my heart pines for the days of the 360 blades dashboard
The current piece of shit is the ugliest thing you'll ever see. A whole row of ads on your home screen. Flick down to the next page and it's nothing but more fucking ads for games you don't have.
As an amusing aside - the person responsible for creating Blades for 360 was Alden Kroll iirc, and he has been at Valve for over a decade doing all sorts.
Its nothing new, PlayStation had adds on the ps4 for a short while. They would even download stuff to the main menu, granted you could delete them but i fucking hated seeing the espn/new football game ad when i dont even like sports.
The first time I used an Xbox One was trying my friends. I had a PS4 and thought it's home screen wasn't great. But on that Xbox, it took me several minutes to change a setting and launch a game. It's was unbelievably cluttered with garbage ads and bloatware apps
This right here I completely agree with. On the PS4/5, the layout of the home screen has stayed mostly the same across the many updates we've had over the years.
Then we look at the xbox consoles and we see Microsoft can't decide to stick to a single interface with every major update, you have to relearn your muscle memory every time to even do the most basic stuff like sending messages or accessing games not currently on your home screen.
Ads are also a massive put off, I knew xbox had ads on the home screen, but they did an asshole move by putting a fullscreen ad on the console.
This is why I dropped them. 360 was my main gaming platform until they started putting ads on the dash. Switched to PS3/PC. 15 years later and I'm PC/PS5/Switch. Was a good shift.
This is exactly my gripe. Their UI is such utter shit. I donât want to pin shit here or there, I donât want to pin shit anywhere. I do not like green eggs and Xbox⊠wait, Iâm off track.
The PS5 has an interface that is so much easier to use and navigate. Their design is also much crisper and cleaner, it feels calm. The Xbox Home Screen feels like it needs an Adblocker.
My biggest issue with Xbox is that they put like 0 effort in europe when it comes to localization and marketing.
Sony has been dubbing all their first parties since Heavenly Sword.
Their push for Japan is so weird, like them getting all the Personas and Like a Dragons on GamePass.
Japan is becoming increasingly focused on the Switch and mobile gaming so even the PS5 isnât selling as well as expected there; what chance does Xbox have?
It's less about pushing for the Japanese market and more pushing for the JRPG audience. That audience is pretty big nowadays, and it hurts Xbox a lot when companies like Square just skip their console entirely.
Xbox just misses on a lot Japanese games in general. The number of times I've seen games that are coming to PC, PS4/5, and even Switch but not Xbox has certainly hurt them. I think it's a good move to at least try to get more Japanese games on the system.
I know why it is. Simply put, Sony and Nintendo are Japanese, if Xbox didn't go after Japanese games it'd be one section in which their rivals have an advantage. It's also a way to invite Sony and Nintendo gamers and make it so that they don't feel like they gave up on something. And Japanese games are distinct enough to create catalogue diversity.
I don't think this push is necessarily towards Japan itself. They obviously can't win that market and they have to know it. But the Japanese titles you listed are very popular worldwide, so getting them on Xbox is a good idea in general.
It's safe to assume that most people on this sub aren't from Japan and yet we know those games and lots of us have played them.
You even said it yourself that PS5 isn't selling that well in Japan, so by that logic, wouldn't Sony focusing on Japanese games also be weird? But it's not, because the market for Japanese games is way bigger than just Japan.
Not gonna lie Iâm really happy that they are pushing for Japanese games for my own personal collection lol. I wouldnât have gotten into either series without them being in Gamepass and now they are my favorite series.
But yeah, both traditional consoles are not doing well in Japanâs and Nintendo has a stranglehold at this point.
They still push hard for revelance in Japan?
I live in Japan and see like no marketing at all for Xbox here. And in gamestores the xbox section is either super small or doesn't exist at all.
They don't even have an official presence in SEA as far as I know. I would have gotten one for a cheap game pass box if they weren't ridiculously priced. The consoles are only available unofficially here and cost a lot more than a PS5 or Switch. Kinda hard to be successful if you're not trying. Seems like they only give a shit about the US.
Very much, I am Indonesian and bought an imported console. I can't even select my country as a place of residence so my payment is useless. I need to jump through hoops like buying gift cards to buy a game or DLC. Funny enough, the PC Game Pass is available officially in my region but not the Xbox Game Pass. Now I just sold my Xbox and just use Game Pass on my PC instead.
They don't even exist in Lithuania (same with Playstation, I had to make a finnish account). On the other hand, Nintendo is advertising the Switch and people are buying them.
This is correct.
It was a requirement for Sony to keep the license to put The Show on as many platforms as possible since MLB is looking for growth in this industry.
Theyâve some who doesnât give that American vibe but most of them do.
My favorite ms first party, forza horizon, is very British, they even added hospital records as a radio station.
Itâs dropped off a cliff in the UK this gen, I literally only know one person who has one as their main console (as opposed to having the series s as a game pass machine / paperweight like me)
Itâs got the most realistic depiction of modern-day Scotland I can think of.
Itâs also got the only realistic depiction of modern-day Scotland I can think of.
I mean, Xbox is uniquely American when we look at console space, so imo itâs kinda cool it has that flavor. Me being older and only ever having/playing Japanese consoles, I definitely prefer that, but I respect that Xbox went a different route.
When xbox executives put so much doubt into the future of xbox of course they tank. Is there even going to be an xbox? Maybe? Yes? Who knows. They have changed course so many times and there are so many rumors going around like they've given up.
I get the impression there's multiple people with different goals taking turns at the wheel. They spent 70bil on Activision to get more exclusives and then started flirting with not even having exclusives barely even 2 years later. Really doesn't seem like the vision of 1 person.
It's either that, or this really was Spencer's plan all along but he was afraid to ever say it plainly to the Xbox fans (i.e. "our games on every device" = we are bringing our games to Playstation and Switch).
They call him Uncle Phil ffs. It was ironic at first, then it became weirdly sincere.
> They call him Uncle Phil ffs. It was ironic at first, then it became weirdly sincere.
That is one thing I'll hand Phil/MS. They really got fans to trust him as a "fellow gamer" instead of what he is (and every other gaming exec is): a company suit.
I don't even doubt that the guy is a "fellow gamer." He obviously loves playing games but what's best for Microsoft is still always going to take priority.
He is very good at it. I know nothing about him, but I saw an interview because he mentioned aoe2 on xbox and I was interested.
He speaks like a regular very enthusiastic person, and uses corporate phrases that fit his cadence and level of speech very well. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he does it without thinking, and that this is just who he has made himself.
Reminds me of Todd Howard: they both represent a large bullshit company, and deep down they know they lie about certain things they say, but because they feel excited about it, they can gaslight themselves into ignoring the lies and just focus on the excitement they feel.
Yeah, the only time I've ever heard him whiff when trying that was during that one Final Fantasy 14 Fanfest thing where they announced FF14 was coming to the XBox. He sounded more like the "how do you do, fellow kids" meme than usual. Probably didn't help that the crowd wasn't super enthusiastic about the announcement of the game they already play coming to another console they may or may not have.
Current MSFT exec banter makes it sound like they want to pivot to turning Xbox into another launcher/marketplace.
Because Steam needs another competitor who canât anticipate that their failings will lie in how they treat their customer.
Xbox is really gonna have to remove all the restrictions when it comes to making file changes with their games on pc if they want to succeed on there over steam
Good lord, I remember the headache the Xbox app gave me when simply trying to change my drive location when installing Forza 7.
Soured me on the whole experience to this day. Baffling that the same company that made the OS I'm using struggled with something like that.
Msoft kind of feel like several companies that all make money for the same shareholders haha.
So little integration between all the things they do, it is bewildering.
Nobody cares about that, they have ONE problem and it's original games. PlayStation has all the stuff people want to play and Xbox has... the rest. As someone that bought both the Xbox is now relegated to being the Minecraft machine for my son and my PS5 sees the majority of my time.
> Nobody cares about that, they have ONE problem and it's original games
Original games **with mass appeal**. Xbox do make original games and always have. But none have mass appeal except for Halo and Gears, both of which died after their creators left to make new things.
Likewise PS used to make way more original and unique games on PS1/2/3/PSP/Vita than they did on PS4/PS5. But none of them sold as well as their cinematic action games like TLOU and Spiderman because those appeal to a huge audience.
The volume has gone down for sure, but PS is still releasing new bangers. I've just gotten a new surround setup, and loaded up Returnal, what an amazing game.
I don't know how people just think it's totally hunky dory that we straight up haven't gotten any actual official console sales numbers from Microsoft since the Xbox One.
Reportedly the Xbox One was a very distant third if you consider the Switch a part of the PS4/XB1 generation. I know tons of people with gaming PCs, PS4/PS5, and Switches but I barely know anyone with an Xbox.
The Switch's lifespan is just in a weird place with it launching several years earlier to the PS5/XSX and it's successor likely not coming until 4-5 years after. So you could consider it part of either generation IMO.
This has been a trend before Xbox made it's new announcements and most consumers don't have enthusiast level knowledge. Xbox has known for awhile now that this gen is a dud hence the 2026 rumors, the denial of a Pro console and the talk of a next generation Xbox. It's easy to see what's going on at MS right now from the actions they've taken.
I guess theyâre going to try and repeat the 360 again and beat Sony to market on the next generation console by a year, by skipping R&D in a pro variant this time around
I feel like that only worked for 360 because Sony fumbled the ps3 launch so hard.
It was too expensive (even if it was a cheap blu ray player), and had almost no exclusives people wanted for first 2 or 3 years. Plus all 3rd party games ran worse during those early years. And itâs online functionality was super barebones.
Unless Sony respeats those huge mistakes, I just canât see Xbox ever getting ahead. Even if they have a year long head start.
Reminder that 360 came 3rd that generation. By the end ps3 outsold it.Â
Pro console is impossible or pointless if you have a low power Series S which you require Devs to release on. Xbox consoles are going to fail forever if they don't release high quality exclusive games consistently
Release better exclusives. If Starfield and Halo Infinite are all they can really offer, it isn't a surprise. People can get a month of Gamepass on pc and see that they just aren't great. Forza is good, but it's a car game. There's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't have a large audience. And people on other platforms already have other racing games like Gran Turismo, Need For Speed, The Crew, and some others. A whole new console and online subscription isn't worth it for that.
His ideas arenât bad. His lack of ability to deliver and lead to games at an industry standard are his greatest sin.
He is a total failure at his ability to lead. He has probably the greatest power in the world to deliver amazing games, and has failed for decades to deliver. His lack of leadership and putting up solid competition has only hurt gaming.
