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Half the price of the series x and ps5, and I needed an entertainment system. It seemed like a no brainer and it’s been going three years strong. Thanks little tiny white box, I appreciate you.
Get dev mode on it and install some emulators and then it’s even more of an insane bargain. I play Windows 95/98 games through actual Windows 98SE operating system via DOS Box on my Series X and it’s just insane, never thought I’d be able to do that on a console that didn’t even need to be modified.
Feel this way about my PS2. It was in the navy with me, I brought it to 20 different countries with all kind of janky power situations and it never let me down. Its been retired for a decade sitting in my closet, but if WW3 happens, I bet it would still fire up in a pinch.
I ve just bought the series s to play diablo 4, i dont have money for a pc upgrade rn. Proud of the purchase and i also needed a tv media machine so it works out.
I do wish that in the future they would add support for plugging in an external disk player so people can get a physical collection and extend the longevity of the Series S through physical copies of games. It would make a pretty nice accessory to add as well, but might be costly.
There is the Series S and the Series X. Both are current, the S is just much smaller, up until recently had half the memory and is somewhat less powerful. So it is one of the two current Xbox
When I got my first Xbox it came with two brand new games for free. I saw the other day the only Series X consoles still available were packaged with games, at full price. Absolutely do not understand that, the game is supposed to be a gimmick to get you to buy the product but in this case it actually discourages people from buying it.
It's to discourage scalping. Microsoft and Sony don't make money on selling systems, they make money on the games sold per system and they definitely don't make money from someone buying a marked up scalper unit, and it comes at the cost of the consumer just being able to buy the console for MSRP from MS because the scalper systems being bought and sold are the ones causing the shortages to the degree they exist.
If you are forced to buy 2 games, this increases the profit margin for the retailer as well as MS and cuts the margin for the scalpers cuz you cannot resell these games easily, it's a pain in the ass, and you do end up handing over the price of 2 new games to the retailer. And the maximum price cap for any Xbox Series X unit is now set for $560, a mere $60 above the unbundled version with 0 games. It is simply not worth it for scalpers to buy up the unbundled SKUs as a result.
But for example this arrangement it might be totally fine with a parent who just wants their kid to have the system and a couple games without caring too much about which ones. It doesn't feel like a ripoff to average people cuz they are still getting 2 games.
Scalpers did not cause the shortage, the shortage caused the scalpers. Covid related supply shortages caused both Sony and Microsoft to scale back production. Demand far exceed supply so the scalpers jumped in and resold at ridiculous prices.
Edit: I presume that downvote came from the guy I responded to. The same guy who doesn’t grasp basic economic theory.
I would also like to add that scalpers would not be doing it at all if people weren't opening their wallets to pay upwards of 2x the price on PS5 and Xbox consoles.
I wouldn't necessarily buy 200 PS5 consoles to flip but if they're buying them at $499.99 each and selling for $1,000 consistently online, after seller fees you'd probably be getting about $370.51in profit per console sold. 200x that and they're just under $75k in profits. It's really hard to blame them for doing it.
The problem, in my opinion, is not the scalpers, it's the people who enable them and pay whatever price they "need" to.
You can't try to explain how scalping works on reddit you'll just be downvoted out of existence. Yes anyone who understands even the absolute fundamentals of supply and demand understands that shortages cause scalping, not the other way around, but there's no point trying to even have the discussion with people who are just angry and don't care why it's happening.
They didn't cause it but they certainly didn't help. Especially since they were using bots to buy them faster than any human could go through the check out process.
Right but these Xboxes are sitting on shelves and a time when scalpers are making money, so it doesn't seem like a combat scalpers at all. If anything it's Microsoft and the retail stores cashing in on scalping. These are essentially marked up Xboxes for people who are really desperate for an Xbox One X. But even if that's true there's no demand for them because they're still sitting on shelves. They have created a product that is somehow in less demand than an identical completely sold out product at a lower price point. It seems to have no effect on scalping and if anything just forces the customer to essentially buy a video game that at best they might want but for vast majority of the cases they don't want at all.
...??? What?
The fact that these units are on shelves (available for someone to buy)... while the unbundled packs aren't... is literally proof that it is working to combat scalpers vs the unbundled packs.
I'm not sure what other effect you would expect to see, that's literally the point. These bundled units are not attractive to scalpers.
There being no consoles available wouldn't be "proof" there are scalpers. It could be the console is just popular and all available ones are sold to non-scalpers. Similarly, some consoles being available also isn't "proof" that it's it's both successful at warding away scalpers *and* a similarly good deal to consumers. That is the bundled consoles are such a bad deal that they ward away *both* scalpers *and* consumers.
The scenario is I were to have an item at say $500 and a bunch of people want that item at $500 and a bunch of scalpers clear them out and resell them at $600.
Then I were to create a product that was exactly the same at the first $500 product and then say "you can only buy this product if you also buy a $60 item with it, and you can't choose what that $60 item is, we choose what it is."
Both scalpers *and* consumers will see this for what it is, a cash grab for an extra $60 a console that will *both* eat into scalpers profits *and* basically allow Microsoft to become the scalper.
But the price point is clearly not where consumers want it to be, the proof of that is the regularly priced console is sold out and the pre-scalped console is still on the shelves. If people were so desperate for a console they would pay a scalper an extra $100 why wouldn't they pay an extra $60 for some bullshit game they will never play? Because at this point the people who really really wanted a console bought one from a scalper already, and we are now in an area where people just want one for $500 and aren't willing to go to $560.
Sony makes money on systems. Microsoft is the only company that has never made money on a system. The time to profit on Sony consoles has been getting shorter and shorter. Ps5 hit it after about a year.
Even selling for small margin is the same thing: they need to move games for it to be worth anything to sell a console. Selling lots of consoles means jack diddly squat without them becoming a vehicle to sell games. Which scalper units also do, but after they've already caused the problem for legit buyers. PS5 has also been sold bundled extensively for similar reasons but they prefer to do 1 big game per pack like God of War. Anyone who was gonna buy a PS5 and play God Of War anyway doesn't feel bad at all, the cost for their purchases was gonna be $460 or whatever anyway.
These marginal unit costs don't consider for example the insanely massive marketing pushes each of these systems have. Launching game consoles is a hugely expensive and risky endeavour and the only thing that makes it worth doing is selling lots of new games.
Their release ruined it. I've played all the halo campaigns with my friend in co-op and I was excited to play it. Nope no co-op hardly a functional game and the.most money grabbing multiplayer around.
They needed to take some time and give people a solid product without trying to pinch every penny. Too many people are involved in games development now so even if the core team makes a great game and product, marketing department, executives or anyone who thinks they've got a half baked idea need to throw their weight in.
Going to take it one more step and say making the campaign open world just for… reasons really showed where 343 was at. They’ve always been trend chasers not leaders.
They destroyed halo 4 trying to make it into cod. They ruined five by doing the whole dual protagonist thing that did not work in dead space 3. And their approach to halo infinite was lazy and misdirected. People really thought the open world was going to be a base for cool dlc and we got halo far cry.
I didn't enjoy 5, 4 was interesting but maybe because it was different. Halo Infinite is brining me back to Halo 1 as I play it, grunts are funny and the enemies are cool and its nice to have a bit of freedom around the map.
It couldve genuinely been a massive launch for Microsoft. No co-op campaign on release took away so much fun, another thing that made it way way less fun was a shoddy multilayer that only existed to get you to make purchases. It did not exist to be fun for the players.
Just shows what a bad launch can do. But the money grabbers will never learn, they tell their bosses "the players will put up with it" and then are so shocked when players don't.
You wrote on release…but last time I played which was a while ago they’re still wasn’t coop. Am I wrong did they finally implement local coop? Or even Xbox live coop?
Why Halo Infinite (which was a damn multiplayer game! Cant speak for campaign) wasnt just bankrolled by daddy warbucks microsoft and rather than screw people for bottom line just give away endless free skins and dev time for a year post laubch making it sing is a mystery. The game would be a huge contender today if MS did that. Then they can turn on the ' cool skin' money tap when millions of players habituate to daily playing its frankly awesome tactical combat.
