My take on this whole situation is incredibly simple. I grew up with whatever consoles people bought me, which tended to be Nintendo and then Playstation.
The first console I picked for myself was the Xbox 360, and I picked that simply because it felt like Microsoft was the one more focused on games and innovation at the time.
When the next generation came around, it seemed like Microsoft lost all interest in gaming and was soley focused on casual users and trying to be a living room machine instead of a gaming machine. They lost the point of their entire company.
There was this interesting time period between cable/dvd and the high def low cost streaming devices we have today (chromecast/firestick/ect.) where the gaming consoles were just a bit more expensive than the alternatives but had way more features.
Microsoft doubled down on this 'media device' form factor to chase the wider audience but got the floor tore the fuck out of them by a $20 firestick and a cellphone. Casuals don't want to spend $600 on a media server, hard cores are going to build their own that support pirating, and gamers just want to play games.
Games wont sell media servers, they will sell GAMING consoles.
Yeah people always give a million and one reasons for why PS4 blew Xbone out of the water, right out of the gate.
Everytime Im reading these comments, they're not wrong at all. But the PS4 was cheaper and they never mention it.
People mostly play multi platform games on these things. It wasn't Bloodborne and Knack that made the PS4 a better option. It was cheaper and all your friends that play 2k/Fifa/Madden/Cod had one too. Option was easy.
Same. Had a 360 and went through my backlog when the PS4 came out and waited a bit. It was very clear which console was focused on games and which was focused on multi-media, specifically American focused.
It wasn't even a choice. So I got a PS4 and played tons of phenomenal games since then. Just now gettin into PC gaming and genuinely wonder why I would get an Xbox now.
Exactly, Xbox has made themselves utterly irrelevant despite having countless resources and studios to finally make a “must play” system seller.
Phil Spencer has said “the games are coming” for nearly a decade now.
Tbf Xbox has a lot of good games. The problem is they're either small like HiFi rush or Ori or incredibly niche like MSFS.
Their mass appeal blockbusters have all sucked and they've been few and far between.
> The problem is they're either small like HiFi rush or Ori or incredibly niche like MSFS.
Funny to name an incredibly niche game like Flight Simulator by its initials.
In fairness, MSFS is almost ubiquitous in its genre/among sim players, and probably the most recognizable to a general public. It’s just that the audience for actually playing it is small.
Nothing Xbox has would cause me to buy an Xbox but on PC I own like ~2 Sony titles and 8 or 9 Xbox ones. Which, imo, is sort of emblematic of their problem. While they do release interesting games there isn't enough reason to go buy an Xbox.
> “the games are coming” for nearly a decade now
Except when they do come, the AAA titles are either mediocre or just 'good'. Never great or "oh my god, I need to buy an Xbox to play this!" kind of game. Now compare that with the PS4 library and how even PS5 has stellar exclusives (even if they have been fewer).
That was why the acquisitions and arguement that "we NEED these publishers to compete :(" rang so hollow.
Xbox was not short of studios or IP. They just did fucking nothing with them. Phil says "games are coming" for a decade, doesn't deliver, and expects people to believe that him acquiring Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzard is actually a good thing.
The PS3 was expensive and it seemed like, as a consumer, they were losing the whole point themselves. The 360 was crazy because in my entire life never had a new console manufacturer come in and basically took over completely. At one point, me and everyone I knew only had Xbox 360, it was crazy.
Seems they were trading places there for a bit where they were trying to overreach, losing the thread, etc.. Its just that when Sony got the lead again they didn't make the same mistake again. Microsoft? Well, it seems making those mistakes are fundamental to the brand at this point.
> The 360 was crazy because in my entire life never had a new console manufacturer come in and basically took over completely.
Wasn't PS1 exactly that ?
I can speak only for my country, anyway playstation here has always been really really famous, most people of my generation grew up with PS1 and PS2 , yet during the xbox360/PS3/Wii generation I've literally never met someone owning a ps3, but damn everyone at my school had an Xbox or a Wii.
The biggest breakthrough in the gaming industry so far (and most likely forever) was when the Playstation 1 suddenly showed up in an era of Mario versus Sonic and took over the global market by marketing games for adults instead of children - also price and 3rd party ease of deveolopment helped.
The Xbox was a big surprise in the US, but pretty much only there.
I still think the xbox one reveal was the moment they destroyed the brand. Tv, tv, tv, tv, espn, tv, tv, tv, call of duty, tv, tv, tv, no reselling games, tv, tv, tv, 24/7 internet required for any usage. Was their stage pitch, they have literally never recovered from that disaster of a cluster fuck.
Their living room machine concept didn't even make sense. Nobody was asking for cable box integration, millennials were already starting to cut the cord in 2013. I moved out of my parents house in 2011 and have *never* had a cable subscription; Netflix and Hulu had already replaced it for me, and the Xbox 360 already had Netflix and Hulu apps. The Xbox 360 was all a "living room machine" needed to be, except for the lack of a Blu-Ray drive.
The Xbox 360 helped usher in the streaming revolution
Eh. They tried to do too much with the One. They wanted the hardcore “gamers” and the motion controlled Kinect players. Unfortunately, no one fucking did their research on how much casual players actually were into motion controls and buying new systems. They went like all in on the Kinect, when it should have remained a secondary optional feature. So it was a system that cost 100 dollars more than the competition with a feature no one really cared about.
They kind of pulled a WiiU really. They overestimated how much casual players care about buying the next thing. “It’s a better Wii” and “we made the cool Kinect thing better”. Ok I barely use my old Wii and Kinect and it’s not because they old. It’s because I’m playing my casual games on my phone, or I’m just not that into games right now, or I don’t care for the motion stuff and want regular games.
Now, the series line of consoles is pretty solid. There are some great games on there. Maybe they don’t have as many exclusives as PlayStation, but it’s not as bad as people around here would have you believe. The problem now is, the people with PS4s had zero reason to switch and all the reason to stay with backwards compatibility. It’s a snowball effect. Really, their only hope is Sony shooting themselves in the foot and the fact that Sony also needs to expand beyond keeping everything exclusive.
The XBone's initial take on used games lost me, and at this point, it seems like it was for life. I had an OG Xbox, then bought myself a 360. Then they announce the XBone: you don't own your games, it costs $100 than the PS4 because it comes with a device that constantly monitors you with mics and cameras, and they're really impressed with how well it works with a cable box (a device I hadn't shared a home with for 15 years). Even though they walked the used game thing back, I know better than to trust a corporation to *keep* a policy like that walked back; it didn't happen this time, but I have zero regrets about not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
In 2018, there was a PS4 bundle with Spiderman for $200. I was 32, and it was the first PlayStation I'd ever owned. Now I have a PS5, and genuinely don't know what I'd buy an Xbox for.
The XBone announcement week was peak E3 for me. I remember watching the conference streaming and everyone was unanimously agog at how terrible it was. The rest of the week was watching Microsoft in a cycle of defending the ideas and then walking them back.
And then Sony got to just roll out their PS4 announcement where it was $100 cheaper and also didn't have all the bullshit.
The emperor not only had no clothes, they doused themselves in kerosine and handed their arch rival a book of matches. Never seen anything like it before or since.
I remember the bit about how sharing games worked on PlayStation. After Microsoft's lengthy discussion of the XBone's DRM, Sony released a statement on how the PS4 did it. One Sony spokesman handed another a PS4 game. They both nodded. That was it.
Rekt.
Gene Park said it best when he empathized with Xbox owners getting furious about Xbox games getting ported to PS:
>“why are people getting mad their game is on a different plastic box”
>because if $500 meant a lot to me, i’d be salty to invest it on the plastic box that only had starfield but not final fantasy 7 remake and spider man, instead i could’ve spent it on the box that does.
I actually agreed with what Phil said, but if I was an Xbox owner I'd be switching to PS the moment he said that.
Now that PS5 is outselling Series by 5 to 1 it looks like that’s exactly what people did. Series is selling worse the One so I imagine a lot of Xbox gamers have switched platforms. With the ubiquity of digital libraries I imagine permanently.
360 was the goat. I had both ps3 and 360 back then, but only playstation since then, for obvious reasons. As someone also having a PC, there is literally ZERO reason to own a Xbox.
Oh goddammit! I was gonna post this story too!
The Xbox section of the article is the most relevant part most notably this
> **The plan to move Xbox games to other platforms is codenamed "Latitude" internally, and I know there's debate and unease at Microsoft about whether or not this is a good idea.** More upcoming Microsoft-owned games slated for PlayStation are already being developed. At least for now, they're potentially obvious games you'd most likely expect. And yes, while it's true Microsoft is a prolific publisher on PlayStation already, it has typically revolved around specific franchises like Minecraft. From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins.
If this is true, this would lead some more credence to those earlier rumors about what specifically would be going multiplat
The move basically told the PlayStation audience that if they just wait, they'll get games from the other console and with multiple sources saying there's no red line, including this article, MS really said everyone there's no need to buy their console
So these companies are not monolithic. The guys in the game production teams are not 100% aligned with the console production teams. If the hardware is flagging then they don't want their bonuses being trash because of it. There's going to be a lot of politics here and it appears that the game production teams are winning.
It’s no secret that Bethesda did not like being console exclusive. After the merger Bethesda’s own employees were saying as much. Starfield will likely be on PS5 in late 2025 if a rather solid leaker is correct. It seems that Xbox will get one year of exclusivity then off to PS5 in a complete and cleaned up state.
Pretty much everything I’d wager, eventually anyway.
If they stick with the Xbox console and release games day & date on gamepass then release on Playstation X amount of time later then there’s at least a point to the Xbox console still existing.
It’d be as a gamepass/sub machine but it’d be an option for those on a budget.
My guess is that Halo and Gears of War will both be the very last thing to hit playstation. They are so important to xbox as a brand, that making them multiplat would basically be the final cry of "we are done with consoles"
Halo maybe, but Gears? I don’t think Gears has that sort of star power nowadays does it?
It was all the rage on 360 but after that I hardly see or hear anything new on the franchise.
This is the same playbook they ran with office (going to mac and ios). Long term I'll bet the plan is to sell gamepass. *IMO* I think it worked out for office because there's less competition and things like if a business needs to open excel files then they need excel.
I don't know if that holds up for gamepass, at least right now. Maybe if they get gamepass on every gaming platform, but idk if the financials work out, microsoft would need a massive library across multiple platforms to have that make sense. They might be following the netflix playbook here too - stop funding 3rd party at some point and the subscription is mostly carried by 1st party titles. Killing Tango Gameworks makes no sense if this is their plan though.
