Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@redd214 I'd say sorry in advance, but now I've already posted my text wall...

Trivia things but it affected me for decision between PS4 & Xbox One.
1. PS4 uses Blue box for game packaging while Xbox One still uses Green box for game packaging. I prefer Blue color over Green color (PS4 win)
2. PS4 have Dragon Quest Builders 2, the BEST game on PS4 for me while Xbox One doesn't have DQB 2. (PS4 win again)
3. PS4 doesn't need Online checking to play games by Offline. Xbox One did. (PS4 win again)
4. PS4 default U/I is more beautiful and simpler than Xbox One. (PS4 win again)
5. PS4 has a lot of Limited edition games from digital to physic by LRG / SRG / etc while Xbox One doesn't even have one. (PS4 win again)

@ThanosReXXX lol all good man I knew it was coming.

All I'll say is both have strengths and weaknesses and both PlayStation and Xbox are FANTASTIC platforms. It's like IOS and Android, they're so similar and great in most regards that it really just comes down to preference.

Though I will almost certainly be skipping the Xbox family moving forward, some of the moves they made this gen are remarkable and I how others catch on!

@redd214 I'd sooner say that Sony is a good platform than I'll ever say that Apple or iOS is a good one, and people who know me here or in real life, know how I feel about Sony, so that oughta tell you something...

So, just out of curiosity, why will you be skipping Xbox from now on?

@ThanosReXXX Xcloud. It's exactly what I hoped it would be, a way to play the handful of Xbox exclusives I'm interested in without needing an actual Xbox and being able to use what I already have. Playing Forza Horizon and Gears 5 on my phone/tablet either standalone or connected to the TV is awesome!

It's really hard to know when you're trolling

@redd214 Ah, okay. Thought you were abandoning the brand altogether.

@Dezzy No, he's just being his usual moronic, tunnel-visioned self...
Except for point 2 (and even that isn't a real point, because it's just personal preference), any and all of his other points are completely useless and non-valid in an ACTUAL platform comparison.

@ThanosReXXX

Sony's VR is, of course inferior to similar technology on the PC, which is no real surprise. PC is always the best solution when it comes to being on the cutting edge.

With that said, PSVR is very well-supported by Sony and is the first VR solution that's accessible to the general consumer as opposed to the hobbyist. Of course, time will tell if Sony takes steps to make even bigger pushes in the VR space to truly make it mainstream, but it's undoubtedly the company best positioned to lead VR into a profitable future.

I... was actually unaware the PS3 has now outsold the Nintendo Wii. That's an absolutely incredible achievement, especially considering how far in the dirt Sony was for most of last gen.

Imagine if the Xbox One somehow surged to the point where it outsold the PS4 by 2020. That'd be an incredible come back.

Regardless of whether or not that "counts" for you, though, my observation was to make a point: even when Sony loses, they come back stronger than ever. The same is not true of Nintendo or Microsoft (Nintendo came back hard with the Switch, but it built on the foundation of the Wii U's failure; still impressive, but not the same sort of thing). Even IF Sony loses market dominance this gen, history suggests it'll come roaring back and still end up having the best console by the end of the generation regardless.

If I'm a single-platform gamer, that matters to me.

Also, yes, games generally ran better on Xbox 360 than on PS3. But PS3 still had overall better Japanese support, despite being in a position of weakness, AND ended its gen with quite a few more high-quality exclusives.

I actually am interested in it. It's one reason why I maintain a gaming PC alongside my consoles. And my general interest in retro gaming is why I have an emulation frontend set up on my PC and have a bunch of old consoles still connected to TVs throughout the house. With that said, it's nowhere near as important as current gen support, and the majority of people will only play a couple of backwards compatible games before going back to the latest AAA release. It's a nice thing to have, especially early in the generation, but it won't save a console or even give it much of a competitive edge over its competition. For example, the Wii U is fully BC with the Wii and, via its robust VC library on both platforms, is inarguably Nintendo's best console for legacy support. The Switch is BC with absolutely nothing.

Besides, when it comes to BC, the previous gen is, by far, the most important, because it's what people are most immediately invested in, and PS5 is apparently BC with the PS4, so the only thing Microsoft really has over Sony on that front is some decades old games. Nothing to sneer at, but also nowhere close to being as important as the more robust current gen support the PS5 will almost certainly receive.

PS4 didn't APPEAR to be a better value at the beginning of the gen. It WAS. You seem to be confusing intent with result, plans with action, etc. It's entirely irrelevant what Sony planned on doing. What matters is what ended up happening.

