Kilau
Gold Member
Phil looks like he has cat ears on.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
What damaged the Xbox brand the most over the years?
- Thread starter DoubleClutch
- Start date
LectureMaster
Gold Member
Last edited:
nial
Gold Member
It was never that much of a compelling alternative to PlayStation outside of the first years of the very expensive PS3, and that was only in NA and UK, I think?
Also, people need to drop the rose-tinted glasses for the Xbox 360 already, it was irrelevant outside of the two aforementioned regions, and you will soon realize that it managed to sell as much thanks to the Kinect boost when casuals moved on from the Wii.
Kinect Aventures outsold Halo 3, FFS.
Also, people need to drop the rose-tinted glasses for the Xbox 360 already, it was irrelevant outside of the two aforementioned regions, and you will soon realize that it managed to sell as much thanks to the Kinect boost when casuals moved on from the Wii.
Kinect Aventures outsold Halo 3, FFS.
Last edited:
SweetTooth
Gold Member
Porting games to other consoles, it will do the same to Playstation/Nintendo if yhey decided to devalue their brands by releasing everywhere.
clarky
Gold Member
Do you think theres that much over lap? I just think most xbox folks fucked off and bought a PS4. Quit rightly so as well.
Giving away their games coupled with not having anything decent for years is what I think are the 2 main factors. Especially when facing the PS4.
Jinzo Prime
Member
A console manufacturer can come back from a lot of things, but a lack of compelling software is not one of them!
Look at what happened to Nintendo once the Wii U era was over. Stratospheric success: because they had software that people wanted to buy. They already had teams that could create great games, so all they had to do was create a console that did not actively hinder their games.
Look at what happened to Nintendo once the Wii U era was over. Stratospheric success: because they had software that people wanted to buy. They already had teams that could create great games, so all they had to do was create a console that did not actively hinder their games.
chilichote
Member
The constantly broken promises
Last edited:
RetroGamingUK
Member
For me…
Was a big fan of Xbox back in the day, these 4 stages killed it for me…
1. RROD - Happened 3 times with my 360, including the 3rd replacement console that I sold to a friend weeks before it broke
2. Kinect focus, their late 360 exclusives just weren’t great, the new developers of Halo and Gears paled in comparison for example
3. Xbone being weak and having DRM, yeah it was obvious after that I’d go with PS4 like everyone else
4. Exclusives, there just weren’t any exclusives of high enough quality to get me interested in buying an Xbone outside of Halo MCC. Their exclusives police with Series has just put me of even more.
It’s not just Xbox though, I loved the Windows XP and MSN Messenger era of Microsoft, I now do all my home/personal computing with Apple products.
Xbox peaked here for me…
Was a big fan of Xbox back in the day, these 4 stages killed it for me…
1. RROD - Happened 3 times with my 360, including the 3rd replacement console that I sold to a friend weeks before it broke
2. Kinect focus, their late 360 exclusives just weren’t great, the new developers of Halo and Gears paled in comparison for example
3. Xbone being weak and having DRM, yeah it was obvious after that I’d go with PS4 like everyone else
4. Exclusives, there just weren’t any exclusives of high enough quality to get me interested in buying an Xbone outside of Halo MCC. Their exclusives police with Series has just put me of even more.
It’s not just Xbox though, I loved the Windows XP and MSN Messenger era of Microsoft, I now do all my home/personal computing with Apple products.
Xbox peaked here for me…
Last edited:
clarky
Gold Member
Thats just started. We are talking about what got them to this point. Its already over.
nial
Gold Member
Forza Motorsport and Gears of War never passed 6M units sold on a single title, even during the peak of the 360 era.
Halo (and probably Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon, but neither is 360 era outside of FH1) is the only real first-party powerhouse on Xbox consoles that Microsoft managed to create from scratch.
Halo (and probably Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon, but neither is 360 era outside of FH1) is the only real first-party powerhouse on Xbox consoles that Microsoft managed to create from scratch.
Nitty_Grimes
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Game Pass.
Nobody is buying games.
Activision purchase.
Shareholders want payback for their $80 billion.
Nobody is buying games.
Activision purchase.
Shareholders want payback for their $80 billion.
Last edited:
Mister Wolf
Member
1. Xbox One
2. Gamepass
2. Gamepass
clarky
Gold Member
That was a decent number though. I think Halo 3 "only" did around 8 million.
