@eduscxbox "Nintendo pick a different name every console generation and it is fine"
That's kind of the point. Nintendo picks a new name every time, and thus there's no confusion because there's only one product of that name. You know it's the right one. There's one time where they didn't do that. The WiiU. Which had the same confusion as Xbox naming to the point it catastrophically failed. "I don't need a screen controller for my Wii!" Xbox would have done better with unique names like Nintendo and Sega did.
I mean, Xbox naming is so confused, they're still using the project codename 20 years later lol!
Apple...well....apple people are special. They just need to know they bought an apple device. They don't really need to know they just spent $2800 on a $1200 laptop do they?
@HonestHick Series X1 and Series S1 will be so much more powerful than the One X and One S!
I guess it still makes more sense than PC where you have a 8900XT which is totally different from the 8900XTX but better than the 9050XT, all run on your "Intel Processor".
I still just love "Intel Processor." It's like naming your dog "Dog".
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah, and it makes sense, launching an Xbox 2 a year before the PS3 would make the PS3 seem much newer (and you can always get a second job to buy one lol.)
But.....at the same time....360 boxed them into a brand hole forever. It worked at that moment in time, but left them no actual forward strategy to go with the brand after that. It's kind of a metaphor for all of Xbox, isn't it?
Of course they could have stuck with the skater theme, the Xbox 720, 1440, Xbox 4k? It would have actually been PERFECT, though you need hindsight to know it. Instead they go to "One". Then expand it to One S and One X. And then deside to also make the successor X and S. Did they not learn from WiiU that you do not recycle names? Even XboxU would have been sadly better. And then when they have the Pro model it could be perfect, the Xbox Series F|U.
@themightyant The rare cases I'll defend Xbox decisions these days, but yeah I don't see a problem with a discount promo on their retail side for subscribers, because it's not a new feature but one that's always been part of their sub, it applies to many games not just theirs, nothing prevents competitors from offering the same promos or better, including pricing via brick and mortar retailers, and competitors also have subscriber-only discounts on things.
It only becomes a problem (and this we wouldn't know about) if they're playing games with the wholesale pricing/revenue splits of the currency when sold to retailers and competitors to incentivize their own digital store as an obvious advantage to purchase from.
@AccessibleDaydream @somnambulance TBF both GP and PS Plus and NSO have always included members-only discounts and offers (in NSO's case it mostly amounts to the ability to buy vouchers) where often the big sales (at least on PS, not even sure it applies to XB) have 2 sale prices, one for subscribers and one for non-subs. So this isn't anything new or special, access to special sale pricing is a standard feature of all the subs that's always been there.
It's actually always been an annoyance of mine. When scrolling the sale pages you usually just get like 90 pages that are just different bundle sizes of different currencies for a bunch of GaaS games and MMOs but with one game mixed in. But yeah, that's been a feature of the subs advertised since the beginning.
As for the Overton Window....the problem with gaming more than other industries is no matter what the industry says, the target is children/tweens/teens. "M Rated" has always meant "high school kids that want to feel mature" and "college kids that couldn't even pretend to be." And for them, whatever existed in their lifetime is the way the world has always been. So the industry knows every 8 years of so the past never happened and whatever forced new world they apply will, for the upcoming new generation of majority players, be the world that always was, accepted without question. It's also (and more notably) why politics targets the young, going back even to WWII and prior. If you acclimate the young to your new normal, you just have to wait for the old to die off (or exit the market.) At least gaming publishers haven't resorted to getting the young to kill off the old to accelerate the process though (yet.)
So gaming has an unfortunate turnaround where within about 8 years, the new thing everyone rejected is now accepted as normal, because if they force it in for long enough, the new majority population of gamers grew up with it and is used to it as normal, even while anyone with a clue was resisting.
Heck, the mainstream gamer now grew up with phone gaming. Even EA seems consumer friendly if that's the only world you know.
@HonestHick Yeah, the 360 seems like a great name now, because it's a a famed product in hindsight, but yeah, when everyone expected "Xbox 2" and they came out with "360" it sounded dumb and "faux edgy". I think ,what, at the time skater/snowboard culture was all the rage with the kiddos, and I always assumed they were trying to channel that whole skater lingo with 360's and 720's and all that. Which sounded dumb because 360 is....right back where you started. And they followed it with the One...
LOL on Android! To be fair, unlike Xbox, Android versions actually have real numbers officially, its just that the food-themed internal codenames became sort of their own legend, and are memorable enough that that's what everyone (nerds) started referring to it as instead of the numbers, and then sometime after that, Google marketing got ahold of it and ran with it for actual consumer facing marketing. That's where it got dumb. But it really is numbered versions, but you never notice that, you just remember the food names.
Of course, Apple's the one that stopped using numbers or names at all and just started calling everything "product". So sellers had to have parenthesis (2024 ver.) I should sell my old TNT2 GPU from 1999 on Ebay "Nvidia GPU - Used - $550." Yeah I know they started using numbers again on the phones at least, because even Apple eventually figured out their naming was even worse than Xbox.
Sony, well, they figured it out for consoles, but then we get into their cameras, TVs, audio.....yeah....they're pretty bad too.
@HonestHick Lol yeah. I really don't know how scuf stays on business, their stuff is absurdly priced and horrendous quality. But esports wannabes keep paying for it. Probably because esports pros are paid to look like they use them without showing they're using a new one every single match lol
All kidding aside though, I can't tell if this is a mistake or done on purpose. Has anyone seen the new Intel naming scheme? It's like it was designed by Xbox. To make it simpler for consumers, instead of 3 families, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 (+Celeron/Pentium for budget) they're splitting it into SIX families and removing the i, Core 5, Core 7, Core 9 + Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, Core Ultra 9. Then they're ending the Celeron and Pentium names and rebranding all the trash chips "Intel Processor". So, where does a Core 9, and a Core Ultra 5 line up? Does anyone actually know? If Ultra is better, but there's 3 tiers of each, where does one meet the other?
On top of that they're removing the generation from the branding, so you don't know what generation it is from the product name without reading the exact part number and checking on their website.
Why are they doing this? "To make it simpler for consumers."
Why are they REALLY doing this? So they can build frankenchips out of old dies and not have to say they're old, while their large builder partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) can sell ancient chips at full price in prebuilds to unsuspecting consumers. "It's got a Core 7 in it! (From 2012.) $350 please."
I myself am looking forward to the next generation Xbox 365 SX. It's supposed to be 50% more powerful than the rumored Xbox Series One XS. Shame it's digital only but it's still a great value with the day 1 games on Game Pass for $15, and it's such a great system since the games are compatible with the Xbox X1 handheld!
I can't believe people are still confused about this. Now Playstation, that's confusing. PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5...how are you supposed to know which one to buy? There only difference is a number, there's no way to know which one is which!
@Dan1283 I guess the new Game Pass Standard subscribers need something to get excited about? To be fair, it's still a better Naughty Dog game than TLoU2.... 🥷
@Feffster Yeah, that's practical and fair, but it's kind of my point. It's one thing that it's interesting to try "because it's there", it's another thing using it as a dripfeed to get people excited to play Xbox One remasters of PS1 games for $20/mo.
$20/mo and people are getting excited for an 8th gen remake of a 5th gen game that's been on sale for years and years? Does everyone laugh at sitcoms whenever the laugh track plays, too?
@HonestHick PS5 seems to be the winner of the stick drift this gen, I've never seen so many reports of drift other than the early Joycons. I have not had my stick drift yet on it, but that's because 75% of my PS5 play time has been VR with the VRSense, and I switched to the Edge part way through for non-VR so it only got shared wear. I really fear for the VRSense though, as you can't replace those controllers, they won't sell them, so if the stick drifts, you throw out the whole $550 kit and buy a new one. And you thought Edge was overpriced! Switch, I have a box full of drifting sticks. Like 6 or so Joycon, and a Pro controller. Xbox....I fear for my Elite 2. I have a dozen drifting 360 controllers a few Elite v1's. My Elite 2 has, knock wood, held up, despite so many reports of issues, even out of the box, even as my most used controller. I fear that can't last much longer, and that one was somehow the lottery winner of luck. It's absurd to pay those prices for controllers guaranteed to drift in time (to say nothing of Scuf.....they're just shameful.)
@HonestHick IDK they're even making money off them, they never have them in stock even if people want them. Like everything else is seems like a checklist product to cash in on the early adopter rush, summarily abandoned once that passed.
It just astounds me that the higher end the controller, the less chance of hall. Scuff, elite, edge, Asus Ally...200, $800..... No hall effect. Turtle Beach, 8bitdo, KRCJGIRA, JiBestGameGood, $18 CONTROLLERS HALL EFFECT!
I bought Legion Go first over Ally due to the big screen and the hall effect. Ally and Edge have hall effect TRIGGERS. Wtf?
It's a cool idea, but by the time you're done overpaying for a controller you could buy an Elite, and by the time you're done paying for an Elite without Hall Effect that can develop drift anyway, why pay more than minimum, it's disposable.
Why are we still stuck with graphene potentiometers in high end controllers when cheap Chinese generics have hall effect now?