And what ended up happening is Sony had a stronger console that was $100 cheaper, and it gained momentum to the point where it consistently outsold the Xbox One by a huge margin, even when Microsoft took steps to be competitive in terms of pricing.

Might things have been different if Sony had launched their system first, or if Microsoft hadn't flubbed the launch of their console? Maybe. Probably. But unless you have the ability to hop into another dimension, it's entirely irrelevant.

Fair enough. I retract that statement. But it's still true that the Playstation brand is one of the most successful and profitable parts of Sony, and it's still true that Sony has a lot more to lose by failing than Microsoft does.

Well, not really. PC is THE platform for premium gaming. It has the best possible performance, the best VR technology, etc. I don't really expect that to change.

Anyway, I'm not questioning your qualifications, but I'll trust historical precedent over everything else. And historical precedent is firmly on Sony's side. Even if they lose market share from this gen (which, come on, they kind of have to: Switch is successful, and Microsoft probably won't flub the Series X launch as badly as they did with the Xbone's), it's still likely they'll maintain the lead next generation when it comes to power consoles (no idea what'll happen with Nintendo, but their success or failure is entirely independent from what happens with other companies). PS5 will almost certainly have (far) better exclusives, better Japanese third party support, better marketing, etc.

I'm not a betting person, but if I was, I'd go with the company that has brutally dominated three out of the four gens it has participated in, and still somehow ended up "winning" the one gen where it was behind.

I'm an equal opportunity cynic, so I'll tear into both sides

@Heavyarms55 Well, it got you, Ralizah, and Anti into the XBox thread, so maybe it's marketing genius after all From my own experience, the problem XBox has, perception-wise, yours included, is that where it differentiates from the competition is in the little things, not the big advertisable things. If you own neither and evaluate on paper, you're entirely right, there's little reason to buy an XBox when Playstation offers a lot more up front. However, owning both, I've found the actual experience of using the XBox, at least with X1X, and particularly if in an all or mostly digital ecosystem is vastly superior to using the PS4. There's no VR or exclusives level selling point, but actually living with the console on a daily basis is actually a nicer, smoother, friendlier experience all the way around, again, particularly with digital. Enough so that I re-bought a multitude of digital games I'd bought on PS4 on X1 to try to consolidate all non-exclusive non-Switch gaming onto the XBox alone. It's not a direct comparison, but as far as a TV-tethered console can be, I liken the experience of booting up X1X, browsing and playing to being more "Switch-like" in its pick up and play convenience than the PS4 that feels like stepping back into 2003 somehow. At least with current gen...

That's a pain point for them. They don't have anything to sell in an obvious way, at least so far, to sway potential customers, but they can instill very high customer satisfaction and loyalty to existing owners. Converting new customers into owners is their difficult challenge.

@Grumblevolcano True, but if the history of PS is any guide, if the PS5 is a normal size device like the PS4 (and Japan hates "large" anything, so there's a fair reason to believe that unless they've gone SO western...) then the thing will be small, have a leaf blower for a fan, and run hot enough to fry bacon. Whether or not that's considered a selling feature or not, though, is unknown.

@Ralizah With the OG XBone I agree. But when the S and X models came out, the equation definitely changed (I say this as a PS4 launch day buyer, an XBone ridiculer, PS4 Pro buyer, PSVR fan, and, eventually, an X1X convert.)

@ThanosReXXX If creating news by creating arguments was the plan, I'll cede to you it's marketing genius. Otherwise the name is a disaster and a joke, and while I'm happy it will hold XBox back, thus keeping it an underdog, and thus keeping it awesome, my palm shall remain glued to my face for the remainder of the 9th gen. It's a terrible set of names with very obvious problems, and maybe it is valuable as a viral argument and controversy generator, but if that wasn't the intent....it's just awful naming, no excuses. You really don't get American big box retail, including online

Even in the boutiques, I was in GameStop the day after Switch reveal announce, behind the guy asking to buy "the new Wii." I'm glad you're in B2B sales. If you were in B2C you'd be bankrupt!

@redd214 Thanos and Ralizah going at it. This is the one rare occasion I'll just grab a big bucket of popcorn and join you over in the bleachers

@Ralizah Obviously, I was talking premium CONSOLE gaming, not PC vs console gaming, so the One X is still that, and not Sony's effort in that specific field.

And I don't know how you manage to perceive an actual truth in an entirely different light, but the PS4 was never of better value at launch, other than maybe for their library, although I honestly can't remember anymore how many games exactly each of the two parties offered at launch.

