SenjutsuSage
Banned
1: I still don't buy the VR hype, and still believe very confidently it's going nowhere fast because the investment on the high end games front just isn't there at a scale where it needs to be, and the price will continue to be an obstacle for that investment ever growing big enough. So long as price is an obstacle for so many, enough companies will never truly invest enough to make it worthwhile even if a gem or two pops up from time to time. Take a look at Sony and PSVR2. Nothing about that Horizon VR game announced has me convinced that is worth buying because I'm not convinced too many worthwhile games will support that.
VR will go the way of 3DTVs, bank on it. I've been saying this for years. The big VR blowup people said would happen still hasn't come. There's a reason it still hasn't taken off, and I don't believe what Oculus is showcasing is convincing enough yet to believe the tide is truly changing. Even PSVR isn't going to be heavily supported it seems across much of the Playstation 5's library. I guarantee that PSVR2 will be sustained by the fact that it will not only work on PS5, but on PC as well. No way they are limiting those headsets to just PS5.
And Microsoft doesn't need their own VR hardware because they have something better, extensive windows support for all viable VR options. The moment VR takes off they can enable support for any top tier VR device to work on Xbox consoles for people who desire that experience. There's zero need to build their own when they can just enable support for Oculus or whatever is available to windows PCs.
2: Marketing Game Pass makes sense because it's the most forward looking and successful gaming related business venture they have ever had. Right now with where Game Pass sits at 25 million subscribers, even if only 1/3rd of those 25 million are ultimate subscribers, that's still $3.49 billion in revenue for the year. Game Pass is on track right now to generate yearly revenue at a pace easily exceeding the equivalent of Microsoft dropping two $60 priced games that each sells 20 million copies in the same year.
Why wouldn't they market Game Pass when it's that level of success? Game Pass, for example, since the start of 2020 has grown by 16 million subscribers in just 2 years time. In that time it has outpaced the growth rate of PS Plus 5 to 1. Now maybe that's because PS+ has reached a saturation point of sorts - even though I personally don't believe that's why and think it has a lot more room for more rapid growth if/when it turns into a better game pass competitor - but that's what's going on for now.
Game Pass is a massive hit that's only set to become even more popular once those Activision games start getting dropped day one on there. Or RPG megatons like Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 get added, along with future big titles across the rest of XGS, Bethesda and Activision. Game Pass will start demonstrating in a more in your face type of way why Microsoft has bet so big on acquiring the IP and studios that they have.
3: On the power front I'm not really concerned there. It was never meant to make PS5 games look a generation behind or anything, but what I do strongly believe is that the numbers and the specifications do matter, and over time Series X will, in more obvious ways than what it already has, prove to be the more capable and performant hardware. It has shown it numerous times already. I acknowledge to not expecting some of the situations I've seen where PS5 has at times outperformed it, or Series X's performance - despite being better wasn't as big or as stable as expected - but on the whole the performance specifications have been proven out. It's the more advanced featureset that will further demonstrate the potential for the box.
Of the available games that actually utilize Xbox Series X's more advanced featureset (Tier 2 VRS), there is a meaningful performance advantage over PS5 more befitting the specifications and potential. VRS Tier 2 implementation in Doom Eternal is magnificent and it's being made even better. And even if they're close I'm not overly worried about that. I know what the tech available on Series X will be able to do once devs start taking more advantage of it. It isn't about some generational difference over PS5, but by being able to be even more efficient and smart with the available resources, they'll be able to squeeze more out of the hardware. VRS Tier 2 and beyond advances, Sampler Feedback Streaming (this is the big one for me that's the real game changer), greater adoption of the full Velocity Architecture (which isn't a thing without Sampler Feedback), Mesh Shaders, and hopefully Machine Learning will all come into play later on. Needless to say I'm not concerned.
As to the rest of what you said, Xbox Game Studios was easily the #1 games publisher of last year. And that doesn't even include the Xbox first party studio titles that came from Bethesda. Xbox's future is strong. Bethesda is a black box of incredible games coming to Xbox. Toss in Activision and there's really nothing to worry about. Blizzard has a whole new survival IP coming that seems likely to end up exclusive. The various studios will get more freedom and future COD games should get more time.
all of this over a game no one seen played.
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