@HonestHick Yeah "friendly" security software. Thank goodness for their protection. Without them hackers could take down your network.... Oh wait. And you pay thousands for that!
Yeah Xbox was half down here. Got the warnings on the Xbox PC app when I went to remote play my xsx. Logins I think are what was down.
@WhiteRabbit But 5 purified souls of sacrificed maidens, 3 putrefied imp hearts specifically from the banks of the river Styx, 7 truths from gaming executives, and 1 MSRP 4090 are almost IMPOSSIBLE to gather! I can get the souls and hearts easy enough but the rest, I don't think that's even possible! And I STILL can't find the corrupted soil on which to build the summoning circle. I'm sure it's somewhere on the MSDN. Surely there must be another way!
@WhiteRabbit I think it's doable in a Microsoft way.
So you can have a cloud only tier, that you must buy ultimate, then go into the settings, disable cloud and console, then log in on a PC and activate your subscription, then submit a request to change to cloud only. After you confirm the change on both PC and console (you must own an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X linked to your account to approve this request) you can then convert from Game Pass Ultimate to Game Pass Cloud, the price change will appear on your statement as of the next monthly billing cycle.
Is that better and much more practical for Microsoft to do? Will Phil hire me now?
Game Pass tears. We all have many, many Game Pass tears. Far too many now....
Much as I'm against too many price packages, I think they actually DO need to break out cloud. Right now it serves no one. Ultimate customers aren't really the target customer for cloud streaming, if you're buying Ultimate you probably have console, or PC, or most likely console AND PC. You're probably not too interested in cloud. If you're interested in cloud, you probably don't have a console, OR a gaming PC, and aren't interested in any of what it offers, you just want cloud. This isn't hard. Cloud should have been its own sub and always should have. Additionally, console full day 1 game pass without PC and without cloud should have been available - not having that is a huge signal that console doesn't matter.
PC should be PC. Cloud should be cloud. Console should be console.
If they want ultimate then they can have ultimate with all 3 and no sane person should buy it because realistically who's playing on all 3 regularly?
It's all reminiscent of Windows Vista Home, Pro, and Ultimate. If you want media features you buy Home. If you want security features, large RAM support, or quad core CPU support you buy Pro. If you want meda AND large ram quad core you need Ultimate. Basically everyone needs Ultimate and the other options exist just to make the single all in one flat price look like a "bargain."
@HonestHick Yeah I looked it up after you mentioned it, technically it was not a Microsoft issue at all. There were two issues an Azure/365 outage at a major US datacenter took big cloud services offline for a while. But the big one wasn't an MS issue, it was CrowdStrike pushing an update to Falcon, and like most "security" software, it basically works like a virus, and embeds itself as a driver and replaces parts of the OS with their custom version....and they pushed a garbage system file that rendered the OS unbootable.
This is the rare case these days I'll defend MS. Not their fault. If some self important security company starts replacing Linux and BSD kernels (including MacOS), the same thing would happen.
The lesson here is if you're going to mess with OS system files and push them out in automated updates, maybe, don't update every single customer on the planet all at the same moment? They did the Russians job for them all in the name of stopping the Russians, and charged customers fortunes to do so.....they'd have been better off with the Russians, at least it would be cheaper!
@shoeses The WiiU wasn't really bad though, and it did some things better than Switch. It was poorly marketed, undesirable, and had the misfortune of launching just before PS4 and X1 so that as soon as it came out, 3rd party support vanished and 100% of all marketing from all publishers went to PS/XB, with several (EA) actively sabotaging WiiU with negative commentary.
"By Nintendo standards" WiiU wasn't bad hardware. And "By Nintendo standards" Switch isn't particularly special hardware, it's another Nintendo handheld, but without the unique gimmicks of the DS era, just a return to the Game Boy form. With a TV out.
It's not so much a matter of bad hardware and good hardware, just marketing and perception. The Switch is actually similar power to WiiU, just a touch more powerful in some areas (but by sacrificing others), yet where WiiU was "not good enough" in 2013, Switch is somehow top tier in 2024. Just marketing and perception.
@TakeItEasy I only disagree with the last part. I jumped back to Xbox after skipping x1 launch because Sony didn't respect fans or communicate anything. Xbox deciding to suck doesn't make Sony suck less, it just makes it seem that way. They both suck now. Sony just has more third party support.
@InterceptorAlpha "Now they've pretty much pushed me off to PC and VR exclusively barring the occasional Ninty or Sony game."
100% exactly heading the same place. Though to be fair it's mostly possible because PC is basically just Super Xbox. It's clear they want Xbox to be a Windows service. Which is fair that's was it was originally too. But I even just bought a quest 3. I'm actually choosing a Zuckerberg platform.... I swore I'd never touch anything Zuck related. Thanks Satya and Amy!
They point blank told foc no price hike for call of duty. Then hike the price and cite call of duty. What exactly is ftc misrepresenting?
We all knew there would be a price increase eventually but I overestimated Microsoft and believed they'd wait until the next call of duty for optics and to make good on the claim. They didn't even care about optics. That's how far they live the spreadsheet.
Gaming By Excel 36 - 404 Not Found
@Jenkinss I still don't think they've decided anything really. That's their problem, they can't decide what they actually want the business to be so they're trying to be everything at once, and that's good for one direction is bad for another direction so they just alternate between what gets priority.
They want gaming to be a subscription but then they compete against that with retail. They want gaming in the cloud but then compete with that with hardware and PC software. They want to be on all screens but then they want to sell subscriptions to partner and own devices.
@BAMozzy Totally agree about it not being long before mobile can do rt and upscaling etc. That's kind of the same point I was making really. General purpose computing is moving at a pace where dedicated graphics machines are begining to be fast irrelevant the same way low end discrete gpus are irrelevant and gone. Every mid range CPU comes with a GPU better than the expensive gpus we had 15 years ago. Thus I see consoles having a limited future. Having graphics nothing else could touch was their claim to fame and that's ending as general compute rivals it me and more and the high end is hitting roadblocks if that's practical to develop for.
Physical retail is it's other unique selling point but that's not demanded widely anymore. I thought maybe going full HBO and locking all exclusives to them forever would be it, but even Sony isn't going that route with more PC releases and probably mobile when viable.
This generation is especially weird. People keep saying we're 4 years in. No we're not it's 3.5. and the first year they weren't even available widely. And yearly the 2.5 after we've still been waiting for it to feel like the generation started. It feels like we're still in launch window waiting for the big games. I don't think this gen counts as "average" when the first 2 or 3 years was just waiting for the launch to stabilize. Yet games kinda feel like they skipped the hardware.
@BAMozzy problem is if consoles are replaced so frequently to catch up, they're not actually any cheaper than extreme PCs which kills its whole purpose. And the PC really outlasts it because the mid range cards didn't even jump that much anymore between a few gens only the elite cards do. And it's the rut consoles are stuck in. I just don't see the console market going for non stop upgrade cycles then most only buy a few games over years. Frankly I see pc getting off the non stop upgrade cycle.... The leaps every 2 or 3 years aren't close to what they were 20 years ago.
But you're taking more going into the PC or mobile upgrade model instead of generations with long compatibility. That i definitely see. I expected that's where Ms was going starting with 1x. I was disappointed when they announced Scarlett and it was just another generational console.
@somnambulance Yeah, I really don't know exactly how they're positioning their handheld strategy. It has great potential but they're going to be head to head against Nintendo at the present rate and that can't end well. They're always too early or too late. Wizards, they are not.
@JayJ Unfortunately it's a different regulatory body for utilities and insurance separately. And they're mostly made up of revolving doors of the very executives of the very oligopolies - CFO of Allstate one year, PUC comissioner the next year, then CFO of State Farm a few years later...... No conflicts of interest there at all, nooooo......
FTC only has purview if one of them goes to buy another. But of course in those businesses one only buys another after the one is in bankruptcy protection and needs a buyer to float anyway.
TL;DR Everything's f-d up beyond repair, and while we wait for the inevitable and necessary nuclear armageddon required to fix it, we're going to fight tooth and nail to the brutal end for ethics and fairness in our video games we used to kill everyone in imaginary worlds to make us feel better so we don't have to do it IRL
@x3King84 I feel like it doesn't take much skill for the rumors to be right, if there's a way for MS to damage their brand, they'll find it. If there's not a way, they'll create one that didn't exist before.
The really sad thing is they make a good product and then don't support it, don't market it, and then don't seem to care, they just let it float out there half alive and consider it good enough while they focus on something else. MS always seems to make a great product, but then lets it wither on the vine until it's forgotten. Zune, Winphone, they always have a good platform they just let dry out.
And it's made all the worse that PS is the alternative where the popularity isn't because it's a great product, but simply because it's already popular and manages to not become a bad product.
@somnambulance Very much like the Sega cycle where there were 3 back to back consoles. People lost faith that the purchase had any lasting power and just waited "for the next one." Nerds are used to "buy a new thing every few years." COnsumers and parents especially have the outlook of "I want the new XStationBox" "But you just got one 2 years ago!"
If you're going to sell dedicated games appliances, it had better well last a while.
We won't be able to determine how long the 9th generation will last until after it launches.