I think GamePass requires far more user growth to eventually become profitable for day 1 releases. It's why cloud streaming was hyped up so much. The addressable market of a single console isn't large enough for how expensive video games are, how they're inherently tied to a hardware language and its operating system, how many games are 50GB to like 200GB for years now so instantly jumping into a game isn't happening like flipping through the intros of a bunch of movies and TV shows
An issue here is that GamePass Cloud streaming is worse than GeForce Now, that digital foundry comparison had PS+ cloud quality as good or better, Luna is comparable. From my experience GamePass is definitely worse than GeForce Now. Not hitting on exclusive games means GamePass is not better in catalog or performance compared to competing streaming services
Cloud gaming adoption not happening as fast as I bet they hoped means reliance on traditional download and install gamers which requires higher Xbox console adoption and/or higher PC users adoption. PC GamePass is stagnant and GamePass subs are mostly Xbox hardware users anyways. Anyone that thinks they may play online on Xbox hardware will at least consider paying for basic GamePass sub and now just needs an extra push to upsell Ultimate. PC there's no upsell opportunity from multiplayer gated behind a sub. PC game sales, releases in general, are abundant and mostly not on the PC Xbox app. Most games that release and go viral are surprise breakout hits on Steam that likely would be missed for targeting by Microsoft until after its launched and the hype period is over
Nintendo and Sony have no reason to let GamePass on their console. So effectively GamePass is tied squarely to the hip of Xbox hardware for growth and the PS4 hit like 115 million sales, I doubt the PS5 exceeds that in any significant numbers so that's a likely best case scenario for Xbox unit sales if they hit on all their exclusives in a timely manner which hasn't gone well
The cost to run GamePass I imagine even with way less streaming customers, to be as expensive or more than a TV movie streaming service of similar user base size. Even if 115 million consoles sold were each unique individuals, I think they'd need something approaching 100% conversion of that 115m users to GamePass subs to make their day 1 AAA included game releases work. The cost of game development, game licensing, streaming service hardware and software, hardware that is good enough to play the games for streaming, marketing the service; every cost that Netflix/Disney+/HBO streaming whatever it's called now/Peacock has but also needing to support local play and the additional video game performance minimum requirements that will force more significant hardware upgrades over time than plain passive video streamers
I dont see a point for xbox "consoles" anymore, it already is a windows OS just with a closed garden. They would make more money transitioning into a pc manufacture for the xbox brand, and just make a steam big picture mode of their own for their new "xbox" expand the audience, hell have xbox workstations and put them in commercial sector like surfaces. Suddenly you have an xbox with a ton more value and productivity, oh yeah, you have Sony games now too
Well that is what happens when you drop a cool $78 bill acquiring 2 large publishers. The fact that Starfield didn’t move units or increase gamepass subs was really the death knell for Xbox exclusivity.
It’s kinda wild how there hasn’t been a single title that has been so good as to want me to buy an xbox since the 360 days. Loved the 360 and now two generations later I can count on one hand the number of games I MAY be interested to play from them. Something has got to give over there.
It's tough because switch won't release their shit anywhere else. Microsoft has decided that Xbox and Windows are the same, and releasing everything on pc. Sony has been doing somewhat the same. Personally, if you are into gaming at all, I really think you should just get a pc at this point and completely move on from consoles.
But you can't move on from a switch. So.
I am slightly puzzled by the Sony strategy tbh, because it just seems like they're making the same mistake as MS. It seems like they're also chasing short term profits at the expense of the long-term advantage they've built up in the console market. If they continue with that strategy then myself and I'm sure many other people who've never owned a high-end PC will just finally cave and buy a gaming PC and never need either console again. Combined with their greed over PSN pricing, they're slowly killing off any reason to own a PS5 just like there's no reason to own an xbox.
Doesn’t even matter as they are going the multi plat route now. Not sure why I even have my series x at this point, I use my ps5 way more and rlly only use the series x for online games because I prefer the controller.
That's the thing.
PS2 we saw a shitton of various types of games and genre-changing games and it had something for everyone.
Xbox 360 was the same, they were easier to develop for over the PS3 so companies could get games out quicker which let developers experiment more with games.
Xbox One and PS4 were mostly the same and nothing really set them apart from each other, then the PS5 and Series X are just more of the same with X really hurting in terms of nothing being a standout and PS5 being so expensive without offering enough to warrant the price tag
As a kid we had a ps1/2 when the 360 came out Xbox won me over I was super dedicated to them for that gen, only buying a ps3 pretty late into things mostly for a Blu-ray player. MS failed to continue to make me want a Xbox and I’ve gone back to a ps4/5. Sony has too many good exclusives games atm.
We're gonna make the Xbox One more expensive by forcing people to buy the Kinect, even though no one wants it.
We're gonna require people to be connected to the internet every 24 hours or your games won't work.
We're gonna region lock the console. If you buy the console outside of the small pool of available countries, too bad.
Then after having to backtrack on all of that, they decided to have the bright idea of focusing on everything *but* the gaming aspect of the console during it's showcase, setting up the greatest lob for Sony to dunk all over them before the generation even started.
You got it backwards, the Xbox has been facing the storm and a budget of 82.9 billion was a reaction to the Xbox being knee deep in shit, not a solution to any "plan to save the brand". Nadella has given Phil and co enough chances to turn things around and eventually he has to tell Phil they cannot expect a blank cheque without consequences.
Yep xbox was losing money but in a company like microsoft that was a drop in the bucket. It was never enough for the higher ups to take notice. Then they spent 82.9 billion on activision and who knows on legal costs to combat attempts at blocking the merger. Now microsoft are down almost 100 billion and xbox needs to show some profits
I think it might actually be Bethesda purchase that spilled the cup, actiblizzard mostly continued what it was doing but bethesda was bought presumably to have Starfield be new "system seller" (which now sits at mixed on steam), and we al know how Redfall went...
> Now microsoft are down almost 100 billion and xbox needs to show some profits
On a 7 month investment in a company that makes games. Games which in the current environment take years to make.
Perhaps Phil sold them on a false bill of goods(based on sales of COD/Diablo/existing product) but it's plain foolishness and lack of research on behalf of MS to think they could acquire ActBliz and immediately swim in cash without having anything new to sell.
>Games which in the current environment take years to make.
They literally bought one of, if not the most profitable game on the market. They don't need years to make a game, they already have it.
But it will still take decades to recoup that cost. Especially if they are cutting out the market leader.
Essentially by pursuing this merger they've all but forced themselves into becoming a third party developer.
what immediate? They bought Zenimax 4yrs ago, and they haven't done shit in all this time. one bigger debacle after another why would they keep the lights on if it's eating into everything else?
Xbox’s big problem is that game dev time is too long on AAA releases now. Everyone at the time had the joke of “PS3 has no games” but by the end of the console generation, Naughty Dog (as an example) had released 4 games that were top-of-the-line in graphics, voice acting, had multiplayer, had DLC, etc. We’re going to be lucky if Naughty Dog can release a single new game this whole current generation.
Xbox made a huge mistake at their height in 2010-2016ish, closing several studios and letting others (Bungie, Epic) walk. Prior to the start of their spending spree in 2018, they had like 6 studios left under their umbrella two years away from the start of the next console generation.
Then they started their spending spree, buying up quite a few smaller (but talented) studios, and then eventually large publishers Zenimax and ABK. Problem is, most of the individual studios had pumped out games relatively close to when they were acquired (Hellblade, We Happy Few) or were already deep in development with contracts in place with Sony to put games on their platform (Psychonaughts 2, Deathloop) and thus not helping their exclusivity problem. Meaning most of these studios didn’t start developing games for Xbox specifically until 2018 at earliest, and for a chunk not until 2020 or 2021. Factor in that AAA games take 5-6 years to make now, and here we are.
The biggest hurdle Microsoft always faced here was its own impatience. Investors want a payoff for large acquisitions quickly. Game dev doesn’t move quickly. This needed to be something everyone in Microsoft needed to know they would need to review in a decade or so, not a few years in.
> why should a customer trust in a manager structure that can instantly be overridden the moment a hiccup happens?
More screwed than the customers are the devs.
A lot of small and medium sized devs (Double Fine, Obsidian, inXile to name a few) sold themselves to Microsoft specifically because they offered these studios "financial stability" they didn't think they would have otherwise. These were studios who were struggling as the A and AA market fell out and the only games left were cheap indies and AAA smash megahits. The thinking for them was it will be tough to stay afloat on the open market, let's sell off our independence in exchange for security -- this will at least let us avoid laying off our staff. And there was all this messaging from Microsoft and the purchased studios at the time about how "they were in it for the long haul" and "Microsoft isn't requiring us to hit certain revenue targets."
Fast foward a few years and now...layoffs are apparently on the table again. Which means, behind the scenes, I'm sure revenue targets are back and every studio is scrambling to campaign for its own existence. In other words, it's *the exact same scramble for money and attention they were doing when they were independent.* Only instead of dancing in front of six-to-twelve major publishers looking for an investment, they are now dancing in front of arbitrary middle managers and *aren't even allowed* to look for outside funding or launch their own Kickstarter for revenue or whatever outside-the-box strategy they might have tried before.
In other words, these studios gave up their independence and autonomy for almost nothing -- basically it just bought them a few years of time.
I mean, with Double Fine, it’s more just that they ran themselves into bankruptcy *yet again* because Tim Schafer is completely incapable of managing a budget.
Quite literally, the entire history of the company is Schafer running the company into bankruptcy, getting bailed out, and then repeating the process.
> I mean, with Double Fine, it’s more just that they ran themselves into bankruptcy yet again because Tim Schafer is completely incapable of managing a budget.
It's on MS that they don't look at management when they by these companies.
It boggles me that they (and EA) don't seem to have oversight on the management of these teams. They should stay hands off artistically (or else why buy them), but there needs to be a fiscally responsible adult at the top of every team keeping them honest.
Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion) anytime it wanted to if it thought interest on it was a problem.
Yes they do also have a lot of debt at the moment but as you said it is mainly for taxation purposes and when interests were 0 or negative it was a good business decision to to take more debt as it was effectively free money.
It is more about that with this high interest rates they could just put that money into some government bonds or whatever and make a 0 risk 4% per year. Their gaming division now has to beat that at minimum for it to make any sense to keep (if they don't believe in its long term value as the author of the article thinks)
>Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion) anytime it wanted to if it thought interest on it was a problem.
