Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[Shifty Geezer]

1-2 weeks ago i was walking in a park, and man the park was crammed, i also bought ice cream and there was a big queue outside of the shop. If you asked me, it had something to do with the unusual sunny and hot weather for that time of the year ... alas, if you only had been there too.

This ice-cream metaphor doesn't work because in that case, there's only one (given) explanation for the queue. However, in the case of lower XB sales there's more than one possible reason other than XB gamers swapping to PS. That's why there needs to be specific evidence.

I asked you to provide an explanation what happened instead, it's right their in your quote.
What i got back instead was an 08/15 keyboard warrior emergency quote and "wrong, because that's not happening in my bubble".

MOD: That's not positive discussion. Please refrain. If you disagree, just disagree.

 

[Charlietus]

This is for those who have started bashing the Xbox management too much, which makes no sense, because we can see a similar downsizing wave at the Playstation studios. So much for that.

When you have 72 billion of revenue yearly, closing the studio that made the best new Xbox IP in 15 years makes you look like fools.

Sony doesn't have that privilege, even if they aren't starving.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS5 ww is far ahead of the 360 at this point in time, by ltd and ytd.

You need to compare PS5 + XBS sales to PS3+360. If there's the same number in total and PS5 has a larger share, we can see the market hasn't shrunk and so the players have migrated. If we have a smaller number of total consoles, it may be the market shrinking.

Down from what? If they reach their (somewhat doubtful) corrected forecast they are at PS4 level. Year to Year they have increased massively.

You might be right on that. I don't have the numbers to hand and Google has all sorts of not-helpful graphs. Is there a readily available table/graph of sales by quarter/year?

 

[rntongo]

Remember all those usual cheerleaders during merge trials singing

" Think about those smaller teams, only under microsoft coffins they have a chance to prosper and be creative, let there be competition and more games for more people".

Just wait till they open their xbox pc for new stores and push new narrative : "hey console makers lets bring down the walls , race for the bottom will be good for everyone."

Its now starting to dawn on alot of people that they were cheerleading into a strategy meant to end the Xbox brand as we know it

 

[egoless]

Not sure why you think a future kinect would cost $100-$150. That was the price of kinect in 2013 we are in 2024.

Also why would it need to be included in the price . I could just be an optional add on

Accessories are a tough sell. That's why, for example, Gamecube was repackaged as a Wii (the hardware hacks work the same on both) even though wiimotes worked perfectly fine on Gamecube. Then they sold accessories with it, but the wiimote itself was part of Wii. Microsoft tried to do the same thing with XB1 Kinect as a full experience. The accessory part would have been a much cheaper VR headset using the already present Kinect for the tracking. But... we can't have nice things.

 

[rntongo]

The games industry is absolutely f'ed. The economics don't work. No idea why anyone would accept employment from any of these big publishers. I think it'd be better to go down with the ship making something at an indie studio. At least in that case your employment is tied directly to the success of your game instead of being torpedoed by your overloads after releasing a successful/well loved game. The unfortunate thing is a game like Alan Wake 2 can be a money loser.

I have a friend that works for Sony's gaming division. I can guarantee you Sony and Nintendo are fine, the fundamental issues are at Xbox only. The industry is facing headwinds like all industries do but Xbox has serious fundamental challenges.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

There is nothing MS/Xbox can do that you wont defend, quite obviously. There's seriously no need to hitch your wagon so hard to some megacorp dude.

That's not true, if you've been paying attention to my posts.

Microsoft isn't some little mom'n'pop shop, nor are they some bigger tech player who is reliant on the whims of industry trends that can make or break them. No, they are MICROSOFT, the most valuable public company on the planet and have shown that they were perfectly willing to spend tens and tens of billions on Xbox. You cant reconcile doing that with also having to state they 'need to cut costs' or whatever nonsense.

Yes, it's a surprise that Arkane Austin is shutting down simply for one miss on a game they didn't even really want to make. That's no way to treat your talent. And it completely locks off the potential for the studio to do anything great for Xbox in the future. Simply disbanding any studio that has one miss is such a stupidly short-sighted decision because every studio misses on occasion. Going all Stalin on your own game studios will only lead to less and worse games in the future.

