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[JohnnyFootball]

Don't worry. Now that Call of Duty is coming to Gamepass Day 1. XS will end over taking PS5 and win the generation.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Sony always wins.

 

[Badlucktroll]

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I'm only going to get the Xbox for the next generation, honestly the Xbox for this generation isn't worth it.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Clearly there is a distinct lack of creative talent at XBox, and there always has been. No other explanation for how so many years can go by with so few games to sell the damned consoles.

I disagree.

There has been plenty of talent at Xbox Studios. They have just never had a strong guiding hand overseeing them like Sony. People praise MS for giving these studios resources, but talented people will blow through resources, which is why you always need there to be some sort of bean counters.

The one instance when they had a strong talented leader, Rodd Fergusson, at Coalition, they got two solid games with normal development cycles.

Letting Pete Hines walk was a festively stupid decision. He should have been a given a larger role.

 

[yazenov]

Xbox = flop

Consoles are dying guys. The market is gonna crash! Sony Too.

 

[skyfinch]

Xbox One was a beast. It had games, hardware and attitude.

 

[phant0m]

Cant shake the feeling Xbox Series failed hard for no reasons.

Series X and S certainly looked more attractive than One Kinect Mattrick nonsene.
Likewise PS5 strange design and questions about its hardware early on, did not look as strong as PS4.

What happened? How did Phil failed when the foundation looked solid?

I blame covid and then inflation.

Exclusive, 1st party titles that core gamers give a shit about.

Halo Infinite? miss
Starfield? miss
Hellblade 2? Took 4 fucking years to show up (and isn’t that popular to begin with)
Gears 5? Last gen game, still nothing new
Forza proper? Eh I guess?
Forza Horizon? Honestly their most consistent franchise but not a system seller
Scorn? miss
Perfect Dark? Is somewhere
Redfall? miss
STALKER 2? is somewhere soon? Maybe?
Fable? Is somewhere


We’re halfway through this gen and XSX STILL doesn’t have a single exclusive “system seller” game. Starfield was the closest they got but then everyone saw it was 2011 game design with 2019 paint.

Sony sells hardware for GoW, Spider-Man, TLOU and (to a lesser extent) HZD. Honestly probably sold quite a few from Helldivers too.

 

[StereoVsn]

In their strongest market as well.

That’s true. They are basically dead outside US and UK (not sure about say Mexico or Brazil).

 

[WildBoy]

For me it was more that Xbox promised too much and took too much time to make it happen. The 2020 Xbox showcase have many games that have yet to be played, because most of it was CGI and in the planning phase. Quite a few games got delayed and failed to be as good as they would need it to be to move more consoles. Even the Activision merger took longer than they planned at first. Covid really fucked them hard, yes. But Xbox choice to not fight Sony for temporary exclusives outside of Gamepass deals/buying the studio was one of their biggest mistakes. Even if I understand that games like Stellar blade would have cost too much, games like Sifu don't harm anybody and having some goodwill would have been good for them. Having 1 year with no games and having Redfall as their first next gen game was not a great plan too.

Tbf it's a shit show but MS didn't have the ability to go after those exclusives like Sony could mainly because Sony didn't allow publishers to go back and forth to MS and get a better deal. They were allowed to see if MS would beat their offer and then Sony mandated if they beat it they can't go back to MS... It's been a one sided battle behind the scenes. But unfortunately MS keep stepping into rakes regardless. The Closing of Tango instead of keeping on the talent in the studio will go down as the dumbest decisions this generation. Forget the activision purchase. They saved them if anything because it is clear they are transitioning to a full third party publisher asap. Xbox is done. Microsoft Games Publishing lives and Money will be made which at the end of the day is all they care about now. Phil had his shot and he blew it.

