Papacheeks
Banned
Can't check out the full interview right now, but he's right that even the best selling single player experiences pale before the kind of dough a service or procedural game can rake in. First parties still need them though; smaller pubs can get away with being invisible, but MS needs to be concerned with mindshare, which those kind of festivals definitely contribute to.
Actually no, go look at GTA V pre-online launch. It sold very well. There are a lot of games that sell well that are mainly single player experiences with sometimes optional online.
Issue is XBox has never had a lot of faith in trying for the long game. Which Sony, Nintendo have.
Which is why more games get published, or localized from the east. If having a stable of content from PC developers was still part of their initiative like it was in the OG xbox early xb360 days, this thread wouldn't exist.
But they are trying to chase that game as a service rabit that works for certain games and apply it to most of their lineup/output.
And that's why there is almost this disconnect with their established franchises halo, gears and games like Recore, QB, sunset(I know they didn't make them first party wise).
They are going this route because the never believed in the foundation they had when they started in this industry. They were just trying to get to selling you a service, and not a console that plays great games one person and enjoy and then if the game supports it play it online or on a couch with a friend.
They basically cultivated a audience that they see only GAAS can satisfy. Sunset was very unique and deserved a second game, but they would rather put their marketing chops behind titanfall at the time. Which was the talk of the summer which was when sunset came out.
If all their games going forward are GAAS, the numbers for xbox owners won't be increasing. GAAS works only if the game has an audience that wants that and accepts it. Which is why it works on PC for certain games.
It's one of the contributing factors why halo, gears sell less and less on top of the franchises are showing fatigue in general.
I just don't see xbox making the changes for long term relationships for development. They want games to have services to them and that seems to be the goal. Because the parent company has shaped xbox to be just that, One big service.