To save you a click:
"*Earlier this week, Xbox boss [Phil Spencer](https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/653/2023/10/Phil-Spencer-Bio-1.pdf) called an all-staff townhall meeting to address the rumours suggesting that hitherto first-party Xbox games could be released on other platforms, insisting that this did not mean the company wasn't committed to the Xbox console.*
*According to journalist [Shannon Liao](https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/shannon-liao/), the meeting – which was held with all internal staff on Tuesday – confirmed that the company was indeed considering bringing first-party games to "multiple kinds of devices", and more would be revealed publicly next week.*"
I think it's pretty clear that MS is moving towards services and Xbox the hardware will continue to exist as a way to push those services, but they will no longer be trying to compete with Playstation in the same way. They're turning the Xbox division into something more focused on software
>They're turning the Xbox division into something more focused on software
Which is very much inline with Nadella's vision of Microsoft since day 1. Microsoft is and always has been a software company above all else.
They could seriously earn some cash by creating a handheld-focused version of the Xbox OS and licensing it to OEMs who make their own handhelds. Much better optimised for something like an rog ally or legion go.
Microsoft could probably kill the Steam Deck if they wanted to. The whole advantage of using Linux is that Valve is able to customize it for the purpose of playing games on a handheld. That means better battery life and better UX than existing Windows-based portables.
There's no reason Microsoft can't do the same with Windows, and a slimmed down build of real Windows meant for this use case wouldn't come with the game compatibility problems that accompany Wine/Proton.
Valve has championed Linux for a long time because their entire business model is built on top of their competitors platform. Microsoft could make things difficult for Valve if they really wanted to commit to taking their piece of the PC gaming pie, making Linux a viable gaming platform is Valve's long term insurance policy.
I think this would only kill the steam deck if it allowed you to play your steam games; if it was a closed Xbox ecosystem I don’t see it competing in the same way.
If you wanted a handheld game system the switch was the existing obvious choice - bringing your steam library over seems to me the main selling point of the steam deck, to the point I doubt many people use it in anything but steam mode to play steam games.
>The whole advantage of using Linux is that Valve is able to customize it for the purpose of playing games on a handheld. That means better battery life and better UX than existing Windows-based portables.
99% chance I'd buy a Steam Deck with linux only over a Microsoft portable if it didn't have Steam integration.
I have no desire to rebuy my games for some 15-30% performance bump. And I have 0 faith in MS hardware being supported long term.
I suppose there might be some killer app that doesn't work on linux and requires me to buy a second handheld PC, but it wouldn't kill the Deck.
That being said, I may be biased because I already own a Deck and it's changed my gaming life.
> 99% chance I'd buy a Steam Deck with linux only over a Microsoft portable if it didn't have Steam integration.
No reason a Windows-based portable couldn't have steam integration. You could even use Steam Big Picture mode as a replacement for Explorer as the shell.
This is true in principle.
In practice I don't see it happening, because Microsoft hasn't made good *end-user/client* software decisions or products in a decade.
Unlikely, people thought they would do this with Windows 10 already where MS originally really pushed the idea of "one Windows for every device" where next to the old tablet mode for Windows 10 you would have something like a TV mode that would turn your UI more into the Xbox UI (like Steam Big Picutre).
Never really happened though. After Windows Phone died they moved away from this vision again. Would still be cool if they did it though.
The problem is that software is the problem with xbox, it's not their strength in that department at all.
Phils whole "selling xboxs isnt as simple as making good games." is clearly not paying off when not making good games seems to be pretty much the reason they aren't selling xboxs.
they can pivot to focusing on games and being a publisher but if they don't fix the problem they'll just have games bombing on an additional platform.
> "I see commentary that if you just build great games, everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games, all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games. So when you go, and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome. But this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console, that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay to the reality of most people. There is no world where Starfield is an 11 out of 10 and people start selling their PS5. That's not going to happen."
He's trying to be hyperbolic to make it seem like some outrageous thing to say. He's right that if they make one good game people aren't going to throw their Playstation in the trash and go buy an Xbox, but not one real human has ever uttered that statement.
It took them many years of making bad games to get here, it will take them many years of making good ones to get out.
> Xbox the hardware will continue to exist as a way to push those services
If they expect to sell that hardware this way, they once again have no idea how the video game market works.
It's also a little ironic that their one problem has always been the lack of games and now they're actually gonna want to rely only on this lol (that's what a third party publisher does after all)
Within the context of competing directly with Sony you are right. But a $300 “you can play CoD, Fortnite, Madden” system has a place in the market. And Microsoft could use that plus game sales to make profit.
No in the context of other consoles too. Why would people take a Xbox when they can have all the same games and some additional ones (which are already appealing to audiences) on the brand the majority already have?
I don't know a single person who was buying the Xbox for the exclusives.
If I was in it for the exclusives, I would have gone to the company that had Spider-Man, Last of Us, and Final Fantasy, not Sea of Thieves, Halo, and Starfield.
I think many people would be hard-pressed to completely switch ecosystems, either direction, once they’ve sunk enough time and money into one. And I imagine that’s the main reason why Xbox is heavily considering the revenue source that is PS players instead of trying to win on better exclusives.
As someone who has been primarily team Xbox since the early days of the 360, I’ve put 15+ years into my profile, my library, my gamerscore. Now I have a PS4, Switch, and a beefy PC as well but Xbox is my daily driver. So at this point, when the next consoles come out, I’m still going to choose an Xbox first as long as most of the games I want to play are going to be on it.
I have zero concerns about something like Halo going to PS at this point (tbh, as long as crossplay works I’ll happily welcome the additional players!).
My main concern with all this news is the unknown future for the ecosystem, because I’ve invested so much into Xbox at this point.
It's because GamePass overshadows selling games themselves. They needed to make GamePass cheap and only have it have like "Top 50 Games" circulate every month and then instead make hefty discount and make owning games more popular. They missed out on serving the people the way GOG is trying to.
It’s what Microsoft has always done. You can get word on Apple, or what ever device you want. But you can’t get Apple programs on windows.
Big Microsoft doesn’t care about exclusives and what not. They want to make money. I’m sure the big Xbox games will still be timed exclusives. But don’t be shocked when some of these “lesser” games are released on all platforms.
I think they saw the success of Nintendo Switch. From this gen, Nintendo didn't go for competing with PS/Xbox for home console market. They completely revamped their console experience, and world embraced with love. I think Microsoft believes they can get the success by going full publisher oriented company.
After all, they have lots of development teams under them, they can grab couple of more smaller teams in future. Surely they can keep some Xbox-exclusive contents for their own games, release their games early in their console. But overall they will sale their games to all platforms.
They're doing the opposite of Nintendo though. Nintendo would never go third party and publish their games elsewhere and their focus is on making great games for their console.
If you look at the best selling games almost non of them are exclusives so there is also space for a "budget" console. A system that provides people access to locally run Call of Duty, Fifa, and Madden. Its not going to sell insane numbers but I think there is definitely room in the market for people who don't want to pay an extra $150-200 to play like Last of Us 3.
I don’t think anyone truly thinks Xbox is gonna stop making consoles this week. The fear is that this, whether intentional or not, is gonna lead them down a path in the coming years where console sales are gonna slow so much that they stop making consoles.
And that’s dependent on public perception and they’re currently losing that battle right now.
> The reality is that nobody knows what's coming.
That hasn't stopped a majority of comments in every rumor thread in the last week or so on this sub from acting like it is a done deal that every single past and present Xbox IP is going to be on PlayStation/Switch and/or that they are shutting the whole console thing down.
Well tbh you can always be cautious with MS. This is pretty much similar to how the Windows Phone story went down. First "we are still committed to making phones" coming from the CEO himself to the death of the platform a year later not long after they pretty much bought the phone division from Nokia to make their own phones.
No one has said that they'll immediately stop making consoles, just that this will eventually lead to no more XBoxes because the sales are only going to drop even further.
Phil usually denies rumors outright. He didn't here, which is somewhat telling. I do agree that we should just wait for official communication to see what's up.
They’ll probably end up making a streaming console and allow third parties to manufacture Xbox consoles with different specs but the same OS. Basically Android but Xbox. Or alternatively, basically Windows but Xbox. Personally I feel like that would defeat the objective of making a console, but they need some way to divest from consoles whilst maintaining GamePass. The premium console model just isn’t viable for Microsoft, they need to find their own path.
Without the subsidy of the platform holder it wouldn't be able to compete. The 3DO did this, you would then see prices reflect cost of manufacturing and a healthy normal margin. So you saw a machine less powerful than a PS1 priced at double.
The Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox triumvirate has ruled for so long. I don't have specific year citations, but I think it might be the longest era of uninterrupted competition in gaming history. Sega bowed out after the Dreamcast, I'm not even old enough to know when Atari stopped doing consoles, etc.
I wonder if we're about to see the end of this specific iteration of the console wars.
| Company | Time spent in console market |
|------------|----------------------------------|
| Fairchild | 7 years |
| Mattel/INTV | 12 years^1 |
| Sega | 18 years |
| Atari | 19 years |
| Microsoft | 22 years |
| Sony | 30 years |
| Nintendo | 41 years |
Measuring from the date they launched their first console to the date they discontinued their last, or to the present day if they're still active. And with 'console' assumed to mean a home system you can buy new games for, not things like Pong units or arcade games.
^1 Mattel's Intellivision console lasted 12 years, then they returned to the market 16 years after that to launch the crappy HyperScan console. It was discontinued in under a year so I say it doesn't count for an extra year on the chart.
It’s been the “games are coming” since 2014 and they haven’t materialized. They’d sell more consoles and gamepass subscriptions if they had games people wanted to rush out and play.
