Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[Cyan]

Xbox One
Dont tell your consumers to eff off like Don Mattrick did because even a great launch line up wont save you from that.

Xbox Series X
where are the games?? Where are the games?? Where are the games??

So they have to do the core things well first. Make great games built for a fixed system then make those great games available on PC. That should be the core goal. that drives innovations. Last gen they were a home entertainment machine not a gaming console and basically told everyone to eff off. This gen they focused too much on acquisitions, preaching the gospel of platform, subscriptions, all you can eat subscription and promising games or trying to gaslight consumers into liking half baked titles. They are really allover the place with no clear goal.They just keep on springing up some diversionary thing that doesnt show a focus on games. Next month we're going to hear about this new diversionary thing(which could work or could flop).

The idea that MS is imitating Sony by releasing a console is not accurate as well. Xbox 360 was a success in its own right and the PS4 was developed to actually learn from the success of the Xbox 360. A lot of people dont know this but Sony engineers were amazed by the 360 system architecture and admitted it was an overall better machine than the PS3. Unfortunately MS decided Don Mattricking that success and not continuing with that line. There is space for two fixed system platforms in the market. In trying to "not copy" Sony, MS has given up on the good things they did on the OG Xbox and the 360 and pursued highly esoteric diversionary goals. If they fail it will end up as a 3rd party publisher. There are so many great titles that were available on the 360 and OG Xbox that Sony decided to replicate on the PS4 and PS5 and today Phil doesnt want to make those titles because it would be copying Sony. I am not surprised at all that MS's gaming division is facing some challenges.

dunno what more they could do after acquiring Bethesda, which didn't change anything. I expected it to have a greater effect. Activision games didn't move the needle in favour of the Xbox either. In this case I was doubtful it'd move the needle and yeah, that didn't happen either.

Maybe like they say it's a case of "your reputation follows you".

If you think about it, it's not that Playstation is doing incredibly well in terms of games but the console is selling well.

When I got the X360 at launch, after getting my first console, the OG Xbox in early 2005, the console had almost no games, and I was counting the days until Oblivion came out, then another 6 months without many games 'til Gears. But it was a console filled with ideas that just worked well and enduring that lack of software was palatable.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's not a proper desktop environment. SteamOS would need far more work to be normie usable on the desktop.

There are three non hobbyist desktop operating systems, ChromeOS, Windows and MacOS. Even then ChromeOS is only really suitable for PWAs, for a more general purpose desktop environment with native software it needs more work.

Valve should go with their own Universal Linux. Take MS on! So sick of the very limited OS options and lack of any challengers as they are entrenched.

 

[Cyan]

What is this new hardware anyway?? I think they need to give an answer at the Xbox Games Show since people are already talking about it everywhere.

they haven't denied a single rumour.... Whatever they are going to say is anyone's guess. Imho, they are going to announce that they are going to go 100% gamepass, maybe, and who knows...

Despite the app itself having room for improvement, PC Gamepass is very well liked between colleagues of mine, and those are people who are constantly playing either classic games from different devices via emulation or the odd Steam game....

They value it 'cos they find value in a collection of decent games for which they don't to pay a lot of money.

If they added forward compatibility, having the ability to play all Windows games on gamepass be it on a xbox or PC, and legal emulation (I'd certainly pay for legal emulators as long as they make your life easy and are integrated into a single service), etc etc, the value would skyrocket.

Current Xbox popularity isn't helping gamepass though.

 

[MfA]

Valve should go with their own Universal Linux. Take MS on! So sick of the very limited OS options and lack of any challengers as they are entrenched.

I think single logon with cloud backup/sync of your environment is the future (you can include E2EE and support for third party cloud storage backends). The level of customization possible with normal Linux makes that kind of thing impossible.

I think a truly modern Linux OS should start with a ChromeOS fork, this is the rock solid base with strongest security guarantees and great design for VMs (still a bit of a WiP though). Then have a locked down VM to run properly sandboxed applications from a curated store. This would be invisible to the user, these two VMs integrate seamlessly to one desktop environment. The environment would have snapshot backups and be restorable/syncable on new hardware by a single logon. Then you can have some VM's for a hobbyist Linux distro or Windows (and warn users of the increased risk when sharing "core" document folders with those).

Of course it should be primarily designed for well defined hardware platforms as well, same as on Chromebooks.

 

[Seanspeed]

dunno what more they could do after acquiring Bethesda, which didn't change anything. I expected it to have a greater effect. Activision games didn't move the needle in favour of the Xbox either. In this case I was doubtful it'd move the needle and yeah, that didn't happen either.

Maybe like they say it's a case of "your reputation follows you".

If you think about it, it's not that Playstation is doing incredibly well in terms of games but the console is selling well.