Topher
Identifies as young
Yep. I go back to the day Phil Spencer said they were no longer going to report Xbox sales numbers. That's when it was over. Phil Spencer was correct two years ago when he said last gen was the worst gen to lose since backward compatibility this gen meant everyone could bring their gaming library forward. Xbox Series, Game Pass, etc. wasn't nearly compelling enough for PlayStation gamers to start over.
clarky
Gold Member
When he said something along the lines of releasing 10/10 games still wouldn't help it confirmed we had a mong driving the bus.
Last edited:
ChoosableOne
ChoosableAll
HerjansEagleFeeder
Member
I'd disagree. The XOne reveal and launch to me seems to be the genesis of all the shit that happened after. It started a downward spiral that MS just couldn't stop, no matter what they tried. In hindsight that generation turned out to be the most important of all, as people were starting their digital libraries around this time. Now normies with 100+ digital PSN games won't ever switch, irregardless of what MS offers.
TheAtomicPile
Member
I think everything can be traced back to this. Stumbling out of the gate with Xbox One by trying to force Kinect (with its additional cost) led to them losing the generation handily, which happened to be the generation where console gamers started getting more ingrained into one ecosystem or another.
Some of the poor decisions we see today with Gamepass, studio management, and exclusives can be attributed to the desperation caused by the failure of the strategy with One/Kinect and the resulting inability to tie gamers down into their platform.
nial
Gold Member
Uncharted 2 and 3, also new IPs fron that same gen, both managed to outsell it. If this was supposed to be Xbox at its peak, then the console brand was doomed into irrelevance.
Imagine if it never had that Kinect boost!
Last edited:
Gilgalaad
Member
The Xbox One is a success story compare to Xbox series.This guy
Last edited:
Topher
Identifies as young
Yeah, he said that in the exact same rant. That was his console war concession speech. Couple years prior he was bragging to Nadella in an email about how good Xbox looked compared to PS5. At some point, the reality hit him hard.
simpatico
Member
Frankly Series would have been a perfect follow up to a proper 720. The ship was already sank at that point though and the piss poor effort of first party devs this gen just made it sink faster.
applesaucejaxon
Member
The Xbox One reveal was really the beginning of their downfall.
RagnarokIV
Battlebus imprisoning me \m/ >.< \m/
Kinect was the beginning of the end.
The switch to try be a happy smiling inclusive family world of knockoff Miis.
It was a big change in attitude and they lost their edge, lost their balls and never recovered. Went down the shitter from there on.
The switch to try be a happy smiling inclusive family world of knockoff Miis.
It was a big change in attitude and they lost their edge, lost their balls and never recovered. Went down the shitter from there on.
PurePlatinum
Member
Last edited:
existensmaximum
Member
Exactly everything they did differently about Xbox One compared to the Xbox 360. Which is... A lot..
Me and my friend were big fans of both Xbox 360 and PS3 and were really anticipation both the PS4 and the Xbox One. The PS4 impressed us and got us excited but the "TV, TV, TV" presentation left us really confused and disappointed.
Kinect? What was all that crap? Xbox became a joke to us after that and they haven't recovered unfortunately. Especially since they ditched exclusives.
Me and my friend were big fans of both Xbox 360 and PS3 and were really anticipation both the PS4 and the Xbox One. The PS4 impressed us and got us excited but the "TV, TV, TV" presentation left us really confused and disappointed.
Kinect? What was all that crap? Xbox became a joke to us after that and they haven't recovered unfortunately. Especially since they ditched exclusives.
nial
Gold Member
Credit where it's due, they did have Psychonauts 2 in 2021.
Zannegan
Member
Honestly, the XBox One, and the narrative they created around its launch, is the biggest misstep they made by far.
Up until that moment, the brand had a ton of positive momentum, especially in the US. Even RRoD seemed to have made little impression on their success. But then they tried to pivot from a hardcore gaming brand into a "for everyone" device in the worst way possible and at the absolutely worst time. There was the "TV, TV, TV" messaging, the default inclusion of the Kinect (which was not so disastrous in and of itself but caused them to invest less into the console itself, which ultimately WAS disastrous), the always-online requirement at a time when people hadn't been desensitize to that BS, and so on. It was like every day something else came out or was said that damaged the console's appeal right when Sony kicked it into gear and knocked it out of the park with the PS4's design and messaging.
This turning point also came at the worst possible generation for them. XBox leadership foresaw that persistent digital libraries were about to become vitally important on consoles as they already were on PC. However, instead of responding by attempting to make their platform the most enticing, easy place to establish a digital library, they attempted to capitalize immediately with the always online requirement and digital passes for preowned physical media. Short term greed had massive long-term costs, to the point where Phil Spencer recently admitted they had "lost the console war" because people were already invested in other digital ecosystems.