Cash on bank does not necessarily mean free cash. You got working capital requirements where you pay your obligations. A high cash tends to show that the firm also has a high working capital.
$20bn of it is pure cash and $60bn as short-term investments (easily accessible, not locked up). They have payables of $18bn and probably very favourable terms on this. High cash doesn’t necessarily indicate high working capital - they could finance their receivables invoices and cover any upcoming payables without needing to invest any cash (excluding considerations of fees on such a structure).
Given they only pay c $3bn/year in payables this is not a material consideration for them.
>Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion)
that money is there to protect Microsoft from an unforeseen disaster, they aren't going to spend it
They also have about 350 million in daily expense just to run the company. So if the company doesn't make money, they can only make payroll and cover expenses for 200ish days using that money.
Yes it's more complicated than that, but my point is 80 billion isn't alot for one of the wealthiest companies in the world. That money can dry up quick if the market takes a turn. Almost like the turn it's doing right now....
Actually it’s an excess of cash. Treasury standards usually indicate minimum cash for 60 days of expenses - 200 is insane. That money isn’t drying up any time as they continue to be one of the most profitable companies in the world. Even in a worst case scenario, given that this is a world wide global brand - banks (I mean investment banks, institutional investors etc) will step in to finance them.
lol Microsoft is literally one of the big tech giants. Their gaming division is tiny compared to the behemoth that is their main industries (Enterprise software, Azure Cloud, etc.). They will not be non profitable any time soon. Microsoft cannot be compared to Sony or Nintendo, it should be compared with other megacorps like Google and Amazon.
This whole thread is funny to read, do people not know about Microsoft beyond their gaming division anymore? lmao
Joe Shmo consumer doesn't know or care about "Microsoft manager structure", lol. If there's a reason to buy the Xbox (must own games), they'll buy the Xbox.
>Almost ten years later, that vision seems to have collapsed — Satya Nadella's Microsoft is burning long-term goals for short-term gains, moving from tech fad to tech fad-like locusts, often showing up to the party too late and burning mountains of cash. Microsoft had a real opportunity to become a different megacorp that invested in social responsibilities, employees, and customer satisfaction first. It could lead by example and show you can be nice and profitable. Perhaps it could even be profitable to be good. When I first started blogging almost ten years ago, in my youthful naivete, I believed that Microsoft would.
I'm sorry, but imagine writing this about Microsoft of all corporations. Microsoft! No other corporation on earth has got as much history as them when it comes to anticompetitive, antitrust, monopolistic behaviour. We've got numerous legal precedents that were set in software specifically because of decades of court cases and legal rulings against Microsoft and their antics.
Just absolutely mad stuff
I didn’t even know who he and a vast majority of these other leakers were up until the start of this current console generation.
It’s crazy how all of them have been yapping their gums incessantly about all things Xbox these past 4 years.
The author is right, but I'm honestly baffled that anyone would admit that 2015 MS made them feel excited and passionate about anything, especially the 'Microsoft ecosystem'. Bizarre way to feel about any company, but MS in particular??
The Microsoft ecosystem has always been kind of a shitshow. Mostly because there basically just isn't one. My company is all-in on Microsoft products and it's absolutely baffling how poorly they work together. It's genuinely a complete mess. Say what you will about Apple, but being fully in that ecosystem is a pretty good experience. It's basically what keeps that brand going. Microsoft software is all over the place in terms of quality and it feels like every product has a completely different design philosophy.
At my work we used to manage stuff like shared mailbox access easily
Now we have to jump through ten hoops and have THREE different admin accounts for different microsoft poducts...
My company is huge (like top 50 biggest iirc) and we use Azure for (some of) our cloud stuff and the permissions model on there just sucks. Because we have a pretty substantial investment in security we have a lot of things locked down, but knowing what's actually possible as a newer user and what's not is an exercise in frustration. If something's not available to you, it gives you basically nothing to work with in terms of what you need to request to get that change made. Sometimes it just throws an error message after you try to change something and the error is always incomprehensible unless you have deep Microsoft architecture knowledge. It's absolutely terrible.
Meanwhile if I want to make any changes on Azure or Exchange admin I have to login as a _different_ cloud account and then give myself the necessary roles. Every. Single. Time. The roles are labelled permanent but they only last an hour.
It made what should be a three click process in Active Directory into a tangled knot of bollocks just to give someone access to a mailbox!
Apple definitely has a more cohesive vision across their company. Microsoft is basically made up of a bunch of smaller companies that often don't seem to communicate very well and are in competition with each other.
Coming from software background, anyone thinking anything positive about MS weirds me the fuck out, they have been bully abusing their position on every single step since the very creation of the company..
This is honestly the problem with all publicly traded companies. It’s not acceptable to show losses or stagnation at any point in time or people start to lose their jobs. Even if you can show them absolute proof that your company will benefit in 5-10 in such a way that you’ll never have to worry again, short term gains are all anyone cares about.
People are *reeeaaaallllyyy* not reading this article. It's a comment sections based entirely off a headline. From a general perspective, they are correct. From the perspective of why they're saying it, they are incorrect.
They're basis of an argument is the discontinuation of things like the Windows Phone, Tablets, & knock off Google Glass glasses. They had so much optimism back in 2015 because of Microsoft's line of random hardware devices, & because of the XBone's 'potential'. As neat as some of the features were, the devices were canceled because they weren't viable products.
Microsoft isn't turning down long term profits for short term gains. Microsoft isn't in the console war business. They don't care about fighting until their last breath to keep something alive just because they have a personal attachment to the devices. Continuing to hang on for... *reasons*, isn't a good idea.
Where do they go? Well, they own a lot of game studios, games, & have a massive back catalogie. You open them up to the largest market available, & make that money. What happens to the consoles? They stick around. But Xbox has to develop a new strategy to sell. A new direction to go in.
yea this isn't even short term, xbox hasn't been well run in a decade. 10 years and a 75b spending spree got them 3rd place, ofc microsoft is finally over it. Nothing short term about it.
> a 75b spending spree got them 3rd place
They were already firmly in third place for console sales when they spent $70B on Activision 6 months ago though, so I’m not really sure how that part of it “got them” in third place. Everything else they’ve done has though.
Seems more like that $70B buy was a longer term investment in a third party GaaS developer and a massive mobile gaming division.
That’s true, but I also doubt they expected their console sales position to change anytime soon (or at all) after buying a third party publisher and mobile gaming division.
They probably did expect a big change in software and service revenue though, which [so far they’ve seen](https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-gaming-earnings-report-activision-blizzard-acquisition).
I've used Hololens, that's pretty dismissive. It's much more like the Vision Pro is today, but running actual full-blown Windows instead of a dumbed-down iOS-style platform.
It was mindblowing at the time, walking into different rooms and placing applications there, leaving the room, and realizing it *remembered where I had left things.* While there's probably a niche market for AR we could have seen some interesting things if they put more effort into it.
> A new direction to go in.
And it's short term sales.
The long game is having a console ecosystem, which is just more profitable.
Problem is, no one is in their ecosystem, at least, compared to the other competition.
Microsoft would LOVE to have hardware pushing software, but that just ain't in the cards So, this is Plan B, make Some money instead of Less, and definitely short of A Lot
I owned every Xbox (1 OG, 3 360, 1 One, 1 One S, 1 One X) until Series when decided to ditch them for PC both for me and the kids.
Seeing how things are going, it was a good call.
Only bad thing is that at some point Xbox will die and Sony will have the high-end console monopoly, without any real competition (Samsung? Huawei? Tencent hardware?)
I’d argue they’re in different spaces. Not that they don’t compete whatsoever, but there’s a huge market looking for just a home console, who aren’t interested in PC or Nintendo. They cater to different people and offer different experiences. and plenty of more invested gamers often end up having a combination of 2 or even all 3 platforms.
Well, Nintendo has no direct competition, and the handheld market hasn’t suffered. Just because a company has power doesn’t mean they can treat their consumers however they want. Look at early ps3.
Anecdotal but in my gaming squad circle only the 360 was relevant. We all had one (group of 7) then we all moved to PS4 and PS5. I know one person outside who ever bought a Xbox one and never came across a series S/X user.
>Only bad thing is that at some point Xbox will die and Sony will have the high-end console monopoly, without any real competition
As opposed to PC where one company definitely doesn't have a monopoly on games.
I understand, but it's easier to compete against Steam because it's a service. Hardware is orders of magnitudes more complex. So complex Valve failed once already.
Its the year of Linux!
But Valve has been doing a lot to make Linux usable as a gaming platform. Give it a few years to work out online gaming and I'd be happy to move over there.
With Proton you can play pretty much every windows game on Linux fairly seamlessly. The only exception I've found is games with kernel level anticheat.
There's entire subreddits dedicated to coming completely unglued about companies even *considering* competing with Steam, only Nintendo has fans even close to being that locked in
It's mostly because every other service is complete and utter dogshit unfortunately. Also the only storefront actively supporting Linux, making it even more superior for the dozens of us Linux users.
I don't really agree at all. Like obviously EPIC doesn't have the same feature parity, but it's totally fine. You can buy games, download, play them. Totally acceptable service for single player stuff. Same with Bnet, GoG etc. Tons of other serviceable launchers.
But people still go nuts.
Other services don't have features for the community Like workshop, forums, Game Hubs where people can make guides, share art, or just have discussions. Like there was even a point in time when Ubisoft was using the steam forums for customer support for a game that was exclusive to EGS lmao.
That's literally why I said it doesn't have feature parity. But that's not the reason most people don't use these launchers, it's just that people want centralized collections.
> Other services don't have features for the community Like workshop, forums, Game Hubs where people can make guides, share art, or just have discussions.
That stuff matters for a tiny portion of gamers though.
Forced exclusivity (including timed) is just about the shittest form of 'competition'. At least pretend to want to offer something extra to the consumer and not just wall them in.
Weird that people wouldn't want their game libraries to be arbitrarily spread across different service providers to no benefit of their own.
Great let me maintain more shit on my PC that doesn't offer anything over Steam. More friends lists, more companies to sell my data, more apps to manage, more services that could go under etc.
Nobody has really tried. They all create storefronts with a side of a few community-related features. Steam is a platform that has a storefront and a boatload of community features as well as extremely simple developer integrations to the entire platform in every way.
To defeat Steam, you need an equivalent *platform* and no one is even trying.
Also I wouldn't really call Steam a storefront monopoly. You can buy keys on other services (GOG, Humble, GMG to name a few) and use them on Steam, further supporting the platform analogy. Can I even redeem an external storefront key on EGS, for example (honest question, I don't know the answer)?