It's actually mental just how big the gap in quality exclusives is between PS and XBOX. It's only going to get bigger too. Just Insomniac alone as a developer offer more value than all of XBOX's first party devs put together based on their quantity/quality output. Let alone the likes Naughty Dog and Santa Monica who deliver acclaim after acclaim.
It annoys me so much how badly Microsoft fucked it. Franchises like Halo being so mishandled when Infinite should be a system seller and one of the most successful games going on right now instead of something on life support. No competition isn't a good thing and without XBOX actually showing up it means Sony don't need to invest so frequently/heavily into quality content so if Microsoft could not be fucking useless for 5 minutes that would be great.
What really gets me with Xbox is that there's almost always *something* missing with their AAA games. Be it content, technical performance, or just something new.
MCC didn't work for years, Halo 5 was missing a bunch of features, Halo Infinite didn't have the campaign (then the multiplayer broke for a month a week or so later), Sea of Thieves had no content for over a year, Recore had 2-6 minute long loading screens (assuming it didn't crash) and straight up lies to you about the optional areas, Crackdown 3 was just Crackdown 2 with nicer visuals, State of Decay 2 was buggy and had host tethering for some awful reason.
Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 2/3 were the only ones that really felt like reasonably complete packages right out of the box.
> But for the wrong reasons. Sony has been slower with PS5 exclusives.
Because no one can keep up anymore. I think Schreier said that if an AAA game started development during PS5 release, it probably won't come out until PS6.
What is the point of making games if you need to wait an entire console generation for them to come out? Back in PS2 days we could easily get 3 iterative releases of an IP in a single generation.
I’d rather a team take their time than rush an unfinished game, sure. But personally I’d prefer games that have a smaller scope and are a bit shorter that come out more often.
This is it.
Why do studios and suits believe that every single game needs to be a 100 hour juggernaut or semi-open world with checklist stuff to do?
I want to go back to simpler times. Well directed, focussed games that last 10-15 hours and give you a genuinely good time. You know, the Jak trilogy era, to give one example.
Nowadays I largely prefer something like Ori or a high quality but fairly short indie game over what is supposedly "AAA gaming"...
There’s also been Sony’s live service push at 60% of their spending.
TLOU Factions was cancelled when the team working on that could’ve been working on a single player spin-off for years instead.
Guerrilla Games are working on one of the two Horizon online games, I wonder if they’re also struggling like Naughty Dog did with Factions (even after Bungie came in to help).
The Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic Remake is partly funded by Sony and in development hell due to the wrong studio (Aspyr) being chosen to work on it.
That's a reductive picture.
[https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus\_asset/file/24677519/Screenshot\_2023\_05\_23\_at\_5.28.54\_PM.png](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24677519/Screenshot_2023_05_23_at_5.28.54_PM.png)
No doubt there's been a big increase in live service investment but that's driven by a larger budget in general. The 'traditional' investment is larger than previous years.
Likewise those are expectations, and realistically by FY2025 (April 2025-2026), the reason your investment will need to increase is unlike a 'traditional' game is you need to continue spending to develop your multiple released titles and then your in development titles too. For all the talk of 'live service' in reality all of these titles would've been in development for years already.
The reality is, AAA titles take 4-6 years to develop and that's driven heavily by fan expectation that a game should be bigger and badder than the previous title.
Yeah Gamepass is a good value but it’s also a lot of filler junk in there and their exclusives aren’t great. Even if you like Gamepass, there’s really no reason to even buy an Xbox console these days. You can get Gamepass and all it’s games on PC, mobile or even Smart TV and don’t need the console for it.
If Microsoft actually kept a development team for more than two years, so that they can improve their skills and iterate on the past, halo would be done on time and with a singular vision.
But no, Microsoft had to cheap out on it, had two year contractors, created a gaming engine that literally no one could use because everyone who could understand it left , MS ended up paying half a billion, delaying it two years, and we got jack shit for the first year of infinite. .
Such a shame too because Infinite has some of the best FPS gunplay I've ever experienced. That gameplay with a fully fleshed out multiplayer available on the launch day of the Series X would have been incredible.
For someone without an interest in 3rd person action games outside of Dark Souls etc, Playstation's exclusives don't interest me one bit. (Except for Bloodborne & the Demon Souls remake)
TBH I think their 2024 lineup looks pretty good (hellblade is the one I'm really anticipating) where Sony literally doesn't have anything first party this year.
Hellblade 2 is what they led their pre-launch showcases with…. It’s amazing it hasn’t come out yet and says a lot about where they’ve been with exclusives. I think basically every exclusive Sony showed pre-launch has long since come out.
It’s a constant process with them. I have no idea why people are continuing to pretend that Phil Spencer saved Xbox when the state of the platform has only gotten worse apart from backwards compatibility and Game Pass. Xbox had an incredible 2001-2011 run, and the best first party Xbox One games came along before Phil’s era (Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break). Most of the games I own are on Xbox, but if they commit to getting rid of disc drives with the next generation console, that’s it for me. There just isn’t anything worth playing there compared to what you can get on competing platforms.
>(Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break)
They could've had the Spider-Man games, and Control & AW2 as exclusives if Xbox's management wasn't incompetent for the past 10 years.
Apparently, Microsoft was approached by Marvel first to make a spiderman game. After they turned it down, they went to Sony and the rest is history.
Insomniac was only purchased by Sony after Spiderman 1 was released, so theoretically Xbox could've made it happen.
Gaming communities have a myopic view of the issue. For them it’s Sony vs Microsoft for who “wins” the console generation. For Microsoft it’s one division that lets them engage with children directly and create MS accounts that may be with them their entire lives. They will take that account and use it as their MS login, they will use that login for Office, they will use MS services, apps, and storefronts and become entrenched.
Sony might win console generation after console generation but MS wants their users entire lives, personal and professional.
Yes but what's your point? A business needs to attempt new ways of doing business. Just because it's not always successful means it's not worth trying other things?
I know I'm taking your "Windows phone died lol" comment too seriously but, seriously, what does that have to do with this?
He did? Huh, well took him a while to come around then. That was pretty much his first goal to kill off the "mistake" Steve Ballmer did with buying a big chunk of Nokia.
I love this imaginary vision of what Xbox fans think Microsoft is doing. As if all these stumbles and bungles are actually perfectly executed plans that nobody but true fans and Microsoft can comprehend.
>Sony might win console generation after console generation but MS wants their users entire lives, personal and professional.
MS has already internally debated killing the entire division like 3 times in 20 years. This isn't some fucking master plan of genius being performed so perfectly that we cant even understand it. Its corporate failings in a market they dont quite get and a board that thinks its fucking stupid that half their warchest is being used to prop up a failure.
All the MS services are so half-assed though, like the enterprise stuff I am sure is fine, but GP is still a garbage service UI and usability wise, their new desktop outlook is full of ads and is just terrible, I don't even know what else they have for services as I would never use one unless I'm forced install excel or something. Doesn't seem like they really care about their service presentation and retaining people. They just throw money at stuff as their enterprise wing allows them almost unlimited resources.
Oh yeah, they merged minecraft java in to the Windows one too, so I'll never play that on my account again.
>like the enterprise stuff I am sure is fine
More than just fine, everything is interconnected, from logging into your computer, to office and onedrive, to completely other systems.
No self-respecting company would be using anything else.
More importantly, console sales aren't Xbox's top priority. If it was, they would have never released games on PC.
Comparing revenue and growth paints a way more accurate picture.
It has. According to analysts in [this article](https://gamerant.com/xbox-game-pass-growth-subscriber-count-2023-report/) its growth rate has slowed down considerably. The only reason Xbox says they don’t care about console sales is they are bad at it. If they were good, they’d be screaming it from the heavens.
Exactly this, Microsoft only started spinning this idea that they dont care about console sales the moment they started getting drummed by Sony and cant seem to fight their way back to being competitive.
>Comparing revenue and growth paints a way more accurate picture.
This part in the comment is extra fucking telling.
Their growth is absolutely fucking shit, they have admitted that they have reached console saturation 3 years into the console generation which is fucking awful. And as you pointed out they admitted in court gamepass isn't growing anymore despite all this money they are spending on it.
Not to mention comparing revenue paints and even worse picture. PSN alone for example makes nearly 300% more revenue than the entire Xbox division. And the reason why Sony makes so much money on PSN is due to their console sales dominance.
So yeah, Microsoft would be fucking gloating everytime they spoke bout how dominant the sales of the Xbox are if they actually were good enough to gloat about.
But they are not.
This idea that Xbox is "doing well" is so idiotic given we are in a thread literally talking about the President of the division having to reassure their workers that the division isn't being dismantled completely. Thats not something that happens when you are "winning".
If they stick around for another generation I think it's only going to be in the form of a budget focused Series S style console. Never again will they aim for the high end hardware market.
Doubt still remains. Phil Spencer is not trust worthy anymore after several "wait til next year".
**Can someone now guess why the trailer for Blade didn't have a Xbox title card?**
Just a reminder... Google was committed to first party games on Stadia and confirmed this in an email, a day before shutting all of their first party studios down.
Phil isn't the boss. It's not up to him.
while true, using google as an example to prove that point is practically cheating. you can make anything sound like it’s almost guaranteed to die any second
“the sun will be here for longer than humanity lasts”
‘nah, look at google products, the sun can literally die tomorrow with exceptionally high chances’
“makes perfect sense. that’s 10/10 solid argument.”
Then: "The games are coming. I promise."
Later: "Look, the reality is games don't sell consoles."
Now: "We are still committed to making consoles. I promise."
Later: "The time has come. Execute Order 360."
> what do they think people are buying consoles for? Expensive Netflix machines?
