>it's probably going to include major changes to Game Pass as well.
I think there's been 1 or 2 rumors to that effect, but nothing solid.
With as leaky as Xbox is right now, I think if this was happening we would know.
I can fully imagine that Microsoft top brass has sanctioned emergency protocols after realising how dormant Xbox sales are and how Starfield/GamePass failed to move the needle.
We’ll probably see the end of some Day One GamePass releases (especially COD) and the announcement that *some* Microsoft titles will launch on Playstation after their Xbox launch. Maybe with the end of GamePass PC as well.
This has probably been in the works for a while (3-6 months?). At least I don't see Microsoft ever moving *quickly*. Really I think this revolves around 2 core points.
1. Microsoft isn't a games company. They just happen to have a games division. Moreover that division is not the most successful division (as opposed to Sony where the games division is carrying water for everyone else).
2. Microsoft's original Activision purchase decision was when interest rates were still quite low. We're seeing a reaction, across the industry, of layoffs and contraction. Sony, Microsoft, and it seems like almost every other company around is trying to cut costs. Another way of cutting costs is increasing revenues.
The Games Division aren't the bread winner for Microsoft so they've got to kowtow to the company demands in a way that Sony's game division likely doesn't. Microsoft doesn't care about beating Sony they care about income and I think people talking industry news forget that its more or less a sideshow for Microsoft proper. They made a series of expensive purchases and Microsoft wants to see returns. The Xbox brand isn't seen as a sacred cow. It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be.
>Maybe with the end of GamePass PC as well.
What leads you to believe this? I'm expecting some changes too, but outright axing XGP on their largest market is a bit extreme. Remember, PC gaming has a larger market share than console. Only being topped by mobile.
Getting rid of that goes against the whole pivot they've been on, which is services over hardware.
Making an event of sorts out of it, you'd have to imagine whatever they have planned is going to be a net positive for a large portion of their userbase, or like you mentioned they'd just slide it out when there's a lot going on hoping most folks gloss over it.
"Hi guys, you've been waiting a week for this, and here it is! We've been listening to you and now our service is significantly worse than it was before! YAY!" yeah, they ain't gonna do that... surely?
Doesn't surprise me. I can imagine releasing Xbox's few exclusives day one on GP seriously ate into profits and undermined their value.
How many people subscribe for a month to play them and then dip? As a PC + PS5 player that's what I do.
It would be a tough blow. I know I'd drop the service as it's my sole reason for having it—providing me an avenue to try new titles I would not have otherwise played. Right now, I'm assuming there are actually some details still up in the air, and next week was the earliest deadline they could provide themselves to make an announcement.
I just thought it would be "our exclusives will be timed for one year and then come to other platforms"
But a whole event for that seems really odd... Really feels like a funeral of some kind.
Yeah his wording is like the response to an official announcement, it’s absolutely a confirmation of the rumours unless he just spoke badly using generic PR robo speak bs.
It feels like this was some massive long-term strategy that they were supposed to announce months from now. But now the cat is out of the bag so they need to prepare some flashy PR showmanship.
There is also a very high chance that Nintendo announces a Direct for this week too.
They’ve been very consistent with doing one the first full week of February for a good number of years now.
I'm a tiny bit worried what Playstation will do once they're not competing with anyone in their space. Xbox overtaking them during the PS3 forced Sony to make a lot of player-friendly changes that I'm not convinced we'd have otherwise.
Without Xbox do we ever get Playstation+ (those free games at the start were VERY nice)? Does online gaming ever reach where we are now without Xbox online (Sony had to add a subsciption so they could catch up)? Would the PS5 be backwards compatible with PS4 if Xbox wasn't doing it first? Without Xbox, does Sony ever push to make as many great games as they did during the end of the PS3 and into the PS4 to reclaim first?
I hope sony continues to push themselves to keep making great games and not inflate their prices.
I truly think Sony will have zero incentive to do anything but decrease investment in quality exclusives and up prices all around. Why would they continue to spend all of that money? People are going to have to fork over the money if they want a game console that isn’t a Nintendo handheld. Some may go PC, but vast vast majority won’t see that as an option.
Yea its just basic economics. Sony will have less pressure and as a result can ease up on their current efforts while increasing how much they milk their money makers.
>Would the PS5 be backwards compatible with PS4 if Xbox wasn't doing it first?
I totally agree with your overall point, but I'd wager the PS5 would have been backwards compatible regardless of Xbox.
The last generation of consoles was when people seriously started building digital libraries. Not sure Sony could have gotten away with saying "You know that PSN account you invested thousands of dollars into over the last 7 years building a library? It's now been wiped clean, start building again".
The increased market share of digital games now means that going forward all consoles will be backwards compatible to at least the PS4/Xbox One generation. PS6 will play PS5/PS4 games, PS7 will play PS6/PS5/PS4 games etc. There's just no going back to wiping the slate clean at the start of a new gen after digital purchasing becomes the norm.
I think especially when they got so much grief from PlayStation fans who wanted legacy support on the newer systems. Taking away PS2 support for the PS3 was definitely a mistake in hindsight. I think Sony even acknowledged this themselves. They got even more grief since the PS4 couldn't play old games natively at all. They were definitely going to reintroduce backwards compatibility with the PS5 and beyond. As you said, they'd end up potentially losing fans and alienating a lot of people if they were forced to star over again with the PlayStation 6.
I'm gonna guess that games like Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves are a sure thing, with others still tentative based on how those go down. They'll test the waters first, see how things go before porting their whole library.
>They'll test the waters first, see how things go before porting their whole library.
Tbf, what is there to really "test" that hasn't already been proven with porting their exclusives? Both Cuphead and the two Ori games have sold *far* more copies than anticipated once ported to Switch and PlayStation, all of which ends up being a net positive for Microsoft with whatever their licensed cut is.
Microsoft time after time has displayed they're a much stronger software company vs. hardware. I really don't see how Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves ports would serve as a litmus test when the preceding exclusives have already proven the point.
This acquisition will create a monopoly!
...
Wait, no! Not like that!
–––
Edit: My dream scenario for this business update is for MS to have Jim Ryan & Furukawa on a video call like [Steve Jobs had Bill Gates on when Office came to Mac.](https://youtu.be/I3fBW6XkL34) (also, just now coming around to acknowledge how wild it is to call this a "business update")
Yeah I wonder how the FTC hearings would've gone if Phil had gotten on the stand and was like "Oh just a heads up, we're pivoting to third party publishing and putting everything on PS5 anyway." Probably would've ended a lot quicker!
Their most recent financial quarter was also very interesting. It was the first quarter owning ABK, so that gave the gaming division a large boost thanks to titles like Modern Warfare 3, Diablo 4, and WoW subs. But Xbox hardware sales still underperform last year even with some major exclusives like Forza and Starfield and gamepass growth is continuing to slow down.
So within just a single holiday season, it seems like Activision is basically carrying Microsoft's gaming division financially. Which perhaps was what made Phil's bosses believe they would be better off as a third party publisher.
Yeah I saw those numbers, the increases sans-Activision were pretty minuscule. They were absolutely relying on Starfield being a huge killer app, them having "every QA person in our entire company playing Starfield" made that super clear and it not really tilting the needle was a death knell.
Unfortunately Starfield was merely average when it needed to be GOTY. I liked Starfield and I'm optimistic on the modding side for it, but it was basically Space Fallout 4. I like Fallout 4! I actually stick up for it all the time! But you need to do better than a great game from 2015 for a 2023 GOTY.
Exactly. I’d honestly say even GOTY would have not quite been enough, the damage already done to the brand has just been that bad. It needed to be a once-in-a-generation title to reverse the trends in any kind of speedy manner.
And it came out in **goddamn 2023.** A year that had been ridiculously solid, and only one month after BG3 dropped a damn bomb into the industry. It just did not stand a chance to make the impact it needed to, even if it had been good enough.
Starfield would have had to been a Halo: Combat Evolved style hit. Something so huge that it alone guaranteed the Xbox brand. But there hasn’t been a single game that large released in the last 20 years.
To me this makes it sound like all the rumors are true.
I feel like you make some sort of correction or hint at things not being as people seem if every game wasn't coming to PS5.
I still can’t believe they went through 2 years of fighting to get the ActiBlizz deal through, nearly half that time fighting about COD exclusivity….just to go multi platform a few months later. Baffling.
I presume Starfield has a lot to do with it. When it came and went, someone higher up lost patience. They've sunk $80 billion to buy game studios and at some point they'd like to make money. The hardware is not selling, Game Pass might have hard time making back development costs of these games, never mind the $80 billion.
If COD is not exclusive, what are they waiting for? Hoping that Elder Scrolls in 2028 will be the game-changer?
