XboxEra Community Hangout |OT12| The Dirty Dozen

Jez said earlier this week he’d have some new info about Xbox’ strategy tomorrow on XB2’s podcast, might have something to do with this.

It’s not like they were spending much in marketing on Europe anyways, last ad i saw was from Starfield last year, think things are better in UK and USA, but even there they are getting outsold 2-3 to 1 against their compentence, in countries like France or Spain things are around 10 to 1, there’s no comeback from that.

Problem is next year is looking even worse hardware sales wise, yes CoD’s coming to GP day 1, but there’s a triple combo Xbox will have to deal with, which is the GP price increase (and removal of cheap day 1 option on console), the new announced SKU’s absurd prices (500€ for a digital Xbox Series X, 650€ for a 2 TB Series X, 350€ for a 1tb Series S, just wow) and the expectable announcement of a new batch of console exclusives coming to Playstation, with stuff like Starfield, Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2, etc?

I can’t imagine a new generation similar to the Series one, with a standard powerful and cheap console, etc, but we’ll see

I saw a lot of ads for Hellblade 2 for like 1 week straight.

And it’s not surprising that they don’t care about Europe because they never did. The only thing they keep doing is Gamescom. Just enough PR I guess.

Well, the focus is on software, not hardware. The only gaming market that is growing are PC and Smartphone.

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We are familiar and practically conditioned that console is the main portion and anything else won’t be settled. If that’s the case, then Xbox will be gone. They already said they have a new console in work and the fact they’re having new set for this gen, they’re not out. It’s just not the main priority.

It’s like streaming service or digital “ownership.” Streaming wasn’t much on radar for many in its early days; now you get people saying cable is dying and stuff. Digital was thought not going to explode this far but now it did to the point physical could be gone. Early stage is always tricky and concerning, but if it catch on and everyone follows, then it’s the same story as others.

In this case, console is basically not much of the king of revenue due to the weakened growth. The sales can be better in the selling rate, but it’s not stopping the damage of cost and down the road, closure and layoff. If anything, the whole feeling of not familiar with its world today started with Fortnite or mobile games or even live service. Why else Sony wants one for themselves badly?

I know people would like to bring up Nintendo, but they are treated similar to the likes of Capcom, let alone in a different market region. That said no one knows yet on what happens when they move to a new generation with bigger cost and work. What I’m saying Xbox can survive without being the number 1 seller in console market, let alone 2. They want to have a different and perhaps long lasting source of income to survive. It’s not dying, just a different take that we’re not familiar with.

If they’re struggling over certain market, changing the strategy that differs compare to say USA would be an ideal. I know marketing is key, but what the chances that a person would look and say, “Hey I just so happen have the money to buy a box. Let’s go.” If they can market like Game Pass on Fire TV, they can catch someone a lot easier than former.

All in all, let them do what they want to do. If it fail, then we know. If you don’t want to buy a console anymore, that’s on you. I do find a bit funny how one would say I wouldn’t let marketing make my decision, but here I will. It’s pretty selective when it’s all things considered. In any case, it’s wait and see from here.

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I’m more and more of the belief that forward compatibility will be made possible on PC hardware and that we will soon see the new Xbox and Xbox portable as the base designs and that Asus and Lenovos of this world will have some form of hardware with Xbox branding. We already had laptops with Xbox wireless integration for controllers and the like and I’m expecting an extension of that.

We will still have the hero devices from MS but they’ll just be PCs in disguise, which I’m totally fine with to be honest as I’d rather just run everything on PC if I can. As long as they can have a design that is cheap enough for the masses I don’t see the problem.

Maybe they think it’s better to get Europe with PC than trying to sell the Xboxes in the end; they must have some numbers for that.

I guess the next logical step now is to buy Steam lol

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I think it’s clear that they want to be Steam, but buying will be the quickest route. Lol.

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I just want them to buy Steam so they can hire competent developer for Counter Strike because this game is broken since they dropped it last year. Almost every game has 2 cheaters and sometimes you join a match of bot farmers.

Because Valve is the darling they are protected by criticism. If they are owned by Microsoft everybody gonna shit on them so they are forced to fix CS lmao.

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Logic, finally.

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Made the mistake of visiting other places before I even saw the article itself. And it has people believing Xbox will exit the hardware business. Or console business.

I guess in a way they are leaving consoles if the hybrid rumor is true and that it will be more like a PC. With the new ad for firesfick I do get it that some people who aren’t really keeping up with this could believe it, but the others should know better.

At least, I hope so, can’t help but start to feel slightly doom and gloomy with this news. Really hope they don’t backtrack from making the new hardware. Hopefully in 2026 (or so) I’ll be able to get my new Xbox at my local Mediamarkt. Otherwise there still should be other options.

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ah. there it is. Knoebel: “It’s a Rumor. Tom Warren couldn’t confirmed, he just got a tip. So take it with a grain of salt.” — Bluesky (bsky.app)

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But yeah, not surprising that a company optimizes its marketing spend for a market segment and geography it’s not doing great in (and the overall market segment is stagnant to down).

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I’m more concerned support will be affected negatively in these parts. There’s nothing positive about an allready small presence becoming smaller.

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“New hardware” can be anything. I don’t trust them lol. I just want a proper console damnit.

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I hear ya!

The rumors were that it was new hardware, right? When Sarah Bond said what she said, did she mention console or just new hardware? Not entirely sure about that.

Honestly I’m OK if it’s a hybrid thingy with Steam and what not on it, as long as its still the ease of use of a console.

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I don’t think Microsoft is going to ship a Windows box as is, so whatever hardware they ship will be a console.

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Considering the article is not BS please explain to me how is it not surprising that Xbox will give up in Europe in the middle of the generation, just before CoD hits Game Pass and before the upcoming tsunami of 1st party games? and with a good portion of MAU on both Xbox and PS ecosystems still being on last gen systems (and before GTA6 hits).

If anything a lot of EU Xbox fans expected now (with the recent changes in marketing leadership as well) to be a good time to market the Series consoles in Europe…not do the opposite.

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How much did you expect the 200k consoles a quarter that they sell in France to change? And at how much marketing spend?

If you believe that there’s no meaningful ability to switch people from one ecosystem to the other, then the only goal for Xbox in Europe is to maintain existing users and upgrade them to a Series vs. a PS5. That doesn’t require broad-based marketing nor necessarily the same amount of stock.

ETA: And we know Phil believes that for the past 14 months since Redfall interview.

ETA x2: But anyone can disagree. Surprise is a personal thing.

Well it was shared earlier that this is an article they were NOT able to Confirm. For now it’s just a rumor.

Hopefully with steam support though, it should take care of the issue (that could get worse) of some devs either not bothering with Xbox or for reasons shipping a Xbox version way later.

2013 feelings is back again, Guess I’ll engage more on games than gaming discussion, xbox community has a serious problem of cyclic doom n gloom

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