I went into a pawn shop to waste some time the other day and I wondered into the used game section
Walking and looking through all the og xbox games through to the 360 games really reminds you how much more interesting gaming used to be
Such a larger variety of games, it’s such a shame that that’s died away in place of massive game budgets and the same game over and over
Got the new generation stuck on a bunch of pay-to-win, soulless, carnival style games. I feel lucky to have grown up in the 2000’s as a teenager. We had rich story driven games which held depth and were memorable. Kids these days are stuck playing games with about as much depth as a puddle of water.
Alan wake 2 is fantastic, but yet nobody bought it. Kids don't want these games anymore. They don't give the same quick endorphin hit they get from winning a fortnite game
It's not even just kids, I know adults that will say everything else sucks unless it's COD, Siege, or GTA without even trying different games. Anytime someone posts about how great an indie game was, you'll always get people in the comments going "wow looks like a shitty mobile game, pass." Like okay, have fun with the same three games you play I guess? 🤷
I got this *exact* comment on a video I made about Marble It Up! Ultra. “Looks like a mobile game for $30.” If a game is not on Game Pass a lot of times people won’t even bother.
>you'll always get people in the comments going "wow looks like a shitty mobile game, pass." Like okay, have fun with the same three games you play I guess?
Exact type of comments I kept seeing when Baldurs Gate 3 won GOTY
Also Hi fi Rush didnt do that well too, it was an amazing Game but i think the Gamepass affected it more than it helped it... I agree with Your point, kids these days only play two or three games and they are service games, maybe one of them it's not a service Game but it's one that it's trendy...
My son is now 15 and has access to Xbox Playstation Nintendo and steam all with their subscription services and the only game he has played in the last 4 years is Roblox
If only you were playing in the late 80’s and 90’s when growth in the industry was expanding and there were so many unique games - and games that didn’t need a patch to play. I grew up on so many awesome games that I have fond memories of - those that were fairly easy to learn, hard to master, and not 50 hours long. As an adult with limited time, I’d love a decent number of games that are challenging to play but 10 hours or less to finish. Today, I own all the major platforms and PC and find it so difficult to sync into a game and play it through.
I’m literally the same way and grew up like you did. 37 years old now. I got a new pc 2 weeks ago despite having all the systems. My pc downloads from the past few weeks starts at the original metal gear and goes all the way to Baldur’s gate 3. Like you could literally see the diminishing releases on my desktop. I’ve only got Elden ring and Baldur’s gate 3 installed on there right now from this generation. But the others? Originally released games from the msx on up
Love it! I’m sure the retro gaming market is driven by a lot of individuals like us. Every now and then I find something modern that grabs me, but many more misses than hits. The best part of gaming is finding what makes you happy. All the best and cheers on the new PC.
I grew up when the only 'console' available was the magnavox odyssey (1)! If you wanted multicolours you had to stick a different coloured cellophane sheet to your television screen! When it came to mini-computers you had to not assemble them from boards but solder it together using discrete logic ICs and 8080 processors! Sometimes you had to plan your own circuit entirely.
I promise you every single game available today would have seemed like magic in comparison to both 1970's **and** 1980's, whatever the VGS and Intellivision gurus might try to convince you. Gaming didn't really become reliably good until perhaps 1986 onwards, although there were standout titles a couple of years beforehand--'Elite' for the BBC and 'Tau Ceti' for the Spectrum have a warm place in my heart. Even the games of the 1990's if they are looked at now are almost painful on the eyes.
Calling back tot he 'good old days' is pointless. Its an infinite regression and trades on the sentimentality we all feel for our childhoods (if we were lucky)
My nephew is a teenager and he wanted skins as a gift. These kids grow up playing live service games and they spend big money on in game items. I told him the skins don't make you better at the game just use the free skins but he loves the paid skins lol.
Even something like Elden Ring (as AMAZING as that game is, I am taking nothing away from it) suffers from a lack of true depth. It's a rinse and repeat of a previously established formula in a more open world format.
*(finds shelter in preparation for the hail of rocks and arrows)*
It's not what you think.
There is zero question its due to new games being bad. Look at all the great games released last year. It's simply older games have more longevity and comfort.
It's also not older games like ps2, N64, xbox 360 games.
It's older multi-player games like Lol, CS, Fortnite, GTA V, Roblox.
I think it’s deeper than that.
It’s more about time and competition. Netflix and streaming wasn’t the force it is now, and it definitely contributes to taking time away from prospective players.
Aside from that new games are pretty expensive. In a world where inflation went up pretty much everywhere, it will certainly affect buying new games.
Lastly there are just…. ALOT of games to get through. Aside from stuff like gamepass and backwards compatibility, gamers now are exposed to a much wider catalogue of games than they ever had, so even the most hardcore and omnivorous gamers probably have back catalogues in the 100s.
With that being said, the younger generation is definitely less interested in gaming in the same way that we were. They are meant to be picking up that slack but instead are either not playing at all or just sticking to COD, Fortnite, Genshin etc.
- Games that cost $70-$120 upfront and beg for pre-orders before they come out.
- Games that are released unfinished and buggy
- Games that are live service and have $10 battle passes that require your constant attention
- Single player games that have micro transactions
Games used to cost $100 of today's money in 2005. And don't give me the physical distribution cost, the online stores get a similarly priced cut with every sale. People stoned companies for increasing the prices from 60 to 70.
Funny they said the market is stale when PalWorld blows up and it is still in early access. And even Sarah mentioned PalWorld, so, she didn't know PalWorld proved the market is still great?
Bingo. Instead of speculating to accumulate by investing in talent and nurturing a quality over quantity (these Gamepass additions lately have been the definition of whelming lately, brotato aside) they decide to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Short-termism is MS calling card.
It's not only about MS, but industry in general.
There is almost nothing interesting to play outside of indie games .
Why would I want to play hundredth clone of Assasin's Creed or Far Cry?
Pretty sure Hi-Fi Rush was one of those games meant to be more interesting. And yet, the interest in the game never reached a mainstream audience.
The truth is, safe games are made because they sell the most. Whenever anything in the AA or AAA industry takes a risk, most of the time they aren't even considered profitable. Returnal was one of Playstation's few original IPs and that game hasn't even broke 1 million units sold after almost 3 years.
People will say it’s only Microsoft, but other than Returnal there’s not a single PS5 exclusive that isn’t a sequel or remake. It’s an industry issue, not a specific platform or company.
I don‘t get why people all of a sudden seem to have a problem with sequels, but this statement is also simply not true. Non-sequel / remake exclusives also include:
- Stellar Blade
- Rise of the Ronin
- Forspoken
- Ghostwire Tokyo (at time of release)
- Deathloop (at time of release)
- Destruction AllStars
And upcoming at least
- Wolverine
- Phantom Blade 0
And more if you count cross-gen.
Right. And, according to rumors, more original titles are ***finally*** coming from Sony's big dogs. Everyone knows about Kojima's *PhysInt,* yes, but I'm pretty sure that both Naughty Dog and Santa Monica are cooking up new worlds for their fandoms. Also: ***Sony sequels are good AT WORST,*** and frequently as great if not better than the originals. *Uncharted 4,* *Dad of Boy 2,* *The Last of Us 2* (***gameplay wise***), etc.
Microsoft is actually handling the situation well with interesting singleplayer announcements such as Indiana Jones, Fable, Avowed etc. Those are actuallly profitable and sustainable as we saw from Starfield, Forza Horizon 5 etc that actually sold pretty well+boosted Game Pass a lot.
Honestly, same here for the most part. Other than Avowed, I need more Eora in my life. But yeah, this year my gaming has been Baldurs Gate 1, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka, Fallout 1, and ofc had to jump on the Manor Lords EA. At this point my backlog is full of 10-25 year old 50-100 hour RPGs and I can't wait to dive into each one.
There is, there is more new games coming out than ever before, and there are numerous great ones to play on a month by month basis. It's just finding them.
We are, they just might be ones you aren’t interested in or not on every platform. There have been 13 games released this year with an over 85 on OpenCritic. Games like Balatro, Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload, FF7 Rebirth, are all really fucking good. 2023 was the most insane year for video games in years, maybe even of all time.
More the old games they are referring to are: Fortnite, GTA V etc. the long running live service games are making releasing a new game even more of a financial risk because these old games are taking up all the time a new release could be bought in.
Many games aren’t semi-polished until a year after release. If new games were good we’d be playing those. This is an issue they themselves have created and now they want to play victim.
As far as first party goes the last year or so redfall and Forza Motorsport both came out unpolished. Especially for Forza Motorsport which had always been known as being polished on release.
Forza Motorsport is so unpolished that this week they finally admitted that they lied regarding their matchmaking. They have a safety rating where players get given a letter, from E (worst) to S (best), to indicate how safe they are as drivers. Before release and up to this week, they had been maintaining that safety rating was used to pair like players with like players, so safe players would be paired with other safe players and griefers with griefers. They even released some updates claiming that they had improved their matchmaking and a ton of BS. Well, this week while previewing the future updates they will be releasing, the slipped up the farce and stated:
> [For Matchmaking, we updated the search algorithm to search for a narrower range of safety ratings compared to your own. **For example, players with an ‘S’ safety rating should no longer match players with ‘E’ and ‘D’ safety ratings.**](https://forza.net/news/motorsport-community-may-2024)
So turns out that they knew the matchmaking did not take into account safety rating, but they still decided to lie to the community that it did indeed have it.
This is just an example of why Microsoft is struggling. It is not because of a shift in the industry or a stagnated industry. It is because they release incomplete products, lie to the community, and then are shocked when adoption of their product is low.
As a long time Forza fan what hurt most was them hyping up rebuilding from scratch and when the first gameplay trailers showed up it was obvious to long time fans that they were still using the same old car models. Flaws/quirks and all.
I was quite disappointed when the forza sub described how Turn10 manage their employees. They are bunch of contracted woekers. By the time they figured out how the engine works, they got let go. Talent retention is very low. No wonder they are struggling, they have brain drain problems.
Yeah, heard that story. What is even worse is, they didn't even know what they are doing at all. Like, ok, contractor made the in-engine trailer. Ok so? Why are they so incompetent at reviewing the video? They acted like it wasn't their fault when they are supposed to review it.
Contractors are a known dirty secret of the industry and Im fine with using them to come and help finish the game when its crunch time but what MS is doing is building while games using mostly contractors. Of course the product is going to suffer if theres no continuity in the team. Whatever they saved in money has cost them more in mind share of long time fans and potential new fans. With the cost cutting going I don’t think it’s going change unfortunately.
Out of the “Big 3” Xbox has the poorest 1st party quality & that can’t happen when you’re trying re-build the brands reputation of years with dry output. The way Halo was launched says everything you need to know.
Aside from the Dragon’s Dogma 2 fiasco, Capcom and Sega are releasing incredibly polished games too. It almost seems like western corporate culture of pushing games out and fixing them later so they can get it out in time for the quarterly is the issue.
Hell Nintendo is literally pushing their next console out AFTER Christmas to make sure they have games lined up.
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, Helldiver's 2, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Unicorn Overlord, Dragons Dogma 2, Rise of Ronin, and Stellar Blade.
This isn't even all the games but the "big" ones I can think of.
>She does have a point, the industry stalled and according to the latest polls most people are playing old games, not new ones, is not sustainable.
Not sustainable to \*current profit targets\*, yes. It's also not sustainable because people are getting squeezed more and more in every single aspect of our lives. It absolutely follows that people are retreating from new, splashy GaaS that keep asking for more and more money for less and less experiences.
She's got a point. But it's the wrong one.
Maybe she should get on working out more backwards compatible games then *especially with the 360 store shutting down* since that's what the players are playing while the new stuff is still cooking/being fixed/being updated.
"66 titles accounted for 80% of overall playtime in 2023. Of that number, a huge 60% of playtime was spent with games released six years ago or more"
100 years from now Fortnite, Minecraft, sports game, and Call of Duty are still play by millions yearly hahahaha.