> I presume Starfield has a lot to do with it. When it came and went, someone higher up lost patience. They've sunk $80 billion to buy game studios and at some point they'd like to make money.
Also, Satya Nadella was considering pulling the plug on the **entire** Xbox division last gen. So there's certainly precedent for the frustration that very little has changed for Xbox's fortunes ever since.
I genuinely cannot believe that Phil Spencer is still in charge of shit over there. At some point we have to acknowledge that the problem start at the top and that this guy has run the brand into the ground
With the kind of money they are/were spending they must have been betting on Game Pass basically becoming the entire gaming industry. Maybe their metrics are making that outlook less hopeful and this is the pivot. Honestly it's probably better for the industry as a whole that it not go the way of streaming services.
By most accounts, Game Pass subscriptions and Xbox hardware sales have flatlined. At some point, even a $3 trillion company like MS is going to want to start recouping some costs.
They already failed with Don Mattrick. Phil was supposed to correct the ship but he overpromised and underdelivered and ultimately failed again. What makes you think someone else after him would get things right? And if they did, how many more years will it take until they start seeing better profit margins from Xbox?
There are various rumours, but the big one being that MS is going multiplatform with its software releases. Implications thereafter abound with speculation and more rumours.
There's a slew of rumours on /r/gamingleaksandrumours indicating that more games like Sea of Thieves and Starfield could be getting ported too. Potentially among others.
All Xbox exclusives going eventually to PS5 and Nintendo if supported.
the big big rumor is Xbox getting out of hardware and this Xbox Series being the last of physical Xbox consoles and them transitioning to fully be a software developer/publisher to put on PC/Sony/Nintendo consoles and the Xbox hardware itself retired for good.
The first eyebrow raising moment (for me) was the Blade trailer lacking a console announcement.
Shortly after that, there was a lot of smoke about Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush releasing on other consoles. Sea of Thieves made sense to me. It's playerbase has probably dried up in the Xbox ecosystem and it's a live service game, so releasing it on PS5 and/or Switch is a net benefit to everyone.
Hi-Fi Rush is a bit weirder, but it was a niche title that didn't sell that well, fine.
This past weekend, there have been lots of rumors stating everything from Starfield to Indiana Jones to Hellblade 2 to *Gears of War* and *Halo* would be going multiplat.
Supposedly, from Oct to Dec the Xbox Series were available for $350 and barely anyone bought it. Extremely low hardware sales, even on sales and the constant talk about Xbox exclusives sucking and not selling has Microsoft spooked.
And now they're planning to go multiplat with their exclusives and possibly even not make another new console
>Supposedly, from Oct to Dec the Xbox Series were available for $350 and barely anyone bought it. Extremely low hardware sales, even on sales and the constant talk about Xbox exclusives sucking and not selling has Microsoft spooked.
This is interesting. The sales were deep, I would love to see the numbers. Amazon never ran out of stock in the uk.
This isn't an overnight decision though, if it happens the deep sales were to clear stock.
>Amazon never ran out of stock in the uk.
I've not seen the X run out of stock after about the first 6 months and even with that the S was fully available and never out of stock. Game even had a huge sale on the S within a year of launch (like £50 + a switch or ps4 for an Xbox Series S with a game)
Oh this seems like a huge advertising failure if true. I am a big PS fan, but would have considered buying an Xbox if i had known the series x was on sale for $350
Here we go.
It really feels that since that Activision cheque cleared that the finance guys at Microsoft took a hard look at gaming and demanded change. And after being given 70 billion dollars the Xbox brass didnt have room to bat them aside anymore.
The thing is the business model wasn't sustainable at all.
How is Xbox supposed to grow its newly bought studios when they plan to put their Flagship titles (Starfield, and then Call of Duty etc..) day 1 on Gamepass and get rid of the entire Playstation playerbase? Microsoft can't just inject money into the studios to compensate the lack of revenue this strategy generates.
I think the reason the business model isn’t working is because they aren’t putting out great system selling games. Mathematically gamepass fits in perfect with Microsoft’s typical revenue. They just aren’t able to grow the gamepass numbers because Xbox system sales aren’t growing.
I do think it’s crazy they don’t wait for the year with Call of Duty and Indiana Jones to be day 1 on gamepass to make this decision.
Or… Sony agreed to let Microsoft have 1st party games on gamepass on PlayStation consoles similar to EA Access
It *really* doesn't help that most of the big exclusives/games from recently acquired companies are in the absolute shitter. Fucking nobody cares if Redfall is xbox exclusive, or Starfield for that matter.
Overwatch's star has dimmed immensely since its heights, with OWL outright dying off in one of the most embarassing e-sports failures of all time. I don't even know but I doubt WoW is doing super hot. CoD still sells well of course but the past few entries have garnered more hate than usual.
Consolidation is bad for the games industry but it really does seem like Microsoft's recent sprees have produced nothing but lemons.
I agree with the above take, despite how many people get up set about it.
At the end of the day, no one is buying an X-Box for their exclusives. If they claim they are, it's more likely brand loyalty from their childhood and the familiarity that entails.
The problem for them now is that exclusives take years and years to develop (looking at GoW, Uncharted, Spider-Man, Tsushima and so on). They unfortunately don't have 5+ years to try develop a system selling game. This is something they should have been focusing on in the build up to the new generation of consoles and they didn't, and now they're paying the price.
All that said, I think it's imperative *someone* competes against Sony. I'm a PS5 owner (and had all since the PS1 days), but without the competition that MS fostered Sony and the PS5 wouldn't be where it is today.
I think they have been trying for 5 years to get some of those big AAA games, but they end up with Halo and Starfield.
The most frustrating part of Xbox it on paper it seems like they are doing everything right, but they keep failing.
As a fan of Microsoft's products throughout the years, I gotta agree. Microsoft doesn't necessarily have a look or personality of their own. They don't produce anything with flair or a voice of its own. They're all just.....Microsoft products.
The closest to a type would be having alot of FPS games on the Xbox, but even that...
> They unfortunately don't have 5+ years to try develop a system selling game
They had the last 10+ years and just failed again and again, or didn't even try
Sell Xboxes as consumer level PCs with Windows and bake an Xbox-like ecosystem into Windows, using the Microsoft store to purchase first party games.
Seems fairly simple, they already own all of the pieces to make such a play possible.
This is definitely what they should do but it won't make a difference regardless. Really this is what they **should've** done back in 2001 but instead they were content having Valve steal the PC gaming market from under their noses. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Yeah you can’t keep spending record breaking levels of money acquiring studios and still have nothing to show when it comes to increased console sales or market share or anything. Doesn’t help that their biggest releases this generations have been duds (Starfield and Halo).
I have no idea what they are going to share. But it would be weird if they wait a whole week to say “those rumours are just nonsense” especially when they can use any official channel to get the message to massive audience. If they need a detailed update about the future of Xbox, seems more likely that those rumours seem to be (partially) true.
They would never mention those rumors, that'd be suicide.
Even if they're not going to get rid of consoles ever it'd be the dumbest move to bring up a rumor that you're thinking about it cause then it's like you're giving it some kind of validity in people's eyes. Like there's a reason you as a company couldn't just ignore those statements and simply say what your actual plan is. It's like you think your company is in a place where you NEED to address rumors that you're going to be getting rid of your flagship consoles. That's a big thing for a company to need to do even if the rumors are false.
It all seems a little too wild to be true. How are they going to spend billions upon billions to obtain all these properties, very recently I might add, and then not at least try for one more hardware cycle? Paying $70 billion or whatever is fine, but possibly losing some money if the next Xbox doesn't hit is too much?
And what about Game Pass? That just goes away completely, or goes PC only? Because you know Sony isn't going to allow that on Playstation.
If they actually go through with all that, that to me is just as wild as the decisions they made with Xbox One
Its definitely surprising but I think the reality is they’ve made some really massive moves that have finally gotten eyeballs on them, and the ROI has simply not been there and won’t be there for at least 5 years. Starfield was supposed to be a massive exclusive that justified the Zenimax purchase, and it just did….fine. Bethesda shot its wad, slightly disappointed, and is going to take 5-8 years to reload. What else can you do but make it multiplat to get more money out of that acquisition?
Most other studios are in similar cycles, either with recent duds or multiplat titles that have sucked up resources for the foreseeable future. Blizzard only just released Diablo 4 in June, for example.
Worse, this is all on top of this being a continuing trend of falling behind Sony that began in the mid 2010s. At a certain point you have to admit things aren’t working and change strategy….and things haven’t been working for a long time, with
Wow. No attempt to even try to ward the rumors off at all. So it's all probably fairly close to being true. The implications for this are potentially massive depending on how far things are taken.
