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[Dr_Ifto]

It wasnt one thing. It was a amalgimation of many things.

1) Red ring of death with Xbox360
2) Lack of First Party exclusives the end of the Xbox360 era
3) Bundling kinect with Xbox One
4) Disastrous E3 presser
5) Lack of meaningful exclusives beginning of Xbox One era
6) Loss of Call of Duty marketing (yes this affected a lot of people on what console to buy)
7) Playstation taking advantage of all the missteps one by one

Phil said it correctly and bluntly, they lost the one generation they shouldnt have with digital libraries. All the above played into it, nothing was bigger than the other really.

 

[Crm114]

Kinect, drm and Xbox one should all be together. They really fked up that launch.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Starfield was the TSN Turning Point on this whole thing, let's be honest. All of 2023 there was Starfield as this unbeatable exclusive game that was going to make Xbox a must-have item once again, just as Halo and Gear had done for them in the past. When its critical and commercial performance could best be described as "fine", that's when all of the sudden everything shifted.

Starfield killed the Xbox brand.

 

[Kvally]

Xbox has had a lot of blunders over the years. For many of us, it will always be part of some of the best gaming memories.

The first Xbox was great and Live changed multiplayer gaming forever.

Then came 360 which for the first few years of its life was the prime place to play games. Better than PC, PlayStation, Wii… eventually PCs caught up, Cell became easier to develop for, and Sony started knocking it out of the park with amazing exclusives. There was the RRoD but they seemed to be doing the right thing to fix it, and near the end of the lifecycle it seemed behind them.

But then Xbox One came around and it was confusing starting with the name. Kinect was controversial, the platform lacked the oomph of PlayStation, and the marketing was hated by fans (such as the always online DRM, push for streaming, and the deal with it stuff).

To me the Xbox One launch was the turning point for the brand and when its steady decline began.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

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.

Supporting other platforms is a policy they can’t reverse either.

Once people expect their games to come to rival systems that’s it.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Starfield was the TSN Turning Point on this whole thing, let's be honest. All of 2023 there was Starfield as this unbeatable exclusive game that was going to make Xbox a must-have item once again, just as Halo and Gear had done for them in the past. When its critical and commercial performance could best be described as "fine", that's when all of the sudden everything shifted.

Starfield killed the Xbox brand.

I think an ultimatum was made by the likes of Satya Nadella at Microsoft for the Cbox team.

If Starfield doesn’t shut so many Xbox consoles for Gamepass subscriptions then they’ll have to go Plan B and go third party.

 

[lughnasadh123]

The biggest thing was the transition from 360 to XB1 and just a series of stepping on rakes ever since. Still blows my mind how fast it went from needing to acquire more studios to get games out to it just not being enough to make a difference from a hardware perspective.

 

[Kvally]

go Plan B and go third party

Seems that is the route for Sony as well. Gaming has been changed forever.

 

[noob smokes]

This guy

Phil did way more damage than him atleast the xbone was pumpin out decent games at the time

 

[fart town usa]

Chad Warden.

 

[TheChumpNation]

My first console was an OG Xbox. My second was an Xbox 360. When I saw the first Xbox One reveal that featured a thousand sports and assorted other crap tie ins, I got worried. When I saw the E3 presentation, mandatory Kinect, and always online requirement, I was out and never looked back. The value proposition of the PS4 vs the Xbox One is one of the more hilarious episodes I can think of in gaming.

So for me, it was the Xbox One launch. If it hadn't been that, it would have been the complete lack of games for the entire Xbox One generation.

 

[EN250]

No games? Not mismanagement, straight up no games outside of a few shared with PCMR which totally defeats the point of a console

 

[Boo Who?]

Forza Horizon 5 is the only exclusive this gen that they knocked it out of the park. The new mainline Forza was boring. GT7 is much more fun to play. Maybe Forza is better now after tons of patches, but I haven't tried it in awhile. Indy is awesome (playing the Steam version), but it will be on PS5 in a couple of months. So for me, its games, always games. Now that they are coming to everything, why would anyone buy an Xbox. This is coming from a person that has every Xbox on launch, and haven't turned my Series X on since I finished the Elden Ring expansion. They haven't had good leadership since Peter Moore.

