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[VitoNotVito]

It just getting boring…
When will people understand that juggernaut like Microsoft doesn’t care about „sentiments”. Their executives are paid big money to say whatever you want to hear. What they do is completely separate story. Those people’s only obligation is to the shareholders and they only follow their bonuses/paychecks. Their decisions are solely based on what brings profit and growth because that’s exactly what it says in their employment contracts.
How many freaking times people need to hear it in order to stop asking stupid questions?

 

[FeralEcho]

The entire western gaming landscape is crumbling.

Ubisoft is a shell of its former self,EA is live service garbage with the ocasional singleplayer every couple years,TakeTwo is basically just GTA at this point,WB is mentally retarded throwing shit at wall hoping some live service no one wants might stick before they go bankrupt,Embracer is....lol,Activision was basically just COD before Xbox took over,and Sony's western division seems to do everything in its power to fuck up the legacy built over years and years of amazing games and new ips with by the numbers sequels and woke products like Spiderman 2 who seem more interested in sending a message than letting the player have fun.

Xbox is just following suit to all these companies because like the rest they have garbage ceos and board of directors who only care about money and greed and follow every stupid trend that thinks will bring them more money.

Problem with Xbox compared to Playstation is that they have put themselves in this shithole a loooong time ago and have done nothing to course correct,from lackluster games for years and years,to following fading trends,to not sticking with their vision at any one time to always lying in interviews and most importantly to having retarded fans that nod in approval at every stupid decision they make just because they are incapable of criticizing their beloved company...

Gaming has become mainstream and therefore it's no longer entertainment, it's a business through and through with money being the only thing that dictates ideas and we're heading head first into another crash because of the greed of these incompetent cunts at the helm of these once great companies who have no fucking idea what gamers actually want.

Seriously FUCK these ceos for what they did to gaming!Eat shit and fuck off you greedy incompetent imbeciles!

 

[Astray]

As someone who's deeply invested in the gaming world and owns consoles from Sony and Nintendo, I can't help but notice the recent struggles of Xbox. With Microsoft being one of the biggest companies globally, boasting vast expertise and resources, it's baffling to witness some of the missteps they've been making lately.

From lackluster game releases to contentious business decisions regarding exclusivity deals and marketing strategies, Xbox seems to be faltering in areas where they should excel. As gamers, we've seen Microsoft's potential with previous Xbox iterations, so why the sudden downturn?

I'm eager to hear your opinions on this matter. Do you believe it's a failure of leadership, a disconnect with the gaming community, or perhaps something else entirely? How do you think Microsoft can leverage its vast resources to turn the tide and reclaim its position as a gaming powerhouse?

They used to be in Stage 4 of Jim Collins' framework for "How the Mighty Fall", now they are thoroughly in Stage 5.

STAGE 5: CAPITULATION TO IRRELEVANCE OR DEATH
The longer a company remains in Stage 4, repeatedly grasping for silver bullets, the more likely it will spiral downward. In Stage 5, accumulated setbacks and expensive false starts erode financial strength and individual spirit to such an extent that leaders abandon all hope of building a great future. In some cases the company's leader just sells out; in other cases the institution atrophies into utter insignificance; and in the most extreme cases the enterprise simply dies outright.

The point of the struggle is not just to survive, but to build an enterprise that makes such a distinctive impact on the world it touches (and does so with such superior performance) that it would leave a gaping hole—a hole that could not be easily filled by any other institution—if it ceased to exist. To accomplish this requires leaders who retain faith that they can find a way to prevail in pursuit of a cause larger than mere survival (and larger than themselves) while also maintaining the stoic will needed to take whatever actions must be taken, however excruciating, for the sake of that cause.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

Failure of management, mismanagement of resources, lack of insight, and greed.

The management of recent Xbox is some of the worst I've ever seen.


Like you said, early Xbox consoles showed a lot of potential and were actually great. I like the OG Xbox and even though the 360 had the RROD fiasco it still had awesome games. The moment MS the company got rid of people like J Allard and Peter Moore who understood gaming, it was all downhill. I think the problems started around the Kinect when Don Mattrick started closing down their studios and the started leaning hard towards casuals with the Kinect. The TV, TV, TV of the XB1 launch was just a continuation of the hard lean towards casuals.