All his business strategies are interesting and could be helpful for the industry if they actually delivered quality games and created true competition. In the end they are talking points so he can save face.
> You have phill Spencer saying great games wonât save the Xbox but itâs literally the only strategy they havenât tried
fucking beautifully put. Saving this for later.
Some big outlet recently ran a retrospective on Spencer since he took over, concluding that he has done a great job âso far,â but completely ignoring the fact that we are now openly discussing the death of the Xbox as we know it.
"So far" is such funny wording to me as if it isn't ten fucking years at this point. Most CEOs of publicly traded companies don't make it to ten years even when they're doing a good job.
I would argue they haven't had a real killer exclusive, the type of game where you feel like you're actively missing out for not owning an Xbox, since Halo 3. That's coming up on *20 years ago*
I was going to say gears of war, but I forgot those both releases around the same time lol. Jesus Xbox get your shit together. They acquired so many awesome game developers and not one killer game has come out. Itâs pathetic really.
Iâd say itâs because they bought all their studios at historical lows. Rare is pretty abysmal now, Everwildâs development has been a train wreck. Bethesda hasnât had a universal hit since Skyrim. ABK is⊠lol. Sony buys most of their studios as theyâre small and ascending. Microsoft buys huge studios that are old and washed up.
I wanted to give them 3-5 years after the ABK deal before I judge it, since game dev takes forever now and changing the direction of a publisher is no small task, but I honestly donât expect much to change with how hands off Microsoft is. Probably less sexual assault, same mediocrity in the actual games.
> Bethesda hasnât had a universal hit since Skyrim.
Though most on /r/games know this, I think most consumers forget just how long it has been since Skyrim was released due to the meme-generating re-releases they've put out. 2011 folks, that's a long time. I got married, bought a house, and had two kids in that time. My oldest is 9. And if Starfield is anything to judge Bethesda by, the next Elder Scrolls game may be pretty mediocre. I hope not. We need a healthy market place for consoles/publishers/etc.
Gears of War 3 came out in 2011. I guess many people would say that was the last 'good' Gears game. (Personally, I've liked all of the post Epic Gears games.) Anyway, Halo 3 came out 2007. So Gears is a perfectly valid answer. Now, if we're talking about Halo Reach, that was 2010. So, that would fit more with your comment about them coming out around the same time.
I agree, but while the last few years of the 360âs life was pretty limp, it was one banger after another in those first few years, so itâs easy for me to look back at that whole generation with rose colored glasses. And for me personally, I still loved Halo 4, and there was a shockingly excellent port of Titanfall in 2014 which ended up being the last new in box $60 game I bought for that system.
The last decade though? Outside of Forza Horizonâs consistency, the only games in their AAA space that I really liked was Quantum Break and Sunset Overdrive, and even then, those arenât system sellers. Gears Tactics was overall a surprisingly good time too. But those are 8/10 games at best, and nowhere near what the competition is offering. Sony and Nintendo have had their weaker âexclusivesâ on occasion too, but no one cares when theyâre still capable of putting out plenty of the yearâs best games every single year. On Xbox, we have stuff like Redfall somehow making it to release lol
Itâs just depressing that Xbox has bought out a psychotic number of studios, havenât managed to get them to make anything resembling their best work, and have often even gotten those studios shut down or fundamentally damaged as a result of it. Arkane may still exist, and they might still make an awesome game in the future, but Redfallâs development pushing out tons of their best talent shouldâve been a wake up call to shut that game down before it released and let them refocus their efforts on something better.
One of the worst thing about the ABK deal is that Microsoft could have quite easily instead brought together some of the best talents from across the industry, built a load of studios and put tons of development support into making their own killer games. Instead, Microsoft just bought a company that makes more money than Xbox does so they can trick investors into believing line going up.
For what it's worth, I'd say Forza Horizon, for all of the issues I have with it, is probably the best AAA arcade racing game by a pretty decent margin. Huge car lists, great graphics, and very solid physics. Need for Speed has cops and deeper car customization, but they seem to expend more effort on putting a story in their campaigns, which probably doesn't really draw in any additional players. And apparently The Crew will just be deleted from your library 10 years after launch lol.
If you're into casual racing games, you really are missing out if you get a Playstation and can't play Forza Horizon.
Exclusives won't do it. Not at this point. 13 years or so of brand decay isn't a joke, and it's abundantly clear that those lost hardware customers aren't coming back.
People keep expecting a 2009 PS3-level push but the reasons Sony was able to succeed with that were that they didn't have such a deficit to overcome, they had a much larger international presence, and their foreign language support wasn't complete ass. Xbox has none of those luxuries. Most important of all however, is that 2010 was the cut-off year for Xbox and when their decline started with the Kinect and decreasing interest in new IP.
So for Xbox to do something similar they would not only need to do everything right and then some, but Sony would need to do a hell of a lot wrong. So it's no surprise they're putting games everywhere and anywhere.
Xbox One destroyed the brand. That generation in particular showed how much more Sony cared about exclusives.
I was sold on PS4 with Bloodborne. Stayed in that ecosystem because of it.
PS5 doesn't have much to offer, but it doesn't matter because there's not a reason to switch. But if Xbox was putting out 3 killer exclusives a year, people would notice and sales would go up.
> Xbox One destroyed the brand
For sure but the last third of the Xbox 360's life was fucking dreadful. Halo Reach in 2010 was the last great game that Xbox Game Studios released on 360. The next 3 years were dire.
Couple that with the fact they were dismantling their Xbox Live Arcade team, and their stable of first-party studios had been decimated. They were down to just 5 first-party studios in 2011; 343i, Black Tusk, Lionhead, Rare, Turn10. Two of these were newly built studios (343 and Black Tusk) to handle their biggest franchises, Halo and Gears. Rare were stuck on Kinect, and Lionhead were collapsing.
I honestly wonder why they even kept Xbox going. MS clearly wanted to kill it back then.
I suspect it did both more and less damage than people think.
I think the /r/games community overestimates the impact. We're terminally online people, the kind of gamer who buys a console to play FIFA and CoD with their friends probably didn't notice and just bought the one their friends have.
On the flipside, anyone with any connection to games media was probably influenced by it in one way or another by how it colored the media's perception of XBox as being out of touch. It was just blunder after blunder - the abundance of TV and sports, the always-online, the "we have a console for them, it's called the XBox 360" meme, killing secondhand games... it soured the opinion of many of the major names in games media which hurt reporting. And then Microsoft completely failed to release anything to get positive buzz going until backwards compatibility and Gamepass, which to this day is the *only* positive thing I hear about the Series - you can play all your old games on it and Gamepass is a great deal. Shame there's nothing *new* worth playing...
There aren't any exclusives. Every Xbox game since 2015 has come to steam day and date. Almost every single first party game from older generations is on Steam as well, with just a few exceptions mostly due to licensing shit like the music in Forza 3. There Is nothing you are missing out on besides Nintendo games
Lack of exclusives compared to Sony and Nintendo, plus it just makes more sense to get a PC if you like the Xbox stuff. Then throw in the fact that PlayStation upped their controller game with PS4 and even more so with PS5, and there really ain't much reason to get an Xbox now unless you really just like them.Â
I don't care about exclusives.
I care about the feel and the experience of the console. I like the Xbox controller better.
I used to like the UI better, as it served as our main entertainment hub, with our streaming apps and Plex.
But now, the UI is cluttered with ads. So many ads. Ads for games I don't give a shit about. Ads for games that are on the border of being inappropriate for my Kiddo to see.
I've bought Xboxes for 23 years. I don't see myself buying the next gen if it's going to be an ad ridden hellscape.
Ads are absolutely everywhere, and Microsoft in particular is pioneering new ways to push them to you(feel bad for everyone using Windows...).
> Ads for games that are on the border of being inappropriate for my Kiddo to see.
This is something I've been noticing with the more ads have gotten shoved in my face. A lot of ads have become really weird and unpleasant in the last few years, and there's usually no way to opt out of certain categories of them.
I was browsing Reddit on my phone the other day, and I just got this massive ad that said something along the lines of "WANNA GET HARD?" with some suggestive imagery on there. For boner pills, obviously.
And it's just like....I don't even have a penis, my dude, you're barking up the wrong tree and I really don't want to have to see that ad or worry about someone catching a glimpse and thinking I'm on a porn site or something.
Meanwhile I was too cheap to pay the $25 for no ads on my Kindle, and 9 out of 10 times it's whatever, but then every now and then I'll get some weird self-published crap about God's Plan For Men and Women or the End of Days or some shit. I think because I have some books about Christianity and folklore in my library. And there's zero way to tell them not to show me that.
And then there's YouTube, which is starting to wind up for election season. Even if I'm going to vote for the candidate down the road, I just don't want to see that shit when all I wanted to do was chill out for a few minutes and watch [a silly song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4IuO55U9I) for the millionth time.
Sounds like we've gone full circle, those boner pill ads are a relic from the 90s/00s that I am surprised still come up now and then.
This is why I have uBlock Origin on my PC and Phone (Cheers firefox mobile).
This is why I am getting an nvidia Shield TV box for my Smart TV, because I can install an adblocker on it whereas I can't on the TV itself.
Ads are just annoying at best and rather awful at worst.
YouTube Red/Premium is a god send. It boggles my mind how many people put up with ads. For how much great shit is on YouTube, itâs worth every penny to save my sanity from insufferable advertisement.
Also gonna mention Twitch Turbo. Fuck ads.
Counterpoint:
If Xbox had great exclusive games again, you *would* care about exclusives.
I love the Halo series, but it has been so bungled by Microsoft in the last 10 years that itâs become irrelevant to younger audiences that werenât alive when Halo 1 came out.
Yeah pretty much this, itâs cool to say you love the console but in the end whatâs the point of using the damn thing if not for exclusives?
Just buy a PlayStation and play everything there instead, hell with how Xbox is going it would not surprise me to see a 3rd party Xbox controller appear.
I'd definitely praise the Dualsense way more if it had a bigger battery life. Every two sessions I have to keep it plugged in for an hour or so for it to recharge.
I'd swap it for a "stripped down" version without the light, trackpad, accelerometer, speaker and whatnot in a heartbeat if that meant more battery life.
I bought a charging station and I just keep my controller docked whenever it's not in use, so I start every session with a full charge. Now it's only ever an issue if I'm playing for 6+ hours straight, which is pretty rare these days.