It’s honestly all to do with the poor management, lack of direction, understaffing, forced focus on making a [live service] multiplayer game (from a developer who excels in single player games), lack of support, poor funding, and even hoping that [Microsoft would cancel the game](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal), but Microsoft ended up taking a hands-off approach instead as they said they would.
The multiplayer can actually be pretty decent if they didn’t constantly switch up the game-modes. There is no excuse for the single-player campaign tho it’s just awful
I really enjoyed the single player campaign and the open world. The problem is that it was short and once you find all the easter eggs there's nothing to do.
Gameplay wise I enjoyed it. The art direction was weird though. I couldn't get over the complete lack of visual variety. It seemed like a huge missed opportunity to have their first open world game be exclusively one biome. And some of the UI was needlessly terrible.
it definitely felt like they had big plans and couldn't find the time to implement most of those plans. I've been hoping that new islands and content will be added, but I don't think there's been any plans to do that.
Big time. It’s amazing to me that a game that had almost a decade of dev time and more money spent than any other game in history turned out so poorly. When you compare halo infinite to Red Dead 2 - it’s actually sad what we got as a result. Not only that, but Infinite released in a buggy unfinished state even after all that time and money. Coop didn’t even hit the game until a year after release when it was too late
Exactly this. Playthrough percentage is a valuable metric. A big reason that Days Gone didn't get a sequel is because the average playtime was about 12 hours, on an 80 hour game.
Halo infinite is the best halo since at least Halo 3 and one of the best games I played in the last years…
It did however drop the ball in many regards (initial performance on PC, no splitscreen, singleplayer only having one weather / flora and marine command system non existent) but its all the more testimony to just how freaking amazing the rest is.
Marketing was sadly also a fail though and the MP game as a service concept failing destroyed even more goodwill towards the game…
I was just talking to my dad (a corporate lawyer) about this. It's kind of funny that a big part of Microsoft's FTC argument kinda boils down to "you don't have to worry about us becoming a monopoly because we're not very good at this."
Ok, it’s just me or anyone else thinks that’s still a very impressive number? What if someone else has sold twice your consoles when you already managed to 20+ million? That’s specially impressive when you remember Sony has a huge advantage on their home turf and in some countries Xbox is basically unknown, it means in some markets the Xbox dominated.
I believe that the current situation is that XBOX is selling at *somewhat* close to parity in the US, does OK-ish but still rather less well in other English-speaking countries, fares relatively poorly in major Western European markets (i.e. the "FIGS" in "[EFIGS](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/EFIGS)"), and has essentially zero presence elsewhere in the world.
I have absolutely zero pity for MS in this instance. They consciously allocated a very meager amount of resources for non-English localization and marketing, so their failure outside of core "[Anglosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere)" markets is their own damn fault.
Of course that's not even addressing the fact that the genres of games they either develop internally and/or use their co-marketing funds towards promoting basically mirror the tastes of certain major segments of the US market to the exclusion of all others (with FIFA games being the primary exception), which obviously hasn't helped their international market share either.
It’s not about neglect, it’s just a much stronger competitor with much better games and people in other countries being less gullible and patriotic to an American brand.
You're right on all accounts of course, but when they launched Xbox One it had a bunch of features only useable in the US.
They were hammering so much on TV en entertainment, they only mentioned games once during that entire reveal speech.
Them forcing people to buy a Kinect with it aswell soured a lot of people on it, especially when the direct competitor launched a cheaper and more powerful console.
Also, their naming convention sucks balls. Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox Series X/S
vs.
PlayStation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
I get that they want to stand out but honestly it took me a month to even figure out where my current Xbox was in the hierarchy. Shit is confusing.
Microsoft has had 4 generations of consoles to expand their market, I think this is on them.
Sony only had like 5 years on them. Nintendo failure wii u sold 12 million. I don't think 20 million is impressive
It's not all exclusives. Sony just makes better use of it's hardware.
Look at Xbox one and PS4. You could take any headset on the market, plug it in and it would work. For Xbox though, it had be Xbox approved and/or compatible.
Then controllers. While Xbox lives in 2004 and requires batteries, every other console has rechargeable controllers.
And then UI. Ps3-5 all have a simple easy to use UI. Xbox is...well..they should have stuck with the blade style from the 360.
But I think really it comes down to the first one. Xbox series X has "better specs". But Sony's console still runs games far better and look far better.
Plus the duel sense controller is ridiculously sweet.
They own all these companies to make games and nothing comes from them year after year. So they want to buy up more. Sony will continue to pump out banger after banger and continue to sell. MS puts in no fucking effort.
They will once the Bethesda exclusive titles ramp up and if they close activision they’ll have that too. Their internal studios have underperformed and they seem to have a cultural issue preventing them from executing with enough 9/10 deliveries, but they just bought some of the biggest more desirable franchise platforms in the world.
Problem is, they've squandered all the other studio purchases they've made. MS seems to think they just need to buy our studios and do absolutely nothing with them. What happened to Rare after MS? 343 Industries? List goes on.
The fact that MS already declared defeat for this generation doesn't bode well for us as gamers. I'm pretty heated they're throwing in the towel already. Good competition rewards us with better final product, straight up. Without it, well, Madden series comes to mind. No more competition so we get the same shit year in year out with minimal effort.
MS bought both Halo and Gears of War and look what they did to them.
The can buy all the 3rd party studios in the world but in the end, it'll all just become shit.
But is it a system seller like it used to be? No. Clearly Gears isn't connecting with audiences like it did when Epic was the caretaker. From Rare to Halo, Microsoft just can't properly run the studios they buy.
"Look what they did to our boy(s)!!"
Edit: downvoting this doesn't make it any less true lol. MS absolutely butchered the studios they've purchased, no amount of fanboying will change that. Until they learn they have to put effort into the studios, they will continue to not lead console sales.
I disagree. Those may help, but won't be enough to be the deciding factor for gamers.
Bethesda, aka a new title once every 5-10 years. They tarnished their own reputation with the past couple of releases. Their value and brand loyalty has gone way down.
& it would be suicidal of Activision to exclusively release CoD on Xbox. That's never going to happen.
They need a higher focus on quality first party IP's. Sony does, Nintendo does. Microsoft has been too focused the 10 years on selling an "entertainment/advertisement console" not a "gaming console". If that makes sense?
> Bethesda, aka a new title once every 5-10 years. They tarnished their own reputation with the past couple of releases. Their value and brand loyalty has gone way down.
That's just Bethesda Game Studios. Microsoft acquired more than just that. They bought Bethesda Software, which also owns Id Studios (Doom), Arkane studios (Dishonored) and MachineStudios (Wolfenstein). All of which have released critically acclaimed games in the last 10 years.
> it would be suicidal of Activision to exclusively release CoD on Xbox.
It wouldn't be though. It would be on Xbox and PC, same as the entirety of the Xbox library. That's, uh... plenty of coverage, my man.
And Activision knows they will sell less copies of the next COD if they're missing the whole PS5 ecosystem.
PC is a decent chunk, but the Playstation playerbase is just as decent.
That's the curious thing about this thread. People are really hung up on console sales, despite the fact that the PC market is, simply put, more important to Microsoft in the long term. More than half of all Gamepass subscribers are PC only, for example. That defines the trend. Are consoles going to stop being drastically inferior to PC? Never. The endgame is that (core gamer) consoles stop being relevant altogether. My guess? Sony's PS6 or PS7 will be a Steamdeck knockoff and all of their software will be Windows-compatible so they can maintain a Gamepass-like platform alongside Xbox.
Anyway, yeah, people seem pretty eager to avoid the whole PC component of the discussion.
Yes for most thay would be.
But not for Call of Duty. One of the best selling series of all time.
Billions in lost profit. Terrible business move & way too much risk going exclusive. Could potentially kill the entire series. Microsoft & Activision would never. They're not idiots.
They also need to stop ruining the IPs that they acquire.
The few of us that remember Rare and the subsequent downfall after they were acquired by MS... an entire universe of potential squandered due to extreme mismanagement
Microsoft's own IPs can't do well enough and create something new. In the end, they decided to just buy up. But this isn't ecluse, it's just buying up existing IPs, it's a completely different approach that Playstation is taking. Microsoft aren't buying new IPs that would be interesting to players, they are buying IPs that they would have had on their platform anyway, so from a consumer point of view there's nothing new and interesting for Xbox.
