Topic: The everything Xbox thread

For the first time I regret not owning an XBone. Starting yesterday, XBone owners have exclusive access to the PSO2 closed beta. I'm jelly. Look as though PS4 (and possibly Switch owners?) will have to wait a little longer until they can play PSO2 at long last.

Sure. But that's a big caveat. If you're a tech aficionado and/or care deeply about performance and resolution in your games, then PC will be your thing. There obviously are performance snobs who don't like PC, but they'll never be fully satisfied with what's on offer from the big three.

Console gaming is still primarily about accessibility and convenience, which is why, if there's not a huge gulf in hardware capability, price will be more important when it comes to a new console establishing momentum.

Fact: PS4 was cheaper at launch.

Fact: The PS4 was, and is, decently more capable than the base Xbox One hardware.

For most people, that makes the PS4 a better value. You're getting superior hardware for $100 less.

You can talk all day long about how, if you add up all the components, the Xbox One was a better value, but the point is that people didn't care about those components. People care about the price tag and what they're getting for it.

Sony offered meatier hardware for a decently slighter price. You can say that's not a better value. And I'll tell you that, unless you were hyped for whatever stupid Kinect functionality the Bone launched with, that's just not true for people who wanted a box to play next-gen games on.

This sort of reminds me of discussions about the Switch Lite. Person A will say: "Switch Lite is a better value if you're only in it for handheld mode. It's $100 less." Person B will say: "No, because the dock costs X amount, so, if you add it up, the Switch Phat is a better value." Maybe, in some universe of platonic pricing norms, that's true, but what matters is what the consumer wants and what's being offered. If I don't care about TV play, then the Switch Lite is still a better value, regardless of the individual pricing of components.

Except the difference is that virtually nobody valued the Kinect camera.

Besides, Microsoft relaunched the Xbone without the camera for the same price as the PS4 later on. And, really, that's almost objectively a better value, considering the difference in hardware potential. For $399.99, do I buy the Xbox One, or the console with more powerful hardware that all my friends are buying and that is the exact same price?

Nothing is guaranteed in life. Maybe a meteor that somehow evaded detection will fall from space and kill us all tomorrow, making this entire discussion pointless. Maybe the economy will crash. With that said, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and, similarly, if you're guessing how things will turn out (which, come on, we all are), it makes a lot more sense to hedge your bets with a company that has seen almost continuous and wild levels of success since the late 90's.

Sony isn't destined to win. But they sure have made a habit of it.

Smug Sony has also been building up amazing first-party support, something Microsoft seems to genuinely struggle with. As Sony's games rock the industry, Microsoft buys developers in an attempt to have SOMETHING to offer people who opt for their machine over Sony's.

Although, with xCloud, I don't see how it really matters. They've given up entirely on the concept of exclusivity, which takes away a gigantic incentive to buy the next Xbox. Why on Earth would I buy the next Xbox if I can just stream its few good games on devices I already own? You can bet your biscuits that you'll need to actually buy Sony's next console to play their biggest games anywhere close to release.

Also, Smug Sony took a failing console last gen and somehow still managed to outsell the competition by the end, which directly led into the wildly successful PS4. Phil Spencer has righted the sinking Xbone ship to the point where it's not a Wii U-esque disaster, but let's not overstate what Microsoft has accomplished.

Well, of course. We're making idle chatter. Gossip. I doubt either of us are industry insiders, so all we have to go on are rhetoric and the few publicly available scraps of information.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't a fanboy screed. I'm not really rooting for Sony. I think the sheer level of industry dominance they've enjoyed this generation is bad for everyone, and I'd love to see Microsoft surge and take them down a peg.

I just... don't see that happening. I could be wrong, of course, but I don't think I am.

@NEStalgia In terms of publicity and overall interest, I think modern-gen Japanese support matters to more people than backwards compatibility with decades old games.

Besides, several of those niche Japanese games are still doing good numbers. Persona 5, for example, has sold... 3 million copies? It's obviously not CoD numbers, but it's also not nothing. And the more excellent Japanese games hit one platform and not the other, the more attractive the console with robust Japanese support looks to the core gaming crowd. And that momentum, without any pricing shenanigans, can easily transfer to broader support for the one console over the other.

Factor in the way Microsoft's console is only really popular in North America, and it remains incredibly likely that Sony will take the lead next gen.

