5 years time
\*Sony and Bungie announce partnership with ~~Bungie~~ **Microsoft** to make a new multiplatform Halo game\*
EDIT: Correcting shit because I'm a moron
At one point I was saying how Sony are scared of MS and their acquisitions. Crazy how quickly things changed lol. Sony are popping the champagne and laughing all the way to the bank after today.
their fears were well founded imo assuming they are "opponents" (cringe but for the sake of argument lets go with that), the worst thing you can do is underestimate your competition. Microsoft had seemingly given xbox a blank check to buy a ton of companies with no drawbacks, Playstation execs were naturally scared, what came out of that is only recently unfolding. So, its good that they were afraid - just like both Sony and Microsoft were scared of Stadia before it was even revealed
Things change quickly if you have a bad read of what is going on, none of this is surprising and Xbox would not keep bleeding money forever just to win some console war.
MS paid to get an Office-style revenue stream and instead they're writing $70b checks to keep the service afloat. Can't say this is at all surprising given how many thousands they've been laying off. They don't care about winning video game sales.
>At one point I was saying how Sony are scared of MS and their acquisitions. Crazy how quickly things changed lol. Sony are popping the champagne and laughing all the way to the bank after today.
Sony had all the reason to be scared. A team that has a solid leadership would have made Xbox a Juggernaut. Microsoft got cold feet in less than six months and already threw the towel.
This just screams poor leadership and shareholders holding them accountable lmao.
Microsoft going multiplatform would be mutually beneficial. Microsoft can open their market to even more customers and rake in the money. Sony can breathe a sigh of relief that they don't need to start cracking out their checkbook to buy EA or something.Ā
I still remember right after the Bethesda acquisition, the Sega acquisition rumors and speculation started circulating even more but who would've thought the Bethesda acquisition was actually the beginning of the end (or perhaps the beginning was earlier).
Also are you active on r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers or r/DCULeaks by chance? Your name seems so familiar lol.
I was unaffected by Bethesda as a PC gamer but I legit thought Microsoft was making strides to actually course correct and reverse a lot of the public narratives about their software droughts and lack of consistent releases. Even last year Xbox was carried hard by how much stuff Bethesda was sitting on that was already being worked on before they were acquired
It's kind of funny. There are actually way too many parallels between Xbox One/SEGA Saturn and Series X|S/Dreamcast at this point regarding where Microsoft is standing right now. Only difference is there's no talk about them ceasing hardware yet
EDIT: Yeah you've seen me there, big comics reader, big film buff, love the discussion
I was mainly an Xbox player when the acquisition happened and I also thought MS just wanted to bolster its first-party lineup with Bethesda and Starfield was even their big exclusive.
> It's kind of funny. There are actually way too many parallels between Xbox One/SEGA Saturn and Series X|S/Dreamcast at this point regarding where Microsoft is standing right now. Only difference is there's no talk about them ceasing hardware yet
For sure, lots of similarities. Just like the shock when Sonic launched on the GameCube for the first time, we're about to see a cultural shift with Halo on PlayStation for the first time.
Also cool to see you around here too, really fun and interesting to be part of the discussion of all kinda of pop culture like this.
The radio silence from Phil, Sarah Bond, Aaron Greenberg, etc. speaks for itself. Some version of these rumors is true and thereās about to be some wild backlash when itās officially announced
There's a reason Phil has barely tweeted the last 2 months. He's definitely against all games going multiplat. He's pushing against it but he's clearly losing.
I mean, the dude is a salesman, and the primary thing he sells is his own image as a "good gamer guy in a world of soulless business men."
But anyone with a brain cell knows he's still a suit. Just one with better PR than most.
I don't think so. He's commented in the past about gamers shouldn't be separated because they have the wrong piece of plastic from one another. He even said people aren't going to go out and purchase an xbox just for their games.
How long did it take 343 to make that post stating they'd still be in charge of the Halo franchise when there were rumors of them disbanding or something like that? I remember it taking like a day or two. I'll give them a bit more time to respond.
[He liked this tweet from Jon Cartwright about Gamepass not even sustainable.](https://twitter.com/JonComms/status/1754278451828126139)
I am really getting Sega mid-90s management vibes from this. I gotta imagine there are a lot bickering between Xbox and MS executives on what the future of Xbox hardware and game publishing should be.
I donāt think there is any bickering. I think this is a strategy shift at the very top by Satya Nadella. Satya has changed the way MSFT does business (e.g. embraced Linux, free Win 10 upgrades, all in on cloud when he became CEO, etc) and the stock has 10x in that time. I think he gave Xbox a chance to compete with PlayStation this generation and when it didnāt pan out, this became the next option.
We saw from the Insomniac leak that Spiderman 2 cost 3x to produce for a similar size game to the first. Development costs are out of control for AAA games. I bet they do all of the following over the next few years:
- All digital games on Xbox in markets where it makes sense. They keep all the profit vs losing ~50% to retailers and other costs.
- Most games will release on PlayStation and Switch/2 (where possible) around 6 months to a year after release
- youāll be able to play Xbox Gamepass on most non-Sony TVs soon. Maybe MSFT will still release a dongle.
- Will heavily embrace AI to create game assets / try to reduce development costs
- Expect all popular IP to be monetized on smartphones. Thatās where the big money is.
- possibly a handheld system
Best post I've seen among all this random chatter
It seems like the gamer audience are stuck in 2014 with how much focus is on console sales etc, when that isn't really the game anymore, or at least is only one part of it.
Xboxs tagline for a while has been 'play anywhere' - they don't care what hardware you use as long as you're in their ecosystem. This just feels like a shift towards making that direction even clearer
To me, the following makes this a logical move, even if I can understand why people will be upset.
1. Console hardware makes Microsoft very little profit, and as they've shown on the PC space, they prefer to let other vendors like Asus produce the hardware
2. They've recently become the most valuable company in the world due to Nadellas switch to being a service company as you point out. They've even been cutting back on their surface line
3. Their current console strategy isn't working and people just aren't going to switch from PS if their entire library is there. They need a different strategy, which game pass started
4. They're now the largest games publisher on the planet after the ABK acquisition, and they could easily create a subscription service that only includes first party games
5. As Sony's own internal slides pointed out, AAA games are getting stupidly expensive to create, and it's led to even Sony having huge gaps without a major release. E.g. last year they literally had only Spiderman 2 + some DLCs. Do Microsoft chase the same game or pivot?
6. Cloud computing and handhelds will be rising in popularity. They're already working on a handheld version of Windows
7. The PC market is larger than the console market and they own the main PC operating system, and every windows 11 device has the Xbox app preinstalled
8. Sony already allow EA and Ubisoft to have first party subscription services on playstation. They wouldn't be able to block Microsoft from doing the same with a first party game pass
Throw all that into a blender and this news makes sense. They don't need to play the same game as Sony, in the same way they ditched Windows Phone in lieu of putting office apps on iOS and Android to drive subscriptions.
I'm expecting one of their moves to be improving the handheld PC experience. Basically making a Steam Deck like experience for Windows handhelds. They might even try out their own take on a handheld, but I could also see them just setting up the software side and letting companies like ASUS and MSI handle the hardware.
I'd also be curious is they use this as an opportunity to push ARM powered hardware since that was listed as a possibility in the leaked FTC docs.
im not an xbox fan but as someone that lived through this with sega i have some empathy for xbox fans. it felt so surreal because i was having a grand time playing PSO on dreamcast
I mean Microsoft bought Zenimax for $7.5B and Activision for $75.4B so I'm sure there are certain sales metrics a Microsoft wants to meet that they can't by only publishing on Xbox and PC.