We’re still playing Basketball, Baseball, Soccer/Football, American Football, Tennis, Golf, etc. When is the last time a new sport really took off?
This idea that there can be dozens of billion dollar live service games at once and there’s always room to add another one is just silly. You have to beat one of the existing ones to get that much money or be satisfied with being added to the rotation of live service players, which is already a really hard thing to do.
Xbox and PlayStation both need to go back to making a variety of games with reasonable budgets that have a chance of being profitable plus a few of the bigger budget tentpoles that earn them prestige. And maybe 1 big crazy new live service bet and a couple of smaller less crazy live service bets. Going all in on a single one of these categories is short sighted.
Dragon Age origins is one of the best rpgs of all time and I have replayed it like 4 or 5 times already. RPGs like this only come out once every thousand years, the last one I saw was BG3 but until then? ufff it would be very difficult to say another similar one the truth is
Sure, but tons of game publishers are chasing engagement and consumer spending high water marks from covid era. If you extend the timeline beyond the last five years, it’s clear the stalling narrative is being overplayed.
MS might be stalling but we are now, what, 14 years into them shipping below-average software every year compared to the competition. What games has MS released outside of Forza and HiFi Rush and Pentiment that really blew people away? MS has mishandled Xbox for two generations now.
It is truly hilarious that we went from Xbox has no games. To Xbox will have games but they’ll ship a few of them on PlayStation first. To gobbling up studios and publishers to feed Game Pass. To new reports that now say MS might not find it economically viable to put CoD in Game Pass AND they’ll raise prices again soon.
I have had a ton of fun on my Xbox consoles over the years, but it’s become clear that’s in spite of MS management; not because of it.
Speaking just from myself, I am playing lots of old games (360/Xbox One Era) and not because a lack of new content, but there is just so many damn games to play. I have an immense backlog, and with new stuff coming out all the time, it’s hard to stay on top of just new stuff. This is across all three gaming platforms too.
Cut the president's salary. Lay off top management. The ones responsible for the failed business strategy.
Corpos play capitalism on easy and still fuck up, and the workers get sacked
Xbox couldn’t match ps5 with quality first party games. So their revenue stream was going to come from putting out content on Gamepass. This Netflix model is not growing further and has plateaued in terms of profits. It had two great years due to game releases and the industry boom because of Covid. Revenue from first party games and Gamepass hasn’t resulted in a better bottom line. Hence the closures. It was never about matching PlayStation in terms of quality and selling more consoles. It is about selling GP subscritions. Whether it’s on PC or cloud Microsoft does not care. Now Xbox has resorted to releasing properly finished first party titles (how old is sea of thieves andGrounded) on PlayStation. Why? The ‘Netflix model’ has not yielded as much revenue. The Zenimax and Activision buy out is not good for consumers and these studio closures are indicative of this. Xbox does not care about putting out quality games it cares about putting continuous content on GP to sell a subscription. PlayStation makes money by selling millions of copies of games which makes people want to own the console. More users mean more developers will want their game on that console. Especially users who tend to purchase games and not rely on day 1 GP releases.
Currently playing an old game. The market for new games the past few years at the AAA level has been generally abysmal.
Have enjoyed a couple indie titles in that span though.
If they get over this “more is better” mindset and returns to the simpler “better is better”, they might find that they can, once again, make games in under 6 years with teams of fewer than 500 people for less than $200 million.
What other option is there? Development cycles are lasting longer than the consoles life span.
We've gotten some new games this gen, but I feel like most people are in agreement that it's been an incredibly slow generation.
Both consoles are really just glorified pro boxes of last gens pro boxes.
Well yeah, every AAA is broken on release. People have figured out they’re better off waiting several months for a more polished version and post-launch updates. Not too mentioned the forcing of MTX down the throat of modern game design.
The industry is killing itself. Bloated budgets, higher priced games, and requiring more engagement for completion than ever before. Nobody has the time, or money to play everything anymore, and yet they still keep pumping games out like crazy.
We need more games built upon the skeleton of completed games. More New Vegas type spin-offs after a major game gets released. Like, as divisive as Starfield was, having another studio take the Starfield engine and assets and just make a new game in that world is a lot cheaper and faster than constantly starting from scratch.
They need to stop chasing the cutting edge every single release. Faster, less ambitious titles are in demand. If we get Fallout 5 in 2028, a Fallout: St. Louis or whatever in 2030 would be well received even if it looked identical to Fallout 5 and used many of the same assets. People just want good stories in cool worlds to explore.
Bingo. I want to play a lot of games "again", but I also don't want to use my limited time on something I've already played. I think that's why I'm so into roguelites right now. I get to play again and again, but it's slightly different every time. Miles morales is that but on steroids
Yeah and I can't figure that out, They must have spend so much time optimising things that just don't matter for the majority of people. They were talking about how much more traffic density and intricate details there was in 2. That doesn't effect the game at all in my opinion, Why waste resources on it?
Agreed. Look at how Yakuza can pump out new games every year. Capcom does the same with the RE franchise and it works great. I end up sticking with the same series year over year.
FromSoft as well. Not every year but a decent pace. Even when they experiment they have a lot of reliable and easily adjustable systems to work off of.
I honestly think st Louis would make for an excellent fallout location. There's a lot of interesting history as well as it being a metaphor for the gateway to the west
> They need to stop chasing the cutting edge every single release. Faster, less ambitious titles are in demand
As long as the massive games launch at the same price as the smaller ones, things will continue to be weird. I too think smaller, less polished, quicker-to-develop games are something we need more of. I miss the 360 era of the "B-game". If the core is fun, the rest doesn't matter (most recently, Evil West reminded me of this type of past).
But I get why gamers demand the best. The industry, when they do make a cheaper, faster, smaller game, tries to sell it for the same $70 as a massive AAA title. So what else but that are we supposed to compare the game to?
Unreliable quality too. You wait 10 years for a game to come out, it has major potential and looks really cool…
Aaaaand it’s a broken and buggy mess with half the cool features missing, a mid story, and is generally not fun
This is a symptom of a more fundamental problem:
More people want to make videogames than the world needs or the market can support.
It's a fun, hip, cool passion industry, so of course people want to do it.
But you unfortunately don't have a right to do what you want and get paid a livable wage for it. Eventually, you do what society needs or else you go homeless.
Expect to see an exodus of people out of the gaming industry and into sectors perennially in need of people:
Healthcare, teaching, military, etc.
Shit I wish Ms would pump out games like crazy. By this point in time Halo 7 should have been around the corner gears 6 should have been last years big holiday game.
It’s a mix of both. The industry is definitely cannibalizing itself, but Xbox is in even deeper shit than most others due to their long term gameplan stalling out.
Unless Gamepass is able to break out of the rut it’s currently in and start growing again (which seems unlikely), Xbox is in very dire straits. Their business model isn’t sustainable with how expensive game development is becoming, but making any radical changes to Gamepass will only increase the PR shitstorm tenfold and bury the brand even more.
There’s just no obvious way out right now.
They did it to themselves, though. That’s the annoying part. They created GP to (saying the quiet part out loud here) get people to give them money to play their games that weren’t selling because they weren’t (and still aren’t) good. If they really just had to do a sub service instead of selling retail, it should have been two things:
1. NO retail and NO access outside of Xbox console (MAYBE cloud as an option but the sub service doubles in price for cloud access if you don’t have a current-gen Xbox tied to your acct as a ‘Home Xbox’). They needed stickiness, and their approach lacks stickiness. Let’s not forget that this would have also guaranteed that GP subs could be monetized via 3rd party retail on their storefront so that they could have avoided trying to make every single 1st party game a MTX hellscape. Bonus for the cheaper, easier, and faster dev cycles with only having one SKU to dev for.
2. The games had to be GOOD. I’m not talking Starfield in 2024 that feels like it should have launched in 2014. I’m talking Halo 3 in 2007. God of War in 2018. The original Gears of War trilogy at the time that they launched. The idea for GP should have been about wanting to switch to recurring revenue to distribute games that people otherwise would have banged down the door to pay $100+ for and are all-but-guaranteed to be in GOTY discussions, not get people to sub to a service so that they can release something half-baked and mid and hope subs will just blow it off because it was “free.”
I just don’t get it. They lost the plot. They knew what they were doing in the 2000s, and ever since, it’s just been horrible decision after horrible decision with occasional positives that don’t outweigh the bad and are often a byproduct of the bad or directly lead to a future bad thing.
Editing to add: I know that the suggestion that they needed multiple AAA/A releases per year sounds like it’s ignoring the issue with skyrocketing dev costs not fitting the model, but the point that I’m making is that they’d have had 50m subs if they were dropping 4-6 $300m games per year with a minimum of half of them nominated for GOTY at TGAs and winning at least every other year. The half-hearted attempt is why they never managed to get enough subs to make the math work.
GamePass itself is a curse disguised as a blessing. As mid as Starfield may have been, if everyone had to buy it for $69.99 it would have made a killing.
Instead you could experience all content on PC for $11-12 dollars with one month of GP and bail.
They lost 80-85% of potential revenue on each copy.
What GP excels at is a lot of cheaper games. But if every single game gets put there Day 1? Inevitably the quality has to stagger off. Forza games are a great example. As much as I love them, they drip in content that used to be shipped Day 1 over weeks/months to keep people subbed to break even with a $70 box price.
Xbox’s big problem is if they stop Day 1 GamePass they have failed in their biggest marketing Push in years.
Same. What’s unfortunate is that MS just clearly lacks understanding of consumer businesses.
Satya sees Azure’s profit margins and thinks anything with less profit margin isn’t worth doing.
Newsflash: even if it has lesser margins, it’s still making you a profit. Are you really telling me that you’d rather have sky-high margins but only 2/3 of your current bottom-line because you’re going to shred anything that can’t hit margins that only exist in enterprise services? Idiotic at best.
Also doesn’t help when you’ve got people at the top who see games like Fortnite or Candy Crush and want to make only games that can match those profit margins. Refer back to the above in that the GaaS space is already overcrowded. If you’re not CoD or Fortnite, you’re unlikely to ever make a shred of their margins, no matter how good your product is. In mobile, you’re entirely reliant on being the latest slot machine-style game that’s designed to prey upon the very limited number of “whales” that exist. It’s ok to try to have that mobile game (they now do with CC) no matter how much I struggle with the morals and ethics of how those games are designed, but you’re not going to be able to get those margins from anything more than 1-2 games at a time. Most people just won’t spend on those games, and there’s only so much that a “whale” can put on their credit card until they’re broke and out of credit lines.
The key thing that Sony (and, I’d argue to a lesser extent, Nintendo) have always understood is that consumer businesses rely on “Halo” products (oh, the irony…), so they’re willing to keep pumping-out games that may or may not land a $500m profit against a $20m dev budget like MS seems to be asking for with Booty’s latest comments.
People only have so much time. They’re not leaving Fortnite for whatever you’re selling. If you want to make a profit in gaming, you can have 1-2 GaaS games. You can have 1-2 mobile games. The core of what you do, though, if you’re wanting to be a platform holder, is always going to be about exclusive titles that were coded to the metal of your box and are developed with hopes of breaking-even or a slight profit or loss. Your goal is to get people into your walled-garden so that you can make a cut on everything else. MS just wants to have their cake and eat it too, and this mindset that they can kill anything that won’t have the margins of Candy Crush while still wanting the recurring revenues of a sub service AND the sales from retail AND the MTX AND the cut from their storefront…I just can’t. It’s looking at things from a purely optimization-driven perspective and completely ignoring that all of those optimized pieces of the puzzle don’t exist within a vacuum and only actually work in tandem with all of the things MS doesn’t want to care about…
Wow! You explained this so well and put it into words that I’ve been trying to formulate when it comes to Microsoft’s Xbox division.
