They are thinking we’ll turn all of those PS users into gamepass customers. We will ship the next console as a cheap SBC with a gamepass subscription. They solve piracy, manufacturing and shipping costs and bend the customers over a barrell in one move.
Sony will be forced to do away with discs too to stay competitive. MS will be able to claim they are multiplatform in the face of the legal issues and that they are for preservation because they will have a select few titles.
The players will own nothing and the prices will eventually increase.
Do yourself a favor and horde as many roms as you can now. Support gog and steam as alternatives to gamepass.
If they believe the amount of people with reliable (!) broadband connections with good enough peering to their data centers is as big as the customer base owning an xbox, they might have an ugly awakening.
Most people will not move just to get a better latency that can still suffer from external influences. Waiting in a queue because the available machines in your nearest data center are all in use because it’s a holiday and everyone is gaming also gets old fast.
This whole thing is so bizarre to me. People have complained endlessly over the years about game console exclusivity. I personally think it’s bad for the consumer.
And now that MS is talking about putting their experiences on other platforms, people are upset with them? That they’ve somehow lost their way, that the brand is dying?
Not really. Don’t get me wrong, I’m jealous of the PS exclusives, but I’ve gotten more value out of Game Pass than I would have out of a PlayStation over those years.
Now if Game Pass ends up on PlayStation by some miracle, I’ll be jumping ship.
And now that MS is talking about putting their experiences on other platforms, people are upset with them? That they’ve somehow lost their way, that the brand is dying?
Those people are “invested” in the xbox eco system I would assume
Naw fam. I have an Xbox series X and game pass and I’m ecstatic to hear that Microsoft may be doing this. This will buy them the good will of all gamers and they know it. Fucking Chad move by MSFT if true.
I don’t get this take. Good will doesn’t keep the platform alive. If you want Xbox to survive they need good exclusive games. Otherwise it’s already over. No one buys the hardware, and then no one buys gamepass. Sony is out selling 2:1 right now. Want to guess what that looks like if people can play everything on a PlayStation?
I’m only nervous that Microsoft will stop developing Xbox’s. If we’re eventually forced to move to a digital only system, I want some kind of guarantee that customers can always access the games they paid for. Otherwise I think sharing games with other consoles is a great idea as long as the added development doesn’t eat into the games overall quality
This one is simple! You see, they stop selling games to their customers. Instead, you can get monthly access to their catalogue of games. Then you don’t have to worry about owning them. Sometimes less (for you) is more (for them).
Yeah, in the long run this could be good for the industry.
That said, if I’d bought a series x on the promise of many years of high quality exclusives (a promise Xbox explicitly made) I would probably be a bit upset in the now…
It’s shaping up that a ps5 is gonna be just the flatly superior console, and Xbox owners will be stuck holding the bag
The 21st century has been repeated instances of “the man behind the curtain” getting completely caught in the curtain, yanking it down, causing a small fire, pissing himself a little bit, and then standing up, waving his hands and yelling at the gathering crowd “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” while the fire begins to grow.
The world wouldn’t be so frustrating if it wasn’t so clear that so much of leadership (corporate, especially so) has no fucking clue what they’re doing, certainly no more in depth clue than their own workforce, and they’ve been coasting on things like stock buybacks for the better part of three decades. They continuously fail but they use their absolutely massive wealth to constantly shield themselves from liability, or any responsibility really, from their near-constant fuck-ups that piss off consumers, poison the environment, and harm workers.
Anyway, much like with their constant fucking-with-the-consumer on Windows 11, they’re just barrelling down the “fuck the people who invested in our hardware ecosystem” path because “fuck consumers, amirite?” They mostly cater to other businesses now, which is part of why it’s a lot easier/cheaper to get a Windows license than it used to be (although that’s been changing). This is the same with so many businesses now, they mostly just serve… other businesses, that’s where the real money is… because they’ve bled the US consumer dry and so they’re prioritizing corporate clients, who have deep coffers.
It’s much like what’s going on at Warner Bros, where shitcanning a movie and deleting it entirely is more “cost-effective” to a movie studio than releasing it. They don’t give one flying fuck how much it pisses of consumers or the people who made it, all they’re worried about is the numbers in WB’s and their own bank accounts. They couldn’t give less of a fuck about what’s in consumers bank accounts or the laborers and artists who made the films bank accounts.
They’ve fully insulated themselves, the aristocracy never left. They just use the power of money to control and influence the power of the State instead of being a King themselves. They’re simply dictators of their own little feifdoms.
I find these kinds of articles fairly useless until Microsoft announces what their actual plans are. Until then we’re all just speculating based on one tweet from Phil Spencer and some unverified rumors.
It’s common in English to refer to a collective like a company or government as though it were an individual. I think it’s just a simple short hand really.
Eg “The whitehouse said today…” We know that the whitehouse (a building) doesn’t have the power of speech and that really means “a whitehouse spokesperson working in an official capacity on behalf of the government said today”.
Really the headline should be something along the lines of “what, exactly, are Xbox business strategists thinking?” But because of the common knowledge of how this shorthand works they can just use the headline they did.
There’s probably a fancy linguistic name for it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Fair. It’s hard to know sometimes if someone has English as a first or second language. People can be really technically good, but then not understand more subtle cultural things.
Never know maybe both of our comments will help some people.
Are we going to reach the same levels of player count and engagement again when there are so many other draws on their attention and time compared to 2020 or 2021? Not anytime soon, if we ever do.