Until then I really like the new SSD I got for my Xbox Two, and my PS4 Pro Plus (White Edition) is really neato! Wonder what the PS4 Pro Plus (White Edition) (Rev. 2 2024 Edition) will be like?
@Fiendish-Beaver The problem with Xbox is that every time they wet their own bed, instead of trying to clean it up, they just go silent, ride out the market and then attempt to reboot the brand with a new hardware launch. Whereupon they soon after soil the clean sheets again and repeat the cycle. To be fair, though, Nintendo did the exact same thing with WiiU and it somehow became a resounding success. I still don't know how Nintendo went from "unwanted and rejected" to "hot ticket item" between Switch and WiiU, while selling the EXACT same games on them. I think most of it stems from the slick marketing of calling it a "hybrid console". People bought into a "new concept", while "Super Game Boy Advance with HDMI out" would not have flown off the shelves as much.
@Daleaf The problem is we've capped out. For 40 years gaming has been about selling leaps forward in graphics and density. We've now hit the ceiling where games are real-time rendered Pixar movies, and some are proper CGI with near-photorealism. There's no where left to go except more perfect lighting, more perfect shadows, more perfect surface interactions. Tiny things that aren't really perceptible to the consumer other than when comparing something new to something old. There's nowhere left to go to wow people, we're already at the state of "pretty close to live action photography" and you cant' get "more" impressive than "looks real." There's VR, but that's still a long way from being mainstream, if it ever is. That's really the only place left to go. And the leaps of wow still exist there.
The only thing I'll give MS here is that, while they're quite clueless in refusing to actually market their products as though they learned nothing from WiiU, I'll grant them that Sony's got it equally wrong. They seem to spend more money marketing things than making things, and their "brand" is built more on their piles of money being used to brainwash people into blindly buying their brand than actually putting everything into their products, then making the consumer pay more to fund it. (300M for Spiderman 2 was not just money spent making the game.....the $10 price hike paid for more marketing.)
There's really got to be a happy medium between hoping "if you build it they will come" from MS and "Pay everyone to believe they have to have it now. Build it later. Then send the buyers the invoice for the marketing." of Sony. They're both opposite sides of the same coin.
@Ralizah I really don't know how people who are so clueless about their market can somehow mange to make so much money. I really don't understand how their brains process information over there.
@OldGamer999 If you haven't yet just do a deep dive on the media poopstorm around Windows Copilot Recall. It's not intentionally. They're really just this incompetent. In every division. Even their most important one. I do not understand how they're rich.
@HonestHick 30 million core....yeah...and that's a problem. The casuals have mostly gone in other directions. Mobile. PC - I don't mean 4090 supertowers, I mean thin light laptops that play indies fine. That was the bulk of console sales. Gone. So it's just the core left. And they keep trying to just extract more and more money to make the economics work, and that can't last.
The problem with cloud is the economics are even worse than consoles. It's "cheap" now. But it needs MASSIVE numbers to work, and much higher pricing. Selling people streaming for $20/mo for now sounds hard to pushto casuals. When it hits the real prices of $89.99/mo for medium, $120.00/mo for high.....it's not going to fly. Unlesss they get those "billion" gamers.
The thing with game size is I suspect that most of the cost for for the game is sunk into the core content. So increasing the size with all that bloat costs little to add, and is why they do it, to increase the "value" because the core part already cost more than budget. I.e. trimming the fat probably won't bring their production costs down all that much. OTOH getting rid of -king fruit physics and paying attention to exact shadow casting from eyelashes might.
Ironically I'm going the other way. Huge fan of many many games, but especially with an interest in VR, I'm looking at worlds to get lost in and those are huge. Skyrim with 150 mods, Fo4 with the same, Flight sims, racing sims, NMS, Elite Dangerous, etc etc....not too many games to pick from but they're games you could spend years playing and not have hit all the content. (Or payed for it, DCS World combat sim has like $1400 of DLC available You buy each plane and map and carrier separately. But it's understandable because it's a true sim. To fly it you basically have to learn how to operate the real world vehicle. Every single switch in the cockpit functions properly, etc, so reading the real manual of the real vehicle is almost mandatory....so I can see why one plane is $50. It's cheaper that 14.3 million the real one costs.
Problem with console profitability is it's coming at the cost of just forever raising prices on the remaining customers. Eventually they push too far, to either make it unaffordable to too many, or to become too close to superior alternatives in PC.
Worldwide windows outage? Wow I've been using MS stuff all day and didn't even know there was an issue other than last night Xbox app saying Xbox stuff was down (but worked for me luckily.) Did the full windows updates and everything on 2 machines today!
But why would Windows itself BSOD from that? I definitely haven't seen on on several machines...that may be something else. Or something tied to your corporate security?
Was waiting for this and this time, I'm glad to see it happened. FTC is 100% right here. MS lied point blank to regulators faces that they were not going to raise prices for this, and then pivoted the moment the teacher wasn't watching and did precisely that. They didn't even give it a year to PRETEND it wasn't related. Didn't even try to create plausible deniability. They just pivoted and did it right there. And not just a $1 increase, but 25% on ultimate, 50% on lowest tier, all ONE YEAR, immediately after saying to regulators they wouldn't.
I still believe this will bite them. Not Xbox. The next time MS finds themselves in front of FTC trying to buy some AI tech or cloud provider. This is an entire ammo crate to use against anything they say.
@HonestHick It's both. Those games are a different market. It wasn't the market of single play games that switched to playing Fortnite, it's people that would have never played single play games that at least play Fortnite. It's more of a social media platform than a video game. It didn't replace "traditional games", it replaced mall rats hanging out near 5-7-9, and as there's a lot more mall rats than Final Fantasy nerds, the industry started caring only about their revenue. And at least they keep the digital food court from looking deserted.
But that's not the core issue, it's just masking it. The problem is MOST console sales were never to FF nerds, most console sales were to ultra casuals that buy two games ever, probably some puzzle game, or a sports game, or the like. Consoles were never about us even if the companies thought they were. Consoles were about the "non-gamers" that bought them for a game or two.
Those customers exited console gaming entirely. They never wanted a console they just wanted a Tetris thing and something with this years team on it. Without them console numbers would plummet, and publishers would panic. The social media players kind of replaced them, so numbers look stable, and those guys are more profitable, only because of whales.
Where the new crisis is is that for ALL of those markets we're getting to the point where hardware they already have can play the kinds of games they want to play, AND that hardware can then bring software to new markets much easier, because it's already there.
It's also cost. The most popular games are popular because they have one thing in common: They're free. In a world where the most popular things everyone else is doing cost....nothing.....who would buy an expensive box to play expensive games on them? The industry keeps telling us it costs too much, people keep saying games need to keep up with inflation........and they're all ignoring that the games everyone plays are free. THere's a reason everyone's playing them (except GTA, GTA people are special...very very special...) A $5 console and $1 games are still expensive compared to the most popular games. Yes, the whales pump in cash at 100x the rate purchasers do, but those games would collapse if all the free riders vanished.
The real problem for consoles is that in the world of modern general purpose computing hardware, you just don't need a console to accomplish the goal for all the non-enthusiast market anymore. Consoles managed to stay relevant by pushing bleeding edge graphics all the time, but that era is ending as the games to do that cost too much to make.
The market for dedicated games won't go away entirely, but then it gets split between those seeking budget (console) and those seeking performance (PC enthusiast), so the market then starts dividing itself. And as that happens the hardware subsidy razor and blades model fails. And if console has to keep raising prices to mach the falling demand, it'll continue to reduce demand by either pushing people down onto phones/laptops, or pushing them up into PC ("It's not THAT much more!")
But if the console industry is revolving around those few games, the console is obsoleting itself. Subsidized hardware can't thrive on being an onramp to a handful of games that already run on hardware everyone already has.
@OldGamer999 Switch is a special case. It had no right to sell as well as it did, but the idea of portable gaming with HD graphics took the world by storm early and the momentum kept rolling. They'll hold onto that because Nintendo handhelds are Nintendo handhelds, but it will get challenging for Nintendo because if people's phones and laptops can kind of do the same things as a $350-400 switch 2.....will people choose to save money and use what they've got?
@GamingFan4Lyf @WhiteRabbit @JonBoyJ I don't disagree with you guys about PC being more expensive overall, people are lying when they say it's not, but at the same time that price is highly exaggerated. $3k will buy you an enthusiast class 4090 rig. Equivalent of a "Titan" back in the day or equivalent before that of doing 2 cards in SLI/Crossfire. Normal players just ignored that. You don't need an enthusiast class 4090 rig to compete with a flipping Series X and PS5. A 3060 slightly bests a Series X and PS5 and they're like $200. That 4090 rig will likely be relatively competitive to a PS6 bought 2-3 years early.
For a single-platform gamer, obviously console is like half the price. For a multiple-platform gamer though, the cost of both PS+XB+HDDs+subscriptions is easily more than a PC that outperforms either of them. You can best a Series X for $1300-1500 handily. You can equal a Series X for about $850-1150 depending on how you shop. Is it more expensive? Yes. Is it more performant? Yes (those console CPUs are garbage.) Is it a viable alternative for Consumer Bob that buys a console plugs it in? No. But it's not as extremely priced as perceived either.