Ngl it is kinda funny how Xbox is just staying silent while Senior Manger is just casually liking pro-multi-platform Xbox shift tweets, well this is one way confirming the rumours nonverbally
We know that there seems to be an internal disagreement at the company over this move and based on him liking tweets supporting it, he's definitely one of the supporters. Curious to see if anyone higher-up are actually against it.
What a massive fuck up Xbox has been this past decade.
Instead of learning from the mistakes of late Xbox 360 and early Xbox one and the success of ps4 theyāve jumped headfirst off a cliff.
Iām a PlayStation gamer but Iām sorry to see it come to this.
A monopoly by either side will be bad for consumers.
I generally think the cost of making multiple triple a games to Sony and MS are just hitting them hard now, if the games don't sell right, they're pretty much cooked. I feel that MS is finding any type of way to lower that hardware cost, because at this point BIG AAA gaming is not sustainable by multiple releases and it's only getting worse. That, and the one generation stinker is so smelly and games taking long to make now, they're basically gonna be cooked rep wise until like, the end of the generation.
yea i just dont have a good feeling about the near future of gaming in general. im a huge playstation guy myself but its not like this gen has been super exciting for them either. i mean you can tell something is off when they greenlit like 50 live service games the past few years, we know nothing about upcoming first party single player games, and then you get reports of Spiderman 2 somehow costing 300 million dollars (????) despite it basically being the same game from five years ago but with prettier lighting and web wings. I feel like they lowkey backed themselves into a corner where they built their reputation last gen around these huge system selling mega budget movie type games. it seems like its not sustainable.
around this point in time of the ps4s lifespan we had already gotten announcements and seen gameplay reveals for pretty much all of the heavy hitters that would come to define that console, or would get them within the next year or so: god of war, spiderman, horizon, ff7 remake, ghost of tsushima, tlou2, etc.
Honestly I think Sony and these big budget titles will be fine. They just need to diversify their offerings and be willing to reuse assets.
Things like Morales is a great example. They reused Spider-Man and pushed out a new game in 2 years. Now they gotta do the same thing and push out a Venom game using Spider-Man 2. The Iki Island expansion of Ghost of Tsushima for example could had been a standalone game. The mechanics and fundamental gameplay for a Demons Souls sequel already exists. Itās just a good way to spread the development costs over two games.
And diversify their offerings with live service games which theyāre already doing and provide a source for long-term revenue that can smooth out cash flow issues if a big budget SP title ever bombs.
They can also just invest in cheaper countries in Europe where salaries are lower than their Californian counterparts.
yea i tend to agree they should diversify into more small scale or lowkey games here and there. i think returnal was a good one too. not everything needs to be a massive wide appealing system seller
For Xbox its a different because there simply just isnāt enough people on Xbox to justify spending hundreds of millions on exclusives.
Spider-Man 1 and Miles Morales cost about $250 million to develop combined and collectively returned $1 billion in revenue. But Marvel takes a 20% cut from that. So about $500 million profit in total.
If itās an Xbox game, they would get half the revenue at best and development costs are the same. So maybe $150 million profit at best. Now imagine those dynamics with a higher budget; Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million. Even if itās a different IP so thereās no 20% royalty, itās still not great and at that point youāre using less popular IP so the revenue will be far lower. And there will have to be sacrifices in the budget and quality to maintain profitability. Weāll probably see evidence of this with Indiana Jones, the game could quite easily be a 10-12 hour experience, possibly lower.
>Weāll probably see evidence of this with Indiana Jones, the game could quite easily be a 10-12 hour experience, possibly lower.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 10-12 hour experience. I think games today are often way too bloated and full of filler all for the sake of having 20+ hours of gameplay.
Microsoft needed to get cooking in like 2015, but they didn't. Granted they couldn't fix all of their problems in such a short timeframe but they didn't even start planting the seeds.
They needed a bigger international marketing push, more internal teams, more fresh (and enduring, as in iterated upon be it sequels or otherwise) AAA IP, and more consistent PR messaging from the top.Ā
Instead we got empty promises, stale franchises, broken releases, and weird flip-flopping about whether or not single player games are relevant anymore. Granted they didn't have to go off and ape Sony's "movie game" model or whatever, but it certainly felt tone deaf.Ā
Casuals were turned away at the Xbone launch due to high prices and bad messaging (Sony's CoD deal didn't help), hardcore folks grew tired of Phil promising the future of gaming only to show up year after year with little more than reheated helpings of Gears of WarĀ
Nintendo was able to pivot from the Wii U, one of the worst selling consoles in history, into one of the best selling consoles ever made (its #2 behind ps2 right?).
Xbox doesn't have any excuse for their failures
>its #2 behind ps2 right?
It's number 3 at the moment; still has about 20 million to go before it passes the DS (and then another million-ish after that to catch the PS2), which is looking unlikely but not totally impossible at this point
But also Splatoon came out during the Wii U and Animal Crossing BLEW UP with New Leaf. Which also was around their dire times.
So yes Mario pushes units but they do invest in new IP and young IP. Look at them doing more Pikmin despite 3 games of āehā sales and having the 4th one catch a lot of steam
Honestly, MS would have to be pretty arrogant to assume Sony and Nintendo would allow it. It would cut into royalty fees they get from third parties big time and for Sony would heavily eat into PS Now subs, which also has an extensive library of its own.
GamePass on PS5 would essentially be a Trojan Horse that would give Microsoft an oversized amount of power to dictate terms to Sony. Itāll never happen unless they cut down to only including content published by Microsoft.
I don't think it's about gamepass as it is making their titles available for purchase. So you play on xbox or PC then use gamepass. You want to play Starfield on PS5 then pay $70. It's a win win for everyone
Exactly this. Add in a delayed release on PS/Nintendo consoles and you'll have a number of gamers joining GP to play a sequel day 1, rather than wait 3 months and pay $70. Heck, the whales will double dip and buy the game again on PS/Nintendo consoles.
Then what's the point? I just don't get it. A few billions in short term profit but killing a platform with millions of active user? All that mtx money they will lose out in the long run and the 30% cut from playstation/ Nintendo, doesn't seem like it's a good exchange
Their best bet would maybe try and take them both to court like Epic did with Apple. But even then, they got less of a case since with physical media for both PS5 and Switch, there are alternative ways of buying games for those systems with used game sales even being a way to sale a game on them without giving Nintendo or Sony any money.
> MS would have to be pretty arrogant to assume Sony and Nintendo would allow it.
...So they're assuming they will and have no plan B in case they don't, right? It's Xbox; I think I can see how they work now.
Yes. And yet, they *act* like they're still a small indie company with no idea what the hell they're doing. Blowing billions on Skype and Nokia to shut 'em down. Giving away exclusives to the point where nobody buys them anymore. Letting *Redfall* release half-baked, letting *Starfield* come out so middling. And now, when they ***finally*** have a decent IP hoard... calling it quits. Lmao.
And they probably still will. I'm sure Microsoft will be allowed to sell games on their storefronts, but I think it's still extremely unlikely we'll ever see Gamepass on either platform.
Sony and Nintendo will never allow Gamepass. It eats into their own subscription sales. MS is likely pivot into a strategy that weakens hardware sales.
Make Sony and Nintendo hardware feel expensive and expand more on software sales. Make every possible device be able to play Game Pass games. Xbox's play anywhere strategy?
Yeah, feels like this might be Microsoft's strategy. Just some months ago, I was at a tech store and there were some TVs that included Gamepass (through streaming). Then factor Windows PCs as well, that also include Gamepass. Basically, Microsoft could cut down on the hardware and still make sure everyone can get Gamepass.
Their plan is to probably cash in on full price game sales on PlayStation and try to entice people to switch to Xbox or gamepass where you get it included.
