I still think the multiplatform strategy is idiotic I would of at least done timed exclusives at the most. Day and date with PS is going to bite them in the ass going forward. If they release a next gen console they are going to be in for a surprise imo.
That being said I understand why they are doing it but I just think it’s too early. Games cost a lot to make and the cost is going to continue to rise and your basically giving the games away for free damn near. They have to make money some how. I just don’t think gamepass is enough. They haven’t been able to sell consoles with gamepass being the selling point so what makes them think gamepass and no exclusives is going to help them sell consoles next gen. They are just going to keep bleeding customers.
We will have to wait and see what direction they go in with these 3rd party made Xbox consoles and handhelds I guess but rumors are Steam is throwing their hat in the console space with steam os. Good luck to Xbox I guess.
I hope I’m wrong I’ve been with Xbox since the og and have a library of over 1000 games at this point. It would suck if they were to ever leave the console space.
I think it depends on what you value as a customer.
Back in the X360 days the library was much more important to me just like my DVD collection was, but now not so much.
It’s very rare that I revisit an old game/film and when I do it’s typically on a subscription service or super cheap.
I don’t typically purchase games anymore, only in rare circumstances (mostly co-op games) and even then it’s typically cheaper and runs better on PC.
GamePass is now what is important to me as it provides me incredible value. The other thing I appreciate is cloud streaming which also requires GamePass.
If all titles you purchased on Xbox included a cloud license my opinion might differ slightly.
If GamePass went away I would have zero interest in Xbox (as a platform) anymore even though I do appreciate things like free cloud saves.
That’s fine I get your point, Game pass can be the deciding factor for you, but it isn’t Xbox. Xbox is more than Game Pass, look at PC for example the Xbox app simply doesn’t have games all it has going for it has been Game Pass which some are just not into. It makes sense to go to any other store on PC before Xbox because they all have good libraries of games as compared to Xbox.
I equally like Game Pass but there are tons of games I play that never go to Game Pass. Game pass is limited in the Xbox experience and that is why the “This is an Xbox” ad is getting mocked because it is the full Xbox experience.
Well yes, but again if you don’t want to buy games then you’d probably stick with GP moving forward. If you do buy games then you’ll probably still buy the same games you would have. I’m talking buying habits here, going from GP’s “no ownership” appeal to having to buy games. An equivalent would be someone who does the “buy used games from Game Stop and return them” thing suddenly shifting to owning the games but with a different console. That said Game Stop is still a thing and people can “not own games” on Playstation just fine, only that Sony doesn’t profit at all from that.
My prediction is that one camp will remain on Xbox hardware and the other camp won’t. The question is how big those two groups will be, and that’s something you will only see when the next-gen console launches IMO.
Xbox will be fine. HOW they end up being fine remains to be seem but revenue and profit will go up, customer numbers and subscribers to GP will keep going up. Console numbers may go down, but if everything else goes up, it won’t matter to them.
If, by 2030, they become a $30bn a year gaming company that sells 10m consoles per generation, they’ll be over the moon.
You could be right too but just becasue you’re putting in on other screens doesn’t mean you’re going to get all those people who don’t bother with Xbox to play it.
So many people today seem more than happy to spend their leisure time on Tik Tok not to play Xbox style games and that’s not being negative to Xbox or SONY but a little bit of a trend
I feel that’s a issue for Xbox Sony and Nintendo going forward
True, but that goes for 99% of multiplats as well though. The majority of multiplats don’t come close to the sales numbers of Sony’s most successful ones. Even mega blockbuster successes like Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Elden Ring, etc are also sold to a miniscule fraction of their user bases. If being sold to a small fraction of the available userbase was a negative indicator then the entire industry would be dead.
I agree they’ll be over the moon being a $30 billion per year gaming company, but I seriously doubt they’d make hardware if it sunk down to 10 million consoles over the course of an entire generation.
Considering that those 10 million consoles would be sold mostly to enthusiasts and/or GP subscribers, you’re looking at revenue of probably $200 million a month, or $2.4 billion a year.
I’m pretty sure they’d be more than happy to produce 10 million consoles for that. They just won’t be subsidized as we know it.
One thought that I can’t shake is the fact that Xbox doesn’t need to port any games to platforms like PlayStation or Switch because they have the single largest platform under their belt, the PC. (The plan is the plan so I’m not saying they should abandon it but rather they are completely underperforming on the PC and that should be a point of discussion among Xbox podcasts and in the gaming media)
The userbase of the PS5 is nearing 70 million. The PC userbase is an estimated 1,850 million, but let’s halve that if we’re talking about machines that can run current gen games down to 900 million.