After MS got rid of Don and brought Phil, it looked like there was a glimmer of hope up until about 2015 when Halo 5 was released and was seen as somewhat of a disappointment. Xbox continued on a downhill path until 2017 with the launch of the XB1X. Looked like they were coming back but it was another fail since they launched the console with no games to take advantage of the hardware. GamePass was seen by many (not me) as the future of Xbox. The moment I saw GP, I knew the Xbox of old was dead.

Fast-forward to the start of this gen and the reason to own an Xbox at launch became GP instead of a great launch title. I remember thinking "WTF?!" when I first saw gameplay of Halo Infinite and realizing that MS had completely lost the plot. Then came the massive acquisitions of studios. First the smaller studios, and then big publishers like Bethesda and ABK. I knew GP wouldn't be enough to sustain those publishers so I just watched on the sidelines the inevitable train-wreck. Everyone in the gaming media is surprised and even a lot of Xbox fans are shocked but truthfully the signs were there for ages that Xbox would eventually crash and burn but they chose to ignore them.

Microsoft is too greedy and impatient to let Xbox naturally grow and thrive. They keep meddling with it and screwing it up with their stupid attempts to fast-track their marketshare and eclipse Sony and Nintendo. They don't realize that gaming development is an artform. They lack imagination and foresight, and are always quick to jump on perceived market trends too early. They keep pivoting left and right and totally lack focus. It doesn't help that Xbox is being run by a lying fraud like Phil Spencer who has a cult-like following of fans/people in gaming media who refuse to hold him accountable for his shitty business decisions.

 

[Tomi]

It's time that all companies sit together with microsoft and discuss what GAMERS WANT, not what microsoft wants, and only then something can change

 

[DenchDeckard]

I Think the only option for xbox for it to be successful and return it's reputation as we once knew it was is to sell it off...

..but I don't think microsoft gives two shits about that. They've secured IP and they will ultimately kill off the console business and become a huge third party publisher until the world is ready to be fully invested in cloud.

 

[RCU005]

The biggest problem Xbox has is that it has no identity and no soul. You can feel it in their conferences and game announcements. They just announce games, they don't announce XBOX games.

It's clear that Xbox management are always focusing on the competition and the "industry", instead of focusing on creating their own thing. They buy studios instead of creating their own. They have had many chances to become as popular or more than Sony, but they don't even see it.

 

[cormack12]

The entire western gaming landscape is crumbling.

Ubisoft is a shell of its former self,EA is live service garbage with the ocasional singleplayer every couple years,TakeTwo is basically just GTA at this point,WB is mentally retarded throwing shit at wall hoping some live service no one wants might stick before they go bankrupt,Embracer is....lol,Activision was basically just COD before Xbox took over,and Sony's western division seems to do everything in its power to fuck up the legacy built over years and years of amazing games and new ips with by the numbers sequels and woke products like Spiderman 2 who seem more interested in sending a message than letting the player have fun.

Xbox is just following suit to all these companies because like the rest they have garbage ceos and board of directors who only care about money and greed and follow every stupid trend that thinks will bring them more money.

Problem with Xbox compared to Playstation is that they have put themselves in this shithole a loooong time ago and have done nothing to course correct,from lackluster games for years and years,to following fading trends,to not sticking with their vision at any one time to always lying in interviews and most importantly to having retarded fans that nod in approval at every stupid decision they make just because they are incapable of criticizing their beloved company...

Gaming has become mainstream and therefore it's no longer entertainment, it's a business through and through with money being the only thing that dictates ideas and we're heading head first into another crash because of the greed of these incompetent cunts at the helm of these once great companies who have no fucking idea what gamers actually want.

Seriously FUCK these ceos for what they did to gaming!Eat shit and fuck off you greedy incompetent imbeciles!

Good post. I generally avoid these threads but this one seems to have promise. There are a number of issues currently.