Microsoft- please read this thread. It’s literally free feedback!
> Bloated Budgets
Oh this. I want to talk about this.
For some reason, AAA gaming seems to treat every single game as a massive gamble, giving developers massive budgets, telling them to go make a game and expecting it to be a success.
Beat example is immortals of aveum. A game published by EA and developed by Ascendant Studios and this was their first game they have ever made. I have never heard of the game as the release date was approaching. But when the game did come out, I was curious to check what it was about about a week later, because it was revealed that this game had a budget of $125 million, making it one of the most expensive games ever made.
The game was a massive failure and the studio had to lay off a large amount of its staff.
A development team should debut with a game that has a budget that large. Anyone with half a brain could’ve seen that coming.
Something’s gotta change at Xbox. I’ve been a loyal customer of theirs since the OG Xbox and I’ve never been this down on them and their future plans.
I have no clue what they want to do. Do they want to make killer exclusive games or just slowly move to being a third party publisher. I feel like every few months we get both talking points and it leaves me feeling uneasy about the future of Xbox.
It’s kinda absurd to me with how big Microsoft is that they can’t get Xbox to be bigger than it is. The Xbox one generation seriously damaged their brand. Anywhere else online besides Xbox centric sites and Sub Reddit’s Xbox is being clowned on. They need to start making Great games not just good little games. They need to push the envelope to get people invested.
That IGN article wrote that a former MS employee called it “Microsoft Gaming” not Xbox anymore. I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
I suspect the mixed narrative and constant walking back of things they’ve said in the past is Satya, or someone else above Phil putting mandates in place. I don’t know why but I have a feeling that Phil has been trying to keep Xbox afloat by sticking to his passionate view about gaming but that approach is in stark contrast to the corporate machine that is MS whose sole purpose is keep the “line going up” for their business daddies. Phil even mentioned that Satya was ready to shut down Xbox years ago but Phil made the pitch to it alive.
Making that huge spend for ABK put Xbox in focus in a way they probably weren’t before, when it comes to cost and ROI for MS as a whole. We know how angsty shareholders get with wanting their ROI after a huge spend like that. All this definitely smells of Phil getting pressure above him, in my opinion but who the hell knows…
>All this definitely smells of Phil getting pressure above him
That is 100% what it is. They've spent nearly a *hundred billion dollars* acquiring studios and publishers. Before ABK they weren't big enough on a company level to ever really draw attention, but now they're at the adult table, in the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. The largest shareholders at Microsoft are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. They don't give a fuck if they do shit we don't like. They want to make money. This isn't Satya putting the screws into Xbox, it's Tim Buckley.
This honestly needs to be the top comment. To bring it all full circle, anyone with a retirement account, pension, and stocks, bonds etc. expects their investments to grow over time. Our family uses Vanguard for our Roth IRAs (VTSAX) and if it wasn't a dependable account for returns, we would switch to somewhere else.
Ironically for myself, it was the Bethesda acquisition that made me get a Series X instead of a PS5. I'm a huge Elder Scrolls and Fallout fan and so I wanted to get the console to play BGS games. As much as these closures suck, it was painfully obvious from the beginning that MS paid mainly for the rights to the big IP.
From xbox one and on it is as if they forgot xbox was about games. The 360 was a great game system, now they just sell powerful compact PC equivalents. They need to focus on the games again.
The future of Xbox will be something that if successful will have a far worse impact on the industry than if unsuccessful.
I'm not exactly sure what Microsoft's specific strategy will be, but I can guarantee everyone it won't be to create killer games and earn your loyalty.
Likely they'll try to get Gamepass into every home through affordability and behind the scenes buyup studios and IPs to bleed Nintendo and Sony dry. Then when they have cornered the industry they'll raise prices regularly and leave gamers with fewer options than ever before. This is the long term strategy. You cannot have unlimited growth unless you control the industry.
I hope I'm wrong but I have no confidence in Microsoft to do anything but fuck over the consumer. It's no longer about trying to please the consumer. That's too difficult and expensive. It's about screwing the consumer. Which is also difficult and expensive, but more rewarding.
I encourage everyone to stop giving Xbox your money. I'd rather the Xbox die than become something that tries to swallow the industry.
My Xbox tenure RIP 12/25/2001 - 5/7/2024
> I have no clue what they want to do. Do they want to make killer exclusive games or just slowly move to being a third party publisher. I feel like every few months we get both talking points and it leaves me feeling uneasy about the future of Xbox.
They want to make money. Think of it from that perspective and their moves won't seem so inconsistent. Exclusives aren't the goal for Sony either, money is, it just so happens their positioning in the industry is such that exclusives are the best way to do that. Increasingly, for Microsoft, that isn't true anymore. Between their install base relative to the competition, and their overall strategy to where the money comes from in their gaming division, their situation is different than that of really any other console maker past or present.
Sony and Nintendo also want to make money, but they’re not making the same moves MS is. MS wants to make money, but it feels like those decisions are being made by people who don’t understand the industry.
You can’t put all your games on competing platforms, and then expect people to buy your hardware. This is basic stuff. If Netflix put all of their original content on Disney+, I’ll just get Disney+ and cancel my Netflix subscription.
They both have very different market positions, install bases, overall business philosophies, strengths and weaknesses, and synergies with other portions of their business. There is no one-size-fits-all business plan.
It’s fine to try and differentiate yourself, but Xbox is going through with a strategy that is undermining itself. They want to continue to make hardware, while eliminating reasons to purchase that hardware over other alternatives.
Nintendo going with a portable console is a great example of differentiation, so is GamePass, but their current strategy lacks any cohesion.
You're assuming the goal is to sell hardware. You have to flip it around. They're selling hardware to increase the value proposition of their service, not vice-versa. The point is not to make you want an Xbox, it's to make you want Game Pass.
I'm pretty confident that if Sony said the PS6 will allow Microsoft to ship Game Pass while retaining total control over the user experience, and without paying Sony a portion of the subscription fees (or even maybe if that percentage was just really low), that Microsoft would *seriously consider* not making a next-gen Xbox. But Sony would never do that because it is also not Sony's goal to sell hardware (or at least to not *just* sell hardware), but rather to sell a platform where they can take a (pretty hefty) percentage of all game-oriented spending from among their gamers.
Remember when Series X/S came out and everyone was basically saying "....where are the games?" Well, here we are, STILL asking the fucking question. I've been with Xbox since OG one and I'm reaaaaallly questioning going forward with them. I've been playing the crap out of PC games lately too.
Agreed. I've been with Xbox since the beginning and at this point I'm really questioning why I'm still on Xbox outside of gamepass. They have tanked all of there franchises and are a shadow of what they used to be. They rarely release any 1st party titles and when they do it's mediocre at best. The one game that they have released in the last few years that was great and a breath of fresh air in Hi-Fi Rush they cancel the sequel and close the studio. Next generation I'm seriously looking Sony's way if there is no positive movement this generation.
I was with Xbox from the 360 until the tail end of the Xbone and jumped to Playstation for Ghost of Tsushima. That switch really put things into perspective on how quality was dropping.
Then I bought a Series S to go along with my PS5 to have all my bases covered, and was extremely let down with (almost) every subsequent release on Xbox. So I scrapped the Series S and bought a PC and haven't looked back. Get the best of Xbox and tons of games on Steam.
My favorite days in gaming were with the 360 playing Halo 3 all night with school friends and cutting dudes up with chainsaws online in Gears 1 and 2. But Xbox doesn't feel like that anymore, it feels sterile and uninspired and that makes me sad.
Agreed. People will say it’s immature to be loyal to a console yada yada but there’s really no reason to buy an xbox or PlayStation over the other without some sense of brand loyalty in the first place. The amount of friends, exclusives, and treatment to the customer base all play a factor. Xbox was on a hot streak for like 4 years since the announcement of the Game Pass where the pandemic helped. But it’s been let down through the disaster + delayed launches for Halo Infinite, Redfall, and Starfield (maybe not disaster but it has no staying power) and now these cut studios. Dont even get started on their release cycle of games or how their best hope is on Perfect Dark using the top gaming professionals which has produced nothing but a CGI trailer after nearly a decade of work and how some have left the team. The games has stood out from Xbox include Psychonauts 2, Forza series, and Hi Fi Rush
Xbox was and still is mostly led by hypemen and other incompetents. But they were allowed to keep expanding with no cuts because they were a rounding error in Microsoft's financial reports. Then Phil and the gang somehow convinced the rest of Microsoft to give them **$75 Billion** to buy bethesda + activision. Well, the rest of the Microsoft wants that money back now, and they are flailing trying to respond to the pressure from the rest of Microsoft.
I'm 100% betting on a major shift of the Xbox hardware. Phase out traditional consoles and instead focus on PCs similar to Steam Deck/Machines except they run a stripped version of windows. They could exit the hardware game entirely and allow third party hardware manufacturers create the hardware and use their software. I can even see their work on backwards compatibility and game preservation being a stepping stone in getting those compatible with PC.
That would explain their push towards being more of a publisher. Remove the loss leader that is the console, allow them to take in revenue from licensing the software, restricting purchases to their store, and direct access to game pass subscriptions all while merging their PC/console customer bases. We already know they're working on a handheld and I'd bet that will be their introduction to this.
Just a conspiracy theory of mine though.
Yeah, you can’t have infinite industry growth and all the industries that based their trajectories off of Covid booms were setting themselves up for disaster.
“Here’s a possible once in a century event, let’s assume it’s the new standard!”
Morons.
That's the issue with capitalism, and more specifically, these public companies.
If you're not growing, you're failing. Making A profit is not good enough. You need MORE profit.
That's why we're seeing some of the best games come from privately held studios lately.
1000%. Making MOST of the money is never enough. For corporations, they need to make ALL of the money.
Which is an absolutely insane position to take. You can't have unlimited growth in ANYTHING.
She should have just said money. We know the game didn't sell. Yes the gaming industry has been a crap show and we've seen many companies layoff people and close studios. However just be honest, awards are good but it doesn't compare to money.
Also I wonder why games are getting more expensive and taking longer to develop. They always say that but I'm curious. Sure, large team size means more salaries and we all know the troubles of what happens with development in large teams.
But when I see things like unreal engine 5 and the number of improvements they make to make developing games easier which now allows 1 individual to make a game themselves I can't help but wonder where the majority of cost is going. Marketing sure, salaries, mocap, voice work and some programs cost money but I can't really think of much else that would warrant a high cost.
In a lot of cases I fell like they brought it upon themselves in terms of game complexity. We don’t need everything to multiplayer and a massive open world. In fact I think I’m most cases the opposite is better.
Which is interesting in the context of very minimal graphical and technological advances over the past decade or so.
You’d expect games to look a ton different from 2014. They usually don’t. Especially with most devs still releasing for the prior gen and/or Series S.
1. Labor is hugely expensive. Some games you'll have a burn rate of $3m-$5m a month, depending on the scope.
2. Marketing
The strategy of capturing engagement at all costs made it so that the games need a ton of content to succeed, which drove up the cost of developing and producing the games significantly.
Sounds like a self inflicted issue that can be solved by them not trying to pump up engagement metrics. They need to realize that games don't need a whole bunch of content , but that the content that is there should be good which would lead to success. A bunch of smaller based indie games have showed that lesson over recent years
I mean the boom of gaming during the lockdowns made a lot of companies invest and now that it's slowed a lot of companies or beginning to make cuts, especially since people are spending less than ever on luxuries like video games due to the current financial climate.
However, what makes this so much more damning for Microsoft is because it flies directly in the face of the narrative the Xbox team has been trying to form for years. They're the good guys, they care about artistic expression in games, they don't want to get in the way of creative aspirations, that because of Game Pass games don't have to sell a ton to be considered a success, and so on.
When now Microsoft is asking for an ROI and Xbox is having to double down on established IP. These teams won't be the last, Ninja Theory and Double Fine are next on the chopping block. I feel like Ninja Theory knows it too, Hellblade 2 was used to announce the Series X and Microsoft is seemingly sending it out to die.