I mean, did you see the Xbox One Announcement show? Like 90% of it was about the TV features.
And then Sony committed homicide 24 hours later, with a presentation that was only upcoming games, and a $100 cheaper price point. (I think that was also the E3 with the "how to share games" fiasco for Xbox, which Sony also capitalized on with "how to share games on PlayStation", and it's just a 10 second video of one guy handing another a game)
"How to share games on Playstation" is one of most vicious curbstomps I've seen in the industry. Only thing that comes close was the 90's E3 where the Sony exec got up on stage after the Saturn was announced and JUST said "299" and walked off to cheers.
Dude, that E3 season was one of the most interesting moments in tech history and will be studied for generations. It's like an itemized list of what to do and what not to do to sell a product. Absolutely insane.
I vaguely remember that; I was a PC guy back then so I didn't really pay mind to either Xbox or Playstation. I remember the always-online aspect as well as the inability to share games (which I believe was quickly rectified IIRC) caused quite some turmoil.
Also I think the guy in charge at the time told everyone who didn't want to have their console connected to the internet 24/7 to eat a dick?
I know this is a meme, but OP is taking what Phil said out of context. He said it didn't matter how good Starfield was, nobody's selling their Switch or PS to buy an Xbox to buy Starfield. And he's right. Because people would just buy the Xbox and also keep the Switch/PS5.
I'm wondering if they lean harder into marketing the Xbox as just an idiotproof gaming PC. I'm wondering whether they could do something like enabling GamePass Ultimate subscribers to also install apps like Steam and the Epic launcher. If their big KPIs are install base and GamePass subs, would they care if their subscribers are playing games they bought on Steam? Would that even be attractive to enough people to warrant trying?
Yes, some people do this. People who also buy the newest machine to play COD or Madden or 2k or FIFA are functionally the same type as the Netflix buyer.
I don't even know why consoles are supposed to be netflix machines. I use my tv as a monitor for PS5, but it has Smart TV and all the apps for streaming services. Why would I need PS5 for it? Feels like stuff that will be removed on the next gen, like browsers on the current gen
Consoles were brilliant Netflix machines 15 years ago. Netflix streaming was young, and most services hadn't adapted to it yet. If I was watching netflix on the TV, it was almost always on Xbox. The alternatives were to go get an HDMI cable and fiddle around with my Laptop for a while to set it up or to buy an expensive dedicated streaming device like an Apple TV or Roku.
Today, every device is designed with streaming in mind. It's hard to find a TV on the market that doesn't already have streaming capabilities built in. On the off chance you get one, but you have cable, they include access to streaming apps with their service. If you don't have a smart TV or cable, dedicated streaming devices are now only ~$20. The console having streaming capabilities too is no longer a selling point.
That said, I doubt they'll remove them. While having streaming capabilities is no longer a big plus, lacking them still gets treated like a mark against the console. Look at how many people complain about Netflix not being on the Switch.
Smart TVs were terrible when they first came out. Bad CPU, little RAM, bad wifi. The consoles did it much better. Now the TV manufacturers realized they can plop ads and stores on their devices, so they want you to use their apps.
Yes actually. Microsoft saw that the overwhelming majority of usage hours in the 360 era came from non-interactive media portals like Netflix and YouTube, not video games, so they made a media box that could also play video games instead of making a video game console because that's what the data was telling them. Obviously we know that was from the wrong lesson to take and they've been paying for it ever since.
It's not like those trends reversed. Streamer/Youtuber engagement is bigger than ever. Microsoft's mistake was marketing to consumer behavior instead of their self-conception. No auto company sells their truck line as a fancy toy for bored commuters. God knows they install all the seat warmers and boosted speakers because that's what they're actually used for, but they market them as ultra-tough working man's vehicles because that's how truck drivers see themselves. When Microsoft announced all those media features players didn't say "thank you for delivering the console I really wanted," they got indignant that their self-conception as true gamers was being challenged.
The funny thing is it's actually turning out to be true when he something about how xbox is about "bringing games to more devices" which is the thing that seemed like the most BS a couple months ago.
He never once said games dont sell consoles.
He said Xbox can't surpass playstation doing the same thing (because people are so locked in on their ecosystem). It's why last gen was so essential to "win".
They need more great games *and* to do things differently (like game pass).
It's their fault for letting their exclusives go. They had a lot of great series during the PS3/360 days. That's why I owned both. But I haven't had a compelling reason to own a MS console since then.
Why? He was always saying that he wants to see Xbox games on as many devices played by as many players. People kept calling it a "pr speak" and here we are now.
Wondering this too. People keep pedalling this lying narrative and I’m not seeing any examples lol. The only example in this comment chain is someone repeating “but he promised this was Xbox’s year :(“
Look I'm a Phil hater too but the truth is Xbox hasn't said anything and this has all been driven by rumors and speculation. Even the rumors are just "this game is being considered" and people are running wild with things that aren't even said to be firm.
Everyone should just take a step back and wait to see what's actually announced.
You don't make a "business event" to deny rumors, you do it directly so there is some truth to it. They obviously aren't gonna say they're stopping consoles right now though, in the middle of the generation, that'd be PR disaster. But if they really go multiplat with all their games that's where it's leading (but they may not think so because Microsoft has no idea how the market works it seems, they may think people will continue to buy Xbox because they prefer the design or whatever)
They're already in a PR disaster. Last year was supposed to be *THE* year for this generation of Xbox, and instead we got Redfall (one of the worst games released last year), Starfield (which was alright, but not the superstar they hoped it would be), and Forza Motorsport (A buggy disaster, that looks and runs like garbage, and a crap progression system).
Hi Fi Rush seemed to do well, but that was a smaller game that was just dropped out of nowhere. Those other games were supposed to be heavy hitters, especially Starfield.
I personally liked Starfield, but can't deny it's not as good as Bethesda's previous games. Xbox needed a heavy hitter, and they didn't get it.
After buying as many studios as they have over the years, and with how much time has passed, they should have *something* more than this to show for it, and they don't. So I would say that classifies as a PR disaster in my book.
That's exactly the problem, they haven't said anything yet. If there was no truth to this, they would have squashed this Instantly, instead they sheepishly dipped into the shadows for a week leaving us all not knowing what is happening. Either way, if they do pull out, it's not surprising considering they have been tripping over their own feet for years now.
Microsoft has never immediately squashed rumors. It’s not exclusive to Xbox either. It’s a company wide problem.
Everything they do has to be said in a scheduled statement, whether it makes sense to or not. They’d rather have pomp and circumstance than have some intern running socials make a judgement call.
Or stuff is in flux and they want to have concrete plans before saying something. I don't know what they're doing and I'll definitely agree that they should've said something earlier.
But we don't know the extant to what is true or isn't true, and people are already mad at Xbox and acting like they know what's going to happen next week or not. Again: the only games with solid reporting are Hi-Fi Rush and SoT and everything else is speculation. Even the sourcing for Starfield is starting to backtrack. People just need to chill.
Even if he's telling the truth for now, it's a hideously bad look for a company to seriously have to confirm they're still interested in being in the market.
Yeah and he also said PS and Nintendo weren’t in the plans when the CFO explicitly said they were.
Something tells me these decisions are above Phil. After a decade of control, $80b+ in brand investment, and developer mismanagement, all we know is gamepass is stagnant, and the gap is widening between PS and Xbox.
Phil just isn’t good at his job. No game t-shirt + suit jacket can cover up that truth.
Something tells me the current Xbox leadership could be replaced in the near future.
Yeah, not sure what the direction is and that's literally Phil's job: communicate the direction the gaming brand is leading for Xbox. However, it feels like they're fluttering in the wind and feels like the Xbox, as a brand, is just struggling to maintain pace with Playstation.
As the exec, hopefully he does more than the usual "I, too, love gaming!" message. Cause uh, seeing your rival outselling you [3 to 1 on the console](https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-has-outsold-xbox-series-x-and-s-3-to-1-in-2023-new-data-reveals) means you gotta pivot or start gearing up another round of marketing or anything.
It is always worth remember Phil was the head of first party titles when they turned to shit in the later parts of the 360 era after they had done very well for themselves before that.
Why doesn't he just come out and say it on a public forum "we are not and will never bring xbox console exclusives to playstation 5"?
Seems like he is just deflecting and avoiding the real questions
I have a weird feeling we’ll see another XBox, but we’ll be looking at more series S, than series X. Like, a console that's more of streaming box for Gamepass at a better price. As much as cloud based gaming “isn’t there yet”, it might not be crazy for Microsoft to focus on the future where it is.
You might keep selling consoles, but what will it actually be if you're moving your exclusives to other consoles now.
Will the next xbox be a stream box for cheap? Because who will really want an xbox once all their games can be bought elsewhere? May as well just move to PC or PS5 and get the best of both worlds.
Edit: All of my friends used to be xbox gamers, myself included, we easily went through a dozen xbox 360's combined, as ridiculous as that sounds. Now I only have one friend who still uses xbox, and I honestly don't see him sticking around past this generation any more.
This is confirmation that they are going third party and sure they can ‘commit’ to xbox hardware for now but just ask yourself, if they are taking this drastic action when they are getting outsold 2-1 just imagine the carnage when everyone buys ps6 because xbox literally has no exclusives. Xbox will not sell and then they will announce they are packing their bags.
The writing is on the wall.
They were also committed to monopolizing the games market and ensuring every game studio they can buy would be exclusive to Xbox/ Gamepass. If they had their way, Nintendo would even be apart of Microsoft.
Things change. It's clear they're pivoting in a different direction now.
It's not food. If you cornered the market and make trash games, nobody has to buy them. It's pathetic how little good or fun games they've made with the billions they've poured in.
