There was a time where it was worth the money because it was far and away better than any free online offering. That time was probably up to about 2010. Now that servers are paid for with digital game sales, it would behoove them to drop the fee. Instead, I think they’re just about to change the console market as we know it.
Also accurate. But it’s looking like we’ll still have $500 machines called Xboxes and PlayStations, except they’ll just be fancy PCs. That’s my guess anyway.
Sony’s already not carrying on. They’ve started putting their games on PC, which is a market that is, for the first time, larger than their console for the same game releases. Nintendo’s got another generation of hardware before they’ll need to change anything.
Fair - I’d be surprised if they haven’t already been working on a ps6 for years though.
In my mind Nintendo is going to be more or less immune to the death of the console market. They did have done a really, really good job at making fun games since the 80s, and have also traditionally had the cheapest hardware (not that that will matter if the competition goes away). I might impulsively buy whatever Nintendo’s next console is just for Zelda or Metroid, even though Nintendo as a company pisses me off.
Yeah, I’ll bet PS6 is business as usual but with an eye toward the future. Microsoft is already hinting that their next Xbox(es) are just going to be PCs, with talk of handhelds and additional storefronts.
I might impulsively buy whatever Nintendo’s next console is just for Zelda or Metroid, even though Nintendo as a company pisses me off.
Stay strong, brother. They only get to keep pissing you off because you keep handing them your money. There’s no shortage of metroidvania games right now, and even Zelda has a decent number of competitors now.
If you wanna play Nintendo games and you hate their hardware or just the company (fair), have you heard of how well the steam deck runs an emulator?
Ive heard it’s actually pretty great, though i haven’t bought one myself. I started sniffing around when i wanted to get my nieces/nephews something to fight over for Christmas. initially was gonna be a switch, but they’re young and those controllers fall apart quicker than shit.
I’m not out here selling steam decks but like check it out if you haven’t and want a “console” rather than a pc solution. i think it’s worth looking into as the mod scene for the Sdeck is heating up too. Anyway comment over.
I’ve messed around with switch emulation on more powerful hardware, but for the simplicity of getting things workings I think I prefer the official console. The performance I had I my PC was not outstanding either.
That’s what they say publicly, yes. Because if they tell their customers right now that they plan to dramatically shorten that window, they’re shooting themselves in the foot early.
Even as far back as the first xbox, I remember some people installing Linux on it. It’s also why Halo later came out for the PC, because porting it wasn’t that difficult. Iirc, the first xbox didn’t run any Windows kernel but it did use direct x.
Elden Ring, Helldivers 2, many games I’d get on Sony PS Store that I just get on Steam because I want to “own” the full game not just the offline part of it.
I would actually consider getting one if that were the case. But no console maker will ever do that again - too many suckers willing to pay. Sony at least lets you play F2P games online without a sub.
Yea I realized a bit ago my kids are only playing fortnite and Roblox, I had no need to be paying for game pass ultimate for TWO accounts lol. Plus, they use steam big picture mode in the living room.
The studios they kept around are making games that are a shadow of their former selves too - Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport come to mind, as well as Starfield. Microsoft Flight Simulator is the only really good one still as far as I can tell.
Thing is, they don’t need to sell consoles anymore. They’re in the gamepass business now. This is why they’re pushing gamepass on phones, PCs, Samsung TVs and Firesticks. They don’t really care about selling you a box under the TV anymore since they’re usually sold at or near a loss anyway. They just want you on the subscription wherever you can play it.
They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I’m guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let’s assume an average of $12 a month. That’s over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don’t have to rely on a big game to have a good month.
You’re more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year. Articles like this fundamentally misunderstand the current gaming landscape and their business model. They’re not losing the race, they’re playing a different sport.
Thing is, they don’t need to sell consoles anymore. They’re in the gamepass business now.
They need to sell consoles to sell GamePass to people. Nobody is going to play games on a Firestick. Same reason why nobody bought the mobile ports of Resident Evil. Those who play games, buy the hardware for it. Some go overboard with the high-end PC and some prefer to buy a cheaper console, but nobody is like “yeah I’ll play Elden Ring on my phone”. Gamers want the hardware, and casuals don’t buy gaming subscriptions. It’s a lost cause.
“MS doesn’t care about selling Xbox console” is a lie they have been pushing for a while now because their console sales have been tanking for that many years. They would LOVE to sell more consoles, they just can’t, so they attempt to spin the story a different way so that the shareholders are still happy. What, you want to know about sales? But who cares about sales, it’s all about engagement! Look at those big, happy numbers we are showing you!
Nobody enters a business with the idea that “whatever, even if we don’t sell enough, it’s fine, we still had a great time”. MS didn’t became the world’s biggest corporation by being lazy.
They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I’m guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let’s assume an average of $12 a month. That’s over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don’t have to rely on a big game to have a good month.
That’s great until you consider the fact that GamePass doesn’t operate in a vacuum. To put games on their service, they have to pay developers. They then need to please shareholders who want subscribers and revenue to increase. The fact that they increased the price twice in a row and effectively doubled the price of GamePass overnight suggests that they are not pleased with the current revenue.
Heck, we don’t even know how many of those 34m subscribers are paying customers, and how many just got into GP by paying $1 or benefitting from some other deal. I was one of those 34m back in February, because I got a year for free with the Rewards program (back when it was still worth something; they axed that one as well, because of course). When they asked me to pay to renew it, I cancelled the subscription. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
You’re more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year.
Sure, but that’s the same as Don Mattrick asking customers to “stick to their X360”. The choice is not between buying games on XOne or subscribing to GamePass on your phone. The choice is between an Xbox, a PS5, a Switch or a PC. Two of those choices means that they have lost a customer (you can’t subscribe to GP on PS or Nintendo consoles), and I’d be curious to know how many people are subscribing for GP on PC instead of just buying games on Steam. You don’t need GP to play online on PC as you do on console, and the prices are cheap enough that you are probably saving money just buying those games instead of renting them.
And let’s not talk about how terrible the user experience is on their PC storefront compared to literally any other competing storefront - I’d rather buy a game on Epic than use their Xbox store, and that says a lot. I had a game on PC thanks to the Play Anywhere program (bought it on Xbox, got the PC version as well), but I had to buy it again on GoG to mod it because MS considers their game files more precious than the holy grail itself and wouldn’t let me go anywhere close to them, let alone touch them.
Just wanted to comment that the Xbox/MS store games are fine now. They used to be in some shitty encrypted directory but not anymore. I have Gamepass for free from a ton of Microsoft rewards points and primarily play GP games on my Xbox, but I’ve played a few on PC as well and I’ve not found it to be too much different from Steam. You can go to a directory and see all the game files as expected. The always online bit sucks though, the recent Microsoft outage due to Cloudstrike kept a lot of people from playing games. That said, I don’t buy any games there, but my experience with gamepass games has been fine past that initial encrypted directory phase.
I think I’ll just stick to playing retro games in emulators for free without a subscription. Sure I miss out on the latest and greatest games, but graphics aren’t everything to me, the gameplay is more important to me. Plus, I really despise having to have subscriptions for everything. If Game Pass works for people, more power to those gamers, but I’m tired of giving what little income I have to billion dollar companies. /rant
I think they fucked up with the series s/x. The Balder’s Gate 3 release made me realize that their policy that games needed to have the same features enabled for both the s and x essentially meant that even if you spend the extra money on the x, it will be held back by the s merely existing.
They really do seem dead-set on transitioning to a software rental company. Let the hardware languish and shove another tier of Game Pass into the marketing grinder.
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