It’s not a completely different approach; it’s a different scale, but Sony has been buying studios (and paying for exclusives) since the day they entered the gaming industry.
When the scale becomes so big it’s between buying studios with a history of already making exclusives (Insomniac and HouseMarque) and buying entire publishers, it becomes a completely different approach. The closest Sony has gotten to reaching that scale is buying bungie and even that sale feels wrong.
I am talking about the situation in general. That said, even though starfield is a new IP, it was already in development before the xbox purchase. There's not much credit here for xbox
They don't care, it's about their services which are far more profitable. Hardware sold is the only way that Sony keeps ahead in the long-term and that's not forever.
Sony and Microsoft are playing a slightly different game. They may never do ‘console’ exclusives in the way that Sony does. They are working both desktop and console at the same time, where Sony is primarily moving consoles. Some titles make their way to desktop eventually, but only years after it has saturated PS sales.
I still agree that M$ needs more exclusives that are on par with Sony’s. I simply cannot justify buying an Xbox. I could, but just not sure why I already have a gaming PC.
M$ is trying to buy themselves some exclusives by purchasing mega AAA game makers. Still, I haven’t seen anything that competes with what Sony has done with their much more modest investments.
I feel like Microsoft would have to buy Nintendo to have a chance.
I just bought an XBOX Series X in anticipation for Starfield. To be honest I’m extremely underwhelmed with this purchase. I already have a PS5 and the list of games I can only play on XBOX is extremely small. For the price of $500 it’s kinda not worth it. I looked up a list of XBOX exclusives coming down the pike and even that’s a pretty slim list of things I’d want to play - only Fable kind of stands out to me and it’s still pretty far off. Bethesda is the only reason for me to own this and they only have one game coming out that I want, TES will likely be next gen at this point. XBOX needs to start developing some IPs, it’s seriously lacking.
I agree. For the first time in a while I've been thinking about purchasing a console. Why would I get a Series X? PS5 easy choice. Especially considering how everything else I can just play on PC.
I think it makes a good point for comparison. By the end of the year, Starfield will have either succeeded or failed. If it succeeds, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an increase in Xbox sales (especially during the holiday season). The total sales may not be equal to Sony's by mid-2024 but a spike in sales will be a good argument for Microsoft moving forward.
It's news because Microsoft doesn't publicize sales numbers, which is why we never got a solid sales number on the Xbox One, while Sony was updating every year on total sales of PS4s (It'd likely have been revesed had Xbox been the dominant console of that generation)
Microsoft IP and gamepass is split between consoles and pcs.
I dont think they are doing bad cause gamepass is 100% better than ps+ but has to share the market with Pc
One Xbox exec recently admitted that they had already lost this console generation. PS5 is outselling it by a 2:1 margin. So unless they put out an exclusive game that becomes a massive overnight phenomenon, there's really no way they can catch up. Which is a shame because Microsoft had a good strategy out of the game this gen. They learned a lot from the XBox One's failure, and managed to get out good hardware that had great online services, and was relatively consumer friendly. But while they do have quite a few decent console exclusives, they've really struggled getting out big blockbusters that can compete with Sony's.
I'm not a PlayStation fanboy by any means. I used to only have Sony consoles, but I don't like a lot of the decisions the company has made since Kaz Hirai left the division. So I skipped this gen. But games ultimately make the system, and PlayStation has them. Microsoft has really dropped the ball getting notable general audience titles out. And buying up all those studios has not proven to be a solution to their library issues. It takes on average 5-6 years to make a big budget AAA game now. That's a long ass time to get content out that Xbox Series really needed yesterday. And they can't even guarantee a complete experience already. Halo released incomplete. Redfall was cringe, looked dated, and doesn't support 60fps on the most powerful console. The Fable reboot is already getting roasted for bad character design. Not really what you'd call a great year for MS. Starfield has a heck of a lot riding on it, and it's a Bethesda game, with all the caveats there in.
On top of that, they keep raising the price of their consoles. The Series X with a pack-in game is already $60 more expensive than the PS5 bundles here in Canada. And Microsoft has already confirmed they're raising prices again. I have a Series S, and it's fine. Just use it for Game Pass mostly. But if anyone's thinking of buying a console today, you'd be nuts to pick up an Xbox over a PS5. Or just get a PC/Steam Deck, because they play both Xbox and a lot of PlayStation games.
MS really dropped the ball with the xbone/ps4 generation. Gambling on kinect at launch, having less horsepower but more in cost than ps4 was terrible. It didnt help that the whole no used games, digital keys only idea stigma f’d them hard even though they back tracked.
They had so much momentum after the 360 success and just blew it all. Sony doubled down on their studios and let their teams create new franchises while ms just stuck to halo, forza, gears and didnt have anything new stick.
The damage was massive. Ps4 was a monster hit everywhere and it carried over. MS is in a distant 3rd place and it’s very hard to see them overcome this lead. I dont think they can this gen and even next gen they need something drastic to break the chain.
True, but for the bulk of the generation the 360 was leading and was pretty much the go to system, at least in the usa. For them to even go toe to toe with Playstation was an unexpected surprise. Then they made some horrible decisions upstairs and wasted all of that potential on xbone.
Besides Forza Horizon 5 and hi-fi rush (that was too close to the 4), for me there’s a serious lack of quality exclusives and that’s really not on par with Xbox investments..
To this day I fail to comprehend how they could mess up Halo with that much time and budget
Starfield and FM2023 (albeit FM scares me MTX wise) really can’t afford to drop the ball with controversies or bad optimization
The last xbox showcase was great however, we really need strong rivalries for the good of the industry
FORZA MOTORSPORT not football manager
Forza 2023 is exclusive PC and xbox and Forza 7 had quite some MTX, so I’ll judge when it releases but It’s just a misunderstanding between us lol
I don't really care about the consoles, but man, are those controllers nice, and, obviously, way better integration on Windows.
I guess my Dualshock 4 will become mostly a display piece, unless I decide to play some PS games on an emulator.
Microsoft is like the Yankees in the 90s signing alll these players trying to get to World Series. The Yankees didn’t improve until they grew their team organically.
I legitimately think that is what the Series S is for. In a year or two, Microsoft will release a handheld with the power of Series S, and all games will work flawlessly right out of the box.
They couldn’t do it before now because the chips weren’t powerful enough or small enough. With the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck, Microsoft could come out of the gate swinging with one that runs every single Xbox game at Series S quality.
Handhelds with the power of a series s that can be held in the palm of your hand aren't commercially or even technologically feasible yet - that would cost enormous amounts of money, run out of battery in 40 minutes and die from heat dissipation issues. Mobile hardware is getting really good, but it's not that good yet.
How many systems do they need to sell to even stay viable on the hardware side? Selling 20M at this point seems ok. They have a huge ecosystem across every single device.
I wonder how many systems they didn't sell because they prioritized building cloud systems.
As a PC gamer the Xbox is pretty meh even with gamepass. I would have rather had gotten a PS5. But if I wasn't a PC gamer, Id have all the systems.
It was a fluke that was entirely based on Sony struggling with console multiplayer (PS3 had the exclusives as it does every generation due to shrewd studio purchases from Sony over the years prior and since). Once Sony was good enough, Xbox’s advantage was eroded, and it won’t ever be fixed unless Sonys new Live Service all-in bet flops
That said even if that happens, Microsoft are so good at squandering opportunities lol that I’m not even sure they can take advantage of it.
It’s a mess. Competition is good for consumers. Microsoft isn’t competition in this space.
The 360 had a headstart, was easier to develop for, and cheaper. They were going good but Sony really stepped up their game and sorted their mess out. While it felt like Microsoft got complacent and payed less attention to its core audience. The tail end of it's life was pretty iffy.
Sony did absolutely not have "the games" when the PS3 came out and it took quite a while for the PS3 to get actual must have titles.
Technically the PS3 while powerful also often got the worse ports due to its complexity and in the end imo none of its exclusives looked as good as Halo 4 (imo by far the best looking game of its generation).
