Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[eastmen]

Presumably MS will create a minimum hardware requirement, and quite nice industrial design, with the next Xbox(s). OEM models have to meet that to be certified for XboxOS. Vendors of XboxOS devices get a cut of store revenue. All devices can still boot to full Windows.

The question with OEM Xboxes, other than invariably worse industrial design, is what's the point? If the XboxOS SDK has a user friendly way of exposing PC game settings then they have some? You can pay extra for extra performance but that baseline is always there with the official box.

Like Eastmen, I'd give it two years.

Yea

I think it be smarter for MS to work with Oems to just make small form factor pcs that boot to the xbox app and just let them price them at whatever. Set them at a minimum price point and just guarantee that MS games work on them for x amount of years.

 

[Nisaaru]

I would also assume future console options could just be AMD Strix Point related configurations with a bigger GPU which AMD could easily release normally. Any custom stuff by then would make hardly any sense too.

Why invest a lot of money into a custom design with questionable benefit by then?

Assuming the console exclusive store business has a future after the Apple court ruling Sony would then have to sell a similar configuration at price X+console game prices competing against OEMs+PC game prices without the console tax.

If you play this out there might not be a future for the current console model unless you really manage to isolate your system completely like Nintendo.

 

[eastmen]

I would also assume future console options could just be AMD Strix Point related configurations with a bigger GPU which AMD could easily release normally. Any custom stuff by then would make hardly any sense too.

Why invest a lot of money into a custom design with questionable benefit by then?

Assuming the console exclusive store business has a future after the Apple court ruling Sony would then have to sell a similar configuration at price X+console game prices competing against OEMs+PC game prices without the console tax.

If you play this out there might not be a future for the current console model unless you really manage to isolate your system completely like Nintendo.

I mean after the court case then even nintendo would have to let other stores onto their platforms.

 

[Nisaaru]

I mean after the court case then even nintendo would have to let other stores onto their platforms.

Yes, but they still could sell their hw and expect a lot sales because of all the addicts out there and make money with their HW. Post GC all their consoles were cheap outdated systems which surely made profits from just the hardware alone.

 

[Seanspeed]

I don't think they necessarily need to subsidise the hardware. Nintendo have repeatedly managed to avoid that need.

Nintendo's hardware has always been subsidized as well. Where have you gotten the idea otherwise? :/

I cannot stress it enough - that is the ENTIRE business model.

 

[Nisaaru]

Nintendo's hardware has always been subsidized as well. Where have you gotten the idea otherwise? :/

I cannot stress it enough - that is the ENTIRE business model.

The Wii was a slightly refresh of the GC with a new gimmick input sold at 3x the price. The HW they released since then should have made them profits.

Just 349$ for a Switch which is based on 10 year old cheap NV Shield I bought for 150Euro back in 2015. Adding an Oled display and a different form factor doesn't make up the difference.

 

[eastmen]

We have discussed earlier that ms develops "cheap" consoles.

Just imagine Series S2, not X2, which is OEM and $399. Of course it means that xbox will not pursue high performance, like PS6 and PS5 Pro.

What hardware will you get in a $400 oem box ? Its going to be dog shit. Lets be honest here. Oems wont eat the cost of higher performance but you know who will ? Sony. So you get OEM boxes with less powerful hardware at the $400 price point which will have to make a decent enough profit that will loose out to the $400-$500 ps6 that is really $600 to produce .

So what profit do you think OEMS would want ? $50 $100 ? per unit sold ?


edit
In the ps5 thread about portables I thought of where OEMS could work. Portable Series S. OEMS like DELL and ASUS already have handhelds for windows. MS can design an apu around zen5/rdna4 to match series s specs and sell that apu to those companies that can then launch their own xboy.

 

[Nisaaru]

What hardware will you get in a $400 oem box ? Its going to be dog shit. Lets be honest here. Oems wont eat the cost of higher performance but you know who will ? Sony. So you get OEM boxes with less powerful hardware at the $400 price point which will have to make a decent enough profit that will loose out to the $400-$500 ps6 that is really $600 to produce .

You can remove a lot of fixed costs for a full custom design with its time to market problems. Initial price level will surely increase but performance can do too with falling prices and faster product cycles.

 

[eastmen]

You can remove a lot of fixed costs for a full custom design with its time to market problems. Initial price level will surely increase but performance can do too with falling prices and faster product cycles.

Yea but the xbox series used zen2/rdna2 which were both new when they hit the market.

I don't see any oem putting in hardware that is better than subsidized console hardware.

 

[rntongo]

What hardware will you get in a $400 oem box ? Its going to be dog shit. Lets be honest here. Oems wont eat the cost of higher performance but you know who will ? Sony. So you get OEM boxes with less powerful hardware at the $400 price point which will have to make a decent enough profit that will loose out to the $400-$500 ps6 that is really $600 to produce .

So what profit do you think OEMS would want ? $50 $100 ? per unit sold ?

You're very right. To add OEMs dont have the economies of scale that a console maker does. Sony can order for 10 million+ APUs from AMD in a single year because of the demand for their consoles. No individual OEM is going to come close to this scale building licensed Xboxes. So they'll mainly compete by providing a more expensive more powerful box than Sony or MS can make. Likely smaller than your average desktop but larger than a console.

 

[Nisaaru]

Yea but the xbox series used zen2/rdna2 which were both new when they hit the market.

I don't see any oem putting in hardware that is better than subsidized console hardware.

Surely not for the same price initially. I agree but 1-2 years afterwards this would look a lot differently and with multi generational games you might wonder why buy a new console on release in the future with no benefits for a few years? By the time these games pop up you could buy a new OEM console with better performance or at similar prices.