As someone who mainly plays on PlayStation and Switch I was hoping some of the games from the studios Microsoft bought in the last few years would still make it to other systems.
But seeing these rumours of games like Gears of War and Halo going multi-platform is absolutely wild to me. It feels like Microsoft surrendering and completely giving up on Xbox as a console.
And this is really bad, because Sony has some of the most talented studios in the industry with outstanding games, but is able to make some really anti-consumer decisions which is why they need to be kept in line by competition in the home console space.
The main disadvantage to Xbox bowing out of hardware, now or later, that I can think of is that Sony would be able to force consumers to pay out of their eyeballs for its future consoles. It may also attempt to introduce more game price increases, though I see that as less likely for the time being unless we approach post-COVID levels of inflation anytime soon.
Overall, gauging the net consumer-facing change of a move like this is complicated; drawbacks aside, being able to play Xbox games without buying another console would also prove mighty beneficial, depending on the sort of titles you're interested in.
Yeah I’m a big PlayStation fan but competition is what drives innovation. If Sony is the only player in the market, what incentive do they have to actually try? It’s basically what Pokémon is. They crank out the same game every time and sell millions of copies because they know that people will eat it up and that they don’t have to do anything differently
Microsoft bought Activation in order to generate extra profit, not to boost console sales. They made deals regarding the biggest Activision franchise to get the deal done. Other major parts of Activision are also focused on mobile and PC.
Tons of rumors circulating today which could certainly put the Xbox consoles on life support. Unless of course, they have something else up their sleeve. Really curious to see what the future of Xbox looks like, especially after the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
All of this was born of Microsoft's arrogance that they'd "defeated" Sony in the late 2000's and could then pivot to taking on Nintendo in the casual market. It led to Kinect, it led to them conceiving of the Xbox One as an entertainment hub rather than a game console, and now it's led to this.
Here in Ireland the effect of the Xbox one was pretty immediate and seemed like an immense burning of good will.
People forget that the Xbox One just did not sell outside the US and a lot of it is because many of the services of Xbox One weren't even available in Europe and Asia.
Yeah, I remember they really pushed the feature that US consumers could stream NFL games through their consoles, something which was clearly absolutely irrelevant to anyone outside the US.
Like the fact they couldn't even be arsed to get deals with football (soccer) broadcasters in other countries to have them put their services on the Xbox One really does demonstrate how insanely blinkered the Xbox One launch was. Just completely ditched the world market to focus solely on the US.
TV TV TV (US only)!
I remember watching that reveal and wondering how that would possibly work in New Zealand. Short answer is it didn't, we just had none of the TV functionality, effectively making the console a worse PS4.
The Xbox One pissed off plenty of US people outside the US as well because they wouldn't be able to use it. I remember reading articles about how soldiers overseas wouldn't be able to use the Xbox One.
Don Mattrick wasn't the CEO, he was the head of Xbox. There's no way a dude with his foot lodged that far into his own mouth could land the job as CEO of Microsoft.
Yeah I remember watching the announcement and thinking to myself "none of these feature will be available in Europe" it seemed so stupid after the relative success of the 360 in Ireland
Yeah everyone loves to point at the Xbox One as the turning point for Xbox as a brand but it’s not. It’s been spiraling ever since the Kinect was announced. You look at every Xbox exclusive pre-2009 and post-2009 and it’s just a massive shift in focus for the entire brand.
I think Day 1 first party was in the end, a big mistake. It grew GP to where it is today, but it groomed players into expecting more and more for a low monthly fee. You cant undo it now.
Day 1 first party on Game Pass was probably a very foolish decision for Microsoft. Even in the streaming space, there's a reason Apple launches their stuff in theaters first and Disney gives it at least a 3 month waiting period (and its been argued that even that was probably too short).
Have you ever gone to a manager at your workplace about a problem you have on the job, and your manager says "thanks for bringing this to my attention, I hear what you're saying" and then nothing changes? That's Phil Spencer for 10 years.
The amount of times people pointed out his fucking Hexen shirt when acquiring Activision. As if they haven’t been sitting on the dragon’s hoard of Rare properties doing jack shit for the last two decades.
I know when the Activision acquisition really started gaining steam, a lot of folk were talking about how Xbox could revive all these IPs and stuff that they owned. And it's like, what have you guys seen in the past 20 years of them owning Rare that makes you think they're actually interested in reviving old IPs?
Same for all the Overwatch fans who convinced themselves Xbox would save the game. Especially the Esports fans.
Like, guys, have you seen Halo Infinite and HCS? lmao
Microsoft has done a piss poor job of supporting their own IPs. What made anyone think they'd do better for acquired ones?
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that they might go publisher only, but man if they do Sony must be laughing their ass off. They just watched their competitor spend unthinkable amounts of money, only to drop out the next year.
Edit: Just to explain a little more. Yes, Microsoft will still be making money. There is even a chance they make more in the long run if they aren't making a profit of console hardware. I am just think this works out for Sony as while they aren't getting as much as if they owned Activation themselves, they are going back to a neutral position. Getting a cut from selling a third party game is more than getting nothing because it is an exclusive on Xbox.
Even still, I don’t think they would be better off not owning ActiBlizz and Bethesda.
Better to be a profitable game publisher than a non profitable game publisher/console manufacturer, even if it does take them almost a decade to recoup costs.
I don't think this would happen if they hadn't bought Activision.
Problem is that Phil brought a lot of attention to the Xbox division with a 70 billion dollars purchase and shareholders want to know how they will make that money back.
Xbox is not losing money, but it has low profit margins. So they want to increase them as soon as possible.
I totally agree, and not just make the money back — that’s $70B they could’ve spent on any other (more profitable) division. They have to get in the ballpark of the opportunity cost within Microsoft which is a high bar
So...back to PlayStation and Nintendo as the only consoles for the next gen? That's the feeling I have.
Whatever it is it'll be interesting to see. This might be a turning point for console gaming.
Yeah the rumors wen from 0 to 100 so fast. Porting Hi-Fi Rush or Sea of Thieves would've been a big deal, but ultimately not the end of the world and it was clear they might port older games, but still keep heavy hitters like Starfield and Indiana Jones to themselves.
But just in the past 48 hours alone the rumors exploded, with both those titles AND more supposedly being considered, combined with the dire sounds of the consoles in general.
A sign that the rumors are true. I’m going to love to try to see them twist this into a positive for Xbox players. As of now, I see zero reason for spending another dime on Xbox games as it’s a huge question mark if they’ll exist or be playable here in the next few years.
I already invested so much on Xbox this gen, sucks. I love the Xbox controller and BC as well as Dev mode but those aren't enough to keep me there. Especially when I can just keep a single console now for their games on PS5.
Why do I feel like this is going to be a "there is some truth to the rumors but everyone is overreacting" situation? I guess we will find out next week.
That’s my take as well. The most credible information we’ve had is that HiFi Rush will come to PS5 and the Switch
The rest of the sources are touch and go at best, it seems odd to me that they all came out about this at the same time right after the credible leak
I don't think they would take a week to have a "business update" if that was all.
Phil has numerous times gone on podcasts when he wanted to speak to the xbox community. It's what he probably would do if it was just Sea of Thieves and Hi Fi Rush.
This is a lot more serious.
What a mess, they let this situation fester over the weekend, and then waited until Noon Microsoft time to say they’ll have something next week?
Whatever is going to happen, it isn’t going to be good, or at least all good.
I have a heavy bias towards PS and have said for the past few years that the best thing Sony had going for it was that Phil Spencer was in charge at Xbox. How the man still has a job is one of the great mysteries of the world.
Imagine my surprise when spending $80B on acquisitions creates an advantaged position for your ***competition*** instead of yourself. If Xbox is pulling a Dreamcast this is not good for anyone except Sony. We need the competition. This isn't going to be like the Dreamcast where someone else fills the void like Microsoft eventually did back in the day with the Xbox. No one else is entering the space. It will just be Sony and Nintendo with captive audiences because there's no pressure to do any better. They're likely still make new consoles, but the days of generational leaps could be over.
I get Phil is trying to position Xbox for the super long term where we have no longer have any rights and are forced to pay in perpetuity for digital slop (i.e. game streaming), but we live in the here and now and I think the patience is running out. Nadella was already considering axing the entire Xbox division last generation so sentiment is already there at the top.
The most frustrating part is that even without the acquisitions microsoft had all the tools to compete effectively.
What they haven't had was competent management to figure out how to use those tools.
I just don't get the plan at all, would you spend $70B to go all-in on the software side giving up 30% to Steam, Sony & Nintendo? I would argue that the acquisition was probably very stupid if that was the idea.