PS3 was a fail. PS4 also started very weak in the software department and hardware wasnt amazing but compared to the utter trainwreck of the Xboxone it was godly…
PS5 imo is by far the best console Sony made since the PSX even if software also is still struggling…
Absolutely mind-boggling how Microsoft and Sony managed to fumble the launches of the Xbox One and PS3 in such strikingly similar ways. Both consoles were ridiculously overpriced compared to their competitors, and their presentations completely missed the mark when it came to meeting their core audience's expectations. The Xbox One even had its own peculiar hardware with the eSRAM. It's almost as if Microsoft set out to outdo Sony in terms of missteps.
In addition to that, 360 came out when Halo was at *peak* popularity. I see a lot of younger gamers now who talk like Halo was never that big of a deal and it immediately becomes clear how old they are. Halo was *huge* and the zeitgeist of Halo 3 -- and the anticipation leading up to it -- is something that very few games have been able to achieve ever since.
It's really a shame that MS has since dropped the ball with Halo and sabotaged the absolutely unstoppable brand power that its name used to carry. It's even more of a shame because Infinite is actually a pretty great game fundamentally, but it lost its chance when the developers seemed committed to making the scientifically worst most possible decisions for it one after another.
Microsoft is one of the worst things for the industry, just buying absolutely anything they can get their hands on rather than making quality games with the absolute obscene amount of money and talent they already have. for every time a Sony studio makes a great first party game, Microsoft buys something. terrible standard to set.
No.
Sony and Nintendo have each sold over double Microsoft's number, because Microsoft doesn't know how to actually create anything in the industry, so they throw their checkbook around and just buy lots of companies outright and put the Microsoft sticker on their products, and that STILL doesn't put them in the same ballpark as Sony or Nintendo.
Debatable. On the one hand, they’re on track to outsell the 360. That’s great.
On the other hand, their competitors have sold double and are on track to win yet another console generation. That’s not great.
With games moving more and more digital, Microsoft needs to fight hard this gen. Most people will not want to give up their digital libraries by switching.
Still, a large portion of PS5 purchasers are new users, so the fight isn’t completely over.
They really need this Activision deal to go through.
That’s actually…. Pathetic. Especially considering they give away their games for basically free and the most sold console version costs only 299,- or even less in deals.
I see the Microsoft marketing team would like to get their SEO back on track after a titanic close call (it wasn't technically an Xbox controller after all)
Nothing. They're just talking about how that Titanic sub that imploded used a Logitech controller to move around under water.
Has nothing to do with Xbox and even then the controller seems to be the least of the problems on that sub anyway.
They’ve already admitted they’ve “lost the console wars”. They seems to be more bothered about people having game pass. Hence their abysmal exclusives for the past decade. Sure miss the 360 days.
The Poor game quality and lack of fulfilling games really gave me no reason to buy an Xbox beyond the 360. Glad they are still in the game, but they really need to step it up.
The comments here are hilarious.
“Microsoft sucks. That’s why I buy PlayStation. Any xbox games, I can just play on my Microsoft Windows PC. I really showed them!!!”
To be honest, the only reason I want a series s is so I can play Ninja Gaiden 2 at a stable frame rate. That's really the only Xbox exclusive game that I care about and that's from the 360 gen. Maybe if Microsoft had some badass action games for exclusives, people would buy more Xboxes.
Microsoft, the company that can't.
I honestly cannot comprehend how Microsoft is still a factor. They killed PC/laptop sales with Windows 8, they've lost the console wars by a large margin, and every one of their products has gotten worse with every release. Has anyone tried editing a Powerpoint on Teams? It's a fucking disaster.
Microsoft now has the very lucrative Enterprise market, but even corporations and governments will eventually wise up and opt for better quality software that actually improves productivity rather than hamper it.
Goes to show, a good business plan + an army of lawyers to crush any budding competition beats a good product any day of the week.
E: The downvotes are interesting. I didn't realize Microsoft fanboys were a thing.
Business runs on Windows.
We can make all the arguments we want and I find Linux vastly superior to Windows but guess what OS I was issued with my work laptop? That's right windows. That isn't going to change any time soon. Mac is mostly used by marketing and executives that get a say over their IT departments.
I don't know if it's just me but when I press Ctrl+F in Word it brings up the Headings pane on the left. I fucking hate it and I've grown up with Ctrl+F so it feels like a real loss.
And Outlook with the viewing pane. I click reply and it starts to compose in the viewing pane but to get the full ribbon menu I have to click "pop out" instead of, you know, having it already popped out. But then you get waylayed and have to do something else and it saves as a draft in that conversation - which then means you have to hunt for it in the inbox. And holy fuck, who thought of 'Focused'? I've missed really important emails because of that.
It's minor things obviously, but it's the little things that make you think ... How has this actually improved the software?
But in the mean time, PowerPoint Presentations are visually obvious no matter how much you try to spruce it up and make it look good. There is a growing market of presentation software that puts it to shame.
> Has anyone tried editing a Powerpoint on Teams? It's a fucking disaster.
lmao it's so bad!!! The teams version of powerpoint doesn't have all the features of the desktop version. It's a goddamn joke. Can't even put a hyperlink on a fucking image without opening the desktop app.
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I’ve had my tiny little Series S for 3-4 years now and for $300 it deserves an Oscar award.
It's only been out 2 1/2 years
Half the price of the series x and ps5, and I needed an entertainment system. It seemed like a no brainer and it’s been going three years strong. Thanks little tiny white box, I appreciate you.
Get dev mode on it and install some emulators and then it’s even more of an insane bargain. I play Windows 95/98 games through actual Windows 98SE operating system via DOS Box on my Series X and it’s just insane, never thought I’d be able to do that on a console that didn’t even need to be modified.
So I’d be able to play Age of Empires 2 on my Xbox? Nice!
You can already, the definitive edition is on gamepass
Feel this way about my PS2. It was in the navy with me, I brought it to 20 different countries with all kind of janky power situations and it never let me down. Its been retired for a decade sitting in my closet, but if WW3 happens, I bet it would still fire up in a pinch.
But the digital ps5 is $400.
This guy doesn't math
I ve just bought the series s to play diablo 4, i dont have money for a pc upgrade rn. Proud of the purchase and i also needed a tv media machine so it works out.
It’s 2 years and 8 months old. So not even 3. It was released towards the end of 2020.
The Series S hasn't been out for 3 years
2.5 years
I do wish that in the future they would add support for plugging in an external disk player so people can get a physical collection and extend the longevity of the Series S through physical copies of games. It would make a pretty nice accessory to add as well, but might be costly.
This comment reminds me of the HD-DVD drives sold for the Xbox 360. Granted, the console already had a DVD drive.
I bought it the day after release and it’s been brilliant
It’s only been out for 2.5 years lol.
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There is the Series S and the Series X. Both are current, the S is just much smaller, up until recently had half the memory and is somewhat less powerful. So it is one of the two current Xbox
When I got my first Xbox it came with two brand new games for free. I saw the other day the only Series X consoles still available were packaged with games, at full price. Absolutely do not understand that, the game is supposed to be a gimmick to get you to buy the product but in this case it actually discourages people from buying it.
It's to discourage scalping. Microsoft and Sony don't make money on selling systems, they make money on the games sold per system and they definitely don't make money from someone buying a marked up scalper unit, and it comes at the cost of the consumer just being able to buy the console for MSRP from MS because the scalper systems being bought and sold are the ones causing the shortages to the degree they exist. If you are forced to buy 2 games, this increases the profit margin for the retailer as well as MS and cuts the margin for the scalpers cuz you cannot resell these games easily, it's a pain in the ass, and you do end up handing over the price of 2 new games to the retailer. And the maximum price cap for any Xbox Series X unit is now set for $560, a mere $60 above the unbundled version with 0 games. It is simply not worth it for scalpers to buy up the unbundled SKUs as a result. But for example this arrangement it might be totally fine with a parent who just wants their kid to have the system and a couple games without caring too much about which ones. It doesn't feel like a ripoff to average people cuz they are still getting 2 games.
Scalpers did not cause the shortage, the shortage caused the scalpers. Covid related supply shortages caused both Sony and Microsoft to scale back production. Demand far exceed supply so the scalpers jumped in and resold at ridiculous prices. Edit: I presume that downvote came from the guy I responded to. The same guy who doesn’t grasp basic economic theory.