General problems in the whole space
Peak games: Xbox has their own problems, but they are also dealing with market problems too. The captive console audience appears to be at saturation or at 'peak' (or running very close to). That is to say, most of the market who are interested in consoles own one or more of the three main competitors already. This is also affecting Sony. Nintendo are a bit more bulletproof because they have strong cross generational appeal. PlayStation and Xbox don't (though Xbox are obviously in a worse place).
Live Service: Since the money is all dropping out of live service games, they have become the chase. You're always fighting for consumers money, but now you're also fighting for their time. A captive audience only has so many hours to play, and if you punish them by missing out on time gated incentives, battle passes, season rewards then they are likely to gravitate towards fewer titles where they can 'max' out their characters.
Gambles: Taking a gamble on a large single player, action narrative game carries so much risk. The big thing about live service games is that just getting one right can make ten failures seem like nothing. You can't do that with single player games in the AAA space.
Cost of games: I think this is the elephant in the room. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have those games like Uncharted and Plague Tale but these high film/story production values don't need to be chased in every behind the shoulder narrative action games. Celebrity VA's, hours and hours of high fidelity cut scenes, studio mocap time and investment, creative rewrites (remocap), shoehorning mechanics into games that don't need them (base building, RPGLite elements, XP systems, side quests, open world hybrid games). Studio layoffs are point scoring exercises for most online console warriors, but everywhere is scaling back (1st party and 3rd party).


That's the backdrop of the industry right now to me. Challenging and needing to change and get its priorities in order. Then if we look at Xbox specific stuff
Quality: Just there are so many tangential issues with everything Microsoft are doing right now. Take the new Halo show, it's probably above average after the last season. However, Paramount+ hosting it can't get the subtitles working on Android TV, which means there are just large blank spaces when arbiter and Makee are speaking. It's just very disjointed with no responsibility or love for the detail and IPs - and this is just a TV adaptation! This extends to games as well though. Forza Motorsport is ok, I don't mind it - but Horizon is just in another league. Forza needs to be a system rival to GT7 and there are too many missteps for the idea to take hold. Not that GT7 had a great start itself, but it has heritage and fans. I've swerved off FM now and play ACC (more sim than simcade) but I haven't even back to FM. Redfall was another disaster. There was a good game underneath that, with good art and sound but who is at the top of the tree and saying this is ready to ship and the mechanics/characters are all good. Halo Infinite - I didn't mind the campaign tbh, and multiplayer was solid but undercooked. Right now, Xbox are putting out games like Saints Row level. The last 10% of any job is where all the presentation and effort is spent. And I think this is where Microsoft are generally failing. They are kind of accepting the 90% and not doing the 10%.
They also fuck up everything good in their platform. Quick Resume is excellent, yet now doesn't work with a lot of titles - so disable it then, or give the option to your players to disable it for certain games. The dashboard rebrand what everyone wanted, is now limiting and worse. Pulling clips off you companion app - now stopped. LFG getting spammed so it's fucking useless. The list goes on.
Xbox One: I agree with Phil. This was the absolute worse generation to fuck up, and they did. I've owned every console except the Xbox One. The whole reveal was all TV but only USA TV and linking. The Kinect is a pile of shite and was very niche, it should not have been front and centre of any strategy. This is the generation when MS should have cemented their Xbox Live as the ecosystem to be in. Sony had played catchup and had a strong finish to the generation, whereas MS didn't really. This was the generation people chose their provider for their digital libraries. It's going to be hard to convert any players now to switch ecosystems and leave their libraries, friends and digital content behind. They made their box the worst place to play 3rd party exclusives and then within months illustrated how their core userbase of COD was being let down on graphics and tech.
Converting players: "It's going to be hard to convert any players now to switch ecosystems" caveated by the fact that you have reasons for them to stay in it. Right now, Xbox aren't giving a reason for players to stick with Xbox. Gamepass is good but you can't buoy your hardware sales by an optional subscription. There is lots of uncertainty about which games are going to end up where. Uncertainty about their tentpole IPs and uncertainty about where the brand is headed.
Studio's/New IPs: Goes back to quality too but their gaming studio's still seems to operate very separate. There are jokes about homogenisation of Sony's games and style of games but you can take a step back and clearly see the strategy and quality control and direction of travel. The perception I have is that this does not exist in reality for the Microsoft studio's (both old and new). There's no identity there, most seem like 3rd party developers just providing a second party title for Xbox. I don't feel there's a common thread running through the brand. There's no love and care, but no senior leadership who are saying 'This is one of our fucking top titles, and this is not up to scratch'. I dunno if it's wanting to be seen as the nice guy or whatever, but sometimes you have to be frank about the quality.
On the flip side it was always going to take a lot of time for new games or new IPs to surface, but I do feel from the initial buzz, we should have seen more. What we have seen has not lived up to the hype (broadly speaking), allowing games like Psychonauts 2 and Pentiment to become examples of their best games. Hellblade can be the first step on a road to recovery, but every game coming out now has the weight of extra scrutiny on it as well. Yuo need ot be consistent, and you need to be consistent to a very high level and Xbox are still all over the place imo.

