I wasn’t paying attention to the gaming culture ecosystem during the Wii U failure and Nintendos subsequent pivot from console-maker to handheld-maker.
Was there ever this much purposeful concern trolling like were seeing now with Xbox’s merging of their Xbox and Windows ecosystems?
No,
Lets be honest all this is just Sony fanboys wish casting the demise of Xbox and then feigning confusion like a bad late night infomercial.
Another day, another “Xbox is dead” moment due to some random YouTube video.
Xbox is exiting the video game market anytime now, you’ve read it here first!
Also, I don’t think it was that bad when Wii I wasn’t doing too great, though it could have been that social media and the likes weren’t as crazy as they are today with the click baits based on negativity.
That’s a good point and no, people have always had concerned about MS and Xbox for the weirdest reasons it seems since the 360 at the very least. There was a bit of concern about the Wii U that could have killed Nintendo, for sure, but that’s moslty it.
2 Fun anecdotes :
I got asked why I bought a Wii U by the vendor that sold it to me, almost laughed at when I was paying, so there was a bit of “concern warring” at the time.
And then a few weeks ago, some guys were talking loudly behind my back when I was in line to buy Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2, saying how the Switch 2 was so bad with ugly graphics.
Nowadays, people are pretty much locked in on their platform so they care only if Nintendo and Sony still have something to sell to them, but they are still used to mock other platforms to justify their own platform of choice.
But in general, I think these days most people don’t keep up with platforms they don’t own so they are only aware of the chatter or the hot takes and don’t care as much as they had been before.
Still, the online chatter is insufferable sometimes regarding Xbox, but most people are so lost on what’s Xbox strategy now, so it’s hard to take them seriously.
No but Nintendo gets it’s ass kissed all the time and gets more free passes than anyone in this industry including but not limited to Sony.
In my opinion, the below five get pass after pass after pass for various reasons -
People can say what they want though, but look at the recent chatters online about ‘‘former Xbox hardware lady says Xbox has no vision and will stop making hardware’’ or whatever, not even 2 weeks after we have had the head of Xbox as well as the head of AMD telling us they are deep in developing bespoke hardware, including first party boxes. Yet people choose to believe the random youtuber who’s info, while she did work at MS a long time ago, is currently irrelevant.
None of it is ever done in good faith to be honest, and it’s even more ridiculous to see big outlets pick up on it and push on that narrative.
Also not surprised at those Switch 2 comments as I’ve heard similar a bit but I think it’s mostly from people saying the price is too high to justify those graphics and also hoping it fails but since Switch 1 did so good this one will be a success even if it sells less, which we are a long way of knowing if that’ll be the case or not.
I think people are not prepared for next gen prices!
I don’t think that Bungie gets passes, they just get extremely lucky by having company after company either acquire them or overpay them for a long term multi-game multi-year contract. Also, they haven’t scored high for their games since Halo Reach. Perhaps a Destiny expansion or two but base game, not even close.
The five I listed get pass after pass around the board. From top to bottom, left to right and in the opposite direction to where it’s just bullshit in my opinion.
Xbox gets the short end of the stick all the time. Now, I’m not happy that they stopped making exclusives, but I still enjoy the ecosystem.
Xbox has been dead for the past 25 years. It will be dead for the next 25 years.
No other company would get away with deleting huge amounts of content from their customers hard drive. Imagine if Kojima would delete the first half of Death Stranding and you could never play it again. Bungie does it - crickets.
No argument here. I’m still trying to figure out why they would delete/remove content. I really don’t understand that.
Oddly enough, I actually played through 10 missions of Destiny 2014 including expansions since they’re bundled in with the main story campaign and it was actually pretty good. I also played the tutorial for Destiny 2 and that’s even better but the on-boarding is beyond horrible.
But yeah, they do get passes for some stuff but at the same time, they don’t get a pass for everything. The five companies I listed I believe get a free pass for EVERYTHING and even more so when it’s something that Microsoft already did and took the heat for.
So while I agree that they may get a pass here and there, I don’t see them as anywhere close to getting passes like the five companies I listed.
It’s all 100% rooted in list wars. Nintendo still has exclusives, so it didn’t really change anything.
What gets me about Playstation these days is they have timed exclusives. And PS5 is still selling well. So I really have to question why the fuck there are so many emotions around “muh exclusives.” It’s so dumb.
What I don’t understand is if Sony doesn’t view Xbox as a competitor, then isn’t Sony really just wasting money buying timed exclusives from 3rd parties if “nobody” is buying an Xbox or buying them on Xbox?
They are but that was before this was unveiled.
The whole thing is rooted in fear. Sony has nothing going for them and it’s clear if this new Xbox strategy is executed well and works there would be no purpose to owning a PlayStation even Nintendo would be affected. Xbox strategy pretty much is a deathblow to the competitors.
That rings pretty true to me. People are out here proudly being willfully ignorant about Xbox hardware plans and basically clamoring for less options. I just don’t remember ever seeing this level of vitriol around the Wii U era and Nintendo stopping making consoles.
Speaking of Wii U. One of the reasons Switch was so successful was because of all the Wii U games Nintendo was able to release to the Switch audience. Games like Mario Kart 8 sold amazing on Switch.
Xbox has that same card to play. Once a new audience “discovers” Gamepass they will get exposed to all the games they missed.
The “Wii U” effect also applied to franchises that got Switch sequels. Splatoon, Mario Maker, Amiibo, and Super Smash all hit the ground running thanks to Wii U versions that were retooled into sequels for Switch.
The sequel equivalent for Microsoft could be Microsoft Flight Sim and Forza. It’s easy for me to imagine a new audience “discovering” those franchises on a next gen sequel.
I think you can absolutely make the argument that the plethora of first party games being added to Gamepass this year is Microsoft’s version of what happened during the Wii U era. Even if these games fail to explode now it makes their next generation Xbox PC hybrid super appealing in 2026.
I was someone that had a near complete Wii U collection of games so when the Switch came out I was actually pretty underwhelmed for those first few years. I literally played Zelda Breath of the Wild on Wii U 
Meanwhile all the mainstream normies were super hyped to be playing all the “new” games on Switch.
What do you mean, pivot? The Switch is as much of a handheld as it is a home console. It’s 100% each of both.
Nintendo merged handheld and home console together to have both markets in one place. It was a bold move at the time and still is, to be honest, because they could have lost both, like the Wii U almost did.
Steam deck was a pipe dream at the time.