• 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?

What damaged the Xbox brand the most over the years?


  • Total voters
    557
  • This poll will close: .

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Day one is a fucking stupid idea that ill never wrap my head around, id love to see the actual numbers.

Do 90 days exclusive to retail, like the movies model, that might have worked.
Would have been better, but I think the best model would have been to be intentionally vague. Like Sony does it.

Even if it's Day 180 (confirmed), a lot of people would just wait. On the other hand, if their customers have no idea if they'd be getting their game on Game Pass day 1, day 365, or 3 years down the road, they are more likely to buy the game. Essentially what Sony has been doing with PS+ Catalog.
 

AGRacing

Member
This guy
images
There’s no argument. This is the guy.
Microsoft, in spite of the red ring, had good competitive footing. Then the Kinect knee jerk Wii reaction and the launch of Xbox One completely destroyed it.
 

clarky

Gold Member
Would have been better, but I think the best model would have been to be intentionally vague. Like Sony does it.

Even if it's Day 180 (confirmed), a lot of people would just wait. On the other hand, if their customers have no idea if they'd be getting their game on Game Pass day 1, day 365, or 3 years down the road, they are more likely to buy the game. Essentially what Sony has been doing with PS+ Catalog.
Yeah I just pulled that figure out of my ass. Let say anything that does shit at retail could come fast, say 45 days (ok thats everything lol) Anything with a long tail later say 6 months. Just like the movies. But announce on a case by case basis AFTER you've sold what you can.

Would that work? I have no idea, but the model they have now certainly doesn't. Good for folks who like sub services though i suppose.
 
Last edited:

Heimdall_Xtreme

Hermen Hulst Fanclub's #1 Member
For me, the Red Ring death damaged the reputation I had on Xbox, I have the original Xbox and bought the 360...

But thanks to that, I abandoned it and was a PS3 and Nintendo user.
 

clarky

Gold Member
There’s no argument. This is the guy.
Microsoft, in spite of the red ring, had good competitive footing. Then the Kinect knee jerk Wii reaction and the launch of Xbox One completely destroyed it.
Not arguing that this guy wasn't a total plum but wasn't Kinect super successful on the 360?

Packing it in with the One was the braindead move.
 

Brigandier

Member
you don't fuck a brand by just making one mistake

so, all of the above

Honestly this is the absolute best answer, It's been a collection of poor decisions and poor leadership one after another over a period of around 12 years.

Since the release of Kinect I feel the Xbox brand has been slipping further and further away from their core customer base, I also feel they've consistently tried to mimic and follow Sony at every corner instead of following their own path but funnily enough when they did try something different (DRM) they absolutely tanked the Xbox brand overnight.

The XSX was a nice piece of equipment for a console but why release that POS XSS.... way to hold back your own platform 👏
 
Since the release of Kinect I feel the Xbox brand has been slipping further and further away from their core customer base, I also feel they've consistently tried to mimic and follow Sony at every corner instead of following their own path
Xbox was synonymous with multiplayer games; that was their differentiator. but over time, multiplayer games became more popular, and they couldn't compete.

It's crazy that this year alone, PlayStation was able to capture the multiplayer zeitgeist (something that Xbox had back with Halo 2) with Helldivers 2 and achieve the Nintendo magic with Astro Bot.

showing again that it's all about great games and consistency.
 

Astray

Member
Studio mismanagement has to be it for me. It's the root cause of almost all the other reasons in the poll.

That was the real cause of the Xbox One's larger market failures, which pushed MS into gamepass and the mass acquisition spree, which pushed MS into multiplatform publishing en masse (and in my eyes, slowly sunsetting the Xbox brand).
 

AGRacing

Member
Not arguing that this guy wasn't a total plum but wasn't Kinect super successful on the 360?

Packing it in with the One was the braindead move.
In what way?
Did it sell enough to be considered a success as an accessory? Sure.
What resources were diverted to it internally that caused a reduction in 1st party output later? Was it worth it? Did those Kinect customers turn out to be loyal or valuable in any way for the launch of the Xbox One? If there was success it simply cost too much and distracted them from the fundamentals. Nintendo had to learn the same lesson with Wii U I think.

Never brag about your haircut when you forgot to put on your pants.
 

bitbydeath

Gold Member
There’s no argument. This is the guy.
Microsoft, in spite of the red ring, had good competitive footing. Then the Kinect knee jerk Wii reaction and the launch of Xbox One completely destroyed it.
Nah, they even had good sales in the beginning.