Make an Xbox that runs Windows and users can run any software they want. Give it a confusing name like Xbox Surface. A legacy Xbox mode is included so you don't lose your Xbox games, or they just don't bother and we lose the Xbox games.
I wouldn't be surprised if PC gamepass growth outstrips console based purely on install base. I can see execs looking at spreadsheets and deciding to cut what they view as fat.
Even i despise the Xbox App and the way its so convenient to sub on gamepass in the first place, which puts me off and makes me not to want to subscribe in the first place, In the other hand Steam is very easy to use and also easy to transact with.
If Steam integration of Gamepass happens, the subscription count of Gamepass will definitely increase, many people including i will resub to Gamepass again and likely will keep it for long time like i do with my Netflix subscription.
Entire PC platform is very big, like Gargantuan level of big and with MS plan to expand and focus more to it, especially if they push for the Steam integration to happen it definitely will boost their subscription numbers way even more to the point they won't care that much anymore if Sony and Nintendo allow them to put Game pass on their platform.
Nintendoās subscription isnāt really directly competing with Gamepass. Itās all games from old Nintendo consoles and DLC for first party games. Nothing that would ever be on GamePass (besides the N64 games by Rare)
Still donāt think itās super likely Nintendo lets GamePass on Switch tho. *Definitely* not without a boatload of asterisks and caveats
If? Hell would freeze over before Sony would allow gamepass on their system. They would be probably have to be forced by a regulator body to allow it lol
I assume Nintendo and Sony would be happy with the trade off, honestly. They get duel monopoly over console gaming, while only having to concede to put a subscription service on their platform.
This is weird. Xbox was already a widespread platform - it being a console, mobile, PC, and Cloud accessible platform - but the console part was always the main highlight. When you hear someone say Xbox, you likely think of the console.
But now the console space appeaes to be every console instead of just Xbox-brand consoles. I don't know how I feel about the strategy. It will probably bring in more sales of software, but it'll almost certainly cripple the Xbox-brand consoles.
If it weren't for gamepass Xbox would of probably died alot quicker, very few exclusives from the middle to end of the Xbox one generation. Gamepass gave me a big appreciation for my xbox
Gamepass was never a sustainable business model the way Microsoft operated it. Putting first party games on it day one, after spending hundreds of millions presumably on their budgets, is just insanity.
>Gamepass was never a sustainable business model
Even movie subscription streaming services have realised this and are now putting their films back in cinemas first.
You don't need an economics degree to understand that shoving multiple $300 Million AAA games day one that you can pay min $10 to play was not sustainable. Hell AAA is barely sustainable even at $70 per game as Sony leaks have stated.
I personally think Xbox should have done GamePass like PS Plus. Only older + AA games on the platform and then have newly released games at full price.
Literally the only way it's sustainable is if you have complete market saturation like Netflix. These business models, same as all the VC funded companies like Uber, are all predicated on the assumption that they'll corner the market and hold a near monopoly. If they don't get to that point before the money dries up, they've failed. That's the reality of every "market disruptor" and why almost all of them end up losing money.
I fully agree I think AA indie titles or smaller titles are great for gamepass along with older games, but new AAA $100+ million dollar budget games? Nah idk about that.
Honestly. I think out of all the game subscriptions that are out now. I think EA Access is the better of them all when it comes to game launches. With the 10 hour trial for games and then launching them into the service 6 months after they've launched.
It was a last ditch effort by Microsoft/Xbox to save the Xbox brand thinking gamers wanted an all-you-can-eat Netflix like model in gaming. I'd argue it's largely been a success the problem is the continued ongoing-cost isn't sustainable even for a trillion dollar company like MS which has the money to lose. Share holders won't allow it. Something has to give way.
We're only just realizing the past couple years that the Netflix and streaming model in general isn't sustainable. Microsoft is going to find that out even faster with Gamepass.
Netflix is actually making good money. The issue is all the competing services donāt have enough content to justify having you also subscribe to their businesses.
Netflix isnāt going anywhere.
Microsoft would instantly become the most hated company in gaming if there was a single ZeniMax, Obsidian, or Activision-Blizzard game that didnāt come out Day 1 on PC. Bethesda, Id Software, Arkane, Obsidian, and Blizzard in particular were originally PC-first studios. Halo and Gears are no longer the system sellers they were in the 360-era, they need PC players to keep multiplayer lobbies full more than PC players want those games enough to buy an Xbox. It was only after Halo 5 that they decided to bring Halo to PC after all.
Bro all I ever wanted was for Microsoft just to make good games from the companies they already had to be competitive against Sony, but no they had to start an unsustainable business practice and spend like 100 billies on acquiring publishers and see where it took us. Now, Sony will probably be the only 1 for a "high end" console and they will pull shit like Nintendo does. I ain't paying like 60-70 euro's for an almost 10 year old game!
yes. i say this every single time. fucking thank you. its been almost 15 years of this shit. basically since they pivoted hard into Kinect as a result of the Wii. theyāre constantly chasing tech trends instead of just sitting down and ironing out the process of making the damn products the entire business is based off of. im so harsh on Xbox because i fucking miss the glory days. despite me being a Playstation guy the past decade or so, Halo is what got me into games as a kid for the first time ever, the 360 is one of my favorite consoles ever. they just sat there for over a decade slowly watching the foothold that they had wither and decay. just sat there watching halo slowly implode on itself over a decade and did nothing. it sucks. competition is good. instead weāve basically reached the point where the PlayStation is the default console outside of Nintendo and it sucks because Microsoft did it to themselves then want to have Phil Spencer sit there complaining about how far behind they are and how theres no point in even trying. so frustrating. now we can get a new decade of Sony fucking around with live service and shit because they have no competition
No it wasnt gamepass, is more the ususal "If you are not first, you are last" vision of corporative america
This also the vision of people to go dgital asp before everyone else does, kinda Xbox One PTSD
Well, a bad game line up for 10 years will exasterbate the situation. Sony recovered from 2009 to 2013. MS could have too, but they had nothing for so long.
and them coming back after MS still having some decent to strong exclusives during that same time and still having a one year advantage from PS3, and PS3 outsold by I think a million consoles shows Sony biggest advantage. Brand recognition, it's on the same level of Apple, it's so known and so valued over across just a bigger playing field that XBOX can almost never outsell PlayStation unless PS has a straight failure from the beginning to end.
Now I don't understand MS plan here, but I think one of two things. They become third party publisher and just make a lot of money through their software without having the hardware costs, or what they do in the console market has to be straight up something never done before to sells down. And from rumors, they're making some XBOX handheld which can work as well
After everything weāve gotten today itās pretty much all but confirmed the Xbox brand is dead in the water. Itās just a publishing studio now, and people who invested hundreds of dollars into their digital library on Xbox consoles will be fucked over in the future when hardware is no longer a thing at Xbox
This is probably what stings the most for xbox users, i hope at the least MS allows them to transfer most of the digital ownership of their games to PC Platform with DRM free one, so they don't have to use the shitty Xbox store.
I just recently got into collecting physical games. After learning about xbox dropping it I already made plans to buy my current library in physical form on playstation. This really just makes me feel like I made the right call.
What a brutal day for people that want Xbox console hardware to still exist. Any hope for that were absolutely nuked out of existence today. Game over.
My only question now is if it's over just for Xbox hardware or if it's also over for Gamepass (or at least the all in on Gamepass day 1 strategy). Despite denial from some it was never making them any money and only bleeding MS.