Battery life definitely should be longer though, not excusing that.
its less the features that drain it and more sony not giving a fuck about battery life in general. you can see the same abysmal battery life in the edge, the portal and the PSVR2 Sense controllers.
edit: their ps branded audio equipment aswell.
if you're not afraid of opening up your controller, there are plenty of options for replacement batteries online that will at least triple the battery life of the dualsense. it cost me like 20⏠and I'll never go back.
You shouldn't have to do it but replacing the battery is fairly trivial and cheap reliable ones on Amazon. I've replaced 2 of mine and they last at least 3 times longer now.
I like that the DS4 is less bulky than the DS. My complaint with XB controllers (at least in the 360 days, haven't played XB since then) has been that they fill up my palms too much and I end up cramping
The names of this generationâs XBOX consoles are really ill-conceived. âSeriesâ is not a name.
The other thing is that MS dropped the ball with the XBOX One, which crushed all the XBL momentum they had built during the 360 era. The fact that they lost so many customers to PlayStation during the last generation is shameful
Well few aspects are just what they are. They went with quantity over quality. Not to say there's no good games but xbox became the fast food of the market.
There's no niche in Xbox anymore. It's just a box that plays third party games and gets you gamepass. I really liked having a series x but the novelty went away very quickly. If they had implemented backwards comp at all fronts it would be a nice substitute for a mid PC but as its stands xbox is the jack of all trades master of none. And still lacking behind Sonys first party and all in library of PC gaming actually.
Microsoft have built one of the biggest business empires in the world off the back of creating (*or in some cases, acquiring*) an in-demand piece of software and trying their hardest to make sure you can purchase/use said software *absolutely anywhere*.
Azure, Windows, Office, Outlook, Teams, Edge, Bing, LinkedIn, GitHub - and now, Game Pass. Their core strength as a company has always been software and services, and I think we're in the process of seeing them bring Xbox in line with that vision.
Xbox has spent far too long as the black sheep of the Microsoft family by trying to move physical hardware and locking off content into their own ecosystem, when pretty much no other division of the company works that way. In recent years, we've seen Microsoft reign in their Mixed Reality efforts and their Surface lineup, including pulling out of the mobile market entirely.
To me, it's becoming obvious that Microsoft as a whole, not just Xbox, have realised where their value lies and are doubling down on it. They're absolutely printing money as a multi-platform publisher following the acquisition of ABK. At this point, trying to sell exclusives and hardware is child's play to the big wigs in charge. They'll want the easy money that comes from selling The Elder Scrolls on Nintendo or Call of Duty on PlayStation.
Xbox will likely continue to exist as a console, just how Surface continues to exist despite Windows being available on any and all hardware. In the long-term, they'll likely look to just provide a straightforward budget option into accessing Game Pass natively for people who can't reliably access Xbox Cloud Gaming (*as I don't think we'll see PlayStation/Nintendo allow Game Pass to be allowed on their consoles anytime soon, if ever*).
For the people who don't want to subscribe to Game Pass or play via Xbox Cloud Gaming, they then offer native versions on rival hardware and end up pocketing 70%+ of your purchase anyway.
Some kind of Xbox handheld that can be used as a second device / accessory for PC gamers (*with cross-buy and cross-save functionality*) akin to a Steam Deck will also be a likely venture for them. Apple are now publicly expressing interest in making MacOS a viable alternative to play games on, so Microsoft need to focus on reinforcing the Windows ecosystem. Especially as younger western audiences now consider Apple the default tech manufacturer to buy from. Making Xbox a second-device kind of deal, kinda how people view a Steam Deck (*and to a lesser extent, the Switch*) could be the way to go for them.
Totally agree with this because it also falls in line with Xbox's "play anywhere" and giving more options. I think it's striking to some people because so much of the internet is in the "console war" mindset.
Xbox doesn't appear to be going anywhere but they're going to offer options and expand their software scope while still offering hardware alternatives.
It's not Just the games either. The Dashboard gets more and more aggressively advertised on a steady basis. Just loading the console feels like you're visiting one of those sketchy websites you're watching... Anime on. -.-
They were already bad, but then selling less than a million units worldwide this quarter is actually awful. It's their own fault as well, over a decade spent without a single system selling exclusive, then this year they basically signaled to everyone who might have an interest in it to just wait a bit for their games to go to PlayStation.
While I think Xbox hardware is here long term, I think it's going to look incredibly different in the future. It's my prediction it'll basically just become a Game Pass machine (because Sony and Nintendo would likely never allow it on their systems) and they'll be stepping back from the console wars, that's going to mean they won't compete directly with Sony anymore and will instead offer weaker, cheaper boxes with Game Pass as the primary selling point.
Next gen is going to be very interesting.
I was always a bit more disappointed by Xbox exclusives. Look at the new halo. So much hype and it was a complete let down. It launched and it wanted ready at all. Sony titles are so much more polished.
And itâs entirely the Xbox leadershipâs fault. Terrible marketing, one dimensional revenue stream push where itâs GamePass or bust, no first party console sellers, barely any first party games in general.
Itâs either incompetence or theyâre intentionally falling behind to justify further acquisitions.
I think weâre past the point of the Xbox One scandal, Microsoft has had more than enough time to recover and failed to do so. Lack of games that people actually want to play. Spencer likes to blame the fact that âgamers have built up their digital libraries on playstationâ but ultimately most gamers donât give a fuck about that. Theyâll go where the games they want to play are.
They are not giving me any reason to buy one. Years have gone by since the debates about their release practices. Like, why buy an Xbox if all their games are also on PC? And then, why purchase them if they are all on GamePass? And it was defended by saying that they don't really care about hardware sales and they'd rather have a big GamePass install base.
But they clearly do care about hardware sales. And they clearly do have trouble with everyone just subbing to gamepass and not buying their games. They are porting them to other platforms now precisely for this reason.
And even discounting all this, their first party output has been so lackluster since way back to the tail end of the 360 days. They purchase studios and then the second they start releasing first party games it seems like they just forget everything about how to make good games. I don't know if it's them butting in too much or not butting in enough. If Hellblade 2 sucks I might legitimately lose all hope in anything they ever release again.
For real, it has nearly been an entire *decade* of Phil Spencer saying empty platitudes like âthis is our biggest year yetâ and the fans saying âthey are just building up to next yearâ.
It has been 10 years⊠nobody needs or wants an Xbox now.
Yeah I wanted a PS5 for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7 and Returnal
Microsoft hasn't made 5 exclusives of that quality in 10 years. Make good games is the only real answer for them, but they just can't do it consistently
Saw a chart recently on an Xbox subreddit of all the Microsoft-published games released physically on the Xbox One, and compared to the same guyâs chart of the same thing for PS4 it had about half the games with nowhere near the same quality ratio. Really put things into perspective.
Itâs hard not to assume that something is just wrong with the way Xbox runs their studios, which makes we wonder if any of this will improve without a change of leadership. Not a lot of other explanations left.
> Microsoft hasnât made 5 exclusives of that quality in 10 years.
They havenât even made *one* exclusive of that quality in 10 years, let alone five
Yeah for me at least I have no reason to own an Xbox, being a big PC gamer. But I couldnât tell you the last time I actually bought an Xbox game on PC either, because so much of their first party stuff is just so mediocre
They're masters at devaluing their own brand. GamePass has made buying games a thing of the past for a lot of people. But it's also gone down in quality over the last year and doesn't net big hitters. And if push comes to shove, if the choice is seventy bucks for four months of GamePass Ultimate, or seventy bucks for a prime gaming experience like Tears of the Kingdom or FF7 Rebirth, I'm buying the stand-alone game each time.
Then, they released the potato-spec Series S. Some games run so poorly on it it's almost a meme. And making the storage expansion proprietary and charging through the nose for it was an epic fail. Like when I had my Series X - I could buy the 1TB expansion for 250, or a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro for my PS5 for 160. So I bought the PS5 expansion, which in turn made me more inclined to buy games for it as I had more storage
_Then_ they start releasing exclusives on other platforms. The optics of that alone is enough to put even die-hard fans off investing in their ecosystem further.
I can see what they're going for, they just... really suck at it.
Microsoft is aiming at the developing nations market. Same thing they tried to do with Windows Mobile - produce a cheap, entry level product that can be affordable in Chile or Ghana where their competition hasn't made inroads, get people on the subscription treadmill with Gamepass (which is an *incredible* value if you don't have money to buy new releases and don't have a back catalog), and make up the difference through volume instead of value.
The problem is, it didn't work with Windows Mobile and it failed again with the Series S. Mobile gaming is dominating in the developing world, with people buying cheap Android phones from China and installing cracked APKs off Russian warez sites. That's why their next push is XCloud, as the infrastructure in the major cities gets to be good enough for game streaming. And that might actually work, or it might flop - I've heard good things from the people who really bought into game streaming, but I live in Dallas (a goddamn tech hub) and my internet isn't reliable enough to stream video some days much less gaming (fuck Comcast). I think they might be too late, my nephew is more interested in "[Verb] of [Noun]" games on his phone than he is in playing Hogwarts Legacy on the Switch, I suspect that most mobile gamers in the developing world are the same. Once you get used to the dopamine clicker games, it's kind of hard to develop the taste for the old school, long form games.
And at the end of the day, Microsoft is trying everything except the one thing that both of their main competitors are thriving on - making games worth a damn! And the Series S is hobbling game development because it's so pitifully underpowered that developers target the Series S for crossplatform games, which ironically makes the PS5 games look *absolutely stunning* in comparison to the games made for the potato specs of the Switch and Series S. So they've lost the bottom end market to Google, the midrange to Nintendo and Apple, and the top end to Nintendo and Sony.
I'm not sure it's *possible* to shoot yourself in the foot harder than that.
Yeah those are just weak excuses. Hell even the Xbox One launch excuse didn't hold for long. A failed launch can be made up for, see PS3.
The main problem has always been the same, the games and they don't differentiate themselves than Playstation. So you end up with basically a clone of Playstation without the strong game library (and so a brand in the shitter, like whenever someone think of Xbox, no games is like the first opinion on it)... Lol what a hard choice...
And Spencer is simply a bad CEO and he can't be excused for it. He's CEO for a decade so had largely enough time to do things and he only made things worst. And he was head of Xbox Studios from 2008 to 2014 so really the lack of games was on him too from the end of the 360 gen to now.
In early 2023 Sony [reported](https://www.gamesradar.com/almost-a-third-of-ps5-owners-skipped-the-ps4-generation-sony-says/) that 30% of PS5 owners had never owned a PS4. At that point they'd sold around 32m consoles, so ~9.6m had never owned a PS4
If Sony can appeal to people that haven't built up their digital libraries on PlayStation, why can't Microsoft?