PS3 fell on its face at the beginning mostly because of pricing. I... don't think they'll make that same mistake again. Sony is arrogant, but they're not stupid.

@Octane Corporate synergy. Keep in mind at the time, XBox was a department under the Windows division. The Windows bosses were making the decisions on what XBox did, and they constrained it to suit agendas for Windows. At the time they were pushing Kinect as a broader scope Big Brother attached to Windows & Azure Cloud, with business conferencing and such as part of it, not just gaming, and were hoping to use gaming toys to promote its adoption to be watching every person in every room and every desk in the world.

After the disaster they were close to shutting down XBox entirely, a key reason Nadella was voted CEO. Thanos linked an interview with Spencer a while back where, apparently, one of the first things Nadella did was call him and ask him point blank why they should bother keeping XBox at all. Spencer was the true visionary around the turnaround that told them to go 100% into it, and since then they've made it it's own division detached from Windows, and Spencer a co-equal head along with the Windows, Azure, etc. bosses.

It's, essentially, an entirely different company this time than it was during the XBone launch. An independent MS division rather than a department under an OS company, which is part of why the old rules don't apply. XBox Series X Standard 2.8 Gold Platinum Ultimate (Standard Edition) isn't going to be released as a footnote of how to promote Windows 11's rollout, it's going to be released to be an XBox.

It may be temporary, but right now XBox and Nintendo are the brands run by gamers and toymakers. Playstation has it's new suite of corporate MBAs running the show. The same people that decided to abandon PS4 for a year plus. It's not hard to guess how this goes

@NEStalgia Hermen Hulst, former CEO of Guerilla Games, is now head of PlayStation's worldwide studios, I don't see that as a bad thing. And in the end, it doesn't really matter who runs the company, as long as the games are good. Reggie was a former Pizza Hut CEO, but Nintendo still released good games, so I don't really care.

@Ralizah "As Sony's games rock the industry, Microsoft buys developers in an attempt to have SOMETHING to offer people who opt for their machine over Sony's."

There's a fair point to that, but there's also a bit of an illusion Sony is good at building through timing and promotion. I like Sony's games. I will buy a PS5 for Sony's games. But when the shine wears off, and I've bought everything available on XB or Switch since, and I boot up my Playstation, I'm left with a dozen or so primary games on Playstation I can't get elsewhere, excluding vintage "Classics". And some of those are falling off now, too, with Yakuza, KH, and FF moving over to XB now. And Last Remnant was on XBox before Sony bought the remaster. If you remove third party exclusives that Sony didn't actually pay for or own, like Persona, that list gets kind of lean of TRUE PS4 first party exclusives, albeit with companies like Atlus providing additional reasons to own the PS, but those kinds of incentives will become rarer as games become more expensive to produce.

"Although, with xCloud, I don't see how it really matters. They've given up entirely on the concept of exclusivity, which takes away a gigantic incentive to buy the next Xbox. Why on Earth would I buy the next Xbox if I can just stream its few good games on devices I already own? You can bet your biscuits that you'll need to actually buy Sony's next console to play their biggest games anywhere close to release.

Also, Smug Sony took a failing console last gen and somehow still managed to outsell the competition by the end, which directly led into the wildly successful PS4. Phil Spencer has righted the sinking Xbone ship to the point where it's not a Wii U-esque disaster, but let's not overstate what Microsoft has accomplished."

I think where xCloud is concerned that's the wrong viewpoint to have. Xbox isn't depending on you buying the physical machine. They're depending on you buying XBox. IF you're subscribing to xCloud, you are buying XBox. Or rather, you're renting time on their XBox. It's all the same to them unless material physical unit sales are what matters at the end of the day. If they can convince iPad owners to subscribe to xCloud, they were successful - they sold xBox. I doubt they see that as a failure, especially in a time where the industry projects cloud being the entire future of the medium.

Not to mention if you buy Sony's streaming you're still buying it from Microsoft, because Sony is........

Regarding Sony's PS3 numbers, I've never really bought into that "PS3 beat Wii!" numbers game. Sony sells their consoles in ridiculously cheap formats for a long time after the new console is out, a long time after MS stopped selling 360, and a long time after Nintendo stopped selling Wii, all while having abandoned support for Wii entirely and PS3/360 were still getting new games. It's similar to how GB was the #1 selling console, mostly by being on the market forever and ever. Sony throws the number around, and they ought to, but it doesn't have the same meaning as if it really sold like that during the actual primary run, at profit, of the hardware. If the Kinect-ridden XBone were on sale until 2037 for $99.99 with a manual disc lid made of a hollowed out milk jug, it could outsell Wii & PS4 combined...