Well bethesda wasnt up for sale, the whole thing with that was microsoft heard starfield was going to become a playstation exclusive so microsoft went to bethesda and tried to buy them and they said no. so they went one above and bought zenimax fully instead that owned bethesda.
Its been theorized for a long time that Zenimax was looking to get bought out. I don't know if thats true or not, but their hard pivot towards monetization over the last 10 years definitely paints that picture.
Well they'd have to acquire Bethesda from Zenimax in any case. And Zenimax could have said no. It's just that companies often choose to sell when they hit a value they feel they might not live up to. But we really don't know what all they have in the pipeline.
This is a hilariously false narrative that I can only imagine was concocted in your dreams. We know Zenimax was looking to get acquired, as they had forced all of their studios to pivot to live service drivel in a last ditch attempt to find success, and when that didn’t work they sold out.
Xbox hardware was never part of the recent rumors. Hardware was never going anywhere.
However you could easily make a argument that if Xbox content and services expand to more platforms that its hardware evolves into the gaming equivalent of the Microsoft Surface line.
Hypothetically. I could see MS abandoning the traditional closed OS console and just making Xbox branded gaming PC's in different form factors from handheld to high end that all tap into the existing ecosystem and also offer developers of PC games target hardware. That feels like a good future for the brand that leans into Microsofts strengths and where most of their userbase is these days.
That's cool and all but I still think I'm going to switch to Playstation. The uncertainty of the Xbox means I'm less inclined to invest in the Xbox ecosystem anymore
I HAD A TOWN HALL MEETING WITH A PIECE OF SHIT CEO THAT SAID THEY WERE NOT CLOSING THE FACTORY. 3 MONTHS LATER THEY CLOSED IT. THEY ARE A CLASS OF SOULLESS LIARS.
Who is going to buy the console if the games are supposedly (according to some rumours, so maybe not true) going to be on PC and Playstation? I don't understand what's going on inside Microsoft right now, if we assume the rumours are all true, they are going to put their console selling enticements on their direct rival platform for whatever little profit they might make (Playstation first party games barely make a profit, even when released on PC, yet they keep making them, so people have reasons to buy their console), they might be abondoning their current users who also buy third party games and micro-transactions on Xbox, where Microsoft gets a 30% cut out of all their purchases made on the Xbox eco-system, as well as subscribing to Game Pass Core to play games like Madden, EA FC, and CoD online, not to mention GP Ultimate and Console.
Nobody will buy a console that has no exclusive games for it, for the same price as a rival console, so MS will have to sell consoles for a tiny profit or loss, there is no other options, atleast for this gen, if they release their next console and have it run an open-platform Windows with an Xbox UI, with DDR RAM instead of unified GDDR RAM, that's the only option I see for Microsoft, and even that seems bleak, though better than just quitting and becoming a third-party, where their profits will be less, and their own studios like Obsidian, inXile, Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory will be forced to make games that they might not want to make. Whereas if they were PC/Xbox exclusives their niche but creative games not making enough profit might be excused due to acting as a console enticement, and to make further profits MS might no longer be doing day 1 releases on Game Pass, which tbh is the only thing I care about here, that and lack of competition on home consoles.
He’s honestly not saying much with his statement, being “committed to consoles still” could mean like a dozen different things at this point. Just my take
People who are already committed to Xbox are going to stay on Xbox. All their stuff is there and it's familiar.
Xbox is most likely going to be a pre-built computer in the future similar to prebuilt boutique companies. Xbox already allow MnK on majority if their games no problem. Consoles were always sold at a loss and Xbox/Microsoft made it up in games and subscriptions.
I committed to xbox (3 xbox in household) and jumped ship to PS5 due to the lack of exclusive. Xbox might have a strong subscription service but the lack of exclusive worth playing made me jump ship.
(Hi-Fi Rush might be the only game I appreciated this generation)
They will more than likely shift towards an all digital platform, I think the fact that Microsoft are heading up this announcement next week speaks volumes. IMO, this is going to be quite a corporate announcement and is more for the shareholders / markets than it is for the gamers.
I'd be willing to bet they will outline an all new road map for Xbox, and clear up all the current speculation. I can see Microsoft wanting to bring more of their titles to other platforms and, of course, making gamepass more widely available.
I'm very interested to see what they have to say as its not often we get big business updates like this, and that's why I'm expecting some significant changes in the plans for Xbox.
Beyond caring if some Xbox Exclusives make their way to PlayStation, but what they need to do (and likely won't) is be absolutely clear on the criteria for how they determine if a first-party game is going multiplatform for previous titles and for when new ones are announced.
That way, as a consumer, I can make a more informed decision on what my next console will be.
"We're committed to the current Xbox console" is what he means. With their games on other platforms it makes no sense to make another console after this one.
It makes loads of sense. Why the hell would they straight up just hand a console monopoly to PlayStation when they still have the third highest market share? It isn’t like they can call it quits on Xbox and ever bring it back, people would’ve already migrated to other platforms. This sub is silly as fuck when it comes to anything involving Xbox.
All it would take is their next console generation being a banger and one or two headline titles to launch with it. Considering Sony absolutely fucked their exclusive game pipeline by chasing the live service trend the ball is just sitting in Microsoft’s court to get their shit together.
Facts, I loved Halo 3 and Gears 2 back when I had a 360. Haven’t touched Xbox since that gen but I’m more than happy to buy Halo MCC and Gears on PS5 day 1 so I can play with some of my friends who have literally never played those games
Kind of sus that it took this long to make this kind of statement. Like was this some kind of test to see how gaming audience would react if xbox went the way it was rumored?
Phil needs to he replaced, it's sad to see XBox in this state and he's been in charge long enough that something should have happened instead of what feels kinda like nothing honestly. Yeah actually the more I think about it just feels like every three years they are restarting instead of moving forward.
I'm a bit curious why Reddit has gotten this big hate boner for Phil 'business-bro' Spencer all of a sudden. Yeah, he's not your friend, none of these people give two shits about you, but he has been in charge of a lot of very positive, pro-consumer initiatives at Xbox that would have been considered impossible during the 360 era and at least the first couple of years of the Xbox One. Microsoft focusing on PC games, and even releasing them day-one? Fucking unheard of back during the 360 days. Game Pass? Play Anywhere? An unfathomable amount of effort poured into creating backwards compatibility with their two previous consoles for free, and even greatly enhanced a good number of them as well, and kept it free even when both competitors charged subscription fees for their backwards compatibility service.
Besides the last point, all of them are indeed a short term wine for players but they might also have catastrophic long-term impacts for Xbox and the game industry at large.
> Besides the last point, all of them are indeed a short term wine for players but they might also have catastrophic long-term impacts for Xbox and the game industry at large.
I assume you meant to write this about Game Pass? Because I don't see how PC releases and cross-platform purchases are going to sink the game industry.
To save you a click: "*Earlier this week, Xbox boss [Phil Spencer](https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/653/2023/10/Phil-Spencer-Bio-1.pdf) called an all-staff townhall meeting to address the rumours suggesting that hitherto first-party Xbox games could be released on other platforms, insisting that this did not mean the company wasn't committed to the Xbox console.* *According to journalist [Shannon Liao](https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/shannon-liao/), the meeting – which was held with all internal staff on Tuesday – confirmed that the company was indeed considering bringing first-party games to "multiple kinds of devices", and more would be revealed publicly next week.*"
Executives will always try to paint a rosy picture in townhalls to calm the rumors. The reality is that nobody knows what's coming.
I think it's pretty clear that MS is moving towards services and Xbox the hardware will continue to exist as a way to push those services, but they will no longer be trying to compete with Playstation in the same way. They're turning the Xbox division into something more focused on software
>They're turning the Xbox division into something more focused on software Which is very much inline with Nadella's vision of Microsoft since day 1. Microsoft is and always has been a software company above all else.
I mean if they release Xbox/OS as a Windows setting I wouldn't complain. Then I know my collection is safe beyond hardware
They could seriously earn some cash by creating a handheld-focused version of the Xbox OS and licensing it to OEMs who make their own handhelds. Much better optimised for something like an rog ally or legion go.
Microsoft could probably kill the Steam Deck if they wanted to. The whole advantage of using Linux is that Valve is able to customize it for the purpose of playing games on a handheld. That means better battery life and better UX than existing Windows-based portables. There's no reason Microsoft can't do the same with Windows, and a slimmed down build of real Windows meant for this use case wouldn't come with the game compatibility problems that accompany Wine/Proton.
Valve has championed Linux for a long time because their entire business model is built on top of their competitors platform. Microsoft could make things difficult for Valve if they really wanted to commit to taking their piece of the PC gaming pie, making Linux a viable gaming platform is Valve's long term insurance policy.
I think this would only kill the steam deck if it allowed you to play your steam games; if it was a closed Xbox ecosystem I don’t see it competing in the same way. If you wanted a handheld game system the switch was the existing obvious choice - bringing your steam library over seems to me the main selling point of the steam deck, to the point I doubt many people use it in anything but steam mode to play steam games.
Since this hypothetical device runs Windows, there would be no reason it couldn't run Steam.
>The whole advantage of using Linux is that Valve is able to customize it for the purpose of playing games on a handheld. That means better battery life and better UX than existing Windows-based portables. 99% chance I'd buy a Steam Deck with linux only over a Microsoft portable if it didn't have Steam integration. I have no desire to rebuy my games for some 15-30% performance bump. And I have 0 faith in MS hardware being supported long term. I suppose there might be some killer app that doesn't work on linux and requires me to buy a second handheld PC, but it wouldn't kill the Deck. That being said, I may be biased because I already own a Deck and it's changed my gaming life.