Consoles at launch are a great bargain compared to their PC equivalents, but after a few years once you get into mid-gen the PC parts come down more favorably again, while the consoles, now, don't come down in price. And that doesn't discuss "pro" models that bring the console up to $1100+ on its own over the generation anyway. If it exists. Which it may not.
And the next consoles are absolutely going to be more expensive. Sony supposedly wanted to do 600 this generation but backed down after XSX was priced. Phil point blank said the subsidy on hardware is over, it doesn't work anymore and to expect maybe higher prices. They were losing $200 on each XSX AFAIK. Realistically? Next gen we're looking at $1200-1400 minimum to own both consoles. Plus additional HDDs for each, plus subscriptions (that keep jumping in price.) And maybe pro models that jack that up to double or more.
We're in a time gap here where PC parts are based on 2024 pricing. The consoles are based on 2019-2020 pre-inflationary pricing. They're itching to catch up, and when they do, it's going to be sticker shock in the console space, and those PC parts will start looking more appealing again. Even the Nvidia ones.
@Vaako007 It depends on region. US, UK, Western Europe, formerly Japan were huge console territories. But they're the only ones. Huge chunks of the world including and especially China are pretty much 100% PC from the start. The consoles kind of have a built in legacy market from "1980s first world countries" but it clouds the real adoption elsewhere.
The flip side of why "console is dying" though, is that the market is going in a direction where average hardware with integrated graphics is "good enough" for the kinds of games most players are actually playing these days. Those new Snapdragon laptops were demo'ed running BG3 at 30fps. Sounds kind of decent as a console on a thin and light mini laptop.
I see the market kind of splitting where buying NO special hardware other than what they already have for normal life (laptop, desktop, phone, ipad whatever) is more than good enough to play most of the games they'd want to play so the casual console market withers, as average tech catches up to where console has been for decades. And then the enthusiast market looking to pay premium for more than what consoles ever offered on "gaming rigs." "Consoles" have been subsidized for 30 years by people that want to play Just Dance and Madden so that Nerdz can play Halo. The numbers crash as those people exit because their normal hardware plays that kind of thing fine.
That leaves a shrinking slice of market for dedicated consoles that are neither "already on your table for no additional cost" nor high performance like a custom rig. A market still exists, but if it keeps shrinking due to overlap with hardware people already have, at some point it stops sustaining itself. My Legion Z1 extreme runs FFXIV at 720p with FSR to 1600x1200 at 60fps. FF7R at 40-45fps. God of War 2018 at 60fps. Starfield at LFMAOLOLNOPE. Neither a "demanding" nor an "easy to drive" game. If I can do that on a handheld with "enthusiast" chip, we're getting close to the time where basically any laptop can run most normal games not designed to push hardware. Then do we need consoles still?
No, the casuals are never going to build E-ATX supertower rigs with RGB's beaming from every oriface with water cooling and a $1000 GPU that weighs more than a cinderblock and be "PC GAMER" nerds. But the point is they don't need to. The casuals can flip open their Acer eBlahBlahBlah 1000 notebook, install steam or go to the Xbox app and download Vampire Surviver just fine without spending hardware money or nerding out. Little Kitty Big City doesn't need 24gb VRAM with 340mm radiators hanging from the top. For the people that want to play Hellblade at 4k, there's big rigs for them to nerd out on.
I said it in the push thread, but gaming has been pricing itself out of most markets. $500 consoles soon to be $600, 700. $70 games when even $60 was a lot. >$1000 GPUs. Subscriptions, services galore. And the games to match the hardware cost so much to make they can't make profits on making games to the size market that can afford the hardware/subs at a price they're willing to pay. It went from being a mainstream activity for everyone and anyone to have a box to play some games under their TV to this pricy hobby for dedicated hobbyists. Of course market will shrink. They didn't define the target price of the target market, they just built whatever seemed impressive and expected people would pay it. Meanwhile phones and PCs that everyone has are getting more and more capable of running games that aren't pushing hardware for the sake of pushing hardware.
@Pabpictu That's a big part of it where consoles once had their own media ecosystem, retail floor space, trading culture, grab a disc/cart, put it in the slot, play the game, that was designed for the hardware.
Now console games are mostly just ports of games designed for PC, with all the problems of PC games baked in, and migrated everyone over to the same digital ecosystem, patches, versions, now performance settings. The modern consoles groomed gamers for the wold of PC, and now can't figure out why people migrate to PC after.
@HonestHick Honestly I think it's a depressing condemnation of the state of the player base on consoles if the whole console ecosystem pretty much depends on a mediocre cringey game like GTA for it's entire sales cycle. If console is down to being all about GTA and Fortnite....it's definitely a....particular....market
@x3King84 Following Xbox is like being a cat and chasing the laser. You just frantically jump from place to place to wherever the red dot moved, and every time you do, it's not there and it jumped somewhere else, and you end up looking pretty unintelligent in the process.
Though I still can't imagine on what planet they actually think selling a $20 subscription to stream 1080p games with high compression to the kind of people why buy Fire Sticks is actually going to be the move that takes them to new heights of market leadership in gaming. Bundling it with Prime Video at a discount? That would grow numbers. $20/mo to the kind of person that never thought to buy a console before? No.
I think next E3/SGF, Devolver Digital should just stick a camera in the Xbox boardroom. I'll be just as zany and satirical as all their other shows and cost them absolutely nothing.
@rustyduck @CutchuSlow It's just 8 hours for a single session, not 8 hours per day total. You can reconnect as many times a day as you want. Seems to be less about limiting play time and more about keeping people from hogging the servers idling and keeping other people from connecting. Like in MMOs and the very "social hangout" games like Fortnite that are more social media platform than video game where people will just hang out on the server all day. Can't imagine anybody actually PLAYING more than 8 hours non-stop with zero breaks other than the kids they find dead in internet cafes in Korea that are addicted to DOTA when their kidneys explode.
For just $80 + 240/yr + Prime membership, you, too, can enjoy the thrill of fuzzy compressed 720p-1080p medium latency gaming in nearly Xbox Series S quality!
I can see the appeal. GP subs are going to reach 1 billion gamers easy!
@themightyant Not at $20 a month it's not. Even Apple couldn't convince their acolytes to pay $10/mo for unlimited ad-free iOS games. If Apple couldn't get Apple faithful to part with $10 on an Apple, Microsoft sure as heck isn't going to get Amazon streamers to pay $20. The PRODUCT could do it. But, like PSVR2 and the (ironically technologically superior) Stadia, the price killed it before it launched.
@Mustoe "Still believe Microsoft have its sights set on traditional console hardware?"
You know how they are. After this fails to move the subscriber needle (and at the price, I believe it will fail to meet expectations by a long shot, it's priced completely wrong for the intended market) then they'll try fawning over the consoles again briefly. Then they'll move onto something else again.
Comments 6,846
Re: These Are The Top-Selling Games In The Xbox Ultimate Game Sale 2024
Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty........
Suicide Squad (!?!?).....Call of Duty.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@eduscxbox "Nintendo pick a different name every console generation and it is fine"
That's kind of the point. Nintendo picks a new name every time, and thus there's no confusion because there's only one product of that name. You know it's the right one. There's one time where they didn't do that. The WiiU. Which had the same confusion as Xbox naming to the point it catastrophically failed. "I don't need a screen controller for my Wii!" Xbox would have done better with unique names like Nintendo and Sega did.
I mean, Xbox naming is so confused, they're still using the project codename 20 years later lol!
Apple...well....apple people are special. They just need to know they bought an apple device. They don't really need to know they just spent $2800 on a $1200 laptop do they?
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Series X1 and Series S1 will be so much more powerful than the One X and One S!
I guess it still makes more sense than PC where you have a 8900XT which is totally different from the 8900XTX but better than the 9050XT, all run on your "Intel Processor".
I still just love "Intel Processor." It's like naming your dog "Dog".
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah, and it makes sense, launching an Xbox 2 a year before the PS3 would make the PS3 seem much newer (and you can always get a second job to buy one lol.)
But.....at the same time....360 boxed them into a brand hole forever. It worked at that moment in time, but left them no actual forward strategy to go with the brand after that. It's kind of a metaphor for all of Xbox, isn't it?
Of course they could have stuck with the skater theme, the Xbox 720, 1440, Xbox 4k? It would have actually been PERFECT, though you need hindsight to know it. Instead they go to "One". Then expand it to One S and One X. And then deside to also make the successor X and S. Did they not learn from WiiU that you do not recycle names? Even XboxU would have been sadly better. And then when they have the Pro model it could be perfect, the Xbox Series F|U.
Re: Call Of Duty Currency Now Discounted On Xbox Thanks To Game Pass
@themightyant The rare cases I'll defend Xbox decisions these days, but yeah I don't see a problem with a discount promo on their retail side for subscribers, because it's not a new feature but one that's always been part of their sub, it applies to many games not just theirs, nothing prevents competitors from offering the same promos or better, including pricing via brick and mortar retailers, and competitors also have subscriber-only discounts on things.
