I hope this too, it would just be so good to see as someone who still and will always favor Xbox as platform of choice. They are becoming a force to be reckoned with now that they have Zenimax and ABK, that isn’t exactly small fry, holy shit. I cannot imagine they don’t want to become (more) successful in European markets too.
It’s not something that will happen overnight but hopefully they are willing to give it a fair shot, give it time, just like they give their studios. They did start caring more about Japan and now see how many awesome games we got from there and it keeps improving.
@saintsflow20 Was the online discourse this insufferable for Nintendo players during the Wii U generation? I feels like I should feel l like a looser for enjoying the Xbox ecosystem even though I play on PC
I agree that it feels like MS just stopped caring about other markets aside from US and some other (small) territories. Xbox 360 the dominant force here in Colombia and you could saw adds from them everywhere (TV, newspapers, websites…etc) and now it has become Nintendo land thanks to its price and marketing . I’ve seen the Mario Wonder ad dozens of times every time I watch TV.
Since we are talking about Xbox number on Europe…does somebody know how much has the series consoles sold there so far?
For Xbox 360 we have this according to Install Base:
PlayStation 3 - 25,98 million
Xbox 360 - 20,86 million
According to this website, Xbox One sold around 10 millions of consoles there, you can see the big decline in those territories during this generation.
This is a pretty fun topic for me, very nostalgic part of my “internet life” so to speak…
It could get pretty bad, but at least the 3DS was there. My “Internet home” at the time was Gamefaqs message boards lmao.
… Admittedly, I was in my early teens then (side note… I joined Gamefaqs when I was 9 ), and I was defending and fighting for Wii U on there VEHEMENTLY (I recognize its failure and fatal flaws these days of course lol).
Now with that said there were tons of trolls who would post stuff very similar to what you hear about Xbox (that I would play into the hands and not realize they were just trying to mess with people ), that Nintendo would go third party, leave the games industry, get acquired, etc etc. This image here -constantly- floated around
I also took a look at my account there just now and noticed just how much troll threads would attract my dumb ass back then (every thread I ever posted in is archived, it’s fun to go back and laugh at myself ). Here’s a bunch of those thread titles I would post in, there’s definitely parallels to what Xbox gets
It was the same for me! I was in my tens and at that time I visited Spanish forums to get gaming news. I remember seeing bad articles abput the Nintendo Wii U nonstop and it was plagued with people stating with confidence that this was it for Ninty, that they HAD to go third party or die…etc. Yeah pretty much the current Xbox online discourse haha) I wont be surprised if trolls started doing those kind of images for Xbox games.
Uncanny how it resembles Xbox situation now
Will Xbox fellas have to go through this for the entire generation? There will be 3 threads created for sales: US, UK and Europe so that leaves 36 thread created a year to repeat the same exact wis-I mean fanfiction crap over and over again until the end cycle of the console?
I think abandoning the power race on the console side would be a way for Xbox consoles to survive or simply do better.
This gen, Xbox has a phenomenal kit with Series X, but they can’t lower prices too much and has to artificially limit the number of consoles they sell so costs dont go up too much.
A more modest high-end console will favour the vision of reaching a wider audience. This wouldnt go against having a S model tho. But focus on 1st party games quality (I always mention Nintendo, they actually make the most money out of the 3 because their games sell like hot cakes and are way cheaper to produce). Offer easy to use tools to 3rd parties, and a friendly environment.
At the end of the day, you will always have PCs for the highest performance.
They need to take those custom ARM processors they made for AI and adapt them for their next Gen systems. Get everything done in house at a lower cost and push out a lower costing, more power efficient console.
Power race is tricky because the most powerful console rarely wins a gen.I think making solid hardware and have the software do the talking is the better approach. I think Microsoft also has to find a way to differentiate themselves from Sony minus gamepass. I love gamepass, but the ultimate tier is not for everybody because some people are just going to buy their annual games and a major AAA. I think first party output wise they’ve matched Sony this gen imo, but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but they need AAA games outside of Halo, Gears, and Forza to get people to check out platform.
The huge difference IMO going into next-gen is the sheer number of first party Xbox studios. It means all these teams can & will create games which target Microsoft’s own hardware specs, irrespective of what Sony does. So there will never be a sh*t version of COD on Xbox whilst the PS6 gets all the bells & whistles (like Ghosts running at a higher res on the ps4 ten years ago).
I just don’t see third party AAA’s being that much of a huge deal anymore when it comes to digital foundry comparisons. PC crushes consoles anyway.
I fully expect the next gen to have a custom designed ai chip in it, though they don’t own a fab so it would still have production outsourced to TSMC or someone. Could also see them working with AMD who own an ai chip company to co-design something that will work with the rest of their chip design. While this will be important to them, it won’t have nearly the scale or impact of the ones they’re designing for their data centers, so they might be able to partner on this to make it affordable which is important with consoles.
