The test is Sea of Thieves. Hi-Fi and Grounded are to help grow the IPs for their transmedia efforts. Pentiment was to make Josh Sawyer and his team happy. Those are my guesses.
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Fair enough. Still think that sooner or later every game will be multiplat. The question is day and date or few month/years later.
It kind of is as it’s pretty much an open secret. All the “podcasters” say it themselves and people can read between the lines.
They’ve left themselves wind open to exactly this sort of thing.
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The “podcasters” don’t know as much as you think. Xbox, if anything, has cut down interaction with the community after people lost their minds.
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I mean its not surprising they cut down interaction when they realised numerous “influencers” were justifiably no longer going to do free PR for them.
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The podcasters don’t know shit to be honest, it’s all about clickbait and trying to cash in on the drama. Very few actually have sources that can be trusted and even then, they’re not always right as we have seen with the most recent drama events earlier this year.
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the “free PR” is the entire industry, we get review codes and do our best to give honest/insightful coverage but we only get those codes because it is “free pr”
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Sure, but xbox has really took advantage of a very dedicated fanbase over the years to promote their stuff etc.
Its different to lets say, PlayStation… which has always been more standoffish.
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I don’t think they took advantage. Xbox has lots of community driven events, more than the other companies. If some people who call themselves influencers thought it made them special then it’s on them honestly. It’s not because I show up at Xbox Fan Fest and get a picture with Phil that I’m now his buddy and expect special favours.
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I had a complete non reaction when I saw that tweet from Jez. Not an attack on him, but it’s interesting how I have zero stock in what he says these days. Crazy what a couple of years can do.
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I still find Jez somewhat trustworthy, but I feel he does a lot of his antics for engagement. Next week he’ll tweet something to go against what he just tweeted.
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on other era someone was posting info from jez’s discord
In his Discord, Jez was more chatty:
- All Xbox first-party games coming to PlayStation, even Forza, Halo
- Xbox will be more Steam-like in the future
- Affordable prices, sales, more open for devs
- Future Xbox-Hardware gonna be for fans who want it
- Xbox hardware will be niche like Steam Deck
- Next Xbox will side-load Steam
- “I don’t think they expect to ever grow in hardware”
he said "Nobody wanted to give Xbox a chance, so this is what they get with a Sony monopoly
I personally feel people did give xbox a chance and then x1 happened and then phil wanted to play nice. Sad if true but xbox has nobody to blame but xbox
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can I ask why?
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It’s called getting new information 
due to the passage of time, something that was true last week might not be true now.
Engagement on twitter for what? So more people hate me? I don’t wanna be in that world.
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Taken out of context of course.
I never suggested Xbox didn’t make their own bed. People see competition as inconvenient these days. See the discourse over Samsung texts being green on iPhone for an example of ppl not wanting to give the competition a chance even if the product is practically just as good in reality.
People stick with what they know and don’t look beyond it, there are too many recent examples where capitalism has often failed to really make the argument that competition leads to a better deal for the consumer. Nobody is really worried about a monopoly since the benefits of competition are really unclear. Xbox also really doesn’t have a great pitch on why you should buy an Xbox Series X /S and even if they did, they’re not really doing a great job of messaging it.
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I’ve seen you say on Twitter or somewhere that you think future xbox hardware will be niche like Steam Deck, but afaik the steam deck has only sold like 5 or so million units while even in its reduced state xbox has sold north of 25 million. Xbox would really have to tank to become “niche” like the Steam Deck so I am curious if you have any insight into what MS is expecting of future hardware.
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My guess is you will be at the june showcase along many others that are sure to ask Phil, Sarah, Matt Booty and other Xbox executives clarity for the public on all this. As you can see how much traffic or debating has been done on this topic and many are just not letting it go.
Personally I think for a multiplatform strategy to work they would have to build their entire ecosystem including consoles on that. That PC 
concept seems to be what’s closest to it.
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While I think they might keep some exclusives, either way this is mostly my expectations now anyway.
Xbox can’t win the console race - I say that as someone who does wish they’d gone all out on marketing and tried using ABK for a bit to try and compete, but realistically Microsoft were never going to let them spend billions extra on ads as it’s never really been a consumer company that’s understood advertising beyond its core products.
Plus Sony spend so much it would just be an arms race, and PlayStation is just too much the “default” grown up console now like Nintendo have the “family friendly” area locked down - and if the massive ABK marketing that will still happen for this year’s CoD with Xbox branding on it doesn’t move the needle, nothing will.
So instead do a Nintendo and do the unexpected before everyone else does - release more games multi-platform (with Xbox having the “free on Game Pass” advantage plus perhaps some timed exclusivity), try a new form factor, go early next generation and most of all, open up the consoles to new store fronts.
I’ve often bought the more “enthusiast” hardware anyway so as long as they keep making Xbox consoles, I’ll keep buying them - I own a Surface laptop and the quality is impressive, and while it’s not an area where Microsoft dominates but it carries on making them so I’m pretty secure on the future of building Xbox consoles too.
Is it enough for me to stay fully exclusive? Probably not, but then most generations I relent and buy a PlayStation in addition to my Xbox anyway, as too many friends stay on that platform and I’m too much of an enthusiast to limit myself (although I cba keeping up with the PC arms race, hence loving the idea of PC stores on Xbox).
Game Pass has allowed me to try so many different types of games in a way I’ve not done since the days of demo discs on magazine covers, and if anything I’m now playing more games on my Xbox than I have in a decade or so - so I’m a happy gamer
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Yep if Apple didn’t build up the aura of “the best money can buy” around its products and in essence allow people to show off that they have money to burn, they’d still be almost bankrupt.
PlayStation act in a very similar way, encouraging devotion, a dislike of the competition and a “best money can buy” idea by huge marketing spend (to the point their margins are tiny as unlike Apple they can’t yet afford to go insane on pricing) to encourage people to think of them as the default games console and anyone who doesn’t have one isn’t cool.
Both have some decent products, but without their marketing spin would be left with very difficult questions about what value they actually provide over their competitors.
And unfortunately they’re a pain to compete against once they reach that cultural cache - you’d have to outspend them massively on marketing to have any effect, and they’d likely try and match it or play the victim for their fans as if the mystique is broken people may actually realise they’re overpaying…