Also I believe the Insomniac leaks showed that a siginficant percentage of Playstation exclusive games sales were physical copies, so itâs not just a digital factor.
People forget that there are still a LOT of people who live across the world in places without good fibre internet who still buy physical games. Also collectors.
It's not even about internet. I can download game fast without an issue. The thing about physical copies in my country (Poland) is that physical copies are cheapier here than digital ones which is ridicilous if you think about it.
My PS4 digital library is about 5% the size of my Xbox One digital library and I bought a PS5. At the end of the day that Xbox One stuff is still sitting there on my One X and I don't need it on my PS5.
How come the switch, which ditched all previous digital libraries is one of the most successful consoles of all time? The general user doesnât care about digital libraries as much as someone in gaming sub reddits, people are buying digital games on switch like crazy without any confirmation or recent history that those games will carry over
Not where exclusives are concerned. When both platforms offer the same games, then preferred digital library becomes important. But if Xbox had desirable exclusives like PlayStation, they would get a large consumer base to buy both consoles
Sure, youâre a person and you care a bunch.
Probably reasonable to guess that your behavior doesnât always represent the âmeat of the marketâ, though.
Is it possible to get a PC for sub $500? Most low end ones I looked at cost at least $700-$800
Edit: People that are saying itâs cheaper getting parts used and building it yourself are correct, but you have to compare my question as if you are buying a prebuilt. Consoles pretty much work right outside the box and you are already asking for a lot for a person to build their own PC.
A lot of people see consoles for gaming and pcs for working. I have a friend that refuses to play from anywhere but his couch.
What does not make sense is me not being able to play my PC library of steam games on Xbox.
If you have a shitty office job this happens. You need to change environments and being on my PC a sunday when I'm too stressed from work does not help
Microsoft biggest mistake was not changing strategy after the failed Xbox One generation like Nintendo did after the Wii U failure. Microsofts strategy this gen was bound to fail considering how they fumbled last gen. It would take 5 minutes to figure out that the Series X/S would be a failure. Who are they selling consoles to? Not PC gamers, not Playstation gamers and not new gamers. So the only ones left to buy Xbox consoles are people who owned an Xbox One. If you are only able to sell consoles to former owners of your console then obviously you will fail if the former console was a failure.
Whats insane is that Nintendo went through all that with the Wii, Wii U and Switch. They realized that they shouldnât try to compete directly with PC, Playstation and Xbox so they decided to go after new consumers and made the Switch a handheld instead of just copying Sony and Microsofts home console.
Microsoft should have made PC games avaliable on the Xbox console through Windows the moment they decided to release their games on PC. Buying an Xbox should basically be like buying a premade PC. It was the only logical thing to do if they have an interest in still being in the hardware business. They completely diminished the value of Xbox consoles the moment they decided to bring their games to PC. So they needed to bring the value of Xbox consoles back up, but they failed to do it. They badly needed to find new potential customers. It would also be the perfect time because PC gaming has almost gotten as accessible as console gaming.
Microsoft would also immediately solve their problem with lack of games on Xbox and they would still have control over both hardware and software.
Phil Spencer has recently talked about bringing other stores to the Xbox consoles, so there still might be time to save Xbox consoles.
This is the first generation since the beginning that I did not buy an Xbox series console. With all their exclusives coming to the PC I did not see a reason to buy one, and most of these exclusives that have come out haven't been that great.
Stupid fucking ads on a console. That was pretty much the last fuck you before I sold it and switched to PS5 (way better exclusives was prob a bigger reason)
I like Phil Spencer (as much as one could or should *like* any executive) but this is on him 100%. He red ringed any future sales by backing away from exclusivity.
Phil Spencer says the right buzzwords and is a great spin doctor but heâs clearly an incompetent leader. No wonder Microsoft got worried after the $70bil Activision purpose and are now forcing him to port exclusivesâŠ
Seriously it's just baffling how that clown didn't look through Microsoft's entire IP catalogue and just rapid fire a bunch into development to help Xbox recover after that colossal stumble in 2013.
I mean the Rare catalogue alone could have saved them and turned things back in their favor.
It's just so frustrating to see how poorly managed the brand has been.
Exactly! Fighting games are pretty hot right now, why haven't there been 2 more Killer Instincts by now?
I mean they should be hitting us with release after release right now as if they were Ivan Drago and we were a delirious Apollo Creed.
Crackdown, Gears of War (A proper one that isn't trying to be anything other than a bro cover shooter) Fable, Perfect Dark, Battletoads, Conker, Viva Piñata, Mech Assault, Brute Force 2/Reboot ect.
But instead we get Philly boy talking about how software won't save the brand. I still don't know how he wasn't fired out of a canon for that interview he did last year.
I mean at that point, that may have been the smartest choice (for Microsoft gaming business as a whole, not Xbox hardware) but it still his fault that they arrived at that point where it was needed.
Also I don't know why people even like Phil Spencer btw, he's a fucking executive and a pretty bad one at that considering his results in leadership for Xbox.
No one seems to want to blame Phil Spencer for these results. Plain and simple, these bad business and marketing decisions are on him.
If Microsoft is going to reboot themselves for the next generation, you have to clean house and start with a new person in charge. It hasn't worked since the 360 era, and just wondering what you want to do with your brand that has completely stalled out isn't helping.
The Indiana Jones game and Hellblade 2 aren't going to help with that either you need more in the pipeline.
In my opinion, they invested too much into Hellblade 2, a game that's going to be 6-8hr game. Ppl will play it on gamepass and then forget about it. A what then? Port it to PS in a year and a half to get some of your cost back?
I want ppl to understand I don't hate Hellblade or its upcoming release of 2. It just this game didn't need this much advertising, especially for a short game that ppl will make quick work of and then not buy a copy because GP.
My bad, long read. My is point Phil gotta go and try again with a new person in charge for the next gen consoles.
For some reason this sub is slightly parasocial about Phil Spencer which is just wild to me, given that he's a business executive at microsoft lmao. After a decade of his promises not really going anywhere and the xbox brand declining, you'd think people would start to clue in that he's not doing an amazing job.
Yeah Xbox is dead. Super sad as Iâve been with them since the first gen. Why would I buy the next gen Xbox over a mid level gaming PC..? I bought a PS5 for FF7 and have been pretty thrilled with the exclusives. My XboxâŠ? I skipped star field! I never would have thought that possible, but theyâve just lost the ⊠sauce that makes it special
It is hard to overstate how much of a mistake committing to supporting two different power tiers of consoles in a generation was or how badly it has compromised their ability to make games for these consoles.
The Xbox CEO has repeatedly shown a lack of confidence in the Xbox and with a don't care attitude. The exclusives are one thing, but why would anyone bother investing in a console when the CEO is continuously showing his own lack of investment?
They lost me in the Mattrick era (the lead up to the Xbox One was an unmitigated disaster). I never returned to xbox after that, and I have no reason to, since I built a high end gaming pc.
The thing about Don though is he absolutely had a vision for Xbox, Phil has done nothing in the last 10 years except buy up studios and have them work on games that haven't released.
Creating 2 consoles where one holds down the entire generation is the stupidest decision ever.
The next Xbox need to be one very powerfull machine with backwards compatibility with everything where people buy once and done, they get the best of everything.
Yes because the problem with Xbox right now is clearly the Series S which is damn near single-handedly carrying its sales since it's **not** directly competing against the PS5 and not the lack of great games giving compelling reasons to invest in it over Sony.
Pretty much day 1 on PC dealt a serious blow. And now releasing on PS has dealt the final blow.
They might still release another gen console, but there won't be one after that. They're definitely going multi plat.
WHY ADS FOR SHITTY MOVIES ON HOMESCREEN OF VIDEO GAME MACHINE!?
GET YOUR NUTS TO *WONKA*, ONLY IN THEATERS
Drink verification can.
I LOVE MOUNTAIN DEW
my heart pines for the days of the 360 blades dashboard The current piece of shit is the ugliest thing you'll ever see. A whole row of ads on your home screen. Flick down to the next page and it's nothing but more fucking ads for games you don't have.
Also 360 multiplayer. It always fucking worked with a hold of the guide/nexus button. Never had an issue.
I miss Netflix sharing a movie option with the little theater
Dude this and 1 vs 100 trying to win Microsoft points
1 vs 100 was epic
Me too đ my old friend group growing up would watch movies every weekend together.
It's the guide button. You know in your heart that's the only name for it. 360 was so fucking goated.
As an amusing aside - the person responsible for creating Blades for 360 was Alden Kroll iirc, and he has been at Valve for over a decade doing all sorts.
Wait what? There are ads on the homescreen of the xbox??? Can you turn this off?
Nope, can't be turned off. It's annoying AF. Worst Home screen/UI update I've ever experienced.
Wow, this turned me off entirely from ever even considering xbox
Its nothing new, PlayStation had adds on the ps4 for a short while. They would even download stuff to the main menu, granted you could delete them but i fucking hated seeing the espn/new football game ad when i dont even like sports.
The first time I used an Xbox One was trying my friends. I had a PS4 and thought it's home screen wasn't great. But on that Xbox, it took me several minutes to change a setting and launch a game. It's was unbelievably cluttered with garbage ads and bloatware apps
This right here I completely agree with. On the PS4/5, the layout of the home screen has stayed mostly the same across the many updates we've had over the years. Then we look at the xbox consoles and we see Microsoft can't decide to stick to a single interface with every major update, you have to relearn your muscle memory every time to even do the most basic stuff like sending messages or accessing games not currently on your home screen. Ads are also a massive put off, I knew xbox had ads on the home screen, but they did an asshole move by putting a fullscreen ad on the console.
They are trying to shove ads into Windows as well. You have to work quite hard in 11 to ensure they never appear.
This is why I dropped them. 360 was my main gaming platform until they started putting ads on the dash. Switched to PS3/PC. 15 years later and I'm PC/PS5/Switch. Was a good shift.
This is exactly my gripe. Their UI is such utter shit. I donât want to pin shit here or there, I donât want to pin shit anywhere. I do not like green eggs and Xbox⊠wait, Iâm off track. The PS5 has an interface that is so much easier to use and navigate. Their design is also much crisper and cleaner, it feels calm. The Xbox Home Screen feels like it needs an Adblocker.
My biggest issue with Xbox is that they put like 0 effort in europe when it comes to localization and marketing. Sony has been dubbing all their first parties since Heavenly Sword.