Up until that moment, the brand had a ton of positive momentum, especially in the US. Even RRoD seemed to have made little impression on their success. But then they tried to pivot from a hardcore gaming brand into a "for everyone" device in the worst way possible and at the absolutely worst time. There was the "TV, TV, TV" messaging, the default inclusion of the Kinect (which was not so disastrous in and of itself but caused them to invest less into the console itself, which ultimately WAS disastrous), the always-online requirement at a time when people hadn't been desensitize to that BS, and so on. It was like every day something else came out or was said that damaged the console's appeal right when Sony kicked it into gear and knocked it out of the park with the PS4's design and messaging.
This turning point also came at the worst possible generation for them. XBox leadership foresaw that persistent digital libraries were about to become vitally important on consoles as they already were on PC. However, instead of responding by attempting to make their platform the most enticing, easy place to establish a digital library, they attempted to capitalize immediately with the always online requirement and digital passes for preowned physical media. Short term greed had massive long-term costs, to the point where Phil Spencer recently admitted they had "lost the console war" because people were already invested in other digital ecosystems.
clarky
Gold Member
Uncharted 2 did 6.5 million in the same ballpark as xbox's first party stuff. Gears 1 and 2 sold around 11million between them, Uncharted 1 and 2 sold less. Why is one a "powerhouse" and the other not?
Last edited:
Fess
Member
No exclusives. That’s it really.
I don’t think twice about buying the next Nintendo hardware. How else would I play their next Mario, Zelda, Metroid?
But I play all Xbox games on my PC now, and everything is on Steam, so at this point it’s literally an annoyance if I have to play through the Xbox PC app and certainly if I have to play on Xbox. All in all the 2024 yearly stats showed that I spent 9 hours total playing their games on Xbox+PC Xbox app. So that’s that. They’ve made their platform irrelevant. I only use Series X for backwards compatibility. That’s an area where they haven’t catched up on PC yet, hopefully they’ll fix that soon.
I still like many of their games but for me they’re now like any other big publisher releasing games on Steam.
If PC gaming gets ruined by even more insane pricing I could see myself return to Xbox. But the more likely scenario is that I’ll go with a Steam machine of sorts.
I don’t think twice about buying the next Nintendo hardware. How else would I play their next Mario, Zelda, Metroid?
But I play all Xbox games on my PC now, and everything is on Steam, so at this point it’s literally an annoyance if I have to play through the Xbox PC app and certainly if I have to play on Xbox. All in all the 2024 yearly stats showed that I spent 9 hours total playing their games on Xbox+PC Xbox app. So that’s that. They’ve made their platform irrelevant. I only use Series X for backwards compatibility. That’s an area where they haven’t catched up on PC yet, hopefully they’ll fix that soon.
I still like many of their games but for me they’re now like any other big publisher releasing games on Steam.
If PC gaming gets ruined by even more insane pricing I could see myself return to Xbox. But the more likely scenario is that I’ll go with a Steam machine of sorts.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Jimmy_liv
Member
I just dint understand why anyone would buy a. Xbox going forward if all of their games appear on a PlayStation.
You have one console with all the games and one console with half the games. It's an utter no brainier.
And so no exclusives previously and now all no exclusives for different reasons mean for almost all of Phil Spencer rein there has been no reason to buy their console and games.
Nintendo do one thing amazingly well, they realise that software sells hardware.
Microsoft have repeatedly refused to accept this simple fact and continue with the 'world's most powerful console nonsense' and now they don't even have that!!
Everyone points to Matrick as the start of the decline, but Phil Spencer rein has absolutely destroyed Xbox.
Last edited:
namenotfound
Member
Lack of great games from internal studios or push of Kinect. RROD was terrible yet it was also their best generation. It was the generation filled with third party exclusives timed or permanent. I'll place blame more on internal studios - really MS in not having enough and whatever management and incentive structure they had that resulted in such mediocrity. That generation was carried hard by third party timed and permanent exclusives. The lasting legacies being Gears of War (Epic Games) and Forza Horizon (Playground games). Besides that, there must have been at least a dozen notable timed or permanent exclusives. Maybe that 3rd party exclusive era was bad just for how limited Xbox was at setting up internal studios and giving them time to grow. Then Kinect happened and Rare and Lionhead got to spend some years focusing on Kinect. Then live service and Liohead was killed.