Personally I think this gen will be way more balanced. PS4 built an aura around itself PS3 never had, mostly out of the bones of XBone and WiiU being absolute disasters in the first 4 years. It was easy to showcase "greatness" simply by being average while the competitions were burning by the side of the road. IMO, being there from day 1, the shine came off PS4 when I realized a year or two ago that everything they showed in the "Year of Dreams" in the stadium, year 1, was the ENTIRE life cycle of the console shown up front, not "this is just the beginning" like it seemed that day. Including KH3 and FF7R. Which....are also on XBox...

This time it has a competitive, differentiated Nintendo, and a "ready for a fight" XBox to contend with, along with their own arrogance and clueless beancounting new execs. They can't sail to dominance to build that aura around this time, and their poised for some serious blunders. Cerny will build good hardware, but Sony policy will be the hurdle. Not unlike "#dealwithit"

@Octane Ah yeah, I did forget about Hulst. That did surprise me as a good move in terms of understanding the needs of game development. In that sense, it's Furukawa that's the odd man out as a bean counter. Reggie doesn't count. He ran a sales office, not game development and hardware planning.

Wow, there's another thread on the Xbox brand, neat.

@NEStalgia Sounds more like Sony will have next to no competition next gen, in that case.

If Sony is doing the traditional home console thing, Microsoft is doing the "games as a service" streaming app thing, and Nintendo is doing the hybrid thing, then there's really no muscling for the same space in the industry. I mean, there'll always be some overlap, but those approaches attract different people for different reasons, I think.

@Ralizah Yeah. PS5 will be the system for Sony exclusives and VR, Switch will be the system for Nintendo exclusives and playing anywhere and Xbox Series X will be the system for if you hate PC gaming but want to play Halo, Gears and Forza (I say those 3 because the other franchises are coming to platforms like Switch).

@Ralizah I don't mean MS is only doing GaaS, obviously where the discussion here is largely about their all new hardware device(s). What I mean is they seem to be focusing on XBox as a total platform rather than a specific hardware disc player device. I.E. It doesn't matter if you're playing on a Windows PC, an XBox console or an iPad via xCloud, you're an XBox customer no matter the method you're interacting with the platform.

Sony's not really operating that differently with their upcoming streaming service that replaces Now. But MS is putting a bit more focus into building out the streaming service (for better or worse), and of course has a PC OS component that Sony doesn't, and can leverage integrating well with it to make up a platform that's bigger than just the "VCR with a big fan" aspect of it. So Sony is focusing on the traditional home console, plus a bit of a secondary focus on streaming. MS is focusing somewhat equally on the traditional home console, streaming and OS integration.

I.E. if you're playing MS Game Studios games on you're PC, you're still in the Microsoft/XBox ecosystem regardless of if you buy the hardware or not. None of these companies make much money selling consoles - and typically they lose money selling consoles. If they could sell you games and services on your toaster, they'd rather do that.

@Grumblevolcano I still find it a little strange, granted, as a multi-platform gamer, when people evaluate the platforms based on exclusives. I don't know if it's Nintendo & Sega that created that weird bubble, or if Sony did it. When you evaluate your total game collection, what percentage of all your games, maaaybe excluding Nintendo since we're all core Nintendo gamers and they're one of the top publishers, are platform exclusive? If we omit Nintendo that's a unique case, and I look at my, what, 320 + games playable on current gen hardware, maybe 25 of them are platform specific?

If you're only going to buy one system yeah you have to buy the one that has the games you want, but it's still a little weird to me when most of the games you're going to play are multiplatform to not look at which platform is actually going to be nicer to play them on. Take exclusives off the table. Ok, VR is a big deal for Sony, but it's also a whole OTHER console you buy for your console. It's the Sega 32x but with games.

But take the exclusives off the table. Forget Uncharted and Forza. You want to play Assassin's Creed, COD, RDR, Just Dance....whatever your thing is. Even assume cross-play for everything. Wouldn't you pick the hardware and software ecosystem that is more suited to your use rather than arguing exclusivity counts?