It all depends on the details. What was going on at the studio? What was in development? Is the talent better elsewhere? We have no idea. It might be short-sighted, but it might be smart. I'm just pointing out that it's really simplistic to always think layoffs aren't justified or "evil" just because it was a big company that did it. It's part of what makes our economy strong. Reallocating capital and resources to more efficient use. Wasting money is stupid if you have $5 in your pocket or $5 billion in your bank account. It doesn't really matter if you are a smart business enterprise.

Absorbing *some* employees into BGS is also ridiculous. MS could have easily just hired some new guys for BGS if they needed more heads(not that head count was any reason at all for Starfield's lackluster reception). And all this does is put even more risk and emphasis on a SINGLE game that will make or break BGS. And it makes it so MS will have less studios to fill out the kind of schedule they need to keep Gamepass appealing long-term without having to write enormous checks to 3rd party publishers/developers.

It's all so wildly asinine.

We'll see. Starfield has an 8.3 Metacritic score, so it was well received enough and that game is only going to improve over time. Maybe not to Cyberpunk degrees, but improved. MS is actually pretty good at improving games. Sea of Thieves was a 6.9 on Xbox when it released and is an 8.8 on Playstation last I looked. That's a big improvement over time. Halo Infinite is also much improved.

The negativity for a publisher with the best lineup this year is sad.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I have a friend that works for Sony's gaming division. I can guarantee you Sony and Nintendo are fine, the fundamental issues are at Xbox only. The industry is facing headwinds like all industries do but Xbox has serious fundamental challenges.

MS is putting out a lot more games than their competitors this year, so I'm not sure your friend is right.

 

[rntongo]

MS is putting out a lot more games than their competitors this year, so I'm not sure your friend is right.

I was saying in relation to the argument that the gaming industry is F**d. Its just headwinds for the tech industry in general. Sony and Nintendo have a clear business/technical plan to get out of current challenges which are temporary. With Xbox things look bad and its not helped by a core group of people in media who incessantly praise every single thing done under Phil despite it obviously leading to even worse outcomes.

I have never seen a head of a division make so many obvious errors yet be given pass after pass after pass while the division is atrophied. Its uncertain and wild tbh and I think its going to get worse in the coming months as Phil reveals his ultimate plan. But what's certain in all this is there will be a group within the media ready to defend whatever is killing the brand as some genius move.

 

[Cappuccino]

of course it is successful but MS rival isn't Sony nor Nintendo but Valve and the Steam Deck, imho. Xbox is a relatively profitable business but not a primary business for MS.

Oh come on, the Steam Deck is nowhere near competing with Windows PC gaming or even the Xbox.

Steam also isn’t really competing with MS even on their own platform (Windows), as MS just publishes games on Steam now.

 

[eastmen]

Accessories are a tough sell. That's why, for example, Gamecube was repackaged as a Wii (the hardware hacks work the same on both) even though wiimotes worked perfectly fine on Gamecube. Then they sold accessories with it, but the wiimote itself was part of Wii. Microsoft tried to do the same thing with XB1 Kinect as a full experience. The accessory part would have been a much cheaper VR headset using the already present Kinect for the tracking. But... we can't have nice things.

Kinect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

35million is a tough sell ?

I think it can be extremely popular and unlike before MS has plenty of its own studios that can support it. Imagine including kinect functionality into something like Guitar hero where you can get points for stage performance and other things. or the next mmo from Ms supporting face over ip like star citizen. Then there is track ir or eye tracking functionality in game.


2025 kinect with updated cameras at a sub $100 cost would likely sell pretty well esp if it was supported on pc

 

[Cappuccino]

Kinect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

35million is a tough sell ?

I think it can be extremely popular and unlike before MS has plenty of its own studios that can support it. Imagine including kinect functionality into something like Guitar hero where you can get points for stage performance and other things. or the next mmo from Ms supporting face over ip like star citizen. Then there is track ir or eye tracking functionality in game.


2025 kinect with updated cameras at a sub $100 cost would likely sell pretty well esp if it was supported on pc

Wasn’t the Kinect included with every Xbox One until they launched the S? That 35mil figure might be a bit inflated.

 

[eastmen]

Wasn’t the Kinect included with every Xbox One until they launched the S? That 35mil figure might be a bit inflated.

Analysis: Where do Kinect sales go from here?

Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews takes a look at Microsoft's global Xbox 360 business, which has remained resilient even amid the downturn in the retail video game market.

www.gamedeveloper.com

We can look at these figures at least three separate ways: absolute Kinect sales, Kinect sales against new hardware sales, or the total Kinect attach rate. In terms of absolute figures, 1 million Kinect units were sold in the first 10 days, followed by an announcement of 2.5 million in the first 25 days. After four months, the figure was up to 10 million. The next announcement I'm aware of was made at the beginning of 2012, by which point 18 million Kinect sensors had been shipped. Then in May of this year Microsoft announced that the figure was over 19 million. In five months, an additional 1 million sensors, give or take, had been shipped. If we compare Kinect sales to new system sales, we see that Microsoft sold two Kinect sensors per each console early in the system's life, but is now down below one new Kinect sensor per new console. In terms of attach rate (i.e. the fraction of the entire installed base that could have a Kinect sensor) that figure went from zero to 19 percent in the first four months that Kinect was available. By the beginning of 2012, it was up to 27 percent and has held steady there for five months. If current trends continue, I expect the numbers to show that 3 out of 10 Xbox 360 systems has a Kinect sensor, or an attach rate of 30 percent. Microsoft believes it can attract a non-traditional gaming audience with Kinect, and the $100 console is designed to appeal to that same audience. The plan, I believe, is to eliminate the Kinect-less models and put a Kinect in the box with every new console, across all prices and configurations. With service plans to subsidize lower entry-level pricing and the higher bill of material costs that comes with the Kinect hardware, Microsoft can reach out to consumers of all stripes, but casuals in particular. This is important because Microsoft's Xbox 360 division has been showing tremendous growth over the past two years. According to the company's SEC filings, the Xbox 360 business is now generating over $8 billion in revenue for the company each 12 months. The figure below shows this growth through

railing 12-month (TTM) revenue totals, i.e. each bar represents the revenue of the previous four quarters. (Viewing the data this way smooths out seasonal effects.)

So the 360 sold 80m life time and the kinect sold at least 19m. That is an extremely high attach rate.

 

[Cyan]

Alan Wake 2 director offers work to those affected by layoffs at Tango and credits his inspiration in The Evil Within

https://twitter.com/x/status/1787863212806881468

 

[Shifty Geezer]

" Think about those smaller teams, only under microsoft coffins they have a chance to prosper

The word you're looking for is 'coffers', although this error actually also works.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have a friend that works for Sony's gaming division. I can guarantee you Sony and Nintendo are fine,...

Sony has axed plenty of studios too.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wasn’t the Kinect included with every Xbox One until they launched the S? That 35mil figure might be a bit inflated.

It sold gangbusters on 360. However, it had incredible novelty that didn't carry through to Kinect 2. Sadly motion interfaces were never fully developed. We had a few experiments but things like head tracking to enable you to look over hills in racing etc. never materialised. I reckon there are a lot of small additions that'd make motion interfaces a really valuable add, but developers are pretty clumsy with new tech and then it doesn't last long enough for them to do useful things with it.

 

[Charlietus]

Sony has axed plenty of studios too.

When people talk about the Xbox crisis, people are talking about console sales, right? Xbox as a publisher is, of course, totally fine, even if mismanaged a bit too much.

 

[QPlayer]

It's funny how some people can treat an apparently mediocre AA title as if it were a priority for a multi-billion dollar console maker's business model. Man... If the ominous game had done as well in terms of sales as it did with critics, they would have been kept. It's a pity, because they made a good game, but not a popular game for which millions give money!

AAA titles are important to both MS and competing manufacturers, and we gamers can certainly do that too, because we always expect our games to be bigger and bigger, from generation to generation. Here is the result, the names needed to maintain and build the brand for multinational companies are primarily AAA titles.

I would also be happier if these big companies embraced all smaller game developers just because they can... But let's stay grounded in the reality of game development, which has become very expensive.

In order for minor developments to operate again without risk, significant changes are necessary in the game industry. AI can provide a solution to this over time, which can be a significant helper for smaller development teams as well. If used properly - development will be cheaper and it will take less time to make a game - we could see more unique games again. This is the reality.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Tango being shuttered was likely motivated by lack of sales of Hi-Fi on other platforms to some degree. No one cared to buy it, so MS realized that as good as it was they had to move on.

Ironically, what might save Alan Wake 2 is MS cash to put it on GP eventually.