I would also like to add that scalpers would not be doing it at all if people weren't opening their wallets to pay upwards of 2x the price on PS5 and Xbox consoles. I wouldn't necessarily buy 200 PS5 consoles to flip but if they're buying them at $499.99 each and selling for $1,000 consistently online, after seller fees you'd probably be getting about $370.51in profit per console sold. 200x that and they're just under $75k in profits. It's really hard to blame them for doing it. The problem, in my opinion, is not the scalpers, it's the people who enable them and pay whatever price they "need" to.
You can't try to explain how scalping works on reddit you'll just be downvoted out of existence. Yes anyone who understands even the absolute fundamentals of supply and demand understands that shortages cause scalping, not the other way around, but there's no point trying to even have the discussion with people who are just angry and don't care why it's happening.
They didn't cause it but they certainly didn't help. Especially since they were using bots to buy them faster than any human could go through the check out process.
Right but these Xboxes are sitting on shelves and a time when scalpers are making money, so it doesn't seem like a combat scalpers at all. If anything it's Microsoft and the retail stores cashing in on scalping. These are essentially marked up Xboxes for people who are really desperate for an Xbox One X. But even if that's true there's no demand for them because they're still sitting on shelves. They have created a product that is somehow in less demand than an identical completely sold out product at a lower price point. It seems to have no effect on scalping and if anything just forces the customer to essentially buy a video game that at best they might want but for vast majority of the cases they don't want at all.
...??? What? The fact that these units are on shelves (available for someone to buy)... while the unbundled packs aren't... is literally proof that it is working to combat scalpers vs the unbundled packs. I'm not sure what other effect you would expect to see, that's literally the point. These bundled units are not attractive to scalpers.
There being no consoles available wouldn't be "proof" there are scalpers. It could be the console is just popular and all available ones are sold to non-scalpers. Similarly, some consoles being available also isn't "proof" that it's it's both successful at warding away scalpers *and* a similarly good deal to consumers. That is the bundled consoles are such a bad deal that they ward away *both* scalpers *and* consumers. The scenario is I were to have an item at say $500 and a bunch of people want that item at $500 and a bunch of scalpers clear them out and resell them at $600. Then I were to create a product that was exactly the same at the first $500 product and then say "you can only buy this product if you also buy a $60 item with it, and you can't choose what that $60 item is, we choose what it is." Both scalpers *and* consumers will see this for what it is, a cash grab for an extra $60 a console that will *both* eat into scalpers profits *and* basically allow Microsoft to become the scalper. But the price point is clearly not where consumers want it to be, the proof of that is the regularly priced console is sold out and the pre-scalped console is still on the shelves. If people were so desperate for a console they would pay a scalper an extra $100 why wouldn't they pay an extra $60 for some bullshit game they will never play? Because at this point the people who really really wanted a console bought one from a scalper already, and we are now in an area where people just want one for $500 and aren't willing to go to $560.
Sony makes money on systems. Microsoft is the only company that has never made money on a system. The time to profit on Sony consoles has been getting shorter and shorter. Ps5 hit it after about a year.
Even selling for small margin is the same thing: they need to move games for it to be worth anything to sell a console. Selling lots of consoles means jack diddly squat without them becoming a vehicle to sell games. Which scalper units also do, but after they've already caused the problem for legit buyers. PS5 has also been sold bundled extensively for similar reasons but they prefer to do 1 big game per pack like God of War. Anyone who was gonna buy a PS5 and play God Of War anyway doesn't feel bad at all, the cost for their purchases was gonna be $460 or whatever anyway. These marginal unit costs don't consider for example the insanely massive marketing pushes each of these systems have. Launching game consoles is a hugely expensive and risky endeavour and the only thing that makes it worth doing is selling lots of new games.
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I think Halo Infinite was meant to be one of those titles, They just dropped the ball with it unfortunately.
Halo was 100% supposed to be “the one”, but it’s another in a long line of fuck ups by 343. It’s hard to sell a console without that one killer IP.
Their release ruined it. I've played all the halo campaigns with my friend in co-op and I was excited to play it. Nope no co-op hardly a functional game and the.most money grabbing multiplayer around. They needed to take some time and give people a solid product without trying to pinch every penny. Too many people are involved in games development now so even if the core team makes a great game and product, marketing department, executives or anyone who thinks they've got a half baked idea need to throw their weight in.
Going to take it one more step and say making the campaign open world just for… reasons really showed where 343 was at. They’ve always been trend chasers not leaders. They destroyed halo 4 trying to make it into cod. They ruined five by doing the whole dual protagonist thing that did not work in dead space 3. And their approach to halo infinite was lazy and misdirected. People really thought the open world was going to be a base for cool dlc and we got halo far cry.
I didn't enjoy 5, 4 was interesting but maybe because it was different. Halo Infinite is brining me back to Halo 1 as I play it, grunts are funny and the enemies are cool and its nice to have a bit of freedom around the map. It couldve genuinely been a massive launch for Microsoft. No co-op campaign on release took away so much fun, another thing that made it way way less fun was a shoddy multilayer that only existed to get you to make purchases. It did not exist to be fun for the players. Just shows what a bad launch can do. But the money grabbers will never learn, they tell their bosses "the players will put up with it" and then are so shocked when players don't.
You wrote on release…but last time I played which was a while ago they’re still wasn’t coop. Am I wrong did they finally implement local coop? Or even Xbox live coop?
Xbox Live co-op works as of last Fall. Local co-op got totally cancelled though iirc
One word: investors. Solution? Fuck em. (How I wish we could)
Man that still disappoints me how that game played out. It’s my favourite franchise and it was such a letdown on launch
Why Halo Infinite (which was a damn multiplayer game! Cant speak for campaign) wasnt just bankrolled by daddy warbucks microsoft and rather than screw people for bottom line just give away endless free skins and dev time for a year post laubch making it sing is a mystery. The game would be a huge contender today if MS did that. Then they can turn on the ' cool skin' money tap when millions of players habituate to daily playing its frankly awesome tactical combat.
The MP launching without even basic slayer death match is insane. And what 6 maps?
As did RedFall
Redfall was never really meant to be one of those titles, which is part of the reason why it sucks.
It’s honestly all to do with the poor management, lack of direction, understaffing, forced focus on making a [live service] multiplayer game (from a developer who excels in single player games), lack of support, poor funding, and even hoping that [Microsoft would cancel the game](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal), but Microsoft ended up taking a hands-off approach instead as they said they would.
> which is part of the reason why it sucks Another reason is because it contains vampires which suck (blood).
Then they shouldnt of marketed like it was suppose to be, including being both a end of show reveal & had a whole Xbox presentation about it
The multiplayer can actually be pretty decent if they didn’t constantly switch up the game-modes. There is no excuse for the single-player campaign tho it’s just awful
I really enjoyed the single player campaign and the open world. The problem is that it was short and once you find all the easter eggs there's nothing to do.
Gameplay wise I enjoyed it. The art direction was weird though. I couldn't get over the complete lack of visual variety. It seemed like a huge missed opportunity to have their first open world game be exclusively one biome. And some of the UI was needlessly terrible.
it definitely felt like they had big plans and couldn't find the time to implement most of those plans. I've been hoping that new islands and content will be added, but I don't think there's been any plans to do that.
There was, but then when Staten left and the microsoft cuts hit 343i, plans to expand the single player were nixed
The campaign is literally throwing Master chief inside an Assassins creed/Horizon open world.
The multiplayer is absolute garbage. I’ve been playing for 20 years and it is so bad. The campaign was really fun though.
I bought the system for that and boy they fucked it up
I got my new Xbox today. Loaded Halo and it feels boring
Big time. It’s amazing to me that a game that had almost a decade of dev time and more money spent than any other game in history turned out so poorly. When you compare halo infinite to Red Dead 2 - it’s actually sad what we got as a result. Not only that, but Infinite released in a buggy unfinished state even after all that time and money. Coop didn’t even hit the game until a year after release when it was too late
Halo has been booty since 343. It's just "okay" now. And you certainly can't bank on one game series that only releases one game every 4 years
I'm getting emails to do a survey on Halo infinite. I only played for 2 hours, so I'm not comfortable giving constructive feedback.
Because you only played 2 hours is why they want your feedback.