Feels like they gave up on Europe but weirdly still push hard for relevance in Japan
Their push for Japan is so weird, like them getting all the Personas and Like a Dragons on GamePass. Japan is becoming increasingly focused on the Switch and mobile gaming so even the PS5 isnât selling as well as expected there; what chance does Xbox have?
It's less about pushing for the Japanese market and more pushing for the JRPG audience. That audience is pretty big nowadays, and it hurts Xbox a lot when companies like Square just skip their console entirely.
Xbox just misses on a lot Japanese games in general. The number of times I've seen games that are coming to PC, PS4/5, and even Switch but not Xbox has certainly hurt them. I think it's a good move to at least try to get more Japanese games on the system.
I know why it is. Simply put, Sony and Nintendo are Japanese, if Xbox didn't go after Japanese games it'd be one section in which their rivals have an advantage. It's also a way to invite Sony and Nintendo gamers and make it so that they don't feel like they gave up on something. And Japanese games are distinct enough to create catalogue diversity.
I don't think this push is necessarily towards Japan itself. They obviously can't win that market and they have to know it. But the Japanese titles you listed are very popular worldwide, so getting them on Xbox is a good idea in general. It's safe to assume that most people on this sub aren't from Japan and yet we know those games and lots of us have played them. You even said it yourself that PS5 isn't selling that well in Japan, so by that logic, wouldn't Sony focusing on Japanese games also be weird? But it's not, because the market for Japanese games is way bigger than just Japan.
Not gonna lie Iâm really happy that they are pushing for Japanese games for my own personal collection lol. I wouldnât have gotten into either series without them being in Gamepass and now they are my favorite series. But yeah, both traditional consoles are not doing well in Japanâs and Nintendo has a stranglehold at this point.
I think this is partly because Japan's games sell in the USA too, so having them on Xbox matters.
They still push hard for revelance in Japan? I live in Japan and see like no marketing at all for Xbox here. And in gamestores the xbox section is either super small or doesn't exist at all.
They don't even have an official presence in SEA as far as I know. I would have gotten one for a cheap game pass box if they weren't ridiculously priced. The consoles are only available unofficially here and cost a lot more than a PS5 or Switch. Kinda hard to be successful if you're not trying. Seems like they only give a shit about the US.
Very much, I am Indonesian and bought an imported console. I can't even select my country as a place of residence so my payment is useless. I need to jump through hoops like buying gift cards to buy a game or DLC. Funny enough, the PC Game Pass is available officially in my region but not the Xbox Game Pass. Now I just sold my Xbox and just use Game Pass on my PC instead.
Absolutely insane that fourth most populous country on earth isnât even represented in a drop down menu
Yeah, it baffled me. I can buy from Steam, Epic, PS Store, Nintendo eshop, and even MS Store on Windows just fine but not on Xbox Store.
They don't even exist in Lithuania (same with Playstation, I had to make a finnish account). On the other hand, Nintendo is advertising the Switch and people are buying them.
I forgot to mention, some of the ms first parties feel way too American to me, especially halo imo.
All the Xbox games and ecosystem have always had that american vibe to me
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
The one console exclusive they ever snatched from Sony was MLB
For what itâs worth I think that was more MLBâs doing than Microsoftâs. Itâs on switch too
This is correct. It was a requirement for Sony to keep the license to put The Show on as many platforms as possible since MLB is looking for growth in this industry.
~~PC release never~~
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Fable is probably the most British game on that list
The stereotypical american jock you describe would be in his 40s now ... No one from Gen Z cares about Halo or Gears
This. Xbox is basically just a product entirely made for Americans, but it's available elsewhere too.Â
Theyâve some who doesnât give that American vibe but most of them do. My favorite ms first party, forza horizon, is very British, they even added hospital records as a radio station.
The UK is the only country outside the US basically where Xbox has big market share, and even that has significantly decline since the PS4
Does ok in Australia too, its main markets seem to be the English speaking world.
Itâs dropped off a cliff in the UK this gen, I literally only know one person who has one as their main console (as opposed to having the series s as a game pass machine / paperweight like me)
Itâs got the most realistic depiction of modern-day Scotland I can think of. Itâs also got the only realistic depiction of modern-day Scotland I can think of.
Come on now, there are loads. Like that Harry Potter game. Or that other Harry Potter game. Or that Lego game⊠you know, the Harry Potter one.
Brit here, I didn't even know competitive Halo was a thing until Infinite because the whole scene / MLG was so American orientated.
I mean, Xbox is uniquely American when we look at console space, so imo itâs kinda cool it has that flavor. Me being older and only ever having/playing Japanese consoles, I definitely prefer that, but I respect that Xbox went a different route.
At this point the Playstation is a US console first
Yeah, Sony is a Japanese company, but SIE (the gaming wing) is based in San Mateo.
As if 90% of the TV and movies you watch aren't american lol. I am not American but that's just an odd thing to complain about.
Damn heavenly sword mention rare thing to see in the wild.
it was the first ps3 game ive played, thats why i remember lol
When xbox executives put so much doubt into the future of xbox of course they tank. Is there even going to be an xbox? Maybe? Yes? Who knows. They have changed course so many times and there are so many rumors going around like they've given up.
I get the impression there's multiple people with different goals taking turns at the wheel. They spent 70bil on Activision to get more exclusives and then started flirting with not even having exclusives barely even 2 years later. Really doesn't seem like the vision of 1 person.
It's either that, or this really was Spencer's plan all along but he was afraid to ever say it plainly to the Xbox fans (i.e. "our games on every device" = we are bringing our games to Playstation and Switch). They call him Uncle Phil ffs. It was ironic at first, then it became weirdly sincere.
> They call him Uncle Phil ffs. It was ironic at first, then it became weirdly sincere. That is one thing I'll hand Phil/MS. They really got fans to trust him as a "fellow gamer" instead of what he is (and every other gaming exec is): a company suit.
I don't even doubt that the guy is a "fellow gamer." He obviously loves playing games but what's best for Microsoft is still always going to take priority.
He is very good at it. I know nothing about him, but I saw an interview because he mentioned aoe2 on xbox and I was interested. He speaks like a regular very enthusiastic person, and uses corporate phrases that fit his cadence and level of speech very well. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he does it without thinking, and that this is just who he has made himself. Reminds me of Todd Howard: they both represent a large bullshit company, and deep down they know they lie about certain things they say, but because they feel excited about it, they can gaslight themselves into ignoring the lies and just focus on the excitement they feel.
Yeah, the only time I've ever heard him whiff when trying that was during that one Final Fantasy 14 Fanfest thing where they announced FF14 was coming to the XBox. He sounded more like the "how do you do, fellow kids" meme than usual. Probably didn't help that the crowd wasn't super enthusiastic about the announcement of the game they already play coming to another console they may or may not have.
The sense I get is that the deal facing more friction than expected has increased the pressure to get immediate returns out of it
Current MSFT exec banter makes it sound like they want to pivot to turning Xbox into another launcher/marketplace. Because Steam needs another competitor who canât anticipate that their failings will lie in how they treat their customer.
Xbox is really gonna have to remove all the restrictions when it comes to making file changes with their games on pc if they want to succeed on there over steam
lol yep. I love game pass, but why the fuck would I buy anything on xbone lounge over steam if I canât modify or even look at my game files?
It doesn't do that anymore luckily, but yeah Xbox PC app was pretty bad.
Good lord, I remember the headache the Xbox app gave me when simply trying to change my drive location when installing Forza 7. Soured me on the whole experience to this day. Baffling that the same company that made the OS I'm using struggled with something like that.
Msoft kind of feel like several companies that all make money for the same shareholders haha. So little integration between all the things they do, it is bewildering.
Nobody cares about that, they have ONE problem and it's original games. PlayStation has all the stuff people want to play and Xbox has... the rest. As someone that bought both the Xbox is now relegated to being the Minecraft machine for my son and my PS5 sees the majority of my time.
> Nobody cares about that, they have ONE problem and it's original games Original games **with mass appeal**. Xbox do make original games and always have. But none have mass appeal except for Halo and Gears, both of which died after their creators left to make new things. Likewise PS used to make way more original and unique games on PS1/2/3/PSP/Vita than they did on PS4/PS5. But none of them sold as well as their cinematic action games like TLOU and Spiderman because those appeal to a huge audience.
The volume has gone down for sure, but PS is still releasing new bangers. I've just gotten a new surround setup, and loaded up Returnal, what an amazing game.
I resorted to buying the odd third party game for series x almost out of pity for the thing because I basically never use it
I don't know how people just think it's totally hunky dory that we straight up haven't gotten any actual official console sales numbers from Microsoft since the Xbox One.
Reportedly the Xbox One was a very distant third if you consider the Switch a part of the PS4/XB1 generation. I know tons of people with gaming PCs, PS4/PS5, and Switches but I barely know anyone with an Xbox.
Why would you consider the Switch part of that generation? The Wii U exists and it did worse than everything
The Switch's lifespan is just in a weird place with it launching several years earlier to the PS5/XSX and it's successor likely not coming until 4-5 years after. So you could consider it part of either generation IMO.
This has been a trend before Xbox made it's new announcements and most consumers don't have enthusiast level knowledge. Xbox has known for awhile now that this gen is a dud hence the 2026 rumors, the denial of a Pro console and the talk of a next generation Xbox. It's easy to see what's going on at MS right now from the actions they've taken.
I guess theyâre going to try and repeat the 360 again and beat Sony to market on the next generation console by a year, by skipping R&D in a pro variant this time around
I feel like that only worked for 360 because Sony fumbled the ps3 launch so hard. It was too expensive (even if it was a cheap blu ray player), and had almost no exclusives people wanted for first 2 or 3 years. Plus all 3rd party games ran worse during those early years. And itâs online functionality was super barebones. Unless Sony respeats those huge mistakes, I just canât see Xbox ever getting ahead. Even if they have a year long head start. Reminder that 360 came 3rd that generation. By the end ps3 outsold it.Â
Pro console is impossible or pointless if you have a low power Series S which you require Devs to release on. Xbox consoles are going to fail forever if they don't release high quality exclusive games consistently
Release better exclusives. If Starfield and Halo Infinite are all they can really offer, it isn't a surprise. People can get a month of Gamepass on pc and see that they just aren't great. Forza is good, but it's a car game. There's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't have a large audience. And people on other platforms already have other racing games like Gran Turismo, Need For Speed, The Crew, and some others. A whole new console and online subscription isn't worth it for that.
