But not necessarily that new.
Regardless of whether or not the sales figures for the last financial quarter are of consoles sold or shipped, regardless of the extent to which the PlayStation and Xbox numbers were muddied by last-gen console statistics, one thing is clear: Microsoft are lagging behind. By an alarming factor of three-to-one.
It's early days, of course, in terms of Phil Spencer's tenure at the top. For much of 2014, he's been dealing in damage control, and trying to turn the omnishambles that Mattrick left behind into something identifiable, something relatable, something to do with games rather than every other facet of entertainment.
The Xbox brand has done a lot of good over the years, but their various blunders are pretty wild to look back on in their magnitude.
Ironically number 9 can save them at this point (releasing games on multiple platforms)
By “save them” you mean make more profit for Microsoft. Xbox will still be a dying hardware platform.
You could add the naming scheme for the consoles, it just confuses customers. I know they wanted to avoid traditional numbering bc it would always be lower than their competitor, but this whole 360 then One then Series thing is confusing af. Imagine a Soccer Mom trying to figure this stuff out. I still mistakenly call the Series X the One from time to time on accident.
Don't forget about the Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox Series X! Good luck to Soccer moms around the world.
They did that on purpose to confuse and direct attention away from the generational numbering.
MS doesn’t like reminding people that they joined the industry after others had already been involved in gaming.
For instance, they called the xbox “360” to combat PlayStation “3” because they wanted to seem like “more” than “3”, so instead of xbox 2, they opted for xbox 360. Also this had the additional benefit of selling consoles to uninformed parents who might purchase a “360” instead of a “3” by mistake, or because they thought 360 was more than 3. Kind of a disingenuous move.
They have been continuing with their confusing naming patterns for pretty much the same reasons. Frankly, it fits with who and what they are as a brand.
I can understand their reasoning, but whoever came up with that naming scheme should be fired, bad naming schemes have killed consoles (I'm pretty sure it was the major reason for the downfall of the WiiU). They should have had unqiue names like Nintendo and Sega have had for their consoles, far less confusing for the consumer.
@FinalFantasyFanatic "They should have had unqiue names like Nintendo..."
lol, you mean:
NES, SNES
GameBoy, GameBoy Advanced, GameBoy Colour, GameBoy SP
DS, DSi, DSXL
3DS, 3DS XL, New 3DS, New 3DS XL
Wii, Wii U
Switch, Switch OLED
Phil Spencer is the worst that has happened to Xbox.
They built a respectable brand up to Xbox one. Then this guy took over and things became a joke
I didn't like either person, both people damaged their respective brands and produced worse outcomes, but Phil did save the Xbox brand from being retired by Microsoft. Although in hindsight, he should have just let it die, rather than languish in limbo like it is now.
Phil Spencer was also on the team back when 360 was around, alongside Shane Kim, Peter Moore etc. I think the damage that did the most harm was the Don Mattrick "Always Online" console (ahead of its time basically). They handed Sony and Nintendo a free-pass when that was revealed. It went downhill from there. Then the corporate machine went into full swing to try and recover. They have to a degree as a games company for the masses, and less so for the core gamer. Outside USA, the Xbox brand does not sell as well as Japanese based consoles (citation needed).
Want a decision maker. The always online and TV plans was a disaster yes, but they caught up by announcing 1st party games that gamers actually kept the hype going.. until this moron took over and introduced the PC day one release.. e all know where that ended..
I dont think they were ever a respectable brand, not since the beginning, when their goal was never to be involved and share in the gaming space. I think the OG xbox was an exception because MS as a brand was still getting its foot in and so the people behind that were people of the gaming industry.
The 360 was the brand in its prime though, everything went downhill towards the end of that generation. Its staple games like Halo, Forza and Gears are what kept the console relevant and afloat for so long.
Really good video.
I remember the days with RRoD was big news on here, N4G.
Microsoft had it turbulence number of years.
Looking at the success of Sea of Thieves despite being 6 years old, time to release Halo, Forza horizon 4 & 5 on PS5. It'll help their revenue
2 of the 4 games they did already sold really well. So it's definitely going down. Idk about halo or forza but I feel those studios they've bought in the last 5 years, their coming
I found this video painful to watch. Can someone list them out?
Top 10 for me from are:
1. 2013 reveal presentation
2. Bundling Kinect 2 with Xbox One
3. RRoD or why rushing to market with hardware is always a bad idea.
4. Buying studios only to close them.
5. Ads on the Home Screen
6. Letting Halo die.
7. Letting Geard of War die.
8. Every console name
9. Charging for Xbox Live on Xbox 360 when Sony let PS3 players play online for free.
10. Cancelling release of OG Xbox games after the Xbox 360 launched.
Microsoft recently revealed its plans to incorporate Copilot directly into video games, with Minecraft being the first showcased example.