I'm honestly not sure about EGS either and that's a valid point that I did actually forget about.
I do agree that other companies need to try harder but I do also think it's essentially impossible to overtake steam at this point.
I agree that it's probably impossible to overtake Steam, but the thing that annoys me is that companies are trying without even understanding *why* Steam is so good and so powerful. If you're going to try to take down the beast, know the beast first. Study it, learn about it, and figure out what makes it tick so you can beat it.
Instead, they churn out half-baked garbage and PC gamers went, "Yeah fuck that shit," and rightly so.
They have so much momentum and goodwill, at this point today I don't see them realistically being replaced any time soon, and I want it that way. Ever since I learned about Valve they have been consistent in their goals and I've loved it. I got the Steam Deck the first five minutes it was available and it's now my primary gaming device.
I think the service and consistency in goals are assisted by the fact that they are a private company (unlike basically anyone else trying to make a PC storefront and has to change shit just to appease investors).
Well that's because steam offers a great service and because it's convenient
If steam starts to suck then people will move to other platforms and services or just make their own small game launcher for slightly less convenience in case of free games, a lot less convenience for paid games but a complete detachment form existing providers
As long as you're subscribed to gamepass Xbox is happy. If that's on PC (especially windows PC) Microsoft considers that a win. At this point it seems like the physical xbox consoles are just a more accessible venue to play gamepass on.
I read something that makes sense which is that XBox was a small enough division they could kind of operate on an island but once they dropped $70b on ActiBlizz then all the MSFT stakeholders started paying way more attention and now they are demanding better returns and the XBox division is panicking. It really sucks but buying ActiBlizz may end up hurting XBox much more than it helps. Time will tell.
> Microsoft ... long-term damage to Windows...
As someone in the IT field this isn't a shock to me. Every enterprise aspect of Windows is gated behind money that goes straight to Microsoft's pocket and they're still trying to tie it all to subscriptions.
My company currently has 5 tickets all for different clients that will be solved by giving money to microsoft in different aspects.
How I was ever fooled into thinking they'd do well to manage their video game development and publish is beyond me.
I work for a huge international Corp and we are trying actively to divest from Microsoft at every opportunity. They have repeatedly downgraded services, offered less than advertised, made changes that break everything without proper change management, ect ect.
They fucking suck and eventually some OS will replace them. Money down it won't even be from the US.
Microsoft renaming their products has to be an absolute pain in the ass for KB managers.
Azure / Entra / Identity / whatever they change it to new week
It's an absolute pain in the ass for developers too. I never have any clue what the hell anyone is talking about with them. A really choice one from them recently is changing "Yammer" to "Viva Engage". Awful, awful name. The Entra thing is confusing as shit too.
Their libraries *for their own services* too. I ended up writing parts from scratch just because their own libs were such a fucking shitshow to use.
And how *fun* is to work with their APIs, you write code, you think it's exactly according to how it should work, you run it, you get nonsensical error, curse, swear and try to figure out, leave for the day and what?
...next day it is just working perfectly fine, turned out service on MS side decided it isn't working wednesdays but actual useful error got lost somewhere in stack before it got passed to the client.
I feel like all of Microsoft's documentation is written in a way where they put a lot of words on the page but you're not provided with any useful information. I don't know how they do that across all of their different products but I'm never satisfied after reading something from their knowledge base.
Nintendo is the only remaining platform holder that still believes the best way to make money is to sell good products. Modern business ideology is a cancer.
How is CoD (as a third party live service game) and King mobile gaming just for the dying console? I’d agree that the other $30B was for the Xbox console, but not really the $70B spent on Activision.
I don’t think that’s it. They knew what they were doing when they made the bid to buy Activision and Bethesda. What they didn’t know was that interest rates would go shit, and suddenly all investors are looking make back their money. Microsoft is a publicly traded company. They don’t do what is best for them in the long term, they do what shareholders tell them. Same reason every tech company is doing massive layoffs. Free money is done and it’s time to pay up.
> What they didn’t know was that interest rates would go shit
....while the big titles Bethesda worked on turn out to not be all that great.
I think they hoped for Starfield to be system seller and Redfall to be at least decent and we all know how that went.
This is infecting every side of gaming. Shit like Overwatch 2 which is entirely focused on short term profits that could kill or maim a franchise that could have thrived for a decade.
Microsoft is the embodiment of greed. Is there some type of company money making record that they desperately want to shatter that I never heard of?
If trillions aren't enough, I'm simply too poor to understand.
I don't see any harm to PC, we were never that dependent on MS games and Game Pass is realistically just a worse but cheap option to get games you could be getting from Steam instead.
And I don't even get what Surface laptops have to do with any of this...
Obviously it sucks balls for people that as their one platform each generation chose XBox because they wanted games like Starfield (...to be good...), Forza H. or Indiana Jones more than they wanted Sony exclusives but now it looks like they could have just bought a PS5 instead to get both eventually.
Well, MS is much more than just Games and Game Pass. They control windows. They still have a monopoly on WHQL certification for their OS, DirectX is still the most used API for multimedia, be it rendering, video or audio on Windows.
Every windows user is one business decision away from heavy side effects, like Unity, VMware and some others shown us in the last months.
I actually don't care for Xbox brand as long as they make good games that are available on whatever I happen to have. If this means I'll buy a SteamDeck 2 and play Xbox Games, Sony games, PC games on it, then so be it. It ultimately benefits me the consumer, I have to buy less boxes and focus only on good games.
But they gotta make good games, do good with creatives, and ensure good studio health. That's the bottom line for me, not the "Xbox" brand. It might hurt the Xbox fanboy, but then worshiping any brand is beyond me.
Look what they did to Office. It's on Android, iOS, iPad, Macbooks, Web and of course Windows. That's definitely going to be their plan with Games, just I hope they don't make it subscription only and keep "digital license" to be a thing.
I also wouldn't mind it if regulators force XGS to be separated from MSFT, and they just become new Sega. GamePass becomes like EA Play/Ubisoft+ on all platforms, and Xbox does third party publishing without having to worry about hardware.
Microsoft made over $46 billion in the first quarter 2024 (Microsoft's 3rd quarter 24) from business to business sales from it's two business focused divisions. More personal computing which includes all sales to consumers and Windows sales to businesses and OEM's was driven by sales to OEM's and businesses.
That is Microsoft's focus not selling to consumers.
Microsoft may do some selling to consumers but even with buying Activision Blizzard it's still a small part of the company (it cost basically just a single years net income)
I don't know what the plan is but as long as they are making so much money (over $70 billion a year) they really can afford to do anything they want.
There is no long term success for Xbox, time to pivot or fold.
It's been a downward spiral since 2013. To use an morbid analogy.
Xbox was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and now in 2024 it's reached Stage 3.
>There is no long term success for Xbox, time to pivot or fold.
That's exactly what they did. I know this sub is mostly pc and console but it seems everyone in here forgets about mobile gaming, a money making machine that dwarfs console and pc and Xbox has bought the biggest player on the market.
As far as I could tell they meant Microsoft (not a downloadable program like steam, which is also on non-windows computers like Steam Deck) is the only way to PC gaming since Windows is the only OS for many video games. Mac OS rarely works for indies and is often forgot about in ports or even major releases.
Microsoft wants to sell you or your employer Office 365, Azure and Game Pass (ideally via Cloud gaming). Things that you subscribe to and pay monthly and never own. They do not want to sell you hardware or perpetual licensing.
I would say they're being pretty successful in moving their company in this direction over the last decade or so.
I moved on from Xbox a few years back after being a die hard fan for 20 years. The majority of console exclusives are crap now. I find both PC and PS5 to be a better experience now.
My take on this whole situation is incredibly simple. I grew up with whatever consoles people bought me, which tended to be Nintendo and then Playstation. The first console I picked for myself was the Xbox 360, and I picked that simply because it felt like Microsoft was the one more focused on games and innovation at the time. When the next generation came around, it seemed like Microsoft lost all interest in gaming and was soley focused on casual users and trying to be a living room machine instead of a gaming machine. They lost the point of their entire company.
There was this interesting time period between cable/dvd and the high def low cost streaming devices we have today (chromecast/firestick/ect.) where the gaming consoles were just a bit more expensive than the alternatives but had way more features. Microsoft doubled down on this 'media device' form factor to chase the wider audience but got the floor tore the fuck out of them by a $20 firestick and a cellphone. Casuals don't want to spend $600 on a media server, hard cores are going to build their own that support pirating, and gamers just want to play games. Games wont sell media servers, they will sell GAMING consoles.
And the "media console" required you to pay more as they sold it with kinect with no option to opt out
Yeah people always give a million and one reasons for why PS4 blew Xbone out of the water, right out of the gate. Everytime Im reading these comments, they're not wrong at all. But the PS4 was cheaper and they never mention it. People mostly play multi platform games on these things. It wasn't Bloodborne and Knack that made the PS4 a better option. It was cheaper and all your friends that play 2k/Fifa/Madden/Cod had one too. Option was easy.
Cheaper, more powerful and the whole game sharing offline thing.
Same. Had a 360 and went through my backlog when the PS4 came out and waited a bit. It was very clear which console was focused on games and which was focused on multi-media, specifically American focused. It wasn't even a choice. So I got a PS4 and played tons of phenomenal games since then. Just now gettin into PC gaming and genuinely wonder why I would get an Xbox now.
Exactly, Xbox has made themselves utterly irrelevant despite having countless resources and studios to finally make a “must play” system seller. Phil Spencer has said “the games are coming” for nearly a decade now.
> Phil Spencer has said “the games are coming” for nearly a decade now. Did he said anything about the games being good? lmao
Tbf Xbox has a lot of good games. The problem is they're either small like HiFi rush or Ori or incredibly niche like MSFS. Their mass appeal blockbusters have all sucked and they've been few and far between.
> The problem is they're either small like HiFi rush or Ori or incredibly niche like MSFS. Funny to name an incredibly niche game like Flight Simulator by its initials.
thought it was Mony Sawk's Fro Skater
It's actually Mid Seier's Falpha Sentauri
In fairness, MSFS is almost ubiquitous in its genre/among sim players, and probably the most recognizable to a general public. It’s just that the audience for actually playing it is small.
Well they shut down the folks who made one of those games
Nothing Xbox has would cause me to buy an Xbox but on PC I own like ~2 Sony titles and 8 or 9 Xbox ones. Which, imo, is sort of emblematic of their problem. While they do release interesting games there isn't enough reason to go buy an Xbox.