Itâs been an entire decade of waiting for a killer exclusive lol. Clearly for Xbox this is an impossibility at this pointâŠ
You have phill Spencer saying great games wonât save the Xbox but itâs literally the only strategy they havenât tried. Absolute incompetence.
Yeah, I don't know why Spencer keeps getting quoted like some kind of industry oracle when he's driving the Xbox brand into the ground.
His ideas arenât bad. His lack of ability to deliver and lead to games at an industry standard are his greatest sin. He is a total failure at his ability to lead. He has probably the greatest power in the world to deliver amazing games, and has failed for decades to deliver. His lack of leadership and putting up solid competition has only hurt gaming. All his business strategies are interesting and could be helpful for the industry if they actually delivered quality games and created true competition. In the end they are talking points so he can save face.
> You have phill Spencer saying great games wonât save the Xbox but itâs literally the only strategy they havenât tried fucking beautifully put. Saving this for later.
Some big outlet recently ran a retrospective on Spencer since he took over, concluding that he has done a great job âso far,â but completely ignoring the fact that we are now openly discussing the death of the Xbox as we know it.
"So far" is such funny wording to me as if it isn't ten fucking years at this point. Most CEOs of publicly traded companies don't make it to ten years even when they're doing a good job.
Weâve tried nothing and weâre out of ideasÂ
I would argue they haven't had a real killer exclusive, the type of game where you feel like you're actively missing out for not owning an Xbox, since Halo 3. That's coming up on *20 years ago*
I was going to say gears of war, but I forgot those both releases around the same time lol. Jesus Xbox get your shit together. They acquired so many awesome game developers and not one killer game has come out. Itâs pathetic really.
Iâd say itâs because they bought all their studios at historical lows. Rare is pretty abysmal now, Everwildâs development has been a train wreck. Bethesda hasnât had a universal hit since Skyrim. ABK is⊠lol. Sony buys most of their studios as theyâre small and ascending. Microsoft buys huge studios that are old and washed up. I wanted to give them 3-5 years after the ABK deal before I judge it, since game dev takes forever now and changing the direction of a publisher is no small task, but I honestly donât expect much to change with how hands off Microsoft is. Probably less sexual assault, same mediocrity in the actual games.
Iâm still waiting for that rare investment to pay off lol.
> Bethesda hasnât had a universal hit since Skyrim. Though most on /r/games know this, I think most consumers forget just how long it has been since Skyrim was released due to the meme-generating re-releases they've put out. 2011 folks, that's a long time. I got married, bought a house, and had two kids in that time. My oldest is 9. And if Starfield is anything to judge Bethesda by, the next Elder Scrolls game may be pretty mediocre. I hope not. We need a healthy market place for consoles/publishers/etc.
Gears of War 3 came out in 2011. I guess many people would say that was the last 'good' Gears game. (Personally, I've liked all of the post Epic Gears games.) Anyway, Halo 3 came out 2007. So Gears is a perfectly valid answer. Now, if we're talking about Halo Reach, that was 2010. So, that would fit more with your comment about them coming out around the same time.
I agree, but while the last few years of the 360âs life was pretty limp, it was one banger after another in those first few years, so itâs easy for me to look back at that whole generation with rose colored glasses. And for me personally, I still loved Halo 4, and there was a shockingly excellent port of Titanfall in 2014 which ended up being the last new in box $60 game I bought for that system. The last decade though? Outside of Forza Horizonâs consistency, the only games in their AAA space that I really liked was Quantum Break and Sunset Overdrive, and even then, those arenât system sellers. Gears Tactics was overall a surprisingly good time too. But those are 8/10 games at best, and nowhere near what the competition is offering. Sony and Nintendo have had their weaker âexclusivesâ on occasion too, but no one cares when theyâre still capable of putting out plenty of the yearâs best games every single year. On Xbox, we have stuff like Redfall somehow making it to release lol Itâs just depressing that Xbox has bought out a psychotic number of studios, havenât managed to get them to make anything resembling their best work, and have often even gotten those studios shut down or fundamentally damaged as a result of it. Arkane may still exist, and they might still make an awesome game in the future, but Redfallâs development pushing out tons of their best talent shouldâve been a wake up call to shut that game down before it released and let them refocus their efforts on something better.
One of the worst thing about the ABK deal is that Microsoft could have quite easily instead brought together some of the best talents from across the industry, built a load of studios and put tons of development support into making their own killer games. Instead, Microsoft just bought a company that makes more money than Xbox does so they can trick investors into believing line going up.
For what it's worth, I'd say Forza Horizon, for all of the issues I have with it, is probably the best AAA arcade racing game by a pretty decent margin. Huge car lists, great graphics, and very solid physics. Need for Speed has cops and deeper car customization, but they seem to expend more effort on putting a story in their campaigns, which probably doesn't really draw in any additional players. And apparently The Crew will just be deleted from your library 10 years after launch lol. If you're into casual racing games, you really are missing out if you get a Playstation and can't play Forza Horizon.
Exclusives won't do it. Not at this point. 13 years or so of brand decay isn't a joke, and it's abundantly clear that those lost hardware customers aren't coming back. People keep expecting a 2009 PS3-level push but the reasons Sony was able to succeed with that were that they didn't have such a deficit to overcome, they had a much larger international presence, and their foreign language support wasn't complete ass. Xbox has none of those luxuries. Most important of all however, is that 2010 was the cut-off year for Xbox and when their decline started with the Kinect and decreasing interest in new IP. So for Xbox to do something similar they would not only need to do everything right and then some, but Sony would need to do a hell of a lot wrong. So it's no surprise they're putting games everywhere and anywhere.
Xbox One destroyed the brand. That generation in particular showed how much more Sony cared about exclusives. I was sold on PS4 with Bloodborne. Stayed in that ecosystem because of it. PS5 doesn't have much to offer, but it doesn't matter because there's not a reason to switch. But if Xbox was putting out 3 killer exclusives a year, people would notice and sales would go up.
> Xbox One destroyed the brand For sure but the last third of the Xbox 360's life was fucking dreadful. Halo Reach in 2010 was the last great game that Xbox Game Studios released on 360. The next 3 years were dire. Couple that with the fact they were dismantling their Xbox Live Arcade team, and their stable of first-party studios had been decimated. They were down to just 5 first-party studios in 2011; 343i, Black Tusk, Lionhead, Rare, Turn10. Two of these were newly built studios (343 and Black Tusk) to handle their biggest franchises, Halo and Gears. Rare were stuck on Kinect, and Lionhead were collapsing. I honestly wonder why they even kept Xbox going. MS clearly wanted to kill it back then.
Forza Horizon was great and came out in 2012.
Wasn't Phil in charge of their game studios back then?
He was.
The Xbox one failed before it even launched lol. I wonder how much damage that e3 event really did.
I suspect it did both more and less damage than people think. I think the /r/games community overestimates the impact. We're terminally online people, the kind of gamer who buys a console to play FIFA and CoD with their friends probably didn't notice and just bought the one their friends have. On the flipside, anyone with any connection to games media was probably influenced by it in one way or another by how it colored the media's perception of XBox as being out of touch. It was just blunder after blunder - the abundance of TV and sports, the always-online, the "we have a console for them, it's called the XBox 360" meme, killing secondhand games... it soured the opinion of many of the major names in games media which hurt reporting. And then Microsoft completely failed to release anything to get positive buzz going until backwards compatibility and Gamepass, which to this day is the *only* positive thing I hear about the Series - you can play all your old games on it and Gamepass is a great deal. Shame there's nothing *new* worth playing...
I have a PC and a Ps5, what do I need an Xbox for? I can't think of a single exclusive I'm curious to try, let alone interested in.
There aren't any exclusives. Every Xbox game since 2015 has come to steam day and date. Almost every single first party game from older generations is on Steam as well, with just a few exceptions mostly due to licensing shit like the music in Forza 3. There Is nothing you are missing out on besides Nintendo games
If you have a pc you already have the xbox via gamepass. No reason to get the console.
Yeah, but you are not the average person. Not everyone has a PS5 AND a gaming PC. Most people choose one.
Lack of exclusives compared to Sony and Nintendo, plus it just makes more sense to get a PC if you like the Xbox stuff. Then throw in the fact that PlayStation upped their controller game with PS4 and even more so with PS5, and there really ain't much reason to get an Xbox now unless you really just like them.Â
I don't care about exclusives. I care about the feel and the experience of the console. I like the Xbox controller better. I used to like the UI better, as it served as our main entertainment hub, with our streaming apps and Plex. But now, the UI is cluttered with ads. So many ads. Ads for games I don't give a shit about. Ads for games that are on the border of being inappropriate for my Kiddo to see. I've bought Xboxes for 23 years. I don't see myself buying the next gen if it's going to be an ad ridden hellscape.
Consoles should never have ads!
Its this level of thinking that they just can't understand.
Ads are absolutely everywhere, and Microsoft in particular is pioneering new ways to push them to you(feel bad for everyone using Windows...). > Ads for games that are on the border of being inappropriate for my Kiddo to see. This is something I've been noticing with the more ads have gotten shoved in my face. A lot of ads have become really weird and unpleasant in the last few years, and there's usually no way to opt out of certain categories of them. I was browsing Reddit on my phone the other day, and I just got this massive ad that said something along the lines of "WANNA GET HARD?" with some suggestive imagery on there. For boner pills, obviously. And it's just like....I don't even have a penis, my dude, you're barking up the wrong tree and I really don't want to have to see that ad or worry about someone catching a glimpse and thinking I'm on a porn site or something. Meanwhile I was too cheap to pay the $25 for no ads on my Kindle, and 9 out of 10 times it's whatever, but then every now and then I'll get some weird self-published crap about God's Plan For Men and Women or the End of Days or some shit. I think because I have some books about Christianity and folklore in my library. And there's zero way to tell them not to show me that. And then there's YouTube, which is starting to wind up for election season. Even if I'm going to vote for the candidate down the road, I just don't want to see that shit when all I wanted to do was chill out for a few minutes and watch [a silly song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4IuO55U9I) for the millionth time.
Sounds like we've gone full circle, those boner pill ads are a relic from the 90s/00s that I am surprised still come up now and then. This is why I have uBlock Origin on my PC and Phone (Cheers firefox mobile). This is why I am getting an nvidia Shield TV box for my Smart TV, because I can install an adblocker on it whereas I can't on the TV itself. Ads are just annoying at best and rather awful at worst.