Like any good corporation they are looking for the largest yield for a minimum amount of effort and are hoping porting to a PS5 userbase of 70 million will get a few million in sales.
But a little bit of marketing can help sell these titles on PC to a far greater degree.
I know this is oversimplifying things but with a user base at least 10 times the PS5 and 20 times the Xbox you should see PC sales eclipsing the consoles.
This thought came about because of the reaction to the “This is an Xbox” ads that is primarily pretty positive. It made me think about Xbox not having this scale and level of marketing in many years. I think that people are just happy to see Xbox finally doing some advertising. I don’t think I’ve seen this sort of level of advertising about Xbox games hitting the PC.
Instead of $1 billion on the next modest acquisition it seems to make far more sense to invest that into making the Xbox PC App streets ahead of the other competitors.
I’m also not a fan of the defeatist attitude where Microsoft is resigning to the fact that the PlayStation is the number one console at the moment. The competition has to work hard to stay ahead and they can slip any moment. The same applies to the idea that Xbox can’t come up with a Steam competitor. I say this because we have seen social media platforms that seemed unstoppable become obsolete despite the fact that people have a lot invested in them along with their contacts and curated feeds. Yes, people don’t want another massive application running on their PC. So make it akin to a web app.
Thinking about Xbox engineers that made miracles happen like 360 backwards compatibility on the Xbox One and features like Quick Resume. With the right investment I know they could make a PC App that eclipses everything else.
Think you’re overestimating heavily the number of PCs that can play current gen games - I used to sell PCs and laptops when at uni and the vast majority sold are base models for school or office work, and a huge number of the Windows licences in the world are corporate.
Even the ones that do try and get used for Steam, and so are in the hardware charts it releases, show lower-powered devices are far more common - and that’s from the userbase actually trying to use it for gaming.
As for eclipsing Steam, unfortunately there’s a few issues at play - a large amount of PC gamers and particularly their gaming media hate Microsoft and consider it a necessary evil for Windows rather than beloved, Steam has a fanatical userbase that even hundreds of millions in free games from Epic hasn’t dented and Xbox itself isn’t popular with much of the PC gaming media (just contrast PC Gamer’s coverage of PlayStation games to Xbox ones).
Could Xbox and Windows be better integrated? Could more console wins like Quick Resume come across and help them on PC? Could Microsoft maybe do more to increase console share, and maybe PC share?
Yes, but they’re already doing a lot of it - a family member who didn’t even touch Game Pass on PC when I got him a 3 month pass has now finally given it a go for CoD and so have a few of his friends, and the apps on PC are getting better, so things are moving the right way.
Combining the platform more with an Xbox hybrid next gen, bringing the might of Microsoft to the console space, may really help - but anyone expecting billions to be spent in marketing and exclusives to trounce Sony and Steam are likely to be disappointed as Microsoft has always been more corporate than consumer so never goes as massive as PlayStation on marketing and will have the data to prove even if every game was exclusive many would simply hold out on PlayStation and Steam (like we do for Final Fantasy etc and PC players seem to do for Epic exclusives)…
If the video is endorsed by Xbox, does that mean Deadly Headley is an Xbox?
For that matter, seeing that ID Studios is now a part of Microsoft, and Doom is an Xbox game, does that mean smart fridges, watches and heart monitor machines are also Xbox’s?
Honestly I don’t get console warriors - maybe I did as a teenager I think, but really not now.
For example tears over From games likely remaining multi-platform in the comments below - I don’t get it, PlayStation is already dominant in high-end consoles so why this desire to take games from Xbox players when it has zero effect on their own lives?
And I guess perhaps they’ve drunk the KoolAid so much they’ll defend any PS price rises, but too often you see the same fanboys criticising Xbox for not providing enough competition to stop Sony price gouging their users rather than actually pointing the finger where it belongs…
I think they’re aware of this hence the Playstation push.
Yes, Xbox is on PC but the vast majority doesn’t give a damn about the XBOX experience on the PC. You can get CUSTOMERS that buy your games on the PS5 and PC but they’re not buying into the Xbox ecosystem like a Xbox console user is.
It’s why I laugh at the doom and gloom around the hardware. It’s not going anywhere, they can’t replace us even if they’re desperately trying to.
As Draymond Green once said “They don’t love you like that”.
Why not? The development costs would be covered by their other revenue plus they continue to service their most engaged console user base. One of the real risks of hardware is the cost of making so many. if you just build fewer consoles, the risk/costs goes down.
MS want to build MORE gateways to Gamepass, not fewer.