Topic: If Microsoft kills off Xbox…

@SOJIA What the hell are you talking about MS and Sony still make consoles.

Microsoft has the same goal for xbox that they have for Windows. Get it in front of as many consumers as possible. They don’t care about console wars (at least MS as a whole doesn’t). They are trying to leverage gamepass and their status now as one of the largest publishers in gaming to get in front of as many people as possible. That is why they have 4 tiers of gaming (mobile, series s, series x and PC). I do think they wanna streamline that but they are sorta trying to see where the market will go. If streaming game systems had taken off then I am sure they would have made an xbox os that could be installed on everything and went with that.

The thing that is limiting them is the market (console gamers want cheap boxes with amazing graphics and their mobile OS didn’t take off) and internet infrastructure of the US (primary market). They will probably have to limp along one more gen before they have enough xbox consumers (again 4 tiers) that they can try a unified gamepass/xbox/windows mobile OS that is platform agnostic. They will likely keep making xboxes the same as they still make computers (Surface line) but it will no longer be in direct competition with sony. It will be more about a single ecosystem that can be experienced on numerous device types. That was always the end goal of xbox. Put MS products (OS) in the hands of as much of the world as possible without it looking like a monopoly.

I hate to say it but as a shareholder I want them to do that rather than try to really fight the “good fight” for gaming.

@RygelXVIII and yet profit allows the company to thrive and make the products you consume and pay and hire the employees that make those products as well as provide jobs for others (I work in IT, guess what my specialty is? The Microsoft stack). And it allows investors like myself to build wealth so I don’t have to work until I die. So hey, no offense taken at all. Hard to be anti capitalist when you benefit from it, and I am talking about you a consumer. But if it makes you feel better to hate others, go ahead. Also I never said anything about “profit over everything”. You made an assumption to fuel your disdain.

Plus a games everywhere approach benefits me because I can play on my PC instead of having a dedicated box I have to buy every few years.

I’m gonna be completely upfront about my own biases just to be transparent, but I do not desire to buy anything from the Microsoft store. I don’t intend to imply that steam releases would be free of scummy practices, rather than trying to insinuate that Microsoft store is off limits for me period. So I do hope the Xbox brand stays alive to some capacity. I am comfortable gaming on my Xbox. I am not comfortable buying stuff from the Microsoft store and have them on my steam deck.

Nintendo themselves does not compete with either Sony or Xbox.

Microsoft not making consoles anymore would be a loss whether you like them or not. It would mean Sony can do whatever they want, because they would be the only option. It would be bad for everyone.

I think a major problem is that most companies are too greedy and stupid to make a huge hit console anymore. They keep making less exclusives (and less AAA games in general) for consoles that cost more to people who have less. So I can't see a dedicated home console from a third company succeeding either way. Even if Xbox does leave the home console space it'll be replaced with massive failures from someone like Amazon or niche products that aren't expecting to sell more than 10-20 million.

The real tragedy is that Xbox shutting down multiple studios as they did, especially Tango, is the type of decision that has potentially permanently made Xbox a no-go of a purchase for me and they deserve all the failure they get. But Xbox succeeding as a home console is still likely the best option for everyone, sadly.

When XBOX going to Dreamcast route, I will be happy and only focus on both Nintendo and PlayStation.
XBOX brand is never relevant in my country Indonesia.

@Ryu_Niiyama I think your right but the only thing you need to factor in is where inside Microsoft see streaming in 10 years time. I mean, in the 80s we waited 15 minutes to load a game. Kids get touchy waiting a couple of seconds lol. But Microsoft probably see streaming as a totally different thing to how we see it currently. They are investing billions into it.

@GrailUK Agreed. That was why i mentioned infrastructure. I know you are in the UK but in the US the internet infrastructure is very uneven. If you don’t live in a major city(or a decently sized smaller city/town) then you might still get dial up, satellite or low quality DSL. I live in a big city currently but a few years ago I lived in a smaller city in the same state and I had to take my xbox one and ps4 to my local game store to update them because otherwise it would take days. Internet still sucks in that city even now. So it really does depend on the infrastructure.

Google fiber has essentially halted new roll outs because companies can’t feasibly fix the internet infrastructure with significant investment (and likely regulation. I like regulation as I am anti monopoly but I do understand why a company would not want to foot the bill to fix infrastructure only to get busted up/restricted by the government. That’s setting money on fire. ) its like the American railroad system … out of date but no one wants to foot the bill and it limits innovation in that sector (look at US passenger trains vs say Japan’s). There are a lot more underlying parts, but I am using that as a generic comparison.