The ONLY reason they were cheaper at launch is because of the EXACT reasons I mentioned, so they were not actually cheaper, they simply removed the components that were similar to what Microsoft offered, which caused such a negative blowback for them, and as such they only APPEARED to be the better deal, but what REALLY happened is that a console with less components could obviously also be sold for less money. Had Microsoft not incorporated the mandatory Kinect camera at first, then they would actually have been the better offer, because that camera initially cost $150, making it even cheaper than the PS4 without camera, so there's that to consider.

There's facts, and then there's perception, the latter of which is obviously only in the eye of the beholder, but which, more often than not, has nothing whatsoever to do with how things actually go or are.

Any and all things you mentioned concerning Sony's continuing success, are assumptions, based upon past performances. Anyone in sales would know that past performances are NEVER a guarantee for the future. Nothing is set in stone. Sony is at number one, and they've already shown complacency multiple times, over the last couple of years, so the actual expectation and/or risk is, that they WILL screw up. Just wait and see...

And while Sony was confidently/smugly, or whatever, sitting in their number one position, Phil Spencer and his team have been building, expanding, and improving time and again, and he's just not going to let that fall apart anymore, so there's more incentive for him to win or even just improve and gain market percentage, than there is for Sony.

But you know what? We can keep going back and forth on this, but I think we should just wait and see what happens, seeing as even after Microsoft's reveal, nothing is completely set in stone yet, and Sony hasn't even revealed anything, so all we can do now is make guesses. Some based on what little info we have, some based on the past which, as mentioned, is never a guarantee in the first place, so I suppose at least for my part, I've basically said all that I can say about this, because there simply isn't any more information to go by.

@NEStalgia There's no "going at" here, just polite conversation. Doesn't always have to be in agreement.
As for the rest: no, man. Just no. Your perception vs a not yet proven reality. Here as well, let's just wait and see how it goes, and how it sells. If it becomes a total disaster, then I'll be the first one to tag you and tell you that you had a valid point after all.

But until then, Phil Spencer, and by extension yours truly, are right on the money.

The PS4 was released a week before the Xbox One, so how could the Xbox One have ''flopped hard'' and influenced Sony if it wasn't even out yet?

@ThanosReXXX That depends on how you define "total disaster" - it doesn't have to hit WiiU depths to count, in my book

@Ralizah One thing you highlight is the Japanese support. That does matter to a niche segment of gamers, and to you and I personally, but when talking generally about the platforms, I don't think that's a terribly significant difference to the overall gaming market. Heck, even in Japan, these days where niche Japanese games have been selling even worse than in the US and Western games are ever-rising in popularity. And with Sony going full Seattle, a lot of Japanese devs have been really putting some effort behind XBox too, especially Square, with some notable exceptions, especially Falcom and Atlus.

The rest, though, this past gen, PS4 was built on top of MS's launch failures. Everything you say was true at the start of the gen, for sure. The whole "mid-gen" reboot of both platforms changed the dynamics, though, significantly, and those earlier arguments became somewhat obsolete, and I think the momentum of that is going to carry into what happens next gen. IMO, Sony got complacent and abusive during PS4, and going into PS3 we saw how that played out after PS2. I'm not as "bullish" on PS5 as I was on PS4 at the same point in time. I'm counting on Sony displaying the same arrogance they did at the PS3 launch, and the same arrogance MS displayed at X1 launch. Especially with the new management.

XBox, right now, is Phil Spencer in the same way Nintendo was Iwata in the 3DS/Wii era. The old rules don't apply, but, similarly, everything good falls apart if he's ever out.

I've heard that the PS5 is going to be a square donut, and you can fit the Xbox in it.

@Octane E3 & the reveal. The Spielberg, Fantasy Football, DVR, online "deal with it", disaster that was the XBox reveal, followed by the E3 presentations, price, Kinect, DRM etc and Sony's "this is how you share games" video, by the end of E3 Monday, Sony won, hands down, the hearts & minds, and MS had blown it. They started back-tracking that very night, but it was too late, the damage was done. After that, XBone was the weaker hardware for 3rd party games, running lower resolutions, for the same price even in pre-launch/previews. There wasn't a hope of recovering at that point.

PS4 was off to record sales, and Yoshida even mentioned that the majority of those sales were to X360 owners, not PS3 owners upgrading.

@NEStalgia Makes me wonder why MS just didn't ditch the camera from the start.

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.