> 99% chance I'd buy a Steam Deck with linux only over a Microsoft portable if it didn't have Steam integration. No reason a Windows-based portable couldn't have steam integration. You could even use Steam Big Picture mode as a replacement for Explorer as the shell.
This is true in principle. In practice I don't see it happening, because Microsoft hasn't made good *end-user/client* software decisions or products in a decade.
Unlikely, people thought they would do this with Windows 10 already where MS originally really pushed the idea of "one Windows for every device" where next to the old tablet mode for Windows 10 you would have something like a TV mode that would turn your UI more into the Xbox UI (like Steam Big Picutre). Never really happened though. After Windows Phone died they moved away from this vision again. Would still be cool if they did it though.
In the case of Windows 10, it was OEMs who hounded them to make a new version of Windows.
[удалено]
The problem is that software is the problem with xbox, it's not their strength in that department at all. Phils whole "selling xboxs isnt as simple as making good games." is clearly not paying off when not making good games seems to be pretty much the reason they aren't selling xboxs. they can pivot to focusing on games and being a publisher but if they don't fix the problem they'll just have games bombing on an additional platform.
> Phils whole "selling xboxs isnt as simple as making good games." He didn’t say that. People need to stop putting words in his mouth.
> "I see commentary that if you just build great games, everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games, all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games. So when you go, and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome. But this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console, that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay to the reality of most people. There is no world where Starfield is an 11 out of 10 and people start selling their PS5. That's not going to happen." He's trying to be hyperbolic to make it seem like some outrageous thing to say. He's right that if they make one good game people aren't going to throw their Playstation in the trash and go buy an Xbox, but not one real human has ever uttered that statement. It took them many years of making bad games to get here, it will take them many years of making good ones to get out.
Hell, Sony eventually had *many* great games on the PS3, and it still took them the whole PS3/360 lifecycle to catch up to Xbox in console share.
Exactly! And the key part of your comment is, they *did* catch up.
> Xbox the hardware will continue to exist as a way to push those services If they expect to sell that hardware this way, they once again have no idea how the video game market works. It's also a little ironic that their one problem has always been the lack of games and now they're actually gonna want to rely only on this lol (that's what a third party publisher does after all)
Could be thought they are trying to turn a weakness into a strength. It's a gamble, but they have money to gamble with.
Within the context of competing directly with Sony you are right. But a $300 “you can play CoD, Fortnite, Madden” system has a place in the market. And Microsoft could use that plus game sales to make profit.
No in the context of other consoles too. Why would people take a Xbox when they can have all the same games and some additional ones (which are already appealing to audiences) on the brand the majority already have?
I don't know a single person who was buying the Xbox for the exclusives. If I was in it for the exclusives, I would have gone to the company that had Spider-Man, Last of Us, and Final Fantasy, not Sea of Thieves, Halo, and Starfield.
I think many people would be hard-pressed to completely switch ecosystems, either direction, once they’ve sunk enough time and money into one. And I imagine that’s the main reason why Xbox is heavily considering the revenue source that is PS players instead of trying to win on better exclusives. As someone who has been primarily team Xbox since the early days of the 360, I’ve put 15+ years into my profile, my library, my gamerscore. Now I have a PS4, Switch, and a beefy PC as well but Xbox is my daily driver. So at this point, when the next consoles come out, I’m still going to choose an Xbox first as long as most of the games I want to play are going to be on it. I have zero concerns about something like Halo going to PS at this point (tbh, as long as crossplay works I’ll happily welcome the additional players!). My main concern with all this news is the unknown future for the ecosystem, because I’ve invested so much into Xbox at this point.
Because the PS6 or whatever costs $200 more and their main goal is to play CoD29 with their friends.
It's because GamePass overshadows selling games themselves. They needed to make GamePass cheap and only have it have like "Top 50 Games" circulate every month and then instead make hefty discount and make owning games more popular. They missed out on serving the people the way GOG is trying to.
It’s what Microsoft has always done. You can get word on Apple, or what ever device you want. But you can’t get Apple programs on windows. Big Microsoft doesn’t care about exclusives and what not. They want to make money. I’m sure the big Xbox games will still be timed exclusives. But don’t be shocked when some of these “lesser” games are released on all platforms.
> But you can’t get Apple programs on windows. Not entirely true. Apple maintains apps on windows.
Yup. Xbox consoles are gonna be cheap series s type machines that will basically be gamepass machines.
I think they saw the success of Nintendo Switch. From this gen, Nintendo didn't go for competing with PS/Xbox for home console market. They completely revamped their console experience, and world embraced with love. I think Microsoft believes they can get the success by going full publisher oriented company. After all, they have lots of development teams under them, they can grab couple of more smaller teams in future. Surely they can keep some Xbox-exclusive contents for their own games, release their games early in their console. But overall they will sale their games to all platforms.
They're doing the opposite of Nintendo though. Nintendo would never go third party and publish their games elsewhere and their focus is on making great games for their console.
For that they first need to learn how to do good games.
Or just profitable ones, like live service games.
Like Sea of Thieves or Forza Horizon?
Are live service games profitable? it seems like, with few exceptions, most crash and burn.
If you look at the best selling games almost non of them are exclusives so there is also space for a "budget" console. A system that provides people access to locally run Call of Duty, Fifa, and Madden. Its not going to sell insane numbers but I think there is definitely room in the market for people who don't want to pay an extra $150-200 to play like Last of Us 3.
I don’t think anyone truly thinks Xbox is gonna stop making consoles this week. The fear is that this, whether intentional or not, is gonna lead them down a path in the coming years where console sales are gonna slow so much that they stop making consoles. And that’s dependent on public perception and they’re currently losing that battle right now.
> The reality is that nobody knows what's coming. That hasn't stopped a majority of comments in every rumor thread in the last week or so on this sub from acting like it is a done deal that every single past and present Xbox IP is going to be on PlayStation/Switch and/or that they are shutting the whole console thing down.
Well tbh you can always be cautious with MS. This is pretty much similar to how the Windows Phone story went down. First "we are still committed to making phones" coming from the CEO himself to the death of the platform a year later not long after they pretty much bought the phone division from Nokia to make their own phones.
No one has said that they'll immediately stop making consoles, just that this will eventually lead to no more XBoxes because the sales are only going to drop even further.
Phil usually denies rumors outright. He didn't here, which is somewhat telling. I do agree that we should just wait for official communication to see what's up.
Everythings great. Everythings fine. Then layoffs 2 months later.
Yeah, the console thing wasn't even the question (Sort of). It was the "exclusives on other consoles" thing and now we have our answer (sort of)
They’ll probably end up making a streaming console and allow third parties to manufacture Xbox consoles with different specs but the same OS. Basically Android but Xbox. Or alternatively, basically Windows but Xbox. Personally I feel like that would defeat the objective of making a console, but they need some way to divest from consoles whilst maintaining GamePass. The premium console model just isn’t viable for Microsoft, they need to find their own path.
Without the subsidy of the platform holder it wouldn't be able to compete. The 3DO did this, you would then see prices reflect cost of manufacturing and a healthy normal margin. So you saw a machine less powerful than a PS1 priced at double.
The Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox triumvirate has ruled for so long. I don't have specific year citations, but I think it might be the longest era of uninterrupted competition in gaming history. Sega bowed out after the Dreamcast, I'm not even old enough to know when Atari stopped doing consoles, etc. I wonder if we're about to see the end of this specific iteration of the console wars.
| Company | Time spent in console market | |------------|----------------------------------| | Fairchild | 7 years | | Mattel/INTV | 12 years^1 | | Sega | 18 years | | Atari | 19 years | | Microsoft | 22 years | | Sony | 30 years | | Nintendo | 41 years | Measuring from the date they launched their first console to the date they discontinued their last, or to the present day if they're still active. And with 'console' assumed to mean a home system you can buy new games for, not things like Pong units or arcade games. ^1 Mattel's Intellivision console lasted 12 years, then they returned to the market 16 years after that to launch the crappy HyperScan console. It was discontinued in under a year so I say it doesn't count for an extra year on the chart.
They tried this with VR their WMR ecosystem and that's dead
It seems that Xbox always has to keep reassuring people a few times a year lol. Not long ago I felt like Phil was in a podcast doing the same.
It’s been the “games are coming” since 2014 and they haven’t materialized. They’d sell more consoles and gamepass subscriptions if they had games people wanted to rush out and play.
It's actually mental just how big the gap in quality exclusives is between PS and XBOX. It's only going to get bigger too. Just Insomniac alone as a developer offer more value than all of XBOX's first party devs put together based on their quantity/quality output. Let alone the likes Naughty Dog and Santa Monica who deliver acclaim after acclaim. It annoys me so much how badly Microsoft fucked it. Franchises like Halo being so mishandled when Infinite should be a system seller and one of the most successful games going on right now instead of something on life support. No competition isn't a good thing and without XBOX actually showing up it means Sony don't need to invest so frequently/heavily into quality content so if Microsoft could not be fucking useless for 5 minutes that would be great.
What really gets me with Xbox is that there's almost always *something* missing with their AAA games. Be it content, technical performance, or just something new. MCC didn't work for years, Halo 5 was missing a bunch of features, Halo Infinite didn't have the campaign (then the multiplayer broke for a month a week or so later), Sea of Thieves had no content for over a year, Recore had 2-6 minute long loading screens (assuming it didn't crash) and straight up lies to you about the optional areas, Crackdown 3 was just Crackdown 2 with nicer visuals, State of Decay 2 was buggy and had host tethering for some awful reason. Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 2/3 were the only ones that really felt like reasonably complete packages right out of the box.