 

[Neff]

Unless their upcoming show goes out of its way to deliver, they're pretty much done. Bad press and lack of faith in the company has reached an unprecedented peak. Their cutthroat, cynical, greedy prioritisation of a slim library of lowest common denominator fare and live service fads at the expense of creativity and innovation is entirely at odds with the demands of loyal, repeat-business core gamers. The best reason to own a Xbox in 2024 is to relive the good old days via BC.

Xbox has all but disappeared from the gaming circles I frequent, and any time I switch on my Series X, my friend list is an offline wasteland.

 

[RoboFu]

The short answer is there is no one at MS who truly understands the gaming market. They only know corporate business 101. When your brand is down fire people and raise prices to make it look like you are not sitting on your ass doing nothing. Corporate 101 is all they know now. Anyone with vision and drive is long gone from the company.

 

[Moriarty1889]

They are imploding before our very eyes. Gamepass has destroyed the brand by devaluing their very own games. They don’t sell enough copies to recoup the costs needed because people want everything on gamepass to rent instead of buying. The console has become a relic of what it once was for Xbox as they don’t even promote it anymore. They don’t care if you buy it or play elsewhere as long as you subscribe to their end all be all Gamepass service. What a complete shitshow run by morons over at MS. The recent studio closures are more of an embarrassment as well. Phil Spencer, the coward and liar that he is, has gone into hiding and made Sarah Bond face the whirlwinds as she spoke nothing but a word salad. This pathetic display of zero accountability and failed leadership is beyond ridiculous. The only way to try and save or salvage the brand is to fire Spencer, Bond and Booty and hopefully replace them with competent people who have a clear vision of gaming. That is the only way I could see Xbox trying to recover before it has gone into complete and utter oblivion.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Microsoft cant understand a basic concept. Which is to create high quality games consistently. For some reason, they are hell bent on not doing that even though they have the resources to do it. Which makes them look even worse. They just don't understand gaming in the same way sony and Nintendo do.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Recent struggles?

It already started during the second half of the X360.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Microsoft almost always had problems especially after X360 era, but I think the core problem of Microsoft’s recent issues is they shouldn’t have spent almost $70 billion dollars for Activision/Blizzard primarily for COD. Imo, that’s probably the biggest mistake in gaming history and that’s saying a mouthful. I doubt they will ever make that money back in a lifetime.

 

[FunkMiller]

I'm eager to hear your opinions on this matter. Do you believe it's a failure of leadership, a disconnect with the gaming community, or perhaps something else entirely? How do you think Microsoft can leverage its vast resources to turn the tide and reclaim its position as a gaming powerhouse?

Spoiler:

They were never a gaming powerhouse.

What they were is a tech company that had enough money and influence to crow bar its way into an industry they knew nothing about - and still don't, really. They got extremely lucky with the Xbox 360 - largely because they had that money to push a genuinely great console out before Sony shat the bed with the Ps3's launch.

But the first two years of Xbox 360 are literally the only time they were on the ascendency as a game company. Without the parent company's money and power, Xbox as a brand would have been dead a long time ago - given how many cock ups the management have made over the years.

 

[panda-zebra]

They have had many chances to become as popular or more than Sony, but they don't even see it.

It's not reasonable to assume they never saw it. They had to be aware of their position - particularly when times were good. It's just that each time it was never enough in the context of xbox being a part of an increasingly gargantuan Microsoft.

xbox had to aim big - at times bigger than the entirety of all console gaming - to justify their existence to behemoth Microsoft. Besting Sony and becoming the central hub of the home was only compelling enough for the overlords in the very early days, over time they always demanded more under threat of the axe.

