Xbox's latest splashy exclusive, Redfall, launched this week to disappointing reviews and a collective shrug from many players. Considered a departure from developer Arkane's core strengths of worldbuilding and stealth gameplay, its most confusing flaw is perhaps its lack of identity: Many have opined that it feels like a game that doesn't know what it wants to be.
Xbox's grand gaming strategy is bigger than just one underwhelming exclusive, of course, and the console manufacturer's biggest game of the year is still to come in the form of Starfield. However, Xbox's shaky track record when it comes to big exclusives in recent years has spurred much discussion within the gaming community, with some Game Pass subscribers wondering what the future of the service might look like. Xbox Game Pass is indeed the current Netflix of gaming, but the service has struggled to find its bonafide hits--its Stranger Things, its Wednesdays, its Dahmers. And when we look in the direction that the major streaming services are currently headed, that spells some interesting decisions for Xbox in the next two to three years.
Just how shock-ing is it?
With Microsoft’s long list of poor messaging and poor decisions this week, combined with rumors of behind-the-scenes problems with some of its top games, one frequent point that keeps coming up is how much weight has been thrown behind Xbox/PC/Ultimate Game Pass.
Well fancy that. A Forbes article with common sense.
Microsoft's only shot to get more gamers, being the devils advocate, is to go Mobile and free to play with ads to grow their fan base. With maybe a subscription to games like cod on Mobile to get more to buy in what they are offering.
But mobile isn't like consoles or PC at all. You can't charge huge amounts for games because that platform is used to cheap or free content. Can't go to Nintendo and Sony with game pass because they'(competitors) aren't stupid to destroy their own platforms with Microsoft's rental service. And PC gamers dabble with it but they're fine with Steam and other, similar offerings. Casuals are their target but do casuals really care because up to this point, they haven't.
They put themselves in a bind and I'm not sorry for them in the least. When you kill your own sales of hardware and software, you groom your base to not buy but to rent, and do everything you can but do what works for Nintendo and Sony in creating games that grow the industry, this is the results. Dead last.
Why was/is it so hard to just make great games and from that, EARN respect that would lead to an increase in consumers? Never made sense how stupid they are when they had the finances to compete and pretty much outdo Nintendo and Sony combined. They just chose greed and annual fees and lack of effort instead.
Touche, Forbes did it at last.
Remember that in addition to having no appetite to invest in new IP and no creative vision to recognise potential winners or refresh their existing portfolio, Microsoft simply can't manage or lead their studios.
I repeatedly find it ridiculous that The Initiative was formed in 2018 when it was announced at E3, and now five years later they haven't even managed to release a trailer let alone gameplay content of anything they're working on. If they don't show off something at the upcoming Xbox showcase, it would be absurd.
But you're right, Microsoft has groomed their fanbase to behave the way Game Pass makes them, but what we've been telling people for years is that "value" or quantity will never ever subsidise or replace a good product.
Give me God of War over the entire Game Pass catalogue, I'll jump to spend on Hades 2 but only sub to Game Pass once or twice a year, and likewise I'll spend a night with Godzilla Minus One over hundreds of B-class shovelware on Netflix.
They have little choice but to double down on their greed, passive revenue streams and ownership cut.
Home console sales seemingly peaked with PS2 20 years ago. Even if a console does outsell it now, it's going to be by a small amount.. like, what I mean is we aren't suddenly going to get a console that sells 400 million units out of nowhere. So yes, I think the article is spot on with their assessment.
Microsoft 365 had 155 million subs in 2018. Today it sits at just shy of 300 million. The games industry was never going to be able to have growth at those levels, not to mention how much more expensive development is.
MS went all-in with Game Pass (and Xbox Series S) and now they're stuck. The model has failed and it's difficult to see what they do from here. They either carry on digging in, kill it completely (which will be a PR disaster for people who have paid to stack up years of service or purchased a Series S with the promise of being able to play all games this generation) or copy Sony and do away with Day One Game Pass and change their Series S policies.. Option 1 & 2 kills Xbox off overnight and Option 3 makes it utterly irrelevant.
The future of everything is subscription. Or at least that's the plan they have for us. Own nothing, rent everything.
They can up that vision where the sun doesnt shine. I have a collection of games going back to 8bit systems and I have no qualms going retro.
The gaming world is still reeling from the announcement that Microsoft is shuttering Tango Gameworks, the studio behind last year’s big Xbox hit, Hi-Fi Rush.
There's no logical or good reason to give for closing Tango Gameworks. They make great games consistently and Hi-Fi Rush was the highest rated Xbox game in literal YEARS. Closing the studio was just plain stupid and nonsensical.
It’s quite strange to not see Phil Spencer in any talkshow or podcast… usually the dude would talk almost daily when there’s even a bit of news from xbox.
Muzzled and/or in on it from the very beginning. You have to be a very stupid person not to anticipate that your division is going to be under scrutiny from shareholders after 80 Billion Dollars worth of acquisitions
The beauty of being a CEO here in America is that when your company does well, you get extra money as a reward...
And when your company does badly, you get extra money to encourage you to stick around and lead it through the storm...And at some point, you get to bow out and float toward retirement on your golden parachute, which means and you guessed it, MORE MONEY!! What a deal for snake oil man Phil!!
Perhaps they think they can sweep this one under the rug, gamers will forget about it,
We will not
They made a good game and you put the whole studio in the bin, this couldn’t be clearer, ms don’t care, everyone suspected it, but now we KNOW it
She's kinda got the verbal communication of 3-years-ago Biden trying to say something he knows nothing about.
What she meant to say is: "We wasted our budget for the next couple years buying Call of Duty, and we're moving all our chips to that one series"
It's starting to seem quite obvious that XBox is going to be shutting down most of their studios or selling them off, then focusing on some sort of PC/Console hybrid OS for the next XBox where they can collect royalties Valve style.
To be fair I don’t think there is a good answer, I’d rather her been honest but that probably would have pissed more people of then the word salad route.
Yeah because it seems the strategy is just do the game, if it's not finished "who cares" and then stick it on Gamepass where over time we'll update it with a roadmap.
A long term gamepass subscription is a waste of money for all but the most hardcore of hardcore multiple-games-at-once players. Same goes for the added extra tiers of PS Plus. Just my opinion though. Maybe some disagree and that's fine.
I really feel like MS are making sure a lot of games will be made around gamepass. Just speculation, but I feel like Redfall was supposed to be a single player game, but in 2020 MS told them to make it 4 player online co-op and make it a service game that can last for years with bland content over long periods of time. "Perfect for gamepass" type of thing. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but MS love gamepass so much, they are going to want games perfectly fitted for gamepass and that means in the way these games are built. This ultimately will make the quality of most of their games suffer as a result. Redfall is a big example and I'm not talking about the bugs. I'm talking about the boring gameplay loop and side quests of bare bones quality. Reference: check out Skill Up's review on youtube. This line unfortunately rings true "Good enough for Gamepass".
Essentially gamepass is nothing than shovelware rn tbh
Game Pass is the video game equivalent to Straight to DVD.
I whish these "game writers" would be honest. Actual creativity is extremely special and people with this gift are usually working in quality environments not gaming mills.