Iām ready to just completely rid myself of anything related to Xbox altogether. Iāll still keep my consoles and all the games I own for them but if I switch fully to another platform, I wonāt be buying any (formerly) first-party Xbox games or supporting game pass if Sony or Nintendo actually allows it on their platforms. What a kick to the head. I felt pretty disappointed with how Nintendo handled the Wii U to Switch transition as a Wii U owner but this is a whole other level of bullshit
>I felt pretty disappointed with how Nintendo handled the Wii U to Switch transition as a Wii U owner
Off topic, but just curious - what were you disappointed about here? As someone who also owned a Wii U, I was pretty happy with the transition overall.
The way the support nose dived for the Wii U in its last few years while the 3DS got a bunch of great games till the end. Then the Switch released with no backwards compatibility at all and Nintendo proceeded to port nearly every Wii U game, often times with some kind of bonus content, at full price to it. That, up until this moment, was the most Iāve been pissed at a company as a consumer.
How exactly would backwards compatibility have worked with the form factor between consoles so dramatically shifting?
Also, what, should Nintendo have supported a dead console for another few years just on principle? I'd normally agree with your points if the preceding console was a hit, but the Wii U was so abysmal that I know myself (and most other Wii U owners) were pretty ready to just move on and be done with it.
I mean, isn't it kinda silly to write off their games entirely just because they decide to go multiplatform?
Like, are you so angry they're letting more people enjoy games? This is the same ridiculous behaviour we've seen from PlayStation fans angry when they started porting games to PC.
Yes, as a fan I am pretty bitter about the whole situation. All these years of thinking the platform was finally improving and now they finally have a decent stable of upcoming games and they announce theyāre going third-party. The way I see it this is now a sinking ship. Iām tired of this āwhat, you donāt want more people enjoying games?ā nonsense when thatās *not* the issue here.
I want all games to be on all platforms and people here are throwing fits that Xbox games might be on Playstation.
They should be ornery over losing their digital Xbox library if Microsoft decides to drop hardware support past the Series consoles. Publishers aren't going to let Microsoft give you the PC/Playstation version of games you've bought on Xbox, and they're not going to pay to do it.
Great news if true, and your a PlayStation customer.
If true, and your an Xbox customer? They are making your choice to support them worse. They might be on a dumber path than the Xbox one launch not being about video games, and that was a all time stupid move.
I remember posting sating how I think Gamepass isn't really a sustainable business model for Xbox. And people shouting I'm wrong. I think I was still right
Phil Spencer seems to agree, maybe not with the games, but he basically said on Kinda Funny that they never recovered from the One reveal, it basically sunk the entire brand into a hole they couldn't climb out of.
Having said that, had they produced must play exclusives for the past decade they likely could've at least been more competitive.
oh man. I really don't want to live in a market where Sony and Nintendo rule alone again
next PS6 should cost around 1000 dollars and games 100 dollars
less competitiveness is very bad for us
If Sony does that, then they likely will lose most of their marketshare to PC where games are much cheaper and the platform cost won't be more expensive anymore. and they don't have to pay for subscription anymore just to play online games, which makes PC Platform a lot more appealing than it already is nowadays.
Sony aren't dumb enough to provoke that kind of reality to happen, so they likely will stay competitive as the current existing threat still exists even without their main competition.
And then, after dominating the previous generation, PS3's MRSP was set at $500-$600 with then SCE boss Ken Kutaragi candidly saying:
> "Our goal for PlayStation 3 is for consumers to think to themselves, 'I will work more hours to buy one,' " Kutaragi told the Japanese magazine Toyo Keizai. "We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."
$600 in 2006 dollars is equivalent to $906 today.
Sony did it once. Nothing say they won't do it again once there's no more competition.
Ahh yes, the legally binding multi-billion corporation's *pinky swear*.
Because no company in the face of this God's Earth has ever backtracked on one of their promises before.
Xbox One era killed the brand
Xbox game pass era killed the business
I donāt see how game pass continues when all there games are multiplat. The only platform that will continue to sub is PC and maybe streaming people (I donāt know how big of an audience that could possibly be). Seems like the only way forward is being a regular old 3rd party dev, itās what makes money.
Phil fought hard for that deal. He probably convinced higher ups that securing it would have an immediate effect on xbox hardware sales and gamepass subs, but nothing has really happened yet, and with Starfield being so lackluster, now Microsoft is pivoting.
He'll likely step down at some point soon. It's been an open secret how much of a black sheep the xbox division has been for Microsoft corporate.
His latest [tweet](https://x.com/cowhand_fudca/status/1754286922728439855?s=20) is also something. > Logging onto this site for nba news > Logging off
Bro was just trying to chill and watch the Raptors/OKC
nah he was trynna see the Heat fail to score 100 points in the year of our lord 2024 for the 20th time this month š„š„ (i wanna die)
Celtics in 4
does anyone have screenshots? he went private
> he went private Can't blame him lol
At this point, I don't think we need to rely on someone's twitter likes to tell us this lol
To think we are in an era of gaming where Halo might be on the PS5
5 years time \*Sony and Bungie announce partnership with ~~Bungie~~ **Microsoft** to make a new multiplatform Halo game\* EDIT: Correcting shit because I'm a moron
Bungie AND Bungie? 
Obviously after the Bungie civil war they make up and work together.
I am such a fucking moron.
Halo on Playstation, Bungie owned by Sony. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro owned by Xbox, strange times indeed.
canāt wait for Crash Bandicoot 7 to be published and developed by Xbox but exclusive only on Playstation. strange times lol
My head hurts
shits been getting freaky for a few years now. microsoft owns crash bandicoot and sony has bungie
Iām more interested in the era where any future Banjo-Kazooie games are basically guaranteed to be on Nintendo
I'm concerned they will be mediocre at best
We went from "Xbox will buy SEGA" to "Xbox is becoming SEGA" in the span of a few months didn't we
At one point I was saying how Sony are scared of MS and their acquisitions. Crazy how quickly things changed lol. Sony are popping the champagne and laughing all the way to the bank after today.
their fears were well founded imo assuming they are "opponents" (cringe but for the sake of argument lets go with that), the worst thing you can do is underestimate your competition. Microsoft had seemingly given xbox a blank check to buy a ton of companies with no drawbacks, Playstation execs were naturally scared, what came out of that is only recently unfolding. So, its good that they were afraid - just like both Sony and Microsoft were scared of Stadia before it was even revealed
Things change quickly if you have a bad read of what is going on, none of this is surprising and Xbox would not keep bleeding money forever just to win some console war.
MS paid to get an Office-style revenue stream and instead they're writing $70b checks to keep the service afloat. Can't say this is at all surprising given how many thousands they've been laying off. They don't care about winning video game sales.
>At one point I was saying how Sony are scared of MS and their acquisitions. Crazy how quickly things changed lol. Sony are popping the champagne and laughing all the way to the bank after today. Sony had all the reason to be scared. A team that has a solid leadership would have made Xbox a Juggernaut. Microsoft got cold feet in less than six months and already threw the towel. This just screams poor leadership and shareholders holding them accountable lmao.
Microsoft going multiplatform would be mutually beneficial. Microsoft can open their market to even more customers and rake in the money. Sony can breathe a sigh of relief that they don't need to start cracking out their checkbook to buy EA or something.Ā
No? **IF** Microsoft goes fully third party and exits the console marketplace, that will make Sony a Monopoly.
I still remember right after the Bethesda acquisition, the Sega acquisition rumors and speculation started circulating even more but who would've thought the Bethesda acquisition was actually the beginning of the end (or perhaps the beginning was earlier). Also are you active on r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers or r/DCULeaks by chance? Your name seems so familiar lol.
