Opinion: Microsoft is at it's best when it's not trying to copy Sony

100% agree here. MS just should play to their strenghs and at their own pace.

They don’t have at the competition and try to replicate to be a carbon copy. Xbox ix unique.

Look at Gamepass, XCloud, BC free enhancements, etc that is the Xbox brand I wanna see going forward and taking bold decisions benefiting everyone in the long run.

While I completely agree with the premise that they are best when they are doing their own thing. I’m not sure I agree that the showcase was an example of them copying Sony.

I do think it was marketed wrong, it should have been presented as a Game Pass showcase with a hint at the future of Xbox Game Studios’ releases.

But maybe I feel that way because it’s a borderline conspiracy with how much that whole show was made for me, almost like they dug through my usage telemetry and gave me a full serve of nearly everything I want. By the time the deer screamed I already considered it a 10/10 presentation.

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I agree MS can’t beat Sony at their own game because beating Sony is still selling around 100M consoles. Google, Amazon and Apple are interested in 1 billion customers. Those companies have things like youtube, twitch and iphones to bring to the ring. I think MS is doing the right thing by worrying about the big tech companies. I just hope they keep their vision and not get bogged down by the console war.

I agree. MS should focus more on PC and be confident with it. No need to react to every little thing Sony did.

Microsoft has always been ahead in the services side of things. Sony has taken a lot of cues from Microsoft in those areas. Game Pass is my favourite thing Microsoft has ever done.

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The real question is… Will gamers let Microsoft do their own thing? Nintendo has probably only a very few games you could call AAA in production value, namely Zelda, Xenoblade series. And a few very strong IP including Mario platformers and Animal Crossing. Nobody seems to loudly demand for more of these games from Nintendo all the time, while they happily enjoy the smaller games from the teams, including Paper Mario, Luigi‘s Mansion or 2D jumpers, alongside (I know fans are complaining now for no Direct, but that‘s not the main point here).

Gamers must finally understand that Xbox core strength will be the variety of genres and experiences. Who else can make a Flight Simulator, platformers, tactic RPGs, WRPGs, first + third person shooters, multiplayer experiences and racing games? I do get that people want more narrative-driven games, and those are also important to have more from in the future, but if gamers continue to act as if these are the only thing that count, this is all wrong.

You can see it this year, Microsoft is having one hell of a year with Ori, Minecraft Dungeons, Flight Simulator, Halo Infinite, Wasteland 3, Tell Me Why, Battletoads, The Medium, all those Steam launches. I see few people online outside our fanbase acknowledging that clear uplift, still claiming “nothing“ Microsoft does entertains them. Or is this is just the hardcore fanboys, because Steam sales seem to suggest Microsoft is actually making games people want to buy, you know. Sorry if I sound a bit bitter about this, but it‘s my honest feeling that people want to keep their narratives going at all cost :wink:

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I think the latest Steam or Twitch charts tell us the answer to this. Microsoft as a whole wants to meet their customer where they already are, be it Android, Linux, Mac or Steam. They don’t want you to force to buy a Surface Pro for Office or a Xbox for Halo. So now they are selling games (mostly) everywhere. The results so far are positive. Not only are more people playing Xbox games, their revenue is buckling the usual downward trend at the end of a hardware generation.

I know some people still want the old ways back, where software is tied to hardware. But this is sooooo over for Microsoft.

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All of this ^

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I think there needs to be a lot of caution is this sort of very sweeping analysis. Do Sony have an old world mentality OR do Sony simply respond to what the market wants whilst trying to slowly nudge it forwards?

I think Xbox’s issue is NOT what it wants to do. But the execution. They always seem to be launching stuff with caveats or before a service is fully ready. Xcloud is the latest example - it might not be their fault but that it cannot support iOS means you can’t really call it a comprehensive console streaming service. But there are lots of other examples whereby Xbox has drip fed - like play anywhere, PC day one, Crossplay etc…and the change was announced or teased but it took a long time to actually be existential - and then by that point it was no longer news. Sony seem to go more for - big announces that actually happen quickly, on the whole.

I suspect Sony are doing much of what Xbox is regarding services, and likely some sort of gamepass - but they still see the value in the traditional market - once they’ve locked away another 100M console sales as they surely will – they will then be able to stretch their customer base with new services and offerings.