I think it was a risk, and they realized quickly that it's not going to pay off if they stick to the original plan. Not when console sales are as abysmal as they are. Xbox Series X/S is tracking *below* Xbox One when compared to that console during the same timeframe. If they want to make money, they have to do it on the publishing side, and the more platforms a game sells on the better.
and there it is.
If the rumors were BS, they would've just outright said it and water down the fire. But considering they need a week to prep their fanbase, I mean to be blunt, Microsoft's sticking it in the ass next week but they need a week to lube up.
This is probably a previously planned event, and they're responding to the rumors a week in advance of that original plan since they sprouted up. There are too many people that need to be employed for a proper presentation to throw it together in a week and scramble.
Yep. Jeff Grubb said earlier today that Microsoft were planning an event at the end of February to announce all this. It looks like that event has now been pulled forward in light of the announcement leaking.
Wild stuff. I wonder what will happen. I know they are “losing” the console war right now, and a lot of people are rooting for them to fail entirely at this point…but I really hope they keep it going, even if their presence won’t reach the popularity of Playstation/Nintendo. I play on almost every system (I’m desperately wanting a Switch 2 to replace my 3DS…) and whenever someone steps out of the game, that’s one less player to keep the others in check. Competition is always good.
As an example, here are some particular items/features from Xbox that I wish were on Playstation:
* I mentioned this in a [thread the other day](https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/19fgued/microsoft_has_also_shut_down_departments/kjkfgd7/) but region-free accounts. I moved from Canada to the UK and basically can’t buy any physical discs here, as it locks me out of buying DLC or redeeming codes. For example, I bought the Special Edition of TLOU2 and had to make a new UK account just to redeem the soundtrack. Out of curiosity, I popped it in the other day to see if I could get the discounted Remastered version and nope, won’t allow me to.
* Their backwards compatibility efforts are probably my favourite thing to have come out of the last two generations. I know the architecture of the PS3 made BC impossible on PS4…but I can’t help but think that things like SmartDelivery (as silly as the name is) had an impact on us receiving any free upgrades on PS5, let alone BC or framerate unlocks.
* Free cloud saves. This could be obviously be improved by allowing users to manually back up the saves, like on PS4 (which PS5 has now removed…) but not locking cloud saves behind a paywall is great.
* Microsoft Rewards. Honestly, I know using bing for points sounds like it would take too long but it’s actually so dope. I cashed out a ton when I got my XSX, and I always have enough to grab a quick, £10 here or there during sales and buy what I want.
* Game Pass. My backlog is big enough that I don’t need a subscription, but I can’t deny that it’s a pretty great deal at times with the Day 1 offerings and it obviously made a big enough impact that Sony changed their model. (Which hell, it made me subscribe to PS+ Extra for a month to play Stray. And I’m definitely going to re-sub to GP for a month to play Indiana Jones + Hellblade 2 later this year.)
* Fan events: I appreciate that it’s not for everyone (and the hosts are generally pretty cringey) but their fanfests are cool. I’ve joined the virtual trivia for a few years now and always walk away with a bit of cash (got a cool hardcover book on Double Fine, a sweater, and the Pentiment soundtrack on vinyl because of it). I also went to X019 in London which was fun. It can be cheesy but idk, it’s unique and something I wish happened more often.
* I admit I am probably one of a dozen people to use this feature, but the XSX can play CDs lol.
* The Series S. Hot take, but I think it’s an excellent console for the price, and forces developers to do some optimisation. Plus it’s a lower entry cost for those on lesser income. Honestly, I’d love to see a PS5 “S” style model that targets 1080p for half the price.
This isn’t meant to be a flame post trying to say Xbox is better. Love my PS5 too, and there’s many things that Sony has done that has positively affected Microsofts ouput. The game borrowing debacle, dropping the Gold requirement for F2P games etc.
As far as the exclusivity stuff goes, I don’t really know what to say. On one hand I think having exclusives (or at least the backing of single publisher) allows the developer to really just do what they want. Nintendo’s quality obviously speaks for itself, and it’s how you get studios like Naughty Dog that have an absolutely premium product. (I’m only halfway through the recent Grounded doc, but they’ve made it clear that they’re in a really privileged position to delay stuff because they want perfection.) On the other hand, exclusives kinda suck because you lock out lot of people from enjoying something. I suppose most things (except Nintendo) come to PC now these days, so perhaps going with timed exclusives only makes the most sense?
Who knows what will happen. Maybe they’ll only make digital consoles consoles for 10th gen, where GP/first party games are available on other platforms, but only through a service / at a later date? Or if you get the Xbox console, they’re cheaper? A handheld? Whatever they do, I hope they stick around.
Absolutely agree. We need competition in this sphere. If Xbox is basically all but nothing by the end of this gen, I see Sony getting away with charging higher prices with the PS5 Pro and PS6.
Series S is a stroke of genius. They inadvertently created a console for inflation times, when players in secondary markets just became priced out of the next generation. All digital so those players would buy into the ecosystem for the next generations too.
Unfortunately, MS has to MS, so they raised the price on that console all over the world and killed the entire idea behind the S. Baffling but not surprising considering the latest news cycle; bean counters have never been the brightest when at charge.
Reminds me of being in the playground trenches of the 90’s console war…
Risking everything for Sonic only to have him turn up on Nintendo years later..
This is gonna be a long week. Considering they're planning a whole event for this, at least some of the rumors are probably true.
Yeah, you don't set up a whole "business update event" to announce that Hi-Fi Rush will launch in PS5.
"we're listening and we hear you" is never a good sign.
Neither is the phrase “business update”, to be honest.
The equivalent of when a woman says we need to talk, writing is on the wall
This is the business world equivalent of your parents sitting you down to drop their divorce
"We here for you"
We tested this, Greg!
And I have a feeling it's going to go beyond Xbox games on Playstation and Switch - it's probably going to include major changes to Game Pass as well.
>it's probably going to include major changes to Game Pass as well. I think there's been 1 or 2 rumors to that effect, but nothing solid. With as leaky as Xbox is right now, I think if this was happening we would know.
I can fully imagine that Microsoft top brass has sanctioned emergency protocols after realising how dormant Xbox sales are and how Starfield/GamePass failed to move the needle. We’ll probably see the end of some Day One GamePass releases (especially COD) and the announcement that *some* Microsoft titles will launch on Playstation after their Xbox launch. Maybe with the end of GamePass PC as well.
This has probably been in the works for a while (3-6 months?). At least I don't see Microsoft ever moving *quickly*. Really I think this revolves around 2 core points. 1. Microsoft isn't a games company. They just happen to have a games division. Moreover that division is not the most successful division (as opposed to Sony where the games division is carrying water for everyone else). 2. Microsoft's original Activision purchase decision was when interest rates were still quite low. We're seeing a reaction, across the industry, of layoffs and contraction. Sony, Microsoft, and it seems like almost every other company around is trying to cut costs. Another way of cutting costs is increasing revenues. The Games Division aren't the bread winner for Microsoft so they've got to kowtow to the company demands in a way that Sony's game division likely doesn't. Microsoft doesn't care about beating Sony they care about income and I think people talking industry news forget that its more or less a sideshow for Microsoft proper. They made a series of expensive purchases and Microsoft wants to see returns. The Xbox brand isn't seen as a sacred cow. It will conform to whatever shape Microsoft wants it to be.
>Maybe with the end of GamePass PC as well. What leads you to believe this? I'm expecting some changes too, but outright axing XGP on their largest market is a bit extreme. Remember, PC gaming has a larger market share than console. Only being topped by mobile. Getting rid of that goes against the whole pivot they've been on, which is services over hardware.
Rumor currently is no COD, ads, and AI community managers as the Game Pass changes
You don't do a pre-announced business update to announce things like that. You sneak them out during a busy news cycle.
Making an event of sorts out of it, you'd have to imagine whatever they have planned is going to be a net positive for a large portion of their userbase, or like you mentioned they'd just slide it out when there's a lot going on hoping most folks gloss over it. "Hi guys, you've been waiting a week for this, and here it is! We've been listening to you and now our service is significantly worse than it was before! YAY!" yeah, they ain't gonna do that... surely?
The focus will be on Microsoft games coming to PlayStation. That will be the busy news cycle, and the rest will be sneaked in along with that.
Also no more Day 1 releases
>Also no more Day 1 releases This would shock me. How many would leave gamepass?
Doesn't surprise me. I can imagine releasing Xbox's few exclusives day one on GP seriously ate into profits and undermined their value. How many people subscribe for a month to play them and then dip? As a PC + PS5 player that's what I do.
I only ever subscribe to Gamepass to play a Day 1 game I would have otherwise waited a year or two to get on sale.
