read today on another forum from a guy who knows his stuff regarding videogames, that a 100% reliable source has mentioned that Microsoft is going to leave Series and stop selling it as we know it. That we are going to know more about it in the near future -next year-. He might be into something 'cos that guy knew things since many months ago....
Good point but those games will never be AAAs.
Maybe you could share the link. The signs hint to what you're saying as well. I think what you say makes sense. They can drive growth as a third party developer and leave the hw business to the OEMs. I think this is where they are trending, where if in the small chance they make new hw it will be a niche product like their surface products. In fact I recall them getting the surface hw guys to take over Xbox hw recently IIRC. But I agree I think this is where they're trending as well.
MS is easily one of the largest third party publishers already with their Activision acquisition. Their sustained growth has been through acquisitions and good will from their Xbox brand as macroeconomic and technology factors generally led growth. The question as always is in Finance is what is their projected cash flows for the next 3 -5 years and what will be the drivers for growth. So its fair for some to question whether they will be able to meet future growth targets in their gaming division if most of the growth for this year is coming from the recent Activision acquisition. Its also fair for some to point out(as you have) that they have in fact seen relatively consistent growth in revenues. The former has a more nuanced conservative look at the numbers the latter has a more optimistic look.
Truthfully, I'm not seeing his delusion.
Marketshare is less, but the platform continues to grow in revenue, not shrink, even more so with the recent acquisitions.
Going as far back as x360 days, when people felt 360 was on top of the console industry. You've made a strong statements that the platform in decline, for some time now, and going steeper - but these graphs here, I'm having a hard time seeing it.
When hardware revenue goes away, which it will eventually, Xbox is still looking healthy. I'm okay if you want to debate the numbers, that's fine, people are okay to disagree. But calling people deluded, when the graphs look like this, is an unnecessary personal attack. I don't take an issue with your arguments, but your words. I've seen delusion, delusion is talking about hidden GPUs, things that don't actually exist. Things that break the laws of physics and pure magic. He doesn't have a deluded view of Xbox's position right now. But using those types of words to stop him from posting I have an issue with. Please refrain from the behaviour of shutting down discussion if you can't actually counter his arguments.
Pretty sure they are the largest in terms of studios and potential output.
he didn't share the link, he just hinted at a guy in Japan who months ago leaked somewhere some very interesting info about Xbox and the leaks turned out to be real.
certainly would if he shared more than what I wrote, but there is no link to confirm his claims, he just commented that. I trust the guy 'cos he mentioned the xbox strategy months ago and he got that information from that japanese source.
Well in fairness, Nintendo used to be synonymous with gaming in the US and all consoles were 'Nintendos'. Sony managed to turn that around. But, different times, and Sony had game. They picked a demographic and managed to appeal and create a whole identity. MS don't really have any 'game'. They were tough and hardball with OXB, then gamers for 360, then 'not-sure-what' and now they just sort of turned up because it was expected but they don't want to be here, seems like.
agreed.
That's not really true. Nothing impacted XB360's position, I don't think, and it kept that position relative to PS3 the whole gen. It was XBO that completely broke their momentum, just as PS3 broke Sony's. Sony managed to turn things around because they got game (in this case, great "it only does everything" marketing) but MS just fumbled about with no idea what to do about what.
Completely agree on this. I remember the Xbox was the most anticipated system because of how well the 360 had performed along with Kinect. They messed up so bad at launch, people just went and bought the PS4 with just one game KillZone. The Xbox One had a much better launch line up because of the good work done by some teams but the Business execs had told gamers to eff off and they whole heartedly did. It was that bad. Self inflicted wound.
I completely agree on this. To add to the last point, even at hot chips the Xbox hw engineers didnt bother mentioning or hinting to the Series S it was a purely marketing business led decision to make that box. The S was imposed on them at a later date in the hopes a cheaper model would drive subscriber growth for gamepass. I remember hearing things "like they went from a 382 bit bus to 320 bit because of signalling issues" and it didnt make sense since the Xbox One didnt have any such issue. It juts sounded like they cut their budget so they could deliver the cheaper model(which turned out to be a dud). As well MS tried to push a narrative that there would be no midgen refreshes this gen because you cant bring down hw costs. Of course this was a subtle lie because Sony's releasing a PS5 pro because they've been able to bring down the costs of manufacturing the PS5 to a level that enables this approach.
There's a Don Mattrick at MS waiting to unleash an AI gaming bot that plays the games for you anywhere anytime over the cloud. Just subscribe to the gaming service and play from any screen at anytime, whether you are present or not. This is what consumers want.
This may seem alien to people in the us, but the situation isn't too dissimilar to "the Samsung" or "an apple" here in Europe. They are the "normal" brands and if you get anything else you got something out of the ordinary.
I think you have your answer of how that would have played out by just looking at the current generation. Just factor out Microsoft actively marketing against the console this generation of course
. The market caters to Sony in regards to high end hardware, and Sony invests a lot in marketing efforts (exclusives, timed exclusives, sony console only content, etc) to keep it that way. Anything different on Xbox hardware is either actively marketed away by "an extended marketing team", or is a slight enhancement if it just happens to be a faster part of the already Sony lead development path.I'm not so sure since again developers cater to Sony. Developers would have just used the extra ram on Xbox in that case as a buffer for the disc drive, just like they did with X1X, X360 and now even XS|X (since apparently there's more ram available on the series x).
I think you have your answer of how that would have played out by just looking at the current generation. Just factor out Microsoft actively marketing against the console this generation of course
we will have to see what happens. IF ms really thinks cloud is the future they are going to keep making hardware so it makes little sense not to release it
Sony didnt get lucky, they looked at developer needs/feedback and included not just 8GB of ram but GDDR5 instead of their original 4GB plan. Xbox on the other hand went with 8GB of DDR memory which was such a terrible decision I'm almost certain it was driven by pressure to include the Kinect in the box. Because Sony had to give up bundling the PS cam in order to get the 8GB of GDDR5. While Xbox hw engineers had to make similar sacrifices to fulfill Don Mattricks dream of a home entertainment system.