Microsoft reaches 10 million Xbox One shipments three months after the PS4

Everything fell apart when Phil took over and stopped making exclusives aside from Halo/Gears/Forza.
 
Last edited:
Disconnected leadership
That's a rather kind way of saying poor leadership. It wasn't so much disconnected and more of poorly thought out strategies from people who had a very weird view of the market. Of the Poll options, the only correct answer is Gamepass. Many of the other poll options are a direct result of gamepass. Porting games to other platforms? Why did that happen? Because gamepass conditioned users not to buy games. Studio mismanagement/acquisition? Gamepass again due to the need for a steady stream of content for the service.

Gamepass led to the strategy of removing exclusives while conditioning the user base not to spend money. Instead of spending tons of money monthly on games, dlc, they pay a single gamepass subscription a month. It's truly the fastest way to kill any platform. Gamepass also conditioned developers to game metrics and create games that are best to meet microsoft's internal metrics. This led to a homogenization of mechanics and gameplay loops. In turn alienating a segment of the market who could no longer find the experiences they're looking for on the platform. Take a look at how they massacred forza motorsport for example.

Gamepass is the most destructive thing they've done at xbox, even more so than tv tv tv, always online, etc. It altered all aspects of xbox from development, to the userbase to the hardware for the negative. In many ways, the series s is a buy product of gamepass. A cheap box to get people into the subscription service. Gamepass will not only permanently kill xbox hardware after their handheld flops but it'll kill xbox as a whole. In many ways, it already has with Microsoft already looking to rebrand it as "Microsoft Gaming".
 
Last edited:

clarky

Gold Member
In what way?
Did it sell enough to be considered a success as an accessory? Sure.
What resources were diverted to it internally that caused a reduction in 1st party output later? Was it worth it? Did those Kinect customers turn out to be loyal or valuable in any way for the launch of the Xbox One? If there was success it simply cost too much and distracted them from the fundamentals. Nintendo had to learn the same lesson with Wii U I think.

Never brag about your haircut when you forgot to put on your pants.
I don't know the answer to those questions. I just thought the Kinect was a roaring success during the 360 days. I dunno I never had one and wasn't paying much attention towards the back end of the 360's life.

If they would have left it as just an accessory then maybe it wouldn't have hurt the xbox one as bad as it (apparently) did.
 
Last edited:

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Nah, they even had good sales in the beginning.



Everything fell apart when Phil took over and stopped making exclusives aside from Halo/Gears/Forza.
Exactly this. They were actually still competitive for like 12-18 months after the Xbox One launch. Until Phil destroyed everything.

I have no idea how Phil concocted the narrative that the Xbox brand was tanking and he saved it from utter destruction. When, in fact, Xbox started declining at a faster pace after Phil became the head of Xbox. I think that successful narrative-building was and still is the biggest achievement of Phil Spencer.
 
Last edited:

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
I don't know the answer to those questions. I just thought the Kinect was a roaring success during the 360 days. I dunno I never had one and wasn't paying much attention towards the back end of the 360's life.

If they would have left it as just an accessory then maybe it wouldn't have hurt the xbox one as bad as it (apparently) did.
I had a Kinect with my 360. It was a lot of fun indeed. Pretty successful too as an accessory.
 

clarky

Gold Member
Exactly this. They were actually still competitive for like 12-18 years after the Xbox One launch. Until Phil destroyed everything.

I have no idea how Phil concocted the narrative that the Xbox brand was tanking and he saved it from utter destruction. When, in fact, Xbox started declining at a faster pace after Phil became the head of Xbox. I think that successful narrative-building was and still is the biggest achievement of Phil Spencer.
Yup. I said it earlier in the thread, Mattrick was bad but Phil is arguably a lot worse.

Fair play to him the man can bullshit.
 
Last edited:

Astray

Member
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.
People here tried to convince us that it was some 5D chess game he was playing with the FTC.

I firmly believe they have issues recognizing emotions, the man was clearly on the brink of tears the entire podcast, Parris and that other guy were basically consoling him for the entire run time.

That interview will go down in gaming history imo.
 
Imo, the final nail in the coffin for the already severely tarnished XBOX brand was the acquisition of Activision/Blizzard which I said from the beginning was a terrible mistake that I don’t think they will ever recover from.

Even though they already had problems like a gaming community that doesn’t buy anything, lack of quality exclusives for a long time, day one ports to PC and mismanagement, I feel that the major acquisition lead to even more layoffs, more studio closures, having to port exclusives to other platforms, etc. Porting major games to other platforms was them essentially throwing in the towel.
 