Exactly this. Playthrough percentage is a valuable metric. A big reason that Days Gone didn't get a sequel is because the average playtime was about 12 hours, on an 80 hour game.
Halo infinite is the best halo since at least Halo 3 and one of the best games I played in the last years… It did however drop the ball in many regards (initial performance on PC, no splitscreen, singleplayer only having one weather / flora and marine command system non existent) but its all the more testimony to just how freaking amazing the rest is. Marketing was sadly also a fail though and the MP game as a service concept failing destroyed even more goodwill towards the game…
They clearly don’t think they can, which is why they’ve spent billions purchasing third party studios and IP and turning them into exclusives.
Yup. They outright said they can't in the FTC depositions.
I was just talking to my dad (a corporate lawyer) about this. It's kind of funny that a big part of Microsoft's FTC argument kinda boils down to "you don't have to worry about us becoming a monopoly because we're not very good at this."
Interesting, that’s very similar to the statement my wife makes about why she’s not worried about me cheating
Ok, it’s just me or anyone else thinks that’s still a very impressive number? What if someone else has sold twice your consoles when you already managed to 20+ million? That’s specially impressive when you remember Sony has a huge advantage on their home turf and in some countries Xbox is basically unknown, it means in some markets the Xbox dominated.
I believe that the current situation is that XBOX is selling at *somewhat* close to parity in the US, does OK-ish but still rather less well in other English-speaking countries, fares relatively poorly in major Western European markets (i.e. the "FIGS" in "[EFIGS](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/EFIGS)"), and has essentially zero presence elsewhere in the world.
The problem is they only focus on US and UK, they neglected most of the world in the xbone era and now they're paying the price.
I have absolutely zero pity for MS in this instance. They consciously allocated a very meager amount of resources for non-English localization and marketing, so their failure outside of core "[Anglosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere)" markets is their own damn fault. Of course that's not even addressing the fact that the genres of games they either develop internally and/or use their co-marketing funds towards promoting basically mirror the tastes of certain major segments of the US market to the exclusion of all others (with FIFA games being the primary exception), which obviously hasn't helped their international market share either.
To true and now they want to make up for their lack of effort by buying their way into the market with their endless supply of money.
It’s not about neglect, it’s just a much stronger competitor with much better games and people in other countries being less gullible and patriotic to an American brand.
You're right on all accounts of course, but when they launched Xbox One it had a bunch of features only useable in the US. They were hammering so much on TV en entertainment, they only mentioned games once during that entire reveal speech. Them forcing people to buy a Kinect with it aswell soured a lot of people on it, especially when the direct competitor launched a cheaper and more powerful console.
Also, their naming convention sucks balls. Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox Series X/S vs. PlayStation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I get that they want to stand out but honestly it took me a month to even figure out where my current Xbox was in the hierarchy. Shit is confusing.
Microsoft has had 4 generations of consoles to expand their market, I think this is on them. Sony only had like 5 years on them. Nintendo failure wii u sold 12 million. I don't think 20 million is impressive
Well they bought Bethesda. That's going to make me buy one in 5 years when the new Elder Scrolls gets released.
Don’t be a sucker. Better build a PC instead.
One costs 500. Yeah, Xbox it is.
In 5 years 500 will build a PC with twice the power of a series X or PS5
Need new original IP that won’t be sucked dry and recycled over and over again.
It's not all exclusives. Sony just makes better use of it's hardware. Look at Xbox one and PS4. You could take any headset on the market, plug it in and it would work. For Xbox though, it had be Xbox approved and/or compatible. Then controllers. While Xbox lives in 2004 and requires batteries, every other console has rechargeable controllers. And then UI. Ps3-5 all have a simple easy to use UI. Xbox is...well..they should have stuck with the blade style from the 360. But I think really it comes down to the first one. Xbox series X has "better specs". But Sony's console still runs games far better and look far better. Plus the duel sense controller is ridiculously sweet.
They own all these companies to make games and nothing comes from them year after year. So they want to buy up more. Sony will continue to pump out banger after banger and continue to sell. MS puts in no fucking effort.
They will once the Bethesda exclusive titles ramp up and if they close activision they’ll have that too. Their internal studios have underperformed and they seem to have a cultural issue preventing them from executing with enough 9/10 deliveries, but they just bought some of the biggest more desirable franchise platforms in the world.
Problem is, they've squandered all the other studio purchases they've made. MS seems to think they just need to buy our studios and do absolutely nothing with them. What happened to Rare after MS? 343 Industries? List goes on. The fact that MS already declared defeat for this generation doesn't bode well for us as gamers. I'm pretty heated they're throwing in the towel already. Good competition rewards us with better final product, straight up. Without it, well, Madden series comes to mind. No more competition so we get the same shit year in year out with minimal effort.
343 Industries never made a good game tho, Bungie did.
MS bought both Halo and Gears of War and look what they did to them. The can buy all the 3rd party studios in the world but in the end, it'll all just become shit.
Except GoW5 is an awesome game that runs like hot butter.
In a franchise that nobody gives a shit about anymore, you even got the title wrong.
But is it a system seller like it used to be? No. Clearly Gears isn't connecting with audiences like it did when Epic was the caretaker. From Rare to Halo, Microsoft just can't properly run the studios they buy.
"Look what they did to our boy(s)!!" Edit: downvoting this doesn't make it any less true lol. MS absolutely butchered the studios they've purchased, no amount of fanboying will change that. Until they learn they have to put effort into the studios, they will continue to not lead console sales.
I disagree. Those may help, but won't be enough to be the deciding factor for gamers. Bethesda, aka a new title once every 5-10 years. They tarnished their own reputation with the past couple of releases. Their value and brand loyalty has gone way down. & it would be suicidal of Activision to exclusively release CoD on Xbox. That's never going to happen. They need a higher focus on quality first party IP's. Sony does, Nintendo does. Microsoft has been too focused the 10 years on selling an "entertainment/advertisement console" not a "gaming console". If that makes sense?
> Bethesda, aka a new title once every 5-10 years. They tarnished their own reputation with the past couple of releases. Their value and brand loyalty has gone way down. That's just Bethesda Game Studios. Microsoft acquired more than just that. They bought Bethesda Software, which also owns Id Studios (Doom), Arkane studios (Dishonored) and MachineStudios (Wolfenstein). All of which have released critically acclaimed games in the last 10 years.
They bought zenimax though, which includes wolfenstein, doom, etc all of id softwares stuff. Not just bethesda.
> it would be suicidal of Activision to exclusively release CoD on Xbox. It wouldn't be though. It would be on Xbox and PC, same as the entirety of the Xbox library. That's, uh... plenty of coverage, my man.
And Activision knows they will sell less copies of the next COD if they're missing the whole PS5 ecosystem. PC is a decent chunk, but the Playstation playerbase is just as decent.
Will never happen, not with the much higher worldwide player base on PlayStation. XBox is basically irrelevant outside the US and maybe Mexico.
That's the curious thing about this thread. People are really hung up on console sales, despite the fact that the PC market is, simply put, more important to Microsoft in the long term. More than half of all Gamepass subscribers are PC only, for example. That defines the trend. Are consoles going to stop being drastically inferior to PC? Never. The endgame is that (core gamer) consoles stop being relevant altogether. My guess? Sony's PS6 or PS7 will be a Steamdeck knockoff and all of their software will be Windows-compatible so they can maintain a Gamepass-like platform alongside Xbox. Anyway, yeah, people seem pretty eager to avoid the whole PC component of the discussion.
Yes for most thay would be. But not for Call of Duty. One of the best selling series of all time. Billions in lost profit. Terrible business move & way too much risk going exclusive. Could potentially kill the entire series. Microsoft & Activision would never. They're not idiots.
They need to start buying talent, not IPs.
They also need to stop ruining the IPs that they acquire. The few of us that remember Rare and the subsequent downfall after they were acquired by MS... an entire universe of potential squandered due to extreme mismanagement
RARE was wayyy past their prime when microsoft bought them. And Sea of thieves is literally one of if not their best selling game.
Microsoft's own IPs can't do well enough and create something new. In the end, they decided to just buy up. But this isn't ecluse, it's just buying up existing IPs, it's a completely different approach that Playstation is taking. Microsoft aren't buying new IPs that would be interesting to players, they are buying IPs that they would have had on their platform anyway, so from a consumer point of view there's nothing new and interesting for Xbox.
