Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion
- Thread starter iroboto
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Sounds to me like a form of gradual socialization, making some part of the internet used to the idea.
Honestly you could be right. MS can change to whatever strategy works. I just think Jez is following some information to make people used to the idea. Of course if say a game like Indiana Jones sells quite well on the SeriesX/S they may decide to make future titles exclusive or increase the their timed exclusivity.
That comment was before the other one, which I will repeat that what he tweets is speculation, everything is unless it's written as a news article.
I largely suspect they are gathering data.
Ie:
What happens to GP subs and sales when we release as exclusive
What happens to GP subs and sales for timed exclusivity.
What happens to GP subs and sales for same day release.
When they have enough of this data, they’ll move to maximize. But it will take them a while to build that up into something useful. So I’m think we’re going to see a lot of everything the next while before they settle on a particular strategy.
Interestingly, nothing has been announced about the new consoles, although in the spring they said that they would start talking about it in December 2024.
Another point of interest is the amount of Xbox availability worldwide, because the Series X is practically not available in Europe at the moment. A small shipment of the new driveless Series X arrived at Amazon at the end of November, but people quickly snapped it up. And based on the feedback I know, there would be a lot of demand for this console. In the meantime, it can be found in Walmart stores everywhere in the US and is a bestseller. It's as if they underestimated the expected demand and now they want to serve the domestic market because of the holiday season. Hmm...
Another point of interest is the amount of Xbox availability worldwide, because the Series X is practically not available in Europe at the moment. A small shipment of the new driveless Series X arrived at Amazon at the end of November, but people quickly snapped it up. And based on the feedback I know, there would be a lot of demand for this console. In the meantime, it can be found in Walmart stores everywhere in the US and is a bestseller. It's as if they underestimated the expected demand and now they want to serve the domestic market because of the holiday season. Hmm...
This is a very nonsensical point of view from you. But a traditional console hardware really wouldn't make much sense. It is much more likely that they will actually come up with consoled PC hardware that runs PC games. However, they can do this in a year or two.
There is nothing non sensical about a discussion of price points. The console price point is a fraction of PC price points of which they already leverage.
In order for a mainstream device like a console to even compete with PC it needs a lower level of hardware abstraction to get more efficiency out of the hardware, thus reducing the cost of the hardware but putting the responsibility of performance in the developers hands.
If it’s just about building a PC in a console form factor, you can buy those already, there is no value in building a console that does that.
For there to be a significant jump in performance, say 2x what we have today, and be approximately the same price points will take years.
You can already look at 5pro that has accomplished little in terms of raw power. Not long ago our posters here were concerned about XBO games starting out at 720p, Series S consoles hanging below 1080p.
now we have mid Gen pro consoles operating at below 900p base resolution.
Buckle in for a very long generation. MS was very correct about their predictions here in terms of hardware costs.
arandomguy
Veteran
"Raw power" and "base resolution" though aren't the end all be all of the end user experience. Transistor scaling has slowed, so it's going to be more important on how we use those transistors then just throwing more "raw power" at it.
In practice current generation consoles missed on things like ML and RT. But this does mean they have quite a bit of low hanging fruit to take advantage of with the next gen. Adpotion of more novel rendering techniques in mass is also something the console platforms are better equipped to deal with.
There is quite a bit next gen consoles can leverage to look and play better than current gen consoles. We already see where they can go with PC hardware despite the more fragemented software support.
In practice current generation consoles missed on things like ML and RT. But this does mean they have quite a bit of low hanging fruit to take advantage of with the next gen. Adpotion of more novel rendering techniques in mass is also something the console platforms are better equipped to deal with.
There is quite a bit next gen consoles can leverage to look and play better than current gen consoles. We already see where they can go with PC hardware despite the more fragemented software support.
I know what's going on in the video game industry, so I also know that a hardware called a console in the traditional sense cannot be released at a low price in the next period. This is precisely why MS is expected to merge Xbox with PC. It is necessary to develop, and they must serve this development with new hardware.
