Brutal self-assessment paints a picture of a Microsoft gaming division in crisis.
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“This cannot continue”: Xbox leaders lay out “hard truths” behind sagging brand
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Guys Xbox has been a failure for over a decade is a bit too late to fix things.
And no Game Pass didn't help, is a rental service not a reason for people to buy a Xbox and Xbox games.
If anything it cannibalised Xbox game sales.
And no Game Pass didn't help, is a rental service not a reason for people to buy a Xbox and Xbox games.
If anything it cannibalised Xbox game sales.
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Man I sure hope GabeN lives another 40 years so Microsoft doesn't have a chance to buy and destroy my preferred platform.
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but what in this article coverage mentions AI? it seems like an actual brutally honest assessment of MSFT's failures with gaming over the past some years
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Each generation, I decide which is going to be my dominate gaming platform. The biggest factor is where everyone else is going, but I tend to be an early adopter and lay out what I like about each machine and report back to the social group. I felt the latest gen hardware performed the same, but I absolutely hate the Xbox's dashboard. I hate the tiling system, the blade menu system, and the whole UI. I get fed ads first and foremost.
Then comes the games. The PS5 had the Demon Soul's remake and it is still a fabulous game - a shame what Sony has done to the studio behind it. The Xbox had... nothing I couldn't get elsewhere.
And Sony had the coup on scoring Call of Duty exclusives away from Microsoft at the time.
Exclusives matter. The game pass was great until the price got jacked up.
And the naming convention is practically a war crime. Whoever heads that team up should have been fired a decade ago.
Microsoft lost this round and may be conceding the future ones, as well, unless something monstrous happens.
Then comes the games. The PS5 had the Demon Soul's remake and it is still a fabulous game - a shame what Sony has done to the studio behind it. The Xbox had... nothing I couldn't get elsewhere.
And Sony had the coup on scoring Call of Duty exclusives away from Microsoft at the time.
Exclusives matter. The game pass was great until the price got jacked up.
And the naming convention is practically a war crime. Whoever heads that team up should have been fired a decade ago.
Microsoft lost this round and may be conceding the future ones, as well, unless something monstrous happens.
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This has been the big disappointment for me since the PS3 / 360 era. Sony used to have a whole host of diverse titles (Microsoft less so, but still more than they have now), and now Sony is basically your choice between cinematic action game or cinematic open world action game, and while Microsoft is a bit more diverse, it's not by much (at least they have an immersive sim and a few styles of rpg in the wings, basically).
I hope xbox makes it, but what it really needs to a decade without shareholders demanding the moon so leadership can invest in the brand the same way they had at the start. They're back to where they were after the OG Xbox, and they need to be frank and scrappy and think long term to pull off another Xbox 360 era.
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Acquiring Activision for 69B then seeing revenues drop is actually insane from a business perspective. How is that even possible?
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Once again a business, hamstrung by near term profit motivated decisions, resorts to checks notes near term profit motivated decision making to course correct.
Nothing says driving your business into the ground like a lawn dart by responding to bad decisions with more bad decisions.
Nothing says driving your business into the ground like a lawn dart by responding to bad decisions with more bad decisions.
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I am just glad that Asha Sharma seems committed to returning the Xbox brand to prominence, rather than killing it.
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Microsoft really messed up with the Xbox One offering where you had to have Kinect, had to be always connected to the internet etc.
Now Microsoft only offer two machines, both with backward compatibility, which is what i want, but the higher cost console is the only one with a disk drive.
Why should i purchase the game again if i have the disk ?, just because i don't want to pay for the highest cost Xbox and don't need the extra performance ?
Has Microsoft ever recovered the user numbers from the Xbox One shenanigans ? where people opted for the PS4.
Now Microsoft only offer two machines, both with backward compatibility, which is what i want, but the higher cost console is the only one with a disk drive.
Why should i purchase the game again if i have the disk ?, just because i don't want to pay for the highest cost Xbox and don't need the extra performance ?
