Whatever strong foundation they are setting though I have to wonder how their console business will be doing long term, because even with money coming in and their revenue going up soon thanks to ABK, if you don’t get more people on consoles your growth will still somehow stall. I feel like if 3 years in they can barely reach 25 million consoles, then no way do they outsell Xbox One after 6 years and we’ll be lucky if they reach 45 million systems sold. PS5 has too much traction and if PS5 Pro is true and we don’t get a pro console on Xbox side, Sony will get the hardcore mindshare and the casual one and then we’re back to « next gen MS will be in a better position » but we’ve said that last gen and yet here we are.
I love what MS is doing and love their ecosystem and will honestly never buy a PlayStation to be honest as I hate how anti consumer they are, but even with a lot of right moves it seems MS can’t seem to shift momentum their way for some reason which is something I have a hard time to understand as everything they do is pro consumer. Really wish sometimes they opened the checkbooks for a few AAA 3rd party exclusives, like let’s say a new Resident Evil or a Yakuza and make it « timed exc’usive »like Sony does (as in forever) and see if that has any impact on sales. You have to think that they’d be willing to spare a few hundred million dollars to see what kind of effect it has on mindshare?
Hopefully all they’ve purchased becomes fully exclusive and they reap the rewards long term. I know I’m in with Xbox for the long run or I’ll go PC only with a side of Nintendo! But negativity around the brand has to go away somehow and they need big marketing push as somehow both Sony and Nintendo outspend MS on this front and as a trillion dollars company they have no excuses.
It is the lack of attractive software for the mainstream audience. It’s been few and far between since Xbone, with Forza being the most reliable thing. Many people even say Starfield is Xbox’s biggest launch since Halo 3 in 2007. We are hopefully now on the cusp of a stream of solid attractive big software, but it will take a good stream of it + good marketing to make it work.
As said many times on here it will cost MS an absolute mountain more than Sony to do it. JP companies especially would charge an arm and leg just for a mere 6 months at most of exclusivity (moreso to extend it) as it is essentially asking them to damage their brand domestically for the duration. In the 360 gen many JP games MS moneyhats went to PS3 very quick with tons of exclusive new features and made many JP Xbox buyers regret their purchase.
If people seriously think Xbox Series X|S isn’t gonna outsell Xbox One, I have a bridge to sell you. The fact it has even sold close to Xbox One during shortages is amazing and the fact people are running out right now to buy a Series X|S to play the old COD games which is huge right now.
Add in Bethesda and most likely ABK, you’d have to pretty naive or frankly stupid to not see Xbox doing a lot better this gen. I think they’ll claw back like 10m or more consoles this gen, but the real fight will be next gen.
Microsoft have started their repair of reputation in 2018 with all the studios they bought and continued it with Bethesda, we’re only now getting a huge game out of that with Starfield (hi fi rush deserves a shoutout too) so their old purchases are only just starting to come good.
This is why I say give it this gen to build up the Xbox hype again, they’ll claw back some users but next gen is when the rubber hits the road and the real shit happens haha, I mostly say that as it’s another reset and if Microsoft does good leading up to next gen they could convert more people at the start of a gen than in the middle like now.
Don’t get me wrong they can’t hold out till next gen to start getting hype it’s from Starfield onwards they gonna be relentless and then don’t fuck up with the next console price, power wise or weird policies.
The “concern” about the results is that they missed on every target that they had for this quarter
Very fixable issues though. Redfall bombing and prioritizing xcloud over hardware is probably the main contributors for them missing their targets.
Starfield and Forza on top of the hardware shortage slowly getting resolved will completely put them back on track in every sector next quarter in my opinion.
Not to mention the elephant in the room in ABK.
Not a great quarter by any means but they’re holding the line with brighter days on the horizon.
If their bad quarter is their 2nd best quarter then I’d be pretty happy haha, I know these companies must grow at all costs but it’s not like they’ve dropped a ton, they just didn’t grow as much as they expected and like you said Redfall bombing and stuff like Minecraft Legends not exactly being a huge blow out sale wise and along with the shortages it all doesn’t help.
2022 still hurting 2023 and nothing really has come out to help that until Starfield and Forza Motorsport and guess what this exact same thing happened in 2021 with Halo and Forza Horizon and look how well that quarter was.
The thing is MS does not seems to think the next quarter will have huge increases. They said “revenue expected to grow mid to high single digit” which compared to this quarter should be between 5%-9% (at most) with a slight increase in console sales or flat if I’m understanding things correctly and not that much revenue.
So that begs the question…does it means they are not expecting Starfield to boost xbox sales or for it to not be big? Are they being conservative or do they believe Statfield will knock it out of the park? Is stock or demand the problem? If its the former…then why hasnt it been solved at this point? and if its the later then that is a far worrisome problem but since the arent even increasing their marketing push…
I really dont want to sound like a doomer but what if Starfield fails in being THE game xbox seems to need to boost their pressence in the industry? A lot of things could change based on its performance on xbox, gamepass and PC me thinks but as I said, this is just short term problems that could easily be “fixable” should the ABK deal go through.
I’m not sure what people were hoping for the first half of this generation? They have the first party studios but we’ve still yet to see the benefits of all the investment over the last five years. Until Microsoft start hitting a steady cadence of quality first party releases things won’t change and both Microsoft and Xbox leadership know that.
I’m not worried about Xbox’s future, they’re setting themselves up for the long haul with the insane amount they’ve invested into first party in such a short time(with ABK $80bn over five years). They realize that local hardware gaming is still going to dominate for the next decade atleast but gamepass is their move into the subscription present that all entertainment is moving towards and cloud is a bet on a possible next step.
I think they’re just being conservative since they missed on all of their targets for this quarter.
Starfield is going to be one of the biggest PC games of all time. I think you should have a little more faith in Phil and Todd. They know how pivotal this game is.
Fiscal projections aren’t targets. We have no idea what the targets are nor whether they were hit or not. Almost certainly raising revenue without hardware increases is something they want to do.
If it wasn’t for Xbox 360, the XOne would have ended with 20-30M sales at best.
This quarter is just the result of the mistakes made several years ago, not getting any big third party deal done this gen did hurt Xbox Series sales hard.
Just like someone pointed here, at this point i don’t know how much will Starfield boost Xbox sales, the X1 and Series consoles had a quite bad reputation last 8 years due to the mediocre catalogue they had. This said, even if it might not get an instant boost, i think from now on, each year will be better sales wise for MS’s console until the end of the generation.
So yes, if MS still cares about their console, it’s all about giving it some great years before the generation ends so people will regain confidence on the Xbox brand by the start of next-gen.
PC market’s growing way faster than consoles one, and MS is going to be the biggest publisher there, so even if Xbox fails they will still be very big
I think the main problem for Microsoft right now is Windows OEM.
The solution as I see it is devices like the Asus Rog, a new PS specifically for them with the same amount of support as the steam deck.
Of course that still comes with issues as I don’t see Microsoft making their own. So windows handheld will always cost more, and they need to allow for steam to be installed or they won’t get much of the steam only crowd to even consider them.
So, in conclusion not really an actual solution to the prep built PCs not selling as much problem.
This quarter was not extraordinary, still one of their best Q4. The real bad one this year was Q2, and this was a result of having no big hitters for Christmas, unlike 2021.
PC are losing to tablets and phone as general purpose devices and for industry computers are good enough to be kept for years. Gaming can be a saviour but not enough. Still, the explosion in prices for graphic cards during covid has slowed down the PC adoption.