The Xbox Series will be supported for years to come as a very significant Gamepass user base is on these machines. However, they talked about new hardware, which they will need in order to keep and develop this significant Games subscriber in the long term. That's why merging the console with the PC can be a good strategy.
This can also be done by selling these hardware at a minimal profit and launching these consoled PCs called Xbox in several price categories. For example, the entry level is $500 for 1080p users, the middle is $900 for 1440p users, and a high-end $1,500 hardware. If these consoles run PC versions of games, they have nothing to lose, regardless of how many people buy them. However, this strategy could work well with a unified Xbox App interface and also unified Gamepass subscription plans.
The precursor to everything
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/11/24318799/microsoft-xbox-app-new-games-homescreen
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/11/24318799/microsoft-xbox-app-new-games-homescreen
arandomguy
Veteran
From a business pespective what's going to be interesting is Steam's mindshare and engrained user base on Microsoft's strategy.
I'm wondering if Microsoft and others who feel this is the strategy might be under estimating just how engrained Steam is.
I'm wondering if Microsoft and others who feel this is the strategy might be under estimating just how engrained Steam is.
what he says isn't gospel, however Sarah Bond and Phil Spencer must take decisions that are tough to take.
Outer Worlds 2 is going to launch on PS5 too.
If they go 100% exclusives for the Xbox they still have the uphill battle of fixing the very bruised brand's perception, and the exclusives aren't any indicative nor a guarantee as of now that they are going to sell enough copies to make a profit.
If they go 100% multiplatform, which seems to be their strategy, they can sell more more than enough copies to make a profit, at the cost of Xbox hardware stopping to be something you need to play and enjoy those games, except if you are looking for the services, the MS environment, where having a closed piece of hardware optimised for that is good for certain consumers.
No, their strategy is on a case by case basis. Not 100% on anything. What is so difficult to understand about that?
Console PC hardware sounds good to a certain amount of people but for a software developer I dont think so. The most important thing would be the SDK developed for this. Devs are not too keen on what MS has offered especially with how it is on the other side. That will be one of their biggest challenges moving forward. But with a move to become a third party developer you wonder how much will be spent on this instead of a broad Microsoft GDK as well as supporting more profitable platforms such as Playstation and Nintendo. I think eventually this will be the direction. They put funding towards the GDK, make their own hardware very niche and as well ensure their dev studios produce titles that run and sell well on multiple platforms including Playstation and Nintendo
Yes this is something I've been thinking as well. If MS becomes a third party developer then this wont really be an issue. Steam will just take the place of Xbox.
I agree MS was right about the hardware costs but their implementation of releasing two different devices at the same time was an epic self evident blunder. I also agree this gen is going to last long. MS's FTC leaks showed 2028 as the year in which they expect to release new hardware. That means its when they expect a significant technological jump from today to build a cost effective system that developers can utilize to create new experiences that drive up business. MS releasing any new hardware before that would be another major blunder of implementation.
I'm not sure there was a better way to do it. If they only released S, they would have had a cheaper, digital only console compared to PS5, but it would have been dwarfed in specs. People remember the Xbox One being outspec'd by PS4, but One had a couple of advantages. Faster WiFi, an extra USB port, HDMI in, and a slight CPU advantage. Series S might have 100mhz faster on the CPU compared to PS5 in some cases. It would have been a terrible launch for them. Releasing X only would mean they would have to have developers create S versions of games that reside on the cloud until the S launches, which means extra work for developers for a platform they can't even sell on yet. That's already a non-starter I think. And when do you launch the S? Too soon and you create market confusion and perhaps some resentment. Too late and you've made developers work to ship games to a non existent platform.
