Their hardware isn’t good right now but despite that they had their 2nd best Q4 ever without major first party releases and no, I’m not counting Redfall lol
They definitely need to do better hardware wise going forward but with a much better cadence of big games and hopefully a massive push with their marketing on CoD like the 360 days they can do better in this regard
As of now, there hasn’t been enough of a reason to get an xbox when ps5 and switch are still the hot shit and Xbox hasn’t released a major title since Halo in 2021
Not a big worry, because I expect to see a major upturn with StarField . It would be nice that know with the Activision deal all but done. Team Xbox start to advertise and push the XBox with adverts on TV and with the start of the footy season Ect
Hardware being down a lot several quarters in a row is not surprising. They aren’t promoting and marketing their consoles and hadn’t a major exclusive since nearly 2 years (Infinite). That’s logical.
It’s not that it should be surprising (it isn’t) but more as to why they aren’t doing it. Even the build up to Starfield is being compared to Spider-Man 2 and with reasons I guess as they are the 2 biggest releases this fall, and it seems like Spider-Man has at least 10 times the marketing budget yet probably sells itself just with the name, so what is MS doing? Unfortunately, marketing is a big part of what makes these devices wanted and cool!
I think gamers really should start to look at the trends in general media, eventually this will happen to gaming. I’ve been gaming since the late 1970’s so I have seen many many changes in gaming and have had to adapt to the industry because gaming itself is a hobby I love.
Some current gamers seem really stuck in the mud with obvious media trends, physical media will be the first to go, that is 5-10 years away, some people are so stuck on it they have a hissy anytime it is suggested that the world is moving away from that.
The same can be said of console gaming, we know console gaming seems to have a cap of 200 million or so active players, gaming is MUCH bigger then that, device agnostic gaming is pretty much already a thing and cloud is coming, at some point consoles will be redundant and lag behind cloud efforts or other types of devices to play games on.
If you are a gamer that will leave gaming due to physical media going away and eventually consoles going away you should probably start looking at finding a new hobby now before these things eventually happen.
Xbox is really the only platform holder properly setup for this transition. Sony is stuck in the mud focusing on hardware sales and traditional game pricing, they are going to have a hard time moving to a new direction. Nintendo will probably be fine since they do their own thing.
It’s ironic that Sony’s dominance and anti consumer practices they used to get a dominate position in hardware has left Xbox and Nintendo to find other avenues for gaming success that are more future proof then Sony’s traditional hardware sales and 70$ games.
Sony may be left holding the bag on an industry that has moved past them at some point.
I have a hard time with the 200 million ceiling as adults who owned consoles before will keep buying them, but the new kids that are entering the space at 6-7 years old or more, shouldn’t those be new clients and keep adding to the « ceiling »?
Kids aren’t playing consoles and entering the console arena in the same type of numbers older gens did, for older people consoles and PC gaming was about the only way to play these games now their is many many more devices able to play games.
I have a 13 year old and basically they see consoles as old school boomer devices while they play on any number of portable devices.
They are still gamers but they do not gravitate to consoles like older generations did, to them the hardware of what they game on is pretty irrelevant.
In the future game consoles may be looked at like a generational thing like kids look at record players and CD players now.
At the very least you should prepare for a world where a local home gaming console is a niche gaming device, if consoles don’t completely go away at some point in the future the nature of their importance will decline eventually.
Thank you… the reality distortion field twisting this into a negative is certainly one of the silliest things I’ve seen today.
We also literally just had a court case where it was confirmed that a decent percentage of Series APUs were dedicated to the xcloud expansion… we’re still seeing the knock on effect. Simple terms: if you don’t have consoles in stores, you will sell less… not rocket science, but the fact that it’s still the second-best quarter and you’re still seeing this reaction says a lot
This is what I think as well. I feel like Redfall (which I still haven’t played) pretty much had to get shoved out the door, since retooling it would take much more time and money than it’s worth. Putting hardware towards cloud servers is a big gamble but it’s also a long-term play…
…for this reason. I don’t think consoles are anywhere near obsolescence but the enormous potential of cloud is well worth a few bumpy quarters, in my estimation.
Like Jorge said above, the ABK acquisition and to a lesser extent, the Zenimax acquisition are pretty plain indicators that MS want a big slice of this pie. They want a big slice of every pie, just not so big that they get targeted by regulators.
I remember reading something a while back about how Gates was frustrated with himself for letting the mobile market slip through his fingers (I think he phrased it as it was one of a million things on his desk and he just never gave it the time it deserved) and this is a way to wedge themselves firmly in that space while still being positioned as a challenge to a duopoly.