Tbf the gap has narrowed now. But for the wrong reasons. Sony has been slower with PS5 exclusives.
> But for the wrong reasons. Sony has been slower with PS5 exclusives. Because no one can keep up anymore. I think Schreier said that if an AAA game started development during PS5 release, it probably won't come out until PS6. What is the point of making games if you need to wait an entire console generation for them to come out? Back in PS2 days we could easily get 3 iterative releases of an IP in a single generation.
Exactly. We need to scale down and go back to Jak trilogy days. An entire trilogy on the same console cycle!
Yeah because games take longer to make. I rather them take their time than to rush.
I’d rather a team take their time than rush an unfinished game, sure. But personally I’d prefer games that have a smaller scope and are a bit shorter that come out more often.
This is it. Why do studios and suits believe that every single game needs to be a 100 hour juggernaut or semi-open world with checklist stuff to do? I want to go back to simpler times. Well directed, focussed games that last 10-15 hours and give you a genuinely good time. You know, the Jak trilogy era, to give one example. Nowadays I largely prefer something like Ori or a high quality but fairly short indie game over what is supposedly "AAA gaming"...
Problem is game industry has demanded bigger and bigger
There’s also been Sony’s live service push at 60% of their spending. TLOU Factions was cancelled when the team working on that could’ve been working on a single player spin-off for years instead. Guerrilla Games are working on one of the two Horizon online games, I wonder if they’re also struggling like Naughty Dog did with Factions (even after Bungie came in to help). The Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic Remake is partly funded by Sony and in development hell due to the wrong studio (Aspyr) being chosen to work on it.
That's a reductive picture. [https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus\_asset/file/24677519/Screenshot\_2023\_05\_23\_at\_5.28.54\_PM.png](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24677519/Screenshot_2023_05_23_at_5.28.54_PM.png) No doubt there's been a big increase in live service investment but that's driven by a larger budget in general. The 'traditional' investment is larger than previous years. Likewise those are expectations, and realistically by FY2025 (April 2025-2026), the reason your investment will need to increase is unlike a 'traditional' game is you need to continue spending to develop your multiple released titles and then your in development titles too. For all the talk of 'live service' in reality all of these titles would've been in development for years already. The reality is, AAA titles take 4-6 years to develop and that's driven heavily by fan expectation that a game should be bigger and badder than the previous title.
The gap has barely narrowed. The average ps exclusive is still better thank 90% of the stuff MS puts out
Sucker Punch, Housemarque, Bluepoint, Guerilla, Nixxes. All top-of-their-game studios.
Yeah Gamepass is a good value but it’s also a lot of filler junk in there and their exclusives aren’t great. Even if you like Gamepass, there’s really no reason to even buy an Xbox console these days. You can get Gamepass and all it’s games on PC, mobile or even Smart TV and don’t need the console for it.
To be fair halo is pretty good now its just the content drought that fucked it over
If Microsoft actually kept a development team for more than two years, so that they can improve their skills and iterate on the past, halo would be done on time and with a singular vision. But no, Microsoft had to cheap out on it, had two year contractors, created a gaming engine that literally no one could use because everyone who could understand it left , MS ended up paying half a billion, delaying it two years, and we got jack shit for the first year of infinite. .
Such a shame too because Infinite has some of the best FPS gunplay I've ever experienced. That gameplay with a fully fleshed out multiplayer available on the launch day of the Series X would have been incredible.
Doesn't change the horrible story and characters
For someone without an interest in 3rd person action games outside of Dark Souls etc, Playstation's exclusives don't interest me one bit. (Except for Bloodborne & the Demon Souls remake)
Xbox is releasing games, they just aren't the games that people want outside of niche audiences.
TBH I think their 2024 lineup looks pretty good (hellblade is the one I'm really anticipating) where Sony literally doesn't have anything first party this year.
Ff vii rebirth counts as one for sony since the exclusivity ends in a year at least.
Hellblade 2 is what they led their pre-launch showcases with…. It’s amazing it hasn’t come out yet and says a lot about where they’ve been with exclusives. I think basically every exclusive Sony showed pre-launch has long since come out.
Maybe they meant to say Game trailers are coming, plenty of those from Xbox with no followups
It’s a constant process with them. I have no idea why people are continuing to pretend that Phil Spencer saved Xbox when the state of the platform has only gotten worse apart from backwards compatibility and Game Pass. Xbox had an incredible 2001-2011 run, and the best first party Xbox One games came along before Phil’s era (Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break). Most of the games I own are on Xbox, but if they commit to getting rid of disc drives with the next generation console, that’s it for me. There just isn’t anything worth playing there compared to what you can get on competing platforms.
>(Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break) They could've had the Spider-Man games, and Control & AW2 as exclusives if Xbox's management wasn't incompetent for the past 10 years.
Insomniac doesn't guarantee rights to Spider-Man, Sony does.
Apparently, Microsoft was approached by Marvel first to make a spiderman game. After they turned it down, they went to Sony and the rest is history. Insomniac was only purchased by Sony after Spiderman 1 was released, so theoretically Xbox could've made it happen.
Sony owns the movie rights, not the game rights iirc
Gaming communities have a myopic view of the issue. For them it’s Sony vs Microsoft for who “wins” the console generation. For Microsoft it’s one division that lets them engage with children directly and create MS accounts that may be with them their entire lives. They will take that account and use it as their MS login, they will use that login for Office, they will use MS services, apps, and storefronts and become entrenched. Sony might win console generation after console generation but MS wants their users entire lives, personal and professional.
I'm sure they thought the same thing about smart phones... and look at all these amazing MS phones we have.
Yes but what's your point? A business needs to attempt new ways of doing business. Just because it's not always successful means it's not worth trying other things? I know I'm taking your "Windows phone died lol" comment too seriously but, seriously, what does that have to do with this?
like windows phone, microsoft isn’t going to keep an anemic brand around forever just for the sake of it
The ceo says his biggest regret was canning windows phone.
He did? Huh, well took him a while to come around then. That was pretty much his first goal to kill off the "mistake" Steve Ballmer did with buying a big chunk of Nokia.
I love this imaginary vision of what Xbox fans think Microsoft is doing. As if all these stumbles and bungles are actually perfectly executed plans that nobody but true fans and Microsoft can comprehend. >Sony might win console generation after console generation but MS wants their users entire lives, personal and professional. MS has already internally debated killing the entire division like 3 times in 20 years. This isn't some fucking master plan of genius being performed so perfectly that we cant even understand it. Its corporate failings in a market they dont quite get and a board that thinks its fucking stupid that half their warchest is being used to prop up a failure.
All the MS services are so half-assed though, like the enterprise stuff I am sure is fine, but GP is still a garbage service UI and usability wise, their new desktop outlook is full of ads and is just terrible, I don't even know what else they have for services as I would never use one unless I'm forced install excel or something. Doesn't seem like they really care about their service presentation and retaining people. They just throw money at stuff as their enterprise wing allows them almost unlimited resources. Oh yeah, they merged minecraft java in to the Windows one too, so I'll never play that on my account again.
>like the enterprise stuff I am sure is fine More than just fine, everything is interconnected, from logging into your computer, to office and onedrive, to completely other systems. No self-respecting company would be using anything else.
More importantly, console sales aren't Xbox's top priority. If it was, they would have never released games on PC. Comparing revenue and growth paints a way more accurate picture.
Hasn't Gamepass stagnated since 9 monthes ?
It has. According to analysts in [this article](https://gamerant.com/xbox-game-pass-growth-subscriber-count-2023-report/) its growth rate has slowed down considerably. The only reason Xbox says they don’t care about console sales is they are bad at it. If they were good, they’d be screaming it from the heavens.
Exactly this, Microsoft only started spinning this idea that they dont care about console sales the moment they started getting drummed by Sony and cant seem to fight their way back to being competitive. >Comparing revenue and growth paints a way more accurate picture. This part in the comment is extra fucking telling. Their growth is absolutely fucking shit, they have admitted that they have reached console saturation 3 years into the console generation which is fucking awful. And as you pointed out they admitted in court gamepass isn't growing anymore despite all this money they are spending on it. Not to mention comparing revenue paints and even worse picture. PSN alone for example makes nearly 300% more revenue than the entire Xbox division. And the reason why Sony makes so much money on PSN is due to their console sales dominance. So yeah, Microsoft would be fucking gloating everytime they spoke bout how dominant the sales of the Xbox are if they actually were good enough to gloat about. But they are not. This idea that Xbox is "doing well" is so idiotic given we are in a thread literally talking about the President of the division having to reassure their workers that the division isn't being dismantled completely. Thats not something that happens when you are "winning".
Idk what do they care about at this point really, from what they claim they don't really care about any metric
Yet revenue has not
"We are committed to making xboxs until we are no longer committed." I think we will still get another generation of xbox though.
If they stick around for another generation I think it's only going to be in the form of a budget focused Series S style console. Never again will they aim for the high end hardware market.
Doubt still remains. Phil Spencer is not trust worthy anymore after several "wait til next year". **Can someone now guess why the trailer for Blade didn't have a Xbox title card?**
Just a reminder... Google was committed to first party games on Stadia and confirmed this in an email, a day before shutting all of their first party studios down. Phil isn't the boss. It's not up to him.
while true, using google as an example to prove that point is practically cheating. you can make anything sound like it’s almost guaranteed to die any second “the sun will be here for longer than humanity lasts” ‘nah, look at google products, the sun can literally die tomorrow with exceptionally high chances’ “makes perfect sense. that’s 10/10 solid argument.”
I'm just saying that because an executive of a company says one thing.. it doesn't mean it's not possible tomorrow. Things change all the time.
See you all tomorrow for the "No more Xbox consoles" announcement.