 

[peish]

For me it was more that Xbox promised too much and took too much time to make it happen. The 2020 Xbox showcase have many games that have yet to be played, because most of it was CGI and in the planning phase. Quite a few games got delayed and failed to be as good as they would need it to be to move more consoles. Even the Activision merger took longer than they planned at first. Covid really fucked them hard, yes. But Xbox choice to not fight Sony for temporary exclusives outside of Gamepass deals/buying the studio was one of their biggest mistakes. Even if I understand that games like Stellar blade would have cost too much, games like Sifu don't harm anybody and having some goodwill would have been good for them. Having 1 year with no games and having Redfall as their first next gen game was not a great plan too.

This is a plausible reason.

Another is people are irrational or sticking with habits. PS5 while unsightly and huge, did not commit any graveous errors like One, no bad news is good news.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

I mean, does this really surprise anyone?

What's the point of buying an Xbox this generation? Where's the killer app? What can an Xbox do that a basic PC with a GPU can't do? It serves no purpose in the current market, and MS made it that way.

 

[Portugeezer]

Was never going to be easy to top XB1 - the fastest selling ®™© console of holiday 2013.

 

[NickFire]

I disagree.

There has been plenty of talent at Xbox Studios. They have just never had a strong guiding hand overseeing them like Sony. People praise MS for giving these studios resources, but talented people will blow through resources, which is why you always need there to be some sort of bean counters.

The one instance when they had a strong talented leader, Rodd Fergusson, at Coalition, they got two solid games with normal development cycles.

Letting Pete Hines walk was a festively stupid decision. He should have been a given a larger role.

I suspect the bean counters were a big part of their problem. Who decided to deprioritize the biggest fans by focusing on Kinnect and then gathering data from TV connections? My guess is the bean counters.

 

[Topher]

Tbf it's a shit show but MS didn't have the ability to go after those exclusives like Sony could mainly because Sony didn't allow publishers to go back and forth to MS and get a better deal. They were allowed to see if MS would beat their offer and then Sony mandated if they beat it they can't go back to MS... It's been a one sided battle behind the scenes. But unfortunately MS keep stepping into rakes regardless.

How would Sony prevent any publisher from seeking a better deal from Microsoft?

 

[digoutyoursoul]

I mean, does this really surprise anyone?

What's the point of buying an Xbox this generation? Where's the killer app? What can an Xbox do that a basic PC with a GPU can't do? It serves no purpose in the current market, and MS made it that way.

Surprising? No. Although whatever they do at Microsoft there are many willing participants who will defend and praise them, or at least pretend to.

They have devalued the console and been applauded for it along the way by elements of the Xbox community.

And it’s such a shame, Xbox could be a brilliant console if they had the people to do it right and that’s what disappoints the most.

You can see how fake some of the people are in the Xbox community, they know things aren’t right but won’t admit it and they inadvertently do by how desperate they are for anything positive by trying to force it.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

Tbf it's a shit show but MS didn't have the ability to go after those exclusives like Sony could mainly because Sony didn't allow publishers to go back and forth to MS and get a better deal. They were allowed to see if MS would beat their offer and then Sony mandated if they beat it they can't go back to MS... It's been a one sided battle behind the scenes. But unfortunately MS keep stepping into rakes regardless. The Closing of Tango instead of keeping on the talent in the studio will go down as the dumbest decisions this generation. Forget the activision purchase. They saved them if anything because it is clear they are transitioning to a full third party publisher asap. Xbox is done. Microsoft Games Publishing lives and Money will be made which at the end of the day is all they care about now. Phil had his shot and he blew it.

I did not know about what you are talking about. Not allowing a third party to use the both of them to get the best deal is a smart move of course but I think that Sony simply was more hungry as we had info from Phil that he was just against the move after their deal with Square for Tomb raider did not work as they wanted it to, if I remember that right. Do you have some links for me to read more about it please?

This is a plausible reason.

Another is people are irrational or sticking with habits. PS5 while unsightly and huge, did not commit any graveous errors like One, no bad news is good news.

This is normal as the leader to have the advantage of being seen as the place to be by default. It is the challenger job to give us a reason to change, as a happy customer have few reasons to look elsewhere.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

I mean, does this really surprise anyone?