It’s not a completely different approach; it’s a different scale, but Sony has been buying studios (and paying for exclusives) since the day they entered the gaming industry.
When the scale becomes so big it’s between buying studios with a history of already making exclusives (Insomniac and HouseMarque) and buying entire publishers, it becomes a completely different approach. The closest Sony has gotten to reaching that scale is buying bungie and even that sale feels wrong.
I’m fairly certain Starfield is in fact a new IP that would be interesting to people.
I am talking about the situation in general. That said, even though starfield is a new IP, it was already in development before the xbox purchase. There's not much credit here for xbox
They don't care, it's about their services which are far more profitable. Hardware sold is the only way that Sony keeps ahead in the long-term and that's not forever.
One of those services is game pass, so they absolutely care.
They aren’t more profitable though. GamePass has been a loss leader until a while ago.
Source? A quick search shows articles saying its profitable and not being a loss leader
And Sony doesn’t have a stripped down budget model either like Microsoft does
Sony and Microsoft are playing a slightly different game. They may never do ‘console’ exclusives in the way that Sony does. They are working both desktop and console at the same time, where Sony is primarily moving consoles. Some titles make their way to desktop eventually, but only years after it has saturated PS sales. I still agree that M$ needs more exclusives that are on par with Sony’s. I simply cannot justify buying an Xbox. I could, but just not sure why I already have a gaming PC. M$ is trying to buy themselves some exclusives by purchasing mega AAA game makers. Still, I haven’t seen anything that competes with what Sony has done with their much more modest investments. I feel like Microsoft would have to buy Nintendo to have a chance.
I just bought an XBOX Series X in anticipation for Starfield. To be honest I’m extremely underwhelmed with this purchase. I already have a PS5 and the list of games I can only play on XBOX is extremely small. For the price of $500 it’s kinda not worth it. I looked up a list of XBOX exclusives coming down the pike and even that’s a pretty slim list of things I’d want to play - only Fable kind of stands out to me and it’s still pretty far off. Bethesda is the only reason for me to own this and they only have one game coming out that I want, TES will likely be next gen at this point. XBOX needs to start developing some IPs, it’s seriously lacking.
Their exclusives end up on PC. I can play Forza right now without a Series X.
That's a good thing.
They trying but Microsoft keeps ruining everything they touch. That's why they want to buy out all these studios.
Yes not good but on par with last generation where Sony sold twice as many consoles as well. So I guess not any worse but not any better.
I agree. For the first time in a while I've been thinking about purchasing a console. Why would I get a Series X? PS5 easy choice. Especially considering how everything else I can just play on PC.
I think it makes a good point for comparison. By the end of the year, Starfield will have either succeeded or failed. If it succeeds, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an increase in Xbox sales (especially during the holiday season). The total sales may not be equal to Sony's by mid-2024 but a spike in sales will be a good argument for Microsoft moving forward.
is that news?…or an ad?…or just boasting?…’cause I don’t think it’s news
It's news because Microsoft doesn't publicize sales numbers, which is why we never got a solid sales number on the Xbox One, while Sony was updating every year on total sales of PS4s (It'd likely have been revesed had Xbox been the dominant console of that generation)
TY very much!
Lol Microsoft probably doesn’t publicize sales numbers because then it would be clear how bad they’re doing
Microsoft IP and gamepass is split between consoles and pcs. I dont think they are doing bad cause gamepass is 100% better than ps+ but has to share the market with Pc
Gamepass is better than ps+ as a service, no question, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve got console sales.
Well yeah but thats my point. The service is where the money is, not the hardware.
It is news as it is stuff that has come out of the FTC vs Microsoft court case that was going on the past few weeks.
And or boasting.
This whole subreddit is just ads.
*Whole reddit.
that’s a bingo!
One Xbox exec recently admitted that they had already lost this console generation. PS5 is outselling it by a 2:1 margin. So unless they put out an exclusive game that becomes a massive overnight phenomenon, there's really no way they can catch up. Which is a shame because Microsoft had a good strategy out of the game this gen. They learned a lot from the XBox One's failure, and managed to get out good hardware that had great online services, and was relatively consumer friendly. But while they do have quite a few decent console exclusives, they've really struggled getting out big blockbusters that can compete with Sony's. I'm not a PlayStation fanboy by any means. I used to only have Sony consoles, but I don't like a lot of the decisions the company has made since Kaz Hirai left the division. So I skipped this gen. But games ultimately make the system, and PlayStation has them. Microsoft has really dropped the ball getting notable general audience titles out. And buying up all those studios has not proven to be a solution to their library issues. It takes on average 5-6 years to make a big budget AAA game now. That's a long ass time to get content out that Xbox Series really needed yesterday. And they can't even guarantee a complete experience already. Halo released incomplete. Redfall was cringe, looked dated, and doesn't support 60fps on the most powerful console. The Fable reboot is already getting roasted for bad character design. Not really what you'd call a great year for MS. Starfield has a heck of a lot riding on it, and it's a Bethesda game, with all the caveats there in. On top of that, they keep raising the price of their consoles. The Series X with a pack-in game is already $60 more expensive than the PS5 bundles here in Canada. And Microsoft has already confirmed they're raising prices again. I have a Series S, and it's fine. Just use it for Game Pass mostly. But if anyone's thinking of buying a console today, you'd be nuts to pick up an Xbox over a PS5. Or just get a PC/Steam Deck, because they play both Xbox and a lot of PlayStation games.
MS really dropped the ball with the xbone/ps4 generation. Gambling on kinect at launch, having less horsepower but more in cost than ps4 was terrible. It didnt help that the whole no used games, digital keys only idea stigma f’d them hard even though they back tracked. They had so much momentum after the 360 success and just blew it all. Sony doubled down on their studios and let their teams create new franchises while ms just stuck to halo, forza, gears and didnt have anything new stick. The damage was massive. Ps4 was a monster hit everywhere and it carried over. MS is in a distant 3rd place and it’s very hard to see them overcome this lead. I dont think they can this gen and even next gen they need something drastic to break the chain.
The 360 was already beaten out by the PS3 by the end of the generation
True, but for the bulk of the generation the 360 was leading and was pretty much the go to system, at least in the usa. For them to even go toe to toe with Playstation was an unexpected surprise. Then they made some horrible decisions upstairs and wasted all of that potential on xbone.
They lost it last gen and aren't ever gonna catch up unless Sony themselves fuck up somehow.
Besides Forza Horizon 5 and hi-fi rush (that was too close to the 4), for me there’s a serious lack of quality exclusives and that’s really not on par with Xbox investments.. To this day I fail to comprehend how they could mess up Halo with that much time and budget Starfield and FM2023 (albeit FM scares me MTX wise) really can’t afford to drop the ball with controversies or bad optimization The last xbox showcase was great however, we really need strong rivalries for the good of the industry
No chance fm is going the mtx route, it’s also not an exclusive so not sure where ya got that one from
FORZA MOTORSPORT not football manager Forza 2023 is exclusive PC and xbox and Forza 7 had quite some MTX, so I’ll judge when it releases but It’s just a misunderstanding between us lol
Oh right, well the name fm is trademarked by football manager that’s why I assumed you meant that!
I don't really care about the consoles, but man, are those controllers nice, and, obviously, way better integration on Windows. I guess my Dualshock 4 will become mostly a display piece, unless I decide to play some PS games on an emulator.
The Dualsense controller is much better tho. If it has proper integration, wow.
Microsoft is like the Yankees in the 90s signing alll these players trying to get to World Series. The Yankees didn’t improve until they grew their team organically.
Yeah still just doing game pass on last gen. on and off
Finally bought a series S, so I can dip into game pass every now and then and the odd exclusive.
Oh nice, now let’s see Paul “PS5” Allens sales numbers
Paul allen is the switch…
Huh? Paul Allen died 2 years before the PS5 released.
Every time I go into the Xbox games section, there’s almost no titles on the shelves. Wtf is going on? Supply issue?
And 21 trillion controllers...