But Microsoft is expanding datacenters to use azure to leverage as much as possible but internet is still a bottle neck.

Which is why I still say King was the best part of the Activision acquisition. Becoming the defacto biggest mobile publisher means that they can push that side if they can’t get consoles or PC they way they want. After all there are a LOT of mobile gamers, many that use mobile as their primary way to game. Which means more trying to use hardware to break into markets, just sell apps that people put on all their phones no matter the brand and work forward from there. If it works then they will make the money spent on that acquisition back quickly.

But the goal imo is a platform agnostic software vehicle much like windows. I feel gaming is too fractured so I would like to see it get there but I also know that it will become even more sterile than at already is now. Ideally a universal ecosystem is good (steam for example) but business is pay to play and MS isn’t going to (likely) do business the way Valve does. Not if they want to turn major profits. Xbox is already a bit of a money pit as is. They aren’t trying to make that worse.

Edit: I hate typing on my phone. I think I got the typos.

@RygelXVIII you literally stated that profits over everything is a tumor of humanity (which again had Nothing to do with anything I said) so I responded to what you said. Look, like I said you can feel however you want. But using my comment as a springboard to equate shareholders to cancer and then trying the “no offense defense “ is you trying to make an assumption and halfway pin it on me for being a shareholder. I simply explained the benefit/purpose of profit and why I am shareholder which directly addresses both your ad hominem and your erroneously applied generalization (shareholders being equated to cancer and you dragging in a nonsense greed generalization in case you are confused as to what I am responding to). If that is a strawman to you, then ok (however you gave emotional generalizations so I can only respond with a structured response to those generalizations. Hence my explanation of how profit works. So I did speak to your logically muddled point, so that isn’t a strawman) but I do suggest you refrain from backhanded ad hominem in the future and actually speak to what I originally actually said. Refrain from red herrings for that matter as you were so focused on calling out the “cancer” and “tumor” that you ignored the entire discussion I had about my opinion on Microsoft’s motivations behind their business model.

Now in the interest of not further derailing the thread I am gonna move on. Have a nice day.

So I don’t have to doublepost, this part is addresses the thread. So one thing I see as a hinderance is the apparent subscription fatigue shown by the flattening growth of gamepass subscriptions (and subscriptions overall) vs the ROI of hosting these games for a nominal fee and partnership fees with EA. Now with the COD effect that may completely change, but for now it feels like that fatigue will slow down the push for a more agnostic/general ecosystem. I am curious as to what the subscription landscape will look like in 2 years.

@Ryu_Niiyama Just tagging in on your final sentiment - I agree, the landscape of Gamepass within the next 2 years is going to be incredibly interesting.... even moreso following on from the XB Showcase.

XB is probably my least favorite ecosystem out of the 'big 3'.... but in fairness, that was a hell of a show. I think it accomplishes the key objective of any such showcase = remind existing owners why they have an XB, and show non-owners what they are missing out on.

Nice to see some industry buzz following on from relatively flat SoP and SGF. Can't wait to see what Nintendo brings this month..

@Ryu_Niiyama Honestly I do feel like shareholder economics has a largely negative impact on our economy. It's largely inaccessible to the lower classes, it seems to be motivated towards constant growth which is wildly unsustainable and unrealistic (how can you constantly grow in a finite world? This largely flies in the face of basic economics and science), and it basically allows people to reap the rewards of the economy for providing basically nothing to the development of products and services. Far too many people are working their butts off and getting far less than shareholders that basically do nothing. I don't think you should be allowed to profit off a product that you've done nothing to actually create.

More to the topic though, I think Microsoft's business model is in a similar situation. They don't want to actually make games or anything that actually improves gaming. They just want to monopolize and extract value. They make very little games themselves, they just pad out their library by buying out companies and licensing games to be sold on their platforms. They don't want to actually develop any products or services that improve the experience, they just want to gatekeep and take a slice of the pie in the process. It's very parasitic. Honestly, I would celebrate the day they leave the industry. Their existence in gaming has been almost nothing but a hindrance and we're better off without them.

The only comfort I get is that a lot of this greedy nonsense is...y'know not working. Some things have too much of a hold to not succeed (Call of Duty and mobile gaming in general), but a lot of these companies/gaming divisions have been doing badly (in general or at least for what they've been aiming towards).