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Xbox If xbox ever goes third party, which company could succeed him, if any?

Xbox technically already is third party since they publish some of their games on other platforms. Minecraft is on everything!
 
I don't know who would be foolish enough to enter that market. Sony has a solid hold on the core audience and has so many folks trapped in their ecosystem thanks to digital purchases. Nintendo has the family audience (and seemingly everyone else, too).

I just don't see it happening.
 
None. The barrier to entry is too high now for any other competitor to enter the traditional console hardware market.

Playstation would become a de facto monopoly.
 
I think this is what Microsoft is banking on; the era of consoles coming to a close so they can take the market leader position of cloud gaming up against the likes of Amazon, Tencent (and formerly Google Stadia).

Granted, that market transition still won't be as fast as they'd like given the lack of network infrastructure for a LOT of rural and even some suburban areas that would require significantly faster speeds than what is currently offered all around the globe. However, that won't preclude it.

For better and for worse, if Microsoft does decide it's time to exit the hardware market, it's because they sense a paradigm shift on the horizon. When that happens we all better be prepared to expect a seismic change in the gaming landscape that'll make the attempted ABK acquisition appear like a minor tremor.
 
crashazo said:
That could be true, but according to someone, tencent is the best option.
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Tencent is only involved in video games insofar as owning stocks in studios. They don’t directly manage the game development process as far as I know.

Steam took a stab with the Deck but that’s more a handheld PC than an actual console.

Google… well, Stadia happened and died.

Basically: it’s incredibly difficult to establish a new video game platform. Sony and Nintendo are deeply entrenched in the psyche of consumers.
 
🤣 at Amazon. Jury is still out on them as far as their internal studios are concerned.

meatbag said:
Steam took a stab with the Deck but that’s more a handheld PC than an actual console
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And "steam machines" before that

meatbag said:
Basically: it’s incredibly difficult to establish a new video game platform. Sony and Nintendo are deeply entrenched in the psyche of consumers.
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If there was one thing Ouya demonstrated, it's this by a country mile
 
Xbox isn’t going to “go third party,” don’t be daft.

For all their struggles with establishing a regular stream of first-party output they just announced Xbox’s second-best 1Q results ever, and the only reason it wasn’t the best ever was because they didn’t ship enough consoles to meet demand.

They’re making money, Game Pass is growing, and the Series S/X is off to a faster start in sales than the Xbox One was. The “is Xbox leaving the console market?” moment was when Nadella took over and was refocusing Microsoft toward the enterprise and was re-evaluating all their current initiatives, with an especially critical eye toward all of Ballmer’s futile endeavors in the consumer electronics market. That moment isn’t now, after they’ve basically purchased a whole new first party publishing operation, and then also Bethesda.
 
Apple released Apple Music and Apple TV on non Apple devices a while ago. You can use Apple Music on Android. Apple still makes a ton of quality hardware every year. Microsoft could release everything on Switch / PS but people are still in the Xbox ecosystem and would continue using them.
 
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If they really want it, Google or Amazon. But they have to have full faith ala Microsoft. Reminder the original Xbox was a net loss and they still made a sequel. I don't see Amazon or Google doing that. I wish it'd be someone who mainly makes games but the market isn't like that now, Nintendo has only survived due to being the kickstarter of it and having legacy, and even they were seriously in trouble only a few years ago. In some AU where the Dreamcast is a smash hit, SEGA would still have fallen eventually I think.

This is why I don't know how to feel about Microsoft, like on one hand I feel we need them to exist in the market and GamePass is really cool and could mark a shift towards more pro-consumer policies, but on the other hand I hate hate hate their desire to grow and grow. A few years ago, while still prefering Nintendo as devs I said they were the best of the 3 from a consumer/industry health standpoint but I've realized they're playing the long game for a monopoly which... probably obvious I'm dumb for thinking of it in purely benevolent terms, and none the less its still good to shift things towards less exclusivity, but like man they don't need to grow anymore.
 
Johna X said:
on the other hand I hate hate hate their desire to grow and grow.
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All companies want to grow and grow. Amazon owns a movie studio. Google owns Fitbit. Embracer owns both a giant board game company and a top-five comic book publisher. AMC (the meme stock theater chain) owns a 22% share of a mining company. Through a weird quirk of history, AMC Networks (the TV channel company) owns the publishing rights to Agatha Christie’s books.

I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t hate Microsoft, and/or all these other companies, for wanting to grow and grow and grow. I’m just saying it’s a little weird to single MS out for pursuing growth. Nintendo went from a playing card company to a global entertainment powerhouse, after all.
 
Gay Bowser said:
All companies want to grow and grow. Amazon owns a movie studio. Google owns Fitbit. Embracer owns both a giant board game company and a top-five comic book publisher. AMC (the meme stock theater chain) owns a 22% share of a mining company. Through a weird quirk of history, AMC Networks (the TV channel company) owns the publishing rights to Agatha Christie’s books.