Instead of catering to their core they chose to lean on kinect for short-term gains. Instead of helping naturally grow an approximately 300 million addressable console market to 400 million over the course of a generation, they imagined a wider market of up to 1 billion with xbox becoming "the next water cooler". When the plan to serve a portion of 1 billion users through TV failed, well how about grabbing a portion of the entire 3 billion+ gaming market on all devices instead? Each time the prospect of these huge numbers must have been too mouth-watering for Microsoft to ignore.

The reality is that, by ignoring what they had and demanding more than their loyal core audience ever expected, each attempt at aiming higher and higher has only resulted in the console itself falling deeper and deeper into irrelevance for their wider gaming business arm.

Bettering Sony in the console gaming space is something now only compelling to aging console fanboys, a concept 15 years beyond its use-by date. xbox - in its original home gaming platform concept - is effectively over. If what we're hearing is true, xbox as a hardware platform seems destined to be relegated to a niche handheld and ironically, going full circle back to its more humble beginnings as a home console/PC hybrid, but without the subsidies. Microsoft spent obscene billions to seemingly help serve their subscription service, but in the time that took to negotiate the service has faltered and flatlined with stark post-Covid realities hitting home.

MS pulled a Rorschach move on themselves - ABK didn't get locked up within xbox, xbox got locked into becoming an even larger Activision.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

There’s no lately. They’ve been shit since mid to late 360 era and they haven’t stopped. They’re just riding off of people who think that will come back.

I dropped out when MS focused on Kinect, and they’re never done anything to make me want to come back.

 

[Trilobit]

I remember when Xbox used to be cool.

 

[Fredrik]

they will ultimately kill off the console business and become a huge third party publisher until the world is ready to be fully invested in cloud.

Yeah I think so too. The puzzle pieces of their plan to be on every screen and reach out to everyone are falling into place. They might keep the Xbox brand for awhile or they might rebrand as something else after the transition. I think they’ll leave the traditional console business within 2 years, could be faster. Apparently they’ll attempt to do something in the portable space, starting later this year, but I give that 2 years max.

Not much more to say. It’s just tragic to yet again see a platform with some new ideas go down. Trying to count how many deaths I’ve seen so far, at least 8; Atari, Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore, 3DO, Sega, Stadia, Xbox.

 

[Woody337]

Imagine if Microsoft spent that $80 billion on keeping people working and creating games instead of buying up ABK. It’s a HUGE slap in the face to throw that money around to only turn around and say we aren’t making money. Blows my mind.

 

[BlackTron]

gotta trim some fat don't need all those studios

Which might still exist had they not been purchased by MS lol

Funny thread BTW

 

[DForce]

Xbox has been struggling for years, but many people didn't want to see it because they were too busy celebrating Game Pass numbers and acquisitions.

They failed to produce those big games and if you do it for too long, then people are just going to lose faith in your product. It also doesn't help that most of the big games they did produce (outside of Forza Horizon) failed to deliver.

This is a management issue.

 

[Badlucktroll]

As we eagerly await and anticipate Xbox to ride off into the sunset, we must now take this time to ponder and reflect.

 

[jroc74]

Lets be real....the decisions they made this gen is a continuation of the decisions they made last gen and the gen before that.

XBO reveal: online drm, XBO initial policies, more of a focus on digital games, creation of Game Pass
Series consoles: Series S was made to be the primary sku, more of a focus on Game Pass

MS are hell bent on making the XBO reveal, policies a reality....and its happening in real time. The wild part is now TV TV TV isnt so bad....it helps older games if executed right. (TLoU, Fallout, etc)

 

[Sorcerer]

Xbox was never needed. Nintendo and Sony were always enough. Distinction between the 2.
Halo saved the first Xbox.
Live carried Xbox through the 360 era.
No more cards left to play with the One or the Series,

 

[jroc74]

Recent struggles?

It already started during the second half of the X360.

Yup, and its not about shifting blame or not holding Phillip K Spencer responsible.

But the push for Kinect by MS....going all in on it really fucked them up and they never recovered.

Cant really say it started with the XBO reveal when how the 360 ended that gen led to the XBO reveal.