Has Microsoft ever recovered the user numbers from the Xbox One shenanigans ? where people opted for the PS4.
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Have you seen the latest Call Of Duty?
They bought Activision for that one game basically... and then released it as a massive flop.
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This is interesting because I have a Series S and in my mind it's a better, more pleasant to use console in every way except the games, which Sony, as dismal as their first party output has been this gen, still beats out Microsoft.
Ironically, I think Xbox was right on the cusp of having a few exclusives that could have at least sold some the Series S (at least at the pre-AI prices) and decided to make most of them multiplatform. I feel like there's a lot of old Xbox owners who would have picked up a Series S to play Fable.
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They thought all the harassment and toxic workplace allegations were as low as the stock would go. They should have actually just waited for Block Ops 7.
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I'm wondering what got frustrating, outside of the gamepass increase. It's a serious question because I've seen comments over the years about switching but always for undefined reasons and I'm curious.
I left PlayStation after Gran Turismo turned into a micro-transaction and artificial scarcity game. Sony also has removed features and content that people have paid for while MSFT goes to great depths to allow backward compatibility, which is something I appreciate.
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I think the Kinect and Wii etc catered to customers that were occasional gamers, now both companies are just catering to the hard-core FPS crowd. Back in the days, people who otherwise never played any games bought consoles to do different gaming, from couch trivia to skiing, bowling and what not, guitar hero and what not, fun stuff honestly.
Now these consoles offer none of that anymore, so why not get a PC instead?
Edit: I would buy the shit out of a console offering these things again.
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Mismanagement from the top. They bought a massive property, that had problems before...and ran it into the ground with their own corporate decision making.
Not uncommon in the acquisition world. Large corporate entities are risk averse as stakeholders demand Sure Things\, and set out to acquire indie and smaller operations that are innovators--except once they acquire them....the same risk-averseness takes over, because the same people end up in-charge at the top-of-the-corporate-ladder.
It is the same thing that has happened with Hollywood and movies--and why it is just sequels-galore at the AAA budget films. Studios and their backers demand profits that are Sure Things...so execs only approve budgets for things that were already successful--not new things that are innovative and risky.
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I purchased the Xbox solely for on the couch gaming, with FPS in mind (Original Xbox). The reason was that i just wanted the game to work out of the box, and wanted a small unit for the living room, and use the TV for the game too.
The Xbox Original and 360 did well without Kinect, but Microsoft dropped the user numbers forcing Kinect upon people.
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I dont even know what the current xbox line is. Xbox xs series box or some nonsense. I know the PS5 is the latest and greatest. This is certainly part of the problem.
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Honestly, I'll believe it when I see it. Looking at Asha's resume, I feel like her background is a mismatch for the Xbox division, given her lack of any gaming industry experience.
Incidentally, she was a COO very shortly after she finished college and has been an executive for nearly the entire time, which makes me wonder how she managed to leapfrog to that level so fast outside of just being at the right place at the right time.
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The Series S was an odd choice that in some ways held back the generation, but not as much as one might think. In terms of gameplay, even the last gen was capable of doing whatever someone wanted to point at it. Worlds of arbitrary size, persistent flags for all kinds of states of entities in that world, vast armies of enemies, whatever. The only issue, as is often the case, is doing that WITH a high fidelity presentation. So, really all most developers had to concern themselves with was scaling down graphics sufficiently to run on the thing, but that does eat into development time. Personally, I think focusing on low fidelity graphics but with sharp art design is the way to go, since really I don't see the "next gen" of consoles coming out any time soon. We're probably looking at a VERY long console generation with the way things are right now.
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I know that supposedly part of the issue was that MS didn't want the 360 to be called the Xbox 2 because they'd be a number behind the PS3. But by the time the gen 4 Xboxes were coming out they could have just called it the Xbox 5 and no one would have really cared that it was not really the fifth one. Heck, just call the XBOX V and pretend like the V is not a roman numeral.