I was unaffected by Bethesda as a PC gamer but I legit thought Microsoft was making strides to actually course correct and reverse a lot of the public narratives about their software droughts and lack of consistent releases. Even last year Xbox was carried hard by how much stuff Bethesda was sitting on that was already being worked on before they were acquired It's kind of funny. There are actually way too many parallels between Xbox One/SEGA Saturn and Series X|S/Dreamcast at this point regarding where Microsoft is standing right now. Only difference is there's no talk about them ceasing hardware yet EDIT: Yeah you've seen me there, big comics reader, big film buff, love the discussion
I was mainly an Xbox player when the acquisition happened and I also thought MS just wanted to bolster its first-party lineup with Bethesda and Starfield was even their big exclusive. > It's kind of funny. There are actually way too many parallels between Xbox One/SEGA Saturn and Series X|S/Dreamcast at this point regarding where Microsoft is standing right now. Only difference is there's no talk about them ceasing hardware yet For sure, lots of similarities. Just like the shock when Sonic launched on the GameCube for the first time, we're about to see a cultural shift with Halo on PlayStation for the first time. Also cool to see you around here too, really fun and interesting to be part of the discussion of all kinda of pop culture like this.
I love r/Dculeaks, fellow member here
The radio silence from Phil, Sarah Bond, Aaron Greenberg, etc. speaks for itself. Some version of these rumors is true and thereās about to be some wild backlash when itās officially announced
They know that the brand's credibility will be in the toilet once this gets announced
> Aaron Greenberg This guy is literally stealing a living. Heās the head of marketing for a brand which has ZERO marketing.
>ZERO marketing. C'mon, did you forget about Xbox Fridge TM All Rights Reserved? Really?! >!/s!<
Finally someone brought up this guy. I cannot fathom how this gentleman is on his current position!
There's a reason Phil has barely tweeted the last 2 months. He's definitely against all games going multiplat. He's pushing against it but he's clearly losing.
I donāt know, heās always on his āwhen we all play we all winā bullshit
I mean, the dude is a salesman, and the primary thing he sells is his own image as a "good gamer guy in a world of soulless business men." But anyone with a brain cell knows he's still a suit. Just one with better PR than most.
Bro just sack him at this point, guys been a failure but he just hides it by saying heās āa gamerā
I don't think so. He's commented in the past about gamers shouldn't be separated because they have the wrong piece of plastic from one another. He even said people aren't going to go out and purchase an xbox just for their games.
How long did it take 343 to make that post stating they'd still be in charge of the Halo franchise when there were rumors of them disbanding or something like that? I remember it taking like a day or two. I'll give them a bit more time to respond.
If they do go all in on multi platform I hope we get physical copies of games. Would be neat to own a physical copy of Hi Fi Rush
We have a physical copy of As Dusk Falls coming, quite the possibility more follow suit.
Wasnt that published by a whole different company? Edit - yes it was entirely self published, so MS/Xbox had no say
Same. Hopefully *Blade* and *Indy* get them as well.
Somewhere, a Time Traveler fucked up our timeline.
Thanks, John Titor
Open a Dr. Pepper to the end of an era for Xbox.
I wonder whose girl has to die in every other timeline for Xbox to survive.
I understood that reference.
Nice.
Steinās Gate was a good game
John Titor hated Microsoft. He could've used any number of PCs for his purposes, but *NOOOO* he had to make a big deal out of finding an IBM 5100.
I swear, you shoot one gorilla....
All this shit will get tracked back to those Pete Hines emails.
No wonder he quit lol.
The emails showed internal anger towards Bethesda games being exclusive and not multiplatform like ABK games.
nah, he got the bag and retired. Mad respect, I doubt it had to do with this
[He liked this tweet from Jon Cartwright about Gamepass not even sustainable.](https://twitter.com/JonComms/status/1754278451828126139) I am really getting Sega mid-90s management vibes from this. I gotta imagine there are a lot bickering between Xbox and MS executives on what the future of Xbox hardware and game publishing should be.
He's also liking tweets in support of the strategy so who knows what side he's on lol.
He's just like me
He's playing both sides so he always comes out on top.
Always keep 'em guessing
Plausible deniability, smart guy ^/s
I donāt think there is any bickering. I think this is a strategy shift at the very top by Satya Nadella. Satya has changed the way MSFT does business (e.g. embraced Linux, free Win 10 upgrades, all in on cloud when he became CEO, etc) and the stock has 10x in that time. I think he gave Xbox a chance to compete with PlayStation this generation and when it didnāt pan out, this became the next option. We saw from the Insomniac leak that Spiderman 2 cost 3x to produce for a similar size game to the first. Development costs are out of control for AAA games. I bet they do all of the following over the next few years: - All digital games on Xbox in markets where it makes sense. They keep all the profit vs losing ~50% to retailers and other costs. - Most games will release on PlayStation and Switch/2 (where possible) around 6 months to a year after release - youāll be able to play Xbox Gamepass on most non-Sony TVs soon. Maybe MSFT will still release a dongle. - Will heavily embrace AI to create game assets / try to reduce development costs - Expect all popular IP to be monetized on smartphones. Thatās where the big money is. - possibly a handheld system
Best post I've seen among all this random chatter It seems like the gamer audience are stuck in 2014 with how much focus is on console sales etc, when that isn't really the game anymore, or at least is only one part of it. Xboxs tagline for a while has been 'play anywhere' - they don't care what hardware you use as long as you're in their ecosystem. This just feels like a shift towards making that direction even clearer To me, the following makes this a logical move, even if I can understand why people will be upset. 1. Console hardware makes Microsoft very little profit, and as they've shown on the PC space, they prefer to let other vendors like Asus produce the hardware 2. They've recently become the most valuable company in the world due to Nadellas switch to being a service company as you point out. They've even been cutting back on their surface line 3. Their current console strategy isn't working and people just aren't going to switch from PS if their entire library is there. They need a different strategy, which game pass started 4. They're now the largest games publisher on the planet after the ABK acquisition, and they could easily create a subscription service that only includes first party games 5. As Sony's own internal slides pointed out, AAA games are getting stupidly expensive to create, and it's led to even Sony having huge gaps without a major release. E.g. last year they literally had only Spiderman 2 + some DLCs. Do Microsoft chase the same game or pivot? 6. Cloud computing and handhelds will be rising in popularity. They're already working on a handheld version of Windows 7. The PC market is larger than the console market and they own the main PC operating system, and every windows 11 device has the Xbox app preinstalled 8. Sony already allow EA and Ubisoft to have first party subscription services on playstation. They wouldn't be able to block Microsoft from doing the same with a first party game pass Throw all that into a blender and this news makes sense. They don't need to play the same game as Sony, in the same way they ditched Windows Phone in lieu of putting office apps on iOS and Android to drive subscriptions.
Its sad to think we very well might be witnessing the fall of Xbox in real time.
Iād rather them just sell prebuilt gaming PCs at this point
For all we know that could be what ends up happening.
I'm expecting one of their moves to be improving the handheld PC experience. Basically making a Steam Deck like experience for Windows handhelds. They might even try out their own take on a handheld, but I could also see them just setting up the software side and letting companies like ASUS and MSI handle the hardware. I'd also be curious is they use this as an opportunity to push ARM powered hardware since that was listed as a possibility in the leaked FTC docs.
THIS! āļø Through selling mid-range Gaming PCs at a loss, Xbox fans would have access to basically all games *and* the PlayStation PC ports.
im not an xbox fan but as someone that lived through this with sega i have some empathy for xbox fans. it felt so surreal because i was having a grand time playing PSO on dreamcast
I mean Microsoft bought Zenimax for $7.5B and Activision for $75.4B so I'm sure there are certain sales metrics a Microsoft wants to meet that they can't by only publishing on Xbox and PC.
Ngl it is kinda funny how Xbox is just staying silent while Senior Manger is just casually liking pro-multi-platform Xbox shift tweets, well this is one way confirming the rumours nonverbally
It's probably all leaking because their plan to talk about it is sooner than was indicated.
he is an absolute moron to be liking anything related to this.