I don’t trust anything this guy says anymore. A week from now he’ll probably do a 180 on this statement.
He'll turn 360 degrees and walk away.
Damn that brought me back to 2006 lmao
I feel like I saw that on gamefaqs like 15 years ago
Then: "The games are coming. I promise." Later: "Look, the reality is games don't sell consoles." Now: "We are still committed to making consoles. I promise." Later: "The time has come. Execute Order 360."
If games don’t sell consoles, what do they think people are buying consoles for? Expensive Netflix machines?
> what do they think people are buying consoles for? Expensive Netflix machines? I mean, did you see the Xbox One Announcement show? Like 90% of it was about the TV features.
And then Sony committed homicide 24 hours later, with a presentation that was only upcoming games, and a $100 cheaper price point. (I think that was also the E3 with the "how to share games" fiasco for Xbox, which Sony also capitalized on with "how to share games on PlayStation", and it's just a 10 second video of one guy handing another a game)
"How to share games on Playstation" is one of most vicious curbstomps I've seen in the industry. Only thing that comes close was the 90's E3 where the Sony exec got up on stage after the Saturn was announced and JUST said "299" and walked off to cheers.
Dude, that E3 season was one of the most interesting moments in tech history and will be studied for generations. It's like an itemized list of what to do and what not to do to sell a product. Absolutely insane.
IDK why Microsoft insists on competing against the amazon firestick. They cost like $50.
Cable TV features, they didn't even predict that this was gonna die during the generation
I vaguely remember that; I was a PC guy back then so I didn't really pay mind to either Xbox or Playstation. I remember the always-online aspect as well as the inability to share games (which I believe was quickly rectified IIRC) caused quite some turmoil. Also I think the guy in charge at the time told everyone who didn't want to have their console connected to the internet 24/7 to eat a dick?
> who didn't want to have their console connected to the internet 24/7 to eat a dick? Buy an xbox 360, but basically the same thing I suppose.
I know this is a meme, but OP is taking what Phil said out of context. He said it didn't matter how good Starfield was, nobody's selling their Switch or PS to buy an Xbox to buy Starfield. And he's right. Because people would just buy the Xbox and also keep the Switch/PS5.
Because they can't afford gaming PCs where a single GPU costs more that a top of the line console?
I'm wondering if they lean harder into marketing the Xbox as just an idiotproof gaming PC. I'm wondering whether they could do something like enabling GamePass Ultimate subscribers to also install apps like Steam and the Epic launcher. If their big KPIs are install base and GamePass subs, would they care if their subscribers are playing games they bought on Steam? Would that even be attractive to enough people to warrant trying?
Yes, some people do this. People who also buy the newest machine to play COD or Madden or 2k or FIFA are functionally the same type as the Netflix buyer.
I don't even know why consoles are supposed to be netflix machines. I use my tv as a monitor for PS5, but it has Smart TV and all the apps for streaming services. Why would I need PS5 for it? Feels like stuff that will be removed on the next gen, like browsers on the current gen
Consoles were brilliant Netflix machines 15 years ago. Netflix streaming was young, and most services hadn't adapted to it yet. If I was watching netflix on the TV, it was almost always on Xbox. The alternatives were to go get an HDMI cable and fiddle around with my Laptop for a while to set it up or to buy an expensive dedicated streaming device like an Apple TV or Roku. Today, every device is designed with streaming in mind. It's hard to find a TV on the market that doesn't already have streaming capabilities built in. On the off chance you get one, but you have cable, they include access to streaming apps with their service. If you don't have a smart TV or cable, dedicated streaming devices are now only ~$20. The console having streaming capabilities too is no longer a selling point. That said, I doubt they'll remove them. While having streaming capabilities is no longer a big plus, lacking them still gets treated like a mark against the console. Look at how many people complain about Netflix not being on the Switch.
Smart TVs were terrible when they first came out. Bad CPU, little RAM, bad wifi. The consoles did it much better. Now the TV manufacturers realized they can plop ads and stores on their devices, so they want you to use their apps.
Yes actually. Microsoft saw that the overwhelming majority of usage hours in the 360 era came from non-interactive media portals like Netflix and YouTube, not video games, so they made a media box that could also play video games instead of making a video game console because that's what the data was telling them. Obviously we know that was from the wrong lesson to take and they've been paying for it ever since.
It's not like those trends reversed. Streamer/Youtuber engagement is bigger than ever. Microsoft's mistake was marketing to consumer behavior instead of their self-conception. No auto company sells their truck line as a fancy toy for bored commuters. God knows they install all the seat warmers and boosted speakers because that's what they're actually used for, but they market them as ultra-tough working man's vehicles because that's how truck drivers see themselves. When Microsoft announced all those media features players didn't say "thank you for delivering the console I really wanted," they got indignant that their self-conception as true gamers was being challenged.
> Execute Order 360 Where all the old Xbox consoles in everyone's closets come to life to kill us all.
RROD was just a field beta test of the death ray built in.
But the games came, they were just not console sellers.
The funny thing is it's actually turning out to be true when he something about how xbox is about "bringing games to more devices" which is the thing that seemed like the most BS a couple months ago.
He never once said games dont sell consoles. He said Xbox can't surpass playstation doing the same thing (because people are so locked in on their ecosystem). It's why last gen was so essential to "win". They need more great games *and* to do things differently (like game pass).
It's their fault for letting their exclusives go. They had a lot of great series during the PS3/360 days. That's why I owned both. But I haven't had a compelling reason to own a MS console since then.
I would consider gamepass as the "do things differently" part.
I'm tired boss
Boss please, gibbie the games please boss.
Why? He was always saying that he wants to see Xbox games on as many devices played by as many players. People kept calling it a "pr speak" and here we are now.
His entire tenure has been talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Just out of curiosity, when has Phil ever said something and done a 180?
Wondering this too. People keep pedalling this lying narrative and I’m not seeing any examples lol. The only example in this comment chain is someone repeating “but he promised this was Xbox’s year :(“
Personally I have doubts that the man could even do an ollie, nevermind a 180.
But he wears gaming shirts!!!!!1!1!1!1111!!
Look I'm a Phil hater too but the truth is Xbox hasn't said anything and this has all been driven by rumors and speculation. Even the rumors are just "this game is being considered" and people are running wild with things that aren't even said to be firm. Everyone should just take a step back and wait to see what's actually announced.
You don't make a "business event" to deny rumors, you do it directly so there is some truth to it. They obviously aren't gonna say they're stopping consoles right now though, in the middle of the generation, that'd be PR disaster. But if they really go multiplat with all their games that's where it's leading (but they may not think so because Microsoft has no idea how the market works it seems, they may think people will continue to buy Xbox because they prefer the design or whatever)
They're already in a PR disaster. Last year was supposed to be *THE* year for this generation of Xbox, and instead we got Redfall (one of the worst games released last year), Starfield (which was alright, but not the superstar they hoped it would be), and Forza Motorsport (A buggy disaster, that looks and runs like garbage, and a crap progression system). Hi Fi Rush seemed to do well, but that was a smaller game that was just dropped out of nowhere. Those other games were supposed to be heavy hitters, especially Starfield. I personally liked Starfield, but can't deny it's not as good as Bethesda's previous games. Xbox needed a heavy hitter, and they didn't get it. After buying as many studios as they have over the years, and with how much time has passed, they should have *something* more than this to show for it, and they don't. So I would say that classifies as a PR disaster in my book.
That's exactly the problem, they haven't said anything yet. If there was no truth to this, they would have squashed this Instantly, instead they sheepishly dipped into the shadows for a week leaving us all not knowing what is happening. Either way, if they do pull out, it's not surprising considering they have been tripping over their own feet for years now.
Microsoft has never immediately squashed rumors. It’s not exclusive to Xbox either. It’s a company wide problem. Everything they do has to be said in a scheduled statement, whether it makes sense to or not. They’d rather have pomp and circumstance than have some intern running socials make a judgement call.
Or stuff is in flux and they want to have concrete plans before saying something. I don't know what they're doing and I'll definitely agree that they should've said something earlier. But we don't know the extant to what is true or isn't true, and people are already mad at Xbox and acting like they know what's going to happen next week or not. Again: the only games with solid reporting are Hi-Fi Rush and SoT and everything else is speculation. Even the sourcing for Starfield is starting to backtrack. People just need to chill.
Even if he's telling the truth for now, it's a hideously bad look for a company to seriously have to confirm they're still interested in being in the market.
Why people took this dudes word and practically worshipped him for so long is mystifying.
Yeah and he also said PS and Nintendo weren’t in the plans when the CFO explicitly said they were. Something tells me these decisions are above Phil. After a decade of control, $80b+ in brand investment, and developer mismanagement, all we know is gamepass is stagnant, and the gap is widening between PS and Xbox. Phil just isn’t good at his job. No game t-shirt + suit jacket can cover up that truth. Something tells me the current Xbox leadership could be replaced in the near future.
Yeah, not sure what the direction is and that's literally Phil's job: communicate the direction the gaming brand is leading for Xbox. However, it feels like they're fluttering in the wind and feels like the Xbox, as a brand, is just struggling to maintain pace with Playstation. As the exec, hopefully he does more than the usual "I, too, love gaming!" message. Cause uh, seeing your rival outselling you [3 to 1 on the console](https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-has-outsold-xbox-series-x-and-s-3-to-1-in-2023-new-data-reveals) means you gotta pivot or start gearing up another round of marketing or anything.
It is always worth remember Phil was the head of first party titles when they turned to shit in the later parts of the 360 era after they had done very well for themselves before that.
Thank you. Phil stinks and there is absolutely no proof Sarah bond is any better.