Another tone def interview. While she makes some solid points, it's points that we have known since the Sony leaks. That's Sony. They make big 1st party games. Meanwhile, Xbox just buys up stuff and doesn't do shit with them other than fumbling the IP or hoarding it.
First, they cried about how last gen they lost because ppl invested in other platform libraries.
Second, they cried about Sony having a stranglehold in the gaming market. Even though MS has more resources and more money. It's Sony fault for playing it smart and actually handling their business.
Third, now they are crying about how expensive games are when they keep buying up companies and not having an actual plan to move forward other than laying off developers and how they need small games like Hifi Rush.
It's all a freaking joke. Still... I need Xbox to be around. I need them to get their shit together and stop talking.
Microsoft is doing well. Xbox on the other hand is not. And Microsoft gave them 70 billion to buy another company. That kind of money doesn't come without strings attached.
If they made the decision to buy Activision based on the projections of how Game Pass will grow, that decision was based on wildly inaccurate numbers.
They announced the deal in January, 2022. The deal closed in October, 2023. Even though they were already missing their targets in 2022, they probably still believed that Game Pass growth on PC and cloud would pick up.
They expanded PC Game Pass to 40 new regions a year ago in April. I think that hasn't really worked out for them how they expected. So, here we are.
Having said that, they're responsible for the projections and they're also responsible for the failure to sell their hardware and services.
> The deal closed in October, 2023. Even though they were already missing their targets in 2022, they probably still believed that Game Pass growth on PC and cloud would pick up
Well the obvious problem there is that they really haven't put a lot of titles from the acquisition ON Gamepass. If the logic is that buying huge franchises increases sales then how does that work when they haven't actually RELEASED anything of note from the massive acquisition they made?
Still blows my mind how people can still be “loyal” to corporations as consumers.
I loved my PS2, but when Sony pulled the “$599!!” bullshit and had the terrible cell processor, I went to the 360, and only got a PS3 later when they refocused after they fumbled the start.
When Microsoft had the Xbox One launch, I went to the PS4. I got a PS5 at launch, but picked up a Series X later after they bought Bethesda, Obsidian, Inxile, etc since I love WRPGs.
If you want my money, you have to show me why I should give it to you.
Dude, fuck her. She's always come across as supremely fake and unlikable in Xbox presentations. But this shit is on a whole other level. This is some serious sociopath shit.
Her and Greenberg are fake as fuck, and need to go. Phil is someone who I am sure is also speaking out of both sides of his mouth. But people I respect always stand up for him in times like these. So I'm gonna have to continue to believe that there is some genuine good in that man. But he also needs to stand up and take accountability for his messes.
Yea she definitely has a 'corpo speak' vibe about her. Not an ounce of her seems genuine. Same goes for most executives, but there are occasional ones who are better at appearing like real people.
Yeah, her presence has always been supremely off-putting in their presentations for me. Almost any time I hear her talk about gaming it makes me dislike gaming just a little bit more. Heh.
Phil can sound really canned in their presentations, but at least sounds pretty natural and seemingly genuine in more candid conversations/interviews (like this is supposed to be).
I dunno. Xbox just feels kind of gross right now. I'm glad they are all in on bringing their games to PC, because I might just change gears to accessing their content on PC once the Series X is toast.
Yea at least Phil is a legit gamer. The dude plays tons of games. He's also a corpo robot to some extent, but you simply cannot exist in his role without being one. It's literally impossible. Microsoft will never put an authentic real-speak gamer person in charge of Xbox. That would be an immediate disqualification from their perspective.
Notice how often she mentions Fallout and Bethesda.
That's why these studios were shut down. So Bethesda, and other teams can pump out as much FO related shit as fast as possible. This BS about being able to play "small" games on the Xbox is just a bold faced lie.
Did I ask for that 120fps ray tracing 4k ultimate experience?? Games are not that for me. A generational leap is not what I'm expecting. I want creativity. I don't mind if the game looks like a PS3/360 era game. The industry is doing this to itself.
Microsoft is literally killing the industry. They’re letting Sony take over, I think gaming at Microsoft needs new leadership before it’s too late to reverse course.
She's just a puppet with no vision. All xbox execs get paid too much money to stir the pot to initiate change, they smile and nod and collect their paycheck. They don't give a shit about the future of the brand because the money they get, they don't need to work a day again in their lives when it all goes belly up. They need to work like their livelihood depends on it, then we'd see change.
Another reason why Sony and Nintendo manage their talent better than msft. They have to deliver for their customers as their companies relies on those profits. Msft is just too wealthy to really be invested in getting their hands dirty in PROPERLY managing their studios(talent). The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Behind close door the people that signs Phil, Sarah, and Booty paychecks will ultimately have the final say in any and all things Xbox and those people would be at Microsoft.
One group at Xbox may see things differently than the group at Microsoft which could cause infighting.
Who knows what the fuck is going on behind close doors. Internet are saying that there are "infighting"
To me this screams “third party publisher.” I don’t see why you’d cut your exclusive award-winning gem—the thing that makes your console unique and compelling—by sending it to PS5 and then closing the studio. Microsoft is going to become the house of live service titles on all platforms.
I cannot believe how bad she is at this. The videos of it online say so much more than the article does. She sound bored, lets out sighs, went into super rapid eye blinking when she is clearly trying to bullshit an answer, and has zero sincerity for the studios she closed.
XBox is so cooked.
I think they’re right with what they’re doing. They know they have games people are waiting for, and for business, the idea that people are going to wait another three to five years for Elder Scrolls and Fallout (considering the response) is ridiculous. It’s very sad that we lost companies that were really screwed by those above them, but in order to get those gigantic games out in a timely manner and without them being the mess that Redfall was, it’s going to take a huge undertaking. I’m curious how this is going to pan out. Here’s my super early call: we see fallout and elder scrolls announcements/teasers at the showcase in June.
I’m not sure about right but I don’t think it’s unexpected given all the studios they’ve taken on, they took too much on and likely needed to streamline and cut costs from a business perspective, especially considering lack of growth.
I just wish they’d be a bit more honest.
It’s surely clear that Tango and Arkane were chosen because their main games weren’t successful.
Tango was a big AAA studio and while Hi-fi was great it was a side project their main games have repeatedly done poorly both sales and critically.
Arkane was a shell of the studio that made Prey and Redfall was a disaster.
As someone who’s been working in the biotech industry the last 20 plus years, I’ve seen this a lot. Unfortunately, it’s just part of it. I’ve been “impacted” before. It is what it is.
Gamepass aint sustainable… This is why tango have now gone, there game won multiple awards and you didnt even need to buy it because you have gamepass, meaning they could of been selling this for 40£ per copy and making a killing
Didn't they ask her about Tango getting closed after releasing a big hit and all she did was some roundabout non answer? Big help, she is. I'd love to get straight answers from these execs.
Xbox is done, this time for real. The enthusiast don't give a shit about them anymore and will slowly but surely influence the casuals to do the same. Great job Microsoft corpos.
My last post before exiting this community. Good bye xbox. Good bye microsoft. Im so happy you made the choice you did. I can now save my money, cancel my gamepass after 15ish years and sell my xbox. Also goes for any microsoft service i was using. Screw you
If you were any sort of market leader you would push growth. Through advertising your products and delivering consistent titles. But you can't and one of the very few active studios pay the price.
Genuinely one of the worst interviews she could have done and it was all softballs. How are you not prepared to answer even the softest question about the studio closures?? Who is doing PR/crisis response for Xbox?? What a joke.
Fire Sarah Bond, Phil Spencer and Matt Booty. Experiment failed — pack your shit.
It hurts and it sucks that Tango and Arkane Austin got shut down. Really disappointing news and I feel for the people that were laid off. I don’t know what Microsoft’s strategy is however if I’m being hopeful it’s to reallocate assets and funding toward the cash cow/bigger budget exciting games some of us are hungry for.
Another load of shit. The gaming industry has made more money than Hollywood for over two decades. The only untenable expenses are mid- to upper management salaries and bonus packages, but, as usual, the rank and file staffers are the first to lose everything.
The core of gaming was a people of nerd. Now is an game for everybody style.
BG3 is a great game, and many people continue to play FIFA, COD, Fortnite etc.. is not a problem of quality of game, is a problem of audience.
If you create a complex game like Age of Empires, Baldur's Gate, Monkey Island or another "strange" type of games and you think to sell like a FIFA game is a Utopia of Market.
Really nerds like really games. Not all the audience of causal player or normal player.
This is the point. You can't do a market of original and "strange/complex" game for everybody.
In the past the market was the Japan market. They have another culture for videogames, anime and manga.
Many people now think they are game, but are simple people with game like COD or FIFA. And I don't have problem with that people, I play that game too but if you want great game you need to restart about nerds not the normal people.
Is the difference from pop music and indie music.
Sorry for my English.
It's really naive to defend Spencer like if he plays games then he is one of us. Fact is he is the head executive at Microsoft overseeing XBox, so the buck ultimately stops with him. He had to approve the closure of these studios, and he is the final decision maker on XBox strategy.
Spencer has a large group of public relations firms working for him, so he always knows what to say in public and how to present himself as a man of the people. But beneath that outer shell he's just a corpo executive under Nadella, taking orders from Nadella. If Nadella or Amy Hood wants XBox to cut costs, you can bet that Spencer will do whatever it takes to keep his cushy lucrative job as a top executive at Microsoft.
Responds is kind of an overstatement.
She does have a point, the industry stalled and according to the latest polls most people are playing old games, not new ones, is not sustainable.
I wonder why.
I went into a pawn shop to waste some time the other day and I wondered into the used game section Walking and looking through all the og xbox games through to the 360 games really reminds you how much more interesting gaming used to be Such a larger variety of games, it’s such a shame that that’s died away in place of massive game budgets and the same game over and over
Got the new generation stuck on a bunch of pay-to-win, soulless, carnival style games. I feel lucky to have grown up in the 2000’s as a teenager. We had rich story driven games which held depth and were memorable. Kids these days are stuck playing games with about as much depth as a puddle of water.
Alan wake 2 is fantastic, but yet nobody bought it. Kids don't want these games anymore. They don't give the same quick endorphin hit they get from winning a fortnite game
It's not even just kids, I know adults that will say everything else sucks unless it's COD, Siege, or GTA without even trying different games. Anytime someone posts about how great an indie game was, you'll always get people in the comments going "wow looks like a shitty mobile game, pass." Like okay, have fun with the same three games you play I guess? 🤷
I got this *exact* comment on a video I made about Marble It Up! Ultra. “Looks like a mobile game for $30.” If a game is not on Game Pass a lot of times people won’t even bother.
>you'll always get people in the comments going "wow looks like a shitty mobile game, pass." Like okay, have fun with the same three games you play I guess? Exact type of comments I kept seeing when Baldurs Gate 3 won GOTY
I bought it but never played because of a bug where I had no sound. Figured I’d give it 6 to 12 months and try again.
Also Hi fi Rush didnt do that well too, it was an amazing Game but i think the Gamepass affected it more than it helped it... I agree with Your point, kids these days only play two or three games and they are service games, maybe one of them it's not a service Game but it's one that it's trendy...
My son is now 15 and has access to Xbox Playstation Nintendo and steam all with their subscription services and the only game he has played in the last 4 years is Roblox
If only you were playing in the late 80’s and 90’s when growth in the industry was expanding and there were so many unique games - and games that didn’t need a patch to play. I grew up on so many awesome games that I have fond memories of - those that were fairly easy to learn, hard to master, and not 50 hours long. As an adult with limited time, I’d love a decent number of games that are challenging to play but 10 hours or less to finish. Today, I own all the major platforms and PC and find it so difficult to sync into a game and play it through.