 

[Fart Knight]

Lately? They've been struggling for 15 years

 

[Fireball]

The Xbox experience feels boring and outdated nowadays. The games are on many platforms, the UI looks like it is an Office 365 app for accounting, and cloud streaming is in beta for years now.

Was team Xbox since 2011, but recently got a PS5 and boy, does it deliver. The UI feels modern, animations and sounds feel really good while navigating the menus. I enjoy the story games there a lot more. And a few days ago I tried PS+ premium and the streaming is awesome. For 3rd person games, I really can't tell the difference in terms of graphics and latency. It is only in 1st person shooters, where the latency is still off.

It sucks, that I have around 250 games bought on Xbox, a lot of friends and memories, feeling it is a dying ecosystem. Now that they deliver the games to all kinds of platforms, it would make sense to turn Xbox into a prebuilt Win11 machine, lay together the MS stores and even enable steam on it. It makes no sense to keep the hardware system closed while distributing your games to each and everybody.

The way it is now, the Xbox hardware is turning into a loose end for MS.

 

[gothmog]

The problem with Microsoft is they think they deserve to be there because they spent the most money buying their way in. They barely understand their products or the market.

 

[Windom Earle]

In an alternate universe, Peter Moore launches the Xbox 720 as a true successor to the 360. Kinect, TV, Gamepass and AB acquisitions never happen.

I know the "blame everything on Mattrick" narrative is getting old, but it is crazy how long the history of errors is rooted in MS. The course of the ship never got corrected. Phil Spencer is a failure.

 

[Humdinger]

As many others have pointed out, these are not "recent" problems. They go back to 2010, when MS shifted its investment from the core gaming audience to chasing the casual market with Kinect. They stopped dancing with the guy that brung 'em. It got worse after that with the Xbox One gen, and it never really got better.

I was a big fan of the OG Xbox and the 360 (first half, anyhow). I jumped ship to Playstation around 2012 but kept looking back over my shoulder, waiting for Microsoft to give me a reason to return to Xbox. They never did.

There are a lot of reasons why Xbox is in this position. I won't repeat the whole litany. If I had to point to one factor, though, it's the most obvious one: games. Xbox failed to deliver great, exclusive games that would draw people to their platform. They continued to fail at this basic requirement for over a decade.

 

[Lunarorbit]

Xbox was living on the edge the last few years.

Honestly I think they have lost a ton of goodwill from their most verdant fans. You can't just get that back either; it's a long process to build that trust back up especially with how long game development is nowadays.

They've already tried selling xboxs for next to nothing this last year and their hardware sales fell further. They are at saturation with their fans. Sarah bond needed to say COD was going to be on gamepass but instead she gave a non answer.

They're fucked. It's always been about the games and they can't deliver.

 

[LordCBH]

It’s dead and poor management decisions killed it.

 

[demigod]

Releasing a new console without a launch title was the moment I knew something was very, very wrong at Xbox.

Since then gamepass was a disaster, devaluing games and training xboys to not want to buy games.

Then Starfield launched and it was average. The hyped up game changer game was an 8/10.

Now they desperately try to release their games on competitors consoles to scrape back sone of their investment. It really is over, who would buy an Xbox now over a PS5.

I wish we could unban OsirisBlack and ask him what the fuck was he smoking when he said xbox had the better launch lineup before the gen started.

 

[djjinx2]

Xbox was never needed. Nintendo and Sony were always enough. Distinction between the 2.
Halo saved the first Xbox.
Live carried Xbox through the 360 era.
No more cards left to play with the One or the Series,

The hybrid card?
The XBOX app on PC hardware card?
The handheld with new windows game mode card?

I agree though that they need a breakout feature or different type of hardware. Otherwise there is no way to get players back from Sony except exclusives and better value across software and hardware. (They don't want to go the exclusive way as it would be such a slow process to recover)

Perhaps less focus on GamePass will also help, perhaps just big discounts on big games through it, and free Indies and AA titles

 

[Quasicat]

Microsoft is a business and this is costing the business with all of the acquisitions. Now that the parent company has put the checkbook away, it’s time for Xbox to make money. I think they will be fine and will make the money they need to, but there will be a ton of loss during this transition.
This is happening everywhere…I work in education and about a quarter of the staff were cut this month making next year even harder…a friend of mine is a nurse and she is seeing it in her industry.
Xbox will bounce back, but there will be some rough times along the way.

