Xbox : What should MS do next? *spawn

[Silent_Buddha]

There was no paradigm shift that benefited Apple, Sony or Samsung over any of their competitors. They made products that appealed to consumers more than the competition. CD was everywhere it wasn't some cornerstone technology that only benefited PlayStation, there was SEGA CD three years before PlayStation even launched.

There were huge paradigm shifts in all of those cases. For Apple, it was in how music was being consumed. Digital music was being sold years before Apple entered the market. But no one was able to capitalize on it because the established players were ignoring it (Toshiba) or not committed to it and fumbling around (Sony) while the other non-music player makers (like Creative Labs} couldn't figure out a way to sell their devices to non-PC consumers.

CD was everywhere yes. But CD as a game distribution medium was largely ignored, so there wasn't a market shift to optical distribution of games until the PSX launched which shifted the paradigm of how consoles needed to be designed in order to be successful. When Nintendo chose not to follow suit with the N64 (2 years after PSX), they basically game the market to Sony. Similar to how the 2D accelerated graphics hardware makers lost relevance in the face of 3D accelerated graphics hardware makers. They failed to transition along with the shift in the market.

Huh? Samsung went from a company that produced cheap and nasty products to a company that focussed on good quality products. The high-end TV market used to be owned by Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba and Samsung hugely disrupted that. It wasn't new technology it was just making more appealing products and selling them at good prices.

Your assertion is that someone could come out of nowhere and release a competitive 3D hardware accelerator to Nvidia. That is not at all the same as Samsung entering western markets. Samsung was a well established TV maker prior to enter Western markets. Their TVs weren't crap, they just weren't widely available in Western markets prior to the advent of LCD TVs. However, their CRT based monitors were somewhat available and were some of the best monitors you could buy. Based off the technology and designs they were using for their consumer Televisions.

So, no, not at all similar or relevant to your assertion that someone could upset the current 3D hardware accelerator market. There is no-one currently making top quality or near top quality hardware accelerators that is unknown in the Western markets. Nothing like Samsung with TVs, or Sony with TVs (70's-80's), or the Japanese auto makers when they entered the US market, etc.

So the record labels were selling their music digitally before Apple? I don't recall that. That was the disruption, forcing the music industry to sell music to consumers in a way many consumers wanted.

Yes, I had a digital music player and was buying digital music years before Apple entered the market with the iPod. Sony had digital music players and was selling digital music at least 1-2 years prior to the iPod, for example. Their hardware was fantastic, but the UI sucked. And their stubborn adherence to the proprietary Memory Stick after SD cards were introduced to the market combined with Apple entering the market with the iPod doomed their digital music business.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

In addition to Like we dearly need a WTF! button

And a Facepalm rating.
And Disagree.
And I Call Bullshit

I can suggest some icons for those from my other site.

EDIT: Here's they are...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

There were huge paradigm shifts in all of those cases. For Apple, it was in how music was being consumed. Digital music was being sold years before Apple entered the market. But no one was able to capitalize on it because the established players were ignoring it (Toshiba) or not committed to it and fumbling around (Sony) while the other non-music player makers (like Creative Labs} couldn't figure out a way to sell their devices to non-PC consumers.

I'm not seeing the paradigm shift you refer too. Music had been portable a long time before the iPod and portable digital music was around a long time before the iPod (tapes, CDs and DMPs). Who was selling wholesale music successfully before Apple? I had a Diamond Rio (I still have it) and could not buy any musically digitally here in the UK so all my music was converted from CD. But you're talking about players, I'm talking about Apple changing the music industry.

CD was everywhere yes. But CD as a game distribution medium was largely ignored, so there wasn't a market shift to optical distribution of games until the PSX launched which shifted the paradigm of how consoles needed to be designed in order to be successful.

PC games on CD-ROM pre-dated the PlayStation by a few years and CD didn't advantage Sony more than anybody anybody else, SEGA had CD in the Saturn. Bloody hell, Commodore had CD in some of their products and they went bankrupt 8 years before the PlayStation launched.

That is not at all the same as Samsung entering western markets. Samsung was a well established TV maker prior to enter Western markets. Their TVs weren't crap, they just weren't widely available in Western markets prior to the advent of LCD TVs.

Samsung was in many Western markets in the 1960s. I don't know which Western markets they were absent from until LCD but Samsung TVs were indeed widely available from the 1970s onwards.

So, no, not at all similar or relevant to your assertion that someone could upset the current 3D hardware accelerator market. There is no-one currently making top quality or near top quality hardware accelerators that is unknown in the Western markets. Nothing like Samsung with TVs, or Sony with TVs (70's-80's), or the Japanese auto makers when they entered the US market, etc.

Again, you're perception is that Samsung was sitting out the West and just came in. Samsung have been present in many Western markets for many decades.

As I said before, rasterised graphics is way long in the tooth and the time it ripe for something new to alleviate the current engineering problems that make increasing performance marginal other than going smaller (new processes) and larger (more transistors). Change is an opportunity.

 

[zed]

The next year is any year the decisive one.
Is like ubuntu, is from 2006 that next year will be the linux's year.

Dude perhaps you don't realize but that meme(*) has long been realized, as MS have admitted last year they only have 14% of the OS marketshare, the number #1 worldwide is android (which is based on linux), Whilst it may of been true in 2006, it is not true today and prolly not true even 5 years ago

(*)meme is not the right word, saying? no, whats the word I need here?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Bloody hell, Commodore had CD in some of their products and they went bankrupt 8 years before the PlayStation launched.

Excuse me? Are you saying Commodore went bankrupt in 1986?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Excuse me? Are you saying Commodore went bankrupt in 1986?