Starting with the 360 era, what are the most successful new IPs developed by studios owned by Microsoft by the time of release of the new IPs first games? Mismanagement of IP and studios - Shadowrun could be a huge video game franchise but instead it just flounders as a niche. FASA Studio, I don't think they should have died. Lionhead shouldn't be dead. Ensemble. Xbox One bad announcement E3 yet it still sold I think it was almost 60 million units and the Series is at around 30 million. If they actually released numerous popular games regularly at a good cadence and stuck to long term certainly Xbox would be closer to PlayStation
Starting with the 360 era, what are the most successful new IPs developed by studios owned by Microsoft by the time of release of the new IPs first games? Mismanagement of IP and studios - Shadowrun could be a huge video game franchise but instead it just flounders as a niche. FASA Studio, I don't think they should have died. Lionhead shouldn't be dead. Ensemble. Xbox One bad announcement E3 yet it still sold I think it was almost 60 million units and the Series is at around 30 million. If they actually released numerous popular games regularly at a good cadence and stuck to long term certainly Xbox would be closer to PlayStation
Last edited:
DaleinCalgary
Member
Can't choose just one
CLW
Member
All
You could go on and on of the missteps Xbox has made for years and honestly i can’t think of ANY good ones other than 360 beating ps3 early to the market
If I had to pick one though it would be E3 ps4/one era with requires online it’s higher price and game sharing.
Sony absolutely BURRIED them for good that E3 “this how you share games on PS4” and with digital libraries becoming bigger and bigger the ONLY way for Xbox to comeback is REAL BANGER exclusives which they are incapable and unwilling to do.
You could go on and on of the missteps Xbox has made for years and honestly i can’t think of ANY good ones other than 360 beating ps3 early to the market
If I had to pick one though it would be E3 ps4/one era with requires online it’s higher price and game sharing.
Sony absolutely BURRIED them for good that E3 “this how you share games on PS4” and with digital libraries becoming bigger and bigger the ONLY way for Xbox to comeback is REAL BANGER exclusives which they are incapable and unwilling to do.
The ninja farmer
Member
For me, as a day one Xbox halo player, Pgr and even a messed up version of perfect dark. 
I even remember getting a free duke and 3 games from Microsoft, for buying so early
. The weird dvd nub. Then the gta trilogy and just when you thought it couldn’t get better. The 360 appears. With odd no storage choice and no hdmi. Both quickly corrected I might add. And for me the 360 was the home of gears, halo. Even though only the 3rd was made for it out of the trilogy. And the mighty cod4 amongst so many others. There were so many games and Xbox became the life blood, that truly connected the players 
They just about came back from the red ring and where hitting console redesigns and special editions out of the park, Xbox live was hitting the world hard and it was a great time to be a console gamer
At this point. I think they went all in on Kinect. At some meeting, some exec sold the dream of capturing those people who bought a Wii, with a more tech version, of something similar. Which would grow their core market, beyond what they had. (Around 85 million in the end, more than twice the previous console) Which no doubt cost many games, as Microsoft’s focus so clearly shifted and the 360 was the home of so many quality and defining games from that period (I had a ps3 for watching blu rays and playing guitar hero
)
Kinect had promise in the early tech demos, but one or two games aside. The hardware and games just weren’t good enough
To then double down with a tv box and mandatory Kinect and topped off with just the most mixed messaging on how it was all going to hang together. And the biggest misstep. Taking their off the ball in what games their console wanted and how to properly manage their star franchises
It came across as confusing and like even Microsoft didn’t know the answers. The buy a 360 at the Xbox reveal/e3 made gamers collective jaws drop !!! From the company that brought internet gaming and set the bar on consoles, that even today is the gold standard (I miss those tiny game updates
)
The weak hardware, that just made it easy to walk from Xbox digital lib and start again on a console whose message was just ‘games’ (not that I am saying that message has always worked out)
Never looked back to be honest and although I always hoped there would be an Xbox I wanted again. It’s sounding like I’ll at least be able to give Microsoft some money to help out (with the gears and halo trilogy, that I won’t mind buying again)
So although I think it’s mostly mismanagement, games that weren’t ready and too many studios taken apart too soon. I would say that the slide started with a camera that really struggled to see fingers
I even remember getting a free duke and 3 games from Microsoft, for buying so early
. The weird dvd nub. Then the gta trilogy and just when you thought it couldn’t get better. The 360 appears. With odd no storage choice and no hdmi. Both quickly corrected I might add. And for me the 360 was the home of gears, halo. Even though only the 3rd was made for it out of the trilogy. And the mighty cod4 amongst so many others. There were so many games and Xbox became the life blood, that truly connected the players They just about came back from the red ring and where hitting console redesigns and special editions out of the park, Xbox live was hitting the world hard and it was a great time to be a console gamer
