I think they need to do this. Be a PC brand with some more accessible but open hardware that is specifically designed to play games from your store. It’s a big jump and they won’t be selling the same volumes but it would open them more widely to the PC market and they could start to push more varied hardware. Partner up with hardware producers rather than make their own etc….
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My idea was something like this, a normal xbox priced as is currently, and a pc version with windows as dual boot priced as a for profit console/pc at around $700. Users have the choice to play on Xbox for a more seamless experience with a the goodies like quick resume etc, and the click the windows button to get back to work.
Could also protect MS from a potential valve steam machine revival, running on linux.
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Radical change I think. Make Xbox an open platform. Like as above steam machines. Make it basically PC only with fixed spec machines running cut down versions of windows as the replacement for TV boxes. Make or commission handhelds that play all games in your ecosystem, at different price points.
I don’t think competing as a console against Sony is a fight they can win, and I mean simply put their games exist across a broad ecosystem but Xbox hardware is not essential to play them. Therefore they need hardware that is less restricted and offers a much wider use case.
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COD isn’t making a difference unless Xbox becomes the only platform you can play it on. Gamepass simply isn’t an enticing draw for new players. I’ve heard in retail people explain that someone owns a console and buys the games they want. Yes they could save money on gamepass but that isn’t a saving that would drive them to spend hundreds on a new console.
And most people don’t buy or play enough games to really get the most out of gamepass.
It’s a superb services shifter but it’s not going to move expensive hardware.
IMO at this point they should just keep supporting the XSeries until the end of the gen by 2026-2028 and then just study if they can make more money by releasing another console even if they won’t sell much or just go third and get extra revenue from the games they sell on Playstation.
I guess MS’s plan was to not spend much on the first years on ads/deals, and hope Halo/Forza and the new games from the acquisitions would push the sales after that, not a good idea, but they were very unlucky too, COVID delaying games didn’t help a bit, and they could do nothing about games like Starfield not being what the were supposed to be.
The state of many of their first party games on release tho is a big weakness, when you are a console creator, just like with Sony or Nintendo, you’ve got a double incentive to release your games in the best possible state, both to sell more copies and to sell consoles, and games like Wasteland 3, Halo Infinite or Forza Motorsport are far from the excellence they should reach, be it due to game quality or lack of polishment.
Wonder what’s MS thinking about next year, if 2023 was this bad for console with big games like Starfield or Forza Motorsport, 2024 should be rougher considering their games for that year are quite niche (with the exception of Avowed maybe?), specially on the console market
I think 2024 is all about the inclusion of Activision Blizzard content on Gamepass.
We saw how there was a surge in activity on some older COD’s when they were updated during the summer, so there has to be some sort of sales boost for the brand & for Gamepass coming when COD drops into the service.
2024 also looks light for PlayStation as well (hence why Last of Us Part II remaster is being advertised heavily like it’s a big event). But their name & “default” purchase status carries them during lean years.
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Did I walk into a deja vu territory?
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I don’t see them waiting all the way until 2028 with their current hardware sales trajectory
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Is the trade off even worth it though ? How do you get MTX revenue from third party games, online revenue, etc etc.
I think you continue business as usual in regards to hardware and try the ABK angle. If that fails then I guess nothing is off the boards in terms of substantial changes to their approach in regards to hardware.
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I think Xbox is trying to get there with the diversity and depth of their first-party lineup, especially FPS and RPGs. And yes, this also includes things like Pentiment, Grounded, Ori to be seen as true differentiators and not just ‘small games that don’t count’. I do agree the numbers aren’t great but I think 2024 and 2025 has a lot in store to differentiate Xbox from the rest. CoD day 1 on Game Pass will also be a part of that, especially if it’s a next-gen only CoD.
And yes they are absolutely making that bet with a united storefront across all devices. Basically a Xbox Play Anywhere extended. I see many hurdles though.
Something I wanted to mention is that many young people don’t even have a TV anymore. It would be really interesting to see an in-depth study of young people’s gaming habits. It does feel like us Gen Y folks might soon become a dinosaur given that we were socialized around a console under our TV from a young age.
True! i forgot about the CoD thing, it’s very hard to tell right now what’s going to happen with that, how will MS deal with it with the campaign market etc, but it could be big for them.