 

[eastmen]

Surely not for the same price initially. I agree but 1-2 years afterwards this would look a lot differently and with multi generational games you might wonder why buy a new console on release in the future with no benefits for a few years? By the time these games pop up you could buy a new OEM console with better performance or at similar prices.

Or at that point the OEM machines are a confusing mishmash of different specs and generations of cpu/gpu/ram and no one will no what is good or not and then why not just buy a pc at that point.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nintendo's hardware has always been subsidized as well. Where have you gotten the idea otherwise? :/

I cannot stress it enough - that is the ENTIRE business model.

Nintendo sells with profit margins. That's why their operating income is so high versus the others who's revenue is high but their operating income isn't due to high costs. They deliberately choose older, cheaper tech for that purpose. Nintendo's business model is to create a desirable experience that people will buy into, hardware and software, much like Apple.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

Nintendo's hardware has always been subsidized as well. Where have you gotten the idea otherwise? :/

I cannot stress it enough - that is the ENTIRE business model.

I don't know exactly when Nintendo changed tack on that front, but I vaguely recall Nintendo guys telling me that in the GameCube days.

Their less than cutting edge hardware from the Wii onwards makes me suspect that was the tipping point.

edit
In the ps5 thread about portables I thought of where OEMS could work. Portable Series S. OEMS like DELL and ASUS already have handhelds for windows. MS can design an apu around zen5/rdna4 to match series s specs and sell that apu to those companies that can then launch their own xboy.

Maybe that's the move altogether for an OEM model? MS designs a semi custom APU so they can secure economies of scale, and OEM's can change things like memory, cache, clockspeed, and cooling.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Maybe that's the move altogether for an OEM model? MS designs a semi custom APU so they can secure economies of scale, and OEM's can change things like memory, cache, clockspeed, and cooling.

I think the main problem with this concept is it's never worked before AFAIK. Where you have an open market selling compatible devices, like desktop IBM clones or DVD players, you have a cut-throat industry that sees most players lose money and you end up with just a couple of players. Steam Deck works because there's only one, so Valve is getting all the economies of sales. Now imagine that same market of a few million units is spread across 5 vendors - you need higher margins per unit. If Valve can sell Steam Deck at $400 knowing they get 30% on software, any OEM is going to have to charge notably more. Which is why Steam Deck alternatives like ASUS and Lenovo went with a $700 price point.

 

[Cyan]

What hardware will you get in a $400 oem box ? Its going to be dog shit. Lets be honest here. Oems wont eat the cost of higher performance but you know who will ? Sony. So you get OEM boxes with less powerful hardware at the $400 price point which will have to make a decent enough profit that will loose out to the $400-$500 ps6 that is really $600 to produce .

So what profit do you think OEMS would want ? $50 $100 ? per unit sold ?


edit
In the ps5 thread about portables I thought of where OEMS could work. Portable Series S. OEMS like DELL and ASUS already have handhelds for windows. MS can design an apu around zen5/rdna4 to match series s specs and sell that apu to those companies that can then launch their own xboy.

that xboy console is what the Series S should be. But not enough people bought the Series S. It lacked boys.

 

[see colon]

Nintendo's hardware has always been subsidized as well. Where have you gotten the idea otherwise? :/

I cannot stress it enough - that is the ENTIRE business model.

Maybe. I think at launch, most Nintendo consoles are basically sold at the price of BOM, but that isn't the real cost of hardware, because console hardware requires a fair amount of R&D, both in the cost of designing the system specs, but in the industrial design of the console itself, and then marketing both in the form of user facing material, but also to sell the idea to developers. Surely the real cost of launching new hardware exceeds the BOM.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wii
$160 BOM, $250 RRP

Wii U
$180 BOM, $300 RRP

NSW
$257 BOM, $300 RRP

3DS
$100 BOM, $250 RRP

Even if under-valued, Nintendo's estimates are well under what the other console companies typically estimate at with their BOMs. Nintendo has decent margins. Again, this is patently obvious in their financials with way better Operating Income than the other loss-leading companies. Instead of subsidies eating into the profits, every sale is bank.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I have a simple proof that this OEM idea is a bad one - rntongo, shifty, eastmen and I all agree on something for a change. This is a bad Xbox killing idea.

The ONLY way it can work is if MS subsidizes a top of the line machine (call it Next) at something like $599 (with X @ $399 and S @ 199) and then allow OEMs to make machines even better than the Next for enthusiasts for whatever they want to charge. I'd probably pay up to $999 for something better than a subsidized $599 Next, knowing that I'm only going to get $799 worth of hardware due to lack of economies of scale and OEM profit making. The problem is that I don't think many people are in the same boat as me. Once you go north of $999 you're into PC territory, which is where I'm headed btw if MS screws this up like it looks like they are about to.

 

[QPlayer]

I have a simple proof that this OEM idea is a bad one - rntongo, eastmen and I all agree on something for a change. This is a bad Xbox killing idea.

The ONLY way it can work is if MS subsidizes a top of the line machine (call it Next) at something like $599 (with X @ $399 and S @ 199) and then allow OEMs to make machines even better than the Next for enthusiasts for whatever they want to charge. I'd probably pay up to $999 for something better than a subsidized $599 Next, knowing that I'm only going to get $799 worth of hardware due to lack of economies of scale and OEM profit making. The problem is that I don't think many people are in the same boat as me. Once you go north of $999 you're into PC territory, which is where I'm headed btw if MS screws this up like it looks like they are about to.

And what if the most significant basis of the whole OEM theory is software, games. Because what if they plan that there won't be a separate console version, but the PC game will be the Xbox game at the same time. This makes it easier for external marketplaces to become part of the Xbox ecosystem and, by the way, the development cost/time of games can be reduced.