As I see it, the video game market went from a growth market to mature practically overnight. Meaning, since Pong, the video game market has continued to grow as more and more people have discovered gaming over time. But in 2020-21, a huge influx of players and time found their way to the video game market and many of them liked it and stuck around. Others have again left gaming, having been pulled away by other things. So now, it’s more about optimization of the player base rather than pursuing more organic growth by finding new players.
This has been a painful transition in thinking for many in the industry, especially those who assumed that player growth would continue forever, especially after the boom seen in 2020-21.
It’s not just that gaming had an unusual growth period during COVID lockdown. It’s that gaming had its final big growth period ever during this period. Everyone left out there that ever thought they might give gaming a shot did so during the lockdown, and they either stuck with it, or they realized it wasn’t a forever hobby for them. From here on out, the gaming industry is more like the food industry or something. They won’t find new pockets of untapped consumers. They have found them all, and now developers and publishers need to be smarter about scale and burn rate.
Everyone left out there that ever thought they might give gaming a shot did so during the lockdown, and they either stuck with it, or they realized it wasn’t a forever hobby for them
looks dubious
That seems like an overly-strong statement.
There’s a point where the whole world has access to video games. And we’re getting closer to that time. There are certainly limits on growth approaching. But I don’t think that we’re to those limits yet.
unique mobile subscribers in 2023, indicating a 43% penetration rate
That’s not even smartphones. And even smartphones can only run certain types of video games. There’s a lot of the world that still is constrained by limited development.
That statement was my attempt to summarize a chunk of the article, and was not my own analysis. From my perspective, I will say that I understand that there are parts of the world that don’t have access to PS5 games or whatever. However, I don’t think that this market is going to massively shift at any time in the next decade, because that would mean a shift of the entire socio-economic balance of the world. As much as I would love to see the Global North take a backseat while other nations rise, I think it’s fair for an analyst to assume that this is not going to happen.
Finally someone in industry is saying it. Execs are doing layoffs because they thought covid driven revenue would last forever, and that was a moronic thought. Like people would ever be at home in those numbers again, all at once, desperate for things to do. They could have used that time better, and they didn’t. Of course the market was going to dip after covid.
I’m convinced now that there is no story so earth-shattering, so horrifying, so diligently researched and expertly told that we could Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle our way to a better games industry.
I disagree, but I also recognize the fundamental lede buried in this lengthy gripe piece: the law is not just. The industry isn’t going to change from the top down, because the fundamental core of the games industry is the same rot that plagues every industry. There’s a club of rich good ol’ boys at the top whose rampant sexism and ultra-capitalism still pervades many economies, and they’re able to successfully lobby the politicians that should regulate them.
But I disagree that it’s ultimately fruitless. There may be no singular story that fixes things, but continued effort to bring that stuff to light has influenced people’s decisions to buy into certain games or publishers. It’s resulted in lawsuits that at least give some justice to the victims. It’s resulted in new indie studios with good work cultures who make amazing games.
So I agree the problem still exists, but the “sunlight” they talk about isn’t a panacea—it’s one of many collective steps towards building a better industry.
I think the author (Brendan Sinclair) probably agrees with exactly what you’re saying - the piece is a discussion of the question, and Brendan discusses some of his more open-ended thoughts in the section that comes after the paywall cut. His central focus seems to be on the question of why the execs at the top never face accountability for these exposed failures of leadership. It isn’t to say that no good comes from these investigative pieces, but just exploring this specific aspect of it.
That said, I also agree with you that this particular article struck me as rambly.
The way to fix it is for developers not to sell out. When your small studio’s game blows up, you’re left with a choice. Do you care about art and making quality games, or do you care about making money and appeasing corporations in exchange for empty promises?
Are you going to leave you work in the hands of its creators, or are you going to hand it off to someone whose entire path in life is centered around squeezing as much money as possible out of every product with no concern for its quality or integrity?
$25 for a ~4 hour or so experience might not be most people's cup of tea if they solely base things off of "dollar per hour" ratios (which I think is an insane way to judge a game's worthiness)
However, Jusant was a great game. The varied locations, the music, the little twists on the climbing gameplay, spelunking into little hidden caverns to find shrines and story tidbits of the people's lives before. It was absolutely worth my time. If people stopped worrying about dollar per hour ratiols or graphics or other random arbitrary things that don't really mean anything in terms of a game's quality, games like this would probably score a lot more recognition in the industry
interesting point. i think my comfort level with this kind of game would be maybe $15, unless there were multiple reviewers calling this their game of the year. however, i think that says more about my personal tastes - the climbing gameplay is a gamble because it is unlike other games i’ve played, and good writing alone is not enough to sell me on a game.
It's definitely not going to be a game for everyone, but I'm one of those weird people who still sees games as art, so I really appreciate games that just do different things and provide experiences you can't really get in other games. Even if they don't 100% stick the landing, I can enjoy and appreciate them for adding some variety and trying something different.
Jusant is on Gamepass by the way, which could be a very good way to give it a try
Also didn’t expect references to Superstorm Sandy or Christie.
For my money, the Christie administration’s Beachgate scandal remains the most ludicrously individualized version of this in microcosm
Especially when you consider he was the reason the state government shutdown, and then that asshole lied about being on the beach, and when caught said “hey if you want to go to the beach, you could run for governor”. You know how many families got fucked out of an enjoyable beach visit for July 4th?
Thanks for sharing this interview and article. It was a really interesting read. I feel like I understand a lot more about how the game came to be now that I’ve read it
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