When I got the X360 at launch, after getting my first console, the OG Xbox in early 2005, the console had almost no games, and I was counting the days until Oblivion came out, then another 6 months without many games 'til Gears. But it was a console filled with ideas that just worked well and enduring that lack of software was palatable.

Well PS5 is doing well cuz the PS4 was super successful and loved, plus it came nearly at the right time with the pandemic boom. Cuz yea, on games alone, it doesn't deserve any of the great success it has had so far. And if they dont fix that, they could well suffer for it in the longer run.

As for X360, every new generation of consoles has a limited amount of games at launch. But X360 probably had one of the best first years ever for a console in terms of game releases. By any normal standard, that was a very strong start, and definitely not something where gamers had to feel like they were treading water waiting for games.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Xbox Series X
where are the games?? Where are the games?? Where are the games??

Ask Sony the same question. When Naughty Dog even ships one new game, Sony fans can start talking about lack of games. LOL

 

[Johnny Awesome]

dunno what more they could do after acquiring Bethesda, which didn't change anything. I expected it to have a greater effect. Activision games didn't move the needle in favour of the Xbox either. In this case I was doubtful it'd move the needle and yeah, that didn't happen either.

Hi Fi Rush was good. Starfield did very well. Fallout games/franchise are doing well. Indiana Jones is coming out and they're about to announce a new Doom. Bethesda acquisition was fine.

They've owned Activision for less than a year. Give me a break.

 

[eastmen]

they haven't denied a single rumour.... Whatever they are going to say is anyone's guess. Imho, they are going to announce that they are going to go 100% gamepass, maybe, and who knows...

Despite the app itself having room for improvement, PC Gamepass is very well liked between colleagues of mine, and those are people who are constantly playing either classic games from different devices via emulation or the odd Steam game....

They value it 'cos they find value in a collection of decent games for which they don't to pay a lot of money.

If they added forward compatibility, having the ability to play all Windows games on gamepass be it on a xbox or PC, and legal emulation (I'd certainly pay for legal emulators as long as they make your life easy and are integrated into a single service), etc etc, the value would skyrocket.

Current Xbox popularity isn't helping gamepass though.

Will be odd to say they will have the largest hardware leap ever and then go 100% to game pass.

I think whatever they are doing there is at least one more piece of xbox hardware

 

[eastmen]

Hi Fi Rush was good. Starfield did very well. Fallout games/franchise are doing well. Indiana Jones is coming out and they're about to announce a new Doom. Bethesda acquisition was fine.

They've owned Activision for less than a year. Give me a break.

is the activision merger even fully complete yet. Like has Ms fully taken over the company and all operations or are they still in the transistion phase

 

[rntongo]

Ask Sony the same question. When Naughty Dog even ships one new game, Sony fans can start talking about lack of games. LOL

I think this is just a tough year and an exception but their other studios have produced proper bangers this gen. Going into the second half of the gen we can only hope both Xbox and Sony do well

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I'll be fair and say that Sony has done alright this gen with Ragnarok, SM2, HFW, GT7, FF exclusives (all 9/10 games), but MS has done much better than many people make out with FH5, FM, Starfield, Flight Sim, Gears Tactics, Halo Infinite, Sea of Thieves content, Hellblade 2 (all 8.1-8.8/10 games). More offerings, but not quite to Sony quality standards. MS as come through even better if you're a GP subscriber with too many good games to even list here. 2024 is MS's year though compared to what Sony has in the pipeline. Moreover both ecosystems have Hogwarts, BG3, Diablo IV, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring ... hit games. The software divide isn't really that great at all between the two.

 

[rntongo]

I'll be fair and say that Sony has done alright this gen with Ragnarok, SM2, HFW, GT7, FF exclusives (all 9/10 games), but MS has done much better than many people make out with FH5, FM, Starfield, Flight Sim, Gears Tactics, Halo Infinite, Sea of Thieves content, Hellblade 2 (all 8.1-8.8/10 games). More offerings, but not quite to Sony quality standards. MS as come through even better if you're a GP subscriber with too many good games to even list here. 2024 is MS's year though compared to what Sony has in the pipeline. Moreover both ecosystems have Hogwarts, BG3, Diablo IV, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring ... hit games. The software divide isn't really that great at all between the two.

Fair points, the consumers though dont see anything they're missing out on by getting an Xbox. Second half of the gen is going to be crucial.

I am hoping much of my gloomy posts surrounding this can be looked back on as an overreaction. I maintain that Xbox's existence has so far, despite not always being successful on their own, has still ultimately been a very positive competitive influence in the industry. Much of my fear is that they are going to panic and make bad decisions to try and recover from previous bad decisions, leading to an even worse situation where we slowly lose the brand and their impact altogether.

I'm certainly rooting for them in the end, despite how negative I have been lately. I also just dont trust them to make these right decisions.

