OG Xbox Creator 'Feared It Was All Over' At The Xbox One Launch

It’s is never over for Xbox, only when Microsoft says so on their terms, they sooooooo rich.

@Dezzy70 It could've absolutely been over for Xbox: https://www.windowscentral.com/xbox-head-phil-spencer-told-microsoft-go-all-gaming-when-brand-was-threatened

"'Satya was transparent that there could be a future where gaming isn't a business that Microsoft should be in,'"

Insane how one Hardware reveal event almost killed the Xbox Brand. Big ups to Satya Nadella for trusting in Phil, the Xbox team and in Xbox. It would be a sad world to live in where Sony would be the only console manufacturer (except Nintendo of course, they are doing their own thing)

@LtSarge "'Satya was transparent that there could be a future where gaming isn't a business that Microsoft should be in,'"

Is that quote based on now? Or back then with the Xbox One? If it's now then your kind of not safe because at anytime they may quit out of the gaming division.

Its clear that the philosophies leading up to the XB1 launch almost 'killed' off Xbox. They had 'few' studio's to offer 'games' and were looking more to the TV/Film 'entertainment' sector having seen the 'rise' of Netflix on their console, even setting up an Xbox Entertainment division (that subsequently got scrapped). That's why TV was a 'big' focus.

Today, MS's Primary Platform is now Game Pass with the Console benefiting from MS's 'need' to offer great games every month to not only attract more subscribers, but to 'keep' them subscribed. '3rd party' deals (like MLB21, Outriders, B4B etc) are for 'Game Pass', which is 'exclusive' on console to Xbox, but only benefits Subscribers.

If Console sales were 'important', those 'exclusive' games would release on Console 'first' to encourage people to buy a Series console before coming to Game Pass or PC/Mobiles.

Despite not having any 'exclusives' to Series Consoles (as all those games release on PC and on Game Pass too), even able to 'stream' games to last gen consoles, the investment and development of Game Pass has secured MS's future for their Console hardware...

@LtSarge
Absolutely, like I said when Microsoft says it is over its over.
Remember they don’t even need to be in the games console industry, I always call it a little side line project, for such a successful trillion dollar company.
Where Nintendo and Sony really need the business more.

@Snake_V5 It was from when Phil Spencer took over Xbox. Satya asked him if he thinks it's worth it to invest time and money into Xbox or if they should stay away from gaming from now on. Phil answered it would be stupid for Microsoft to abandon gaming since it's the biggest entertainment market there is and if Microsoft really wants to stay in gaming he needs the full support of Microsoft behind Xbox.

@Medic_Alert
Yes I think game streaming will be the future, once the main countries get the internet up to speed, mine is 6mb/sec and tried gamepass streaming for fun on my series x.
It was great but obviously not working but amazing to try.
I always think there will be an ultimate experience box you can buy for full 4K, high level detail and top end fps, hdr, Dolby vision and atmos and I will always go for that perfection top end experience, for me that is the only to play games.

@Dezzy70 If Xbox continued just like before, then yeah it would still be considered a "small side project". However now with Game Pass, that's all changed. I mean, let's say hypothetically speaking that Microsoft reaches a point where Game Pass has 100 million subscribers and they're all paying €10 each month. That's 1 billion euros in pure revenue each month, and 12 billion each year. I don't think Microsoft would consider Xbox as a small side project at that point.

@LtSarge
Very good point, let’s see what happens but I can’t see them getting now where near 100 million gamepass subscriptions, I have gamepass and probably all on here do. I can’t see it taking off that well, if they get to 50 million worldwide it will surprise me.
I am not saying it is not great or not a great idea, but I mingle a lot with the UK general public and no one mentions it really apart from me.
It’s like most general public switch owners don’t have switch on line. It’s us gamer mad enthusiasts that have all this stuff in our special bubble 😂
They need to shift as many consoles as they can to get more gamepass subscriptions, even though it is available on mobile and pc, I don’t know a single person that has gamepass outside of this forum.

