if you pay close attention to what this Neogaf user, SneakerSO, says. Take into account that he wrote these posts
like two months ago, you might understand many things that are going to happen.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/euro...ox-series-s-x-3-26-yoy.1664690/post-268716941
All of them. I know of several high-profile Bethesda titles whose port work started up a few months ago. I also have some knowledge on ABK in general, and not a single project that was in dev, or that has gotten an initial approval to have an exploratory milestone achieved, has had a single discussion on exclusivity. I also now know of several titles that fall squarely under XGS, titles that have yet to be announced, that now are doing PS/Xbox/Switch 2 development.
The console wars are basically over. The public just doesn't know it yet.
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Honestly, I don't think anyone, including MS, wants GP on other consoles. Some of the biggest revenue growth for MS has come from full game sales on PC. Why would MS wanna put the service on new growth markets which actively undermines that? I know that both Nintendo and Sony won't allow it, even as a XGS-only service. And to be frank, they don't need to.
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Sony would've known by virtue of devs/pubs basically informing them and signing SLAs in order to ultimately ship to those platforms. MS didn't start doing PS versions of both ports and new releases without Sony being in the know.
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I really don't think MS cuts hardware altogether. None of the conversations I have had indicates thats what the plan is.
MS still makes boat loads of revenue from the Xbox platform. Not on HW sales, but on services & subscriptions. Sure, if they begin announcing regular releases on PS/Nintendo, some of those users may just opt to leave, but the likelihood is that those users will still engage with MS' output, just on their terms.
Everything i've seen indicates that MS' approach will likely mirror how they treat the Surface line. Keep making a HW line for a very dedicated consumer base. Make your SW and services revenue on every other device.
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I really don't see how releasing on the Switch 2 would be seen as desperate. Ninteno has a massive userbase and GAAS titles have done well in that eco. MS has loads of GAAS games that would compliment Switch users.
You have to also consider - they aren't gonna drop support for their current consoles, or even stop their plans for their upcoming hardware. They are just gonna widen their publishing targets. This means, they are still going to be supporting the XSS for quite awhile, on top of already looking towards supporting the Switch 2 with some of their titles, such as Minecraft and CoD, the latter of which they are contractually obligated to support, and that is MS biggest revenue earner as of right now.
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Ending console exclusivity is the road this is ultimately ending up at for them. Internally, Nadella and other execs have been questioning why they haven't gone this route a long time ago, and this is before the absolute collapse of their HW sales this year.
Ending exclusivity yields them a host of benefits, not the least of which is getting regulators off their backs for future acquisitions. You just have to measure the loss of revenue you'd get from users abandoning the HW platform, to the potential revenue you can make by selling on all platforms, not to mention even your lost users are just as lucky to keep using your software anywhere else.
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I mean, they now know without a doubt that playing the traditional console business model tactics isn't going to work, so producing a unit that needs mass market adoption doesn't need to happen if your SW can still make money on other platforms, so my prediction is that the next Xbox HW release will likely be very high end on the price tag, with very limited production. I also don't think they are going to enter an annual or semi-annual production model for their units. I expect HW demand will slide even further once titles are routinely releasing elsewhere, but like I said, it'll be greatly offset by the revenue from other platforms
Xbox has never really been concerned with 'growing their profit margins' - they regularly and famously don't make profit and have lost money on this outing for a very long time. Releasing software on other platforms isn't necessarily a high-margin endeavor, but the revenue it does generate does make it make sense. We're talking about a HW generation (XSS/X) where they were still selling units at a loss at full MSRP in year 3 - Sony was selling PS5s at a profit starting in year 2.
I don't imagine a situation where they maintain the current Xbox business model as is. The console isn't selling. Retailers are doing everything in their power in MS' strongest market to absolutely clear out stock or MS risks having to honor stock buybacks. They don't even have any big titles in the pipe on the scale of Starfield to even hope for a console sales rebound.
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I really won't talk in depth on some of the other games coming cause announcing games for other teams is simply not my business.