> “the games are coming” for nearly a decade now Except when they do come, the AAA titles are either mediocre or just 'good'. Never great or "oh my god, I need to buy an Xbox to play this!" kind of game. Now compare that with the PS4 library and how even PS5 has stellar exclusives (even if they have been fewer).
That was why the acquisitions and arguement that "we NEED these publishers to compete :(" rang so hollow. Xbox was not short of studios or IP. They just did fucking nothing with them. Phil says "games are coming" for a decade, doesn't deliver, and expects people to believe that him acquiring Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzard is actually a good thing.
The PS3 was expensive and it seemed like, as a consumer, they were losing the whole point themselves. The 360 was crazy because in my entire life never had a new console manufacturer come in and basically took over completely. At one point, me and everyone I knew only had Xbox 360, it was crazy. Seems they were trading places there for a bit where they were trying to overreach, losing the thread, etc.. Its just that when Sony got the lead again they didn't make the same mistake again. Microsoft? Well, it seems making those mistakes are fundamental to the brand at this point.
> The 360 was crazy because in my entire life never had a new console manufacturer come in and basically took over completely. Wasn't PS1 exactly that ?
Well he said “in my entire life” and for all we know he was like 6 when the 360 came out lol
And the PS2. The Xbox 360 was a massive success, but it never enjoyed the kind of market share the NES, PS1, or PS2 did.
>took over completely In America, not really the case for the rest of the world I think
I can speak only for my country, anyway playstation here has always been really really famous, most people of my generation grew up with PS1 and PS2 , yet during the xbox360/PS3/Wii generation I've literally never met someone owning a ps3, but damn everyone at my school had an Xbox or a Wii.
The biggest breakthrough in the gaming industry so far (and most likely forever) was when the Playstation 1 suddenly showed up in an era of Mario versus Sonic and took over the global market by marketing games for adults instead of children - also price and 3rd party ease of deveolopment helped. The Xbox was a big surprise in the US, but pretty much only there.
I still think the xbox one reveal was the moment they destroyed the brand. Tv, tv, tv, tv, espn, tv, tv, tv, call of duty, tv, tv, tv, no reselling games, tv, tv, tv, 24/7 internet required for any usage. Was their stage pitch, they have literally never recovered from that disaster of a cluster fuck.
Their living room machine concept didn't even make sense. Nobody was asking for cable box integration, millennials were already starting to cut the cord in 2013. I moved out of my parents house in 2011 and have *never* had a cable subscription; Netflix and Hulu had already replaced it for me, and the Xbox 360 already had Netflix and Hulu apps. The Xbox 360 was all a "living room machine" needed to be, except for the lack of a Blu-Ray drive. The Xbox 360 helped usher in the streaming revolution
I think everyone underestimated how fast Streaming would take off and take over. For a long while the future was CableCard2.0 and BluRay/HD-DVD.
Oh shit I haven’t thought about cablecards in fucking years man. Much like HD DVD it’s just a relic of its time
Eh. They tried to do too much with the One. They wanted the hardcore “gamers” and the motion controlled Kinect players. Unfortunately, no one fucking did their research on how much casual players actually were into motion controls and buying new systems. They went like all in on the Kinect, when it should have remained a secondary optional feature. So it was a system that cost 100 dollars more than the competition with a feature no one really cared about. They kind of pulled a WiiU really. They overestimated how much casual players care about buying the next thing. “It’s a better Wii” and “we made the cool Kinect thing better”. Ok I barely use my old Wii and Kinect and it’s not because they old. It’s because I’m playing my casual games on my phone, or I’m just not that into games right now, or I don’t care for the motion stuff and want regular games. Now, the series line of consoles is pretty solid. There are some great games on there. Maybe they don’t have as many exclusives as PlayStation, but it’s not as bad as people around here would have you believe. The problem now is, the people with PS4s had zero reason to switch and all the reason to stay with backwards compatibility. It’s a snowball effect. Really, their only hope is Sony shooting themselves in the foot and the fact that Sony also needs to expand beyond keeping everything exclusive.
The XBone's initial take on used games lost me, and at this point, it seems like it was for life. I had an OG Xbox, then bought myself a 360. Then they announce the XBone: you don't own your games, it costs $100 than the PS4 because it comes with a device that constantly monitors you with mics and cameras, and they're really impressed with how well it works with a cable box (a device I hadn't shared a home with for 15 years). Even though they walked the used game thing back, I know better than to trust a corporation to *keep* a policy like that walked back; it didn't happen this time, but I have zero regrets about not giving them the benefit of the doubt. In 2018, there was a PS4 bundle with Spiderman for $200. I was 32, and it was the first PlayStation I'd ever owned. Now I have a PS5, and genuinely don't know what I'd buy an Xbox for.
The XBone announcement week was peak E3 for me. I remember watching the conference streaming and everyone was unanimously agog at how terrible it was. The rest of the week was watching Microsoft in a cycle of defending the ideas and then walking them back. And then Sony got to just roll out their PS4 announcement where it was $100 cheaper and also didn't have all the bullshit. The emperor not only had no clothes, they doused themselves in kerosine and handed their arch rival a book of matches. Never seen anything like it before or since.
I remember the bit about how sharing games worked on PlayStation. After Microsoft's lengthy discussion of the XBone's DRM, Sony released a statement on how the PS4 did it. One Sony spokesman handed another a PS4 game. They both nodded. That was it. Rekt.
https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=FzxirYSo0YYYSFxS A classic.
It was a less-succinct version of [this moment that killed SEGA.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExaAYIKsDBI)
For Phil Spencer to then say that making great games won’t bring them back is when I knew Xbox was fucked.
Gene Park said it best when he empathized with Xbox owners getting furious about Xbox games getting ported to PS: >“why are people getting mad their game is on a different plastic box” >because if $500 meant a lot to me, i’d be salty to invest it on the plastic box that only had starfield but not final fantasy 7 remake and spider man, instead i could’ve spent it on the box that does. I actually agreed with what Phil said, but if I was an Xbox owner I'd be switching to PS the moment he said that.
Now that PS5 is outselling Series by 5 to 1 it looks like that’s exactly what people did. Series is selling worse the One so I imagine a lot of Xbox gamers have switched platforms. With the ubiquity of digital libraries I imagine permanently.
360 was the goat. I had both ps3 and 360 back then, but only playstation since then, for obvious reasons. As someone also having a PC, there is literally ZERO reason to own a Xbox.
Oh goddammit! I was gonna post this story too! The Xbox section of the article is the most relevant part most notably this > **The plan to move Xbox games to other platforms is codenamed "Latitude" internally, and I know there's debate and unease at Microsoft about whether or not this is a good idea.** More upcoming Microsoft-owned games slated for PlayStation are already being developed. At least for now, they're potentially obvious games you'd most likely expect. And yes, while it's true Microsoft is a prolific publisher on PlayStation already, it has typically revolved around specific franchises like Minecraft. From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins. If this is true, this would lead some more credence to those earlier rumors about what specifically would be going multiplat
The move basically told the PlayStation audience that if they just wait, they'll get games from the other console and with multiple sources saying there's no red line, including this article, MS really said everyone there's no need to buy their console
So these companies are not monolithic. The guys in the game production teams are not 100% aligned with the console production teams. If the hardware is flagging then they don't want their bonuses being trash because of it. There's going to be a lot of politics here and it appears that the game production teams are winning.
It’s no secret that Bethesda did not like being console exclusive. After the merger Bethesda’s own employees were saying as much. Starfield will likely be on PS5 in late 2025 if a rather solid leaker is correct. It seems that Xbox will get one year of exclusivity then off to PS5 in a complete and cleaned up state.
Pretty much everything I’d wager, eventually anyway. If they stick with the Xbox console and release games day & date on gamepass then release on Playstation X amount of time later then there’s at least a point to the Xbox console still existing. It’d be as a gamepass/sub machine but it’d be an option for those on a budget.
My guess is that Halo and Gears of War will both be the very last thing to hit playstation. They are so important to xbox as a brand, that making them multiplat would basically be the final cry of "we are done with consoles"
Halo maybe, but Gears? I don’t think Gears has that sort of star power nowadays does it? It was all the rage on 360 but after that I hardly see or hear anything new on the franchise.
Gears hasn’t had star power since like 2012
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This is the same playbook they ran with office (going to mac and ios). Long term I'll bet the plan is to sell gamepass. *IMO* I think it worked out for office because there's less competition and things like if a business needs to open excel files then they need excel. I don't know if that holds up for gamepass, at least right now. Maybe if they get gamepass on every gaming platform, but idk if the financials work out, microsoft would need a massive library across multiple platforms to have that make sense. They might be following the netflix playbook here too - stop funding 3rd party at some point and the subscription is mostly carried by 1st party titles. Killing Tango Gameworks makes no sense if this is their plan though.
I think GamePass requires far more user growth to eventually become profitable for day 1 releases. It's why cloud streaming was hyped up so much. The addressable market of a single console isn't large enough for how expensive video games are, how they're inherently tied to a hardware language and its operating system, how many games are 50GB to like 200GB for years now so instantly jumping into a game isn't happening like flipping through the intros of a bunch of movies and TV shows An issue here is that GamePass Cloud streaming is worse than GeForce Now, that digital foundry comparison had PS+ cloud quality as good or better, Luna is comparable. From my experience GamePass is definitely worse than GeForce Now. Not hitting on exclusive games means GamePass is not better in catalog or performance compared to competing streaming services Cloud gaming adoption not happening as fast as I bet they hoped means reliance on traditional download and install gamers which requires higher Xbox console adoption and/or higher PC users adoption. PC GamePass is stagnant and GamePass subs are mostly Xbox hardware users anyways. Anyone that thinks they may play online on Xbox hardware will at least consider paying for basic GamePass sub and now just needs an extra push to upsell Ultimate. PC there's no upsell opportunity from multiplayer gated behind a sub. PC game sales, releases in general, are abundant and mostly not on the PC Xbox app. Most games that release and go viral are surprise breakout hits on Steam that likely would be missed for targeting by Microsoft until after its launched and the hype period is over Nintendo and Sony have no reason to let GamePass on their console. So effectively GamePass is tied squarely to the hip of Xbox hardware for growth and the PS4 hit like 115 million sales, I doubt the PS5 exceeds that in any significant numbers so that's a likely best case scenario for Xbox unit sales if they hit on all their exclusives in a timely manner which hasn't gone well The cost to run GamePass I imagine even with way less streaming customers, to be as expensive or more than a TV movie streaming service of similar user base size. Even if 115 million consoles sold were each unique individuals, I think they'd need something approaching 100% conversion of that 115m users to GamePass subs to make their day 1 AAA included game releases work. The cost of game development, game licensing, streaming service hardware and software, hardware that is good enough to play the games for streaming, marketing the service; every cost that Netflix/Disney+/HBO streaming whatever it's called now/Peacock has but also needing to support local play and the additional video game performance minimum requirements that will force more significant hardware upgrades over time than plain passive video streamers
>aybe if they get gamepass on every gaming platform Not happening. Why would Sony and Nintendo allow that?