No. But it's funny in retrospect when in 2020 internet (and some portion of GAF) touted 2 Xbox SKUs, especially the cheapo box, as some sort of brilliant idea. Now both of them are trailing behind 1 SKU launch-aligned platform.

How the turntables.

 

[Topher]

I suspect the bean counters were a big part of their problem. Who decided to deprioritize the biggest fans by focusing on Kinnect and then gathering data from TV connections? My guess is the bean counters.

Pretty much. Microsoft tried to milk the motion control fad far too long which sounds like something that would happen based on "bean counter" analysis. Microsoft's biggest failings have been their lacking in ability to "read the room" when it comes to gaming.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Xbox 360 and PS3 sold rather mediocre in its first 3 years or so. Wii was cheap and the go to system for many, while PS2 also outsold 360 until FY 2009 I think?

Xbox One actually didn't start that bad, despite its reputation. It wasn't available everywhere until late 2014, and the PS4 was a behemoth which made XO look even worse. As you can see 360 trailed behind Xbox One until FY3.

 

[ComputerBlue]

Xbox 360? You mean the console that was outsold every month of the generation worldwide by it's competitor the ps3 after it's release?
The console that came in 3rd it's generation?
That console?

I was always curious how much the 360 actually sold in terms of player count and not because of RROD. I remember reading that the defect rate was somewhere near 50% which is insane.

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

Just wait until BLOPS 6 releases on Gamepass

 

[Topher]

Just wait until BLOPS 6 releases on Gamepass

No doubt that the NPD the months after the next Call of Duty release is going to be the most interesting monthly sales figures that we have had around the gaming industry in a very long time.

I'll be ready

 

[NickFire]

I was always curious how much the 360 actually sold in terms of player account and not because of RROD. I remember reading that the defect rate was somewhere near 50% which is insane.

Failure rate was insane. I had two replaced because of it (had fortunately bought the extended warranty from MS directly).

Also, I think RRoD caused more lost sales than replacement sales. My memory is that everyone wanted a 360, and suddenly no one did because they were all melting inside.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I was always curious how much the 360 actually sold in terms of player account and not because of RROD. I remember reading that the defect rate was somewhere near 50% which is insane.

I didn't know many who bought another one, though it did happen. But also a lot of consumers gave them the finger.

I sold my 360 in late 2007, my last game IIRC was Ace Combat 6 which is when my 2nd RRoD happened and I was tired of having to send it for repairs again. I've never returned to MS since, until I bought a Series S on an impulse during the pandemia and nothing to do.

 

[ComputerBlue]

Also, I think RRoD caused more lost sales than replacement sales. My memory is that everyone wanted a 360, and suddenly no one did because they were all melting inside.

Good point.

 

[JCreasy]

"Wop wop wop wop wop, Dot fuck 'em up"

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I'm only going to get the Xbox for the next generation, honestly the Xbox for this generation isn't worth it.

You should maybe wait to see what exactly MS are offering for the next generation, first. And even then, wait a bit to see them delivering on those promises perhaps.

Although if the "promise" is basically just Windows-based consolized gaming PCs, I guess that's easier to see results for from the jump.

Failure rate was insane. I had two replaced because of it (had fortunately bought the extended warranty from MS directly).

Also, I think RRoD caused more lost sales than replacement sales. My memory is that everyone wanted a 360, and suddenly no one did because they were all melting inside.

TBF, it was just the models up to some new revision in late 2008 that had the high failure rates. After that reliability improved a lot, and then significantly so around the time of whatever systems they were sending out once Kinect launched.

Still though, 3 years of high-error rate consoles on the market would've been disaster and the end for any other platform. Not Xbox tho, thanks to daddy Microsoft's money. I guess in that sense though, they were fortunate that 360 adoption rates weren't THAT high by 2008; even if it was handily outselling PS3 in the US by then that wasn't a high bar to clear and the bulk of 360's sales came post-2008, especially once the Kinect launched.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Failure rate was insane.