 

[Havoc2049]

-Going after the fickle fad chasing soccer mom crowd with the Kinect.

-Closing down a bunch of studios and letting a bunch of IP go dormant at the end of the Xbox 360/Games for Windows era.

-Realizing that you don't have enough studios to make modern games after closing down a bunch of studios and having to spend a boat load of money to buy new studios.

-Mismanaging studios and and worrying about a bunch of social issues that have nothing to do with making good games.

 

[sachos]

I mean this poll should have had multiple choice options, pretty much all of the above really.

 

[DoubleClutch]

I mean this poll should have had multiple choice options, pretty much all of the above really.

I’ve seen this message a lot throughout the thread and people who say it are missing the goal of this thread.

It’s not, what is everything that Xbox did wrong. It’s, out what they’ve blundered, has damaged the brand the most.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

What damaged Xbox was them consistently making bad decisions and not learning from the mistakes.

Once they tasted some success during the 360 era they got very complacent.

 

[Fbh]

Kinect was a massive blunder, not just the device but the way it made MS lose the focus on what made the 360 so good at first. The early 360 era was awesome but with the introduction of Kinect they started to focus on getting the hyper casual audience and they handed the more core market to Sony.

Then came the X1 and they focused on TV for the reveal because that's what they thought the casuals wanted (even though no casual player was going to watch a console reveal conference), not to mention they made the console $100 more expensive despite having weaker hardware because they insisted on bundling a Kinect with every system.
The Xbox one ended up being a disaster from almost every angle, and it cost them the generation where digital libraries really started to take off on consoles, which put them at an instant disadvantage this gen.

 

[Isurus]

This list should have included pricing the Xbox One $100 higher than the PS4. In the end, I think that was the largest problem.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

Lots of good thoughts in this thread, so perhaps I can't really add much besides saying, can we at least be amazed at how many blunders Xbox has made?

I mean to consistently shoot yourself in the foot, I actually think they've surpassed Sega in terms of poor business decisions.

 

[Kupfer]

For me it was the weak Xbox One without a clear direction and with a focus on Kinect, Sports and TV shows.
Coming out of a generation where I owned and played both, the PS3 and the 360, I just went for a PS4 not caring about Xbox anymore.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

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.

It's the vicious cycle vs the virtuous cycle.

The way gaming works these days true system sellers are really difficult to create because not many people want to even give new IP a chance. Even more so when the user base doesn't purchase games. GamePass conditions people not to buy games and it makes it harder to create system sellers because you inherently need to keep costs down, which means limiting budgets making it more difficult to stand out next to competition. Worse is using contractors on short term basis only, meaning you always have brain drain on every project. This is a vicious cycle. PC Day 1 also makes it hard to create a system seller, because no one needs to buy your system to play it. The individual game might sell better in the short term, but you lose out on long term gains and compounded gains by creating a strong user base.

This is why Sony can create games like Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima and sell 10+ million units, simply because of the size of the user base. The more people who buy these games, the more people who talk about them, leading more people to buy them and maybe even buy PlayStations because of it. This is the virtuous cycle. Sony can afford to spend significant money on individual games knowing that they'll help build the PlayStation user base and worse case scenario you're getting increased royalty sales from games like roblox, Minecraft, EA FC, and fortnite, best case scenario you're building your market share within the user base. Sony games did not used to sell 10 million units a pop or anywhere close to it (with the exception of Gran Turismo). They can also sell these games later on PC without impacting the health of their user base.

It's what has pushed Zelda and Mario Kart to sell significantly more than past iterations because the Switch is so successful. It's why God of War 2018 sold as much as the entire God of War franchise combined.

You can't create high selling games without first building an environment where you can sell lots of units.

Pokemon was able to go viral because of how many Gameboys had already sold, it wasn't limited to Gameboy color.

 

[Deerock71]

My answer is yes.

 

[Conflict NZ]

The biggest thing was the transition from 360 to XB1 and just a series of stepping on rakes ever since. Still blows my mind how fast it went from needing to acquire more studios to get games out to it just not being enough to make a difference from a hardware perspective.

It wasn't a difference because we haven't even gotten into a cadence of those studios releasing games yet. After all those acquisitions there were still significant droughts. October 2023 - October 2024 they released literally two games, Hellblade 2 and Age of Mythology remastered. October 2024 - October 2025 will be the first 12 months they will have had a regular release cadence if leakers are to be believed, but Microsoft already gave up.

I have no idea what is going on with their development, why is Obsidian the only developer that can seemingly release consistent games? Why aren't they getting their studios to run smaller projects concurrently? Why is double fine coming up on four years since their last release despite claiming to have small games in the works? Why has Forza Horizon taken a four year break when it was a two year release cycle?

Games are taking longer but they still haven't figured out a way to have their studios finish projects in a cadence and instead it's starting to look like they might even have too many games this year.

 

[Come On Tars]

me, a kinda normie felt ZERO desire to buy the xbox one. That's when I switched to pc gaming. So for me that console was a huge misstep

 

[Yoda]

It was the attitude MS had at the xbone launch. The reveal of the console was clearly not focused on gaming. Sony literally 1 upped them by praising the status quo. Don Mattrick fucked the brand it Phil wasn't capable of salvaging it.

 

[DoubleClutch]

The problem for Xbox is lack of vision and identity. Microsoft has all the resources in the world to make Xbox as much of a success that it wants, but it has no vision.

Is the brand a console? Is it a service? Is it a storefront? Is it a developer? Is it a platform? Will it have exclusives developed in house? Will it buy IPs? Will it develop its own IPs?

None of these questions are clear and this lack of focus leads to the results it’s produced.

 

[rapid32.5]

It’s always about having great exclusives for success. But this year they will have great games that will go multi platform and it’s the same mistake year after year.
Overall, it was mismanagement of studios that produced nothing for 5 years.

 

[sendit]

 

[laynelane]

Even thought the 360 had some issues (failure rate), it was still popular and the home to a lot of great games and innovations (eg. refining online play). It just seems like a different party was in charge back then. The Xbone reveal, to me, was when MS itself became more involved. So, it became less about games and more about always online, daily check-ins, no used games, Kinect, etc. It was a giant overreach, of course, and the backlash was severe but it's like they never quite came back from that. Phil was marketed as a gamer, but he's very obviously a MS lifer - look what's happened to Xbox under his leadership - subs, recurring spending, etc. all seemingly became the most important considerations.

Basically, I don't think MS has a good grip on the creative part of being in the gaming industry. The don't understand that gamers are not the same as their other customers on the PC side (Windows, Office, etc.) of things. Services, low prices, etc. are nice, but people also want a consistent release and focus on good games. I always go back to how people were complaining about a lack of first-party releases during the Xbone days. MS' response was to introduce the "world's most powerful console" - the Xbox One X. There's this unwillingness and/or inability to really listen about the "games" part of being in the industy - a problem I don't think the 360 had, but has been an issue ever since the Xbone reveal.

 

[clintar]

All the Gamestop employees always trying to talk it up.

 

[b0uncyfr0]

Simple, lack of great defining games. I think its clear now, you cant compete against good exclusives by increasing the amount of average games.

People want unforgettable experiences, an exclusive has a much better chance of doing that than 5 regular ass games

 

[mdkirby]

Voted studio mismanagement, but it was actually TV TV TV and all the missteps at the launch of XONE, as that was the generation where people really started building out their digital libraries. Losing that generation really fucked them. When a user has hundreds of games locked into an ecosystem, you're realllllly gone have to do something particularly special to pull them away.

 

[Bond007]

Probably all of those things have obviously led to this moment.

But the lack of exclusives has been the nail in the coffin in my opinion. Its the most representative of your console- what sets you apart- the first thing people see or want. I've been gaming since the SNES/Genesis days and i have always had the desire to own all consoles as soon as i could afford to- why? Cause they all offered something i wanted. Xbox has never been my primary but i have always desired one to ensure i had access to the handful of games exclusive to the platform. Those days are long gone.
Not only did they fail to bring on new good exclusives( i don't mean timed exclusives) but they also either dropped the ball on the ones they have or milked them to death. They failed to produce their own things and mostly relied on money to get them this far inorganically in my opinion. Any other company would have folded long ago. Instead of dialing in on exclusives- they stated that they are no longer important in the last few years, which is a massive cop out.
Their console brand is tarnished.

 

[RickMasters]

That’s basically a PC then

You wanna pay PC money next gen?

I been building my own computers for over 20 years and they all run on windows. Makes sense that they integrate my Xbox experience into my windows experience. They should have done it from the first Xbox.

I don’t get what you mean by PC money next gen. People are already paying 900 bucks for PS5 pros, that you can’t even upgrade parts like CPU and ram at your own pace. Who’s REALLY getting ripped off here?

 

[mayham2199]

I been building my own computers for over 20 years and they all run on windows. Makes sense that they integrate my Xbox experience into my windows experience. They should have done it from the first Xbox.

I don’t get what you mean by PC money next gen. People are already paying 900 bucks for PS5 pros, that you can’t even upgrade parts like CPU and ram at your own pace. Who’s REALLY getting ripped off here?

As a former PC gamer I'll take getting "ripped off" over dealing with all the BS over there on PC. Wonder if this will make GTA 7 defacto PS6-7 exclusive.

 

[VinnyMac]

the xbox one reveal.... tv tv tv tv they have literally never recovered since

 

[Sooner]

Phil completely mismanaged every studio they acquired to a comical degree.

This comes down to caring about the IPs, not the people and reasons why these IPs got where they are in the first place.

Microsoft will spend billions on IPs and then let those talented people who made the IPs go to save chump change.

 

[Sooner]

the xbox one reveal.... tv tv tv tv they have literally never recovered since

They could have though. Sony recovered after the rocky PS3 start to outsell the 360. Nintendo followed up one of the worst selling consoles ever with one of the best.

There has been plenty of chances over the last 10-15 years to recover from a bad console reveal a couple generations ago. They've, instead, gone in the opposite direction.

 

[SpokkX]

Brand naming should be on the list.
Xbox
Xbox 360
Xbox one
Xbox x, xbox s....

What the fk is this? This causes consumer confusion... just name the thing xbox 1, 2, 3, etc...

Yes and dont forget

Xbox One S and Xbox One X to..
Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X

While also keeping the controllers looking basically the same

 

[Majukun]

it's between the always online and lack of exclusives, one made people walk away from the brand, the other made so that nobody even bothered looking back

 

[SEGAvangelist]

No damage. Only winning. Colt says so.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Keeping fat fuck Aaron Greenberg around. Don't know how this man has been able to hold onto his job with the marketing blunders since the Kinect days.

 

[Sooner]

PlayStation

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

someone make this juicy thread

 

[SEGAvangelist]

someone make this juicy thread

Why can't you?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Why can't you?

im disable

 

[Barry Burton]

 

[SEGAvangelist]

 

[RetroGamingUK]

I been building my own computers for over 20 years and they all run on windows. Makes sense that they integrate my Xbox experience into my windows experience. They should have done it from the first Xbox.

I don’t get what you mean by PC money next gen. People are already paying 900 bucks for PS5 pros, that you can’t even upgrade parts like CPU and ram at your own pace. Who’s REALLY getting ripped off here?

Consoles are sold at a discount because they make the money back by taking a cut of ALL game sales.

PC vendors can’t do this as only the likes of Microsoft and Valve make the money off games.

If the next Xbox allows you to access Steam then there’s no possibility to discount it.

I really don’t understand why people don’t get this.