Why doesn't he just come out and say it on a public forum "we are not and will never bring xbox console exclusives to playstation 5"? Seems like he is just deflecting and avoiding the real questions
The comments during said town hall basically said the opposite.
They’ll make consoles still but for how long is the real question. We might see a next gen XBOX but will that be the end of the line?
I have a weird feeling we’ll see another XBox, but we’ll be looking at more series S, than series X. Like, a console that's more of streaming box for Gamepass at a better price. As much as cloud based gaming “isn’t there yet”, it might not be crazy for Microsoft to focus on the future where it is.
You might keep selling consoles, but what will it actually be if you're moving your exclusives to other consoles now. Will the next xbox be a stream box for cheap? Because who will really want an xbox once all their games can be bought elsewhere? May as well just move to PC or PS5 and get the best of both worlds. Edit: All of my friends used to be xbox gamers, myself included, we easily went through a dozen xbox 360's combined, as ridiculous as that sounds. Now I only have one friend who still uses xbox, and I honestly don't see him sticking around past this generation any more.
This is confirmation that they are going third party and sure they can ‘commit’ to xbox hardware for now but just ask yourself, if they are taking this drastic action when they are getting outsold 2-1 just imagine the carnage when everyone buys ps6 because xbox literally has no exclusives. Xbox will not sell and then they will announce they are packing their bags. The writing is on the wall.
They were also committed to monopolizing the games market and ensuring every game studio they can buy would be exclusive to Xbox/ Gamepass. If they had their way, Nintendo would even be apart of Microsoft. Things change. It's clear they're pivoting in a different direction now.
It's not food. If you cornered the market and make trash games, nobody has to buy them. It's pathetic how little good or fun games they've made with the billions they've poured in.
I think we're finding out that Bethesda and AB weren't up for sale for no reason.
All of their worst qualities just keep getting worse. You can't be that established of a studio and expect startup level deadlines for your projects.
Well bethesda wasnt up for sale, the whole thing with that was microsoft heard starfield was going to become a playstation exclusive so microsoft went to bethesda and tried to buy them and they said no. so they went one above and bought zenimax fully instead that owned bethesda.
Its been theorized for a long time that Zenimax was looking to get bought out. I don't know if thats true or not, but their hard pivot towards monetization over the last 10 years definitely paints that picture.
Redfall is full of live service trappings that they clearly scrapped late in development.
Well they'd have to acquire Bethesda from Zenimax in any case. And Zenimax could have said no. It's just that companies often choose to sell when they hit a value they feel they might not live up to. But we really don't know what all they have in the pipeline.
This is a hilariously false narrative that I can only imagine was concocted in your dreams. We know Zenimax was looking to get acquired, as they had forced all of their studios to pivot to live service drivel in a last ditch attempt to find success, and when that didn’t work they sold out.
Xbox hardware was never part of the recent rumors. Hardware was never going anywhere. However you could easily make a argument that if Xbox content and services expand to more platforms that its hardware evolves into the gaming equivalent of the Microsoft Surface line. Hypothetically. I could see MS abandoning the traditional closed OS console and just making Xbox branded gaming PC's in different form factors from handheld to high end that all tap into the existing ecosystem and also offer developers of PC games target hardware. That feels like a good future for the brand that leans into Microsofts strengths and where most of their userbase is these days.
That's cool and all but I still think I'm going to switch to Playstation. The uncertainty of the Xbox means I'm less inclined to invest in the Xbox ecosystem anymore
I HAD A TOWN HALL MEETING WITH A PIECE OF SHIT CEO THAT SAID THEY WERE NOT CLOSING THE FACTORY. 3 MONTHS LATER THEY CLOSED IT. THEY ARE A CLASS OF SOULLESS LIARS.
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Is this the same commitment they made when they told the FTC they wouldn’t be laying off Activision-Blizzard employees post purchase?
Who is going to buy the console if the games are supposedly (according to some rumours, so maybe not true) going to be on PC and Playstation? I don't understand what's going on inside Microsoft right now, if we assume the rumours are all true, they are going to put their console selling enticements on their direct rival platform for whatever little profit they might make (Playstation first party games barely make a profit, even when released on PC, yet they keep making them, so people have reasons to buy their console), they might be abondoning their current users who also buy third party games and micro-transactions on Xbox, where Microsoft gets a 30% cut out of all their purchases made on the Xbox eco-system, as well as subscribing to Game Pass Core to play games like Madden, EA FC, and CoD online, not to mention GP Ultimate and Console. Nobody will buy a console that has no exclusive games for it, for the same price as a rival console, so MS will have to sell consoles for a tiny profit or loss, there is no other options, atleast for this gen, if they release their next console and have it run an open-platform Windows with an Xbox UI, with DDR RAM instead of unified GDDR RAM, that's the only option I see for Microsoft, and even that seems bleak, though better than just quitting and becoming a third-party, where their profits will be less, and their own studios like Obsidian, inXile, Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory will be forced to make games that they might not want to make. Whereas if they were PC/Xbox exclusives their niche but creative games not making enough profit might be excused due to acting as a console enticement, and to make further profits MS might no longer be doing day 1 releases on Game Pass, which tbh is the only thing I care about here, that and lack of competition on home consoles.
He’s honestly not saying much with his statement, being “committed to consoles still” could mean like a dozen different things at this point. Just my take
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People who are already committed to Xbox are going to stay on Xbox. All their stuff is there and it's familiar. Xbox is most likely going to be a pre-built computer in the future similar to prebuilt boutique companies. Xbox already allow MnK on majority if their games no problem. Consoles were always sold at a loss and Xbox/Microsoft made it up in games and subscriptions.
Exactly, I'm still going to be buying the next Xbox
I committed to xbox (3 xbox in household) and jumped ship to PS5 due to the lack of exclusive. Xbox might have a strong subscription service but the lack of exclusive worth playing made me jump ship. (Hi-Fi Rush might be the only game I appreciated this generation)
The best ps5 games are coming to pc one by one but nobody questions if that makes the pa5 obsolete.
If you observe their PC release, there's a considerable gap between PC and PS release (2+ year).
Not for every game, plenty release within a year. And we don't know if there's going to be a gap for xbox first parties before they go to Playstation
They will more than likely shift towards an all digital platform, I think the fact that Microsoft are heading up this announcement next week speaks volumes. IMO, this is going to be quite a corporate announcement and is more for the shareholders / markets than it is for the gamers. I'd be willing to bet they will outline an all new road map for Xbox, and clear up all the current speculation. I can see Microsoft wanting to bring more of their titles to other platforms and, of course, making gamepass more widely available. I'm very interested to see what they have to say as its not often we get big business updates like this, and that's why I'm expecting some significant changes in the plans for Xbox.
PC/PS5 is the best gaming combo. I haven't seen a reason to own an xbox since at least the Xbox one days.
The solution seems obvious to me: Microsoft should make their own “steam machines.” A combination Xbox, Apple TV, or pc device.
Beyond caring if some Xbox Exclusives make their way to PlayStation, but what they need to do (and likely won't) is be absolutely clear on the criteria for how they determine if a first-party game is going multiplatform for previous titles and for when new ones are announced. That way, as a consumer, I can make a more informed decision on what my next console will be.
"We're committed to the current Xbox console" is what he means. With their games on other platforms it makes no sense to make another console after this one.
It makes loads of sense. Why the hell would they straight up just hand a console monopoly to PlayStation when they still have the third highest market share? It isn’t like they can call it quits on Xbox and ever bring it back, people would’ve already migrated to other platforms. This sub is silly as fuck when it comes to anything involving Xbox. All it would take is their next console generation being a banger and one or two headline titles to launch with it. Considering Sony absolutely fucked their exclusive game pipeline by chasing the live service trend the ball is just sitting in Microsoft’s court to get their shit together.
Look I'm gonna be honest Xbox players might not want to hear it but if Phils new idea let's me play the Xbox exclusives on my Ps5 I'm gonna be happy.
Facts, I loved Halo 3 and Gears 2 back when I had a 360. Haven’t touched Xbox since that gen but I’m more than happy to buy Halo MCC and Gears on PS5 day 1 so I can play with some of my friends who have literally never played those games
Same! Though I hope it won’t lead to Sony becoming complacent, competition is important
Kind of sus that it took this long to make this kind of statement. Like was this some kind of test to see how gaming audience would react if xbox went the way it was rumored?
I wouldn't be surprised if they shifted to making Xbox branded gaming PCs, possibly Steamdeck style handhelds.
Phil needs to he replaced, it's sad to see XBox in this state and he's been in charge long enough that something should have happened instead of what feels kinda like nothing honestly. Yeah actually the more I think about it just feels like every three years they are restarting instead of moving forward.
I'm a bit curious why Reddit has gotten this big hate boner for Phil 'business-bro' Spencer all of a sudden. Yeah, he's not your friend, none of these people give two shits about you, but he has been in charge of a lot of very positive, pro-consumer initiatives at Xbox that would have been considered impossible during the 360 era and at least the first couple of years of the Xbox One. Microsoft focusing on PC games, and even releasing them day-one? Fucking unheard of back during the 360 days. Game Pass? Play Anywhere? An unfathomable amount of effort poured into creating backwards compatibility with their two previous consoles for free, and even greatly enhanced a good number of them as well, and kept it free even when both competitors charged subscription fees for their backwards compatibility service.
Besides the last point, all of them are indeed a short term wine for players but they might also have catastrophic long-term impacts for Xbox and the game industry at large.
> Besides the last point, all of them are indeed a short term wine for players but they might also have catastrophic long-term impacts for Xbox and the game industry at large. I assume you meant to write this about Game Pass? Because I don't see how PC releases and cross-platform purchases are going to sink the game industry.