And I still really thankful to Moore for that. I was at my first yean in Uni during RROD days and made a small fortune on X360 repairs (heat gun fix+GPU reballing and custom cooling projects). It was more than enough to finance my dates with my then-gf-now-wife. RROD was so wonderful and so frequent that during the Falcon days I could've afford pretty posh places for dates and bought two PS3s (for me and for my gf) with Xbox 360 repair money. God bless vanilla 360 idiotic heat management and poor QC. God bless.

 

[TropicanaTwista]

Sony and (especially) Xbox need to take advantage of every month they have before the Switch 2 drops. Once Switch 2 is released I don't see too many first place sales for PS5 and never for Xbox.

I'm not so sure about that. I think Switch 2 is gonna sell gangbusters but if GTA 6 releases in fall of 2025 or even early to mid 2026, I feel like that's gonna prop up PlayStation a TON.

 

[recursive]

It's not.

The 360 had an abnormal explosion in sales at the end of its lifespan because of Kinect.

The beginning of the 360 was very slow.

With a healthy dose of repurchases due to rrod.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I never would have guessed stellar blade would debut at #1 back when I first saw it. In fact, all the way to the last push before launch I would have said no way.

I doubt anybody had that game on their radar until the demo was released. It's an example of what a good demo can do for a game before launch these days

 

[TheTony316]

But Sony's in trouble right?

 

[Astray]

Cant shake the feeling Xbox Series failed hard for no reasons.

Series X and S certainly looked more attractive than One Kinect Mattrick nonsene.
Likewise PS5 strange design and questions about its hardware early on, did not look as strong as PS4.

What happened? How did Phil failed when the foundation looked solid?

I blame covid and then inflation.

Sony came in with a strong launch-slate, and a new controller with brand-new tech that's sufficient enough to swing multiplatform players. The console design is eccentric, but it also makes it really stand out in a home, meaning every PS5 is kind of a conversation starter by itself.

Microsoft had a weak launch slate (Forza Horizon 5 was amazing, but not enough), they also inexplicably kept the same controller across gens with no real enhancements or even tuning. They had sound thermal design and well-built machines, but the designs looked legitimately boring (My wife really loves the Halo special edition Series X we have, but she really, REALLY hated the regular version.

The storage expansion methods made a difference down the line too, Xbox's is still wayyy too expensive with no real performance benefit.

Add the above to momentum already being in PS's favor and you get the situation today.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The storage expansion methods made a difference down the line too, Xbox's is still wayyy too expensive with no real performance benefit.

Expanding Xbox storage isn't that important when Xbox gamers don't buy games, they just download and play them for free on Gamepass and then delete them a week later.

So this was a double edged sword for MS, first by killing all their revenue streams with Gamepass and then also killing the potential revenue they would have got from massively overpriced storage because nobody who owns an Xbox needs to expand their storage anyways

 

[Gambit2483]

Weird, Gaf told me Nintendo wouldn't be a competitor to Sony and Playstation would have a monopoly.

Gaf needs to tell that to Japan.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Consoles, exclusives and high costing games that make profit are dead right?

 

[PixelatedBeast]

But Sony's in trouble right?

According to the PC crowd, console sales are bad, Sony is anti-comsumer and needs to release their games day 1 on Steam....

 

[Wooxsvan]

 

[Klayzer]

Microsoft's biggest failings have been their lacking in ability to "read the room" when it comes to gaming.

So much this. Since their inception to gaming.

 

[tmlDan]

Cant shake the feeling Xbox Series failed hard for no reasons.

Series X and S certainly looked more attractive than One Kinect Mattrick nonsene.
Likewise PS5 strange design and questions about its hardware early on, did not look as strong as PS4.

What happened? How did Phil failed when the foundation looked solid?

I blame covid and then inflation.

it's called games, they dont have any good games

Where have you been!?

 

[Nydius]

Trailing the Xbox One by 13% on a time aligned basis when the Series consoles launched with a budget version that was $200 less than the premium version, has had multiple sales, and had a generous all-inclusive pay-over-time financing option? Calling that a failure feels like a massive understatement.

