"This many consoles"... being two?
Yes, what Xbox offers clearly isn't appealing enough. If it were, they would capture market share from PlayStation (like they did in the 360). Neither company will (financially) win in that case.
When Microsoft entered the fray, console gaming was growing.
and the PC market was abandoned and there was not mobile gaming. (big indicator for Wii´s sales )
but up until then, console sales continued to expand with each generation.
So, according to google.
PS2 + Xbox ≈ 179
PS3 + Xbox 360 ≈ 171
PS4 + Xbone ≈ 175
so that has been the market size for Play Station and Xbox.
There was a time when four primary consoles on the market was just fine.
was it?
So, before launch, there was nothing to indicate the Xbox One "shouldn't have even existed"
there was: MS hadn't made any money with the OG Xbox and/or Xbox 360 + RROD
That's a silly statement: it made perfect sense for Microsoft to continue in the console space
and thats why the bet towards Kinect, Skype, CoD and TV? MS had the brilliant idea to go for the mainstream audience (they were expecting to sell 100M consoles just in the United States). They tried to unify the Xbox /Windows UI. They had like a TV production division or something like that. Remember their slogan:
Xbox One: The Complete All-in-One Games and Entertainment System
- the industry was happily supporting the PS3 and Xbox 360, with the Wii a side consideration.
and the market share between PS3/360 was roughly 50% for MS this was not enough to make money. and we all know what was happening to Sony.
The issue is that the industry hit a ceiling but continued to ramp up expenditures anyway. It seems there's only so many people who want an expensive box under their TVs to play games, but the infinite growth requirements for publically traded companies mean they need to extract more money from the same people anyway. So, the platforms cannibalised one another's marketshare, ramped up microtransactions, increased prices, and other dubious practices, all to force the illusion of growth. And sure, revenues are up, but at the end of the day, the generational console sales aren't growing. And if your business is console gaming, that's a problem when development costs double and triple.
To whom do these conditions affect the most?..yep, the weakest link, the one with a smaller install base....Xbox. Play station on the other hand makes a profit. Xbox doesn't.
Xbox is trying to find a way through the ceiling the industry seems to have hit without dumping everything into live service loot boxes. Good decisions or not, that's what they're trying to do.
No. I will try to explain this quickly.
MS didn't invest in first-party studios/New IPs in the 360 gen. > When the Xbox One disaster happened, they didn't have the infrastructure to produce content (like Sony did in the PS3 era) > so what do you have? A console without exclusives and not enough budget to compete.
from our beloved friend jez corden:
"I've been told that the budget for exclusive publishing deals, which previously led to games like Quantum Break and Ryse, has been low, and Xbox has been using the budget it does have to place an emphasis on other areas"
this in turn just ended up hurting the brand. After Xbox canceled several games (ScaleBound, Fable Legends, Phantom Dust ) and disappointing releases (Crackdown 3 particularly) The sentiment toward the brand was at an all-time low
> Phil Spencer becomes the "savior"
Now, he
emphasizes Game Pass and
pivots strongly toward that business model, even promising
Day One releases of first-party games. However,
there is still a lackluster and disappointing cadence in the release of first-party content >
PC Ports > Buys studios and Publishers, spend closer to 100B!! in 5 years.
This is the insight:
Money in the console business
is not made by the games you make, the money (the big bucks) is made by that
30% cut. BUT for you to earn that 30% cut, you need to make your platform/storefront stronger and bigger. and how do you do that? You use your
exclusive content which has to be
GOTY or massively popular to attract consumers which in turn
buy in your store. They Fail at that basic equation. But in top of that, they pivoted their brand and ecosystem towards a subscription model that encourages people to
NOT BUY GAMES. aka to not generate that 30% cut
Xbox is already on Consoles, PC and Mobile/TVs (streaming app). But the brand is so fucked up that no one gives a shit. and the massive IPs they have acquired are already established across the market segments outside Xbox (they are not going to be associated/ or help the Xbox Brand).
in other other words:
they are not
Trying to find a way through the ceiling the industry
this implies that they have acquired the ceiling of consoles, but they LOST IT.
what they are trying to do is:
TO MAKE MONEY. Because they fucked up so hard the dynamic of the 30% cut incentive inside their ecosystem, they NEED to put their games in other platforms. and now they have spent 100B dollars!!! and they need to make that money back......they are so fucked.