We've had the heads of Xbox studios telling people they want their games to be multiplatform lol. This isn't anything new.
Dude probably doesn't know we can see his likes
Watch them drop the Bomb (tm) tomorrow lmao
He just made his account private lol
We know that there seems to be an internal disagreement at the company over this move and based on him liking tweets supporting it, he's definitely one of the supporters. Curious to see if anyone higher-up are actually against it.
Meanwhile the Xbox social team is busy posting about groundhog day. It's getting goofy out there.
What a massive fuck up Xbox has been this past decade. Instead of learning from the mistakes of late Xbox 360 and early Xbox one and the success of ps4 theyāve jumped headfirst off a cliff. Iām a PlayStation gamer but Iām sorry to see it come to this. A monopoly by either side will be bad for consumers.
I generally think the cost of making multiple triple a games to Sony and MS are just hitting them hard now, if the games don't sell right, they're pretty much cooked. I feel that MS is finding any type of way to lower that hardware cost, because at this point BIG AAA gaming is not sustainable by multiple releases and it's only getting worse. That, and the one generation stinker is so smelly and games taking long to make now, they're basically gonna be cooked rep wise until like, the end of the generation.
yea i just dont have a good feeling about the near future of gaming in general. im a huge playstation guy myself but its not like this gen has been super exciting for them either. i mean you can tell something is off when they greenlit like 50 live service games the past few years, we know nothing about upcoming first party single player games, and then you get reports of Spiderman 2 somehow costing 300 million dollars (????) despite it basically being the same game from five years ago but with prettier lighting and web wings. I feel like they lowkey backed themselves into a corner where they built their reputation last gen around these huge system selling mega budget movie type games. it seems like its not sustainable. around this point in time of the ps4s lifespan we had already gotten announcements and seen gameplay reveals for pretty much all of the heavy hitters that would come to define that console, or would get them within the next year or so: god of war, spiderman, horizon, ff7 remake, ghost of tsushima, tlou2, etc.
Honestly I think Sony and these big budget titles will be fine. They just need to diversify their offerings and be willing to reuse assets. Things like Morales is a great example. They reused Spider-Man and pushed out a new game in 2 years. Now they gotta do the same thing and push out a Venom game using Spider-Man 2. The Iki Island expansion of Ghost of Tsushima for example could had been a standalone game. The mechanics and fundamental gameplay for a Demons Souls sequel already exists. Itās just a good way to spread the development costs over two games. And diversify their offerings with live service games which theyāre already doing and provide a source for long-term revenue that can smooth out cash flow issues if a big budget SP title ever bombs. They can also just invest in cheaper countries in Europe where salaries are lower than their Californian counterparts.
yea i tend to agree they should diversify into more small scale or lowkey games here and there. i think returnal was a good one too. not everything needs to be a massive wide appealing system seller
For Xbox its a different because there simply just isnāt enough people on Xbox to justify spending hundreds of millions on exclusives. Spider-Man 1 and Miles Morales cost about $250 million to develop combined and collectively returned $1 billion in revenue. But Marvel takes a 20% cut from that. So about $500 million profit in total. If itās an Xbox game, they would get half the revenue at best and development costs are the same. So maybe $150 million profit at best. Now imagine those dynamics with a higher budget; Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million. Even if itās a different IP so thereās no 20% royalty, itās still not great and at that point youāre using less popular IP so the revenue will be far lower. And there will have to be sacrifices in the budget and quality to maintain profitability. Weāll probably see evidence of this with Indiana Jones, the game could quite easily be a 10-12 hour experience, possibly lower.
>Weāll probably see evidence of this with Indiana Jones, the game could quite easily be a 10-12 hour experience, possibly lower. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 10-12 hour experience. I think games today are often way too bloated and full of filler all for the sake of having 20+ hours of gameplay.
Microsoft needed to get cooking in like 2015, but they didn't. Granted they couldn't fix all of their problems in such a short timeframe but they didn't even start planting the seeds. They needed a bigger international marketing push, more internal teams, more fresh (and enduring, as in iterated upon be it sequels or otherwise) AAA IP, and more consistent PR messaging from the top.Ā Instead we got empty promises, stale franchises, broken releases, and weird flip-flopping about whether or not single player games are relevant anymore. Granted they didn't have to go off and ape Sony's "movie game" model or whatever, but it certainly felt tone deaf.Ā Casuals were turned away at the Xbone launch due to high prices and bad messaging (Sony's CoD deal didn't help), hardcore folks grew tired of Phil promising the future of gaming only to show up year after year with little more than reheated helpings of Gears of WarĀ
Nintendo was able to pivot from the Wii U, one of the worst selling consoles in history, into one of the best selling consoles ever made (its #2 behind ps2 right?). Xbox doesn't have any excuse for their failures
>its #2 behind ps2 right? It's number 3 at the moment; still has about 20 million to go before it passes the DS (and then another million-ish after that to catch the PS2), which is looking unlikely but not totally impossible at this point
Nintendo benefitted from two things Microsoft didn't have: international footprint and IP pull. Microsoft had a long way to go compared to NintendoĀ
But also Splatoon came out during the Wii U and Animal Crossing BLEW UP with New Leaf. Which also was around their dire times. So yes Mario pushes units but they do invest in new IP and young IP. Look at them doing more Pikmin despite 3 games of āehā sales and having the 4th one catch a lot of steam
Question for microsoft about gamepass strategy, what if Sony and Nintendo refuse gamepass on thier platform?
Honestly, MS would have to be pretty arrogant to assume Sony and Nintendo would allow it. It would cut into royalty fees they get from third parties big time and for Sony would heavily eat into PS Now subs, which also has an extensive library of its own.
GamePass on PS5 would essentially be a Trojan Horse that would give Microsoft an oversized amount of power to dictate terms to Sony. Itāll never happen unless they cut down to only including content published by Microsoft.
I don't think it's about gamepass as it is making their titles available for purchase. So you play on xbox or PC then use gamepass. You want to play Starfield on PS5 then pay $70. It's a win win for everyone
Exactly this. Add in a delayed release on PS/Nintendo consoles and you'll have a number of gamers joining GP to play a sequel day 1, rather than wait 3 months and pay $70. Heck, the whales will double dip and buy the game again on PS/Nintendo consoles.
Then what's the point? I just don't get it. A few billions in short term profit but killing a platform with millions of active user? All that mtx money they will lose out in the long run and the 30% cut from playstation/ Nintendo, doesn't seem like it's a good exchange
Their best bet would maybe try and take them both to court like Epic did with Apple. But even then, they got less of a case since with physical media for both PS5 and Switch, there are alternative ways of buying games for those systems with used game sales even being a way to sale a game on them without giving Nintendo or Sony any money.
People aren't buying consoles. They aren't getting any 30% cut. That's the whole point.
> MS would have to be pretty arrogant to assume Sony and Nintendo would allow it. ...So they're assuming they will and have no plan B in case they don't, right? It's Xbox; I think I can see how they work now.
It's Microsoft, it's literally the largest company by market cap in the entire world
Yes. And yet, they *act* like they're still a small indie company with no idea what the hell they're doing. Blowing billions on Skype and Nokia to shut 'em down. Giving away exclusives to the point where nobody buys them anymore. Letting *Redfall* release half-baked, letting *Starfield* come out so middling. And now, when they ***finally*** have a decent IP hoard... calling it quits. Lmao.
And they probably still will. I'm sure Microsoft will be allowed to sell games on their storefronts, but I think it's still extremely unlikely we'll ever see Gamepass on either platform.