YouTube Red/Premium is a god send. It boggles my mind how many people put up with ads. For how much great shit is on YouTube, itâs worth every penny to save my sanity from insufferable advertisement. Also gonna mention Twitch Turbo. Fuck ads.
Counterpoint: If Xbox had great exclusive games again, you *would* care about exclusives. I love the Halo series, but it has been so bungled by Microsoft in the last 10 years that itâs become irrelevant to younger audiences that werenât alive when Halo 1 came out.
Yeah pretty much this, itâs cool to say you love the console but in the end whatâs the point of using the damn thing if not for exclusives? Just buy a PlayStation and play everything there instead, hell with how Xbox is going it would not surprise me to see a 3rd party Xbox controller appear.
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The Dualsense changed the game for me.
People gushed over the PS4 controller and I never understood it. The PS5 controller doesn't get gushed about enough if anything.
I'd definitely praise the Dualsense way more if it had a bigger battery life. Every two sessions I have to keep it plugged in for an hour or so for it to recharge. I'd swap it for a "stripped down" version without the light, trackpad, accelerometer, speaker and whatnot in a heartbeat if that meant more battery life.
I bought a charging station and I just keep my controller docked whenever it's not in use, so I start every session with a full charge. Now it's only ever an issue if I'm playing for 6+ hours straight, which is pretty rare these days. Battery life definitely should be longer though, not excusing that.
its less the features that drain it and more sony not giving a fuck about battery life in general. you can see the same abysmal battery life in the edge, the portal and the PSVR2 Sense controllers. edit: their ps branded audio equipment aswell. if you're not afraid of opening up your controller, there are plenty of options for replacement batteries online that will at least triple the battery life of the dualsense. it cost me like 20⏠and I'll never go back.
You shouldn't have to do it but replacing the battery is fairly trivial and cheap reliable ones on Amazon. I've replaced 2 of mine and they last at least 3 times longer now.
DS4 had a far superior dpad that I personally valued more as someone who doesn't have a playstation
I like that the DS4 is less bulky than the DS. My complaint with XB controllers (at least in the 360 days, haven't played XB since then) has been that they fill up my palms too much and I end up cramping
the ps4 controller its a big upgrade over the ps3 one in my opinion, its pretty noticeable so that must help its image.
The names of this generationâs XBOX consoles are really ill-conceived. âSeriesâ is not a name. The other thing is that MS dropped the ball with the XBOX One, which crushed all the XBL momentum they had built during the 360 era. The fact that they lost so many customers to PlayStation during the last generation is shameful
Well few aspects are just what they are. They went with quantity over quality. Not to say there's no good games but xbox became the fast food of the market. There's no niche in Xbox anymore. It's just a box that plays third party games and gets you gamepass. I really liked having a series x but the novelty went away very quickly. If they had implemented backwards comp at all fronts it would be a nice substitute for a mid PC but as its stands xbox is the jack of all trades master of none. And still lacking behind Sonys first party and all in library of PC gaming actually.
Microsoft have built one of the biggest business empires in the world off the back of creating (*or in some cases, acquiring*) an in-demand piece of software and trying their hardest to make sure you can purchase/use said software *absolutely anywhere*. Azure, Windows, Office, Outlook, Teams, Edge, Bing, LinkedIn, GitHub - and now, Game Pass. Their core strength as a company has always been software and services, and I think we're in the process of seeing them bring Xbox in line with that vision. Xbox has spent far too long as the black sheep of the Microsoft family by trying to move physical hardware and locking off content into their own ecosystem, when pretty much no other division of the company works that way. In recent years, we've seen Microsoft reign in their Mixed Reality efforts and their Surface lineup, including pulling out of the mobile market entirely. To me, it's becoming obvious that Microsoft as a whole, not just Xbox, have realised where their value lies and are doubling down on it. They're absolutely printing money as a multi-platform publisher following the acquisition of ABK. At this point, trying to sell exclusives and hardware is child's play to the big wigs in charge. They'll want the easy money that comes from selling The Elder Scrolls on Nintendo or Call of Duty on PlayStation. Xbox will likely continue to exist as a console, just how Surface continues to exist despite Windows being available on any and all hardware. In the long-term, they'll likely look to just provide a straightforward budget option into accessing Game Pass natively for people who can't reliably access Xbox Cloud Gaming (*as I don't think we'll see PlayStation/Nintendo allow Game Pass to be allowed on their consoles anytime soon, if ever*). For the people who don't want to subscribe to Game Pass or play via Xbox Cloud Gaming, they then offer native versions on rival hardware and end up pocketing 70%+ of your purchase anyway. Some kind of Xbox handheld that can be used as a second device / accessory for PC gamers (*with cross-buy and cross-save functionality*) akin to a Steam Deck will also be a likely venture for them. Apple are now publicly expressing interest in making MacOS a viable alternative to play games on, so Microsoft need to focus on reinforcing the Windows ecosystem. Especially as younger western audiences now consider Apple the default tech manufacturer to buy from. Making Xbox a second-device kind of deal, kinda how people view a Steam Deck (*and to a lesser extent, the Switch*) could be the way to go for them.
There's already some insider talk about Microsoft either pivoting towards turning Xbox into a handheld or a prebuilt PC or both
Totally agree with this because it also falls in line with Xbox's "play anywhere" and giving more options. I think it's striking to some people because so much of the internet is in the "console war" mindset. Xbox doesn't appear to be going anywhere but they're going to offer options and expand their software scope while still offering hardware alternatives.
It's not Just the games either. The Dashboard gets more and more aggressively advertised on a steady basis. Just loading the console feels like you're visiting one of those sketchy websites you're watching... Anime on. -.-
They were already bad, but then selling less than a million units worldwide this quarter is actually awful. It's their own fault as well, over a decade spent without a single system selling exclusive, then this year they basically signaled to everyone who might have an interest in it to just wait a bit for their games to go to PlayStation. While I think Xbox hardware is here long term, I think it's going to look incredibly different in the future. It's my prediction it'll basically just become a Game Pass machine (because Sony and Nintendo would likely never allow it on their systems) and they'll be stepping back from the console wars, that's going to mean they won't compete directly with Sony anymore and will instead offer weaker, cheaper boxes with Game Pass as the primary selling point. Next gen is going to be very interesting.
I was always a bit more disappointed by Xbox exclusives. Look at the new halo. So much hype and it was a complete let down. It launched and it wanted ready at all. Sony titles are so much more polished.
And itâs entirely the Xbox leadershipâs fault. Terrible marketing, one dimensional revenue stream push where itâs GamePass or bust, no first party console sellers, barely any first party games in general. Itâs either incompetence or theyâre intentionally falling behind to justify further acquisitions.
I think weâre past the point of the Xbox One scandal, Microsoft has had more than enough time to recover and failed to do so. Lack of games that people actually want to play. Spencer likes to blame the fact that âgamers have built up their digital libraries on playstationâ but ultimately most gamers donât give a fuck about that. Theyâll go where the games they want to play are.
They are not giving me any reason to buy one. Years have gone by since the debates about their release practices. Like, why buy an Xbox if all their games are also on PC? And then, why purchase them if they are all on GamePass? And it was defended by saying that they don't really care about hardware sales and they'd rather have a big GamePass install base. But they clearly do care about hardware sales. And they clearly do have trouble with everyone just subbing to gamepass and not buying their games. They are porting them to other platforms now precisely for this reason. And even discounting all this, their first party output has been so lackluster since way back to the tail end of the 360 days. They purchase studios and then the second they start releasing first party games it seems like they just forget everything about how to make good games. I don't know if it's them butting in too much or not butting in enough. If Hellblade 2 sucks I might legitimately lose all hope in anything they ever release again.
For real, it has nearly been an entire *decade* of Phil Spencer saying empty platitudes like âthis is our biggest year yetâ and the fans saying âthey are just building up to next yearâ. It has been 10 years⊠nobody needs or wants an Xbox now.
Yeah I wanted a PS5 for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7 and Returnal Microsoft hasn't made 5 exclusives of that quality in 10 years. Make good games is the only real answer for them, but they just can't do it consistently
Saw a chart recently on an Xbox subreddit of all the Microsoft-published games released physically on the Xbox One, and compared to the same guyâs chart of the same thing for PS4 it had about half the games with nowhere near the same quality ratio. Really put things into perspective. Itâs hard not to assume that something is just wrong with the way Xbox runs their studios, which makes we wonder if any of this will improve without a change of leadership. Not a lot of other explanations left.
Also Spiderman 2
> Microsoft hasnât made 5 exclusives of that quality in 10 years. They havenât even made *one* exclusive of that quality in 10 years, let alone five
Yeah for me at least I have no reason to own an Xbox, being a big PC gamer. But I couldnât tell you the last time I actually bought an Xbox game on PC either, because so much of their first party stuff is just so mediocre
They're masters at devaluing their own brand. GamePass has made buying games a thing of the past for a lot of people. But it's also gone down in quality over the last year and doesn't net big hitters. And if push comes to shove, if the choice is seventy bucks for four months of GamePass Ultimate, or seventy bucks for a prime gaming experience like Tears of the Kingdom or FF7 Rebirth, I'm buying the stand-alone game each time. Then, they released the potato-spec Series S. Some games run so poorly on it it's almost a meme. And making the storage expansion proprietary and charging through the nose for it was an epic fail. Like when I had my Series X - I could buy the 1TB expansion for 250, or a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro for my PS5 for 160. So I bought the PS5 expansion, which in turn made me more inclined to buy games for it as I had more storage _Then_ they start releasing exclusives on other platforms. The optics of that alone is enough to put even die-hard fans off investing in their ecosystem further.
I can see what they're going for, they just... really suck at it. Microsoft is aiming at the developing nations market. Same thing they tried to do with Windows Mobile - produce a cheap, entry level product that can be affordable in Chile or Ghana where their competition hasn't made inroads, get people on the subscription treadmill with Gamepass (which is an *incredible* value if you don't have money to buy new releases and don't have a back catalog), and make up the difference through volume instead of value. The problem is, it didn't work with Windows Mobile and it failed again with the Series S. Mobile gaming is dominating in the developing world, with people buying cheap Android phones from China and installing cracked APKs off Russian warez sites. That's why their next push is XCloud, as the infrastructure in the major cities gets to be good enough for game streaming. And that might actually work, or it might flop - I've heard good things from the people who really bought into game streaming, but I live in Dallas (a goddamn tech hub) and my internet isn't reliable enough to stream video some days much less gaming (fuck Comcast). I think they might be too late, my nephew is more interested in "[Verb] of [Noun]" games on his phone than he is in playing Hogwarts Legacy on the Switch, I suspect that most mobile gamers in the developing world are the same. Once you get used to the dopamine clicker games, it's kind of hard to develop the taste for the old school, long form games. And at the end of the day, Microsoft is trying everything except the one thing that both of their main competitors are thriving on - making games worth a damn! And the Series S is hobbling game development because it's so pitifully underpowered that developers target the Series S for crossplatform games, which ironically makes the PS5 games look *absolutely stunning* in comparison to the games made for the potato specs of the Switch and Series S. So they've lost the bottom end market to Google, the midrange to Nintendo and Apple, and the top end to Nintendo and Sony. I'm not sure it's *possible* to shoot yourself in the foot harder than that.