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It isn't what you know, it is who you know.
I had an in-law who went from desk-grunt software QC (something they knew nothing about), to corpo VP at a major US bank in the software QC area (something they also knew nothing about) in under 5 years. Last I heard they were being sent to corporate sensitivity training as, while they got results, they were that micromanaging jerk of a manager you never want to work under.
They didn't get to their golden-parachute by knowing things, but by playing the people and knowing them to level up. People who know how things work--almost never end up in charge.
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That reminds me... mannequins look pretty ugly these days. They cut every single corner and basically turned the modern mannequin into a wire frame with a featureless loop of metal for a "head". Whatever happened to those high detail mannequins that could come to life and get romantically involved with a lead actress, or educate kids on children's television?
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It might have been ok if it cannibalized game sales IF a whole lot of players were paying the monthly subs for it. But, I suspect a lot of players are like me (though not all, of course):
* I rarely pay full price for games. Wait 6 months, a year, two years, and the price of almost every game drops substantially - particularly if you catch it in a steam sale, GOG sale, Amazon sale, etc.
* I play the same small number of games for rather a long time, before I get bored and play another small number of games for a long time
* So, I don't want to pay for subs - if I can get a game for $10 or $20 and play it for a year, that's a way better deal than paying $10-$20/mo just to pay to play the same 2 or 3 games for a year.
Which leaves that the only players who might see good value out of game rental services are gamers who constantly want to switch to new games, and don't play them very long.
I suppose XBox Game Pass is a good deal if you play 4 to 8 games this month and then a completely different set of 4 or 8 games next month. But with a rental service, the longer you play a game, the more you're paying for just that game.
Subs maybe makes sense for things like a music service, because you might listen to a hundred tracks this month and a mostly different set of a hundred tracks next month.
But gaming is a rather different beast where players might play a game anywhere from 10 - 1000+ hours. Lots of games are very much designed to be played for long periods of time - like open world games with huge world maps, lots of character progression, lots of loot gathering, and lots of quests (Skyrim, GTA, Minecraft, etc). Other games will be played a lot because they are competitive 'esports' - fps's like CoD, Team Fortress 2, PUBG, Fortnight, etc; Real Time Strategy games like Starcraft, League of Legends, DOTA2, etc).
I just don't feel like I would actually get value from a gaming sub.
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I wish them luck. Finally turning my Series X on after a few years solely because of Horizon 6.
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its a crisis of microsoft's own making. openAI funded by unlimited $$ from microsoft has destroyed the entire consumer electronics sector, meaning all those M&As for games are useless if nobody can afford to play anything
on top of that we have the K shaped (wealth gap) economy that's increasingly pricing people out of everything else
on top of that we have the K shaped (wealth gap) economy that's increasingly pricing people out of everything else
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Exclusivity does seem to matter highly. If you want to sale the hardware you have to have something only that hardware can run. I've been told this numerous times by my peers.
I personally find exclusives an abomination. If I have a perfectly good console, let me play XYZ on it, or my PC., I like the PC/Xbox thing Microsoft has got going on, as my machine smokes the Xbox in every way, but yeah... That doesn't make people go "oh by gosh I gotta buy the Xbox".
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Exactly this. Remember back in the day when they purchased quality developer Rare Games? They overpaid for the acquisition then subsequently ran that studio into the ground by having them release shit Kinect games & multiplayer online games. MS doesn’t understand how to operate in the videogame industry, even whilst haphazardly & unresponsibly throwing around mountains of cash…
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eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
They cannot incorporate Copilot into Xbox so the top management doesnt give a rats ass about the gaming division.
Someone remembers the last time Nadella mentioned Xbox/games (not to showcase some AI GPU bullshit) ?
Someone remembers the last time Nadella mentioned Xbox/games (not to showcase some AI GPU bullshit) ?