Guys I'm worried that Microsoft are just going to quit the gaming division at anytime, it doesn't feel safe. There's no way im spending all this money and playing all these games on Xbox for them to just quit. The fact that they were considering this just because Xbox One was in a bad place shows they had no consideration for any of us, they would of quit and screwed us all over.

I may have to return back to PlayStation where it feels safer. I don't recall there ever being a time in PlayStation history were Sony was going to quit, even when they were in there darkest days with the PS3 and nearly declared bankruptcy they still didn't say they were going to quit the gaming division.

@Snake_V5 I doubt they'll just quit after spending $7.5 billion on a acquisition. They're clearly here to stay hence the huge investments in gamepass. There's clearly been lessons learned from the xbox one generation which you can see in the Series Range.

@LtSarge
See they sold roughly 20 to 25 game pass subscriptions and some at a cheaper rate per month.
That’s the easy ones to sell to us nuts on here that are gamers and been gamer for years the Xbox enthusiasts, which I think are about roughly 50 million world wide, including some general public.

Now the up hill battle starts the general public that’s is not going to be easy the next 25 to 30 million to sell and at full price to get to even 50 million live subscriptions simultaneously will be a small miracle.
And you have the competition, not that they have the same but the more switch and PS5 sells console wise can take away another console away from Xbox and a potential game pass customer.
Yes you might get a few mobile and PC customers but on mobile most play free games and the PC market is competitive as well.

The Xbox One generation definitely hurt the brand a lot. It gave Playstation huge dominance over the gaming industry. Its going to take time to claw back that dominance, but the good news is that xbox is going in the right direction, judged on 2021 alone there's a huge change in perception towards xbox and its all positive. I would be keen to know the subscription numbers for game pass. It was 18 million when last publically announced at the start of 2021.

@Dezzy70 Well if you ask me, Game Pass is still in its infancy stage. We aren't getting many new first-party games day one on a frequent basis because Xbox Game Studios has pretty much just started and Microsoft still wants to acquire more studios in order to release more first-party titles on the service. Cloud Gaming is still in the beta phase and I feel like that feature is going to be absolutely necessary for Game Pass to truly succeed. After all, the mainstream audience doesn't want to wait hours for 100+ GB games to be downloaded. They just want to jump right in and play, the process needs to be instantaneous just like with music and movie/TV show services. Doesn't help either that Game Pass is still not available on smart TVs. And finally, they need to make Game Pass available worldwide and market it heavily. There are still many countries that don't have the service or have it but it's not heavily marketed. I think Game Pass would be very popular in e.g. Japan since Japanese people love to play on their smartphones and Microsoft has been increasing its efforts of adding more touch-control supported titles on Game Pass.

If they could add many more games, including exclusives, improve Cloud Gaming, and reach more nations and people in general through marketing, I think there's definitely a chance for the service to become very successful.

Well, I bought an Xbox One instead of a PS4, so I couldn’t say I ever feared it was all over. Kinda regretted my choice, though, once I saw how many great exclusives the PS4 got. Oh well, I’ve got a Series S now and I’m loving it so far.

@Medic_Alert
Yes I can’t see Xbox going anywhere anytime soon.
Console wise this generation we have series x etc.
I am not however totally convinced they will produce another console say in 6 years time for the new next generation.
They could just go software based with the studios they have, say like Ubisoft or EA.
Only time will tell, but I do hope they keep making top end consoles.

@Dezzy70 it takes a lot of time to build a well known and well subscribed service. For example when Netflix started it was a rental service, it took them nearly 20 years to become a service that not only regularly puts out third party content but also it now makes its content on a regular basis. Netflix wasn't profitable for a good few years and i think it was the same with Spotify. A subscription Based business is a long term investment. It will never be successful over night. It requires a steady flow of content, variety, huge marketing, quality and competitive pricing. Xbox Game Pass has only been around since 2016, xbox game studios is pretty much a whole new thing with Bethesda now joining. Once the studios get in order and start supplying more first party titles every 3 months that's when gamepass will really be at its full potential. In my opinion this will require more studios either being built or acquired. It's going to be a few more years before GamePass becomes a household name.