I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t hate Microsoft, and/or all these other companies, for wanting to grow and grow and grow. I’m just saying it’s a little weird to single MS out for pursuing growth. Nintendo went from a playing card company to a global entertainment powerhouse, after all.
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Well yes, I understand capitalism, Nintendo has done many bad things, I guess I moreso mean the desire for buyouts in the game industry was far smaller a few years ago, ABK feels like an escalation and its led to Sony fans calling for some retaliation and Nintendo fans insisting they need to buy all their outsource studios like Hal like yes they all want to grow I mean it actually feels like Sony and Nintendo are a lot less interested in expansion by buyout. Now somehow miraculously the anti-trust system may have actually scored a win for once but the intent is clear.
 
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Tencent I think. But I see Embracer Group dabbling into this side of the business too in the near future.
 
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The only companies able to become platform holders at this point are huge multinationals, and even then it’s a large risk for them with the amount of cash sunk into it (see Amazon). TenCent/Embracer likely could try, but I don’t think they would, they seem happy enough just expanding almost exponentially as third party publishers.
 
It would need to be someone who could differentiate themselves and offer something completely different.

Personally, I'd love it if Atari finally got their collective shit together and did something spectacular. I mean, it's a pipe dream, and outside of shovelware or the odd nostalgic throwback they haven't really done anything of note for decades, but the idea of a company with both new blood and stacks of IP really swinging for the fences (not you, Intellivision) peaks my curiosity. They wouldn't even need it to be a super powerful console, they just need the right minds behind their IP and the right hook.

Hell, they could do a wallet friendly VR set and throw money at people to make VR games for them. I'd buy Missile Command VR......

Or yeah, SEGA. Dreamcast 2 please.
 
None. The cost and skills needed to enter the gaming market is so astronomically higher today than it was over 20 years ago when Microsoft first entered the market with Xbox.

If Microsoft hypothetically stopped making Xbox consoles and went "third party" in the sense that they're willing to regularly put 1st party games on Playstation/Nintendo, then I think the market would just become Playstation/Nintendo/Steam.
 
Reading over this thread and…yeah! It seems very unlikely someone else would try and take up that mantle. Apple has got their games and hardware range and that setup will likely not change. Valve makes good hardware but between the Index and Deck they seem pretty focused on the higher end / aren’t interested in mass producing something at a lower price. And I can’t think of anyone else with the bank to even try!
 
Google and Apple would be the only companies with the war chests to do so, and we already saw how it turned out for Google.
 
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Pragmatically Amazon is really the only company with the war chest to do so, well Google too but we already saw them fail and bail with Stadia.
 
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I don't think anyone would attempt to launch a console. But you'd see others pursue subscription/streaming services
 
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Succeed what, making their own console? Not worth it

Anyway Microsoft is already the best third party supporter of the Switch
 
The last time other companies had any opportunity to do this was when Sega faceplanted with the Saturn

In 2001 you needed "2001 era Microsoft trying to prevent Nintendo or Sony muscling into personal computing through video games" money

Now? Man. I don't know. It'd take a lot, and I don't think any of these corpos is willing or able to measure up to the culture lead (including and especially labour/production/development culture) that Nintendo and Sony have
 
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Arguably meta are already a console maker. Quest 2 has sold 20 million units (coming up on GameCube and Xbox) and is standalone with its own store that it gets a cut of all sales from.

Of course a big argument against that is meta is positioning VR as beyond gaming ("metaverse") so if that whole bullshit fails they may drop it altogether and if it succeeds that it won't really be a console business anymore.
 
crepuscule said:
Arguably meta are already a console maker. Quest 2 has sold 20 million units (coming up on GameCube and Xbox) and is standalone with its own store that it gets a cut of all sales from.

Of course a big argument against that is meta is positioning VR as beyond gaming ("metaverse") so if that whole bullshit fails they may drop it altogether and if it succeeds that it won't really be a console business anymore.
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Yeah, in most of the ways that matter, the Quest basically is a console.

Apple is probably the only company that could reasonably enter the home console space. They already have a TV OS platform (the imaginatively named tvOS), and they already have an App Store and a relationship with pretty much every game publisher, and they have their own internal chip design division that has done pretty incredible work elevating the performance of mobile chips, particularly in the realm of graphics. Thus far, their tvOS hardware has aimed at the streaming player market, with gaming as sort of a bonus feature, but it’s not hard at all to imagine them developing a more purpose-built “GamePod” with a more powerful SoC, a controller in the box, and a higher price, and then working to encourage publishers to bring their “real console” games to it. They have all the pieces in place to do that, it wouldn’t even necessarily be a massive investment for them like their car or their weird Reality AR/VR thing is.
 
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As s console maker? None, the risks and needed investment are just too high and the few companies that maybe could afford it are more interested in driving other alternative types of platforms and storefronts (mobile, PC, VR, cloud, etc).
 
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