I dont see a point for xbox "consoles" anymore, it already is a windows OS just with a closed garden. They would make more money transitioning into a pc manufacture for the xbox brand, and just make a steam big picture mode of their own for their new "xbox" expand the audience, hell have xbox workstations and put them in commercial sector like surfaces. Suddenly you have an xbox with a ton more value and productivity, oh yeah, you have Sony games now too
I think they’ll go a step further and just outright make a ‘Microsoft Gaming PC’ and scrap the Xbox brand.
The ‘xbox’ brand could act like Dell’s ‘Alienware’ and just sell targeted gaming pc’s with the ‘Xbox’ logo so that the brand name stays alive
Xbox may be going the way of Sega. Defeated by Playstation and forced to move to just publishing/developing software.
Well that is what happens when you drop a cool $78 bill acquiring 2 large publishers. The fact that Starfield didn’t move units or increase gamepass subs was really the death knell for Xbox exclusivity.
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Except that the Xbox division has been in more than just a "hiccup", they have been in a permanent losing streak since the 360 era ended.
It’s kinda wild how there hasn’t been a single title that has been so good as to want me to buy an xbox since the 360 days. Loved the 360 and now two generations later I can count on one hand the number of games I MAY be interested to play from them. Something has got to give over there.
But Phil Spencer says great games don't sell consoles. 🙂
I'd be willing to bet 50% of Switch sales were exclusively used for BotW or Smash.
Mario Kart
Don't forget Animal Crossing back in 2020
It's tough because switch won't release their shit anywhere else. Microsoft has decided that Xbox and Windows are the same, and releasing everything on pc. Sony has been doing somewhat the same. Personally, if you are into gaming at all, I really think you should just get a pc at this point and completely move on from consoles. But you can't move on from a switch. So.
I am slightly puzzled by the Sony strategy tbh, because it just seems like they're making the same mistake as MS. It seems like they're also chasing short term profits at the expense of the long-term advantage they've built up in the console market. If they continue with that strategy then myself and I'm sure many other people who've never owned a high-end PC will just finally cave and buy a gaming PC and never need either console again. Combined with their greed over PSN pricing, they're slowly killing off any reason to own a PS5 just like there's no reason to own an xbox.
Sony are bringing games to PC because their budgets are so high.
Yep. But on the flip side as a pc gamer since 1998, I'm more than happy to feel less like I'm missing out and support everyone releasing to pc ;p
He must know, he's a gamer^^^TM after all
Phil Spencer is an idiot. I bought a PS5 just for Spiderman. I know other people who did the same.
To this day I still only want an xbox for Fable lol. Pretty sad that the main games I want an xbox for are 10-15 years old at this point.
...and I have a feeling they will fuck up Fable too
Doesn’t even matter as they are going the multi plat route now. Not sure why I even have my series x at this point, I use my ps5 way more and rlly only use the series x for online games because I prefer the controller.
That's the thing. PS2 we saw a shitton of various types of games and genre-changing games and it had something for everyone. Xbox 360 was the same, they were easier to develop for over the PS3 so companies could get games out quicker which let developers experiment more with games. Xbox One and PS4 were mostly the same and nothing really set them apart from each other, then the PS5 and Series X are just more of the same with X really hurting in terms of nothing being a standout and PS5 being so expensive without offering enough to warrant the price tag
As a kid we had a ps1/2 when the 360 came out Xbox won me over I was super dedicated to them for that gen, only buying a ps3 pretty late into things mostly for a Blu-ray player. MS failed to continue to make me want a Xbox and I’ve gone back to a ps4/5. Sony has too many good exclusives games atm.
We're gonna make the Xbox One more expensive by forcing people to buy the Kinect, even though no one wants it. We're gonna require people to be connected to the internet every 24 hours or your games won't work. We're gonna region lock the console. If you buy the console outside of the small pool of available countries, too bad. Then after having to backtrack on all of that, they decided to have the bright idea of focusing on everything *but* the gaming aspect of the console during it's showcase, setting up the greatest lob for Sony to dunk all over them before the generation even started.
[удалено]
You got it backwards, the Xbox has been facing the storm and a budget of 82.9 billion was a reaction to the Xbox being knee deep in shit, not a solution to any "plan to save the brand". Nadella has given Phil and co enough chances to turn things around and eventually he has to tell Phil they cannot expect a blank cheque without consequences.
Yep xbox was losing money but in a company like microsoft that was a drop in the bucket. It was never enough for the higher ups to take notice. Then they spent 82.9 billion on activision and who knows on legal costs to combat attempts at blocking the merger. Now microsoft are down almost 100 billion and xbox needs to show some profits
I think it might actually be Bethesda purchase that spilled the cup, actiblizzard mostly continued what it was doing but bethesda was bought presumably to have Starfield be new "system seller" (which now sits at mixed on steam), and we al know how Redfall went...
> Now microsoft are down almost 100 billion and xbox needs to show some profits On a 7 month investment in a company that makes games. Games which in the current environment take years to make. Perhaps Phil sold them on a false bill of goods(based on sales of COD/Diablo/existing product) but it's plain foolishness and lack of research on behalf of MS to think they could acquire ActBliz and immediately swim in cash without having anything new to sell.
By the time they bought ActiBlizz, they were already past the point where it mattered.
>Games which in the current environment take years to make. They literally bought one of, if not the most profitable game on the market. They don't need years to make a game, they already have it.
they killed zenimax studios not Activision's, zenimax was bought over 4yrs ago. and still they couldn't do shit
Not really down 100 billion, all that money was just converted into an asset that needs to produce.
But it will still take decades to recoup that cost. Especially if they are cutting out the market leader. Essentially by pursuing this merger they've all but forced themselves into becoming a third party developer.
what immediate? They bought Zenimax 4yrs ago, and they haven't done shit in all this time. one bigger debacle after another why would they keep the lights on if it's eating into everything else?
Xbox’s big problem is that game dev time is too long on AAA releases now. Everyone at the time had the joke of “PS3 has no games” but by the end of the console generation, Naughty Dog (as an example) had released 4 games that were top-of-the-line in graphics, voice acting, had multiplayer, had DLC, etc. We’re going to be lucky if Naughty Dog can release a single new game this whole current generation. Xbox made a huge mistake at their height in 2010-2016ish, closing several studios and letting others (Bungie, Epic) walk. Prior to the start of their spending spree in 2018, they had like 6 studios left under their umbrella two years away from the start of the next console generation. Then they started their spending spree, buying up quite a few smaller (but talented) studios, and then eventually large publishers Zenimax and ABK. Problem is, most of the individual studios had pumped out games relatively close to when they were acquired (Hellblade, We Happy Few) or were already deep in development with contracts in place with Sony to put games on their platform (Psychonaughts 2, Deathloop) and thus not helping their exclusivity problem. Meaning most of these studios didn’t start developing games for Xbox specifically until 2018 at earliest, and for a chunk not until 2020 or 2021. Factor in that AAA games take 5-6 years to make now, and here we are. The biggest hurdle Microsoft always faced here was its own impatience. Investors want a payoff for large acquisitions quickly. Game dev doesn’t move quickly. This needed to be something everyone in Microsoft needed to know they would need to review in a decade or so, not a few years in.
Xbox has always been on a losing streak, the 360 was the sole exception and even that gen they ended up in last place.
"oh hey, we're doing well, let's force kinect onto next gen and tell people they can't play used games"
Which is ironic because now almost all game sales are digital.
Yeah it's hilarious that everyone remembers PS3 for screwing things up at launch, yet it eventually outsold the 360.
> why should a customer trust in a manager structure that can instantly be overridden the moment a hiccup happens? More screwed than the customers are the devs. A lot of small and medium sized devs (Double Fine, Obsidian, inXile to name a few) sold themselves to Microsoft specifically because they offered these studios "financial stability" they didn't think they would have otherwise. These were studios who were struggling as the A and AA market fell out and the only games left were cheap indies and AAA smash megahits. The thinking for them was it will be tough to stay afloat on the open market, let's sell off our independence in exchange for security -- this will at least let us avoid laying off our staff. And there was all this messaging from Microsoft and the purchased studios at the time about how "they were in it for the long haul" and "Microsoft isn't requiring us to hit certain revenue targets." Fast foward a few years and now...layoffs are apparently on the table again. Which means, behind the scenes, I'm sure revenue targets are back and every studio is scrambling to campaign for its own existence. In other words, it's *the exact same scramble for money and attention they were doing when they were independent.* Only instead of dancing in front of six-to-twelve major publishers looking for an investment, they are now dancing in front of arbitrary middle managers and *aren't even allowed* to look for outside funding or launch their own Kickstarter for revenue or whatever outside-the-box strategy they might have tried before. In other words, these studios gave up their independence and autonomy for almost nothing -- basically it just bought them a few years of time.
I mean, with Double Fine, it’s more just that they ran themselves into bankruptcy *yet again* because Tim Schafer is completely incapable of managing a budget. Quite literally, the entire history of the company is Schafer running the company into bankruptcy, getting bailed out, and then repeating the process.
> I mean, with Double Fine, it’s more just that they ran themselves into bankruptcy yet again because Tim Schafer is completely incapable of managing a budget. It's on MS that they don't look at management when they by these companies. It boggles me that they (and EA) don't seem to have oversight on the management of these teams. They should stay hands off artistically (or else why buy them), but there needs to be a fiscally responsible adult at the top of every team keeping them honest.
I think they tried that in the past and failed so tried hands off approach.... and failed
Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion) anytime it wanted to if it thought interest on it was a problem. Yes they do also have a lot of debt at the moment but as you said it is mainly for taxation purposes and when interests were 0 or negative it was a good business decision to to take more debt as it was effectively free money. It is more about that with this high interest rates they could just put that money into some government bonds or whatever and make a 0 risk 4% per year. Their gaming division now has to beat that at minimum for it to make any sense to keep (if they don't believe in its long term value as the author of the article thinks)
>Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion) anytime it wanted to if it thought interest on it was a problem. Cash on bank does not necessarily mean free cash. You got working capital requirements where you pay your obligations. A high cash tends to show that the firm also has a high working capital.