@Medic_Alert yeah that's right I remember Phil Spencer saying the next Xbox was already in development just after the launch of Series range

@Medic_Alert
You have more faith in all these gaming businesses and PR suits than me.
I don’t want Xbox to go anywhere and I want them to make top end consoles, their presence alone keeps Sony and Nintendo working hard.
But Microsoft is Microsoft and at a turn of a dime they can do what they want, business is business and even if Microsoft fully pulled out of the console market sold their studios I would not be shocked just sad 😢

@Dezzy70 The likelihood of them pulling out is extremely slim. As others have said, the time they could have pulled out was back when this article was talking about. If the Series consoles weren't selling and Game Pass wasn't succeeding like they had hoped, then maybe, but neither is true. The PS5 is outselling them, but it's not like the last generation either where Xbox was getting their asses kicked. Even though you're not wrong that they could pull out anytime they wanted and be just fine as a company, there's 0 reason to worry about that in my opinion.

As for Game Pass, it's great, but I'm only subscribed to it because you can subscribe to 3 years of Xbox Live Gold and then convert it to Game Pass. If I had to pay $15 a month for it like what any other normal service would be like, then I wouldn't even though it technically would still be a good value. If I was an Xbox only gamer, maybe it would be different, but I'm not.

@Chaudy
Time will tell the gaming years under my belt tell me it’s a strange old market and the general public takes something very special to buy into.
We shall see in the future.

@Dezzy70 that statement is true, gaming market is very different and quite difficult to be successful in. As you say time will tell.

@KilloWertz
Yes I got my game pass cheap and own all three consoles.
Yes game-pass would definitely not satisfy me at full price, they need three big top end AAA games a year for it to worth the asking price, for me.
I like new big AAA games, that’s what I play and lean towards adventures as well.
2021 we had FH5 and being honest Halo Infinite campaign not top end AAA.
So that’s 1.5 big AAA game for 2021.
2022 is only Starfield as a top end AAA at the minute and we haven’t seen much of that and it is a new IP.
Maybe 2023 we will get to the 3 or 4 top end AAA games a year on game pass.

@Medic_Alert Until all these exclusives release on PS5 and Xbox will be probably left in the dust like last generation with the PS4. Once those PS4 exclusives came out that was it.

I know 2021 you could say was where Xbox had the most steam but that steam also ran out at the end of 2021. Now it's PlayStation turn beginning in 2022 and beyond, look at the amount of exclusives that will be coming.

@Medic_Alert
I totally agree and hope Xbox is super successful
Now and in the future.

@Snake_V5
At the start of 2022 that is how I see it.
Big AAA exclusives from Sony.
This is why I always say Xbox need a steady stream of big AAA exclusives throughout the year.
Xbox seem to always go big at the 4th quarter sell well then die off the next 3 quarters at the start of the next year. i.e 2021 into 2022.
When I look at my three consoles at home.
2022 belongs at the minute to Sony and Nintendo to a lesser degree.
Big AAA exclusive wise I have to wait to November 2022 for Starfield and we haven’t seen much of that game.
My point to this reply, this is how the general public see it as well and see the PS5 and Nintendo libraries of new big AAA must have exclusives growing, with Xbox a new potentially AAA ip Starfield stuck out in November 2022 only.
I think 2023 and 2024 is when Xbox may have their best years exclusive AAA wise as they do have a lot of studios now, but games take time.

@Dezzy70 How do you decide when wanting a game whether to get it for PS5 or Series X? Do you go by which console is your preference?

