Sounds good, especially that larger surprise. Let’s hope nobody decides to be a rotten asshole and spoils it. Keep that for the devs to announce when they decide its time for that.
I don’t think it’s that crazy a statement
MS have all the money in the world as well as a IP library basically nobody should be able to match, their success or failure will be entirely their own doing
There’s no reason they should be so disliked in Europe, have such terrible localisation or whatever other issues they may have, they have all the tools to succeed regardless if Sony or Nintendo are doing well or not
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This one I’m in agreement on. Always felt that any “tier 2, tier 3” countries that they set up back when they did are being kept that way except Japan which they “promoted” to “tier 1.5”.
Personally I don’t think they hit their x billion gamers goal or whatever the more realistic version of that number they internally have.
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Up until a few years ago, Xbox’s biggest issue was support from MS proper. Also, everything for Xbox was being run by divisions within MS that either didn’t care about gaming or simply didn’t understand it.
Now that Xbox is it’s own division and can handle everything on it’s own, things are slowly changing, but they still have a long way to go in certain areas. The other challenge for Xbox is that they have a budget that they have to work within. Everyone assumes Xbox has an unlimited budget to do whatever they want, but that’s simply not true, and everything costs money.
I’m not trying to make excuses for them, but the situation isn’t as simple as “they have money, they should just be able to do everything”.
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he wasn’t referring to localization when he made that statement
(i’m not saying it’s not an issue, but he literally was not referring to localization when he made that statement)
Oh absolutely, everything has budgets even MS
But lets be honest, basic things like localisation should not be as bad as they are for a company this size, so either they need to change their budgets in certain areas to be taken seriously or they do have the budget and are just failing
Either way, something needs to change, I only use the localisation issue as I feel it’s something everyone can agree on, there’s plenty of things they need to do better on but that one feels like it’s top of the pile
They’ll have CoD, King and everything else money rolling in now though so there should be even less excuses now
Oh, I agree 100%. If it were me, and it was indeed a budget issue, I would figure out how to set aside enough money for localization to garner some goodwill in countries I was hoping to expand into.
Also, I don’t know how ABK handled these things, but if they already have teams internally to handle this stuff, that would be great.
They seem to want to take Japan seriously with their recent hires and jobs so hopefully that will extend to other regions as well
I get that Xbox has always been very UK/US focused but they cant keep talking about 2 billion gamers and only take a few countries seriously
Yeah, I think they’re just moving at a much slower pace than people want them to. If their localization efforts are still shit a few years from now, then that will spell volumes, to me at least, on how they view other markets outside US/UK.
I miss the 90’s when the console business was a “wild west” of sorts and just about everyone and their mother made a run at the console business. I was a Sega kid all the way but I had a PC Engine (Turbo Grafix 16 ) as well which had a lot of great software on it. Gaming was at it’s best then and I always enjoy seeing retrospectives on Youtube and such on how small teams got together and made some of these games the process seemed so different compared to now.
As for the OG xbox while I loved the PGR’s and Halos as much as the next guy, my favorite games were always those weird little exclusives that would pop up on the console (usually from Japanese devs) that didn’t get as much attention as the bigger games. Stuff like Phantom Dust , Phantom Crash, Crimson Sea, Wreckless The Yakuza Missions, and Metalwolf Chaos to name a few. That’s not to mention all the Sega games that brought me to the console to begin with.
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I still remember all the late nights playing Bonk’s Adventure and Splatterhouse. That 16-bit era really was the best.
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You’re speaking my language in every sense; from the 80s/90s kid-days of growing up with all the Voodoo GFX ads at Babbages to the plethora of console offerings - Bonk was one of my faves as a lad (Turbo Grafix baby!). Even the love of the obscure OG Xbox exclusives/Sega games; Panzer Dragoon Orta is quite literally my favorite game from that console (still have my OG copy bought from a Kansas City Babbages lol).
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Never had a PC Engine but I remember when I first discovered Bomberman when there was some EA hosted gaming event with a bunch of different kiosks at one of the local malls. It’s one of my favorite party games til this day and doesn’t get near the respect it deserves.
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Bomberman will always be one of my favorite franchises. Funny enough, when we first started dating, my wife and I would often play one of the Bomberman games on the 360. She always wanted to play it and who was I to say no? 
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That’s a keeper haha
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If you love SHMUPS it’s probably the best console to own besides a 360!
Also still have my copies of PD Orta, Shenmue 2, Gun Valkyrie and JSRF for my OG xbox. As well as Midnight Club : Dub Edition and Jade Empire among others. Wish I had kept more of my old Dreamcast games (damn Funcoland) I had a few games like Project Justice and Cannon Spike that go for hundreds of dollars these days last I checked. I kick myself to this day trading those in.
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I honestly think the narrative will change for the better if Xbox just releases high quality back to back exclusives for the next few years. They should have done this from the start but obviously they couldn’t. Plus like the above posters have said better marketing and localization in countries outside of North America. Let the games do the talking
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At this point it’ll be hard to turn it around until the end of the gen I think, Sony’s got the mindshare unfortunately.
I think the 2026 idea isn’t a bad one, run on your own timeline and shake things up like Nintendo did with the Switch by being its own thing, releasing on its own with no direct competition at the same time to get the limelight, but in the case of Xbox, being the only one for a year or 2 with true next gen games like Call of Duty and maybe Elder Scrolls 6 to really start with a bang.
At this point, back to back AAA will probably only make the Series consoles fall less behind while reminding people of what’s to come and build confidence for next gen.
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Yes, they need a fresh reboot and not go at the same time as PS. They have Activision, Bethesda at home. They have great support from third parties like EA, Sega and Cd Project, I would include Ubisoft but after the Insomniac leaks I think they are closer to Sony than MS right now or is it just PS Plus.
This could be that year. It would have been last year if redfall scored ok but i think this year will be better