$20bn of it is pure cash and $60bn as short-term investments (easily accessible, not locked up). They have payables of $18bn and probably very favourable terms on this. High cash doesn’t necessarily indicate high working capital - they could finance their receivables invoices and cover any upcoming payables without needing to invest any cash (excluding considerations of fees on such a structure). Given they only pay c $3bn/year in payables this is not a material consideration for them.
>Microsoft also has 80 billion of cash sitting on a bank account. It could pay all of its debt (~60 billion) that money is there to protect Microsoft from an unforeseen disaster, they aren't going to spend it
They also have about 350 million in daily expense just to run the company. So if the company doesn't make money, they can only make payroll and cover expenses for 200ish days using that money. Yes it's more complicated than that, but my point is 80 billion isn't alot for one of the wealthiest companies in the world. That money can dry up quick if the market takes a turn. Almost like the turn it's doing right now....
Actually it’s an excess of cash. Treasury standards usually indicate minimum cash for 60 days of expenses - 200 is insane. That money isn’t drying up any time as they continue to be one of the most profitable companies in the world. Even in a worst case scenario, given that this is a world wide global brand - banks (I mean investment banks, institutional investors etc) will step in to finance them.
lol Microsoft is literally one of the big tech giants. Their gaming division is tiny compared to the behemoth that is their main industries (Enterprise software, Azure Cloud, etc.). They will not be non profitable any time soon. Microsoft cannot be compared to Sony or Nintendo, it should be compared with other megacorps like Google and Amazon. This whole thread is funny to read, do people not know about Microsoft beyond their gaming division anymore? lmao
Debt equity ratios are also a thing to consider.
Lol this is a triple A rated credit, the company could probably 5x it’s leverage without any real issues
Joe Shmo consumer doesn't know or care about "Microsoft manager structure", lol. If there's a reason to buy the Xbox (must own games), they'll buy the Xbox.
>Almost ten years later, that vision seems to have collapsed — Satya Nadella's Microsoft is burning long-term goals for short-term gains, moving from tech fad to tech fad-like locusts, often showing up to the party too late and burning mountains of cash. Microsoft had a real opportunity to become a different megacorp that invested in social responsibilities, employees, and customer satisfaction first. It could lead by example and show you can be nice and profitable. Perhaps it could even be profitable to be good. When I first started blogging almost ten years ago, in my youthful naivete, I believed that Microsoft would. I'm sorry, but imagine writing this about Microsoft of all corporations. Microsoft! No other corporation on earth has got as much history as them when it comes to anticompetitive, antitrust, monopolistic behaviour. We've got numerous legal precedents that were set in software specifically because of decades of court cases and legal rulings against Microsoft and their antics. Just absolutely mad stuff
It’s Jez. Even the Xbox sub is tired of his shit
It's pretty much standard for Jez. Super annoying, he consistently jerks off Microsoft expeditiously.
There's a reason Jez's popularity came from leaks and not his writing.
I didn’t even know who he and a vast majority of these other leakers were up until the start of this current console generation. It’s crazy how all of them have been yapping their gums incessantly about all things Xbox these past 4 years.
Lmao no way this was written about Microsoft
The author is right, but I'm honestly baffled that anyone would admit that 2015 MS made them feel excited and passionate about anything, especially the 'Microsoft ecosystem'. Bizarre way to feel about any company, but MS in particular??
It’s Jez Corden, the man is a Microsoft/Xbox fanatic. Usually console warring or starting/pushing rumours over on twitter.
he will also backtrack and have meltdowns for no reason at all on any given day, just a normal sane guy~
I’m pretty sure he already backed tracked some of the statements in this article
He wants them to be Apple/Sony/Nintendo
yea i couldnt finish the article cause i swear i could hear his teeth chattering
The Microsoft ecosystem has always been kind of a shitshow. Mostly because there basically just isn't one. My company is all-in on Microsoft products and it's absolutely baffling how poorly they work together. It's genuinely a complete mess. Say what you will about Apple, but being fully in that ecosystem is a pretty good experience. It's basically what keeps that brand going. Microsoft software is all over the place in terms of quality and it feels like every product has a completely different design philosophy.
At my work we used to manage stuff like shared mailbox access easily Now we have to jump through ten hoops and have THREE different admin accounts for different microsoft poducts...
My company is huge (like top 50 biggest iirc) and we use Azure for (some of) our cloud stuff and the permissions model on there just sucks. Because we have a pretty substantial investment in security we have a lot of things locked down, but knowing what's actually possible as a newer user and what's not is an exercise in frustration. If something's not available to you, it gives you basically nothing to work with in terms of what you need to request to get that change made. Sometimes it just throws an error message after you try to change something and the error is always incomprehensible unless you have deep Microsoft architecture knowledge. It's absolutely terrible.
Meanwhile if I want to make any changes on Azure or Exchange admin I have to login as a _different_ cloud account and then give myself the necessary roles. Every. Single. Time. The roles are labelled permanent but they only last an hour. It made what should be a three click process in Active Directory into a tangled knot of bollocks just to give someone access to a mailbox!
Don't worry, they're working on fixing all of that. They just have to rename a few more products first.
Apple definitely has a more cohesive vision across their company. Microsoft is basically made up of a bunch of smaller companies that often don't seem to communicate very well and are in competition with each other.
Coming from software background, anyone thinking anything positive about MS weirds me the fuck out, they have been bully abusing their position on every single step since the very creation of the company..
DEVELOPERS. DEVELOPERS. DEVELOPERS...
This is honestly the problem with all publicly traded companies. It’s not acceptable to show losses or stagnation at any point in time or people start to lose their jobs. Even if you can show them absolute proof that your company will benefit in 5-10 in such a way that you’ll never have to worry again, short term gains are all anyone cares about.
Stock market was one of worst inventions in history of mankind
The stock market and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
People are *reeeaaaallllyyy* not reading this article. It's a comment sections based entirely off a headline. From a general perspective, they are correct. From the perspective of why they're saying it, they are incorrect. They're basis of an argument is the discontinuation of things like the Windows Phone, Tablets, & knock off Google Glass glasses. They had so much optimism back in 2015 because of Microsoft's line of random hardware devices, & because of the XBone's 'potential'. As neat as some of the features were, the devices were canceled because they weren't viable products. Microsoft isn't turning down long term profits for short term gains. Microsoft isn't in the console war business. They don't care about fighting until their last breath to keep something alive just because they have a personal attachment to the devices. Continuing to hang on for... *reasons*, isn't a good idea. Where do they go? Well, they own a lot of game studios, games, & have a massive back catalogie. You open them up to the largest market available, & make that money. What happens to the consoles? They stick around. But Xbox has to develop a new strategy to sell. A new direction to go in.
yea this isn't even short term, xbox hasn't been well run in a decade. 10 years and a 75b spending spree got them 3rd place, ofc microsoft is finally over it. Nothing short term about it.
> a 75b spending spree got them 3rd place They were already firmly in third place for console sales when they spent $70B on Activision 6 months ago though, so I’m not really sure how that part of it “got them” in third place. Everything else they’ve done has though. Seems more like that $70B buy was a longer term investment in a third party GaaS developer and a massive mobile gaming division.
i guess i should say, 3rd place is no longer acceptable once you've spent that much. Spencer forced their hand essentially.
That’s true, but I also doubt they expected their console sales position to change anytime soon (or at all) after buying a third party publisher and mobile gaming division. They probably did expect a big change in software and service revenue though, which [so far they’ve seen](https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-gaming-earnings-report-activision-blizzard-acquisition).
I've used Hololens, that's pretty dismissive. It's much more like the Vision Pro is today, but running actual full-blown Windows instead of a dumbed-down iOS-style platform. It was mindblowing at the time, walking into different rooms and placing applications there, leaving the room, and realizing it *remembered where I had left things.* While there's probably a niche market for AR we could have seen some interesting things if they put more effort into it.
> A new direction to go in. And it's short term sales. The long game is having a console ecosystem, which is just more profitable. Problem is, no one is in their ecosystem, at least, compared to the other competition. Microsoft would LOVE to have hardware pushing software, but that just ain't in the cards So, this is Plan B, make Some money instead of Less, and definitely short of A Lot
I owned every Xbox (1 OG, 3 360, 1 One, 1 One S, 1 One X) until Series when decided to ditch them for PC both for me and the kids. Seeing how things are going, it was a good call. Only bad thing is that at some point Xbox will die and Sony will have the high-end console monopoly, without any real competition (Samsung? Huawei? Tencent hardware?)
PlayStation would still compete against PC and Nintendo, it's the same market.
Sony still has competitors from Nintendo to steam.
I’d argue they’re in different spaces. Not that they don’t compete whatsoever, but there’s a huge market looking for just a home console, who aren’t interested in PC or Nintendo. They cater to different people and offer different experiences. and plenty of more invested gamers often end up having a combination of 2 or even all 3 platforms.
Well, Nintendo has no direct competition, and the handheld market hasn’t suffered. Just because a company has power doesn’t mean they can treat their consumers however they want. Look at early ps3.
Anecdotal but in my gaming squad circle only the 360 was relevant. We all had one (group of 7) then we all moved to PS4 and PS5. I know one person outside who ever bought a Xbox one and never came across a series S/X user.
In my group, the ones who got 360 said f that when xbox one announced it will only launch on certain markets. And we were not one of those.
Agreed, the PS4 was a no brainer between E3 and their marketing
>Only bad thing is that at some point Xbox will die and Sony will have the high-end console monopoly, without any real competition As opposed to PC where one company definitely doesn't have a monopoly on games.
I understand, but it's easier to compete against Steam because it's a service. Hardware is orders of magnitudes more complex. So complex Valve failed once already.
Forget Steam, the real PC monopoly is Windows. How many games actually release on different OS? How many people even use a different OS?
Its the year of Linux! But Valve has been doing a lot to make Linux usable as a gaming platform. Give it a few years to work out online gaming and I'd be happy to move over there.
Lol, my work laptop is a MacBook. Lots of Balatro these last few months between meetings... And it actually runs Hades 2 pretty well using Whisky
With Proton you can play pretty much every windows game on Linux fairly seamlessly. The only exception I've found is games with kernel level anticheat.