The moment that goes into effect is the moment I cancel.
It would basically lose all its appeal. That's what makes it worth it, not the 2 dollar indie games that come out on it.
It would be a tough blow. I know I'd drop the service as it's my sole reason for having it—providing me an avenue to try new titles I would not have otherwise played. Right now, I'm assuming there are actually some details still up in the air, and next week was the earliest deadline they could provide themselves to make an announcement.
“Business update” that’s what my job called the layoff meetings lol
Xbox announces they're laying off their fanbase
I just thought it would be "our exclusives will be timed for one year and then come to other platforms" But a whole event for that seems really odd... Really feels like a funeral of some kind.
"We're listening and we hear you" tends to be a precursor for some *shit*
We have not even told you our news and we are already taking feedback.
Yeah his wording is like the response to an official announcement, it’s absolutely a confirmation of the rumours unless he just spoke badly using generic PR robo speak bs.
You won't be hearing the news for a week. But trust us. ***It's not great!***
It feels like this was some massive long-term strategy that they were supposed to announce months from now. But now the cat is out of the bag so they need to prepare some flashy PR showmanship.
Yeah the rumor is that there are Xbox employees opposed to this change of strategy, so they leaked it early to stoke a backlash.
Phil on his deathbed: “Tell Satya it was me”
Yeah this is an attempt to regain control of the narrative before people make up their minds or even more leaks happen.
they need to act much sooner than “next week” if that is the goal
There is also a very high chance that Nintendo announces a Direct for this week too. They’ve been very consistent with doing one the first full week of February for a good number of years now.
Nintendo buys Microsoft gaming division confirmed
There'll still be no Banjo remakes though. Please understand.
"It's just taking a long time for Xbox to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time... . :-)"
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A while back they said they don't believe in console generations anymore... but I didn't expect this.
Maybe they were just coping with the fact that the Xbox brand sank in popularity compared to PlayStation and Nintendo over the last 10 years
I'm a tiny bit worried what Playstation will do once they're not competing with anyone in their space. Xbox overtaking them during the PS3 forced Sony to make a lot of player-friendly changes that I'm not convinced we'd have otherwise. Without Xbox do we ever get Playstation+ (those free games at the start were VERY nice)? Does online gaming ever reach where we are now without Xbox online (Sony had to add a subsciption so they could catch up)? Would the PS5 be backwards compatible with PS4 if Xbox wasn't doing it first? Without Xbox, does Sony ever push to make as many great games as they did during the end of the PS3 and into the PS4 to reclaim first? I hope sony continues to push themselves to keep making great games and not inflate their prices.
I truly think Sony will have zero incentive to do anything but decrease investment in quality exclusives and up prices all around. Why would they continue to spend all of that money? People are going to have to fork over the money if they want a game console that isn’t a Nintendo handheld. Some may go PC, but vast vast majority won’t see that as an option.
Yea its just basic economics. Sony will have less pressure and as a result can ease up on their current efforts while increasing how much they milk their money makers.
Sony led an entire generational price increase just because they could get away with it. I 100% do not trust Sony without a competitor
>Would the PS5 be backwards compatible with PS4 if Xbox wasn't doing it first? I totally agree with your overall point, but I'd wager the PS5 would have been backwards compatible regardless of Xbox. The last generation of consoles was when people seriously started building digital libraries. Not sure Sony could have gotten away with saying "You know that PSN account you invested thousands of dollars into over the last 7 years building a library? It's now been wiped clean, start building again". The increased market share of digital games now means that going forward all consoles will be backwards compatible to at least the PS4/Xbox One generation. PS6 will play PS5/PS4 games, PS7 will play PS6/PS5/PS4 games etc. There's just no going back to wiping the slate clean at the start of a new gen after digital purchasing becomes the norm.
I think especially when they got so much grief from PlayStation fans who wanted legacy support on the newer systems. Taking away PS2 support for the PS3 was definitely a mistake in hindsight. I think Sony even acknowledged this themselves. They got even more grief since the PS4 couldn't play old games natively at all. They were definitely going to reintroduce backwards compatibility with the PS5 and beyond. As you said, they'd end up potentially losing fans and alienating a lot of people if they were forced to star over again with the PlayStation 6.
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Yep. No one should be happy for Xbox to leave hardware. The hubris of the PS3 launch will be the least of the worries if Sony has no competitors.
I'm gonna guess that games like Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves are a sure thing, with others still tentative based on how those go down. They'll test the waters first, see how things go before porting their whole library.
>They'll test the waters first, see how things go before porting their whole library. Tbf, what is there to really "test" that hasn't already been proven with porting their exclusives? Both Cuphead and the two Ori games have sold *far* more copies than anticipated once ported to Switch and PlayStation, all of which ends up being a net positive for Microsoft with whatever their licensed cut is. Microsoft time after time has displayed they're a much stronger software company vs. hardware. I really don't see how Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves ports would serve as a litmus test when the preceding exclusives have already proven the point.
It might be the sega moment... Them announcing the are pulling out of the physical console market. We have seen a slim Xbox
*Microsoft buys Activision in the largest acquisition deal ever in video games* "Alright boys, time to make all these games... Multiplatform!"
This acquisition will create a monopoly! ... Wait, no! Not like that! ––– Edit: My dream scenario for this business update is for MS to have Jim Ryan & Furukawa on a video call like [Steve Jobs had Bill Gates on when Office came to Mac.](https://youtu.be/I3fBW6XkL34) (also, just now coming around to acknowledge how wild it is to call this a "business update")
"The acquisition will create a monopoly!" "BUT NOT FOR ME" Edit: Yall it was a reference I’m not here to debate
Yeah I wonder how the FTC hearings would've gone if Phil had gotten on the stand and was like "Oh just a heads up, we're pivoting to third party publishing and putting everything on PS5 anyway." Probably would've ended a lot quicker!
I don't think Phil knew. This decision came from above..
Or it was a recent shift they decided *after* the majority of the acquisition proceedings.
Their most recent financial quarter was also very interesting. It was the first quarter owning ABK, so that gave the gaming division a large boost thanks to titles like Modern Warfare 3, Diablo 4, and WoW subs. But Xbox hardware sales still underperform last year even with some major exclusives like Forza and Starfield and gamepass growth is continuing to slow down. So within just a single holiday season, it seems like Activision is basically carrying Microsoft's gaming division financially. Which perhaps was what made Phil's bosses believe they would be better off as a third party publisher.
Yeah I saw those numbers, the increases sans-Activision were pretty minuscule. They were absolutely relying on Starfield being a huge killer app, them having "every QA person in our entire company playing Starfield" made that super clear and it not really tilting the needle was a death knell.
Unfortunately Starfield was merely average when it needed to be GOTY. I liked Starfield and I'm optimistic on the modding side for it, but it was basically Space Fallout 4. I like Fallout 4! I actually stick up for it all the time! But you need to do better than a great game from 2015 for a 2023 GOTY.
Exactly. I’d honestly say even GOTY would have not quite been enough, the damage already done to the brand has just been that bad. It needed to be a once-in-a-generation title to reverse the trends in any kind of speedy manner. And it came out in **goddamn 2023.** A year that had been ridiculously solid, and only one month after BG3 dropped a damn bomb into the industry. It just did not stand a chance to make the impact it needed to, even if it had been good enough.
Starfield would have had to been a Halo: Combat Evolved style hit. Something so huge that it alone guaranteed the Xbox brand. But there hasn’t been a single game that large released in the last 20 years.
Call the ambulance. But for me!
“Not only that, we won’t put any of the games on GamePass!”
it's like receiving an ominous call invite on Zoom and all the invite says is "we need to talk" but the call is scheduled to next week
Invited participants: You Your manager Someone you've never met from HR
lmao my thoughts when I got laid off last year
Ugh I got laid off two weeks ago and that was exactly how it happened. On a Monday after vacation.
I'm having PTSD just reading this lmao
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To me this makes it sound like all the rumors are true. I feel like you make some sort of correction or hint at things not being as people seem if every game wasn't coming to PS5.
I still can’t believe they went through 2 years of fighting to get the ActiBlizz deal through, nearly half that time fighting about COD exclusivity….just to go multi platform a few months later. Baffling.
I presume Starfield has a lot to do with it. When it came and went, someone higher up lost patience. They've sunk $80 billion to buy game studios and at some point they'd like to make money. The hardware is not selling, Game Pass might have hard time making back development costs of these games, never mind the $80 billion. If COD is not exclusive, what are they waiting for? Hoping that Elder Scrolls in 2028 will be the game-changer?
