KINDA-LONG PSEUDO-CRITIQUE/RANT I GUESS INCOMING!!!
Okay let me just preface this saying that if you are familiar with my posts,
certainly from a technological discussion POV and also from a games POV, I've been a very strong proponent for the Series X, as well as the PS5. I've also been someone who has (and continues to be) dismissive of concerns Series S will "hold back" next-gen development (or the "interesting" recent speculation that 10 GB of VRAM will "hold back" gaming development in the future...try and guess why that's an "interesting" point of speculation
), more concerned it will have issues with complicating the production pipeline on MS's end more than anything else. And from an isolated POV, I actually do very much like and see the value in what they're doing with Gamepass and xCloud.
With all that said, in light of this recent comment from Cindy Walker, I'm just gonna come out and say it:
She might be in for a rude awakening a few months or so from now.
The thing is, I'm still not
100% convinced the casuals and mainstream gamers who would hop on board for something like Series S will actually do so at launch, and the core and hardcore gamers have probably played through a ton of those thousands of games already on previous Xbox (and PlayStation and Nintendo) consoles, so just how much of an incentive will it be for them to jump in at launch to play those games yet again but with some improved visuals and performance?
Because as improved the ML can scale up their looks, they still won't look as good as a proper
remake of that game built from the
ground-up for newer hardware like with what the Demon's Souls remake is doing. Sure people have played that game a lot, too (well, if you were a PS3 owner, anyway...even then I think Demon's Souls was a lot more niche than Dark Souls), but knowing it's getting all the performance benefits of a new console AND next-gen caliber visuals due to being a full-on remake is what's really going to be the driving hooks for people to jump in.
It's frustrating because I
do want MS to compete with Sony in getting the mindshare with the general core/hardcore gamer, not just those already in the Xbox ecosystem, but statements like these don't really show me that's what they want to do anymore, and I think it's a massive mistake. Because I'm still convinced the large majority of purchasers for next-gen these first two years are going to be
core/hardcore gamers outside of the Black Friday/Christmas periods, where you have the biggest influx of casuals and mainstreamers buying consoles in any given year.
If that's MS's strategy, to count on big holiday sales with the cheap Series S to give them big yearly totals, then I don't
really know how sound that strategy is. Long-term sustained monthly sales would surely be more desirable than massive holiday peak sales accounting for the majority of yearly units, right? I know they want that audience so they can get Gamepass subs, but are cheap Gamepass subs really worth trading out the virtually guaranteed multiple
magnitudes of money the core/hardcore would invest into the platform, even if there are less of them than the casual/mainstream gamers? AFAIK, the high attach rates and big peripheral sales are generated from the
core/hardcore, and
historically speaking that segment dominates the first year or two of console sales. MS's notion might be that the reason for such is because the price is normally too high for the casuals and mainstream to jump in earlier, hence Series S.
But now we really have to ask ourselves, does the Series S actually drive
enough of a value prop to pull away would-be Xbox One S owners? I mean, if relying mainly on 3rd-party software, they surely know that 3rd-party will be supporting cross-gen for the next two years without doubt, it's not like XBO and PS4 versions of games like Cyberpunk are cancelled. Maybe the casual/mainstream are
TRULY indifferent towards specs so in which case, why would they care if the Series S is more performant than a One S, when the One S is
cheaper? MS have already said they're continuing One S production so I think that might actually be a bit of a ding on Series S's case to the casual and mainstream gamers, even some within the Xbox ecosystem.
And ironically, it's in that kind of situation where having system exclusives actually
DOES matter, because then you're driving attention of the casuals and mainstream to the only viable option for that particular game, and that ends up benefiting the platform
and the game.
So yeah, I'll just say these weren't the best choice of words from Cindy literally the
day of their competitor's showcase, when said competitor is going to be pushing a lot of system exclusives (1st and 3rd-party, full and timed) to hook in the core/hardcore gamers and, by doing so, those core/hardcore gamers will drive interest of casuals and mainstream to
that platform and ecosystem, which just
happens to have a cheaper all-digital version of the traditional disc model coming at the same day (and the only difference between them is literally just a disc drive). I've been
very optimistic about the technology in MS's next-gen systems (and still am), particularly the Series X, and while I was
also very optimistic about their messaging going from December to May or so, TBH that optimism has diminished gradually with what I'd consider kerfuffles, and for me it
really started to waver after the July showcase.