Ditto. I think this is how most of us think. No one sensible wants them to fail.

 

[MfA]

Xbox caused them to completely take their eye off the ball for desktop windows. Once Microsoft is just offering Office365 to run on Mac's for consumers and office users they aren't going to be in the console market any more either.

I don't know what kind of b-team they put on desktop, but they need to literally dump 10 years of work now and start over from Win32&.NET. WinRT/WinUI are not salvageable, which is a shame for their Arm laptops because WinRT is kind of central there. A central disaster.

 

[MfA]

Microsoft is flying high on the cloud transition for back end to Azure and the shift to Microsoft365, Windows as an actual desktop environment is going from weakness to greater weakness. It's just hard to see with all the money rolling in.

 

[Cyan]

Xbox caused them to completely take their eye off the ball for desktop windows.

this is something that started to happen after the huge success -deservedly so- of the X360. Consoles in general were in their golden era -if we don't take into account PS1 and PS2- and were selling in droves, whereas on the PC, Steam wasn't close to what it is now, and Microsoft stopped focusing on the gaming side of Windows. That was a mistake.

The hated Windows Vista had things that although poorly implemented were the way to follow as they created the game folder where they gave you information about the games and the games were automatically grouped when you installed them.

Another thing was the Windows Experience Index (WEI) and Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) that unfortunately didn't have success, but it'd have greatly facilitated laymen to know if a program or game ran on their rig because it is much easier to understand that to play smoothly you need a GPU which scores 3 points or more and a CPU that scores 4 points or more than having to investigate if a certain game asks for a processor that is equivalent, superior or inferior than yours ...

 

[eastmen]

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-introduces-ryzen-9000-zen5-desktop-cpus-granite-ridge

Like I said just moving to a new zen alone can be a pretty big deal

A new 2025 xbox could have a zen 6 which even if its only 13% faster than zen 5 it would be a pretty big jump over the Zen 2 in xbox series / ps5/pro

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Another thing was the Windows Experience Index (WEI) and Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) that unfortunately didn't have success, but it'd have greatly facilitated laymen to know if a program or game ran on their rig because it is much easier to understand that to play smoothly you need a GPU which scores 3 points or more and a CPU that scores 4 points or more than having to investigate if a certain game asks for a processor that is equivalent, superior or inferior than yours ...

In the end I think that idea was doomed to fail. Reason being, as tech advanced, what as a 9.4 five years ago maybe became a 7.6. If you kept it out of ten, as increasing tech raised the ceiling on a ten, everyone's existing specs would have to be re-evaluated lower. As such, that score would go down over time for all users. "Why's my computer getting worse?!" "Oh, you need to upgrade." Not a good look.

Or, you have an uncapped score and just let inflation take its toll. "This game needs a 7.5 minimum." I'm good. "This game needs a 9.6." "This game needs a 12.5" 15.8. 32.9. 76.3.

In short, as an absolute score the numbers would just go up and up and up over time. As a relative score, user machine scores would go down over time which would be a really bad look.

I guess if you wanted to maintain that concept, you'd want to bracket it in 'generations'. Set a score for now based on XBSX. Then introduce a next-gen score at a particular date (coinciding with a new console or spec) for a new score against a new benchmark. That way the score wouldn't go down over time but would be fixed for that generation of software.

 

[cheapchips]

I guess if you wanted to maintain that concept, you'd want to bracket it in 'generations'. Set a score for now based on XBSX. Then introduce a next-gen score at a particular date (coinciding with a new console or spec) for a new score against a new benchmark. That way the score wouldn't go down over time but would be fixed for that generation of software.

You could tie the scores more directly to the general reference. For Series X 2026 you have 150% GPU, 120% CPU and 200% SSD, 100% memory speed. For Series X 2032 arrives and it's a 'not powerful enough!', except the SSD, which continues to score 200%.

 

[QPlayer]

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-introduces-ryzen-9000-zen5-desktop-cpus-granite-ridge

View attachment 11417


Like I said just moving to a new zen alone can be a pretty big deal

A new 2025 xbox could have a zen 6 which even if its only 13% faster than zen 5 it would be a pretty big jump over the Zen 2 in xbox series / ps5/pro

Zen5 may be interesting mostly because of the NPU unit associated with the CPU on a chip, together with the AI accelerator cores of the following GPUs.

If the new Xbox comes in 2025, it will have Zen5, if a contract is signed with AMD for the new console.

 

[eastmen]

Zen5 may be interesting mostly because of the NPU unit associated with the CPU on a chip, together with the AI accelerator cores of the following GPUs.

If the new Xbox comes in 2025, it will have Zen5, if a contract is signed with AMD for the new console.

It could be 5 or 6. It depends on what MS wants to grab. Zen 6 can be released next june which would give plenty of time for a production ramp.