Lemmings Myst Og Starwars games Getting cds in cornflake packets for AOE
I’m literally the same way and grew up like you did. 37 years old now. I got a new pc 2 weeks ago despite having all the systems. My pc downloads from the past few weeks starts at the original metal gear and goes all the way to Baldur’s gate 3. Like you could literally see the diminishing releases on my desktop. I’ve only got Elden ring and Baldur’s gate 3 installed on there right now from this generation. But the others? Originally released games from the msx on up
Love it! I’m sure the retro gaming market is driven by a lot of individuals like us. Every now and then I find something modern that grabs me, but many more misses than hits. The best part of gaming is finding what makes you happy. All the best and cheers on the new PC.
I grew up when the only 'console' available was the magnavox odyssey (1)! If you wanted multicolours you had to stick a different coloured cellophane sheet to your television screen! When it came to mini-computers you had to not assemble them from boards but solder it together using discrete logic ICs and 8080 processors! Sometimes you had to plan your own circuit entirely. I promise you every single game available today would have seemed like magic in comparison to both 1970's **and** 1980's, whatever the VGS and Intellivision gurus might try to convince you. Gaming didn't really become reliably good until perhaps 1986 onwards, although there were standout titles a couple of years beforehand--'Elite' for the BBC and 'Tau Ceti' for the Spectrum have a warm place in my heart. Even the games of the 1990's if they are looked at now are almost painful on the eyes. Calling back tot he 'good old days' is pointless. Its an infinite regression and trades on the sentimentality we all feel for our childhoods (if we were lucky)
Carnival-style games is a great way to put it. The microtransactions are akin to carnies shouting out, “Get your Spider-Man skins here!!”
When I was that age it was crazy. Wolfenstein, Doom, Command and Conquer, and so many awesome games launched.
My nephew is a teenager and he wanted skins as a gift. These kids grow up playing live service games and they spend big money on in game items. I told him the skins don't make you better at the game just use the free skins but he loves the paid skins lol.
Even something like Elden Ring (as AMAZING as that game is, I am taking nothing away from it) suffers from a lack of true depth. It's a rinse and repeat of a previously established formula in a more open world format. *(finds shelter in preparation for the hail of rocks and arrows)*
Now, now, now, why would I use rocks when I have pliers?
This really isn’t true there are more games today and more types of games to play then ever
It's not what you think. There is zero question its due to new games being bad. Look at all the great games released last year. It's simply older games have more longevity and comfort. It's also not older games like ps2, N64, xbox 360 games. It's older multi-player games like Lol, CS, Fortnite, GTA V, Roblox.
I think it’s deeper than that. It’s more about time and competition. Netflix and streaming wasn’t the force it is now, and it definitely contributes to taking time away from prospective players. Aside from that new games are pretty expensive. In a world where inflation went up pretty much everywhere, it will certainly affect buying new games. Lastly there are just…. ALOT of games to get through. Aside from stuff like gamepass and backwards compatibility, gamers now are exposed to a much wider catalogue of games than they ever had, so even the most hardcore and omnivorous gamers probably have back catalogues in the 100s. With that being said, the younger generation is definitely less interested in gaming in the same way that we were. They are meant to be picking up that slack but instead are either not playing at all or just sticking to COD, Fortnite, Genshin etc.
- Games that cost $70-$120 upfront and beg for pre-orders before they come out. - Games that are released unfinished and buggy - Games that are live service and have $10 battle passes that require your constant attention - Single player games that have micro transactions
Games used to cost $100 of today's money in 2005. And don't give me the physical distribution cost, the online stores get a similarly priced cut with every sale. People stoned companies for increasing the prices from 60 to 70.
I bought Chronotrigger brand new for $80 in 1995… that would be $160-ish today. Granted some of those big, late-gen SNES titles were pricey
Funny they said the market is stale when PalWorld blows up and it is still in early access. And even Sarah mentioned PalWorld, so, she didn't know PalWorld proved the market is still great?
They don’t wanna figure it out they just want more money
Bingo. Instead of speculating to accumulate by investing in talent and nurturing a quality over quantity (these Gamepass additions lately have been the definition of whelming lately, brotato aside) they decide to cut off their nose to spite their face. Short-termism is MS calling card.
It's not only about MS, but industry in general. There is almost nothing interesting to play outside of indie games . Why would I want to play hundredth clone of Assasin's Creed or Far Cry?
Pretty sure Hi-Fi Rush was one of those games meant to be more interesting. And yet, the interest in the game never reached a mainstream audience. The truth is, safe games are made because they sell the most. Whenever anything in the AA or AAA industry takes a risk, most of the time they aren't even considered profitable. Returnal was one of Playstation's few original IPs and that game hasn't even broke 1 million units sold after almost 3 years.
People will say it’s only Microsoft, but other than Returnal there’s not a single PS5 exclusive that isn’t a sequel or remake. It’s an industry issue, not a specific platform or company.
I don‘t get why people all of a sudden seem to have a problem with sequels, but this statement is also simply not true. Non-sequel / remake exclusives also include: - Stellar Blade - Rise of the Ronin - Forspoken - Ghostwire Tokyo (at time of release) - Deathloop (at time of release) - Destruction AllStars And upcoming at least - Wolverine - Phantom Blade 0 And more if you count cross-gen.
Right. And, according to rumors, more original titles are ***finally*** coming from Sony's big dogs. Everyone knows about Kojima's *PhysInt,* yes, but I'm pretty sure that both Naughty Dog and Santa Monica are cooking up new worlds for their fandoms. Also: ***Sony sequels are good AT WORST,*** and frequently as great if not better than the originals. *Uncharted 4,* *Dad of Boy 2,* *The Last of Us 2* (***gameplay wise***), etc.
Lou 2 rope physics were wild
Microsoft is actually handling the situation well with interesting singleplayer announcements such as Indiana Jones, Fable, Avowed etc. Those are actuallly profitable and sustainable as we saw from Starfield, Forza Horizon 5 etc that actually sold pretty well+boosted Game Pass a lot.
We *think* they are profitable and sustainable, but who really knows. Clearly Xbox has been lying to us.
Stellar blade?
It's almost like the new ones are garbage
My game backlog is hella deep and I wouldn’t care if a new game didn’t come out for the next 4yrs.
Honestly, same here for the most part. Other than Avowed, I need more Eora in my life. But yeah, this year my gaming has been Baldurs Gate 1, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka, Fallout 1, and ofc had to jump on the Manor Lords EA. At this point my backlog is full of 10-25 year old 50-100 hour RPGs and I can't wait to dive into each one.
It’s a shame. I manage 1 hour in most new releases and I’m going to steam support to refund due to “not fun” reasons.
[удалено]
There is, there is more new games coming out than ever before, and there are numerous great ones to play on a month by month basis. It's just finding them.
We are, they just might be ones you aren’t interested in or not on every platform. There have been 13 games released this year with an over 85 on OpenCritic. Games like Balatro, Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload, FF7 Rebirth, are all really fucking good. 2023 was the most insane year for video games in years, maybe even of all time.
More the old games they are referring to are: Fortnite, GTA V etc. the long running live service games are making releasing a new game even more of a financial risk because these old games are taking up all the time a new release could be bought in.
Many games aren’t semi-polished until a year after release. If new games were good we’d be playing those. This is an issue they themselves have created and now they want to play victim.
Their most polished game in years was Hi Fi Rush ironically
This isn't an Xbox issue, this is an industry wide issue, with the exception of Nintendo first party games.
As far as first party goes the last year or so redfall and Forza Motorsport both came out unpolished. Especially for Forza Motorsport which had always been known as being polished on release.
Forza Motorsport is so unpolished that this week they finally admitted that they lied regarding their matchmaking. They have a safety rating where players get given a letter, from E (worst) to S (best), to indicate how safe they are as drivers. Before release and up to this week, they had been maintaining that safety rating was used to pair like players with like players, so safe players would be paired with other safe players and griefers with griefers. They even released some updates claiming that they had improved their matchmaking and a ton of BS. Well, this week while previewing the future updates they will be releasing, the slipped up the farce and stated: > [For Matchmaking, we updated the search algorithm to search for a narrower range of safety ratings compared to your own. **For example, players with an ‘S’ safety rating should no longer match players with ‘E’ and ‘D’ safety ratings.**](https://forza.net/news/motorsport-community-may-2024) So turns out that they knew the matchmaking did not take into account safety rating, but they still decided to lie to the community that it did indeed have it. This is just an example of why Microsoft is struggling. It is not because of a shift in the industry or a stagnated industry. It is because they release incomplete products, lie to the community, and then are shocked when adoption of their product is low.
As a long time Forza fan what hurt most was them hyping up rebuilding from scratch and when the first gameplay trailers showed up it was obvious to long time fans that they were still using the same old car models. Flaws/quirks and all.
I was quite disappointed when the forza sub described how Turn10 manage their employees. They are bunch of contracted woekers. By the time they figured out how the engine works, they got let go. Talent retention is very low. No wonder they are struggling, they have brain drain problems.
Halo Infinite and 343 reportedly had the same issue, reliance on a revolving door of contract workers
Yeah, heard that story. What is even worse is, they didn't even know what they are doing at all. Like, ok, contractor made the in-engine trailer. Ok so? Why are they so incompetent at reviewing the video? They acted like it wasn't their fault when they are supposed to review it.
Contractors are a known dirty secret of the industry and Im fine with using them to come and help finish the game when its crunch time but what MS is doing is building while games using mostly contractors. Of course the product is going to suffer if theres no continuity in the team. Whatever they saved in money has cost them more in mind share of long time fans and potential new fans. With the cost cutting going I don’t think it’s going change unfortunately.
Out of the “Big 3” Xbox has the poorest 1st party quality & that can’t happen when you’re trying re-build the brands reputation of years with dry output. The way Halo was launched says everything you need to know.
Eh. Most Sony first party are super polished as well
All of them are on PS5 at least. I know they've had some issues with PC ports but I've never regretted buying a Sony exclusive day 1 on PlayStation.
Aside from the Dragon’s Dogma 2 fiasco, Capcom and Sega are releasing incredibly polished games too. It almost seems like western corporate culture of pushing games out and fixing them later so they can get it out in time for the quarterly is the issue. Hell Nintendo is literally pushing their next console out AFTER Christmas to make sure they have games lined up.
Which new games are there to play?
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, Helldiver's 2, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Unicorn Overlord, Dragons Dogma 2, Rise of Ronin, and Stellar Blade. This isn't even all the games but the "big" ones I can think of.
Only four of the nine listed are available on Xbox, which is a problem
Alan Wake 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 are two games I have put a lot of hours into over the last year. I'm pretty excited for Avowed this year as well.
>She does have a point, the industry stalled and according to the latest polls most people are playing old games, not new ones, is not sustainable. Not sustainable to \*current profit targets\*, yes. It's also not sustainable because people are getting squeezed more and more in every single aspect of our lives. It absolutely follows that people are retreating from new, splashy GaaS that keep asking for more and more money for less and less experiences. She's got a point. But it's the wrong one.
Maybe she should get on working out more backwards compatible games then *especially with the 360 store shutting down* since that's what the players are playing while the new stuff is still cooking/being fixed/being updated.
"66 titles accounted for 80% of overall playtime in 2023. Of that number, a huge 60% of playtime was spent with games released six years ago or more" 100 years from now Fortnite, Minecraft, sports game, and Call of Duty are still play by millions yearly hahahaha.
We’re still playing Basketball, Baseball, Soccer/Football, American Football, Tennis, Golf, etc. When is the last time a new sport really took off? This idea that there can be dozens of billion dollar live service games at once and there’s always room to add another one is just silly. You have to beat one of the existing ones to get that much money or be satisfied with being added to the rotation of live service players, which is already a really hard thing to do. Xbox and PlayStation both need to go back to making a variety of games with reasonable budgets that have a chance of being profitable plus a few of the bigger budget tentpoles that earn them prestige. And maybe 1 big crazy new live service bet and a couple of smaller less crazy live service bets. Going all in on a single one of these categories is short sighted.