My bad, I don't know why I thought that. My brain is compressing memory from that period. Commodore's CDTV and Philips CD-i both predated PlayStation by 3 years and some PC games were shipping on CD (in addition to 3.5" floppy) too. You can't hang PlayStations disruption on CD, CD had been done a bunch by that time. PlayStation disrupted because the 3D tech was decent for the time, it was cheap, it was very easy to develop for and Sony were a very flexible publisher.

Commodore were probably intellectually bankrupt in 1986 though! Remember AAA and Hombre? Of course not, they didn't pursue those chipset designs

 

[Persistantthug]

I've only read 2 pages of this, but I'm trying to figure out why this topic was dumped in the console section.

 

[BRiT]

I've only read 2 pages of this, but I'm trying to figure out why this topic was dumped in the console section.

Uhm Cause its asking what MS should do next in the console area.

Or do you mean the talk about disruptive technology?

 

[Jwm]

That's way too early. This time around 4 years isn't enough for a significantly better hardware, they'd be shooting themselves in the other foot.

Not to mention the power needed for some of the new upper end GPU's would be a bit wasteful to many, I can't imagine mobile versions of these chips anytime soon that would be worth it.

I am in the camp of wanting to see new hardware, but that is just because I like to see new hardware and take it apart. /evil grin

 

[iroboto]

The next Xbox could very well be a derivative of Surface Book. uhh err.... yea
It's perfect candidate for explicit multi-adaptor. I mean if I were part of the R&D group, this would be an area of focus for me, especially if power requirements are important.

 

[iroboto]

I'm assuming that the XB1 is the last piece of console hardware (at least as we currently think of it) that MS will ship. "Next Gen" (and I think even before this gen ends), Xbox will completely be a service. So this change in reporting allows MS to show their investors a wonderful profit curve. Right now, that curve is either shallow or possible upside down, because the costs of hardware are included in the cost per subscriber. As Xbox moves to a service and the hardware costs are removed from the equation that curve will fatten (or reverse itself).

Yes. Concerning strategy for XBox, one should consider this as a very high possibility. If you chart all the rumours and moves, visually one would likely see a trend.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

So you guys believe that Xbox won't have further console releases and will instead become a service for PC?

It sounds like you're suggesting every current Xbox owner will simply become a PC gamer and retain their subscription there. Or am I completely missing the point?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

XB console will just be a MS PC, maybe with a simplified front end. It won't play XB specific titles but Windows titles. Console buyers will be unaware of the difference under the hood. they'll just know the MS box plays their favourite games, and these games can also run on other devices. And if they connect a keyboard to it, they can also use Office should they really want. A good sell for kids as a computer as well as a console (even if never used as such!).

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

So you guys believe that Xbox won't have further console releases and will instead become a service for PC?

It sounds like you're suggesting every current Xbox owner will simply become a PC gamer and retain their subscription there. Or am I completely missing the point?

Pretty much. The Xbox will become what the Steam Box is envisioned to be. Any W10 PC will be an Xbox, but I'm also pretty sure 3rd parties and maybe even MS will sell "Xboxes" to fill the market segment for people who just want to be able to "plug and play".

Games aren't made to sell consoles. Consoles are made to sell games. If you can sell those games without the costs of producing consoles, why would you?

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Depends on whether you believe all those console gamers want to transition to PC. I wouldn't want to.

I'd be very disappointed if there was not another Xbox.

 

[iroboto]

So you guys believe that Xbox won't have further console releases and will instead become a service for PC?

It sounds like you're suggesting every current Xbox owner will simply become a PC gamer and retain their subscription there. Or am I completely missing the point?

For me: if has been answered. It is now a question of how and when.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

"How" is obviously their biggest issue. They could essentially be giving the market back to Sony/Nintendo by unintentionally giving the consumers something they don't want.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Depends on whether you believe all those console gamers want to transition to PC. I wouldn't want to.

Why not? The PC front can be hidden behind a console front. What's wrong with that? Buying a console now is basically buying a PC in terms of hardware. The difference is the software. Remove the Windows interface and replace it with a console like interface, and with DX12 and the future allowing low-level access to the hardware reducing the waste, you have a console in pretty much every way only with full PC compatibility built in.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

"How" is obviously their biggest issue. They could essentially be giving the market back to Sony/Nintendo by unintentionally giving the consumers something they don't want.

I think you're missing the point. The point is that if MS pulls this off, there won't be a console industry. They aren't giving the market to Sony/Nintendo, they are destroying the market entirely. If all you need is a controller and a game license to play your game and you can then play that game on any W10 system, nobody will spend $499 or $399 or even $199 for a dedicated piece of hardware tech that is 3 years out of date when it makes it to market.

This is also the reason that MS has invested so heavily (and overmarketed originally, but it's clearly the path envisioned) in Azure for gaming. If those W10 systems can offload computational requirements to the cloud, the performance ceiling is exponentially greater than anything that Nintendo or Sony could provide in a locked down piece of hardware.

Think about the scenario where Sony is trying to launch the PS5 and they are competing against Xbox as a service that is available on any W10 device and is leveraging cloud computational abilities that can steadily and frequently be upgraded. Think about the cost of entry barrier, where for the PS5 it will $500-$600 while for the Xbox as a service it would only be the price of a game and controller.

The console industry would be relegated only to those who don't have online or acceptable online access. Essentially, lower dollar value markets and would pretty much be eaten up by the handheld market.

Hi. Internet here. We've killed another industry, welcome to the future!

 

[Clukos]

What you are describing is a steam machine Shifty. There's already something like that on the market and people don't seem willing to buy that instead of consoles. These machines are running their own dedicated Steam OS which can play games just as easily as consoles and even support controllers.