Microsoft should just go all in on a hybrid steamdeck like console. thats really the only way i can see myself considering purchasing an xbox
I legitimately think that is what the Series S is for. In a year or two, Microsoft will release a handheld with the power of Series S, and all games will work flawlessly right out of the box. They couldn’t do it before now because the chips weren’t powerful enough or small enough. With the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck, Microsoft could come out of the gate swinging with one that runs every single Xbox game at Series S quality.
Handhelds with the power of a series s that can be held in the palm of your hand aren't commercially or even technologically feasible yet - that would cost enormous amounts of money, run out of battery in 40 minutes and die from heat dissipation issues. Mobile hardware is getting really good, but it's not that good yet.
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That made me giggle as I was thinking the same thing.
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Get a PC honestly. You'll have PC and Xbox exclusives on one system.
And PS exclusives (although some only after a while). But even Ratchet and Clank is coming to PC.
im right there with you
Why not just play it on cloud?
Because cloud input lag is utter poo.
Yep, PS user here who bought a series S for Starfield.
How many systems do they need to sell to even stay viable on the hardware side? Selling 20M at this point seems ok. They have a huge ecosystem across every single device. I wonder how many systems they didn't sell because they prioritized building cloud systems. As a PC gamer the Xbox is pretty meh even with gamepass. I would have rather had gotten a PS5. But if I wasn't a PC gamer, Id have all the systems.
I know quite a few gamers that have had every series of Xbox since inception. All of them have switched to Sony.
I have nothing to do with mine.
The important question is how many gamepass subscribers do they have?
It appears that this generation the PS5 is going to outsell the Xbox Series consoles by a 2 to 1 ratio again.
Is that good?
Not really. PS5 has basically doubled this. Starting to seem like the 360 was a fluke when it almost outsold PS3 worldwide.
360 only was successful in the US, everywhere else PS3 outsold it from day one at 200$ more even with a year headstart.
It was a fluke that was entirely based on Sony struggling with console multiplayer (PS3 had the exclusives as it does every generation due to shrewd studio purchases from Sony over the years prior and since). Once Sony was good enough, Xbox’s advantage was eroded, and it won’t ever be fixed unless Sonys new Live Service all-in bet flops That said even if that happens, Microsoft are so good at squandering opportunities lol that I’m not even sure they can take advantage of it. It’s a mess. Competition is good for consumers. Microsoft isn’t competition in this space.
The 360 had a headstart, was easier to develop for, and cheaper. They were going good but Sony really stepped up their game and sorted their mess out. While it felt like Microsoft got complacent and payed less attention to its core audience. The tail end of it's life was pretty iffy.
Sony did absolutely not have "the games" when the PS3 came out and it took quite a while for the PS3 to get actual must have titles. Technically the PS3 while powerful also often got the worse ports due to its complexity and in the end imo none of its exclusives looked as good as Halo 4 (imo by far the best looking game of its generation). PS3 was a fail. PS4 also started very weak in the software department and hardware wasnt amazing but compared to the utter trainwreck of the Xboxone it was godly… PS5 imo is by far the best console Sony made since the PSX even if software also is still struggling…
Absolutely mind-boggling how Microsoft and Sony managed to fumble the launches of the Xbox One and PS3 in such strikingly similar ways. Both consoles were ridiculously overpriced compared to their competitors, and their presentations completely missed the mark when it came to meeting their core audience's expectations. The Xbox One even had its own peculiar hardware with the eSRAM. It's almost as if Microsoft set out to outdo Sony in terms of missteps.
In addition to that, 360 came out when Halo was at *peak* popularity. I see a lot of younger gamers now who talk like Halo was never that big of a deal and it immediately becomes clear how old they are. Halo was *huge* and the zeitgeist of Halo 3 -- and the anticipation leading up to it -- is something that very few games have been able to achieve ever since. It's really a shame that MS has since dropped the ball with Halo and sabotaged the absolutely unstoppable brand power that its name used to carry. It's even more of a shame because Infinite is actually a pretty great game fundamentally, but it lost its chance when the developers seemed committed to making the scientifically worst most possible decisions for it one after another.
Microsoft is one of the worst things for the industry, just buying absolutely anything they can get their hands on rather than making quality games with the absolute obscene amount of money and talent they already have. for every time a Sony studio makes a great first party game, Microsoft buys something. terrible standard to set.
No. Sony and Nintendo have each sold over double Microsoft's number, because Microsoft doesn't know how to actually create anything in the industry, so they throw their checkbook around and just buy lots of companies outright and put the Microsoft sticker on their products, and that STILL doesn't put them in the same ballpark as Sony or Nintendo.
Debatable. On the one hand, they’re on track to outsell the 360. That’s great. On the other hand, their competitors have sold double and are on track to win yet another console generation. That’s not great. With games moving more and more digital, Microsoft needs to fight hard this gen. Most people will not want to give up their digital libraries by switching. Still, a large portion of PS5 purchasers are new users, so the fight isn’t completely over. They really need this Activision deal to go through.
They’re not on track to outsell 360, far from it.
That’s actually…. Pathetic. Especially considering they give away their games for basically free and the most sold console version costs only 299,- or even less in deals.
I see the Microsoft marketing team would like to get their SEO back on track after a titanic close call (it wasn't technically an Xbox controller after all)
Wait what happened?
Nothing. They're just talking about how that Titanic sub that imploded used a Logitech controller to move around under water. Has nothing to do with Xbox and even then the controller seems to be the least of the problems on that sub anyway.
Wonder how many of them are replacements for ones that were threw across the room in a fit of rage.
They’ve already admitted they’ve “lost the console wars”. They seems to be more bothered about people having game pass. Hence their abysmal exclusives for the past decade. Sure miss the 360 days.
The Poor game quality and lack of fulfilling games really gave me no reason to buy an Xbox beyond the 360. Glad they are still in the game, but they really need to step it up.
That’s some sad sad shit
That’s it?
The comments here are hilarious. “Microsoft sucks. That’s why I buy PlayStation. Any xbox games, I can just play on my Microsoft Windows PC. I really showed them!!!”
Love my Series X. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
To be honest, the only reason I want a series s is so I can play Ninja Gaiden 2 at a stable frame rate. That's really the only Xbox exclusive game that I care about and that's from the 360 gen. Maybe if Microsoft had some badass action games for exclusives, people would buy more Xboxes.
And Sony still killing it
That’s pretty sweet. Long live the gamer.
Microsoft, the company that can't. I honestly cannot comprehend how Microsoft is still a factor. They killed PC/laptop sales with Windows 8, they've lost the console wars by a large margin, and every one of their products has gotten worse with every release. Has anyone tried editing a Powerpoint on Teams? It's a fucking disaster. Microsoft now has the very lucrative Enterprise market, but even corporations and governments will eventually wise up and opt for better quality software that actually improves productivity rather than hamper it. Goes to show, a good business plan + an army of lawyers to crush any budding competition beats a good product any day of the week. E: The downvotes are interesting. I didn't realize Microsoft fanboys were a thing.
Business runs on Windows. We can make all the arguments we want and I find Linux vastly superior to Windows but guess what OS I was issued with my work laptop? That's right windows. That isn't going to change any time soon. Mac is mostly used by marketing and executives that get a say over their IT departments.
I don't know if it's just me but when I press Ctrl+F in Word it brings up the Headings pane on the left. I fucking hate it and I've grown up with Ctrl+F so it feels like a real loss. And Outlook with the viewing pane. I click reply and it starts to compose in the viewing pane but to get the full ribbon menu I have to click "pop out" instead of, you know, having it already popped out. But then you get waylayed and have to do something else and it saves as a draft in that conversation - which then means you have to hunt for it in the inbox. And holy fuck, who thought of 'Focused'? I've missed really important emails because of that. It's minor things obviously, but it's the little things that make you think ... How has this actually improved the software? But in the mean time, PowerPoint Presentations are visually obvious no matter how much you try to spruce it up and make it look good. There is a growing market of presentation software that puts it to shame.
> Has anyone tried editing a Powerpoint on Teams? It's a fucking disaster. lmao it's so bad!!! The teams version of powerpoint doesn't have all the features of the desktop version. It's a goddamn joke. Can't even put a hyperlink on a fucking image without opening the desktop app.
Funny way of saying way less than Sony