About Playstation’s 2024 i disagree tho, they got Final Fantasy and a few asian games that should help them on that market quite a bit, not so much for west tho, also Silent Hill.
And there’s also the big 3rd party multiplatform games, not sure which ones are releasing that year, but it’s to be expected that Sony will get some nice marketing deals there.
At this point, with the market share gap (AKA cheaper deals), i doubt PS’s going to have another weak year, even if they release only 1 or even 0 AAA first party games.
I think the going third party crowd forgets about this part. How valuable is it for Microsoft is to Microsoft to lose a customer that’s into their ecosystem just to sell a couple of games on PlayStation ? If I leave their ecosystem then they won’t get the 30% cut from third party games and microtransactions . They’ll end up losing a lot more money than they would gain by going third party . Seriously why would they risk losing somebody that is into their ecosystem just to sell some Bethesda and Microsoft titles . Financially it doesn’t add up for them to lose people to their ecosystem which would also potentially lose people into Microsoft ecosystem as a whole . There are many that don’t even use a computer and just use mobile for their computing needs , and some of the younger crowd prefer Mac ecosystem .
Anyways, I think it’s clear that Microsoft should start next gen a year before Sony and launch with elder scrolls 6
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Though your store. Which obviously needs to be better and I’m not saying it’s something that exists now. But if the numbers are as bad as suggested then they are broadly going to have to change something now and get it right.
Their problem is as someone pointed out to me given how they reward internal teams for engagement will those teams increasingly focus on PC versions over the Xbox ones given that their job is to hit broad reach and build wider engagement and focussing on a smaller console base might actually leave the losing out on internal KPIs?
But wouldn’t mobile be the platform they build for instead, as it has the widest reach and then just upscale for everything else.
They make more money from owning the console and collecting 30% of everyone’s releases than publishing everything they have on PlayStation.
Giving up the console also means they would not have revenue from all the accessories sold for xbox such as controllers. They would also not have the subscription costs for Xbox Live (gamepass core). Those are too large of revenue generators to ever entertain going Third Party Only. They make metric ton of money by owning the console.
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That’s a dangerous bet, I don’t know man.
There’s just still too much money from the average Xbox hardware user that’s pumping into the ecosystem.
Even if the Xbox hardware is currently dying a slow death, 30-50M consoles is still bringing in billions of dollars. They’ll just have to be okay with that sort or ceiling for hardware and let the PC/Mobile aspect of the business make up for it.
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Xbox is never going 3rd party. They have a huge collection of games spanning several generations that people have bought that just cannot be transferred over to other systems if they went 3rd party and all of that would be lost and would be a huge blow to their millions of users. Also, the accessory market and 30% cut is too big for them to give up.
While I think they are starting to be a bit more aggressive now with Series S and X, I believe that MS has a long term plan that they are executing on regardless of what the competition is doing, their financials look good so far, and all we can do is let the trillion dollar company do what they think is best for their brand considering all of the info they have that we don’t.
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Eventually yes but not right now. Why would for example a Bethesda studio work that hard on a decent Xbox version when they know there is a bigger audience on PC to hit their internal KPIs with?
The flaw in the Xbox approach is starting to be apparent. They are absolutely right that console is not the future. But attempting to halfway house it is leaving them in no man’s land. Can’t sell enough consoles. Equally don’t have a big enough footprint elsewhere yet to not sell consoles.
The console is definitely doing worse than I expected but as you said even 30m consoles is a massive market, a market they need for those 25m+ if not far more GP customers that are on console nevermind all the third party sales, accessories etc
I think they might need to change things up somehow going forward but they absolutely need some form of hardware in the console space for GP alone
IMO Microsoft’s big problem is that perception is reality… Sites like Eurogamer and IGN inundate their readers with negative Xbox articles, there’s a large contingent of people who like dunking on the Xbox brand and while they might be dismissed as silly fanboys, repeat something enough times by enough mouths and it will resonate eventually. Plus there is huge resentment that MS takes games away from other platforms (and then the same people celebrate when Sony moneyhats games not to appear on Xbox).
Probably the best course of action for MS is to build a great games library over time that will have to be respected at the very least. They have ginormous development resources now after expanding XGS and acquiring Zenimax and ABK and they can shape their future in whatever direction they’d like.
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