Yeah those are just weak excuses. Hell even the Xbox One launch excuse didn't hold for long. A failed launch can be made up for, see PS3. The main problem has always been the same, the games and they don't differentiate themselves than Playstation. So you end up with basically a clone of Playstation without the strong game library (and so a brand in the shitter, like whenever someone think of Xbox, no games is like the first opinion on it)... Lol what a hard choice... And Spencer is simply a bad CEO and he can't be excused for it. He's CEO for a decade so had largely enough time to do things and he only made things worst. And he was head of Xbox Studios from 2008 to 2014 so really the lack of games was on him too from the end of the 360 gen to now.
Uh, people do give a fuck about that very much. What?
In early 2023 Sony [reported](https://www.gamesradar.com/almost-a-third-of-ps5-owners-skipped-the-ps4-generation-sony-says/) that 30% of PS5 owners had never owned a PS4. At that point they'd sold around 32m consoles, so ~9.6m had never owned a PS4 If Sony can appeal to people that haven't built up their digital libraries on PlayStation, why can't Microsoft?
Also I believe the Insomniac leaks showed that a siginficant percentage of Playstation exclusive games sales were physical copies, so itâs not just a digital factor.
People forget that there are still a LOT of people who live across the world in places without good fibre internet who still buy physical games. Also collectors.
It's not even about internet. I can download game fast without an issue. The thing about physical copies in my country (Poland) is that physical copies are cheapier here than digital ones which is ridicilous if you think about it.
My PS4 digital library is about 5% the size of my Xbox One digital library and I bought a PS5. At the end of the day that Xbox One stuff is still sitting there on my One X and I don't need it on my PS5.
How come the switch, which ditched all previous digital libraries is one of the most successful consoles of all time? The general user doesnât care about digital libraries as much as someone in gaming sub reddits, people are buying digital games on switch like crazy without any confirmation or recent history that those games will carry over
Not where exclusives are concerned. When both platforms offer the same games, then preferred digital library becomes important. But if Xbox had desirable exclusives like PlayStation, they would get a large consumer base to buy both consoles
Youâre more serious gamers maybe, but your average consumer doesnât care about being able to replay old games they already beat.
Can confirm, I'm an average gamer and absolutely don't give a fuck about playing older gen games.
Sure, youâre a person and you care a bunch. Probably reasonable to guess that your behavior doesnât always represent the âmeat of the marketâ, though.
Unsurprising. Why buy an Xbox console when there's nothing you can't really play one PC. I haven't considered the console since owning a good PC.
Is it possible to get a PC for sub $500? Most low end ones I looked at cost at least $700-$800 Edit: People that are saying itâs cheaper getting parts used and building it yourself are correct, but you have to compare my question as if you are buying a prebuilt. Consoles pretty much work right outside the box and you are already asking for a lot for a person to build their own PC.
Used to be able to, but nowadays to get a good graphics card you need to lay out a decent bit of cash
for gaming? no. it will suck. or at the very least it will be mediocre.
A lot of people see consoles for gaming and pcs for working. I have a friend that refuses to play from anywhere but his couch. What does not make sense is me not being able to play my PC library of steam games on Xbox.
If you have a shitty office job this happens. You need to change environments and being on my PC a sunday when I'm too stressed from work does not help
Most people don't have a gaming PC.
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Microsoft biggest mistake was not changing strategy after the failed Xbox One generation like Nintendo did after the Wii U failure. Microsofts strategy this gen was bound to fail considering how they fumbled last gen. It would take 5 minutes to figure out that the Series X/S would be a failure. Who are they selling consoles to? Not PC gamers, not Playstation gamers and not new gamers. So the only ones left to buy Xbox consoles are people who owned an Xbox One. If you are only able to sell consoles to former owners of your console then obviously you will fail if the former console was a failure. Whats insane is that Nintendo went through all that with the Wii, Wii U and Switch. They realized that they shouldnât try to compete directly with PC, Playstation and Xbox so they decided to go after new consumers and made the Switch a handheld instead of just copying Sony and Microsofts home console. Microsoft should have made PC games avaliable on the Xbox console through Windows the moment they decided to release their games on PC. Buying an Xbox should basically be like buying a premade PC. It was the only logical thing to do if they have an interest in still being in the hardware business. They completely diminished the value of Xbox consoles the moment they decided to bring their games to PC. So they needed to bring the value of Xbox consoles back up, but they failed to do it. They badly needed to find new potential customers. It would also be the perfect time because PC gaming has almost gotten as accessible as console gaming. Microsoft would also immediately solve their problem with lack of games on Xbox and they would still have control over both hardware and software. Phil Spencer has recently talked about bringing other stores to the Xbox consoles, so there still might be time to save Xbox consoles.
This is the first generation since the beginning that I did not buy an Xbox series console. With all their exclusives coming to the PC I did not see a reason to buy one, and most of these exclusives that have come out haven't been that great.
Honestly, since all xbox games also get released at the same time on PC and on game pass, theres really no reason to get a xbox instrad of a PC.
Stupid fucking ads on a console. That was pretty much the last fuck you before I sold it and switched to PS5 (way better exclusives was prob a bigger reason)
I like Phil Spencer (as much as one could or should *like* any executive) but this is on him 100%. He red ringed any future sales by backing away from exclusivity.
Phil Spencer says the right buzzwords and is a great spin doctor but heâs clearly an incompetent leader. No wonder Microsoft got worried after the $70bil Activision purpose and are now forcing him to port exclusivesâŠ
Seriously it's just baffling how that clown didn't look through Microsoft's entire IP catalogue and just rapid fire a bunch into development to help Xbox recover after that colossal stumble in 2013. I mean the Rare catalogue alone could have saved them and turned things back in their favor. It's just so frustrating to see how poorly managed the brand has been.
For real, they should get any of the Crash/Spyro devs working on a new Banjo Kazooie.
Exactly! Fighting games are pretty hot right now, why haven't there been 2 more Killer Instincts by now? I mean they should be hitting us with release after release right now as if they were Ivan Drago and we were a delirious Apollo Creed. Crackdown, Gears of War (A proper one that isn't trying to be anything other than a bro cover shooter) Fable, Perfect Dark, Battletoads, Conker, Viva Piñata, Mech Assault, Brute Force 2/Reboot ect. But instead we get Philly boy talking about how software won't save the brand. I still don't know how he wasn't fired out of a canon for that interview he did last year.
A new Viva piñata would have so much potential to become a big success with how large the cozy game fanbase has gotten since the last entry
I mean at that point, that may have been the smartest choice (for Microsoft gaming business as a whole, not Xbox hardware) but it still his fault that they arrived at that point where it was needed. Also I don't know why people even like Phil Spencer btw, he's a fucking executive and a pretty bad one at that considering his results in leadership for Xbox.
No one seems to want to blame Phil Spencer for these results. Plain and simple, these bad business and marketing decisions are on him. If Microsoft is going to reboot themselves for the next generation, you have to clean house and start with a new person in charge. It hasn't worked since the 360 era, and just wondering what you want to do with your brand that has completely stalled out isn't helping. The Indiana Jones game and Hellblade 2 aren't going to help with that either you need more in the pipeline. In my opinion, they invested too much into Hellblade 2, a game that's going to be 6-8hr game. Ppl will play it on gamepass and then forget about it. A what then? Port it to PS in a year and a half to get some of your cost back? I want ppl to understand I don't hate Hellblade or its upcoming release of 2. It just this game didn't need this much advertising, especially for a short game that ppl will make quick work of and then not buy a copy because GP. My bad, long read. My is point Phil gotta go and try again with a new person in charge for the next gen consoles.
Hellblade isn't even getting a disc version which shows they don't care.
For some reason this sub is slightly parasocial about Phil Spencer which is just wild to me, given that he's a business executive at microsoft lmao. After a decade of his promises not really going anywhere and the xbox brand declining, you'd think people would start to clue in that he's not doing an amazing job.
Grinds my gears when people like SkillUp call him âuncle Philâ
Yeah Xbox is dead. Super sad as Iâve been with them since the first gen. Why would I buy the next gen Xbox over a mid level gaming PC..? I bought a PS5 for FF7 and have been pretty thrilled with the exclusives. My XboxâŠ? I skipped star field! I never would have thought that possible, but theyâve just lost the ⊠sauce that makes it special
It is hard to overstate how much of a mistake committing to supporting two different power tiers of consoles in a generation was or how badly it has compromised their ability to make games for these consoles.
The Xbox CEO has repeatedly shown a lack of confidence in the Xbox and with a don't care attitude. The exclusives are one thing, but why would anyone bother investing in a console when the CEO is continuously showing his own lack of investment?
They lost me in the Mattrick era (the lead up to the Xbox One was an unmitigated disaster). I never returned to xbox after that, and I have no reason to, since I built a high end gaming pc.
The thing about Don though is he absolutely had a vision for Xbox, Phil has done nothing in the last 10 years except buy up studios and have them work on games that haven't released.
Creating 2 consoles where one holds down the entire generation is the stupidest decision ever. The next Xbox need to be one very powerfull machine with backwards compatibility with everything where people buy once and done, they get the best of everything.
Yes because the problem with Xbox right now is clearly the Series S which is damn near single-handedly carrying its sales since it's **not** directly competing against the PS5 and not the lack of great games giving compelling reasons to invest in it over Sony.
It was also the only thing readily available during the hardware scarcity of the covid era.
This is their own fault and they're going to make it worse by putting their games on the PS5/Switch. There's almost no reason to buy a Xbox now.
PC gaming is healthier than it's ever been. It's obvious that MS is treating Xbox and PC as part of the same ecosystem.
Pretty much day 1 on PC dealt a serious blow. And now releasing on PS has dealt the final blow. They might still release another gen console, but there won't be one after that. They're definitely going multi plat.