At this point. I think they went all in on Kinect. At some meeting, some exec sold the dream of capturing those people who bought a Wii, with a more tech version, of something similar. Which would grow their core market, beyond what they had. (Around 85 million in the end, more than twice the previous console) Which no doubt cost many games, as Microsoft’s focus so clearly shifted and the 360 was the home of so many quality and defining games from that period (I had a ps3 for watching blu rays and playing guitar hero
)Kinect had promise in the early tech demos, but one or two games aside. The hardware and games just weren’t good enough
To then double down with a tv box and mandatory Kinect and topped off with just the most mixed messaging on how it was all going to hang together. And the biggest misstep. Taking their off the ball in what games their console wanted and how to properly manage their star franchises
It came across as confusing and like even Microsoft didn’t know the answers. The buy a 360 at the Xbox reveal/e3 made gamers collective jaws drop !!! From the company that brought internet gaming and set the bar on consoles, that even today is the gold standard (I miss those tiny game updates
)The weak hardware, that just made it easy to walk from Xbox digital lib and start again on a console whose message was just ‘games’ (not that I am saying that message has always worked out)
Never looked back to be honest and although I always hoped there would be an Xbox I wanted again. It’s sounding like I’ll at least be able to give Microsoft some money to help out (with the gears and halo trilogy, that I won’t mind buying again)
So although I think it’s mostly mismanagement, games that weren’t ready and too many studios taken apart too soon. I would say that the slide started with a camera that really struggled to see fingers
Jaybe
Member
There were a lot of self destructive strategies by Xbox. Pushing Kinect ate up a bunch of studio time and added an extra $100 to the Xbox One launch price. First party throughout Xbox One was abysmal mostly, aside from Forza Horizon. Halo used to be huge but Bonnie Ross drove it into the ground. They launched Xbox Series with nothing, and then 2022 was miss for big first party games.
The other issue has been competitive. Nintendo have been near flawless and same with PlayStation aside from their live service misses. If covid didn’t batter supply chains and limits PlayStation production, this generation would have been even more brutal for Xbox.
The other issue has been competitive. Nintendo have been near flawless and same with PlayStation aside from their live service misses. If covid didn’t batter supply chains and limits PlayStation production, this generation would have been even more brutal for Xbox.
Sooner
Member
It's GamePass. Only because the effort to try so desperately to make it work led to further and further poor decisions - studio aquisitions to get IPs and cut the actual talent and trying to make games just good enough to not cancel a subscription, but not good enough to be worthy of a full purchase
Sort of like a small lie that gets worse and worse as you tell more damning lies to make the initial lie work.
Sort of like a small lie that gets worse and worse as you tell more damning lies to make the initial lie work.
nial
Gold Member
Well, that's kinda what I meant. Your best being in the same ballpark as your competitor's worst is not a pretty good look.
Plus, there's a pretty big difference between Kinect Adventures, Halo 3 and Gears 1, compare it to PS4 where you would have GOW, HZD, Spider-Man, TLOU and Uncharted 4 around the same ballpark, with GT Sport and TLOU2 not that far off either.
clarky
Gold Member
Cakeboxer
Gold Member
Xbox One for 4 reasons:
- Price
- Marketing (drm, tv fetish, always on)
- Kinect
- Power
Markting + kinect + power scared away the core gamers and the price + kinect scared away the casuals. They came from a super strong gen and threw it all away. They even had the slightly better launch titles and Sony didn't have a big hitter for 2,5 years and yet even before the Uncharted 4 release it was already game over for Microsoft with like 40 million to 20 million.
- Price
- Marketing (drm, tv fetish, always on)
- Kinect
- Power
Markting + kinect + power scared away the core gamers and the price + kinect scared away the casuals. They came from a super strong gen and threw it all away. They even had the slightly better launch titles and Sony didn't have a big hitter for 2,5 years and yet even before the Uncharted 4 release it was already game over for Microsoft with like 40 million to 20 million.
Last edited:
nial
Gold Member
I never called PS3 era Uncharted a powerhouse, though? That was about Halo, which yes, used to be so (Halo 3 sold 14M units on the 360).
So, again.
DEAD ORIGINAL
Member
I've always thought Xbox 360 was dominant in the 7th Gen until 2010 focusing on crap Kinect discontinuing 1 Vs 100 and Halo Reach the first bad Halo, why? armour lock jet packs scrapped the old ranked system, then 2011 scrapped sent u a message UK loved that show and they changed the dashboard again from NXE to that shitty Metro one honestly Xbox had a winning hand and continued to shoot themselves in the foot, head, ass balls etc.
Similar threads
- Poll