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Well... could it be that they saturated?
I mean, the consoles been out for a while, I suspect at this point everyone remotely interested has one?
That'd make sense, but that's still a negative sign, as PS5/Switch have yet to meet saturation.
Thing is, they don't need to sell consoles anymore. They're in the gamepass business now. This is why they're pushing gamepass on phones, PCs, Samsung TVs and Firesticks. They don't really care about selling you a box under the TV anymore since they're usually sold at or near a loss anyway. They just want you on the subscription wherever you can play it.
They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I'm guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let's assume an average of $12 a month. That's over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don't have to rely on a big game to have a good month.
You're more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year. Articles like this fundamentally misunderstand the current gaming landscape and their business model. They're not losing the race, they're playing a different sport.
I think I'll just stick to playing retro games in emulators for free without a subscription. Sure I miss out on the latest and greatest games, but graphics aren't everything to me, the gameplay is more important to me. Plus, I really despise having to have subscriptions for everything. If Game Pass works for people, more power to those gamers, but I'm tired of giving what little income I have to billion dollar companies. /rant
I think they fucked up with the series s/x. The Balder's Gate 3 release made me realize that their policy that games needed to have the same features enabled for both the s and x essentially meant that even if you spend the extra money on the x, it will be held back by the s merely existing.
They could stop charging gamers a subscription to play the paid games (they "own") online.
This could attract some customers that don't want to deal with PC or don't want to add fixed costs to their monthly or yearly bill.
They could stop charging gamers a subscription to play the paid games (they “own”) online.
This is one of the key reasons why I own PS5, but I don't play or invest in it. Even though couch gaming is much more comfortable for me.
I'm in the same boat.
Elden Ring, Helldivers 2, many games I'd get on Sony PS Store that I just get on Steam because I want to "own" the full game not just the offline part of it.
Microsoft not being evil? Not going to happen. (Except for smokescreen purposes and amounts)
There was a time where it was worth the money because it was far and away better than any free online offering. That time was probably up to about 2010. Now that servers are paid for with digital game sales, it would behoove them to drop the fee. Instead, I think they're just about to change the console market as we know it.
Maybe don't close the studios making your only good games next time? Dunno, just a thought
This was the reason I left. Don’t fire your flagships.
It’s one of those pieces of advice like “Don’t lie on the ground naked next to a fire ant colony” but I guess some people really are that stupid.
The studios they kept around are making games that are a shadow of their former selves too - Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport come to mind, as well as Starfield. Microsoft Flight Simulator is the only really good one still as far as I can tell.
I'm not surprised. My experience with Xbox has declined over the last few years now so wouldn't recommend it to anyone anymore.
What has changed if you don't mind?
Just my opinions as someone that's enjoyed that xbox brand since the first one, and stuck with it out of convenience and from making friends on the network there. Next "console" is a proper gaming computer
The last console other than the switch that I owned was the PS3. I loved that UI. A buddy was like "let's play some Halo" and I loved halo 1 and 2 but the rest just don't do it for me. Once he booted up his Xbox and I was driving the UI trying to launch the game I just wanted to hurl. Such a garbage UI. Littered with ads etc.
No idea what PS5 UI looks like but they're just PCs with a custom UI at this point so I'll stick with my PC.
PS5 ui is actually quite bland but at least it isn't crammed full of useless shit like the Xbox dashboard.
I find the aesthetics of Xbox are actually nice but again they fill the dash with so much stuff it's a mess and intrusive.
I was a heavy Xbox user up until last year when they redesigned the Xbox home screen.
Instead of being able to pin multiple groups of custom apps/games wherever you want, you now only get one group pinned about halfway down the page past several rows of ads. There are generally at least 5 separate rows of ads on the homescreen at all times.
I have a series x (also had an original, 360, and one), and will 100% not be buying another console from Microsoft. The joy of using my expensive console was ruined by ads.
I need to finish Elden Ring, after which my Xbox will be used as a steaming device for videos from my PC or Kodi exclusively.
Edit - upon checking it looks like you can actually pin 2 custom groups. But there are also really 14 rows of ads, not 5, so....
Games = Usually okay
Console = Nah
Same. I recently bought a PS5 after being an Xbox user since the post-N64 days. The difference in quality is substantial.
I started dropping off after every time I started to boot my Xbox it just was just ads upon ads trying to sell me stuff and not gettin me into the games faster.
Oh crap. That just PlayStation's going to do it too. Right now I get ads at the bottom and games at the top so I can at least jump straight into a game. Assuming I don't boot straight into one because I went to rest mode in it.
But the second MS proves this, Sony will follow.
I use mine primarily for media and occasionally play online with friends. They killed gold, and reverted to game pass core, so now I have to pay $10/month to play games I own. They are deleting my purchased games, ea archived an active account for inactivity when I had playtime in the calendar year. There is no new IP, they shut down studios, and raised prices, locked us into a shitty platform and started monitoring and monetizing their paid users.
They deserve this
They really do seem dead-set on transitioning to a software rental company. Let the hardware languish and shove another tier of Game Pass into the marketing grinder.