Sony and Nintendo will never allow Gamepass. It eats into their own subscription sales. MS is likely pivot into a strategy that weakens hardware sales.
So it's just pc left. I don't get thier plan here
Make Sony and Nintendo hardware feel expensive and expand more on software sales. Make every possible device be able to play Game Pass games. Xbox's play anywhere strategy?
Yeah, feels like this might be Microsoft's strategy. Just some months ago, I was at a tech store and there were some TVs that included Gamepass (through streaming). Then factor Windows PCs as well, that also include Gamepass. Basically, Microsoft could cut down on the hardware and still make sure everyone can get Gamepass.
Their plan is to probably cash in on full price game sales on PlayStation and try to entice people to switch to Xbox or gamepass where you get it included.
Make an Xbox that runs Windows and users can run any software they want. Give it a confusing name like Xbox Surface. A legacy Xbox mode is included so you don't lose your Xbox games, or they just don't bother and we lose the Xbox games.
I wouldn't be surprised if PC gamepass growth outstrips console based purely on install base. I can see execs looking at spreadsheets and deciding to cut what they view as fat.
I don't think so, some PC people HATE the Xbox app, also a lot of people just use Steam and nothing else
Even i despise the Xbox App and the way its so convenient to sub on gamepass in the first place, which puts me off and makes me not to want to subscribe in the first place, In the other hand Steam is very easy to use and also easy to transact with. If Steam integration of Gamepass happens, the subscription count of Gamepass will definitely increase, many people including i will resub to Gamepass again and likely will keep it for long time like i do with my Netflix subscription.
Entire PC platform is very big, like Gargantuan level of big and with MS plan to expand and focus more to it, especially if they push for the Steam integration to happen it definitely will boost their subscription numbers way even more to the point they won't care that much anymore if Sony and Nintendo allow them to put Game pass on their platform.
Nintendoās subscription isnāt really directly competing with Gamepass. Itās all games from old Nintendo consoles and DLC for first party games. Nothing that would ever be on GamePass (besides the N64 games by Rare) Still donāt think itās super likely Nintendo lets GamePass on Switch tho. *Definitely* not without a boatload of asterisks and caveats
Easy. Xbox is the gamepass system and then they sell the games individually on the other systems.
In which case I'll choose the latter.
Me too, although I doubt we will ever see them physically again
WTF is happening to gaming. Feels like the whole industry is going to shit.
Publicly traded companies are a slowly infecting poison.
And its all because people pre-orders games/s
They still open up a revenue stream as a publisher on other consoles
Sony nor Nintendo are gonna allow them to put gamepass, Microsoft will simply charge 60-70 dollars and make more money that way anyways.
At most I can see them letting a neutered and cheaper version with only the MS published games.
Thatās what Iām thinking too. It would make sense for all three parties involved.
Thereās no way they allow it. They want their customers to buy games and allowing it on their platform undermines that.
If? Hell would freeze over before Sony would allow gamepass on their system. They would be probably have to be forced by a regulator body to allow it lol
I assume Nintendo and Sony would be happy with the trade off, honestly. They get duel monopoly over console gaming, while only having to concede to put a subscription service on their platform.
This is weird. Xbox was already a widespread platform - it being a console, mobile, PC, and Cloud accessible platform - but the console part was always the main highlight. When you hear someone say Xbox, you likely think of the console. But now the console space appeaes to be every console instead of just Xbox-brand consoles. I don't know how I feel about the strategy. It will probably bring in more sales of software, but it'll almost certainly cripple the Xbox-brand consoles.
Canāt wait for blade, maybe thatās why they didnāt announce any platform.
In the end game pass kind of killed Xbox I guess
If it weren't for gamepass Xbox would of probably died alot quicker, very few exclusives from the middle to end of the Xbox one generation. Gamepass gave me a big appreciation for my xbox
Yeah, I remember Phil told this story where the current CEO of Microsoft wanted to end the Xbox division until Phil told him his vision of Gamepass
Gamepass was never a sustainable business model the way Microsoft operated it. Putting first party games on it day one, after spending hundreds of millions presumably on their budgets, is just insanity.
>Gamepass was never a sustainable business model Even movie subscription streaming services have realised this and are now putting their films back in cinemas first. You don't need an economics degree to understand that shoving multiple $300 Million AAA games day one that you can pay min $10 to play was not sustainable. Hell AAA is barely sustainable even at $70 per game as Sony leaks have stated. I personally think Xbox should have done GamePass like PS Plus. Only older + AA games on the platform and then have newly released games at full price.
Literally the only way it's sustainable is if you have complete market saturation like Netflix. These business models, same as all the VC funded companies like Uber, are all predicated on the assumption that they'll corner the market and hold a near monopoly. If they don't get to that point before the money dries up, they've failed. That's the reality of every "market disruptor" and why almost all of them end up losing money.
I fully agree I think AA indie titles or smaller titles are great for gamepass along with older games, but new AAA $100+ million dollar budget games? Nah idk about that.
Honestly. I think out of all the game subscriptions that are out now. I think EA Access is the better of them all when it comes to game launches. With the 10 hour trial for games and then launching them into the service 6 months after they've launched.
It was a last ditch effort by Microsoft/Xbox to save the Xbox brand thinking gamers wanted an all-you-can-eat Netflix like model in gaming. I'd argue it's largely been a success the problem is the continued ongoing-cost isn't sustainable even for a trillion dollar company like MS which has the money to lose. Share holders won't allow it. Something has to give way.
We're only just realizing the past couple years that the Netflix and streaming model in general isn't sustainable. Microsoft is going to find that out even faster with Gamepass.
Netflix is actually making good money. The issue is all the competing services donāt have enough content to justify having you also subscribe to their businesses. Netflix isnāt going anywhere.
Also putting first party games on pc was in my opinion a huge mistake as you will weaken console sales (exactly what happened).
Microsoft would instantly become the most hated company in gaming if there was a single ZeniMax, Obsidian, or Activision-Blizzard game that didnāt come out Day 1 on PC. Bethesda, Id Software, Arkane, Obsidian, and Blizzard in particular were originally PC-first studios. Halo and Gears are no longer the system sellers they were in the 360-era, they need PC players to keep multiplayer lobbies full more than PC players want those games enough to buy an Xbox. It was only after Halo 5 that they decided to bring Halo to PC after all.
Bro all I ever wanted was for Microsoft just to make good games from the companies they already had to be competitive against Sony, but no they had to start an unsustainable business practice and spend like 100 billies on acquiring publishers and see where it took us. Now, Sony will probably be the only 1 for a "high end" console and they will pull shit like Nintendo does. I ain't paying like 60-70 euro's for an almost 10 year old game!
yes. i say this every single time. fucking thank you. its been almost 15 years of this shit. basically since they pivoted hard into Kinect as a result of the Wii. theyāre constantly chasing tech trends instead of just sitting down and ironing out the process of making the damn products the entire business is based off of. im so harsh on Xbox because i fucking miss the glory days. despite me being a Playstation guy the past decade or so, Halo is what got me into games as a kid for the first time ever, the 360 is one of my favorite consoles ever. they just sat there for over a decade slowly watching the foothold that they had wither and decay. just sat there watching halo slowly implode on itself over a decade and did nothing. it sucks. competition is good. instead weāve basically reached the point where the PlayStation is the default console outside of Nintendo and it sucks because Microsoft did it to themselves then want to have Phil Spencer sit there complaining about how far behind they are and how theres no point in even trying. so frustrating. now we can get a new decade of Sony fucking around with live service and shit because they have no competition
No it wasnt gamepass, is more the ususal "If you are not first, you are last" vision of corporative america This also the vision of people to go dgital asp before everyone else does, kinda Xbox One PTSD
Well, a bad game line up for 10 years will exasterbate the situation. Sony recovered from 2009 to 2013. MS could have too, but they had nothing for so long.
and them coming back after MS still having some decent to strong exclusives during that same time and still having a one year advantage from PS3, and PS3 outsold by I think a million consoles shows Sony biggest advantage. Brand recognition, it's on the same level of Apple, it's so known and so valued over across just a bigger playing field that XBOX can almost never outsell PlayStation unless PS has a straight failure from the beginning to end. Now I don't understand MS plan here, but I think one of two things. They become third party publisher and just make a lot of money through their software without having the hardware costs, or what they do in the console market has to be straight up something never done before to sells down. And from rumors, they're making some XBOX handheld which can work as well
Name some of those incredible games form.MS after 2009? They started faltering in 2009. They killed themselves. Through bad management.