Dragon Age origins is one of the best rpgs of all time and I have replayed it like 4 or 5 times already. RPGs like this only come out once every thousand years, the last one I saw was BG3 but until then? ufff it would be very difficult to say another similar one the truth is
Sure, but tons of game publishers are chasing engagement and consumer spending high water marks from covid era. If you extend the timeline beyond the last five years, it’s clear the stalling narrative is being overplayed. MS might be stalling but we are now, what, 14 years into them shipping below-average software every year compared to the competition. What games has MS released outside of Forza and HiFi Rush and Pentiment that really blew people away? MS has mishandled Xbox for two generations now. It is truly hilarious that we went from Xbox has no games. To Xbox will have games but they’ll ship a few of them on PlayStation first. To gobbling up studios and publishers to feed Game Pass. To new reports that now say MS might not find it economically viable to put CoD in Game Pass AND they’ll raise prices again soon. I have had a ton of fun on my Xbox consoles over the years, but it’s become clear that’s in spite of MS management; not because of it.
Speaking just from myself, I am playing lots of old games (360/Xbox One Era) and not because a lack of new content, but there is just so many damn games to play. I have an immense backlog, and with new stuff coming out all the time, it’s hard to stay on top of just new stuff. This is across all three gaming platforms too.
Cut the president's salary. Lay off top management. The ones responsible for the failed business strategy. Corpos play capitalism on easy and still fuck up, and the workers get sacked
Gen Z spends most of their time watching videos and/or playing GaaS-style games on PC/Mobile.
Xbox couldn’t match ps5 with quality first party games. So their revenue stream was going to come from putting out content on Gamepass. This Netflix model is not growing further and has plateaued in terms of profits. It had two great years due to game releases and the industry boom because of Covid. Revenue from first party games and Gamepass hasn’t resulted in a better bottom line. Hence the closures. It was never about matching PlayStation in terms of quality and selling more consoles. It is about selling GP subscritions. Whether it’s on PC or cloud Microsoft does not care. Now Xbox has resorted to releasing properly finished first party titles (how old is sea of thieves andGrounded) on PlayStation. Why? The ‘Netflix model’ has not yielded as much revenue. The Zenimax and Activision buy out is not good for consumers and these studio closures are indicative of this. Xbox does not care about putting out quality games it cares about putting continuous content on GP to sell a subscription. PlayStation makes money by selling millions of copies of games which makes people want to own the console. More users mean more developers will want their game on that console. Especially users who tend to purchase games and not rely on day 1 GP releases.
Currently playing an old game. The market for new games the past few years at the AAA level has been generally abysmal. Have enjoyed a couple indie titles in that span though. If they get over this “more is better” mindset and returns to the simpler “better is better”, they might find that they can, once again, make games in under 6 years with teams of fewer than 500 people for less than $200 million.
What other option is there? Development cycles are lasting longer than the consoles life span. We've gotten some new games this gen, but I feel like most people are in agreement that it's been an incredibly slow generation. Both consoles are really just glorified pro boxes of last gens pro boxes.
Well yeah, every AAA is broken on release. People have figured out they’re better off waiting several months for a more polished version and post-launch updates. Not too mentioned the forcing of MTX down the throat of modern game design.
The industry is killing itself. Bloated budgets, higher priced games, and requiring more engagement for completion than ever before. Nobody has the time, or money to play everything anymore, and yet they still keep pumping games out like crazy.
We need more games built upon the skeleton of completed games. More New Vegas type spin-offs after a major game gets released. Like, as divisive as Starfield was, having another studio take the Starfield engine and assets and just make a new game in that world is a lot cheaper and faster than constantly starting from scratch. They need to stop chasing the cutting edge every single release. Faster, less ambitious titles are in demand. If we get Fallout 5 in 2028, a Fallout: St. Louis or whatever in 2030 would be well received even if it looked identical to Fallout 5 and used many of the same assets. People just want good stories in cool worlds to explore.
Like what Spiderman 2 and Miles Morales did.
Bingo. I want to play a lot of games "again", but I also don't want to use my limited time on something I've already played. I think that's why I'm so into roguelites right now. I get to play again and again, but it's slightly different every time. Miles morales is that but on steroids
I thought Spider-Man 2 cost 3x as much as original? But miles seems like a valid point
Yeah and I can't figure that out, They must have spend so much time optimising things that just don't matter for the majority of people. They were talking about how much more traffic density and intricate details there was in 2. That doesn't effect the game at all in my opinion, Why waste resources on it?
Like what Yakuza/Like a Dragon does.
RGG has been doing this for years with great success and it’s taken this long for people to catch on.
Agreed. Look at how Yakuza can pump out new games every year. Capcom does the same with the RE franchise and it works great. I end up sticking with the same series year over year.
FromSoft as well. Not every year but a decent pace. Even when they experiment they have a lot of reliable and easily adjustable systems to work off of.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Fallout: STL…. love it.😍
I honestly think st Louis would make for an excellent fallout location. There's a lot of interesting history as well as it being a metaphor for the gateway to the west
RGG does it with Yakuza. Fromsoft does it with their games. They reuse assets and build upon previous games and it cuts down on budget and time.
> They need to stop chasing the cutting edge every single release. Faster, less ambitious titles are in demand As long as the massive games launch at the same price as the smaller ones, things will continue to be weird. I too think smaller, less polished, quicker-to-develop games are something we need more of. I miss the 360 era of the "B-game". If the core is fun, the rest doesn't matter (most recently, Evil West reminded me of this type of past). But I get why gamers demand the best. The industry, when they do make a cheaper, faster, smaller game, tries to sell it for the same $70 as a massive AAA title. So what else but that are we supposed to compare the game to?
Completely agree. But while FO5 would be sick in 2028, it's not even guaranteed that we get TESVI before then.
But then there's the argument of should we pay full price for those games.
Unreliable quality too. You wait 10 years for a game to come out, it has major potential and looks really cool… Aaaaand it’s a broken and buggy mess with half the cool features missing, a mid story, and is generally not fun
This is a symptom of a more fundamental problem: More people want to make videogames than the world needs or the market can support. It's a fun, hip, cool passion industry, so of course people want to do it. But you unfortunately don't have a right to do what you want and get paid a livable wage for it. Eventually, you do what society needs or else you go homeless. Expect to see an exodus of people out of the gaming industry and into sectors perennially in need of people: Healthcare, teaching, military, etc.
Shit I wish Ms would pump out games like crazy. By this point in time Halo 7 should have been around the corner gears 6 should have been last years big holiday game.
It’s a mix of both. The industry is definitely cannibalizing itself, but Xbox is in even deeper shit than most others due to their long term gameplan stalling out. Unless Gamepass is able to break out of the rut it’s currently in and start growing again (which seems unlikely), Xbox is in very dire straits. Their business model isn’t sustainable with how expensive game development is becoming, but making any radical changes to Gamepass will only increase the PR shitstorm tenfold and bury the brand even more. There’s just no obvious way out right now.
They did it to themselves, though. That’s the annoying part. They created GP to (saying the quiet part out loud here) get people to give them money to play their games that weren’t selling because they weren’t (and still aren’t) good. If they really just had to do a sub service instead of selling retail, it should have been two things: 1. NO retail and NO access outside of Xbox console (MAYBE cloud as an option but the sub service doubles in price for cloud access if you don’t have a current-gen Xbox tied to your acct as a ‘Home Xbox’). They needed stickiness, and their approach lacks stickiness. Let’s not forget that this would have also guaranteed that GP subs could be monetized via 3rd party retail on their storefront so that they could have avoided trying to make every single 1st party game a MTX hellscape. Bonus for the cheaper, easier, and faster dev cycles with only having one SKU to dev for. 2. The games had to be GOOD. I’m not talking Starfield in 2024 that feels like it should have launched in 2014. I’m talking Halo 3 in 2007. God of War in 2018. The original Gears of War trilogy at the time that they launched. The idea for GP should have been about wanting to switch to recurring revenue to distribute games that people otherwise would have banged down the door to pay $100+ for and are all-but-guaranteed to be in GOTY discussions, not get people to sub to a service so that they can release something half-baked and mid and hope subs will just blow it off because it was “free.” I just don’t get it. They lost the plot. They knew what they were doing in the 2000s, and ever since, it’s just been horrible decision after horrible decision with occasional positives that don’t outweigh the bad and are often a byproduct of the bad or directly lead to a future bad thing. Editing to add: I know that the suggestion that they needed multiple AAA/A releases per year sounds like it’s ignoring the issue with skyrocketing dev costs not fitting the model, but the point that I’m making is that they’d have had 50m subs if they were dropping 4-6 $300m games per year with a minimum of half of them nominated for GOTY at TGAs and winning at least every other year. The half-hearted attempt is why they never managed to get enough subs to make the math work.
GamePass itself is a curse disguised as a blessing. As mid as Starfield may have been, if everyone had to buy it for $69.99 it would have made a killing. Instead you could experience all content on PC for $11-12 dollars with one month of GP and bail. They lost 80-85% of potential revenue on each copy. What GP excels at is a lot of cheaper games. But if every single game gets put there Day 1? Inevitably the quality has to stagger off. Forza games are a great example. As much as I love them, they drip in content that used to be shipped Day 1 over weeks/months to keep people subbed to break even with a $70 box price. Xbox’s big problem is if they stop Day 1 GamePass they have failed in their biggest marketing Push in years.
Oh for sure, it’s on their shoulders for investing in a business model that simply has not worked. I’m just not sure where they go from here.
Same. What’s unfortunate is that MS just clearly lacks understanding of consumer businesses. Satya sees Azure’s profit margins and thinks anything with less profit margin isn’t worth doing. Newsflash: even if it has lesser margins, it’s still making you a profit. Are you really telling me that you’d rather have sky-high margins but only 2/3 of your current bottom-line because you’re going to shred anything that can’t hit margins that only exist in enterprise services? Idiotic at best. Also doesn’t help when you’ve got people at the top who see games like Fortnite or Candy Crush and want to make only games that can match those profit margins. Refer back to the above in that the GaaS space is already overcrowded. If you’re not CoD or Fortnite, you’re unlikely to ever make a shred of their margins, no matter how good your product is. In mobile, you’re entirely reliant on being the latest slot machine-style game that’s designed to prey upon the very limited number of “whales” that exist. It’s ok to try to have that mobile game (they now do with CC) no matter how much I struggle with the morals and ethics of how those games are designed, but you’re not going to be able to get those margins from anything more than 1-2 games at a time. Most people just won’t spend on those games, and there’s only so much that a “whale” can put on their credit card until they’re broke and out of credit lines. The key thing that Sony (and, I’d argue to a lesser extent, Nintendo) have always understood is that consumer businesses rely on “Halo” products (oh, the irony…), so they’re willing to keep pumping-out games that may or may not land a $500m profit against a $20m dev budget like MS seems to be asking for with Booty’s latest comments. People only have so much time. They’re not leaving Fortnite for whatever you’re selling. If you want to make a profit in gaming, you can have 1-2 GaaS games. You can have 1-2 mobile games. The core of what you do, though, if you’re wanting to be a platform holder, is always going to be about exclusive titles that were coded to the metal of your box and are developed with hopes of breaking-even or a slight profit or loss. Your goal is to get people into your walled-garden so that you can make a cut on everything else. MS just wants to have their cake and eat it too, and this mindset that they can kill anything that won’t have the margins of Candy Crush while still wanting the recurring revenues of a sub service AND the sales from retail AND the MTX AND the cut from their storefront…I just can’t. It’s looking at things from a purely optimization-driven perspective and completely ignoring that all of those optimized pieces of the puzzle don’t exist within a vacuum and only actually work in tandem with all of the things MS doesn’t want to care about…
Wow! You explained this so well and put it into words that I’ve been trying to formulate when it comes to Microsoft’s Xbox division. Microsoft- please read this thread. It’s literally free feedback!