My Baseless Prediction, i.e. if I ran Xbox, what I would do given their situation:
Microsoft will sunset the Xbox as a console but focus on creating a dual boot mode for Windows similar to the Steam Deck and Big Picture Mode. Probably called “Xbox Mode” or something similarly unoriginal but evocative. This streamlined mode will greatly reduce system overhead and be controller-centric, and it will have an emulation layer to support all Xbox ecosystem games along with backward compatibility. On certain form factors it will be the default boot mode, and supporting this they will release two new Windows PC form factors: a living room box and a handheld. Other PC manufacturers will be able to jump on the wagon as well. I doubt they will in any way define reference performance profiles akin to a console “generation” but they may have some kind of guidance regarding how graphics should scale seamlessly between TV/monitor and handheld form factors to allow for a Switch-like docking experience.
You need to shoehorn some AI into this tho
Uggggghhhhh. Me, I’d just support DLSS-style upscaling and call it a day but realistically there will be some GenAI bullshit for sure.
Somebody was showing off an AI technique to de-interlace old videos. This is a problem that is notoriously difficult to solve algorithmically you either end up with blurs or you end up with crossfade.
This will revolutionize the old VCR porn market
This is what I believe too
Because no one wants a console with ads, has no gyro aiming, strange support for older Xbox/games.
Xbox is dead as a console, but will live on as Game Pass on PC, Smart TVs, Portable, and an eventual ARM puck you bring with you.
The industry is going to be in a weird place where Sony and Nintendo are the only first parties and hardware vendors. Its too costly for an upstart, they can just focus on the PC.
I think this is a good point. Heavy gamers are going PC. More flexibility and more ways for them to play. That leaves casual gamers, which previously might buy a console, but it'd eventually collect dust. New game streaming services serve them better.
Game Pass is trash. I only play GoG games, at this point.
Let me just fire up all these Xbox exclusive and first party games they've released since like 2021...
I have a real opposite problem with exclusives. I don't think they should exist. A console should just be a means to an end: to play a game.
I get why they do it but it's bullshit. It's just a custom PC that plugs into a TV.
The case I see is like this: Many publishers increasingly argue that they don't have a strong monetization plan for big epic singleplayer games unless they have a dozen forms of microtransactions. For Sony, the monetization plan for God of War is the PlayStation 5 - and all of the residual purchases that come after someone owns one. 80% of those purchases will be of games that are on both Xbox and Playstation - but went to the latter because God of War and Spiderman are awesome. With that in mind, the teams making those games can sorta just aim for awards, not perfect profitability.
I completely agree. Console exclusives are crap. Especially with how good PCs are.
Halo Infinite - failed
Starfield - failed
Forza Motorsport - terrible launch
Redfall - failed
Out of curiosity, I googled exclusives for Xbox series exclusives. They've got things like Forza Horizon 5, sunset overdrive and Ori. Like, sure, but you can't say proudly that your console is being held aloft by 4+ year old titles when the competition is releasing banger after banger!
They just missed the mark. You can spend billions on R&D and marketing for a new console, billions on buying up game studios to make new games, but if your games suck on launch, people won't play on your console.
What XBox has done this generation is borderline suicide.
They lost me forever when they tried to make the Xbone unable to play games unless you were online.
I'm getting rid of my xbox when the ps5pro comes out. the fact that the Xbox just keeps regressing in features (I can't plug in a USB microphone wtf?????) and rising costs of game pass just pushed me back to Playstation.
Imho, Xbox fully died when the 360 was taken offline.
I think they saw the writing on the wall with PC gaming resurging
Yep. If it isnt dedicated couch coop or party games, why wouldn't you get something with minimal/no vendor lock, and hardware you can control/upgrade?
Well once upon a time a console was a small fraction of the cost of a PC and the experience was put game in, turn console on, play game. Sure a console had a fraction of the computing power of a contemporary desktop but typically they had hardware specifically for graphics and sound and games were usually coded very efficiently for the specific hardware often directly in assembly.
That hasn't been the case for a good long while now. Consoles and their games receive updates just like PCs do. Yes the purchase price of a PC and its associated hardware is probably does still cost more than a console...until a few months of paying for those subscriptions go by. Console hardware is now very closely related to PC hardware. So the value proposition is for the price of a low-end gaming PC you get a lower-middle class gaming PC with a 90% less useful operating system, recurring costs and worsened versions of games.
Meanwhile Valve says "Yeah we made using a normal gaming PC on the living room TV work pretty well a WHILE ago. Also, you know the Nintendo Switch? Well we've built a full fat gaming laptop into a similar form factor of portable device. It's an x86 PC, it runs PC games natively. It runs Linux, you can get to a desktop, hook it up to a keyboard and mouse and you can do spreadsheets and run CAD on it for all we care." And it's been such a big success that several competing products have been hastily pushed out that run off-the-shelf Windows and none of them are as good.
It's mobile gaming too. Phones are eating their lunch on the small games. PCs are doing it on big games. And it's their own restrictive rules that caused it.
I have two kids. Both prefer pc or switch for exclusives. They haven’t touched the PlayStation or Xbox in months if not years. I don’t even think they know how to turn them on.
To be fair I don't think I've seen good things about Micro$oft in years. I'm honestly not surprised.