Publishers Not Sure If They Should Keep Making Xbox Games
It seems some big and small publishers aren’t sure if they should keep porting games to Xbox consoles
Reportedly, some third-party video game publishers aren’t sure why they should keep making and supporting games for Xbox consoles due to poor sales in Europe.
Microsoft’s biggest mistake was making the S and not going all in on the X. Having two hardware specs makes developers lives so much harder and leaves a big chunk of the console base with poor specs you have to optimise the hell out of your build for. Whereas Sony put a single target platform in everyone’s hands.
Games Journalists try to go 5 seconds without creaming their pants writing an article about "Xbox going away":
Man that article really made me think of the Larian BG3 XS debacle.
I hope this is just a bit overstated, because I don’t want to feel the pressure to buy an PS or build a PC.
I do want to buy a SteamDeck, and this only reinforces that decision though.
The pc portable space is gonna get really interesting in the next few years, the demand is clearly there
Steam Deck is already a prebuilt, portable computer, for the price of a console. I know I'm in the Xbox community but it's never been easier to try a PC.
There will be more options, sure, but the fundamental limits on the performance of a handheld PC haven't really changed since the steam deck launched 2 years ago.
We need either a big battery breakthrough or a big architecture breakthrough to actually push the space forward.
There are plenty of interesting games to play that don't need super-powerful hardware, but the Deck doesn't even handle all of those flawlessly. Case in point the Persona 3 remake that had very noticeable frame rate drops on the Deck.
I have a SteamDeck and really enjoy it. Even if you get the base model, you won’t be disappointed. I play way more of my Steam library now.
Going from Xbox to PC is way easier than leaving PS for it. If thats any consolation. I had to ditch my PS library and data.
XBOX has seen the writing on the wall. People that want a console want a PlayStation. Everyone else wants a Steam deck or a PC and everyone else wants a switch.
But Game Pass makes all of that irrelevant. With game pass they don't have to sell hardware at all which always involves taking a loss on hardware.
I figure the next thing we are going to see from them is a thin client that can stream games from XBOX Live+ Me Edition. For 39.99 a month you get Xbox Live and Game Pass and your games get streamed directly from Microsofts datacenter. On the other side, Game Pass for PC will be 30 for local play and 40 to stream and then in 2026 the Xbox handheld will launch which will be a Qualcomm AV1 decoder/Wifi Chip with an X on it that starts at $199, and includes 6 months of Game pass+.
This is the future they've been waiting for since The Xbox 360 Elite.
This is not the near future of xbox. Not for mainstream use, at least.
Video games streaming exists. It runs well enough with amazing internet that it's actually even good enough to use. I did some playing on stadia back before it closed down. With my gigabit fiber internet, it only had a little bit of lag (felt like 20ms, i noticed it, but was quickly able to get used to it too) with the occassional hitch.
The problem is that gigabit fiber is reserved for people who live on the right street in a big city, and absolutely nobody else. And it id a requirement for game streaming to do well.
Once genuinely good internet is available to most everyone, then you will find game streaming services being mass adopted. Until then, game streaming will follow the other cool tech product that has huge market limiting requirements; VR.
Consoles like xbox are made for the casual user. You can't have a product that works best for the casual user but has huge not-casual requirements to run it.
The next xbox thing wont be a thin client for streaming games, but the product after this one just might be.
Seems like they did F up with the Series S, making it harder to develop for Xbox. It’s a bit of a shame, because I really liked the S for what it is: I was spending a lot of time in a different city for work, having many free evenings in an apartment, so I bought one and used it to watch movies/series and catch up on some games.
Now that I’m not traveling anymore, I stick to my PS5, and my Series S is in a box for many months now, though I’ll probably use it again when the new Senua game comes around. This shows that another key things would be a strong collection of exclusives to get people to buy the console, which is missing.
I find poor sales hard to believe taking into account the pandemic and supply chain issues both consoles faced for a couple years.
PS5 has sold double the units of xbox series S https://www.vgchartz.com/article/460059/ps5-vs-xbox-series-xs-sales-comparison-january-2024/
PS5 also costs 25% more, so it's not selling more because it's cheaper. It's just better and has better games. I'm not sure why that's hard for you to believe.
I wasn’t saying that playstation hasn’t sold more consoles. I also not arguing that it doesn’t have better games. It does, Microsoft is very clearly dropping the ball even after they acquired as many heavy hitters as they did. My biggest regret this generation was switching to a Series X from the PS4 instead of either tossing money at a PC or picking up the PS5.
What I’m surprised by is that the conditions when consoles have had didn’t seem to be taken into effect.
It's been going on for years now, ever since Microsoft abandoned Gamescom and pretty much gave up on a European presence.
https://www.pcinvasion.com/microsoft-not-attending-gamescom-or-tokyo-game-show/
I understand where they are coming from, but it's also hard to feel bad for them considering how bloated games are now. Larian did have a hard time due to the Series S, but that also lead them to solving problems all the other platforms were having as well.
Supposedly there's a few lower-income countries where the Series S is a lot more popular - but I guess I doubt such areas would have such high game sales numbers, especially in the AAA $60-$70 bracket.