Last edited:

Sunkrest

Neo Member
It's all about games. I'm trying to remember when was the last time I was really excited to buy and was satisfied after purchase of first party MS game and all comes to mind is Halo Reach and Gears of War 3. That was ~15 years ago?
 

Gryllis

Neo Member
A series of missteps, but I honestly still thought they were righting wrong turns until basically every move they made in 2024. They lost me, a former avid Xbox player, last year.

I have no idea what they're trying to do anymore. And the real problem is, I don't thing they know either.

Everything is an Xbox? Sounds great on paper. But it immediately failed when I can't play hundreds of Xbox games I own on anything besides an Xbox console, which they're slowly abandoning.
 
My opinion is there are two main issues.

1. Xbox One Launch
2. Severe lack of consistently good exclusives.

Both of those points go hand in hand, if they had just not screwed up one they would've been fine. If they hadn't screwed the Xbox One launch they could've limped through release droughts with a larger install base and 3rd party games and would've been able to get more 3rd party exclusives.

If they had consistently good exclusives they could've rectified the Xbox One launch, but from 2015 - 2024 the only consistently good first party game they have had is Forza Horizon, Gears and Halo were shells of themselves. Also people rightly talk about the Series X/S launch but something I don't see mentioned often is that very recently they went basically a whole year with only two releases, one of them being a remaster (Hellblade 2/AOM Remastered), and that was when they had the eyes of Microsoft leadership on them trying to push 3rd party, they have 30+ studios and they released two games in 12 months. I don't even understand how they managed that. The last year I can say they had a "good" year was 2014 but even then that's with hindsight of MCC working correctly because at the time that was an absolute catastrophe.
 

VitoNotVito

Member
Nothing “damaged” them.
This brand was just another poor attempt from Microsoft to be “cool”. It had a great start with Halo and being a new player on the market years ago. However it’s dying just like Zune, Windows Phone, Surface or any other consumer product they ever had. Not a single cool kid these days wanted to have anything manufactured by Microsoft. They simply don’t understand consumer marketing.
 

Alan Wake

Member
A combination of things, obviously. The Xbox One project was ill-conceived and hurt the brand immensely. They did some good things to right the ship after that, but it took years to get somewhat on track. They started buying studios which looked promising, but we've all heard stories about how they handle their studios, so mismanagement of studios is another factor. They did the absolutely forbidden thing, which is to mismanage your most important IP. Halo is a shadow of itself today, and that's Microsoft's fault. But other projects didn't deliver either. Looking back at the Xbox One generation, they had lots of decent exclusives but very few excellent ones. PS4 had tons of those.

Everything else, from Game Pass to putting games on other platforms, are just consequences of their inability to compete with PlayStation. Game Pass made Xbox gamers used to not buying games anymore, obviously hurting sales. And yet Game Pass growth has plattened. Now they've finally understood they had a broken business plan, and with all the acquisitions they are left with no other option but to put all their games on other platforms, where the gamers are.
 
Last edited:

Brigandier

Member
Xbox was synonymous with multiplayer games; that was their differentiator. but over time, multiplayer games became more popular, and they couldn't compete.

It's crazy that this year alone, PlayStation was able to capture the multiplayer zeitgeist (something that Xbox had back with Halo 2) with Helldivers 2 and achieve the Nintendo magic with Astro Bot.

showing again that it's all about great games and consistency.

I remember the og Xbox launching with a great bunch of games, and Xbox live was seriously amazing it was and still is one of my favorite ever consoles.

They continued to be the clear winner with 360 for online play with the right games then poof they just fell off a cliff and at present I can't believe how many studios they have and such little output.
 


There are still ashes left from this burn :messenger_grinning_squinting:

Plus, failing to deliver on the software side and acquiring major publishers didn’t help.

PS4 Sony was the best.

Both current gen Sony and Microsoft have been fucking awful. The only difference is, Microsoft have been even more awful than Sony.

The fall of Xbox as a brand is somewhat hilarious. They're now relegated to being a 3rd party studio. Sega 2.0 (although they do have unlimited Microsoft money)
 

cireza

Member
It is yet to be confirmed, but I think that buying Activision is the trigger that will lead to the end of proper Xbox hardware. Which sucks.

Still waiting to see if this happens.
 

FingerBang

Member
MS is a string of fuck-ups. They built a strong brand with the OG Xbox and the first years of the 360, I remember how people thought Sony would not last another generation, destined to be another Sega.
Then MS launched Kinect and it was a great success until it wasn't, with the launch of the Xbox One being a massive disaster. That generation mostly sucked and things turned around only when Game Pass and Xbox One X launched. The Series consoles were hyped (12TFLOPS BOIS) and it seemed like MS was getting ready to kick ass again, even with the Series S having a stupid amount of RAM that could hold back the generation (it didn't).