F*** AI
"Hey Copilot, what's a good meme to prove I dislike AI".... https://giphy.com/clips/sou...
Two trillion dollar company that just can't wait to put as many people possible out of work as fast as possible.
It feels like every single thing they do is making gaming worse and destroying the industry.
....you know it takes people to program the AI.... right? It isnt like it is sentient. We haven't reach skynet level of situation or anywhere close to the matrix just yet.
That's next Thursday.
It takes a people to program the AI then that AI is used for who knows how many games eliminating countless jobs which only grows as AI is used for more and more game creation functions.
What you're saying is so ridiculously short sighted and truly larking any kind of understanding and foresight.
Why all the hate? Im actually excited about this! Always wanted this kind of immersion, and an AI companion with me all the time helping me out knowing the status of my skills/inventory/progress and giving me tips on the best approach or how to craft something specific is game changing for the industry.
Hate all you want about AI, but this is just the start and I can see the potential already. You wont be complaining in the next 5-10 years about this, but rather complain if a game hasn’t implemented it.
Yes we can't wait for the work of others to be used without the need to pay them so that MS can profit even more from the people they fire.
There is no chance I'd ever use something like this, especially if it's not part of the core game design, but a layer on top of it. It's way too much handholding. Many games already feel like busy work, because they don't let the player figure things out on their own. Having a real-time interactive guide defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place in my opinion.
If this were to become the standard like you predict, we'll see more and more video games get away with bad design, because people will just be used to ask for help from the AI companion anyway.
Well Nintendo don't need this with some of their games these days, with invincible characters, items, easy bosses etc.. they do the hand holding built in
Microsoft's Activision subsidiary announced today that it is opening a new game development studio to take advantage of the huge talent pool growing in Poland. It'll be the second Activision studio based in the region, joining Infinity Ward Krakow, although this studio is, in fact, not working on Call of Duty.
"Put simply, if Spencer is to perform a proper reset of the Xbox One brand and realign the console's focus on gaming, he's going to need a new console to do it. Not a generational console, but an Xbox One trimmed of all the fat. One that gets rid of everything apart from the core system hardware and a big fat hard-drive."
I see your point but these extras aren't, apart from the kinect, really costing Microsoft anything. Getting rid of them seems more anti productive than productive. The best thing to do is to change the focus and not release another completely different SKU. Another completely different SKU increases confusion amongst consumers (which I feel is one of the problems with the Kinectless SKU). This would be taking it a step too far.
Microsoft needs to find a way of making the Xbox even cheaper to start making ground on the PS4 but removing stuff isn't going to help. Remember Microsoft spent a fortune on the new kinect (rumored to be as much as the console). It is something you can't just write off. The damage was already done then (so removing more stuff isn't going to help them that much; we talking about taking very little off the manufacturing price here with these things gone)
Good article, really enjoyed the read.
I think we all know that the 'slim' version of consoles will come out, not sure if it will be next year or in 2016. But even if we assume Microsoft release the xboxone-slim in 2015, trimmed of any excess fat, and at a further reduced price; we know that Sony are in a position to do the same, and potentially still have the cheaper, but still more powerful console.
Microsoft needed a killer app that demonstrated the integration of Kinect, media and gaming, to really show their vision for the xboxone. I was really keeping an eye on Quantum Break, because it promised to bring all three components together for a true next-gen experience. But now that kinect has been unbundled, and xbox entertainment studios has closed, I'm not actually sure Microsoft can still fulfill that vision in the same way.
First party exclusive games are what can bring Microsoft upto par, but even that is not necessarily going to bring new converts to the console, but will help migrate the last-gen adopters to the new gen. It seems Sony on the other hand have been able to bring in new converts into the playstation ecosystem, if the 3-1 statistic is true.
Bottom line - Microsoft have tried a re-launch by unbundling Kinect from xboxone, now they need to show up strong on the games front going forward. That's really the only way they can get back up to par.
That would be crazy , but if they do so am ready to buy me a new one when released.
Ms is not releasing any new console atleast for the next 5 years
And, the solution is to release a new console within about 10 months of releasing the ONE, knowing there a many projects in development for it. There are 26 countries that have yet to receive the ONE.
I understand that it's you're job to blow sh!t out of proportion to get hits but, damn.