I dont get this at all. 1.) Sony doesnt have a bigger hw development budget than MS Gaming probably even less but 2.) more importantly the combination Series S/X was more expensive to produce as opposed to one. You have two separate production lines all competing for the same target customer from the get go. Why wouldnt MS have released a single 16GB RAM console comparable to the base PS5. If anything it goes to show their strategy of launching their "midgen" console at the start of the gen was misguided. Advancements in AI accelerators have proven more important than advancements in CPUs/GPUs. And developers prefer designing current gen games around the singular 16GB machines.
You dont release a home console with less than 16GB of RAM period. Imagine a dev spending 5 years telling Sony and MS "we would like an SSD if its possible on the next gen but more importantly based on empirical data we need a doubling of RAM...". And MS comes out with a system with only 10GB of RAM of which 8GB is available. I wouldnt even touch the S if I was told to write software for it tbh.
For the Xbox One, it cost more to make than the PS4 yet it was less powerful because they added a bunch of stuff no one asked for and which were not gaming related. This gen they did the same thing by providing a console no one asked for, producing more of them than there was demand for and essentially cementing their competitor (PS5) as the best platform for game development. One solid base console with 16GB of RAM to design your games around with a short time to triangle. People are buying the PS5 pro for example but devs dont have to worry about it just design your game around the base console and update what you need/want. Thats much harder than designing a game around 16GB of RAM and trying to get it to run with the same requirements on a 10GB machine.
I don't think this is true. People want a console at Series S price points. I think we can agree that the problem with S is in it's specs, but again, I don't know how you can really get much better for that price at that time. Microsoft made Series S to hit a price point that consumers want them to hit, it's mostly the developers who want the extra hardware.
This is a pretty lopsided view of sales here.
That's like saying, man you built a Honda Civic when everyone else is making BMWs and of course BMWs are better, and then they release a Ferrari, even better~!
Yea, but most people aren't willing to pay for a BMW, let alone a Ferrari.
Price is king, and as the core of the market is done their purchasing of consoles, the remaining folks usually buy in when the price is low enough, they are waiting for a sale that makes sense. And we can see 3 years into this gen, that's not happening. The this generation will not catch last generation in terms of hardware sales, and that's with everyone leaving Xbox to buy a playstation, and they had the extra added benefit of COVID and they are still behind PS4 numbers. And that gap is only going to increase as time goes on. We still have 3 years left in this generation.
arandomguy
Veteran
I think the problem with the Series S though is that it isn't cheap enough, especially compared to the PS5. This is unlike a Civic to BMW to Ferrari analogy.
The GPU, or even the entire SoC, isn't the entirety cost of a console. At some point cutting back on it is going to have diminishing returns in terms of cost versus capability loss. As in if you half the GPU performance you aren't going to actually half the cost of that console.
Now the flip side is you can argue half the performance is not the same as half the perceived performance for the target market. It would be interesting to see how buyers in the target market actually view the Series S vs. the PS5 in terms of perceived capabilities and user experience.
An interesting what if would be if they had focused on just one console that was cost optimized against the PS5.
Also I'm not entirely sure adoption rate over the generation is just based on the price falling. I know enthusiasts tend to think in the way that you either rush out to buy when something is new or the value proposition changes but that isn't really the case for most other purchasers. They'll for example just buy it as they need it or want it or can buy it (saved up enough, gift, etc.).
The GPU, or even the entire SoC, isn't the entirety cost of a console. At some point cutting back on it is going to have diminishing returns in terms of cost versus capability loss. As in if you half the GPU performance you aren't going to actually half the cost of that console.
Now the flip side is you can argue half the performance is not the same as half the perceived performance for the target market. It would be interesting to see how buyers in the target market actually view the Series S vs. the PS5 in terms of perceived capabilities and user experience.
An interesting what if would be if they had focused on just one console that was cost optimized against the PS5.
Also I'm not entirely sure adoption rate over the generation is just based on the price falling. I know enthusiasts tend to think in the way that you either rush out to buy when something is new or the value proposition changes but that isn't really the case for most other purchasers. They'll for example just buy it as they need it or want it or can buy it (saved up enough, gift, etc.).
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