It's also significantly more expensive. Hell, I'd be happy with an Xbox One X, but they replaced it with something that would cost me $735 CAD after tax.

Significantly more expensive? I don't know what it was in CAD, but the Xbone was $499 USD at launch. Same as the Xbox Series X at launch. These figures also include the much less pricey Series S. By comparison, the Xbox One didn't reach the same price point as the Series S until the One S launched in late 2016, and that was a desperation move to shed the poor image the launch Xbone had.

 

[GHG]

Cant shake the feeling Xbox Series failed hard for no reasons.

Series X and S certainly looked more attractive than One Kinect Mattrick nonsene.
Likewise PS5 strange design and questions about its hardware early on, did not look as strong as PS4.

What happened? How did Phil failed when the foundation looked solid?

I blame covid and then inflation.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

Sony and (especially) Xbox need to take advantage of every month they have before the Switch 2 drops. Once Switch 2 is released I don't see too many first place sales for PS5 and never for Xbox.

1. Sony isn't competing with Nintendo. Two very different platforms
2. If switch 2 is just going to be a new switch... I don't expect that it would be as fast selling as the current switch. Unless they are smarter than Sony and make sure everything released going forward from its release is exclusive to the switch 2.
3. but even if they are, and it sells like crazy, just like the OG switch showed, and the Swithc during the release period of the PS5... those two platforms aren't direct competitors.

---

MS has got to be something else though, the classical case of focusing too much on your enemies and not noticing that the real enemy is within yourself.

They spent almost $100B in acquisitions over the last 10 years... to buy shit that was already on their platform, and now releasing said shit on every platform just as they were before. When all they needed was like $2B in the same time span to actually make new exciting games or IPs that would have pushed the sales of their platform.

This has got to be the most dumb shit I have ever seen.

Hell, even if what they wanted were timed exclusives or even release parity of every third-party exclusive Sony got in that same period, it would have still cost them only $1B more to money hat that shit. But they spent $80B+. Crazy.

 

[SlimySnake]

8% growth is good but with MS trailing by 13% and Switch being in its final stages, i expected better.

Still, nothing to scoff at considering how high the prices are right now. They need to drop the price to $299 by the time GTA comes out.

MS needs to make cod next gen only so people are actually forced to buy their consoles.

 

[thismeinteil]

Cant shake the feeling Xbox Series failed hard for no reasons.

Series X and S certainly looked more attractive than One Kinect Mattrick nonsene.
Likewise PS5 strange design and questions about its hardware early on, did not look as strong as PS4.

What happened? How did Phil failed when the foundation looked solid?

I blame covid and then inflation.

Please tell me this is a joke post. You realize that PS5's success is happening right alongside the Series, right? It ain't COVID or inflation.

No, Xbox's problem is that they have a decade long record now of over promising and under delivering. A bunch of cancelled games and the ones they release have been mostly mediocre, with few gems sprinkled in. Of course, all of those gems can be had on PC, with many coming to PS5 and Switch.

Xbox HW is now beyond unnecessary, and sales are showing that.

 

[Three]

MS needs to make cod next gen only so people are actually forced to buy their consoles.

They don't care about their console anymore. They're trying to sell as many games and mtx as possible as a publisher.

 

[Plague Doctor]

Your boy(Phil) doing worse than Don Mattrick despite Mattrick never getting the support Phil has gotten. Apologize to him.

My dude, it's like an undisputed fact that Mattrick greenlit games for like 14 years out and even some by pubs he thought about buying back in 2011 and we haven't gotten to Phil's vision yet. Why does everyone have a hate boner for Phil!?!! None of this is his fault! Hate this place. It's always so mean to Xbox

 

[ByWatterson]

My dude, Mattrick greenlit games for like 14 years out and even some by pubs he thought about buying back in 2011 and we haven't gotten to Phil's vision yet. Why does everyone have a hate boner for Phil!?!! None of this is his fault! Hate this place. It's always so mean to Xbox

Real post?

 

[JCreasy]

BRUH! LMFAO