Microsoft’s direction with gaming. As for acquisitions i thought they did a new restructuring not too long ago to handle this.
Unfortunately more are planned, they’ve already said as much.
I don’t trust they will do right by any further acquisitions now.
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Phil and Sarah are being silenced from commenting about anything about anything, you figure a statement from Phil or Sarah about the the closures of a few Bethesda studios would eminent but nothing. Does that not concern you?
I prefer the Xbox controller as well but as someone who’s played his last three games on PlayStation 5, my bigger issue is the shitty battery life and the touch pad. I prefer the placement of the analog sticks on the Xbox controller but the analog sticks on the dual sense are the least of my complaints.
As for having PC store fronts on Xbox consoles, that’s all a wait and see for me. As of now, it’s just rumors and speculation. I will say that if Microsoft has somehow worked out a deal with Valve, then they should announce it during the showcase for their next generation consoles.
Hahaha. Nice. Once Sony goes day one on PC, should be even better for you.
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Phil has already hinted at it in interviews, and a lot of times with Xbox it seems they are preparing the community at large as to what will happen with those hints in interviews.
I feel like it’s not a matter of if it’ll happen, but when, and how well implemented will it be. It has to be more than Windows obviously since it’s a gaming system so I wouldn’t be surprised if all hands are on deck at MS to make this happen.
You’ve also got Sarah Bond in interviews saying she has a dedicated team for forward compatibility, and I think they have a plan to make the Xbox store work on PCs as well and decouple it from the consoles so it can live anywhere.
It’s basically all it amounts to: make sure gamers’s investments keep following them and keep the large library available, which is necessary for Gamepass to thrive, but at the same time make it simple for devs to keep supporting your ecosystem. We know current Xbox dev kits are made to scale from Xbox One all the way to Series X as well as cloud and PC. I think the next Xbox is an evolution on that concept taken to the next level.
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Pentiment was not a mid sized team, it was legit tiny.
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Hinting at it and it actually happening are two different things. A lot can happen in the next two plus years before the next generation Xbox console launches. I simply take a wait and see what happens approach.
I don’t believe what they are saying, much less hinting at lol.
You mean the new hardware or just overall?