Nothing beats how badly they mismanaged their IPs and studios, though. Absolutely nothing.
 

Kumomeme

Member
the evangelists who rally at every super duper friendly relatable gamer uncle phil words for atleast almost a decade.

especially those who memorize all the buzz words and didnt shy to preach over it everwhere.
 
Last edited:
Who cares anymore? I just want the next Xbox to have my steam and my Xbox accounts on one box. Anything else is just you guys wanting to relive the moments Xbox games come to Xbox because nothing in Playstation is remotely interesting anyway but never want to admit that part. 🤷🏾‍♂️😂😂😂😂😂
That’s basically a PC then

You wanna pay PC money next gen?
 
I don't understand why anyone would buy your product if you don't have any exclusives worth mentioning, but the competition has exciting exclusive titles and/or comparable hardware. That's been my question for years.
 

RCX

Member
MS doesn't have the right instincts for this business.

The only time they had any real success was with the 360 and that was largely because Sony were fucking things up badly with the ps3 pricing.

They just aren't a creative force. And that's essential to succeeding in videogames.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
They've never been able to create AAA system sellers internally.

Halo - They bought Bungie out
Gears of War - Was made by Epic Games

Forza was never really a major system seller.

They've been in the market for two decades and they've never really come out with any new IP that could sell systems.

Both Nintendo and Sony have new IP from the last decade that are 10 million plus sellers like Splatoon, Horizon, Spider-Man*, and Ghost. Sony even has a litany of games that almost reached 10 million that they aren't tapping like Bloodborne, Day's Gone, and franchise they gave back to the developer like Death Stranding.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Honestly studio mismanagement, remember when you could get banned for saying "Xbox got no games" but it was true and has been for such a long time.

Yes it's hyperbole, it's closer to "Xbox has no games worth playing in terms of quantity or quality compared to the competition" but as an Xbox owner it fucking sucked, for entire generations, my Xbox series X is now a blu-ray player essentially so I don't have to switch out my PS5 disc. My Xbox One was the first console I have EVER traded in.

I also think people have actually let Xbox get away with releasing sub par products for far too long, people mock the forum as SonyGAF, but NeoGAF let Halo Infinite win GOTY. It was the most generic half cooked open world shooter in years, and that's an issue. Xbox needed to he held to a higher standard for years by it's players, they never did.

I don't think I will buy the next Gen of Xbox, it will be the first one I never owned, Indiana Jones should be the norm, not the exception.
 
Last edited:

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Xbox One announcement.
Kinect Required.
Relying so heavily on third party devs with few exclusive deals.(Xbox 360 had alot of exclusives early in its life)
Closing Fasa Studios - They were forced into ShadowRun then blamed for it not doing well.
Not acquiring Bioware when they had the chance (KOTOR/Jade Empire)
 

Alan Wake

Member
Not arguing that this guy wasn't a total plum but wasn't Kinect super successful on the 360?

Packing it in with the One was the braindead move.

25 million Kinect cameras sold for a system that was 5 year old at the time. That's amazing. It wasn't strange that they thought it was a good idea to carry on that success story with their next Xbox. I get it. But they built the entire console experience around it! They drifted away from the gaming aspect of it, and it made the system more expensive than the PS4 which was unacceptable to most gamers.

I bought the Kinect 2.0 last year just to try it out since they had unbundled it when I bought my first Xbox One at the time. It's decent for voice commands and swapping, but for gaming...? No. Apart from Dance Central and Kinect Sports Rivals, Kinect 2.0 is just annoying to use, and today it obviously feels old.

Kinect 2.0 was basically Xbox's Wii U Gamepad. They failed to show its relevance for gaming.
 
Last edited:

Drew1440

Member
People underestimate the damage the RROD did for Xbox, a lot of people to this day refuse to invest in Xbox hardware over fears it will break down 18 months later.
 
Not releasing good games (and killing Halo). If they had been doing that then no one would give a shit about any of that other stuff.

Putting their exclusives on other platforms is just the final nail in the coffin.
 
Last edited:

Alan Wake

Member
People underestimate the damage the RROD did for Xbox, a lot of people to this day refuse to invest in Xbox hardware over fears it will break down 18 months later.
And yet Xbox 360 was the best selling Xbox console by far and is the most fondly remembered. I don't think RROD is even in the top 5 when we look att reasons as to why Xbox eventually failed in the so called console war.
 
Top Bottom