It only becomes a problem (and this we wouldn't know about) if they're playing games with the wholesale pricing/revenue splits of the currency when sold to retailers and competitors to incentivize their own digital store as an obvious advantage to purchase from.
Re: Call Of Duty Currency Now Discounted On Xbox Thanks To Game Pass
@AccessibleDaydream @somnambulance TBF both GP and PS Plus and NSO have always included members-only discounts and offers (in NSO's case it mostly amounts to the ability to buy vouchers) where often the big sales (at least on PS, not even sure it applies to XB) have 2 sale prices, one for subscribers and one for non-subs. So this isn't anything new or special, access to special sale pricing is a standard feature of all the subs that's always been there.
It's actually always been an annoyance of mine. When scrolling the sale pages you usually just get like 90 pages that are just different bundle sizes of different currencies for a bunch of GaaS games and MMOs but with one game mixed in. But yeah, that's been a feature of the subs advertised since the beginning.
As for the Overton Window....the problem with gaming more than other industries is no matter what the industry says, the target is children/tweens/teens. "M Rated" has always meant "high school kids that want to feel mature" and "college kids that couldn't even pretend to be." And for them, whatever existed in their lifetime is the way the world has always been. So the industry knows every 8 years of so the past never happened and whatever forced new world they apply will, for the upcoming new generation of majority players, be the world that always was, accepted without question. It's also (and more notably) why politics targets the young, going back even to WWII and prior. If you acclimate the young to your new normal, you just have to wait for the old to die off (or exit the market.) At least gaming publishers haven't resorted to getting the young to kill off the old to accelerate the process though (yet.)
So gaming has an unfortunate turnaround where within about 8 years, the new thing everyone rejected is now accepted as normal, because if they force it in for long enough, the new majority population of gamers grew up with it and is used to it as normal, even while anyone with a clue was resisting.
Heck, the mainstream gamer now grew up with phone gaming. Even EA seems consumer friendly if that's the only world you know.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@HonestHick Yeah, the 360 seems like a great name now, because it's a a famed product in hindsight, but yeah, when everyone expected "Xbox 2" and they came out with "360" it sounded dumb and "faux edgy". I think ,what, at the time skater/snowboard culture was all the rage with the kiddos, and I always assumed they were trying to channel that whole skater lingo with 360's and 720's and all that. Which sounded dumb because 360 is....right back where you started. And they followed it with the One...
LOL on Android! To be fair, unlike Xbox, Android versions actually have real numbers officially, its just that the food-themed internal codenames became sort of their own legend, and are memorable enough that that's what everyone (nerds) started referring to it as instead of the numbers, and then sometime after that, Google marketing got ahold of it and ran with it for actual consumer facing marketing. That's where it got dumb. But it really is numbered versions, but you never notice that, you just remember the food names.
Of course, Apple's the one that stopped using numbers or names at all and just started calling everything "product". So sellers had to have parenthesis (2024 ver.) I should sell my old TNT2 GPU from 1999 on Ebay "Nvidia GPU - Used - $550." Yeah I know they started using numbers again on the phones at least, because even Apple eventually figured out their naming was even worse than Xbox.
Sony, well, they figured it out for consoles, but then we get into their cameras, TVs, audio.....yeah....they're pretty bad too.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@EVIL-C There's always the XS Xbox. Like what they send to the liquidator, the XS ones.
I still think the NL mod Eel had the best name. The Xbox SEries X. XSeX. They'd be number one 😂
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick Lol yeah. I really don't know how scuf stays on business, their stuff is absurdly priced and horrendous quality. But esports wannabes keep paying for it. Probably because esports pros are paid to look like they use them without showing they're using a new one every single match lol
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@EVIL-C Xbox 1.1 - Done!
Microsoft history math:
3+1 = 3.11.
+1
=95
+1
=98
+1
=2000
+1
=7
+1
=8
+1
=8.1
+1
=10
+1
=11
+1
=11
+1
=11
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
All kidding aside though, I can't tell if this is a mistake or done on purpose. Has anyone seen the new Intel naming scheme? It's like it was designed by Xbox. To make it simpler for consumers, instead of 3 families, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 (+Celeron/Pentium for budget) they're splitting it into SIX families and removing the i, Core 5, Core 7, Core 9 + Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, Core Ultra 9. Then they're ending the Celeron and Pentium names and rebranding all the trash chips "Intel Processor". So, where does a Core 9, and a Core Ultra 5 line up? Does anyone actually know? If Ultra is better, but there's 3 tiers of each, where does one meet the other?
On top of that they're removing the generation from the branding, so you don't know what generation it is from the product name without reading the exact part number and checking on their website.
Why are they doing this? "To make it simpler for consumers."
Why are they REALLY doing this? So they can build frankenchips out of old dies and not have to say they're old, while their large builder partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc) can sell ancient chips at full price in prebuilds to unsuspecting consumers. "It's got a Core 7 in it! (From 2012.) $350 please."
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
@WhiteRabbit You missed the Xbox DOne.
Re: Four Years Later, People Are Still Getting Confused By Xbox's 'Horrible' Console Names
I myself am looking forward to the next generation Xbox 365 SX. It's supposed to be 50% more powerful than the rumored Xbox Series One XS. Shame it's digital only but it's still a great value with the day 1 games on Game Pass for $15, and it's such a great system since the games are compatible with the Xbox X1 handheld!
I can't believe people are still confused about this. Now Playstation, that's confusing. PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5...how are you supposed to know which one to buy? There only difference is a number, there's no way to know which one is which!
Re: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Xbox Game Pass Date '100% Confirmed' By Reliable Leaker
@Dan1283 I guess the new Game Pass Standard subscribers need something to get excited about? To be fair, it's still a better Naughty Dog game than TLoU2.... 🥷
@Feffster Yeah, that's practical and fair, but it's kind of my point. It's one thing that it's interesting to try "because it's there", it's another thing using it as a dripfeed to get people excited to play Xbox One remasters of PS1 games for $20/mo.
Re: Humble Games Announces 'Restructuring' Plans As Employees Get Laid Off
"But gaming hasn't kept up with inflation! Everything must cost more!"
Meanwhile: Customers stop buying everything even at current prices except for high income whales.
Nope, no recession here, best economy ever!
Re: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Xbox Game Pass Date '100% Confirmed' By Reliable Leaker
$20/mo and people are getting excited for an 8th gen remake of a 5th gen game that's been on sale for years and years? Does everyone laugh at sitcoms whenever the laugh track plays, too?
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick PS5 seems to be the winner of the stick drift this gen, I've never seen so many reports of drift other than the early Joycons. I have not had my stick drift yet on it, but that's because 75% of my PS5 play time has been VR with the VRSense, and I switched to the Edge part way through for non-VR so it only got shared wear. I really fear for the VRSense though, as you can't replace those controllers, they won't sell them, so if the stick drifts, you throw out the whole $550 kit and buy a new one. And you thought Edge was overpriced! Switch, I have a box full of drifting sticks. Like 6 or so Joycon, and a Pro controller. Xbox....I fear for my Elite 2. I have a dozen drifting 360 controllers a few Elite v1's. My Elite 2 has, knock wood, held up, despite so many reports of issues, even out of the box, even as my most used controller. I fear that can't last much longer, and that one was somehow the lottery winner of luck. It's absurd to pay those prices for controllers guaranteed to drift in time (to say nothing of Scuf.....they're just shameful.)
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
@HonestHick IDK they're even making money off them, they never have them in stock even if people want them. Like everything else is seems like a checklist product to cash in on the early adopter rush, summarily abandoned once that passed.
It just astounds me that the higher end the controller, the less chance of hall. Scuff, elite, edge, Asus Ally...200, $800..... No hall effect. Turtle Beach, 8bitdo, KRCJGIRA, JiBestGameGood, $18 CONTROLLERS HALL EFFECT!
I bought Legion Go first over Ally due to the big screen and the hall effect. Ally and Edge have hall effect TRIGGERS. Wtf?
Re: Talking Point: Have You Ever Bought A Controller From Xbox Design Lab?
It's a cool idea, but by the time you're done overpaying for a controller you could buy an Elite, and by the time you're done paying for an Elite without Hall Effect that can develop drift anyway, why pay more than minimum, it's disposable.
Why are we still stuck with graphene potentiometers in high end controllers when cheap Chinese generics have hall effect now?
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick Yeah "friendly" security software. Thank goodness for their protection. Without them hackers could take down your network.... Oh wait. And you pay thousands for that!
Yeah Xbox was half down here. Got the warnings on the Xbox PC app when I went to remote play my xsx. Logins I think are what was down.
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@Stormrage995 Nobody asked for a 25%-50% price increase in a year. Value was not added
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@WhiteRabbit But 5 purified souls of sacrificed maidens, 3 putrefied imp hearts specifically from the banks of the river Styx, 7 truths from gaming executives, and 1 MSRP 4090 are almost IMPOSSIBLE to gather! I can get the souls and hearts easy enough but the rest, I don't think that's even possible! And I STILL can't find the corrupted soil on which to build the summoning circle. I'm sure it's somewhere on the MSDN. Surely there must be another way!