For me the problem with Xbox is they often do things backwards - gamepass is absolutely excellent but their focus should be on growing and solidifying their console business in the immediate future to drive gamepass subs. Because for all the ‘they don’t care about their console hardware sales’ talk - if you boil it down if that is the case then they should be committing to that strategy and partnering with PC manufacturers for hardware and not be investing in the world’s most powerful console. They could have made cheaper PC’s across a range of specs that allowed TV play in partnership with one of the gaming PC brands. If that truly was their strategy. Right now I personally think they’ve once again landed themselves in a tough spot. They are trying to hedge their bets and not really speaking to either audience completely. We’re once again a few months from a console launch and Xbox is dominated by questions and perceived missteps. Whereas Sony are doing what they always do - and what almost always works.

Bingo. Some people - just regular gamers and the gaming press alike - would have you believe that almost nobody considers MS games anything special, when that’s clearly not the case.

I’m sorry, but this is just a terrible idea. PC and consoles are not interchangeable at all, and had they opted for something like that, I would be out of the Xbox ecosystem.

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Can’t agree. The messages were completely different & that’s the best part in my opinion.

Still want to hear them from Japan.

Good question. Sony has a more conservative business approach. They are very good at reacting to the market. Microsoft is trying to lead a market that isn’t there yet. Industries need both types of approaches. Both approaches appeal more to different customer segments.

This may be true however I think it’s necessary to take those risks and sometimes fail if you intend to go big by capitalizing on an emerging market. They had the right data on the industry trend of the smart home but simply didn’t execute. That said, you can’t diversify your future or find other “next big things” if you aren’t willing to continue to take risks.

Game Pass is their way of solidifying the console business…and PC business and Xcloud business. A non traditional approach doesn’t equate to a backwards approach. Most new markets or next big things were not captured with traditional, safe strategies.

In the end, I think it’s good that we’re getting both. They will lead with different customer segments and try to branch out from there. While one or the other may not be for everyone here, it doesn’t immediately make it wrong.

I agree completely. It’s a bad idea. So they still have a console market. And need to ensure they remember that. It’s no good treating it as a second class PC - some games come later, MP is pay gated etc…you could get away with that in the days when Xbox got its own games and it was a separate entity. But now it isn’t I feel they still need to show what their console plays are. Gamepass and their studios are excellent but it still looks very very light for a console launch to me. And we still haven’t seen a single game running on the hardware. Very very soon they’ve got to sell the console as a piece of hardware. They’ve done gamepass and their services. But it’s two or three months out and they absolutely have to speak to an audience interested in a piece of hardware and the exciting new games and experiences it can deliver.

I agree that they should sort out the situation with Gold, but I never like seeing it compared to free multiplayer on PC. It’s always been a false equivalence because Gold also gives you GWG and DWG. Now, whether people still find those worthwhile is up for debate. Personally, those were very valuable to me in the pre-Game Pass days, and they easily made Gold worth the expense for me (I rarely play online multiplayer, so that particular paywall never figured into my calculations). Now that I’m on GP, maybe not as much, but they’re still nice to have as Ultimate perks (mind you, Xbox/Xbox 360 GWG have always been more valuable to me because you get to keep them for good - that value still remains).

I don’t mind having to wait a bit for ports of PC-centric games. While mouse and keyboard are now supported on Xbox, they’re not a standard control scheme, and it was important for MS to prove that they still know how to satisfy the specific tastes of PC gamers first. To tell you the truth, I doubt that Xbox One could easily handle some of those games, but now that Series X has a decent CPU, I see no reason why all of Microsoft’s (non-VR) PC games wouldn’t also be on console. It would be great to see them arrive to Xbox day and date with the PC version, but I understand the difficulties in achieving that, and I really don’t mind waiting a few months. Regardless, I suspect that we will see more unification on that front going forward.

Sure, but there’s still enough time, and it’s not like the whole world is not going through a difficult situation right now. This console launch will not be the same as those before it, and not only because of the virus. We’ve never had mid-gen upgrades of this kind before, never this level of BC support across the board, and never this level of detachment of platforms from their hardware, especially on Xbox. I’m seeing a lot of people acting like the old rules still apply, and that the console market still operates according to the same old principles, but that’s simply not the case. While there are some things that I would and will criticize, I believe that MS has a sound idea of how to approach this transition.