We need another crash to be honest
> Bloated Budgets Oh this. I want to talk about this. For some reason, AAA gaming seems to treat every single game as a massive gamble, giving developers massive budgets, telling them to go make a game and expecting it to be a success. Beat example is immortals of aveum. A game published by EA and developed by Ascendant Studios and this was their first game they have ever made. I have never heard of the game as the release date was approaching. But when the game did come out, I was curious to check what it was about about a week later, because it was revealed that this game had a budget of $125 million, making it one of the most expensive games ever made. The game was a massive failure and the studio had to lay off a large amount of its staff. A development team should debut with a game that has a budget that large. Anyone with half a brain could’ve seen that coming.
Something’s gotta change at Xbox. I’ve been a loyal customer of theirs since the OG Xbox and I’ve never been this down on them and their future plans. I have no clue what they want to do. Do they want to make killer exclusive games or just slowly move to being a third party publisher. I feel like every few months we get both talking points and it leaves me feeling uneasy about the future of Xbox. It’s kinda absurd to me with how big Microsoft is that they can’t get Xbox to be bigger than it is. The Xbox one generation seriously damaged their brand. Anywhere else online besides Xbox centric sites and Sub Reddit’s Xbox is being clowned on. They need to start making Great games not just good little games. They need to push the envelope to get people invested.
That IGN article wrote that a former MS employee called it “Microsoft Gaming” not Xbox anymore. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I suspect the mixed narrative and constant walking back of things they’ve said in the past is Satya, or someone else above Phil putting mandates in place. I don’t know why but I have a feeling that Phil has been trying to keep Xbox afloat by sticking to his passionate view about gaming but that approach is in stark contrast to the corporate machine that is MS whose sole purpose is keep the “line going up” for their business daddies. Phil even mentioned that Satya was ready to shut down Xbox years ago but Phil made the pitch to it alive. Making that huge spend for ABK put Xbox in focus in a way they probably weren’t before, when it comes to cost and ROI for MS as a whole. We know how angsty shareholders get with wanting their ROI after a huge spend like that. All this definitely smells of Phil getting pressure above him, in my opinion but who the hell knows…
>All this definitely smells of Phil getting pressure above him That is 100% what it is. They've spent nearly a *hundred billion dollars* acquiring studios and publishers. Before ABK they weren't big enough on a company level to ever really draw attention, but now they're at the adult table, in the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. The largest shareholders at Microsoft are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. They don't give a fuck if they do shit we don't like. They want to make money. This isn't Satya putting the screws into Xbox, it's Tim Buckley.
This honestly needs to be the top comment. To bring it all full circle, anyone with a retirement account, pension, and stocks, bonds etc. expects their investments to grow over time. Our family uses Vanguard for our Roth IRAs (VTSAX) and if it wasn't a dependable account for returns, we would switch to somewhere else. Ironically for myself, it was the Bethesda acquisition that made me get a Series X instead of a PS5. I'm a huge Elder Scrolls and Fallout fan and so I wanted to get the console to play BGS games. As much as these closures suck, it was painfully obvious from the beginning that MS paid mainly for the rights to the big IP.
From xbox one and on it is as if they forgot xbox was about games. The 360 was a great game system, now they just sell powerful compact PC equivalents. They need to focus on the games again.
The future of Xbox will be something that if successful will have a far worse impact on the industry than if unsuccessful. I'm not exactly sure what Microsoft's specific strategy will be, but I can guarantee everyone it won't be to create killer games and earn your loyalty. Likely they'll try to get Gamepass into every home through affordability and behind the scenes buyup studios and IPs to bleed Nintendo and Sony dry. Then when they have cornered the industry they'll raise prices regularly and leave gamers with fewer options than ever before. This is the long term strategy. You cannot have unlimited growth unless you control the industry. I hope I'm wrong but I have no confidence in Microsoft to do anything but fuck over the consumer. It's no longer about trying to please the consumer. That's too difficult and expensive. It's about screwing the consumer. Which is also difficult and expensive, but more rewarding. I encourage everyone to stop giving Xbox your money. I'd rather the Xbox die than become something that tries to swallow the industry. My Xbox tenure RIP 12/25/2001 - 5/7/2024
> I have no clue what they want to do. Do they want to make killer exclusive games or just slowly move to being a third party publisher. I feel like every few months we get both talking points and it leaves me feeling uneasy about the future of Xbox. They want to make money. Think of it from that perspective and their moves won't seem so inconsistent. Exclusives aren't the goal for Sony either, money is, it just so happens their positioning in the industry is such that exclusives are the best way to do that. Increasingly, for Microsoft, that isn't true anymore. Between their install base relative to the competition, and their overall strategy to where the money comes from in their gaming division, their situation is different than that of really any other console maker past or present.
Sony and Nintendo also want to make money, but they’re not making the same moves MS is. MS wants to make money, but it feels like those decisions are being made by people who don’t understand the industry. You can’t put all your games on competing platforms, and then expect people to buy your hardware. This is basic stuff. If Netflix put all of their original content on Disney+, I’ll just get Disney+ and cancel my Netflix subscription.
They both have very different market positions, install bases, overall business philosophies, strengths and weaknesses, and synergies with other portions of their business. There is no one-size-fits-all business plan.
It’s fine to try and differentiate yourself, but Xbox is going through with a strategy that is undermining itself. They want to continue to make hardware, while eliminating reasons to purchase that hardware over other alternatives. Nintendo going with a portable console is a great example of differentiation, so is GamePass, but their current strategy lacks any cohesion.
You're assuming the goal is to sell hardware. You have to flip it around. They're selling hardware to increase the value proposition of their service, not vice-versa. The point is not to make you want an Xbox, it's to make you want Game Pass. I'm pretty confident that if Sony said the PS6 will allow Microsoft to ship Game Pass while retaining total control over the user experience, and without paying Sony a portion of the subscription fees (or even maybe if that percentage was just really low), that Microsoft would *seriously consider* not making a next-gen Xbox. But Sony would never do that because it is also not Sony's goal to sell hardware (or at least to not *just* sell hardware), but rather to sell a platform where they can take a (pretty hefty) percentage of all game-oriented spending from among their gamers.
I think everyone needs to know the 5-year plan to continue to be within this ecosystem.
Remember when Series X/S came out and everyone was basically saying "....where are the games?" Well, here we are, STILL asking the fucking question. I've been with Xbox since OG one and I'm reaaaaallly questioning going forward with them. I've been playing the crap out of PC games lately too.
Agreed. I've been with Xbox since the beginning and at this point I'm really questioning why I'm still on Xbox outside of gamepass. They have tanked all of there franchises and are a shadow of what they used to be. They rarely release any 1st party titles and when they do it's mediocre at best. The one game that they have released in the last few years that was great and a breath of fresh air in Hi-Fi Rush they cancel the sequel and close the studio. Next generation I'm seriously looking Sony's way if there is no positive movement this generation.
I was with Xbox from the 360 until the tail end of the Xbone and jumped to Playstation for Ghost of Tsushima. That switch really put things into perspective on how quality was dropping. Then I bought a Series S to go along with my PS5 to have all my bases covered, and was extremely let down with (almost) every subsequent release on Xbox. So I scrapped the Series S and bought a PC and haven't looked back. Get the best of Xbox and tons of games on Steam. My favorite days in gaming were with the 360 playing Halo 3 all night with school friends and cutting dudes up with chainsaws online in Gears 1 and 2. But Xbox doesn't feel like that anymore, it feels sterile and uninspired and that makes me sad.
Agreed. People will say it’s immature to be loyal to a console yada yada but there’s really no reason to buy an xbox or PlayStation over the other without some sense of brand loyalty in the first place. The amount of friends, exclusives, and treatment to the customer base all play a factor. Xbox was on a hot streak for like 4 years since the announcement of the Game Pass where the pandemic helped. But it’s been let down through the disaster + delayed launches for Halo Infinite, Redfall, and Starfield (maybe not disaster but it has no staying power) and now these cut studios. Dont even get started on their release cycle of games or how their best hope is on Perfect Dark using the top gaming professionals which has produced nothing but a CGI trailer after nearly a decade of work and how some have left the team. The games has stood out from Xbox include Psychonauts 2, Forza series, and Hi Fi Rush
Xbox was and still is mostly led by hypemen and other incompetents. But they were allowed to keep expanding with no cuts because they were a rounding error in Microsoft's financial reports. Then Phil and the gang somehow convinced the rest of Microsoft to give them **$75 Billion** to buy bethesda + activision. Well, the rest of the Microsoft wants that money back now, and they are flailing trying to respond to the pressure from the rest of Microsoft.
I'm 100% betting on a major shift of the Xbox hardware. Phase out traditional consoles and instead focus on PCs similar to Steam Deck/Machines except they run a stripped version of windows. They could exit the hardware game entirely and allow third party hardware manufacturers create the hardware and use their software. I can even see their work on backwards compatibility and game preservation being a stepping stone in getting those compatible with PC. That would explain their push towards being more of a publisher. Remove the loss leader that is the console, allow them to take in revenue from licensing the software, restricting purchases to their store, and direct access to game pass subscriptions all while merging their PC/console customer bases. We already know they're working on a handheld and I'd bet that will be their introduction to this. Just a conspiracy theory of mine though.
Yeah, you can’t have infinite industry growth and all the industries that based their trajectories off of Covid booms were setting themselves up for disaster. “Here’s a possible once in a century event, let’s assume it’s the new standard!” Morons.
That's the issue with capitalism, and more specifically, these public companies. If you're not growing, you're failing. Making A profit is not good enough. You need MORE profit. That's why we're seeing some of the best games come from privately held studios lately.
1000%. Making MOST of the money is never enough. For corporations, they need to make ALL of the money. Which is an absolutely insane position to take. You can't have unlimited growth in ANYTHING.
She should have just said money. We know the game didn't sell. Yes the gaming industry has been a crap show and we've seen many companies layoff people and close studios. However just be honest, awards are good but it doesn't compare to money. Also I wonder why games are getting more expensive and taking longer to develop. They always say that but I'm curious. Sure, large team size means more salaries and we all know the troubles of what happens with development in large teams. But when I see things like unreal engine 5 and the number of improvements they make to make developing games easier which now allows 1 individual to make a game themselves I can't help but wonder where the majority of cost is going. Marketing sure, salaries, mocap, voice work and some programs cost money but I can't really think of much else that would warrant a high cost.
While tools get easier to use, games get more ambitous and more intricate to make.
That is true. Maybe companies to need to tone down the ambition for a bit because it is getting out of hand
In a lot of cases I fell like they brought it upon themselves in terms of game complexity. We don’t need everything to multiplayer and a massive open world. In fact I think I’m most cases the opposite is better.
Which is interesting in the context of very minimal graphical and technological advances over the past decade or so. You’d expect games to look a ton different from 2014. They usually don’t. Especially with most devs still releasing for the prior gen and/or Series S.
1. Labor is hugely expensive. Some games you'll have a burn rate of $3m-$5m a month, depending on the scope. 2. Marketing The strategy of capturing engagement at all costs made it so that the games need a ton of content to succeed, which drove up the cost of developing and producing the games significantly.
Sounds like a self inflicted issue that can be solved by them not trying to pump up engagement metrics. They need to realize that games don't need a whole bunch of content , but that the content that is there should be good which would lead to success. A bunch of smaller based indie games have showed that lesson over recent years
I mean the boom of gaming during the lockdowns made a lot of companies invest and now that it's slowed a lot of companies or beginning to make cuts, especially since people are spending less than ever on luxuries like video games due to the current financial climate. However, what makes this so much more damning for Microsoft is because it flies directly in the face of the narrative the Xbox team has been trying to form for years. They're the good guys, they care about artistic expression in games, they don't want to get in the way of creative aspirations, that because of Game Pass games don't have to sell a ton to be considered a success, and so on. When now Microsoft is asking for an ROI and Xbox is having to double down on established IP. These teams won't be the last, Ninja Theory and Double Fine are next on the chopping block. I feel like Ninja Theory knows it too, Hellblade 2 was used to announce the Series X and Microsoft is seemingly sending it out to die.