Re: Analyst Expects Xbox Game Pass To Bring In 'Almost $5.5bn' In 2025
@AlwaysPlaying I've said quite a few times that Xbox is run like it's a Kickstarter. Glad I'm not the only one that sees it!
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Pure Xbox needs to sell "WWSD" bumper stickers.
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
@WhiteRabbit I think it's doable in a Microsoft way.
So you can have a cloud only tier, that you must buy ultimate, then go into the settings, disable cloud and console, then log in on a PC and activate your subscription, then submit a request to change to cloud only. After you confirm the change on both PC and console (you must own an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X linked to your account to approve this request) you can then convert from Game Pass Ultimate to Game Pass Cloud, the price change will appear on your statement as of the next monthly billing cycle.
Is that better and much more practical for Microsoft to do? Will Phil hire me now?
Re: Xbox Reportedly 'Exploring Potential' For Various New Game Pass Tiers
Game Pass tears. We all have many, many Game Pass tears. Far too many now....
Much as I'm against too many price packages, I think they actually DO need to break out cloud. Right now it serves no one. Ultimate customers aren't really the target customer for cloud streaming, if you're buying Ultimate you probably have console, or PC, or most likely console AND PC. You're probably not too interested in cloud. If you're interested in cloud, you probably don't have a console, OR a gaming PC, and aren't interested in any of what it offers, you just want cloud. This isn't hard. Cloud should have been its own sub and always should have. Additionally, console full day 1 game pass without PC and without cloud should have been available - not having that is a huge signal that console doesn't matter.
PC should be PC.
Cloud should be cloud.
Console should be console.
If they want ultimate then they can have ultimate with all 3 and no sane person should buy it because realistically who's playing on all 3 regularly?
It's all reminiscent of Windows Vista Home, Pro, and Ultimate. If you want media features you buy Home. If you want security features, large RAM support, or quad core CPU support you buy Pro. If you want meda AND large ram quad core you need Ultimate. Basically everyone needs Ultimate and the other options exist just to make the single all in one flat price look like a "bargain."
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick Yeah I looked it up after you mentioned it, technically it was not a Microsoft issue at all. There were two issues an Azure/365 outage at a major US datacenter took big cloud services offline for a while. But the big one wasn't an MS issue, it was CrowdStrike pushing an update to Falcon, and like most "security" software, it basically works like a virus, and embeds itself as a driver and replaces parts of the OS with their custom version....and they pushed a garbage system file that rendered the OS unbootable.
This is the rare case these days I'll defend MS. Not their fault. If some self important security company starts replacing Linux and BSD kernels (including MacOS), the same thing would happen.
The lesson here is if you're going to mess with OS system files and push them out in automated updates, maybe, don't update every single customer on the planet all at the same moment? They did the Russians job for them all in the name of stopping the Russians, and charged customers fortunes to do so.....they'd have been better off with the Russians, at least it would be cheaper!
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@shoeses The WiiU wasn't really bad though, and it did some things better than Switch. It was poorly marketed, undesirable, and had the misfortune of launching just before PS4 and X1 so that as soon as it came out, 3rd party support vanished and 100% of all marketing from all publishers went to PS/XB, with several (EA) actively sabotaging WiiU with negative commentary.
"By Nintendo standards" WiiU wasn't bad hardware. And "By Nintendo standards" Switch isn't particularly special hardware, it's another Nintendo handheld, but without the unique gimmicks of the DS era, just a return to the Game Boy form. With a TV out.
It's not so much a matter of bad hardware and good hardware, just marketing and perception. The Switch is actually similar power to WiiU, just a touch more powerful in some areas (but by sacrificing others), yet where WiiU was "not good enough" in 2013, Switch is somehow top tier in 2024. Just marketing and perception.
Re: Microsoft Says FTC Is Being 'Misleading' In Response To Xbox Game Pass Criticisms
@TakeItEasy I only disagree with the last part. I jumped back to Xbox after skipping x1 launch because Sony didn't respect fans or communicate anything. Xbox deciding to suck doesn't make Sony suck less, it just makes it seem that way. They both suck now. Sony just has more third party support.
@InterceptorAlpha "Now they've pretty much pushed me off to PC and VR exclusively barring the occasional Ninty or Sony game."
100% exactly heading the same place. Though to be fair it's mostly possible because PC is basically just Super Xbox. It's clear they want Xbox to be a Windows service. Which is fair that's was it was originally too. But I even just bought a quest 3. I'm actually choosing a Zuckerberg platform.... I swore I'd never touch anything Zuck related. Thanks Satya and Amy!
Re: Microsoft Says FTC Is Being 'Misleading' In Response To Xbox Game Pass Criticisms
They point blank told foc no price hike for call of duty. Then hike the price and cite call of duty. What exactly is ftc misrepresenting?
We all knew there would be a price increase eventually but I overestimated Microsoft and believed they'd wait until the next call of duty for optics and to make good on the claim. They didn't even care about optics. That's how far they live the spreadsheet.
Gaming By Excel 36 - 404 Not Found
@Jenkinss I still don't think they've decided anything really. That's their problem, they can't decide what they actually want the business to be so they're trying to be everything at once, and that's good for one direction is bad for another direction so they just alternate between what gets priority.
They want gaming to be a subscription but then they compete against that with retail. They want gaming in the cloud but then compete with that with hardware and PC software. They want to be on all screens but then they want to sell subscriptions to partner and own devices.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@BAMozzy Totally agree about it not being long before mobile can do rt and upscaling etc. That's kind of the same point I was making really. General purpose computing is moving at a pace where dedicated graphics machines are begining to be fast irrelevant the same way low end discrete gpus are irrelevant and gone. Every mid range CPU comes with a GPU better than the expensive gpus we had 15 years ago. Thus I see consoles having a limited future. Having graphics nothing else could touch was their claim to fame and that's ending as general compute rivals it me and more and the high end is hitting roadblocks if that's practical to develop for.
Physical retail is it's other unique selling point but that's not demanded widely anymore. I thought maybe going full HBO and locking all exclusives to them forever would be it, but even Sony isn't going that route with more PC releases and probably mobile when viable.
This generation is especially weird. People keep saying we're 4 years in. No we're not it's 3.5. and the first year they weren't even available widely. And yearly the 2.5 after we've still been waiting for it to feel like the generation started. It feels like we're still in launch window waiting for the big games. I don't think this gen counts as "average" when the first 2 or 3 years was just waiting for the launch to stabilize. Yet games kinda feel like they skipped the hardware.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@BAMozzy problem is if consoles are replaced so frequently to catch up, they're not actually any cheaper than extreme PCs which kills its whole purpose. And the PC really outlasts it because the mid range cards didn't even jump that much anymore between a few gens only the elite cards do. And it's the rut consoles are stuck in. I just don't see the console market going for non stop upgrade cycles then most only buy a few games over years. Frankly I see pc getting off the non stop upgrade cycle.... The leaps every 2 or 3 years aren't close to what they were 20 years ago.
But you're taking more going into the PC or mobile upgrade model instead of generations with long compatibility. That i definitely see. I expected that's where Ms was going starting with 1x. I was disappointed when they announced Scarlett and it was just another generational console.
@somnambulance Yeah, I really don't know exactly how they're positioning their handheld strategy. It has great potential but they're going to be head to head against Nintendo at the present rate and that can't end well. They're always too early or too late. Wizards, they are not.
Re: FTC Calls Out Xbox's New 'Degraded' Game Pass Tier & Price Increases
@JayJ Unfortunately it's a different regulatory body for utilities and insurance separately. And they're mostly made up of revolving doors of the very executives of the very oligopolies - CFO of Allstate one year, PUC comissioner the next year, then CFO of State Farm a few years later...... No conflicts of interest there at all, nooooo......
FTC only has purview if one of them goes to buy another. But of course in those businesses one only buys another after the one is in bankruptcy protection and needs a buyer to float anyway.
TL;DR Everything's f-d up beyond repair, and while we wait for the inevitable and necessary nuclear armageddon required to fix it, we're going to fight tooth and nail to the brutal end for ethics and fairness in our video games we used to kill everyone in imaginary worlds to make us feel better so we don't have to do it IRL
Re: Sony PlayStation 'Regrettably Outspends Us', Says Xbox EMEA Marketing Boss
@x3King84 I feel like it doesn't take much skill for the rumors to be right, if there's a way for MS to damage their brand, they'll find it. If there's not a way, they'll create one that didn't exist before.
The really sad thing is they make a good product and then don't support it, don't market it, and then don't seem to care, they just let it float out there half alive and consider it good enough while they focus on something else. MS always seems to make a great product, but then lets it wither on the vine until it's forgotten. Zune, Winphone, they always have a good platform they just let dry out.
And it's made all the worse that PS is the alternative where the popularity isn't because it's a great product, but simply because it's already popular and manages to not become a bad product.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
@somnambulance Very much like the Sega cycle where there were 3 back to back consoles. People lost faith that the purchase had any lasting power and just waited "for the next one." Nerds are used to "buy a new thing every few years." COnsumers and parents especially have the outlook of "I want the new XStationBox" "But you just got one 2 years ago!"