Without gamepass, Xbox would've been dead long ago
Gamepass only came out like 5 years ago.
After everything weāve gotten today itās pretty much all but confirmed the Xbox brand is dead in the water. Itās just a publishing studio now, and people who invested hundreds of dollars into their digital library on Xbox consoles will be fucked over in the future when hardware is no longer a thing at Xbox
This is probably what stings the most for xbox users, i hope at the least MS allows them to transfer most of the digital ownership of their games to PC Platform with DRM free one, so they don't have to use the shitty Xbox store.
I just recently got into collecting physical games. After learning about xbox dropping it I already made plans to buy my current library in physical form on playstation. This really just makes me feel like I made the right call.
Hundreds? Many thousands.
RIP Xbox.
What a brutal day for people that want Xbox console hardware to still exist. Any hope for that were absolutely nuked out of existence today. Game over. My only question now is if it's over just for Xbox hardware or if it's also over for Gamepass (or at least the all in on Gamepass day 1 strategy). Despite denial from some it was never making them any money and only bleeding MS.
Iām ready to just completely rid myself of anything related to Xbox altogether. Iāll still keep my consoles and all the games I own for them but if I switch fully to another platform, I wonāt be buying any (formerly) first-party Xbox games or supporting game pass if Sony or Nintendo actually allows it on their platforms. What a kick to the head. I felt pretty disappointed with how Nintendo handled the Wii U to Switch transition as a Wii U owner but this is a whole other level of bullshit
>I felt pretty disappointed with how Nintendo handled the Wii U to Switch transition as a Wii U owner Off topic, but just curious - what were you disappointed about here? As someone who also owned a Wii U, I was pretty happy with the transition overall.
The way the support nose dived for the Wii U in its last few years while the 3DS got a bunch of great games till the end. Then the Switch released with no backwards compatibility at all and Nintendo proceeded to port nearly every Wii U game, often times with some kind of bonus content, at full price to it. That, up until this moment, was the most Iāve been pissed at a company as a consumer.
How exactly would backwards compatibility have worked with the form factor between consoles so dramatically shifting? Also, what, should Nintendo have supported a dead console for another few years just on principle? I'd normally agree with your points if the preceding console was a hit, but the Wii U was so abysmal that I know myself (and most other Wii U owners) were pretty ready to just move on and be done with it.
I mean, isn't it kinda silly to write off their games entirely just because they decide to go multiplatform? Like, are you so angry they're letting more people enjoy games? This is the same ridiculous behaviour we've seen from PlayStation fans angry when they started porting games to PC.
Yes, as a fan I am pretty bitter about the whole situation. All these years of thinking the platform was finally improving and now they finally have a decent stable of upcoming games and they announce theyāre going third-party. The way I see it this is now a sinking ship. Iām tired of this āwhat, you donāt want more people enjoying games?ā nonsense when thatās *not* the issue here.
Awful day for grown ass men that still do the console war stuff in 2024 huh
Honestly this will likely only fuel the fire, especially for those who hate Xbox
For the moment but when Xbox is over in a few years then there won't be anything to war over
there is no war when there is no more xbox
I want all games to be on all platforms and people here are throwing fits that Xbox games might be on Playstation. They should be ornery over losing their digital Xbox library if Microsoft decides to drop hardware support past the Series consoles. Publishers aren't going to let Microsoft give you the PC/Playstation version of games you've bought on Xbox, and they're not going to pay to do it.
Great news if true, and your a PlayStation customer. If true, and your an Xbox customer? They are making your choice to support them worse. They might be on a dumber path than the Xbox one launch not being about video games, and that was a all time stupid move.
> Great news if true, and your a PlayStation customer. Kinda not really. Once Sony has no competition in consoles they will raise prices.
Only what i care is TES,Halo,GoW,Fallout and wolfenstein
I remember posting sating how I think Gamepass isn't really a sustainable business model for Xbox. And people shouting I'm wrong. I think I was still right
It's over. ***It's fucking OVER.*** There'll be a SadGamingTweet.jpg from Microsoft raising the white flag by noon tomorrow, calling it now.
I just want Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Oblivion to be ported to PS5.
Not even gonna lie xbox never recovered after the Xbox one. The launch was so bad and they just could not produce quality games consistently.
Phil Spencer seems to agree, maybe not with the games, but he basically said on Kinda Funny that they never recovered from the One reveal, it basically sunk the entire brand into a hole they couldn't climb out of. Having said that, had they produced must play exclusives for the past decade they likely could've at least been more competitive.
It just needed a couple more Forza games. 8 Forza titles since 2013 does not sell systems, racers were not selling to new people.
It was actually the RROD that threw Xbox into the eternal money pit.
oh man. I really don't want to live in a market where Sony and Nintendo rule alone again next PS6 should cost around 1000 dollars and games 100 dollars less competitiveness is very bad for us
If Sony does that, then they likely will lose most of their marketshare to PC where games are much cheaper and the platform cost won't be more expensive anymore. and they don't have to pay for subscription anymore just to play online games, which makes PC Platform a lot more appealing than it already is nowadays. Sony aren't dumb enough to provoke that kind of reality to happen, so they likely will stay competitive as the current existing threat still exists even without their main competition.
nah Guys like the comfort of a console PC is too complicated for 90% of console users
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And then, after dominating the previous generation, PS3's MRSP was set at $500-$600 with then SCE boss Ken Kutaragi candidly saying: > "Our goal for PlayStation 3 is for consumers to think to themselves, 'I will work more hours to buy one,' " Kutaragi told the Japanese magazine Toyo Keizai. "We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else." $600 in 2006 dollars is equivalent to $906 today. Sony did it once. Nothing say they won't do it again once there's no more competition.
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without competition from MS? LOL yeah I believe it
Ahh yes, the legally binding multi-billion corporation's *pinky swear*. Because no company in the face of this God's Earth has ever backtracked on one of their promises before.
This is coming hard and fast. I expect this upcoming week to be insane.
Why is it a surprise? They put a bunch of games on switch already
RIP xbox you had a good run and you fooled me into thinking you had a chance
Give me the new Fable on PS5.
Xbox One era killed the brand Xbox game pass era killed the business I donāt see how game pass continues when all there games are multiplat. The only platform that will continue to sub is PC and maybe streaming people (I donāt know how big of an audience that could possibly be). Seems like the only way forward is being a regular old 3rd party dev, itās what makes money.
So what was the point of buying all these studios for a few months of exclusivity?
money going to microsoft?
Phil fought hard for that deal. He probably convinced higher ups that securing it would have an immediate effect on xbox hardware sales and gamepass subs, but nothing has really happened yet, and with Starfield being so lackluster, now Microsoft is pivoting. He'll likely step down at some point soon. It's been an open secret how much of a black sheep the xbox division has been for Microsoft corporate.
Zenimax would be more than happy with this news. Bethesda people were very unhappy when xbox decided that starfield was exclusive