 

[Basil King]

More like whats up with western gaming industry.

PS is literally based in the West and has been for awhile now.

Xbox is dead and the name is poison.

 

[diffusionx]

Microsoft is too greedy and impatient to let Xbox naturally grow and thrive. They keep meddling with it and screwing it up with their stupid attempts to fast-track their marketshare and eclipse Sony and Nintendo. They don't realize that gaming development is an artform. They lack imagination and foresight, and are always quick to jump on perceived market trends too early. They keep pivoting left and right and totally lack focus. It doesn't help that Xbox is being run by a lying fraud like Phil Spencer who has a cult-like following of fans/people in gaming media who refuse to hold him accountable for his shitty business decisions.

The thing that really was concerning, and people pointed it out at the time, was that the people in charge of Xbox thought that the Infinite "craig" trailer was ready to go and the game was on track to be launched in a few month. They seemed honestly surprised at the reaction. And when Redfall came out, Spencer, again, seemed surprised at how the game was received.

Like do I think Jim Ryan played any videogames... No... But the people who run Sony and produce these games know when a game is good and know when it meets the standards of the audience... That does not seem to be the case at MS.

 

[Neff]

Imagine if Microsoft spent that $80 billion on keeping people working and creating games instead of buying up ABK

Most preposterously stupid waste of money in gaming history and a horrific misread of the market. If they had the cash reserves to offset such poor judgement without it affecting the rest of the business, then I could maybe understand it as a ballsy (if insanely risky and costly) gamble. But clearly they don't, and the rest of Xbox, such as it currently is, will pay the price.

Congratulations, you killed your console brand for Call of Duty and Candy Crush.

In an alternate universe, Peter Moore launches the Xbox 720 as a true successor to the 360. Kinect, TV, Gamepass and AB acquisitions never happen.

It also launches with Lost Odyssey 2, Perfect Dark 3 and Banjo 3.

 

[MALpractice311]

Recent struggles?

It already started during the second half of the X360.

Nailed it. As I've said many times, this started 10+ years ago.

 

[Moridianae]

Microsoft got too greedy and tried to make Xbox the new "water cooler", the jack of all trades entertainment system appeasing TV TV TV Sports Sports Sports crowed rather than gamers.

This. It's s funny joke, these days, but I wad deep in the retail trenches those days with GameStop and the sheer disdain that Mattrick caused was immense.

Arguably, they never really recovered from the hole that dug. They then decided to bank on another "water cooler" with a Netflix style of gaming, which was never going to be profitable.

2 systems that were difficult to develop for because of varying power levels put strain on developers.

It's just negative news for them, as they have no clear direction. They went "wallet warfare" but that didn't work.

We tend to look at the various news as strictly held to the internet, or we're a bubble, but the sales of Xbox were down and arguably got even slower in these last 2 to 3 months.

Consumers now know it's just not great. I mean, when you discount by $100 in the holidays and Sony STILL outsells you I think it was 2:1 or almost 3:1 you're cooked.

 

[eerik9000]

It has been a really tough decade for Phil.

2014:
Promoted to Head of Xbox
Backed with $2.5 billion to acquire Mojang

2017:
Promoted to Excecutive Vice President of Gaming at Microsoft
Backed with billions to build Game Pass

2020:
Backed with $8.1 billion to acquire ZeniMax media

2022:
Promoted to CEO of Microsoft Gaming
Backed with $75.4 billion to acquire Activision-Blizzard

He has been given no time or resources to build the Xbox brand, and now allegedly the Microsoft board, which has been running an extremely successful business, want's Phil to have some accountability for his actions?! How dare they!

 

[SupremeHoodie]

I don't know why people are surprised by any of this. MS as a whole lost it's desire to innovate and create decades ago. Their only modus operandi is to buy out their competitors and then bury them, because they can never design products that are actually better than their competitors. It was only a matter of time before that mentality made it's way to the Xbox division.

Don Mattrick literally killed Xbox by forcing Kinect down everyone’s throats (for all of Kinect’s faults we can’t say that it wasn’t innovative) and creating an always online console that would also be the cable box of people’s living rooms (which Netflix and all these other apps ended up making these consoles anyways). While sony just made a stronger ps3 and called it a day.