Because the money isn’t in selling boxes. They help of course, insofar as providing a point of sale for their services and storefront. If they can successfully Trojan Horse that stuff onto the staggeringly huge smartphone platform, then the potential for revenue doesn’t just skyrocket, it’s also essentially future-proofed for a good long while.
Putting all of that aside, I want to point out that for however rocky this forecast is, it would surely have been much worse without Spencer and his crew at the helm. Imagine how things would look if Ryan’s new goal of market dominance had been largely unopposed like it was last gen. Imagine how bad things would look if Starfield - which is being positioned as a “make or break” game for the entire platform - had been snatched up by Sony for an unknown duration of exclusivity.
The dust hasn’t settled by any means but, as someone who played almost exclusively on PS4 last gen, thank goodness MS didn’t just roll over. Every single person who loves this hobby would be worse off for it, and most wouldn’t understand why, apparently
Well I think at this point MS spending 70 billion on ABK completely means MS is literally buying into gaming like never before.
Console importance may decline but the Xbox Ecosysem is much better poised for the future then Sony is. Take away the console from Sony and they have nothing, do that with Xbox and they still pretty much have a huge portion of gaming to push their eco system with. MS has done this with with most of the other sectors by making it diverse enough to survive trends and also future proof to work through industry changes.
So you have to ask yourself are you in gaming for a piece of hardware or the actual games themselves? Cause if it’s hardware then your hobby is sunsetting, if it’s just actual games then things are better then ever.
That “low” guidance is seriously messing with my head. So either the don’t expect Starfield to be big or the somehow expect less sales, revenue, subscriptions …etc. and expect Starfield to made up that difference which would be quite concerning and bring back the questions: Is it stock problem? Is it demand problem?
I don’t believe Starfield is “make or break” situation for xbox but it should be concerning if even with one of the biggest games of the year (a Bethesda RPG no less) console sales are not moving with 2 (or 3?) consecutive quarter of hardware decline. I mean, at this rate next FY could end up being one of the lowest xbox have had.
I fully believe with the ABK acquisition they wont priotitize the console part in the long term but in the short term and should the deal collapse one has to wonder what will they do to improve their positions.
If the deal goes through no one should worry about Xbox’s future in the short term and even less in the long term when we know MS as ambitious plan for gaming with Xbox leading the changes.
Dont think they will leave the console space, it just will be a way to enter their ecosystem with the Xbox app being the primary ecosystem.
Exactly, consoles are and SHOULD be their primary focus as of now but we are approaching Starfield’s release and to be honest, it seems nothing much has changed marketing wise compared to last year and if we believe in their guidance for Xbox next quarter well…it points a different picture but I just them being conservative.
It’s true, you’d have to be a real idiot to throw away something with that kind of brand recognition…
Joking aside, I’m curious as to who sets the targets and how. I imagine it all crosses the CFO’s desk, but could it be that they (she?) just aren’t aware that Starfield is probably going to be big?
Don’t think anyone doubts how serious MS is about gaming or else they wouldn’t have bought all those studios of course. However, the more consoles on the marketplace the more sales and potential for Gamepass. While “growth” on PC is actually good, the reality is that they could have 100% increase in PC Gamepass but without a number, we might have only grown from 200k to 400k which isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. Console players also spend a lot more on accessories and services in general so they bring in a lot more money so it’s important to sell to them.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that MS is spending all that money to have an even bigger foothold and future proof themselves, but they are not encouraging people to join their ecosystem with publicity and by filling retail channels with their most powerful system. It’s weird how they are acting and don’t seem to concerned. It’s like basically they are not selling at an adequate level and they just shrug it off.
And while having higher revenues than X360 is good, when you competition also has higher revenue than that same generation but even more growth, you know you are not doing your best. Even without as many AAA first parties I’m sure there’s something they could have done to push their system more and it sucks not seeing them do it.
It’s crazy seeing a bunch of places say Microsoft is about to exit the console hardware business. There’s no way they give up at least 30% cut of 60million+ players. Plus, all of the microtransactions that will be spent. I just don’t see a future where Microsoft drops out of the console hardware business unless cloud replaces hardware across the board
I just wanted to say…while I could sound a bit pessimistic. I would never seriously entertain the idea of Xbox going third party and throw out of the window all of their plans and huge ambitions for a slight or modicum increase of revenue. That’s just fanboy nonsense and wishful thinking.
Edit: though I would really like them to support Ninty