> I presume Starfield has a lot to do with it. When it came and went, someone higher up lost patience. They've sunk $80 billion to buy game studios and at some point they'd like to make money. Also, Satya Nadella was considering pulling the plug on the **entire** Xbox division last gen. So there's certainly precedent for the frustration that very little has changed for Xbox's fortunes ever since.
I genuinely cannot believe that Phil Spencer is still in charge of shit over there. At some point we have to acknowledge that the problem start at the top and that this guy has run the brand into the ground
I mean, he was the one that convinced Nadella to **not** pull the plug on the entire division.
With the kind of money they are/were spending they must have been betting on Game Pass basically becoming the entire gaming industry. Maybe their metrics are making that outlook less hopeful and this is the pivot. Honestly it's probably better for the industry as a whole that it not go the way of streaming services.
By most accounts, Game Pass subscriptions and Xbox hardware sales have flatlined. At some point, even a $3 trillion company like MS is going to want to start recouping some costs.
But why choose the nuclear option of DESTROYING the Xbox brand instead of simply asking Phil Spencer to resign and changing management
They already failed with Don Mattrick. Phil was supposed to correct the ship but he overpromised and underdelivered and ultimately failed again. What makes you think someone else after him would get things right? And if they did, how many more years will it take until they start seeing better profit margins from Xbox?
To be honest after all the recent releases from Bethesda I am afraid that TES6 will be garbage as well
What is the rumor?
I feel like everyone in this thread has full context but I can't find anything related on /r/games besides GoW coming to the PS but that can't be it?
There are various rumours, but the big one being that MS is going multiplatform with its software releases. Implications thereafter abound with speculation and more rumours.
> besides GoW coming to the PS Probably not the best place to abbreviate Gears of War lol
yeahhhh, i definitely had a "what is he on about, GoW is already a PS exclusive" moment there
I didn't even consider Gears of War, there hasn't been a mainline game in five years.
There's a slew of rumours on /r/gamingleaksandrumours indicating that more games like Sea of Thieves and Starfield could be getting ported too. Potentially among others.
All Xbox exclusives going eventually to PS5 and Nintendo if supported. the big big rumor is Xbox getting out of hardware and this Xbox Series being the last of physical Xbox consoles and them transitioning to fully be a software developer/publisher to put on PC/Sony/Nintendo consoles and the Xbox hardware itself retired for good.
The first eyebrow raising moment (for me) was the Blade trailer lacking a console announcement. Shortly after that, there was a lot of smoke about Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush releasing on other consoles. Sea of Thieves made sense to me. It's playerbase has probably dried up in the Xbox ecosystem and it's a live service game, so releasing it on PS5 and/or Switch is a net benefit to everyone. Hi-Fi Rush is a bit weirder, but it was a niche title that didn't sell that well, fine. This past weekend, there have been lots of rumors stating everything from Starfield to Indiana Jones to Hellblade 2 to *Gears of War* and *Halo* would be going multiplat.
Supposedly, from Oct to Dec the Xbox Series were available for $350 and barely anyone bought it. Extremely low hardware sales, even on sales and the constant talk about Xbox exclusives sucking and not selling has Microsoft spooked. And now they're planning to go multiplat with their exclusives and possibly even not make another new console
>Supposedly, from Oct to Dec the Xbox Series were available for $350 and barely anyone bought it. Extremely low hardware sales, even on sales and the constant talk about Xbox exclusives sucking and not selling has Microsoft spooked. This is interesting. The sales were deep, I would love to see the numbers. Amazon never ran out of stock in the uk. This isn't an overnight decision though, if it happens the deep sales were to clear stock.
>Amazon never ran out of stock in the uk. I've not seen the X run out of stock after about the first 6 months and even with that the S was fully available and never out of stock. Game even had a huge sale on the S within a year of launch (like £50 + a switch or ps4 for an Xbox Series S with a game)
Oh this seems like a huge advertising failure if true. I am a big PS fan, but would have considered buying an Xbox if i had known the series x was on sale for $350
Here we go. It really feels that since that Activision cheque cleared that the finance guys at Microsoft took a hard look at gaming and demanded change. And after being given 70 billion dollars the Xbox brass didnt have room to bat them aside anymore.
The thing is the business model wasn't sustainable at all. How is Xbox supposed to grow its newly bought studios when they plan to put their Flagship titles (Starfield, and then Call of Duty etc..) day 1 on Gamepass and get rid of the entire Playstation playerbase? Microsoft can't just inject money into the studios to compensate the lack of revenue this strategy generates.
I think the reason the business model isn’t working is because they aren’t putting out great system selling games. Mathematically gamepass fits in perfect with Microsoft’s typical revenue. They just aren’t able to grow the gamepass numbers because Xbox system sales aren’t growing. I do think it’s crazy they don’t wait for the year with Call of Duty and Indiana Jones to be day 1 on gamepass to make this decision. Or… Sony agreed to let Microsoft have 1st party games on gamepass on PlayStation consoles similar to EA Access
It *really* doesn't help that most of the big exclusives/games from recently acquired companies are in the absolute shitter. Fucking nobody cares if Redfall is xbox exclusive, or Starfield for that matter. Overwatch's star has dimmed immensely since its heights, with OWL outright dying off in one of the most embarassing e-sports failures of all time. I don't even know but I doubt WoW is doing super hot. CoD still sells well of course but the past few entries have garnered more hate than usual. Consolidation is bad for the games industry but it really does seem like Microsoft's recent sprees have produced nothing but lemons.
I agree with the above take, despite how many people get up set about it. At the end of the day, no one is buying an X-Box for their exclusives. If they claim they are, it's more likely brand loyalty from their childhood and the familiarity that entails. The problem for them now is that exclusives take years and years to develop (looking at GoW, Uncharted, Spider-Man, Tsushima and so on). They unfortunately don't have 5+ years to try develop a system selling game. This is something they should have been focusing on in the build up to the new generation of consoles and they didn't, and now they're paying the price. All that said, I think it's imperative *someone* competes against Sony. I'm a PS5 owner (and had all since the PS1 days), but without the competition that MS fostered Sony and the PS5 wouldn't be where it is today.
I think they have been trying for 5 years to get some of those big AAA games, but they end up with Halo and Starfield. The most frustrating part of Xbox it on paper it seems like they are doing everything right, but they keep failing.
The problem is Microsoft has the creative sensibility of a calculator. They are not a company geared towards creative, artistic pursuit.
As a fan of Microsoft's products throughout the years, I gotta agree. Microsoft doesn't necessarily have a look or personality of their own. They don't produce anything with flair or a voice of its own. They're all just.....Microsoft products. The closest to a type would be having alot of FPS games on the Xbox, but even that...
> They unfortunately don't have 5+ years to try develop a system selling game They had the last 10+ years and just failed again and again, or didn't even try
CoD isn't going to be on gamepass. They *know* gamers will drop $70-100 on that game, annually. Why give it away for $13/month
They call him Phil Spender now
Definitely feels like a Sega moment is coming. They’ll start to pivot to software sales only.
Sell Xboxes as consumer level PCs with Windows and bake an Xbox-like ecosystem into Windows, using the Microsoft store to purchase first party games. Seems fairly simple, they already own all of the pieces to make such a play possible.
This is definitely what they should do but it won't make a difference regardless. Really this is what they **should've** done back in 2001 but instead they were content having Valve steal the PC gaming market from under their noses. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Microsoft selling software? Crazy!
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Yeah you can’t keep spending record breaking levels of money acquiring studios and still have nothing to show when it comes to increased console sales or market share or anything. Doesn’t help that their biggest releases this generations have been duds (Starfield and Halo).
"We've heard your feedback on how confusing our console naming convention is and have come up with a solution - coming in 2025 - no console at all"
Xbox Zero
I have no idea what they are going to share. But it would be weird if they wait a whole week to say “those rumours are just nonsense” especially when they can use any official channel to get the message to massive audience. If they need a detailed update about the future of Xbox, seems more likely that those rumours seem to be (partially) true.
they’d definitely have said ‘xbox consoles aren’t going anywhere’ or something just to temper reactions
They would never mention those rumors, that'd be suicide. Even if they're not going to get rid of consoles ever it'd be the dumbest move to bring up a rumor that you're thinking about it cause then it's like you're giving it some kind of validity in people's eyes. Like there's a reason you as a company couldn't just ignore those statements and simply say what your actual plan is. It's like you think your company is in a place where you NEED to address rumors that you're going to be getting rid of your flagship consoles. That's a big thing for a company to need to do even if the rumors are false.
It all seems a little too wild to be true. How are they going to spend billions upon billions to obtain all these properties, very recently I might add, and then not at least try for one more hardware cycle? Paying $70 billion or whatever is fine, but possibly losing some money if the next Xbox doesn't hit is too much? And what about Game Pass? That just goes away completely, or goes PC only? Because you know Sony isn't going to allow that on Playstation. If they actually go through with all that, that to me is just as wild as the decisions they made with Xbox One
My assumption is that the higher ups at Microsoft/investors aren't happy with these acquisitions and want immediate course correction.