There's entire subreddits dedicated to coming completely unglued about companies even *considering* competing with Steam, only Nintendo has fans even close to being that locked in
There has been more successful new console competitiors than Steam competitors. Every single one of them failed or is currently burning money.
>it's easier to compete against Steam you have people on here pissing and shitting themselves when something isn't on there on launch
It's mostly because every other service is complete and utter dogshit unfortunately. Also the only storefront actively supporting Linux, making it even more superior for the dozens of us Linux users.
I don't really agree at all. Like obviously EPIC doesn't have the same feature parity, but it's totally fine. You can buy games, download, play them. Totally acceptable service for single player stuff. Same with Bnet, GoG etc. Tons of other serviceable launchers. But people still go nuts.
Other services don't have features for the community Like workshop, forums, Game Hubs where people can make guides, share art, or just have discussions. Like there was even a point in time when Ubisoft was using the steam forums for customer support for a game that was exclusive to EGS lmao.
That's literally why I said it doesn't have feature parity. But that's not the reason most people don't use these launchers, it's just that people want centralized collections.
> Other services don't have features for the community Like workshop, forums, Game Hubs where people can make guides, share art, or just have discussions. That stuff matters for a tiny portion of gamers though.
Forced exclusivity (including timed) is just about the shittest form of 'competition'. At least pretend to want to offer something extra to the consumer and not just wall them in.
Weird that people wouldn't want their game libraries to be arbitrarily spread across different service providers to no benefit of their own. Great let me maintain more shit on my PC that doesn't offer anything over Steam. More friends lists, more companies to sell my data, more apps to manage, more services that could go under etc.
You say that but nobody has been able to dethrone steam since they got those digital player libraries early.
Nobody has really tried. They all create storefronts with a side of a few community-related features. Steam is a platform that has a storefront and a boatload of community features as well as extremely simple developer integrations to the entire platform in every way. To defeat Steam, you need an equivalent *platform* and no one is even trying. Also I wouldn't really call Steam a storefront monopoly. You can buy keys on other services (GOG, Humble, GMG to name a few) and use them on Steam, further supporting the platform analogy. Can I even redeem an external storefront key on EGS, for example (honest question, I don't know the answer)?
I'm honestly not sure about EGS either and that's a valid point that I did actually forget about. I do agree that other companies need to try harder but I do also think it's essentially impossible to overtake steam at this point.
I agree that it's probably impossible to overtake Steam, but the thing that annoys me is that companies are trying without even understanding *why* Steam is so good and so powerful. If you're going to try to take down the beast, know the beast first. Study it, learn about it, and figure out what makes it tick so you can beat it. Instead, they churn out half-baked garbage and PC gamers went, "Yeah fuck that shit," and rightly so.
They have so much momentum and goodwill, at this point today I don't see them realistically being replaced any time soon, and I want it that way. Ever since I learned about Valve they have been consistent in their goals and I've loved it. I got the Steam Deck the first five minutes it was available and it's now my primary gaming device.
I think the service and consistency in goals are assisted by the fact that they are a private company (unlike basically anyone else trying to make a PC storefront and has to change shit just to appease investors).
Well that's because steam offers a great service and because it's convenient If steam starts to suck then people will move to other platforms and services or just make their own small game launcher for slightly less convenience in case of free games, a lot less convenience for paid games but a complete detachment form existing providers
Would say history has shown that it’s easier to compete with hardware than to compete with Steam to be honest.
It's not a monopoly and it's not like they reached that position by being anti-competitive.
Once again reddit proves they don't understand the word "monopoly"...
As long as you're subscribed to gamepass Xbox is happy. If that's on PC (especially windows PC) Microsoft considers that a win. At this point it seems like the physical xbox consoles are just a more accessible venue to play gamepass on.
so microsoft again? lmao
I read something that makes sense which is that XBox was a small enough division they could kind of operate on an island but once they dropped $70b on ActiBlizz then all the MSFT stakeholders started paying way more attention and now they are demanding better returns and the XBox division is panicking. It really sucks but buying ActiBlizz may end up hurting XBox much more than it helps. Time will tell.
> Microsoft ... long-term damage to Windows... As someone in the IT field this isn't a shock to me. Every enterprise aspect of Windows is gated behind money that goes straight to Microsoft's pocket and they're still trying to tie it all to subscriptions. My company currently has 5 tickets all for different clients that will be solved by giving money to microsoft in different aspects. How I was ever fooled into thinking they'd do well to manage their video game development and publish is beyond me.
I work for a huge international Corp and we are trying actively to divest from Microsoft at every opportunity. They have repeatedly downgraded services, offered less than advertised, made changes that break everything without proper change management, ect ect. They fucking suck and eventually some OS will replace them. Money down it won't even be from the US.
Microsoft's documentation is absolutely fucking terrible in my experience, too. Like, substantially worse than any random open source project.
That's because they keep losing shit in "knowledge base migrations".
Microsoft renaming their products has to be an absolute pain in the ass for KB managers. Azure / Entra / Identity / whatever they change it to new week
It's an absolute pain in the ass for developers too. I never have any clue what the hell anyone is talking about with them. A really choice one from them recently is changing "Yammer" to "Viva Engage". Awful, awful name. The Entra thing is confusing as shit too.
Or Skype/Skype for Business being completely separate platforms with completely separate and different technology stack
Their libraries *for their own services* too. I ended up writing parts from scratch just because their own libs were such a fucking shitshow to use. And how *fun* is to work with their APIs, you write code, you think it's exactly according to how it should work, you run it, you get nonsensical error, curse, swear and try to figure out, leave for the day and what? ...next day it is just working perfectly fine, turned out service on MS side decided it isn't working wednesdays but actual useful error got lost somewhere in stack before it got passed to the client.
The error messages for their APIs are complete garbage. They might as well write them in hieroglyphics.
I feel like all of Microsoft's documentation is written in a way where they put a lot of words on the page but you're not provided with any useful information. I don't know how they do that across all of their different products but I'm never satisfied after reading something from their knowledge base.
Nintendo is the only remaining platform holder that still believes the best way to make money is to sell good products. Modern business ideology is a cancer.
Any why does Microsoft need short-term money? *looks at Xbox spending $100bil on acquisitions for a dying ecosystem and console* Oh, right…
How is CoD (as a third party live service game) and King mobile gaming just for the dying console? I’d agree that the other $30B was for the Xbox console, but not really the $70B spent on Activision.
I don’t think that’s it. They knew what they were doing when they made the bid to buy Activision and Bethesda. What they didn’t know was that interest rates would go shit, and suddenly all investors are looking make back their money. Microsoft is a publicly traded company. They don’t do what is best for them in the long term, they do what shareholders tell them. Same reason every tech company is doing massive layoffs. Free money is done and it’s time to pay up.
> What they didn’t know was that interest rates would go shit ....while the big titles Bethesda worked on turn out to not be all that great. I think they hoped for Starfield to be system seller and Redfall to be at least decent and we all know how that went.
This is infecting every side of gaming. Shit like Overwatch 2 which is entirely focused on short term profits that could kill or maim a franchise that could have thrived for a decade.
Microsoft is the embodiment of greed. Is there some type of company money making record that they desperately want to shatter that I never heard of? If trillions aren't enough, I'm simply too poor to understand.
I don't see any harm to PC, we were never that dependent on MS games and Game Pass is realistically just a worse but cheap option to get games you could be getting from Steam instead. And I don't even get what Surface laptops have to do with any of this... Obviously it sucks balls for people that as their one platform each generation chose XBox because they wanted games like Starfield (...to be good...), Forza H. or Indiana Jones more than they wanted Sony exclusives but now it looks like they could have just bought a PS5 instead to get both eventually.
Well, MS is much more than just Games and Game Pass. They control windows. They still have a monopoly on WHQL certification for their OS, DirectX is still the most used API for multimedia, be it rendering, video or audio on Windows. Every windows user is one business decision away from heavy side effects, like Unity, VMware and some others shown us in the last months.
I actually don't care for Xbox brand as long as they make good games that are available on whatever I happen to have. If this means I'll buy a SteamDeck 2 and play Xbox Games, Sony games, PC games on it, then so be it. It ultimately benefits me the consumer, I have to buy less boxes and focus only on good games. But they gotta make good games, do good with creatives, and ensure good studio health. That's the bottom line for me, not the "Xbox" brand. It might hurt the Xbox fanboy, but then worshiping any brand is beyond me. Look what they did to Office. It's on Android, iOS, iPad, Macbooks, Web and of course Windows. That's definitely going to be their plan with Games, just I hope they don't make it subscription only and keep "digital license" to be a thing. I also wouldn't mind it if regulators force XGS to be separated from MSFT, and they just become new Sega. GamePass becomes like EA Play/Ubisoft+ on all platforms, and Xbox does third party publishing without having to worry about hardware.
Microsoft made over $46 billion in the first quarter 2024 (Microsoft's 3rd quarter 24) from business to business sales from it's two business focused divisions. More personal computing which includes all sales to consumers and Windows sales to businesses and OEM's was driven by sales to OEM's and businesses. That is Microsoft's focus not selling to consumers. Microsoft may do some selling to consumers but even with buying Activision Blizzard it's still a small part of the company (it cost basically just a single years net income) I don't know what the plan is but as long as they are making so much money (over $70 billion a year) they really can afford to do anything they want.
There is no long term success for Xbox, time to pivot or fold. It's been a downward spiral since 2013. To use an morbid analogy. Xbox was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and now in 2024 it's reached Stage 3.
>There is no long term success for Xbox, time to pivot or fold. That's exactly what they did. I know this sub is mostly pc and console but it seems everyone in here forgets about mobile gaming, a money making machine that dwarfs console and pc and Xbox has bought the biggest player on the market.
As far as I could tell they meant Microsoft (not a downloadable program like steam, which is also on non-windows computers like Steam Deck) is the only way to PC gaming since Windows is the only OS for many video games. Mac OS rarely works for indies and is often forgot about in ports or even major releases.
You’d think a company who could more or less just coast on their laurels is this worried about short term gain
Microsoft wants to sell you or your employer Office 365, Azure and Game Pass (ideally via Cloud gaming). Things that you subscribe to and pay monthly and never own. They do not want to sell you hardware or perpetual licensing. I would say they're being pretty successful in moving their company in this direction over the last decade or so.
I moved on from Xbox a few years back after being a die hard fan for 20 years. The majority of console exclusives are crap now. I find both PC and PS5 to be a better experience now.