But of course Starfield is gonna wind up elsewhere. I don't know why you'd even be surprised by that. Also - why would you even care? Why would this ruin your day?
Also, I don't have an uncle anywhere. I've worked at various pubs over my career, including Zenimax in recent times.
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A big reduction on ad spend promoting the console happened not long after Starfield launched. Not just in EU, but WW even, and right before the holidays to boot. Can't really be surprised at the results, but ad campaigns are typically flexible enough to allow you to save some money in the short term as you change-up long-term plans.
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There were several growth milestones they were expecting to hit before 2027 and outside of the ones they hit thanks to the boost Covid/pandemic gave them and everyone else, they have yet to hit any of them, and are churning around the same number of users, more or less. They also massively overshot how much they expected to invest in the division. Again - Covid boost to GP really blinded them on how well the service was actually doing.
To put it bluntly, when Nadella removed GP growth off of his KPIs, a whole heck of a lot changed at Xbox and Microsoft gaming.
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Then that begs the question - why were those studios purchased? If their output shouldn't be expected to sell, then why would anyone think that same output should be a compelling reason to move consoles?
I do think folks are underestimating just how valuable the increased exposure with wider releases might yield for a variety of different growth vectors for Microsoft in general, whether thats getting more users overall on Azure-backed games, to users in other ecos being exposed to that output a
nd then opting to get an Xbox as a means of gaining access to the GP service.
Not to mention - if MS' is truly invested in maintaining and growing their current revenue levels, then closing studios would merely run counter to that. Again, noting that the studios we're talking about are not the big revenue earners in general.
Fact remains though that, if the goal in buying all these studios was to somehow grow the Xbox console business, then they absolutely, unequivocally failed in this regard. They are doing worse than X1 now by a notable margin.
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Jez doesn't know anything that isn't spoonfed to him by his MS contacts. This isn't gonna be a blanket announcement or story. It'll be a slow-trickle of announcements that establishes a new norm, and thats all. Mega-corps like MS will never go out and make any announcement that can have them be viewed as being in a negative or poor position - could affect stock prices too much.
Anyway, this is one of those situations where nothing has to be said. Just let the ports/games speak for themselves. Too many I now know about from colleagues working on them to really doubt its occurring.
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Sony has not agreed to it, nor will they ever. More importantly - MS wouldn't want that themselves. They'd make more money on full game sales in that eco.
There is a reason why the biggest software revenue for them is coming from PC, and its not cause of the Windows Store.
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he real reason why Xbox will always make a console marked Xbox, even if it does transition into being a Windows Box for TVs, is that the sub revenue from console users is still highly valuable to MS, whether we're talking GP or just XBLG. Sure, they aren't high enough to offset their operating costs, but for MS, its still subscription & services revenue that they'd rather have than not have.
For the majority of what Xbox is producing, however, I can't really say just how difficult MS will find it to discover an audience for their output. Sure, for a lot of their XGS titles, mindshare and brand recognition is really, absurdly low. Just as an example, marketing metrics on Hellblade 2 after the TGAs couldn't be worse for a game of its budget, and that is a highly anticipated title for the core Xbox audience. This isn't a novelty though - Ninja Theory struggled with sales on non-licensed titles they worked on for a long time. The same can be said about most of the teams MS has bought. As much as Obsidian can be beloved, their titles have typically not moved the needle in sales. Same can be said for inXile, Compulsion too. The biggest selling entities that MS has purchased has been BGS, Playground, and ABK.
This isn't to really harp on those other studios in their portfolio though. I do think that, with an expanded potential audience, and with a marketing campaigns designed to appeal to users in those expanded ecosystems, that those games may be able to find sizable audiences without much issue. As for these games now being compared to other pieces of content already on offer on those platforms - in many ways, they already were, albeit not in a head-to-head, 'which should I buy' comparison.
Quality is an interesting idea to talk about, but I am going to choose to ignore this part when doing some evaluating all this, simply cause we don't really know what some of this output will be like in the coming years. I do have some thoughts on it, but I think thats irrelevant right now.
kotaku.com