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Not sure if this is snark or serious, but it may actually work. If they narrow their scope and refocus on their core franchises and services, this could actually lead to a successful turnaround. As mentioned at the top of the article they feel they've spread themselves too thin and overexpanded recently. Cutting down on the money and manpower and ostensibly also the expanded boondoggles could actually work out well for them.
It sucks for the people who will get laid off, though, no doubt. I'm not discounting that. Just saying, for the brand specifically, this isn't that far fetched of a strategy.
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nvidia's circular financing helped too. Here's a bag of money but you have to use it to buy our product.
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I'll be honest I have not understood the hate thrown xboxs way the past decade. They got rid of console exclusives for the most part which is something everyone says they hate to the point of being irate at epic games... But then turn around and every post was like "oh good now I don't have a reason to buy an Xbox" like sure, but shouldn't you be supportive of a purely good move for consumers instead of weirdly naysaying it?
Xbox drug PlayStation kicking and screaming into cross play, if it was up to Sony we still wouldn't have that for almost any games.
So many actually unquestionably good moves for consumers and everyone was greeted with snark and eye rolls. Never made sense to me. Like yeah the acquisitions are bad long run for players, but you can actually be happy about the good things and support those things.
Idk just weird to see everyone talking shit about Phil spencer when the console market today looks dramatically better for consumers specifically because of the moves Xbox made under him.
Xbox drug PlayStation kicking and screaming into cross play, if it was up to Sony we still wouldn't have that for almost any games.
So many actually unquestionably good moves for consumers and everyone was greeted with snark and eye rolls. Never made sense to me. Like yeah the acquisitions are bad long run for players, but you can actually be happy about the good things and support those things.
Idk just weird to see everyone talking shit about Phil spencer when the console market today looks dramatically better for consumers specifically because of the moves Xbox made under him.
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That's what she said she was sommitted to. Mass layoffs and budget cuts imply more of the same short-term decision making, though.
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I don't get it - they spent all this money on studio acquisitions and have churned out basically nothing while accomplishing massive brand dilution. So the solution must be layoffs to further refine that? What? Spencer's vision didn't pan out and that was clear a few years ago. I guess this is a step in the right direction from a strategic standpoint but some heavy-hitting single player games are seriously lacking in the Xbox space.
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As someone who has a PS5 and a gaming PC, I find plenty of reason to want to play the PS5. Sometimes, I just want to sit in the recliner and play on the big TV with no hiccups or problems. The gaming experience is much more streamlined on PS5, I can boot it up and just pick right back up where I left off on my game, Discord comes integrated into the system so I can hang out with friends, the performance of games is pretty much always consistent and they still look fantastic from 10' away from the screen. It pretty much always just works and looks and plays great while doing it.
I've never had streaming from my PC to my living room TV be a seamless, pain free experience. And sure, the PC has far more raw power. But if I am not sitting 2 feet from the screen and counting pixels, do I really notice as I'm in the flow of just playing a game? No I don't, because the PS5 still looks great.
The PC has far more games available, true, and certain types of games are just a far better experience on the PC. So I like it for those reasons.
They both have their merits. I don't know why we always have to do this, 'What even is the point of consoles anymore?' routine in every single article about consoles.
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I’m so disappointed with how things have crashed and burned with Xbox. I guess I’m part of the problem—in theory I’ve always loved Xbox, but in practice I only ever owned the 360. But for those first couple generations this brand seemed like it had so much potential!
For a little while I was having a lot of fun just using GamePass streaming instead of a hardware Xbox but after I finished Starfield and Expedition 33 I didn’t feel like there was anything else I cared about playing that I couldn’t get on my Switch 2 or computer.
I don’t think it’s good for the game industry if Xbox goes down. I’m rooting for them to find a way out of this.
For a little while I was having a lot of fun just using GamePass streaming instead of a hardware Xbox but after I finished Starfield and Expedition 33 I didn’t feel like there was anything else I cared about playing that I couldn’t get on my Switch 2 or computer.
I don’t think it’s good for the game industry if Xbox goes down. I’m rooting for them to find a way out of this.
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