Xbox also WON its market during the 360 days because it was the trailblazer for online multiplayer gaming. A lot of the features we take for granted now was created by the xbox division.

 

[IDKFA]

As someone who's deeply invested in the gaming world and owns consoles from Sony and Nintendo, I can't help but notice the recent struggles of Xbox. With Microsoft being one of the biggest companies globally, boasting vast expertise and resources, it's baffling to witness some of the missteps they've been making lately.

From lackluster game releases to contentious business decisions regarding exclusivity deals and marketing strategies, Xbox seems to be faltering in areas where they should excel. As gamers, we've seen Microsoft's potential with previous Xbox iterations, so why the sudden downturn?

I'm eager to hear your opinions on this matter. Do you believe it's a failure of leadership, a disconnect with the gaming community, or perhaps something else entirely? How do you think Microsoft can leverage its vast resources to turn the tide and reclaim its position as a gaming powerhouse?

They're still a gaming powerhouse. They own Activision, King and Bethesda, not to mention all their other studios. If they went full 3rd party they'd be the biggest publisher on the planet.

If we're talking about hardware and reclaiming the 360 glory days, well that's never going to happen. If Gamepass is making Xbox consoles fly off the shelf then nothing will.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Xbox feels like a zombie brand. I think they have one console generation left before they go full 3rd party publisher. All thanks to Phil and his retard crew.

 

[TheloniusFabdul]

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I still can’t believe halo infinite got great reviews. When was the last true Xbox banger?

 

[Cert.in.Death]

As someone who's deeply invested in the gaming world and owns consoles from Sony and Nintendo, I can't help but notice the recent struggles of Xbox. With Microsoft being one of the biggest companies globally, boasting vast expertise and resources, it's baffling to witness some of the missteps they've been making lately.

From lackluster game releases to contentious business decisions regarding exclusivity deals and marketing strategies, Xbox seems to be faltering in areas where they should excel. As gamers, we've seen Microsoft's potential with previous Xbox iterations, so why the sudden downturn?

I'm eager to hear your opinions on this matter. Do you believe it's a failure of leadership, a disconnect with the gaming community, or perhaps something else entirely? How do you think Microsoft can leverage its vast resources to turn the tide and reclaim its position as a gaming powerhouse?

The short version:
The world has changed around Xbox: the older, hardcore audience has migrated to PC (something you can thank Valve for facilitating) and the younger audience is being eaten up by smartphones and Switch. Xbox devices are losing players on both ends of the spectrum and the ones that would entertain their product offerings are being wooed by Playstation. So why is Playstation kicking Xbox's ass? Game quality and value, something MS is failing to compete against (personally MS' alarm bells should have been ringing when Crackdown 3 released a complete laughingstock).

Meanwhile, on the business side, Xbox - in a hail mary attempt to diversify from its competition - decided to push GamePass as a substitute for lacking exclusive in-demand content. But the economics are not sensible without the subscriber base, which they couldn't achieve due to the aforementioned waning interest in consoles and their own failings to produce meaningful, quality content, in painful contrast to their competitor (plus their own missteps during the Xbox One era that destroyed consumer trust in the brand).

Now you've a division that has put itself in the red to the tune of $75b dollars which, if everything remains fixed moving forward (it won't, obviously, but it's a Herculean task to grow the revenue streams and profit margins), will require 30-40 years to recoup. The moneymen at MS are now picking apart the business model and realizing the current strategy is not tenable. And, as a consequence, they're going to have to disclose it to investors after years of avoiding a direct address as to how the brand is performing.

Final Takeaway:
MS has been obfuscating the Xbox division's performance metrics for years (hiding it in its devices reporting verticals at times and at others in its patent licensing activities). Asking shareholders to turn a blind eye to the division's goings-on is not tenable when you've taken $75b of their money to buy creative IPs and bloated development studios. There is nowhere for Xbox to hide and MS has legal obligations to correct course or face shareholder revolt, which will reshape the board and the company irreparably.

 

[TGO]

Lately? They've always sucked at this
I mean Sony fucked up BIG with the PS3 and had the whole industry against them and MS even had a whole year head start and they still ended up last place
They have never been good at this.