I have PS4 Pro. I have X1X. Outer Worlds is out. Which platform do I buy it for? The PS4 gives me no reason to favor it over X1X, meanwhile the menus, navigation, and overall interface on X1X gives me reason to prefer it there. Ralizah hates the XBox controlers and loves the DS4....so the choice of which to get is obvious there.

I just think it's kind of broken to evaluate systems purely by "which of the half dozen exclusives for each can I play - oh well that machine has no exclusives so I'll just get this other machine and shoehorn the other 80% of my games onto a platform that maybe suits them or my use less because I want those other half dozen games."

Granted, that's PS4 vs X1X - maybe XSX (XSEX?) vs PS5 will make PS5 look like the better bet. But where most of the games we're going to play are PC games first and foremost, wouldn't the most PC-like platform be ideal?

Or similarly the mentality that says "I'm really a PC gamer and play all these multiplat games on PC so the only value a console has is in playing nothing but exclusive games on it that I can't play on my PC even though I'd prefer to, and therefore a Playstation has 12 games and an XBox has 2 so Playstation wins." You're not really even a console customer at that point, you're just buying a plastic & metal license key with a fan and a power light for access to a couple of games.

@NEStalgia Well the key thing to remember is many people only get 1 console. If you're going to get multiple, that's where deciding where to buy games come in and is where Xbox Series X shines if you like the ecosystem because you can use the Game Pass Ultimate trick to guarantee 3 years for just £1/$1/€1 when you've got 3 years of Gold.

@Grumblevolcano But even if you're only buying one console. Again, Nintendo aside for the moment because they're a special case in several ways, but just going between MS and PS right now:

When did it become standard to chose your ONE and ONLY gaming system simply to play GoW, LBP, HZD, and Uncharted versus simply to play Forza, Gears, FSO2 Beta. Why not choose your one and only console based on your preferred place to play the other 200 games you may buy?

@NEStalgia I think most of my games are platform exclusive. On PlayStation it's definitely half. Even more on Switch, but that's because I only really buy Nintendo games on Switch.

@Octane You just don't buy very many games then

Switch is kind of an exception. Outer Worlds being on Switch is cool, but you're going to buy it on PS/XB/PC if you have the option unless you really really really want portability on it.

That in itself is an interesting question though. Nintendo being aside -they're unique and you buy their hardware to play their games. Sony's games are popular, but they're not quite the magical publisher Nintendo is. What makes people like yourself buy primarily platform exclusive games? My theory is simply because you can. Because exclusivity seems fitting and helps justify the purchase. I imagine I do that too to some extent.

Someone will say "look at the Metacritic scores!" I've said, probably in this thread a few times, that with Nintendo and Sony I think the critical scores are high in some cases just because of the publisher's reputation. It's something that happens in judged sports - things like figure skating and skateboarding. An athlete that is known to consistently nail the technical elements tends to be less scrutinized by judges, less slow-mo reviews from off-angle cameras, etc. while an athlete that's known to make technical errors will be scrutinized closely. Judges will verify the technical elements in replay most of the time.

The result of this is that in major competitions, one athlete can have a serious technical failure that goes unnoticed, they're are essentially scored on benefit of doubt, while another athlete can have the performance of their lives with the tiniest of miniature errors, and get heavy points deduction while the athlete with the serious failure gets near perfect marks - simply because the judges were looking for problems with the latter, and assuming no problems with the former. That problem persists up through Olympic level.

I think video game critics do much of the same. Sony is known for great narratives and few technical difficulties (albeit a lot of sameness through a lot of their games) and critics just evaluate them through rose tinted glasses. Similarly Nintendo tends to be viewed in the same light "most of what they do is great, so this will be no different.) MS is a lot more experimental, more prone to take chances, more often leading to disasters. Crackdown 3 being a great example. So critics tend to look at a new MS game through very critical lenses, looking for the faults and cracks, rightly marking them down, but wrongly ignoring glaring holes in Sony's "play it safe" lineups. Much of the time I think a Sony game, even if it's fairly middling and average with some big flaws, gets great scores simply because it's a Sony game. It's not that their games aren't good, but I don't see them as being as "amazing" as scores make them look.