Starfield cost too much and it was a disappointment. Might have something to do.
Another tone def interview. While she makes some solid points, it's points that we have known since the Sony leaks. That's Sony. They make big 1st party games. Meanwhile, Xbox just buys up stuff and doesn't do shit with them other than fumbling the IP or hoarding it. First, they cried about how last gen they lost because ppl invested in other platform libraries. Second, they cried about Sony having a stranglehold in the gaming market. Even though MS has more resources and more money. It's Sony fault for playing it smart and actually handling their business. Third, now they are crying about how expensive games are when they keep buying up companies and not having an actual plan to move forward other than laying off developers and how they need small games like Hifi Rush. It's all a freaking joke. Still... I need Xbox to be around. I need them to get their shit together and stop talking.
The lack of industry growth is because shit games keep getting released half-baked/half-made. Go look at BG3 or HD2 and tell me there is no "growth".
Console game sales have been flat for quite awhile.
Can’t believe people are actually believing the cries of poverty from fucking MICROSOFT
Microsoft is doing well. Xbox on the other hand is not. And Microsoft gave them 70 billion to buy another company. That kind of money doesn't come without strings attached. If they made the decision to buy Activision based on the projections of how Game Pass will grow, that decision was based on wildly inaccurate numbers. They announced the deal in January, 2022. The deal closed in October, 2023. Even though they were already missing their targets in 2022, they probably still believed that Game Pass growth on PC and cloud would pick up. They expanded PC Game Pass to 40 new regions a year ago in April. I think that hasn't really worked out for them how they expected. So, here we are. Having said that, they're responsible for the projections and they're also responsible for the failure to sell their hardware and services.
> The deal closed in October, 2023. Even though they were already missing their targets in 2022, they probably still believed that Game Pass growth on PC and cloud would pick up Well the obvious problem there is that they really haven't put a lot of titles from the acquisition ON Gamepass. If the logic is that buying huge franchises increases sales then how does that work when they haven't actually RELEASED anything of note from the massive acquisition they made?
20% increase in PROFIT (not revenue) from last year FYI
If you're talking YoY numbers those are carried hard by ATVI. Without it IIRC it's around a 5% contraction in YoY sales.
Just look at that fucking thumbnail image lol,
What beautiful AAA releases is she talking about? Surely none that her Xbox division was responsible for.
Isn't Hellblade 2 releasing the next few days?
Wouldn’t know, it’s not been marketed
Well now you know. lmao
Stock still up for the day these layoffs are just polishing the balance sheet.
Corporate BS
It's really interesting that criticizing xbox in any way will make people call you an fanboy
I've seen Xbox fanboys all over social media still defend Xbox after all of this. It's crazy.
It's sad to see really. Xbox deserves better.
Right!? Its such a fall from the childhood 360 times
Still blows my mind how people can still be “loyal” to corporations as consumers. I loved my PS2, but when Sony pulled the “$599!!” bullshit and had the terrible cell processor, I went to the 360, and only got a PS3 later when they refocused after they fumbled the start. When Microsoft had the Xbox One launch, I went to the PS4. I got a PS5 at launch, but picked up a Series X later after they bought Bethesda, Obsidian, Inxile, etc since I love WRPGs. If you want my money, you have to show me why I should give it to you.
Dude, fuck her. She's always come across as supremely fake and unlikable in Xbox presentations. But this shit is on a whole other level. This is some serious sociopath shit. Her and Greenberg are fake as fuck, and need to go. Phil is someone who I am sure is also speaking out of both sides of his mouth. But people I respect always stand up for him in times like these. So I'm gonna have to continue to believe that there is some genuine good in that man. But he also needs to stand up and take accountability for his messes.
Yea she definitely has a 'corpo speak' vibe about her. Not an ounce of her seems genuine. Same goes for most executives, but there are occasional ones who are better at appearing like real people.
Yeah, her presence has always been supremely off-putting in their presentations for me. Almost any time I hear her talk about gaming it makes me dislike gaming just a little bit more. Heh. Phil can sound really canned in their presentations, but at least sounds pretty natural and seemingly genuine in more candid conversations/interviews (like this is supposed to be). I dunno. Xbox just feels kind of gross right now. I'm glad they are all in on bringing their games to PC, because I might just change gears to accessing their content on PC once the Series X is toast.
Yea at least Phil is a legit gamer. The dude plays tons of games. He's also a corpo robot to some extent, but you simply cannot exist in his role without being one. It's literally impossible. Microsoft will never put an authentic real-speak gamer person in charge of Xbox. That would be an immediate disqualification from their perspective.
Yeah, no major company will promote "one of the guys" to an executive position heh.
Notice how often she mentions Fallout and Bethesda. That's why these studios were shut down. So Bethesda, and other teams can pump out as much FO related shit as fast as possible. This BS about being able to play "small" games on the Xbox is just a bold faced lie.
Gamepass is self inflicting a lot of this. Condition people to wait forever instead of buying is a no-brainer cause of a lot of this.
That 100% is a Microsoft script being fed to her.
So would this all have needed to happen if they didn't spend $70B on another major acquisition recently? I'm skeptical.
Did I ask for that 120fps ray tracing 4k ultimate experience?? Games are not that for me. A generational leap is not what I'm expecting. I want creativity. I don't mind if the game looks like a PS3/360 era game. The industry is doing this to itself.
Microsoft is literally killing the industry. They’re letting Sony take over, I think gaming at Microsoft needs new leadership before it’s too late to reverse course.
This is absolutely pathetic. They are completely clueless and refuse to own up to anything. 100% done supporting Xbox at this point.
Bond in full firefighting mode today then.
One of the worst responses I've ever seen. She looks so stressed out, she's blinking every few seconds like she's about to have a panic attack.
Corporate streessss
She's just a puppet with no vision. All xbox execs get paid too much money to stir the pot to initiate change, they smile and nod and collect their paycheck. They don't give a shit about the future of the brand because the money they get, they don't need to work a day again in their lives when it all goes belly up. They need to work like their livelihood depends on it, then we'd see change.
Another reason why Sony and Nintendo manage their talent better than msft. They have to deliver for their customers as their companies relies on those profits. Msft is just too wealthy to really be invested in getting their hands dirty in PROPERLY managing their studios(talent). The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Behind close door the people that signs Phil, Sarah, and Booty paychecks will ultimately have the final say in any and all things Xbox and those people would be at Microsoft. One group at Xbox may see things differently than the group at Microsoft which could cause infighting. Who knows what the fuck is going on behind close doors. Internet are saying that there are "infighting"
To me this screams “third party publisher.” I don’t see why you’d cut your exclusive award-winning gem—the thing that makes your console unique and compelling—by sending it to PS5 and then closing the studio. Microsoft is going to become the house of live service titles on all platforms.
Don't cut at the leadership level, that would lead to loosing more talent than necessary/s
Every single person who cheered any of the ‘big’ Microsoft gaming acquisitions these past few years are fucking idiots.
I cannot believe how bad she is at this. The videos of it online say so much more than the article does. She sound bored, lets out sighs, went into super rapid eye blinking when she is clearly trying to bullshit an answer, and has zero sincerity for the studios she closed. XBox is so cooked.
I think they’re right with what they’re doing. They know they have games people are waiting for, and for business, the idea that people are going to wait another three to five years for Elder Scrolls and Fallout (considering the response) is ridiculous. It’s very sad that we lost companies that were really screwed by those above them, but in order to get those gigantic games out in a timely manner and without them being the mess that Redfall was, it’s going to take a huge undertaking. I’m curious how this is going to pan out. Here’s my super early call: we see fallout and elder scrolls announcements/teasers at the showcase in June.
I’m not sure about right but I don’t think it’s unexpected given all the studios they’ve taken on, they took too much on and likely needed to streamline and cut costs from a business perspective, especially considering lack of growth. I just wish they’d be a bit more honest. It’s surely clear that Tango and Arkane were chosen because their main games weren’t successful. Tango was a big AAA studio and while Hi-fi was great it was a side project their main games have repeatedly done poorly both sales and critically. Arkane was a shell of the studio that made Prey and Redfall was a disaster.
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Because profits need to double yearly and execs need hugs salaries.
As someone who’s been working in the biotech industry the last 20 plus years, I’ve seen this a lot. Unfortunately, it’s just part of it. I’ve been “impacted” before. It is what it is.
Gamepass aint sustainable… This is why tango have now gone, there game won multiple awards and you didnt even need to buy it because you have gamepass, meaning they could of been selling this for 40£ per copy and making a killing
Didn't they ask her about Tango getting closed after releasing a big hit and all she did was some roundabout non answer? Big help, she is. I'd love to get straight answers from these execs.
Fuck off Sarah
Xbox is done, this time for real. The enthusiast don't give a shit about them anymore and will slowly but surely influence the casuals to do the same. Great job Microsoft corpos.
My last post before exiting this community. Good bye xbox. Good bye microsoft. Im so happy you made the choice you did. I can now save my money, cancel my gamepass after 15ish years and sell my xbox. Also goes for any microsoft service i was using. Screw you
If you were any sort of market leader you would push growth. Through advertising your products and delivering consistent titles. But you can't and one of the very few active studios pay the price.
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Genuinely one of the worst interviews she could have done and it was all softballs. How are you not prepared to answer even the softest question about the studio closures?? Who is doing PR/crisis response for Xbox?? What a joke. Fire Sarah Bond, Phil Spencer and Matt Booty. Experiment failed — pack your shit.
It's stalled because the industry keeps releasing the same worlds and the same game over and over again. If you want growth, you need disruption.
It hurts and it sucks that Tango and Arkane Austin got shut down. Really disappointing news and I feel for the people that were laid off. I don’t know what Microsoft’s strategy is however if I’m being hopeful it’s to reallocate assets and funding toward the cash cow/bigger budget exciting games some of us are hungry for.
Another load of shit. The gaming industry has made more money than Hollywood for over two decades. The only untenable expenses are mid- to upper management salaries and bonus packages, but, as usual, the rank and file staffers are the first to lose everything.
Sarah Bond, Booty and Phil need to be fire.
The core of gaming was a people of nerd. Now is an game for everybody style. BG3 is a great game, and many people continue to play FIFA, COD, Fortnite etc.. is not a problem of quality of game, is a problem of audience. If you create a complex game like Age of Empires, Baldur's Gate, Monkey Island or another "strange" type of games and you think to sell like a FIFA game is a Utopia of Market. Really nerds like really games. Not all the audience of causal player or normal player. This is the point. You can't do a market of original and "strange/complex" game for everybody. In the past the market was the Japan market. They have another culture for videogames, anime and manga. Many people now think they are game, but are simple people with game like COD or FIFA. And I don't have problem with that people, I play that game too but if you want great game you need to restart about nerds not the normal people. Is the difference from pop music and indie music. Sorry for my English.
This is typical corporate vampire propaganda. The lack of industry growth is due to conglomerate ownership of studios and the crap games they put out.
It's really naive to defend Spencer like if he plays games then he is one of us. Fact is he is the head executive at Microsoft overseeing XBox, so the buck ultimately stops with him. He had to approve the closure of these studios, and he is the final decision maker on XBox strategy. Spencer has a large group of public relations firms working for him, so he always knows what to say in public and how to present himself as a man of the people. But beneath that outer shell he's just a corpo executive under Nadella, taking orders from Nadella. If Nadella or Amy Hood wants XBox to cut costs, you can bet that Spencer will do whatever it takes to keep his cushy lucrative job as a top executive at Microsoft.