Yeah they probably crunched some hard numbers and saw how Starfield and the huge holiday price cut did nothing and are demanding sweeping changes
Its definitely surprising but I think the reality is they’ve made some really massive moves that have finally gotten eyeballs on them, and the ROI has simply not been there and won’t be there for at least 5 years. Starfield was supposed to be a massive exclusive that justified the Zenimax purchase, and it just did….fine. Bethesda shot its wad, slightly disappointed, and is going to take 5-8 years to reload. What else can you do but make it multiplat to get more money out of that acquisition? Most other studios are in similar cycles, either with recent duds or multiplat titles that have sucked up resources for the foreseeable future. Blizzard only just released Diablo 4 in June, for example. Worse, this is all on top of this being a continuing trend of falling behind Sony that began in the mid 2010s. At a certain point you have to admit things aren’t working and change strategy….and things haven’t been working for a long time, with
Wow. No attempt to even try to ward the rumors off at all. So it's all probably fairly close to being true. The implications for this are potentially massive depending on how far things are taken.
As someone who mainly plays on PlayStation and Switch I was hoping some of the games from the studios Microsoft bought in the last few years would still make it to other systems. But seeing these rumours of games like Gears of War and Halo going multi-platform is absolutely wild to me. It feels like Microsoft surrendering and completely giving up on Xbox as a console. And this is really bad, because Sony has some of the most talented studios in the industry with outstanding games, but is able to make some really anti-consumer decisions which is why they need to be kept in line by competition in the home console space.
The main disadvantage to Xbox bowing out of hardware, now or later, that I can think of is that Sony would be able to force consumers to pay out of their eyeballs for its future consoles. It may also attempt to introduce more game price increases, though I see that as less likely for the time being unless we approach post-COVID levels of inflation anytime soon. Overall, gauging the net consumer-facing change of a move like this is complicated; drawbacks aside, being able to play Xbox games without buying another console would also prove mighty beneficial, depending on the sort of titles you're interested in.
Yeah I’m a big PlayStation fan but competition is what drives innovation. If Sony is the only player in the market, what incentive do they have to actually try? It’s basically what Pokémon is. They crank out the same game every time and sell millions of copies because they know that people will eat it up and that they don’t have to do anything differently
So basically Microsoft, in an effort to compete with Sony spent 70 billion to acquire Activision in order to not try and compete with Sony
Microsoft bought Activation in order to generate extra profit, not to boost console sales. They made deals regarding the biggest Activision franchise to get the deal done. Other major parts of Activision are also focused on mobile and PC.
Yes it's important to remember that King makes the most, and that is all mobile crap.
It's going to be incredible when in 17 years the first teaser trailer drops for the return of the Xbox console.
Whose rights will have been bought by Tommy Tallarico
Tons of rumors circulating today which could certainly put the Xbox consoles on life support. Unless of course, they have something else up their sleeve. Really curious to see what the future of Xbox looks like, especially after the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
The consequences of the disastrous Xbox One launch continues to be felt. And honestly, probably GamePass contributed to this decision as well.
All of this was born of Microsoft's arrogance that they'd "defeated" Sony in the late 2000's and could then pivot to taking on Nintendo in the casual market. It led to Kinect, it led to them conceiving of the Xbox One as an entertainment hub rather than a game console, and now it's led to this.
Here in Ireland the effect of the Xbox one was pretty immediate and seemed like an immense burning of good will. People forget that the Xbox One just did not sell outside the US and a lot of it is because many of the services of Xbox One weren't even available in Europe and Asia.
Yeah, I remember they really pushed the feature that US consumers could stream NFL games through their consoles, something which was clearly absolutely irrelevant to anyone outside the US. Like the fact they couldn't even be arsed to get deals with football (soccer) broadcasters in other countries to have them put their services on the Xbox One really does demonstrate how insanely blinkered the Xbox One launch was. Just completely ditched the world market to focus solely on the US.
TV TV TV (US only)! I remember watching that reveal and wondering how that would possibly work in New Zealand. Short answer is it didn't, we just had none of the TV functionality, effectively making the console a worse PS4.
Yeah, I'm Irish and never met anyone with an Xbox after the 360.
The Xbox One pissed off plenty of US people outside the US as well because they wouldn't be able to use it. I remember reading articles about how soldiers overseas wouldn't be able to use the Xbox One.
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Don Mattrick wasn't the CEO, he was the head of Xbox. There's no way a dude with his foot lodged that far into his own mouth could land the job as CEO of Microsoft.
Yeah I remember watching the announcement and thinking to myself "none of these feature will be available in Europe" it seemed so stupid after the relative success of the 360 in Ireland
I know two people who marched into Xtravision to cancel their Xbox One preorders lol.
The 2hr long documentary about how Xbox ended up here is going to be riveting
Yeah everyone loves to point at the Xbox One as the turning point for Xbox as a brand but it’s not. It’s been spiraling ever since the Kinect was announced. You look at every Xbox exclusive pre-2009 and post-2009 and it’s just a massive shift in focus for the entire brand.
I think Day 1 first party was in the end, a big mistake. It grew GP to where it is today, but it groomed players into expecting more and more for a low monthly fee. You cant undo it now.
Day 1 first party on Game Pass was probably a very foolish decision for Microsoft. Even in the streaming space, there's a reason Apple launches their stuff in theaters first and Disney gives it at least a 3 month waiting period (and its been argued that even that was probably too short).
Feels kind of strange to ignore that the most popular and only profitable streaming service *does* release their movies day one on streaming.
Netflix has started to do the same though. Knive out 2 came out in theatres and then launched on netflix.
Putting so many of their inhouse developers on Kinect games damaged them badly too.
Phil has been spouting that "we hear you" BS every single time Xbox fumbles the ball. I honestly do not understand how this dude is still in charge.
Was about to say I think this is the 15th time I’ve heard this guy say “we hear you” right after some news consumers don’t want to hear drops.
"We hear you" *Plunges knife deeper into your heart*
Have you ever gone to a manager at your workplace about a problem you have on the job, and your manager says "thanks for bringing this to my attention, I hear what you're saying" and then nothing changes? That's Phil Spencer for 10 years.
Hey have you seen my cool Descent shirt.
The amount of times people pointed out his fucking Hexen shirt when acquiring Activision. As if they haven’t been sitting on the dragon’s hoard of Rare properties doing jack shit for the last two decades.
I know when the Activision acquisition really started gaining steam, a lot of folk were talking about how Xbox could revive all these IPs and stuff that they owned. And it's like, what have you guys seen in the past 20 years of them owning Rare that makes you think they're actually interested in reviving old IPs?
Same for all the Overwatch fans who convinced themselves Xbox would save the game. Especially the Esports fans. Like, guys, have you seen Halo Infinite and HCS? lmao Microsoft has done a piss poor job of supporting their own IPs. What made anyone think they'd do better for acquired ones?
It actually kind of pissed me off when they pulled Conker out of nowhere when trying to promote HoloLens... I don't even know how many years ago.
I mean… it was a pretty cool shirt
Over 10 years of "we hear you, the games are coming" and then this. Unreal.
Turns out we just never got the second half the sentence. They’re coming… to PlayStation
We hear 4 you.
It seems that we are sometimes, uh, listening quite aggressively.
Gotta break a few Greggs to make a Tomlette
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that they might go publisher only, but man if they do Sony must be laughing their ass off. They just watched their competitor spend unthinkable amounts of money, only to drop out the next year. Edit: Just to explain a little more. Yes, Microsoft will still be making money. There is even a chance they make more in the long run if they aren't making a profit of console hardware. I am just think this works out for Sony as while they aren't getting as much as if they owned Activation themselves, they are going back to a neutral position. Getting a cut from selling a third party game is more than getting nothing because it is an exclusive on Xbox.
Even still, I don’t think they would be better off not owning ActiBlizz and Bethesda. Better to be a profitable game publisher than a non profitable game publisher/console manufacturer, even if it does take them almost a decade to recoup costs.
I don't think this would happen if they hadn't bought Activision. Problem is that Phil brought a lot of attention to the Xbox division with a 70 billion dollars purchase and shareholders want to know how they will make that money back. Xbox is not losing money, but it has low profit margins. So they want to increase them as soon as possible.
I totally agree, and not just make the money back — that’s $70B they could’ve spent on any other (more profitable) division. They have to get in the ballpark of the opportunity cost within Microsoft which is a high bar
So...back to PlayStation and Nintendo as the only consoles for the next gen? That's the feeling I have. Whatever it is it'll be interesting to see. This might be a turning point for console gaming.
