Nik Wood writes about the rumour of Microsoft moving to "one consumer games" and the widespread effect it would have,
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.
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.
This guy doesn't seem to realize that the reason console hardware is so cheap, is because its sold at a loss, or nearly break-even, after the retail cut is factored in.
I'm not supporter of MS'es One Consumer strategy, but I can say that selling hardware is NOT one of the ways they make money. Nintendo is the ONLY company to manage such a feat in the past 8 years, because they sell aging tech for relatively high prices. The DS, Wii, 3DS, and likely the Wii U, all follow this model.
The X360, OTOH, is a bargain at $199.99, as is the PS3 at $249.99. The Wii is probably not worth more than about $99, but Nintendo retails it for $149.99 -- heck, they don't even pay DVD royalties, like the PS2 does.
Nintendo aside, NO hardware manufacturer makes money on selling hardware. They get *everything* from software and accessories. Hence, MS's business plan.
I still don't like it, but that's the truth of the matter.
This article uses the same, tired arguments, trying to compare the games industry to film and cars, without respecting the details of not having to, for example, by replacement parts for you game, or paying to get it serviced from another company who pays service licensing fees, and sometimes needs to buy OEM parts. It also doesn't consider that films come out, and make a huge portion of their income, 6+ months before they are allowed to be sold as used titles at all, or that hardcover books (which are out a good year before paperback) are incredibly difficult to pawn off as used items at reasonable prices, relative to paperbacks.
There are NO parallels to the bad-for-publishers-and-devs financial model of the games industry. I don't like MS'es brute force approach, but there DO need to be some regulations on used RETAILERs. If they can't return some % of the used sale to the publisher, then there should at least be an embargo on used sales for 6 months after a games release... or something. The %-cut wouldn't hurt consumers AT ALL. I don't know why people even complain about such a concept.
Ugh. More of this nonsense about used games making gaming affordable and comparisons between games and cars.
First of all, unless you're buying the dirt cheap under-$30 used games from GameStop, you have absolutely no business crying about used games making gaming affordable. Practically every game NEW aside from Call of Duty drops to $30 or less within eight to twelve months.
Second, vehicles deteriorate. Games don't. If I walk into GameStop and buy Call of Duty 2 for 360, it's guaranteed to work just as well in 2012 as it did in 2005. Unless someone can just as easily find me a car that's been used since 2005 that a dealer guarantees is in the exact same condition as it was when it was driven off the lot, the comparison between games and vehicles is nonsense. The condition of used cars helps drive new vehicle purchases. A dented DVD case and missing manual doesn't do the same to encourage new game sales in the same way a used vehicle's condition and life expectancy does for new car sales.
And third, MS isn't going to block used games flat out. They would be insane to do so. I'm sure GameStop would gladly sell a next-gen Xbox with the "feature", but selling customers a console that can play used games will be their priority to ensure their used business stays as big as possible. If Sony or Nintendo consoles could play used games, which console do you think GameStop would push harder?
At worst, it will be some kind of $10 activation fee to play a used game on a console that isn't already registered to an account with the rights to play it.
I think Microsoft might piss off the customer more than anything if they adopted the one game feature. That would be the worse feature on the next gen console Microsoft already has the history with the RROD this one time game feature. Would go down in Microsoft history as the worse thing ever making the RROD a thing of the past. They want people to buy the next gen console and with the rumor of the one time game feature floating around people are getting angry or scarred. Personally unless Microsoft announces the one time game feature I am not going to believe this rumor. I can see an online pass that Sony is doing and EA are doing it as well. But right now rumors about the next gen consoles are just rumors. Sony and Microsoft are keeping tight lips about their next projects because nothing ruins a secret more then when your competitors know your secrets.
Microsoft would have no problem with this considering they shove ads onto the consoles of people who actually pay for P2P multiplayer.
I hardly buy used games but if any console maker takes this rout, I will not buy the console until that feature is removed...
Don't like used game sales cause you don't get a cut? Then open your own damn stores and sell them to compete against g-stop and others.
I don't feel bad at all when I check games on demand and I see games like blood on the sand for 50 bucks and a bunch of other games that have no business being over $20.