@Snake_V5
I guess you mean a third party game?

@Dezzy70 Yeah, any game that's on both Xbox and PlayStation.

@Snake_V5
At the start of the new generation I went series x
As it has slightly more power, variable refresh rate, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos on some games, even if the Dolby Vision was sort of forced on some games.
Anyway with my top end 65” tv I compared assassins creed Vanhalla Series x to PS5.
I beg anyone to tell the difference it looked the same, played the same and sounded the same through my Dolby Atoms sound system.

Being honest Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision make very little difference if any, maybe because my set up is top end but most of it is Microsoft PR speaking and bragging rights. Also reading geeky AV forums that have done tests it is not really implemented that well console wise.

So since Farcry 6 I buy third parties for my PS5, however I do hope PS5 gets the VRR update soon just in case a third party game has screen tearing.
Sony exclusives never have screen tearing as their own studios make sure of that.

So slowly it’s getting more PS5 for me as each month goes by and looking at 2022 I can’t see that changing anytime soon.

@Dezzy70 Whether you consider 'Halo' as a 'Big AAA' game or not, it certainly is according to the industry and has a AAA price point.

MS released Flight Sim, Halo and FH5 this year on Console so that's '3' games - on top of that, you also had MLB21, Outriders, Back 4 Blood etc on Day1 - Maybe 3rd Party, but still AAA releases that saved you paying AAA prices so these 3 alone can save you the 'cost' of Game Pass for a year.

Game Pass Ultimate is £11 a month here, that's £132 a year at MOST!! AAA Games are about £55 on MS Store so that's about 2 games and 1 indie (as these are about £25+ now). That £11 for January wouldn't get very far, but on Game Pass Ultimate, that's Mass Effect Legendary, R6 Seige, R6 Extraction on Day 1, early access to the Anacrusis (a £25 game which will be '£30' when it releases on its own).

Its not 'just' 1st Party AAA games that need to be considered - Xbox Publishing (Contraband comes from that) and ID@Xbox games also contribute to the 'day 1' releases and to the 'value' of Game Pass. When MS don't have their own, they can also offer 3rd Party 'new' releases too to increase the 'value' of Game Pass.

2022 may only have 'Redfall' and 'Starfield' from 1st Party right now, although that will change over the 'year'. But they also have Stalker2, Plague Tale, Warhammer:Darktide, R6: Extraction, Slime Rancher 2, Hello Neighbour 2, Scorn etc also coming to Game Pass on Day 1 too - and Deathloop to of course

Game Pass is 'more' than just Day1 First Party AAA games. Its also Xbox Publishing games, also ID@Xbox games, also some 3rd Party multi-platform games, also older games that you may of missed and some with FPS and/or Resolution boosts too. GPU adds 'streaming' and the ability to play on PC/Mobile too as well as EA Play and the games they add...

Just looking ahead, we have Starfield, Avowed, Fable, Perfect Dark, Outer Worlds 2, State of Decay 3, Everwild, Forza Motorsport, Redfall, Hellblade 2 etc from 1st Party studio's with no doubt others in 'early' development...

I was one of the voices back in 2013 not just thinking it was over for Xbox, but glad of the fact.
Imagine if the Xbox One launch had been a success and that was the direction gaming was now going in?
The turnaround since Phil Spencer has taken over has been incredible, and despite in 2013 saying "I'll never buy an Xbox again" I not only bought an Xbox One eventually but also decided on the Series X ahead of the PS5 as my first console of choice this gen too.
An upward trajectory that shows no signs of slowing.

I didn't buy one till 2 years later because of that forced online only crap they proposed.

@Savage_Joe
Please remember I have a series x and been with Xbox since day one original Xbox.
I just say it as I see it that’s all and sometimes my observations in the real general public world which is what I really socialise with all the time.

I think on here and PSquare and NL everyone is in this gaming bubble and maybe doesn’t socialise with the general public like I do all my personnel life throughout the years. This gives me a lot of general public insight to who is talking about what console or games or what console they own or may get one day.
Also shop sales observations. This include parents as well and at work.

Remember I own all three consoles and have owned all consoles since day one.

But when I type it on here and be honest about general public opinion if it is not in favour of Xbox or PlayStation or Nintendo on their respective sites they get the hump.

I will you an example and what and see, what happens.
In my social general public personal life and work life most ages from 8 years old to 50 years old.
This is my findings.
Most own a switch.
Some own a PS5 or getting one very soon
None own a series x, no one mentions FH5 or Halo Infinite as games they have heard much of or want to play.
What is game pass have not a clue.
Shop observations, series s always on shelf’s.
My 3 local GAME UK have some Series x on the shelf still to sell.

Now watch the fan boys blast me senseless, when all I am doing is giving my social general public and shop observations.

Now don’t get me wrong in the UK series x shifted a fair few console over Christmas and just after, so fair play to them.

@BAMozzy
I did say 2023 and 2024 will be when in house AAA exclusives would pick up and things would be different and may change the landscape but I doubt it, by very much.

Yep. The second they said they were making profits off of the console instead of selling it at a loss, then when Kinect was on a different SKU instead of being an included while still being competitive.

Still miffed with how they handled Kinect.

That launch was the sole reason I switched to ps4. Ok the exclusives were a huge reason but Microsoft really messed up.

I will get a series x this year so Microsoft have turned it around but what a way to ruin the good work of the 360. X1 was the Sega Saturn all over again.

Don Mattrick was the one guy who could've single handedly killed the Xbox brand. Kicking him off the the Xbox team was the best decision they've made.

@Chaudy there will be a price increase though you can't expect them to buy all these studios & make big first party games that all come to game pass day one & make all these deals to have third party games come to the service & keep charging what they are now so it all depends on what people are willing to pay for it

@electrolite77
That’s cool and fair enough, you are UK like me.
Maybe it’s in my area, Greater London area I live.
I do know a few Xbox360 and Xbox one owners, but they were hand me downs to youngsters that now play switch most of the time and the parents have sort of left gaming really apart from the odd switch time with their kids.

@DevinRex
I know he was powerful in Xbox at the time, but it still may have come from above or would have had to get the big guns to agree.
I don’t think he take all the blame.
Imagine if they said to Phil Spencer, by 2023 we want this done and that done or else, but what they wanted done was not that good for gaming or the Xbox brand.
What is Phil gonna do, go stick your hundreds of thousand with perks you pay me a year or go along with it or look elsewhere for another job.
Not an easy decision is it.
At lot goes on in those offices at Microsoft.

@LtSarge was Satya the same guy responsible for the takeover of Nokia (and then the culling of Nokia)

Xbox has done a lot right this generation, but their naming system is like something that Mattrick would have come up with

It was only over when Microsoft backtracked. I wanted theat all-singing, all-dancing media centre Xbox One together with a raft of 1st party exclusives.

What I eventually got was a VCR that played 360 games supported by a company that had shut down all its good studios.

@electrolite77
I was in the the Xbox360 days the glory Xbox days as I call them.
Yes Xbox360 was around a lot in UK then and very importantly general public were impressed and talking about Forza Horizon, Gears of war especially and some Halo and going wow this Xbox is great the games etc etc.
Then it slowed at the end of Xbox360 days, PS3 picked it up with the likes of Last of Us.
We all know what happened with Xbox one and PS4 and now we are here today.
Today UK big Sony fan base mainly due to the PS4 era and it had just stayed at the start of new PS5 generation.
I mean when released Sony released some games, but also cross generation, they then released R&C that always goes down well.
Now at the start PS5 /PS4 is getting HFW and GT7.
They are on a roll from the PS4 era, pushing the games out still in the PS5 era and being honest in the UK much won’t change console sales or game sale wise and the general public enthusiasm will be on Sony again and Nintendo.
If they manage it all, it is gonna a very long time and some truly amazing games and franchises for Xbox to ever get anywhere near Sony and Nintendo in the UK.
Also being honest they not starting 2022 that well compared to the competition exclusive AAA game wise. Sony HFW, GT7. Nintendo Pokémon game.
Microsoft, no big AAA exclusives at the start of 2022 and just keep going on about gamepass which UK general public don’t care about and the youngsters and friends don’t care about as they are all playing FIFA and COD on their PS4/PS5. Or even younger Mario Kart and Lego games on Switch.
I see it in my social life everyday.

I still remember that release, and recently re-watching the event confirmed that I wasn't wrong at the time. What a real flop, and it soured the console for me until the One S.

This is what happens when there's a tech culture of keeping things top secret to have these big, pointless, reveals.

I still enjoyed the Xbox One era, But yeah I don't know what they were thinking during the lead up to that console..

@Dezzy70 I imagine Balmer and the fact that the Windows head had control over Xbox and used Xbox to benefit Windows features had some small bearing on the X1 disaster, but given how Matrick still talks about that agenda to this day, given his interview piece for the documentary, it sounds like that whole monstrosity was his own nightmare vision, and he still believes in it... inexplicably.

@Snake_V5 I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not (it can be hard to tell), but, no MS isn't going to quit gaming now (And I'm someone who was positive they were going to 6 years ago.)

The referenced quote was during the time when Matrick killed the brand with the public, and closed all of the internal studios except the ever-incompetent 343i and the fortunately talented Coalition, Steve Balmer had resigned, Satya Nadella just joined and was changing the total direction of MS to "cloud-first", the shareholders chose him in part because he said he was open to the idea of jettisoning Xbox, which they wanted, and Phil was just taking over the role from Matrick. The introductory call contained the referenced quote, where Satya asked why they should keep Xbox open, and Phil replied that if they go in, they need to go ALL in.

That was the do-or-die moment. At the time they had basically no software business in video games (Matrick closed it all), and a DOA piece of hardware. Either Satya closed shop and said the Xbox program was a failure, or they give Phil total control, and invest into it a a core business market. They went with the latter, promoted Xbox out of a sub-division under Windows and made it an equal, stand-alone division with Phil in charge, and granted, obviously, fortunes in capital to buy/build out a software business, and finally a cloud platform that synergized with the cloud-first model for the company.

They've now spent at full scale, whatever it took, to build Xbox into a main business arm, complete with a whole cloud infrastructure. Further, Game Pass/cloud gives them a competitive footprint against their biggest real competitors in all industries (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon; Sony is small potatoes, and technically a partner) and their forays into that business which is strategically important across the company. It's not going anywhere. At "worst" case they could spin it off as an independent company, but it's now a mountain of capital, and I doubt even that would happen for many years. It's not Zune or Mixer, it's a core business arm with a whole datacenter footprint now.

As for PlayStation:
“We’d been through the fire with PS3 and now everything was on the line. We had to get this right and if we didn’t, it could’ve been the end [of PlayStation]."
-Shahid Ahmad (Former SCEE Senior Business Development Manager)

Shu Yoshida had commented a few things in interviews the more or less said the same. Remember that was a time when Sony Corp was in very dire straights, and was liquidating real estate to break even.

Similarly,
"When your only business is video games"...."Along with so many of the other things I was part of, but the Switch really was a make or break product for the company and luckily it was a hit."
-Reggie Fils-Aime

In reality, all 3 companies have been in positions where it was questionable if they'd be continuing with gaming (or at all in N's case)if their next product wasn't a hit. Luckily in all 3 cases the next product was a hit.

@NEStalgia
More importantly are we getting BOTW2 this year 2022 and if so what month?
Give me your best shot please.

@NEStalgia What makes you think Sony is small potatoes though? They've been around longer than Xbox and have much more of a stronger narrative and presence. Sony also have Cloud too with PS Now as well. If anyone knows more about the gaming business than Microsoft it's Sony.

@Snake_V5 And where is that PS Now cloud server running? Microsoft's datacenters.....

Compared to the Silicon Valley giants of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, MS, all of Sony Corp is small potatoes. Sure they're a virtual media monopoly and a tech giant. And an insurance giant in Asia (their biggest industry by earnings!) I don't mean to say Sony is small, but compared to the big six tech titans, EVERYONE is small potatoes. Apple could buy Sony Corp thrice and still have plenty of gash to gobble Walmart and Disney as a midnight snack, and not even have to explain the line item to their investors. People really don't grasp the dystopian scale the big tech companies operate at and how they've distorted the entire world market.

MS's focus is on the other 5 of the big 6 + the goliath that is Tencent (officially smaller than the big 6, unofficially part of a national GDP of a currency manipulating unchangeable government.) Sony's a competitor in their gaming market space, but not to any of their other market space, and in the gaming market space, Sony's also a partner.

Sony plays the game as an unassailable monopolistic megacorp. The big 6 play the game as pseudo-governments without allegiance.

That's the thing. MS is using Xbox as one of the tools in their toolbox to compete for equal footing with the other tech titans, and in the gaming space, Apple is winning by a good margin, technically, with Xbox nicely in second. Sony isn't in that race, they're not aiming against Apple or Google, and they don't have any other products that compete with them directly, while MS is competing on Search and cloud compute, OS's, etc.

I don't mean to say Sony's business scale in gaming is trivial, on its own, it's not, it's still the console leader. But the overall business scale isn't on the same scale, and isn't really competing in the same market for the same reasons. Fans like to try to pit MS against Sony and see "who's winning", but Sony's aiming for media dominance and controlling the console space, while MS is aiming to align their entire suite of platforms and services against the other 6, and media & entertainment is only one of many parts of that. It's a different contest on a different scale. Falling behind Sony in consoles is irrelevant to them. They're looking at how their gaming involvement is drawing market share from Google and Facebook, and conjonining with using Bing and building out their cluster farms to rival Amazon's footprint.

And in that goal, Sony's success is also their success. The better PSN does, as an Azure client, the better MS's cloud footprint is, the better their leverage on Amazon, etc. On network services, Playstation is basically a Microsoft reseller. Thus, a partner, not a threat in the actual competition MS is engaged in. Who cares if PSN or GP leads. MS rakes in money from it either way. Similarly, MS gets endless royalties from Android. As long as Google instead of Apple wins, MS wins.

It's comforting knowing the products are here to stay, but it's also distressing that these things are such behemoths that even when you "vote with your wallet" you still can't actually escape funding them even if you don't want to!

@Dezzy70 Ooh, that's a hard one. If we get it it's got to be Nov/Dec. They've showed trailers, they keep making sure to say it's been delayed. We probably do get it this year. I don't think they'd keep sticking Aonuma up there to remind everyone it's coming if it were really behind.

But.....

Nintendo shelves games as business demand in the release schedule dictates and they're already loading both barrels with big new era Pokemon this month and Splatoon (which is even bigger than Zelda in Japan).... I wouldn't be shocked if they delayed it. But right now, I'm thinking Pokemon now, Kirby early spring, Splatoon Summer, and Zelda holiday. That would be unusually big for them, but that's my best guess.

@NEStalgia
Well I hope so it’s been along time coming five years this March 2022, and two years since the first little tease.
Also don’t forget Bayonetta 3 is 2022.
Hope all those games arrive, I need something to get me back to my Switch and most of those can do that for sure.

@NEStalgia PS Now runs on Sony own data centres, they don't need Microsoft 😁

@Snake_V5 https://www.engadget.com/2019-05-16-sony-microsoft-partnership-azure-cloud-streaming.html