Love you and the lads’ pod! When you say more aggressive, to you mean in terms of securing third-party exclusives/Global Publishing deals or in acquiring more studios? Or something else entirely?

Personally, while I have loved the direction over the past few years and definitely think Phil and Matt are doing a great job, I think a bit of both points need a bit more tending to. On the one hand, I firmly believe that if Sony doesn’t adapt to the incoming evolution of gaming and the means in which we do, they won’t be viable in the long-run and that may be just one reason they’ve been so aggressive on their exclusivity deals… but for the short-term that approach is inarguably working to drum up reasons, as shallow as they may be, to play on their system. Xbox doing some of the same could help, media and the Twitter circles be damned (let’s be honest, for most in the reporting industry they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t); I still have yet to understand why Rise of the Tomb Raider got a fraction of the vitriol from the online communities when Sony has been doing quite literally the same for years, even to the extent of making a previously multi-platform title’s new iteration permanently exclusive (SF5). I have heard every possible excuse and frankly they’re about as backed by truth as a statement from Trump (but I digress).

As for acquisitions, I alluded to this in my last point but long-term I firmly believe Amazon will be the biggest competitor, possibly with Google still with Stadia, and they’ve been making acquisitions to suggest as such. The so-called content war has already started and if Xbox wants to keep engagement high, and be the gaming Netflix, they need to be able to keep content rolling out and games take a considerable amount of time to produce. They have a considerable quality and quantity of studios as it stands, many which are able to produce multiple titles simultaneously, but I firmly believe a handful of other studios would secure that position in the long run. I’ve been on the camp that thinks WB is an incredibly smart purchase, with or without some or all of the IPs, because a lot of those teams have storied legacies, but I think sprinkling some into the fold would be beneficial still. Throwing in a mix of Frontier, Asobo, JP Games, FeelPluss & Mistwalker, and an Eastern European studio like Techland, 4A Games, or Farm51 would be veritable success for the long-term viability.

I know that Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited resources but compared to many of their competitors, they’re already making a lot of the right moves and are, in my opinion, better positioned for long-term success.

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This 100%. I love their diverse lineup but I get concerned when people give them a pass for not pursuing some of Sony’s user base. I’m not saying that I want them to focus only on hardware and pump out 3rd person open world action games. I do think they should market the Series X as much as they do GamePass and they should provide some big budget, high quality and polished narrative driven action games. They need games that get people to pay attention and start talking. There is a reason why Sony is the leader in the industry and sure the industry landscape can and will change but a part of their strategy should be to also target that group of 100+ million gamers that Sony has kept almost entirely locked up. A part of me thinks MS know this since the first next gen game they revealed was Hellblade 2, a game that very much targets this market and did get people talking. Now they just need to do a good job delivering and I hope they do.

Each of MSFT business division operates fairly independently, each of then have their own P&L. Also mission statement is “… every organization on the planet to achieve more”. This is every important, MSFT wants to provide a platform (like windows is a platform). This is one of the major differentiators with its competitors, providing services, not exclude,.

A mixture of both. Microsoft consistently seems to set expectations sky high and then not rise to meet them. They need to be releasing titles that are super niche but desired by the vocal minority - Banjo, MechAssault etc as examples - surprise and delight the audience is all I’m saying. Buying 3rd party games as exclusives, not so much. Funding new and interesting titles via XGSGP - all for it.

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Yup once they release 1-2 AAA 3rd person narrative focused games it will probably change the mindset of people who think MS can’t make games like that or that Game Pass can’t allow those games to exist. I agree with you about Hellblade 2, if this game is really good I think it will start to change the narrative. I absolutely think MS will make will make some banger narrative games but the really nice thing about MS is you will also get weird different games from a lot of indie devs or even their own 1st party passion projects.

I’m a very happy GP subscriber and I seriously think that subscription alone will cover most of my gaming, obviously some 3rd party games I will still buy like COD/BF/CP2077 but other than that I’m set.

I guess its better to sell servers to sony rather them buy from others or make there own.