If you're going to sell dedicated games appliances, it had better well last a while.
Re: Talking Point: Do You Think This Generation Will Be A Short One?
We won't be able to determine how long the 9th generation will last until after it launches.
Until then I really like the new SSD I got for my Xbox Two, and my PS4 Pro Plus (White Edition) is really neato! Wonder what the PS4 Pro Plus (White Edition) (Rev. 2 2024 Edition) will be like?
@Fiendish-Beaver The problem with Xbox is that every time they wet their own bed, instead of trying to clean it up, they just go silent, ride out the market and then attempt to reboot the brand with a new hardware launch. Whereupon they soon after soil the clean sheets again and repeat the cycle. To be fair, though, Nintendo did the exact same thing with WiiU and it somehow became a resounding success. I still don't know how Nintendo went from "unwanted and rejected" to "hot ticket item" between Switch and WiiU, while selling the EXACT same games on them. I think most of it stems from the slick marketing of calling it a "hybrid console". People bought into a "new concept", while "Super Game Boy Advance with HDMI out" would not have flown off the shelves as much.
@Daleaf The problem is we've capped out. For 40 years gaming has been about selling leaps forward in graphics and density. We've now hit the ceiling where games are real-time rendered Pixar movies, and some are proper CGI with near-photorealism. There's no where left to go except more perfect lighting, more perfect shadows, more perfect surface interactions. Tiny things that aren't really perceptible to the consumer other than when comparing something new to something old. There's nowhere left to go to wow people, we're already at the state of "pretty close to live action photography" and you cant' get "more" impressive than "looks real." There's VR, but that's still a long way from being mainstream, if it ever is. That's really the only place left to go. And the leaps of wow still exist there.
Re: Sony PlayStation 'Regrettably Outspends Us', Says Xbox EMEA Marketing Boss
The only thing I'll give MS here is that, while they're quite clueless in refusing to actually market their products as though they learned nothing from WiiU, I'll grant them that Sony's got it equally wrong. They seem to spend more money marketing things than making things, and their "brand" is built more on their piles of money being used to brainwash people into blindly buying their brand than actually putting everything into their products, then making the consumer pay more to fund it. (300M for Spiderman 2 was not just money spent making the game.....the $10 price hike paid for more marketing.)
There's really got to be a happy medium between hoping "if you build it they will come" from MS and "Pay everyone to believe they have to have it now. Build it later. Then send the buyers the invoice for the marketing." of Sony. They're both opposite sides of the same coin.
@Ralizah I really don't know how people who are so clueless about their market can somehow mange to make so much money. I really don't understand how their brains process information over there.
@OldGamer999 If you haven't yet just do a deep dive on the media poopstorm around Windows Copilot Recall. It's not intentionally. They're really just this incompetent. In every division. Even their most important one. I do not understand how they're rich.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick 30 million core....yeah...and that's a problem. The casuals have mostly gone in other directions. Mobile. PC - I don't mean 4090 supertowers, I mean thin light laptops that play indies fine. That was the bulk of console sales. Gone. So it's just the core left. And they keep trying to just extract more and more money to make the economics work, and that can't last.
The problem with cloud is the economics are even worse than consoles. It's "cheap" now. But it needs MASSIVE numbers to work, and much higher pricing. Selling people streaming for $20/mo for now sounds hard to pushto casuals. When it hits the real prices of $89.99/mo for medium, $120.00/mo for high.....it's not going to fly. Unlesss they get those "billion" gamers.
The thing with game size is I suspect that most of the cost for for the game is sunk into the core content. So increasing the size with all that bloat costs little to add, and is why they do it, to increase the "value" because the core part already cost more than budget. I.e. trimming the fat probably won't bring their production costs down all that much. OTOH getting rid of -king fruit physics and paying attention to exact shadow casting from eyelashes might.
Ironically I'm going the other way. Huge fan of many many games, but especially with an interest in VR, I'm looking at worlds to get lost in and those are huge. Skyrim with 150 mods, Fo4 with the same, Flight sims, racing sims, NMS, Elite Dangerous, etc etc....not too many games to pick from but they're games you could spend years playing and not have hit all the content. (Or payed for it, DCS World combat sim has like $1400 of DLC available You buy each plane and map and carrier separately. But it's understandable because it's a true sim. To fly it you basically have to learn how to operate the real world vehicle. Every single switch in the cockpit functions properly, etc, so reading the real manual of the real vehicle is almost mandatory....so I can see why one plane is $50. It's cheaper that 14.3 million the real one costs.
Problem with console profitability is it's coming at the cost of just forever raising prices on the remaining customers. Eventually they push too far, to either make it unaffordable to too many, or to become too close to superior alternatives in PC.
Worldwide windows outage? Wow I've been using MS stuff all day and didn't even know there was an issue other than last night Xbox app saying Xbox stuff was down (but worked for me luckily.) Did the full windows updates and everything on 2 machines today!
But why would Windows itself BSOD from that? I definitely haven't seen on on several machines...that may be something else. Or something tied to your corporate security?
Re: Sony PlayStation 'Regrettably Outspends Us', Says Xbox EMEA Marketing Boss
So they can find $70B to buy ABK, but they can't afford some ad space during the olympics?
Maybe they should ask Copilot how to do it.
Re: FTC Calls Out Xbox's New 'Degraded' Game Pass Tier & Price Increases
Was waiting for this and this time, I'm glad to see it happened. FTC is 100% right here. MS lied point blank to regulators faces that they were not going to raise prices for this, and then pivoted the moment the teacher wasn't watching and did precisely that. They didn't even give it a year to PRETEND it wasn't related. Didn't even try to create plausible deniability. They just pivoted and did it right there. And not just a $1 increase, but 25% on ultimate, 50% on lowest tier, all ONE YEAR, immediately after saying to regulators they wouldn't.
I still believe this will bite them. Not Xbox. The next time MS finds themselves in front of FTC trying to buy some AI tech or cloud provider. This is an entire ammo crate to use against anything they say.
Re: Halo TV Show Cancelled By Paramount+ After Two Seasons
This show is the '93 Super Mario Bros. Movie for a new generation.
@themightyant " You can’t have 2 seasons of buildup to get to Halo in a Halo TV show."
But we had 7 seasons of buildup to get to Halo on Xbox.....
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@HonestHick It's both. Those games are a different market. It wasn't the market of single play games that switched to playing Fortnite, it's people that would have never played single play games that at least play Fortnite. It's more of a social media platform than a video game. It didn't replace "traditional games", it replaced mall rats hanging out near 5-7-9, and as there's a lot more mall rats than Final Fantasy nerds, the industry started caring only about their revenue. And at least they keep the digital food court from looking deserted.
But that's not the core issue, it's just masking it. The problem is MOST console sales were never to FF nerds, most console sales were to ultra casuals that buy two games ever, probably some puzzle game, or a sports game, or the like. Consoles were never about us even if the companies thought they were. Consoles were about the "non-gamers" that bought them for a game or two.
Those customers exited console gaming entirely. They never wanted a console they just wanted a Tetris thing and something with this years team on it. Without them console numbers would plummet, and publishers would panic. The social media players kind of replaced them, so numbers look stable, and those guys are more profitable, only because of whales.
Where the new crisis is is that for ALL of those markets we're getting to the point where hardware they already have can play the kinds of games they want to play, AND that hardware can then bring software to new markets much easier, because it's already there.
It's also cost. The most popular games are popular because they have one thing in common: They're free. In a world where the most popular things everyone else is doing cost....nothing.....who would buy an expensive box to play expensive games on them? The industry keeps telling us it costs too much, people keep saying games need to keep up with inflation........and they're all ignoring that the games everyone plays are free. THere's a reason everyone's playing them (except GTA, GTA people are special...very very special...) A $5 console and $1 games are still expensive compared to the most popular games. Yes, the whales pump in cash at 100x the rate purchasers do, but those games would collapse if all the free riders vanished.
The real problem for consoles is that in the world of modern general purpose computing hardware, you just don't need a console to accomplish the goal for all the non-enthusiast market anymore. Consoles managed to stay relevant by pushing bleeding edge graphics all the time, but that era is ending as the games to do that cost too much to make.
The market for dedicated games won't go away entirely, but then it gets split between those seeking budget (console) and those seeking performance (PC enthusiast), so the market then starts dividing itself. And as that happens the hardware subsidy razor and blades model fails. And if console has to keep raising prices to mach the falling demand, it'll continue to reduce demand by either pushing people down onto phones/laptops, or pushing them up into PC ("It's not THAT much more!")
But if the console industry is revolving around those few games, the console is obsoleting itself. Subsidized hardware can't thrive on being an onramp to a handful of games that already run on hardware everyone already has.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@OldGamer999 Switch is a special case. It had no right to sell as well as it did, but the idea of portable gaming with HD graphics took the world by storm early and the momentum kept rolling. They'll hold onto that because Nintendo handhelds are Nintendo handhelds, but it will get challenging for Nintendo because if people's phones and laptops can kind of do the same things as a $350-400 switch 2.....will people choose to save money and use what they've got?