Yes, more than abandoning the power race completely, I meant looking for ways of creating a console which is simply cheaper to produce or can get over time, technological development circumstances permitting.
If we still follow the Nintendo example, they seem to be betting on DLSS for the Switch 2, because they are going to be limited by form factor, yes, but in other systems could be a way of keeping costs moderate. That is what I mean, look for technological alternatives.
Xbox fully deserves those numbers. Their efforts and organization in Europe are laughable compared to Nintendo and PlayStation, thus consumers ignore them. This is what happens when you focus on the USA and the rest of the world is an afterthought. Don’t expect to gain marketshare if you are spending and investing way, way less than the competition in Europe while being in last position.
My position is mainly, it’s fine to try and tackle the weak markets via PC and streaming… but what is their serious expectation for growth in these areas with this kind of low investment? Right now it comes across as “Well let’s just hope our games are so good that people will just play them in English and ignore the localization problems (very bad because again they had to apologize this year for Minecraft Legends’ Arabic localization). Also word of mouth will be our marketing (not great because anytime there’s a misfire game it gets poisoned).”
Yeah, it sucks. I badly want them to do better. And the stores having less and less and such a small section dedicated to it are the results of it, it sucks. And back in the 360 days it sure wasn’t this bad, actually during the Xbox One era there were way more games and just hardware and stuff in the stores. So while they are doing so well in several things, in other things they actually became worse.
It’s very unfortunate because there ARE fans here in my country. I just hope there won’t come a point where MS stops bothering with my country and that we don’t get Xbox anymore. That’s probably way too drastic, but still. But the fact that it’s actually doing this bad overall in Europe, came as a shock to me.
Sony is marketing itself in Europe since the ps1. They literally built the youth console gaming market. Before them, there were a few consoles (Nintendo and Sega) on one side, and the micro computers and PC on the other side. Sony brought them together with their marketing and Sony see the benefits generation after generation here.
I do think there’s an element of hyperbole with the reporting of sales figures. Especially in this current year where the internet in its ensemble has been ‘mobilized’ (I’m being kind with the choice of wording here) to focus on all things negative about Xbox.
Even when the Xbox One was struggling, I wasn’t aware of such vitriolic “Xbox is gonna exit the hardware space!” viral conversations all day & all night.
The truth of the matter is Xbox has always been a luxury in Europe, i.e. like a second option behind Sony & Nintendo. I don’t know the exact data but I’ll assume most Europeans who bought into the Xbox brand did so after already owning either a PlayStation or a Nintendo. It’s just something extra, basically, i.e. an American brand with a load of shooters, strategy games & rpg’s.
The sales of Xbox relative to the PS5 do not reflect on Microsoft’s standing in Europe either, i.e. not when almost every PC here comes with Windows installed. And Sony’s console success doesn’t reflect on its other divisions, like their tv’s still get walloped by Samsung I believe.
I try not to focus on this sort of data too much, certainly not to the extent it detracts from my own enjoyment of my Series X.
That’s true, it’s always been behind Sony and Nintendo, except for a while when they had the 360 and Sony was lagging behind. But as soon as that PS3 came out folks flocked to it in my country.
It’s just that now with how well Xbox is doing, with all these new studios and so on, I definitely was expecting them to improve in Europe, slowly but surely, but it getting worse is not what I expected. Already seeing YouTubers like Griffin and others going “Xbox is dying. PS destroying sales despite Starfield and ABK.”
I really hope it’s just a matter of time and that MS starts to take this more seriously. I don’t think it’s all on them but I do think they can do better. And agreed, none of this will have me enjoying my XSX less.
It makes a certain amount of sense to me that in Europe (places like France specifically) where inflation & the cost of living is higher than ever, we see consumers fall back on the ‘safe’ brands they’ve always known: PlayStation (& Nintendo).
One thing is certain IMO: a hypothetical scenario in which Xbox leaves the console space would have really, really bad implications for the console market. It’s why I’ve always made sure I supported Xbox in my own small way. I mean I loved my ps1 when I was a kid & sure, the PS3 was a great system as far as I’m concerned (as a blu ray player in particular, even though its third party performance was not good). But a ‘high end’ console market with Sony as the sole player in town? Oh hell, I nope out of that one.
It’ll be the 2020’s equivalent of the infamous $599, except higher, nastier & even more anti-consumer.
We’ve already saw Sony raise game prices to $70 and increase subscription service by 30% with no fight back from media or consumers. Now imagine what they would do if there’s no Xbox . We could see them and third party devs raise cost of games to $100
), and I was defending and fighting for Wii U on there VEHEMENTLY 
), that Nintendo would go third party, leave the games industry, get acquired, etc etc. This image here -constantly- floated around
). Here’s a bunch of those thread titles I would post in, there’s definitely parallels to what Xbox gets