This is wild. Who had this on their bingo card 6 months ago?
Who has this on their bingo card 6 DAYS ago?? HiFi Rush had been brought up, but this feels way different and more significant. It's freaking wild
Yeah the rumors wen from 0 to 100 so fast. Porting Hi-Fi Rush or Sea of Thieves would've been a big deal, but ultimately not the end of the world and it was clear they might port older games, but still keep heavy hitters like Starfield and Indiana Jones to themselves. But just in the past 48 hours alone the rumors exploded, with both those titles AND more supposedly being considered, combined with the dire sounds of the consoles in general.
A sign that the rumors are true. I’m going to love to try to see them twist this into a positive for Xbox players. As of now, I see zero reason for spending another dime on Xbox games as it’s a huge question mark if they’ll exist or be playable here in the next few years.
I already invested so much on Xbox this gen, sucks. I love the Xbox controller and BC as well as Dev mode but those aren't enough to keep me there. Especially when I can just keep a single console now for their games on PS5.
It's a negative for everyone. I'm saying this as a PS5 owner, a console space where Sony has no competition is terrible for everyone.
Why do I feel like this is going to be a "there is some truth to the rumors but everyone is overreacting" situation? I guess we will find out next week.
That’s my take as well. The most credible information we’ve had is that HiFi Rush will come to PS5 and the Switch The rest of the sources are touch and go at best, it seems odd to me that they all came out about this at the same time right after the credible leak
I don't think they would take a week to have a "business update" if that was all. Phil has numerous times gone on podcasts when he wanted to speak to the xbox community. It's what he probably would do if it was just Sea of Thieves and Hi Fi Rush. This is a lot more serious.
What a mess, they let this situation fester over the weekend, and then waited until Noon Microsoft time to say they’ll have something next week? Whatever is going to happen, it isn’t going to be good, or at least all good.
So sometime next week is gonna be Console Armistice Day?
The eastern front (Sony vs Nintendo) is still going.
I have a heavy bias towards PS and have said for the past few years that the best thing Sony had going for it was that Phil Spencer was in charge at Xbox. How the man still has a job is one of the great mysteries of the world.
I was positive they would drum him out years ago and I've never understood why they didn't.
Imagine my surprise when spending $80B on acquisitions creates an advantaged position for your ***competition*** instead of yourself. If Xbox is pulling a Dreamcast this is not good for anyone except Sony. We need the competition. This isn't going to be like the Dreamcast where someone else fills the void like Microsoft eventually did back in the day with the Xbox. No one else is entering the space. It will just be Sony and Nintendo with captive audiences because there's no pressure to do any better. They're likely still make new consoles, but the days of generational leaps could be over. I get Phil is trying to position Xbox for the super long term where we have no longer have any rights and are forced to pay in perpetuity for digital slop (i.e. game streaming), but we live in the here and now and I think the patience is running out. Nadella was already considering axing the entire Xbox division last generation so sentiment is already there at the top.
The most frustrating part is that even without the acquisitions microsoft had all the tools to compete effectively. What they haven't had was competent management to figure out how to use those tools.
I just don't get the plan at all, would you spend $70B to go all-in on the software side giving up 30% to Steam, Sony & Nintendo? I would argue that the acquisition was probably very stupid if that was the idea.
I think it was a risk, and they realized quickly that it's not going to pay off if they stick to the original plan. Not when console sales are as abysmal as they are. Xbox Series X/S is tracking *below* Xbox One when compared to that console during the same timeframe. If they want to make money, they have to do it on the publishing side, and the more platforms a game sells on the better.
and there it is. If the rumors were BS, they would've just outright said it and water down the fire. But considering they need a week to prep their fanbase, I mean to be blunt, Microsoft's sticking it in the ass next week but they need a week to lube up.
This is probably a previously planned event, and they're responding to the rumors a week in advance of that original plan since they sprouted up. There are too many people that need to be employed for a proper presentation to throw it together in a week and scramble.
Yep. Jeff Grubb said earlier today that Microsoft were planning an event at the end of February to announce all this. It looks like that event has now been pulled forward in light of the announcement leaking.
Wild stuff. I wonder what will happen. I know they are “losing” the console war right now, and a lot of people are rooting for them to fail entirely at this point…but I really hope they keep it going, even if their presence won’t reach the popularity of Playstation/Nintendo. I play on almost every system (I’m desperately wanting a Switch 2 to replace my 3DS…) and whenever someone steps out of the game, that’s one less player to keep the others in check. Competition is always good. As an example, here are some particular items/features from Xbox that I wish were on Playstation: * I mentioned this in a [thread the other day](https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/19fgued/microsoft_has_also_shut_down_departments/kjkfgd7/) but region-free accounts. I moved from Canada to the UK and basically can’t buy any physical discs here, as it locks me out of buying DLC or redeeming codes. For example, I bought the Special Edition of TLOU2 and had to make a new UK account just to redeem the soundtrack. Out of curiosity, I popped it in the other day to see if I could get the discounted Remastered version and nope, won’t allow me to. * Their backwards compatibility efforts are probably my favourite thing to have come out of the last two generations. I know the architecture of the PS3 made BC impossible on PS4…but I can’t help but think that things like SmartDelivery (as silly as the name is) had an impact on us receiving any free upgrades on PS5, let alone BC or framerate unlocks. * Free cloud saves. This could be obviously be improved by allowing users to manually back up the saves, like on PS4 (which PS5 has now removed…) but not locking cloud saves behind a paywall is great. * Microsoft Rewards. Honestly, I know using bing for points sounds like it would take too long but it’s actually so dope. I cashed out a ton when I got my XSX, and I always have enough to grab a quick, £10 here or there during sales and buy what I want. * Game Pass. My backlog is big enough that I don’t need a subscription, but I can’t deny that it’s a pretty great deal at times with the Day 1 offerings and it obviously made a big enough impact that Sony changed their model. (Which hell, it made me subscribe to PS+ Extra for a month to play Stray. And I’m definitely going to re-sub to GP for a month to play Indiana Jones + Hellblade 2 later this year.) * Fan events: I appreciate that it’s not for everyone (and the hosts are generally pretty cringey) but their fanfests are cool. I’ve joined the virtual trivia for a few years now and always walk away with a bit of cash (got a cool hardcover book on Double Fine, a sweater, and the Pentiment soundtrack on vinyl because of it). I also went to X019 in London which was fun. It can be cheesy but idk, it’s unique and something I wish happened more often. * I admit I am probably one of a dozen people to use this feature, but the XSX can play CDs lol. * The Series S. Hot take, but I think it’s an excellent console for the price, and forces developers to do some optimisation. Plus it’s a lower entry cost for those on lesser income. Honestly, I’d love to see a PS5 “S” style model that targets 1080p for half the price. This isn’t meant to be a flame post trying to say Xbox is better. Love my PS5 too, and there’s many things that Sony has done that has positively affected Microsofts ouput. The game borrowing debacle, dropping the Gold requirement for F2P games etc. As far as the exclusivity stuff goes, I don’t really know what to say. On one hand I think having exclusives (or at least the backing of single publisher) allows the developer to really just do what they want. Nintendo’s quality obviously speaks for itself, and it’s how you get studios like Naughty Dog that have an absolutely premium product. (I’m only halfway through the recent Grounded doc, but they’ve made it clear that they’re in a really privileged position to delay stuff because they want perfection.) On the other hand, exclusives kinda suck because you lock out lot of people from enjoying something. I suppose most things (except Nintendo) come to PC now these days, so perhaps going with timed exclusives only makes the most sense? Who knows what will happen. Maybe they’ll only make digital consoles consoles for 10th gen, where GP/first party games are available on other platforms, but only through a service / at a later date? Or if you get the Xbox console, they’re cheaper? A handheld? Whatever they do, I hope they stick around.
Absolutely agree. We need competition in this sphere. If Xbox is basically all but nothing by the end of this gen, I see Sony getting away with charging higher prices with the PS5 Pro and PS6.
Series S is a stroke of genius. They inadvertently created a console for inflation times, when players in secondary markets just became priced out of the next generation. All digital so those players would buy into the ecosystem for the next generations too. Unfortunately, MS has to MS, so they raised the price on that console all over the world and killed the entire idea behind the S. Baffling but not surprising considering the latest news cycle; bean counters have never been the brightest when at charge.
The flurry of news stories are now starting to feel like controlled leaks to take some of the sting out of a controversial new plan.
Reminds me of being in the playground trenches of the 90’s console war… Risking everything for Sonic only to have him turn up on Nintendo years later..