@GamingFan4Lyf @WhiteRabbit @JonBoyJ I don't disagree with you guys about PC being more expensive overall, people are lying when they say it's not, but at the same time that price is highly exaggerated. $3k will buy you an enthusiast class 4090 rig. Equivalent of a "Titan" back in the day or equivalent before that of doing 2 cards in SLI/Crossfire. Normal players just ignored that. You don't need an enthusiast class 4090 rig to compete with a flipping Series X and PS5. A 3060 slightly bests a Series X and PS5 and they're like $200. That 4090 rig will likely be relatively competitive to a PS6 bought 2-3 years early.
For a single-platform gamer, obviously console is like half the price. For a multiple-platform gamer though, the cost of both PS+XB+HDDs+subscriptions is easily more than a PC that outperforms either of them. You can best a Series X for $1300-1500 handily. You can equal a Series X for about $850-1150 depending on how you shop. Is it more expensive? Yes. Is it more performant? Yes (those console CPUs are garbage.) Is it a viable alternative for Consumer Bob that buys a console plugs it in? No. But it's not as extremely priced as perceived either.
Consoles at launch are a great bargain compared to their PC equivalents, but after a few years once you get into mid-gen the PC parts come down more favorably again, while the consoles, now, don't come down in price. And that doesn't discuss "pro" models that bring the console up to $1100+ on its own over the generation anyway. If it exists. Which it may not.
And the next consoles are absolutely going to be more expensive. Sony supposedly wanted to do 600 this generation but backed down after XSX was priced. Phil point blank said the subsidy on hardware is over, it doesn't work anymore and to expect maybe higher prices. They were losing $200 on each XSX AFAIK. Realistically? Next gen we're looking at $1200-1400 minimum to own both consoles. Plus additional HDDs for each, plus subscriptions (that keep jumping in price.) And maybe pro models that jack that up to double or more.
We're in a time gap here where PC parts are based on 2024 pricing. The consoles are based on 2019-2020 pre-inflationary pricing. They're itching to catch up, and when they do, it's going to be sticker shock in the console space, and those PC parts will start looking more appealing again. Even the Nvidia ones.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
@Vaako007 It depends on region. US, UK, Western Europe, formerly Japan were huge console territories. But they're the only ones. Huge chunks of the world including and especially China are pretty much 100% PC from the start. The consoles kind of have a built in legacy market from "1980s first world countries" but it clouds the real adoption elsewhere.
The flip side of why "console is dying" though, is that the market is going in a direction where average hardware with integrated graphics is "good enough" for the kinds of games most players are actually playing these days. Those new Snapdragon laptops were demo'ed running BG3 at 30fps. Sounds kind of decent as a console on a thin and light mini laptop.
I see the market kind of splitting where buying NO special hardware other than what they already have for normal life (laptop, desktop, phone, ipad whatever) is more than good enough to play most of the games they'd want to play so the casual console market withers, as average tech catches up to where console has been for decades. And then the enthusiast market looking to pay premium for more than what consoles ever offered on "gaming rigs." "Consoles" have been subsidized for 30 years by people that want to play Just Dance and Madden so that Nerdz can play Halo. The numbers crash as those people exit because their normal hardware plays that kind of thing fine.
That leaves a shrinking slice of market for dedicated consoles that are neither "already on your table for no additional cost" nor high performance like a custom rig. A market still exists, but if it keeps shrinking due to overlap with hardware people already have, at some point it stops sustaining itself. My Legion Z1 extreme runs FFXIV at 720p with FSR to 1600x1200 at 60fps. FF7R at 40-45fps. God of War 2018 at 60fps. Starfield at LFMAOLOLNOPE. Neither a "demanding" nor an "easy to drive" game. If I can do that on a handheld with "enthusiast" chip, we're getting close to the time where basically any laptop can run most normal games not designed to push hardware. Then do we need consoles still?
No, the casuals are never going to build E-ATX supertower rigs with RGB's beaming from every oriface with water cooling and a $1000 GPU that weighs more than a cinderblock and be "PC GAMER" nerds. But the point is they don't need to. The casuals can flip open their Acer eBlahBlahBlah 1000 notebook, install steam or go to the Xbox app and download Vampire Surviver just fine without spending hardware money or nerding out. Little Kitty Big City doesn't need 24gb VRAM with 340mm radiators hanging from the top. For the people that want to play Hellblade at 4k, there's big rigs for them to nerd out on.
Re: Xbox Series X|S Console Sales Down A Third In Europe With 'Weaker Software Lineup' In 2024
I said it in the push thread, but gaming has been pricing itself out of most markets. $500 consoles soon to be $600, 700. $70 games when even $60 was a lot. >$1000 GPUs. Subscriptions, services galore. And the games to match the hardware cost so much to make they can't make profits on making games to the size market that can afford the hardware/subs at a price they're willing to pay. It went from being a mainstream activity for everyone and anyone to have a box to play some games under their TV to this pricy hobby for dedicated hobbyists. Of course market will shrink. They didn't define the target price of the target market, they just built whatever seemed impressive and expected people would pay it. Meanwhile phones and PCs that everyone has are getting more and more capable of running games that aren't pushing hardware for the sake of pushing hardware.
@Pabpictu That's a big part of it where consoles once had their own media ecosystem, retail floor space, trading culture, grab a disc/cart, put it in the slot, play the game, that was designed for the hardware.
Now console games are mostly just ports of games designed for PC, with all the problems of PC games baked in, and migrated everyone over to the same digital ecosystem, patches, versions, now performance settings. The modern consoles groomed gamers for the wold of PC, and now can't figure out why people migrate to PC after.
@HonestHick Honestly I think it's a depressing condemnation of the state of the player base on consoles if the whole console ecosystem pretty much depends on a mediocre cringey game like GTA for it's entire sales cycle. If console is down to being all about GTA and Fortnite....it's definitely a....particular....market
Re: Xbox Adds Nvidia GeForce Now Integration To Its Game Pages
Expensive, but this kind of salvages the cloud use of game pass because Microsofts own streaming is kinda bad.
Every game should now have 2 buttons
*Play instantlyish on Xbox Cloud
*Play instantly on a good platform.
@Decimateh yeah,It's a PC gaming cloud sub (RTX 4080 rig or 4060 rig), so it's the PC version of Game Pass included here.
Re: Xbox Gaming On Amazon's Fire Stick Is Getting Mixed Feedback So Far
@x3King84 Following Xbox is like being a cat and chasing the laser. You just frantically jump from place to place to wherever the red dot moved, and every time you do, it's not there and it jumped somewhere else, and you end up looking pretty unintelligent in the process.
Though I still can't imagine on what planet they actually think selling a $20 subscription to stream 1080p games with high compression to the kind of people why buy Fire Sticks is actually going to be the move that takes them to new heights of market leadership in gaming. Bundling it with Prime Video at a discount? That would grow numbers. $20/mo to the kind of person that never thought to buy a console before? No.
I think next E3/SGF, Devolver Digital should just stick a camera in the Xbox boardroom. I'll be just as zany and satirical as all their other shows and cost them absolutely nothing.
@rustyduck @CutchuSlow It's just 8 hours for a single session, not 8 hours per day total. You can reconnect as many times a day as you want. Seems to be less about limiting play time and more about keeping people from hogging the servers idling and keeping other people from connecting. Like in MMOs and the very "social hangout" games like Fortnite that are more social media platform than video game where people will just hang out on the server all day. Can't imagine anybody actually PLAYING more than 8 hours non-stop with zero breaks other than the kids they find dead in internet cafes in Korea that are addicted to DOTA when their kidneys explode.
Re: Yes, Xbox Has Made A New Controller With Deadpool's Booty On The Back
So many jokes.
So many.
Re: Amazon Now Selling Fire Stick, Xbox Controller & Game Pass Ultimate Bundle
For just $80 + 240/yr + Prime membership, you, too, can enjoy the thrill of fuzzy compressed 720p-1080p medium latency gaming in nearly Xbox Series S quality!
I can see the appeal. GP subs are going to reach 1 billion gamers easy!
@themightyant Not at $20 a month it's not. Even Apple couldn't convince their acolytes to pay $10/mo for unlimited ad-free iOS games. If Apple couldn't get Apple faithful to part with $10 on an Apple, Microsoft sure as heck isn't going to get Amazon streamers to pay $20. The PRODUCT could do it. But, like PSVR2 and the (ironically technologically superior) Stadia, the price killed it before it launched.
@Mustoe "Still believe Microsoft have its sights set on traditional console hardware?"
You know how they are. After this fails to move the subscriber needle (and at the price, I believe it will fail to meet expectations by a long shot, it's priced completely wrong for the intended market) then they'll try fawning over the consoles again briefly. Then they'll move onto something else again.
Re: Amazon Prime Day 2024 - Best Deals On Xbox Consoles, Games, Accessories, Game Pass And More
Forget the sales, Ryan has a new portrait and since when is he not 12? We need a Talking Point for this.
Re: Xbox Confirms Next Three Game Pass Titles, Teases 'Another Update' Coming Soon
@Ricky-Spanish INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE