Discussion Eurogamer: What is the point of Xbox?

[Haziqonfire]

Very length article, but some key points below. Honestly, I've been asking myself the same thing, even before the shift in strategy by bringing games to other platforms.

The 360 years feel like a lifetime ago. This week, Xbox stunned the industry by announcing it had closed three studios, and repurposed a fourth into another service game support team. This follows the 1900 people laid off across Xbox at the start of this year, and those Xbox employees quietly caught up in the 10,000 layoffs Microsoft made the year before. It has been a disastrous piece of PR self-sabotage, particularly with the reputations of these studios in mind.

Arkane Austin struggled with the uncharacteristic co-op, online shooter elements of Redfall, but before that made the excellent 2017 reboot of Prey and the first, fantastic Dishonored that led to the immersive sim's modern mini-revival. Tango Gameworks, Microsoft's only Japan-based studio that was led, until earlier this year, by horror legend Shinji Mikami, made The Evil Within games and the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-winning breakout Hi-Fi Rush. Roundhouse Studios was founded by the makers of the original Prey, but is now presumably destined to make different coloured leather boots for The Elder Scrolls Online. Alpha Dog made mobile games, an area where Microsoft has been specifically looking to expand. More broadly, for two console generations now, Xbox has floundered under a clear and obvious lack of inventive, attention-grabbing exclusive games. It just bought these studios in 2021.

What is the point of Xbox? Go back through the last 10 years or so, to the end of the 360's golden age and the origins of the Xbox One, and it starts to become clear. The point of Xbox is to achieve, apparently, growth on a massive scale. It is to make more money than it did the year before.

This will seem like ancient history now, but bear with me - the mistakes Xbox made in 2013 are, as we'll see, worryingly relevant to the struggles it faces right now. We need to start with the infamous "TV, TV, TV" presentation on stage at E3 2013, where Don Mattrick, Xbox's boss at the time, unveiled plans for the Xbox One. It would be an all-in-one home entertainment device, which was actually quite a nice, interesting, forward-thinking idea (aside from the compulsory bundling-in of the expensive and wildly unpopular Kinect), but the perceived emphasis on non-gaming applications, next to PlayStation's laser targeting of traditional, blockbuster video games and more graphically powerful console, gave the impression Xbox hadn't prioritised its core audience.

It's also the first sign of Microsoft's backwards thinking with the Xbox, where it sought to grow beyond its core audience not by adding to them, by fulfilling its core purpose of creating new games that more people want to play and new ways to play them, but by offering something entirely unrelated and merging the two together.

But the issue with its priorities ran deeper than the hardware. Take the closure of legendary Fable developer Lionhead, in 2016, and the cancellation of Fable Legends that was due to launch that year. As covered in Eurogamer's extensive inside story, it was Microsoft's idea in around 2012, six years after it had bought the once-independent studio, to shift from the single-player RPGs it was known for to a free-to-play, live service multiplayer game in Fable Legends.

The point here, ultimately, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it does not show any sign of coming to an end. Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox's leadership clearly knows it's a problem. I believe Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond were utterly sincere when they said they looked at Lionhead and promised themselves not to make the same mistakes again. But to do that, they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.

 

[Lugia667]

I bet quite a few of Microsoft's higher ups have been asking the same thing recently

 

[TreIII]

When Xbox had the likes of Peter Moore on the payroll, back in the day? At the very least, you can say that Xbox had people who actually understood games, and left a good foundation of what would work for the gaming sphere. Especially when you wanted to compete for a seat at the table with Nintendo and Sony.

But the Xbox of the last decade and some change just turned into yet another tech bro company. One which doesn't seem to get that video games are not simply software, and that you can't just throw money at things and magically get more money back.

Divorced of the legacy from the OG and 360, the current era's Xbox is showing itself not much different from the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple.

 

[Serif]

What is an Xbox? A miserable pile of secrets.

 

[WestEgg]

At this point? To control tremendously popular IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Fallout, and perch themselves as an unignorable behemoth that’s permanently affixed to the industry. Like, the other day I was thinking, Microsoft could exit the console industry, causing Sony to be perceived as the winner of their console war… only for them to have to immediately acknowledge that Microsoft is now also their most important 3rd party partner that they’ll be dependent on for as long as they themselves are producing hardware.

 

[EvilChameleon]

The good times have always felt just over the horizon. Project Scorpio will set the tone; Game Pass is the future; the Series X will have the games; Starfield will jump-start Game Pass now it's stalled. The growing sentiment today is that they'll probably never come.

This could describe Halo as well. Halo Infinite was supposed to be IT, the big thing to bring the series back to life, and as this article later says, it's just sitting there, floundering, with a bunch of battle passes.

 

[Revolsin]

needed to be said. they've just been spinning their wheels for a while now with no end in sight... except i guess we might be reaching an end. in a way.

 

[Sin & Punishment]

I've been wondering the same thing since the Xbox One

 

[Xbro]

I genuinely think there is a need for someone to file the space of being a direct competitor of playstation. Simply because having a defacto single console for the latest and greatest 3rd party games to go to is bad

 

[Josh5890]

The article title is very click-baity, but there are some really good points in there.

 

[Felony]

Plenty of folks at Xbox have asked themselves the very same question. The title is apt. Blunt as hell, but very fitting.

It's also actually making a lot of good points. There's no direction within the ecosystem, and likely hasn't been in years, yet a lot more folks waiting in line outside -- cash in hand -- are seeing through the windows into the mess that is the house of Xbox.

 

[EvilChameleon]

I genuinely think there is a need for someone to file the space of being a direct competitor of playstation. Simply because having a defacto single console for the latest and greatest 3rd party games to go to is bad

Here's how I would "win" the next gen for XBOX and also get thrown out of the window of the boardroom like in that meme;

One SKU, sold at a likely loss, $400. Fully backwards compatible, disc drive included, slightly better stats than the Series X. Launch with a Halo game, a Gears game, and a COD game. Drop the requirement of GamePass Core for online play for those games. Go.

 

[VegiHam]

Xbox is an app on my PC that lets me try out games I might like to buy on steam for £8 month.

That's the whole point of it, for me.

 

[Brock Reiher]

Xbox Series X is easily the best place to play games that aren't available on the Nintendo Switch, and you can play tons of indie games for free thanks to Game Pass. It plays tv/movies and Blu rays too. What more "point" do you need?

 

[unkindlynice]

Article raises a history of bad behaviours/decisions by MS over the years but I can’t help but feel the issue for Xbox is that actually Microsoft has bought Activision and now Xbox is getting absorbed into that.

 

[Síriocaz]

The article title is very click-baity, but there are some really good points in there.

I think it's missing the point that "growth, growth and growth" is also everyone else's mission, it just so happens that Sony and Nintendo nailed it and Microsoft failed miserably.

To me, it speaks more of a short vision coming from management, that they passed on their opportunity to create their own 50 million RPG (although, and the article remarks it, they had their precedent with Fable), that their message with Xbox-TV-Kinect backfired—a tad ironic considering this is roughly how the big consoles work nowadays, and that they thought Game Pass would become big and with zero consequences down the line.

I think it's also noticeable that part of their decision-making was influenced by their wish to break apart from the competition, seeing how the usual console business only more or less worked with the X360 and would continue almost exclusively serving Sony well into the PS4 years.

 

[Vookatos]

Good article. Happy to see the industry acknowledge the problems. I'm not sure whether Eurogamer is full of good takes, but I'm quite surprised considering most mainstream gaming journalism is just free PR. Hoping to see more people call out companies' bullshit.

 

[PixelKnight]

By contrast, the culture that's developed at Xbox is seemingly one-and-done. One strike and you're out. Redfall didn't work? Forget the talent involved in Dishonored and Prey, forget, crucially, the invaluable lessons that team will have learned from its struggles with Redfall. You're gone. Hi-Fi Rush, exactly the kind of game the platform needs, didn't drive enough subscribers? See ya. (Despite its nature as "a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations", as Aaron Greenberg, VP of Xbox marketing put it at the time.) When Lionhead was closed in 2016, some developers had been there since the studio was founded in 1997.

What message does it send to a developer if you know you're one bad game, one troubled project, away from your studio being instantly closed - what does that do to your desire to innovate and experiment? It obliterates it. It drags every developer on that platform towards conservatism, risk-aversion and safe bets. Towards derivativeness - X game with Y elements is big right now - and ultimately creative death.

Article seems on point to me. Lack of direction outside of telling their talent to chase trends, regardless of whether or not their studios have expertise in that particular trend. And if the results aren’t a smash hit? As in, not just an award-winning, critically acclaimed hit, but a breakout smash? Not good enough. Studio closed. That’s not an environment that fosters talent, creativity, experimentation. All multinationals chase the money, but when the long term money maker is a sustainable path to regular creative work customers actually want across a portfolio of studios, throwing bodies at tired trends is a short term plan, not a 10+ year one.

 

[Oscillator]

I don't think Xbox ever had a direction except Halo.

Halo 1 sold the Xbox
Halo 2 sold Xbox Live
Halo 3 sold the 360

Then Halo has been nothing but downhill since.

 

[lilty]

The entire situation surrounding Xbox is so frustrating. I remember the glory days of the 360 and absolutely loved that console, and then they completely bungled the Xbox One announcement which has been well documented. What’s annoying is that they made some actual good decisions along the way to try and rehabilitate the brand. Getting rid of the Kinect requirement, the amazing back compat efforts, the hardware refresh and One X. There were reasons to be excited about the brand leading into the current generation and the hardware team delivered 2 quality pieces of kit.

Then, nothing but disappointing games and special edition controllers. It’s kind of ridiculous how every June Xbox comes out with a presser talking about how next year will be the biggest year ever and then nearly every project is delayed or doesn’t live up to expectations. I have been legitimately angry about Tango since the news broke because even though I haven’t played HFR yet, it looks like the coolest game Xbox has published in years.

At this point Game Pass has to go. It is clearly not working.

 

[Galgavias]

Microsoft's problem for the past decade has been the fact they cannot project manage their games in development well...like at all well. I always joke that they've had the best upcoming slate of games for the past 10 years. Yet they never quite meet their potential. They just aimlessly drift from one project to the next, snap up a new studio hoping this one brings home the bacon, and then move on to the next shiny toy when these new projects they manage begin to drift.

They need a firmer guiding presence at executive level guiding these projects and occasionally giving them a kick up the arse. AKA they need a Miyamoto.

 

[Apopheniac]

At this point? To control tremendously popular IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Fallout, and perch themselves as as unignorable behemoth that’s permanently affixed to the industry. Like, the other day I was thinking, Microsoft could exit the console industry, causing Sony to be perceived as the winner of their console war… only for them to have to immediately acknowledge that Microsoft is now also their most important 3rd party partner that they’ll be dependent on for as long as they themselves are producing hardware.

Until Microsoft's mismanagement drives these franchises into the ground. I don't see any reason to believe that Microsoft will be better stewards of ZeniMax or Activision than they've been of their own internal studios. Mojang at least seems to be in the clear, though Minecraft practically sells itself at this point.

 

[metwars]

It's just so unfortunate seeing xbox in this position. The OG and 360 were major in my childhood, especially halo. The amount of death matches we played as kids in halo and halo 2 was crazy.

But now, it just seems to be falling flat. Which is a shame since to me it seemed like the console had some good promise. I love the console itself, and the controller is great as always....but the games never really got to where it should be. Being promised games like fable and perfect dark, only to not see anything from them for years now is frustrating. Like what happened to Everwild. That game looked so good. I still love playing 3rd party games on the system...but man the wasted potential

 

[touchfuzzy]

Xbox Series X is easily the best place to play games that aren't available on the Nintendo Switch, and you can play tons of indie games for free thanks to Game Pass. It plays tv/movies and Blu rays too. What more "point" do you need?

This logic always tickles me a bit. Can't wait to watch all the NFL games for free when I renew my DAZN subscription in the fall too, I guess?

 

[N 2 Deep]

The leadership has fundamentally gone against what makes any of these products attractive: great software.

They simply haven't put out any amazing games and then the great games they have released they reward those teams by letting them go...

i have no clue whats going on with them, whether they're too hands off, or the leadership has no clue about how the gaming industry works, but something has to give. Idk how they were more competent for their first two gens but just have been fumbling since. MS said they won't care if their employees unionize and that's what every single team should be working towards imo

 

[Brock Reiher]

The leadership has fundamentally gone against what makes any of these products attractive: great software.

They simply haven't put out any amazing games and then the great games they have released they reward those teams by letting them go...

i have no clue whats going on with them, whether they're too hands off, or the leadership has no clue about how the gaming industry works, but something has to give. Idk how they were more competent for their first two gens but just have been fumbling since. MS said they won't care if their employees unionize and that's what every single team should be working towards imo

Xbox does have lots of great software, just not exclusive. It is the best place to play that great software though imo

 

[N 2 Deep]

Xbox does have lots of great software, just not exclusive. It is the best place to play that great software though imo

Agreed but marketing for their best games and making the Xbox platform as a whole more attractive hasn't been something they executed well on

Additionally some of their biggest AAA games have just fallen flat with the public, I am a XSX owner and I just haven't used it at all for almost a year now

 

[Prophet64]

My current Xbox series S still has a point. But hoo boy this is the last Xbox I'll ever own. Well played Microsoft.

 

[MaitreWakou]

A modern console to (re)play all the bangers that released on X360. That's it.

 

[Razgriz]

Xbox as a console to me at least is kinda representative of the general American dislike for how Japan managed to replace them in relevance on the gaming market after the 80s crash.

A lot of stuff surrounding Xbox has always given me that impression at least; when it launched, Xbox was specifically marketed as a. not being kiddie like Nintendo and b. not having the "creepy anime" stuff that Sony had (which funnily enough more or less made them in the same position SEGA used to be in with their marketing, minus the Sony part). Like, Xbox was for the jocks, the cool kids and it was that at the expense of everyone else.

There's also the general arrogance from Microsoft towards marketing in Japan and the documented failures of doing soand to this day desire to try and buy Nintendo (for which they essentially got laughed out of the room and told to never come back). Remember that this was an actual ad for Xbox in Japan. They also just straight up refuse to market in most developing countries, even though Xbox's cheaper price range compared to Sony should give them an easy market in those regions.

And that's without delving into the general... well, just American jingoism present on brands with similar mental headspace to Xbox; shit like X-Play was rightfully raked for extreme racism a while back, but also things like how people like Phil Fish (a prominent developer for XBLA) said that Japanese games just suck - there's a culture that enabled those things and it's hard to not tie that into Xbox. There's something to examine here if you want to delve into the general bloodthirst of the US post-9/11 and Xbox's role in making the spunkgargleweewee shooter a thing. There's also the thing where rainbow/green LEDs are the "gamer aesthetic" (aka why I can't buy a proper keyboard without it having the ablity to tire my eyes out if the OS hasn't mounted the drivers yet) and how it's pretty much entirely a debranded version of XBox's visual style.

Outside of the US and the UK, Xbox is pretty much a non-presence as well (lending further credence to this notion); I can go to any gaming store here and I'll find ~4 racks of Sony, ~5 racks of Nintendo and if I'm lucky, a dumpster dive with some Xbox games in it.

The mistakes of Xbox go back way further than 2013. The Xbone is just what killed the brand in the US for a while and it's resurrection attempt is clearly still hampered by the same arrogance. The mentality is what's wrong here. Xbox' focus is and always primarily was to be "the console for the USA since the USA is the best" (insert eagle noise) and that's what is still keeping them from being good. Spencer was able to put the wool on the eyes of some people, but he is the guy who still thought he could put Nintendo on his wikipedia page through an acquisition, in spite of the fact that Japanese law literally prevents foreign takeovers over companies like Nintendo. There's such an extreme risk aversion when it comes to the Microsoft approach of game development, combined with the gluttonous desire to swallow up as many publishers as possible, which makes all this quite apparent.

 

[TheRealSploge]

A modern console to (re)play all the bangers that released on X360. That's it.

The first thing I did when I got a Series X was replay Gears of War…

Then Halo 1-3. Then I sold it.

 

[Lugia667]

Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN

Has the rapid growth of Xbox made the ship too heavy? Following the closures of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse, we explore what the future of Xbox could look like.

www.ign.com

while most of this article is Ryan defending Phil and absolving him of everything this one quote stuck out

I spoke to two former longtime Xbox employees, separately, and both lamented the current state of the business. One told me, prior to this week’s awful studio closures, “I had lengthy conversations with a bunch of Xbox founders, and we all came to the same conclusion: it’s no longer Xbox, but Microsoft Gaming.” Ouch.

 

[9-Volt]

I don't think Xbox ever had a direction except Halo.

Halo 1 sold the Xbox
Halo 2 sold Xbox Live
Halo 3 sold the 360

Then Halo has been nothing but downhill since.

For a very brief moment, Xbox was "the only HD console in the market". That lasted only one year though, making the system the best selling non-Nintendo/PS console in the end.

 

[Leo]

I've been asking myself that for the last 20 years, seems like everyone has caught up at last.

 

[JorgenRaft]

Their place in the industry currently is kind of weird and questionable. I don't think them leaving would put Sony is a place to monopolize home gaming. PC, Nintendo, and Playstation are all in competition with one another despite their differences, and I think these differences are a good thing and help keep the industry interesting and diverse. Xbox has tried making their "difference" to be Gamepass, but it doesn't really seem to work.

Nintendo and Playstation fuck up sometimes, but their brands are so strong that they typically course correct and adapt to make up for it. That makes it really tough for Xbox to compete against when they don't have anything to make them really stand out like the other 2. They bought these 2 giant companies to potentially have more notable exclusives, but now we're seeing some of these games come to other systems and some of these studios get shut down. Even the one thing that identified and carried their brand from the beginning, Halo, has been having its own issues.

I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, but we'll have to see how exactly they approach the next few years before we start getting into another generation.

 

[Red Monster]

Here's how I would "win" the next gen for XBOX and also get thrown out of the window of the boardroom like in that meme;

One SKU, sold at a likely loss, $400. Fully backwards compatible, disc drive included, slightly better stats than the Series X. Launch with a Halo game, a Gears game, and a COD game. Drop the requirement of GamePass Core for online play for those games. Go.

This is good, but all three of those are shooters. My favorite memories of Xbox are from the launch of the 360, where we had Call of Duty 2, yeah, but also PGR3 and Kameo and King Kong.

 

[Echobyte]

I have been thinking about this since the news the other day. I am a long-time Xbox fan. I had the OG console in 2023 and have been there for all the console launches. We are far from the OG days and even further from the 360's early years. It sucks. Xbox was a coming of age console for me. It was the first video game system I worked hard for and saved money. Halo was a great game and changed how I view shooters. Halo 2 took it a step further and got me into competitive gaming, which I still do today with Apex Legends and OW2. Sony and Nintendo systems have had their own influences on me in different ways, and if they were going through this, I'd still feel the same way about them.

I really thought the XSX would mark a return to form, and it is closer to the 360 days. Thats not happening. I have mostly moved to Steam as my main platform which has been a long time coming (18 years on Steam).

 

[EvilChameleon]

This is good, but all three of those are shooters. My favorite memories of Xbox are from the launch of the 360, where we had Call of Duty 2, yeah, but also PGR3 and Kameo and King Kong.

Okay, you've twisted my arm. Let's throw in a Forza game and that Fable game that Playground has been making for 30 years.

 

[Oscillator]

OT:

There's also the thing where rainbow/green LEDs are the "gamer aesthetic" (aka why I can't buy a proper keyboard without it having the ablity to tire my eyes out if the OS hasn't mounted the drivers yet)

--> https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/collections/ducky-keyboards (Some RGB mixed in, alas.)

 

[lexony]

Microsoft's problem for the past decade has been the fact they cannot project manage their games in development well...like at all well. I always joke that they've had the best upcoming slate of games for the past 10 years. Yet they never quite meet their potential. They just aimlessly drift from one project to the next, snap up a new studio hoping this one brings home the bacon, and then move on to the next shiny toy when these new projects they manage begin to drift.

They need a firmer guiding presence at executive level guiding these projects and occasionally giving them a kick up the arse. AKA they need a Miyamoto.

I‘m not sure if they’d have needed as much presence as Nintendo, I mean they have their whole design philosophy they even demand of their partners working with them.

It would have already been a good starting point to have a vision of what type of games they want to make and if this is even something they want to keep doing as part of their business, I mean it would have been an option to just go more in a platform provider role like Steam or Apple.

Because it really seems now that the only reason they bought studios left and right was to keep Gamepass alive with short term deals for another year. Something they would have gotten for way cheaper if they‘d have just kept doing partnerships with other publishers.

 

[RedSpring]

Microsoft as a developer/publisher has been pretty horrific. Seems like games either take forever or just plagued with issues. A real shame because I really like the few original ip they have. Layoffs are always terrible and they’re all people who already made great games before being bought just to never find their footing and let go after purchase.

But as a console maker, I have really like their recents products. Xbox One X is a nice premium upgrade over the original. A cheaper version in Series S along with Game Pass are a great boon for many people wanting to get into high end gaming. The UI features are great with multiple game suspend and smart delivery. The amazing enhanced backward compatibility is great for someone who hasn’t bought their previous consoles. It would be a shame to see Microsoft leaving the console space.

 

[freedomseekr]

Microsoft's attitude towards anything since the mid-to-late 90s has been "we want to be part of that as well", especially in the consumer market. It resulted in the Zune and Windows Phone, two tech products that are widely regarded as failures. And even on the B2B side, they haven't had any major innovation for a long time (in fact, it was only after Google Docs launched that they introduced collaboration tools into Office) and their whole shtick with Windows has been "let's copy Apple and Mac OS" which has ended up not working as they had probably hoped.

Xbox falls under the same attitude. There has never been a long-term strategy with it and even at its most successful, it’s been a fluke due to outside factors – the 360 had one less device to contend with as Nintendo decided to bow out of the hardcore-focused market with the Wii and it launched earlier than the PS3 (which had an extremely messy launch period), giving it a leg up, but by 2010 the whole endeavour had just ground to a halt.

What’s the point of Xbox? It’s to satiate Microsoft’s desire for what essentially amounts to a participation award at best and to help them create another stranglehold on an industry at worst.

 

[My Tulpa]

This is like asking “what’s the point in 3rd party tv consoles? Why not just be a pc gamer or cloud game on a portable device?”

Once you answer that question, you will understand why an Xbox exists.

PlayStation and Xbox will eventually become irrelevant, relatively (like record players and cd players and uhd players)…but until then, it makes sense for Xbox to have a footprint

This Eurogamer article is clickbait pretending like this doesn’t apply to PlayStation as well.

 

[Hailinel]

This is like asking “what’s the point in 3rd party tv consoles? Why not just be a pc gamer or cloud game on a portable device?”

Once you answer that question, you will understand why an Xbox exists.

PlayStation and Xbox will eventually become irrelevant, relatively (like record players and cd players and uhd players)…but until then, it makes sense for Xbox to have a footprint

This Eurogamer article is clickbait pretending like this doesn’t apply to PlayStation as well.

You don't sound like you read it.

It's an opinion piece, but it's a pretty well-reasoned piece on how Xbox ended up where it is now after a decade of wheel-spinning, repeating past mistakes, and unforced errors.

 

[PixelKnight]

You don't sound like you read it.

It's an opinion piece, but it's a pretty well-reasoned piece on how Xbox ended up where it is now after a decade of wheel-spinning, repeating past mistakes, and unforced errors.

This. Even the headline isn’t an unreasonable question when read as ‘what exactly is Xbox management trying to achieve’, which the article stands up, at length. Spicy headline if you don’t read further? Yes. But given that some Xbox management are saying ‘we need games like hi-fi rush’ at the same time as others are canning the studio after it released a critically acclaimed hit, because they apparently also only want smash mega hits, they come across as directionless and confused.

If the goal of Xbox remains domination of the American living room as a media hub (as flawed as that is for a multinational), then focusing on mega GAAS games where people play a single game forever, while at the same time selling a subscription service with thousands of games on it including all the latest first party ones, doesnt match up as a pair of strategies. If the goal of Xbox (as Bond says) is ‘every screen is an Xbox’, then that’s a different proposition, presumably requiring a greater range of titles for people streaming to tablets and phones rather than just ‘latest AAA GaaS game or bust’. At this point they don’t seem to know what Xbox is other than cutting studios to save money in the short term. And so ‘what exactly is your plan as the major platform with no clear strength other than backing from MS?’ seems an entirely reasonable question from the games press to me.

 

[Lord Azrael]

To me it seemed like the "point" of Xbox was to serve as a mere gateway to their true ambition, the cloud gaming subscription model. They wanted to be the first player to what they viewed as the future of gaming, to establish dominance early. But as it turns out, this model doesn't seem to be bearing much fruit. Hell even show/movie streaming services have reached the same conclusion these past few years, but it's doubly true for gaming. Something like Netflix is gonna be more appealing because for one flat fee, you can watch dozens of shows and movies in a year. But most games require a lot more investment than that - lots of people probably look at Game Pass and think it's not worth it if they only play two or three big games a year anyway.

Or well, at least that's what I would say the most recent "point" of Xbox was. If you look back a couple of generations then yeah, the previous goal was to become some sort of living room hub. And now that they've seemingly decided that the current direction isn't working, and are pivoting away from it at record speed, what's the new goal of Xbox? I honestly have no idea. That's the problem the article is getting at I guess, Microsoft never had a coherent vision that they managed to stick to for more than a few years at a time. Now I'm not even sure Xbox will keep existing. Microsoft might finally just decide to settle as a publisher, raking in money from their biggest properties the old fashioned way, and give up on trying to misguidedly lead the charge into new spaces.

 

[Galgavias]

Microsoft's strategy has always been 'we need everyone in the world to be using our software and product ecosystem', so their every product and decision stems from the desire to drive people towards Windows, which is their bread and butter. They only entered the console market because they foresaw a time in which consoles could effectively serve as computers hooked up to everyone's TV. That thought terrified them, and the OG Xbox was born.

Now some twenty years later, what has happened is these computers are now in the palms of our hands in the form of smartphones, and consoles have largely remained entertainment products. That leaves Microsoft a bit stuck, as they aren't really an entertainment company. Phil's strategy was to turn them into one, by making them the 'go-to' place for high end video gaming and luring people onto the general Microsoft ecosystem. That was what GamePass was, that's what their pushes for cloud streaming and AI are for, that's why this week they announced they're opening a new mobile app store. It's all to get consumers to lock themselves into their software ecosystem and not run off to Apple.

It's a plan that, strategically speaking, isn't without merit. But I think Phil and his team have done a terrible job making all these acquisitions and producing something tangible from it that he can report to his higher ups. GamePass was for a while, but that oasis has seemingly run dry. Their record in actually producing and releasing games I can describe - somewhat generously - as spotty, and that's a failure in project management.

Now Phil and his team find themselves at the far end of a Bond villain's big table, with the head honchos stroking white cats and spouting lines like 'remember, this organisation does not tolerate failure.' So they're now stuck in a rock and a hard place. They need to prove that Xbox has not only value, but can generate significant profit. Hence this drastic realignment. And if they fail, then people more powerful than them will make this realignment even more drastic.

 

[Haziqonfire]

This is like asking “what’s the point in 3rd party tv consoles? Why not just be a pc gamer or cloud game on a portable device?”

Once you answer that question, you will understand why an Xbox exists.

PlayStation and Xbox will eventually become irrelevant, relatively (like record players and cd players and uhd players)…but until then, it makes sense for Xbox to have a footprint

This Eurogamer article is clickbait pretending like this doesn’t apply to PlayStation as well.

I’d suggest you read the article. It a history of how Xbox got to where they are, it’s not really applicable to PlayStation or Nintendo in the same way.

 

[Armoured_Bear]

Xbox Series X is easily the best place to play games that aren't available on the Nintendo Switch, and you can play tons of indie games for free thanks to Game Pass. It plays tv/movies and Blu rays too. What more "point" do you need?

Why is it "easily the best place"?
That's a big statement, I for one, think the PS5 controller is miles better and would choose it every time.

 

[mrtanooki]

Outside of some 3rd party games looking and running slightly better i would find it difficult to recommend a Series X over a PS5.