I love Insomniac games. R&C is one of the best shooters I've ever played. I'd buy a PS just for R&C. Spiderman is "very good" and is popular because it's Spiderman, so it's popularity is inevitable. But when I compare it to Sunset Overdrive, a much more experimental and "rough" outing, there's a lot more to love about Sunset. It's clear it was part of the mechanical inspiration behind Spiderman, but where Spiderman sucks the life out of it, plays it safe, and derrives almost all of Arkham, Sunset is similarly designed but goes pedal to the metal crazy with fun mechanics and player agency. Meanwhile Spiderman gets top marks, Sunset overdrive gets filtered as an also-ran, and it's made by the same team....

@NEStalgia Yeah, nobody sensible can really believe that PS4 sold more than Xbox One/Wii U/Switch because of Sony's games, especially since there weren't any Sony's games to begin with. Nintendo depends on their own games, Sony said that they were surprised that PS4 was selling so well without games.

This generation we've seen so many games going multiplatform, only a few remain, those made by Sony's studios and those made by Microsoft's studios but for Microsoft is no longer about consoles but about subscriptions, Windows, consoles and streaming, integrating all of them to give the best possible value to players. Let's get real, Sony doesn't make that much money with consoles either but with royalties and subscriptions. Another plus for Microsoft is multiplatform games that run and look better on Microsoft's hardware because most of the games that the majority of people play are third-party games. When most people choose a console, it's not about those few games unless they're buying Nintendo. Next generation is going to be nothing like this one for Sony because Nintendo and Microsoft won't mess it up like they did in 2012-2013, no matter how beautiful Uncharted 5 is.

@BlueOcean Year 1 on PS4 was pretty bleak, wasn't it? I bought it, and used it the first 2 weeks, for Knack and Killzone and basically didn't touch it again for another year. I think 3DS consumed my gaming during most of that time. They weren't too ashamed at the time that most of their booming sales was down to Microsoft's giant launch disaster and the WiiU's struggles.

They did do a good job capitalizing on that momentum, Year of Dreams, bringing out some big guns in rapid succession and keeping interest in the system high for years though. Right around the time X1X and Switch came out, though, they seemed to lose all interest in their own platform and had already moved onto PS5 internally. People defend PS4 based on the early ears, but when you look at its trajectory it mimics Wii. A boom followed by abandonment. Sony skipped this E3, and, IMO, was only present in name the previous E3...that was sad to watch. They managed to have a worse E3 showing than Nintendo, and Nintendo had nothing but 5 hours of Smash. My opinion of PS4 was much higher 2 years ago than it is today, and I don't like how they abandoned it, Vita-style in the end of it's run.

First half of the gen MS didn't even seem present, (and were highly offensive early on), but at this point it feels like, as an X1 owner you're not being abandoned just because new hardware is coming out in a year. As a PS4 owner I feel like they already forgot about me a year and a half ago with another year of neglect before they tell me to renew my membership. I did use my PS4 a lot last year too, but mostly for KH from 10 years ago, which wasn't on XB...yet....

I do admit, Square departing Sony's grip really reversed a lot of grip PS had on me.

Agreed that MS is all about subscriptions now. And value - but their focus on value is also only because they're #3. If XBox were the dominant system they'd be less willing to offer value, and Sony would be throwing more good value toward us....so the status quo is working in XB fan's favors at the moment

That's very interesting and one of the reasons I don't pay attention to reviews anymore. Nintendo's and Sony's games are reviewed with rose-tinted glasses while Microsoft's games are scrutinised in every imaginable way.

@NEStalgia Yep, I also played the old Kingdom Hearts games on PS4 because they weren't on Xbox at the moment because we all know that the Xbox controller is better. I played each of the Uncharted games once and yeah, great voice acting and Nate is really likeable but I won't be playing again. I didn't really like The Last of Us or, specifically, its gameplay. Wipeout Omega Collection, another compilation of old games, is my most played PS4 game besides the huge Kingdom Hearts collection. Now old and new Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games are coming to Xbox. Square Enix was the only thing I was missing on Xbox.

I also feel like Sony has abandoned PS4 somehow and Nintendo well, Nintendo did the same with Wii and Wii U.

@BlueOcean @NEStalgia It's about Microsoft using the Games as a Service model a lot more than the others regarding the review situation. I saw IGN re-reviewed MCC when Halo Reach came earlier this month and that kind of concept needs to be more common.

I'd imagine Sea of Thieves for example is in a much better state now than it was when it launched in March 2018.