The Hot Chips presentation restored a good bit of it in August (although there were still some details I wished we got that we didn't), but it's hard not to notice that MS are doubling down on xCloud and Gamepass, and are treating Series X as simply an option or means of experiencing those services. Honestly, I preferred MS's messaging when it was
just the Series X as the focus: that was
clear,
concise messaging and, while simple, the simplicity helped a lot. That's not me saying Gamepass, xCloud and Series S are bad products; not even
close! Series S is very well-designed for a cheaper next-gen offering, Gamepass offers a lot of value and xCloud offers a lot of flexibility.
However, I don't necessarily think these things should've been done under the
Xbox branding if I'm being honest, Gamepass and xCloud in particular. I don't see why MS didn't spin those two into a separate brand and isolated them from the main one. Back in the '90s SEGA started doing PC ports of their console games under the SEGA Soft label; while it's debatable how exactly this worked out for them (at least at the time; nowadays the PC is one of SEGA's strongest platforms by far), one thing I actually thing was the right call (in retrospect) was to have SEGA Soft be its
own label and brand
separate from the SEGA brand handling the consoles and arcade stuff. The reason why, is because it allowed the two to focus much more on those particular markets, given their mountain of differences.
Consoles and PC might be closer today than back in the '90s, but I still think they have enough differences to where completely treating messaging and branding between the two as one in the same might not be the
best choice; there are reasons why FS2020 has prioritized PC for the moment, as one example. And those two (console/PC) have a LOT more
similar than consoles and
mobile, mobile being the area xCloud is prioritizing (hence why it's not on PC yet). These things should be their own brands IMHO and independent of Xbox, because Xbox is more or less associated as a console gaming brand; it's not exactly easy to change that association after decades, especially when you're trying to manage all of these initiatives under one brand identity (Xbox).
So yeah, that probably about sums up my thoughts on MS atm heading into next-gen: I
love the technology, I
like the games so far (especially some in particular like FS2020, Bright Memory Infinite, Scorn, Exo-Mecha, The Ascent etc.), and am
hopeful of the 1st-party in the future (Avowed, Fable, Forza, etc.), but I'm actually
NOT feeling the messaging that much right now. The convergence, I feel, they're doing it too soon, it's too many things with different (and in some cases conflicting) points being pushed simultaneously, causing some friction. And because of that I feel some will start to eat into the others down the line.
If I were MS, I would've kept the Xbox focus on Series X, spun off Series S as a pseudo-desktop product from the Surface division with a subsidy covered on Gamepass & xCloud while being able to run a version of W10, put Gamepass and xCloud under the umbrella of a different brand identity.
Sometimes it's better to keep certain product and services branches
isolated, that way they can build up with their own focus and, once they have matured to a certain level of sustainability, THAT is when you integrate them together and push them under a same identity or messaging.
So far I've yet to see
any advertising focused mainly on the Series X similar to what we've seen from Sony's ads for PS5. Why not? Will they even take this time to announce or show anything of a game like FS2020 on Series X? Or some other visually arresting game that can attest to its power and features set? Simply knowing I can play games via Gamepass on my Series X isn't enough of a sell I feel, especially for the core/hardcore who aren't in the Xbox ecosystem.
While being upfront on their messaging I guess I should also say that, personally, the presentation leaks last week were probably for the best. If they went with the presentation as planned I don't know if it would've garnered the same level of traction. I say all of this not knowing how Sony's presentation today will actually transpire (what games will be shown, will the prices be satisfactory, are there any nasty surprises from their end that could sour messaging leading up to launch etc.), but I think the main point still stands: I
personally just haven't been too big a fan of the Gamepass/xCloud messaging (and to a lesser extent, now the messaging with Series S) overshadowing the Series X. It does kind of feel like Series X is a bastard stepchild to MS for the moment which is
insane considering its capabilities, but that's what the messaging and recent marketing for Gamepass and xCloud feel like to me.
Again, it wouldn't probably come off this way of those other things were being handled by a
different division (with some networking to the Xbox division obviously), that way the Xbox division could just focus on the Series X and throw some bones of value-adds in Gamepass and All-Access being there, too. But I don't think their messaging or marketing should be PRIMARILY focused on those things because, ultimately, general core and hardcore gamers, at the start of a new gen, want new games. They don't even care if it's just a handful of new big games, as long as they're good. And that attraction hits harder when those are platform/ecosystem exclusives.
MS want to take a different direction from Sony and I understand that, that's cool. But they might be trying to pivot
too much,
too soon. I guess we'll see in the sales and subscription numbers a few months post-launch. Still likely going to pick up a Series X sometime in 2021 (same with PS5 most likely), I just hope by then that MS's messaging puts Series X more on the pedestal it had at The Game Awards during the reveal and the months which followed; it's still their best product out of the bunch they're introducing, and deserves the spotlight commanding of such.