Nautilus
Banned
Low effort Video below for whoever prefers that:
In the year of 2023, this is what it feels like Xbox situation is right now:
So how did Xbox manage to put itself in this situation? At the start of the generation, when the Series console was about to be launched, there was so much promise for it. The backwards compatibility initiative, that not only made Xbox 360 and the original Xbox games playable again on modern consoles, made playing old games exciting again. Gamepass was already a thing, and had already caught many gamers' hearts with its treasure trove of content and a relatively low monthly price. But most of all, they showed exciting first party games. Games on multiple genres, that (some still) seems to have a lot of potential, that could change the image that Xbox always had of being a machine to only play Halo, Gears and Forza, and games like it. Some of these games were:
Some of these games that were released, while considered good, were a disappointment, like Halo Infinite. Others were just straight out horrible, like Redfall. But most of them are still missing in action. And worst of all, is the horrible pacing at which first party games are released, and this feeling of “Next year will be the year for Xbox!” that never goes away. So what is going on?
I think this problem is multifaceted, but the pacing problem, of games being announced too early and the big drought periods between big releases, is mostly due to Microsoft’s management being straight out inefficient and incompetent. There is no other way of putting this. Xbox has currently 23 first party development studios under its wing. And more often than not, a single studio can handle multiple games at once, much like Bethesda already does. So even taking into account that games nowadays can take up to 5 years to complete, and assuming that each of those 23 game studios does only 1 game per time, Microsoft should be putting out several games per year. And yet they don’t. And they got plenty of time already to organize themselves to fix whatever pipeline problem they supposedly had. Games announced for more than 3 years, like Avowed and Fable, were never seen again after their initial reveal. The year 2022 barely had any games coming out directly from Xbox. Most of their games nowadays have constant delays, and it isn’t uncommon that such delays are bigger than a year. All of this shows just how disorganized Xbox is internally as they can’t seem to properly manage the teams to focus on the problems at hand, or build a proper timeline around how ambitious a game is or plan the scale of the project around the time that is given to it and how long would it take to release most if not all games, in order to avoid droughts that we are seeing nowadays. And it’s not just the management side that they seem lacking. Most of their games have seen technical issues, likely due to Xbox having problems at either recruiting or retaining talented personnel to resolve these issues at a reasonable pace.
But it’s not just a problem with the day-to-day operational activities that I believe they are having problems with, I believe there is an issue with the overall strategy that Microsoft is going for. Or at least, a disconnect at what Microsoft wants Xbox to be, versus what they are doing with Xbox. I think most can agree with me that Gamepass sits at the center at whatever Microsoft wants Xbox to be. The Netflix of gaming, a console juggernaut, whatever it may be. But the problem is that Gamepass, being a subscription model, demands the consumer constant retention and attention at all times. So the games that most synergize with this strategy, at least for it to work and be sustainable in the long term, are games that either require hundreds of hours to be finished, of which there are few, or games who are build around the concept of being replayed over and over, much like Multiplayer and “Games as a service” games. And therein lies the issue: For Gamepass to be profitable and sustainable, it needs more games that retain players for a longer time in the service. But the games that are usually seen as “killer apps”, the ones that draw players to a certain ecosystem in the first place, are most of the time one-and-done games, barring exceptions. In other words, single player games. Not to mention that this need to focus on games with replayability also lessens the appeal of the service, because it lowers the amount of diversity of genres in it, at least from its exclusive games. And what is the biggest appeal for a console or a service? Its exclusive content.
Don’t believe it? Just check for yourself. Sea of Thieves? You can’t even manage a proper ship without other players, which is the only way to traverse around the game. Halo Infinite? Not only has its multiplayer portion been released as Free to Play with constant battle passes being created for it, but the single player portion was once promised to be constantly updated with new content. Grounded? A co-op focused game. Even games that can be played alone without feeling like you are missing out have multiplayer or co-op features put into them, like State of Decay 2. And even before the Series X and S was released, many of Xbox’s beloved IPs, like Gears of War 5 and the Forza series, had stuff like microtransactions put into them, since it would be the most obvious way to “compensate” the financial loss, compared to how much they could gain for multiplayer centric games, since the single player retention appeal would be lower. And which service would benefit from such inclusion, since the game would basically be given for “free” in said service? Gamepass. I mean, Microsoft measures a game’s success nowadays not by how many copies it sold, but by how many players the game has(Basically measures how many downloads the game has, regardless if someone played 100 hours of it, or just 1), and how much time the players have spent on total in the game. That tells you everything you need to know.
And it goes without saying: This need to put… mechanisms into place to make even single player games “viable” in a platform like Gamepass ultimately influences the game’s quality. And recently we just had the perfect example of this: Redfall. Redfall was a game that was marketed at being completely playable and enjoyable solo but much, if not all, of its marketing focused on the co-op aspect. The studio that made it, Arkane, is known for its Immersive sims single player games, and yet here they are doing something completely different from what they usually do. And when playing through the game, you feel the conflicting designs in it, as if there was no clear direction other than appealing to their current fanbase, and what the platform they were publishing their game demanded of them to be successful. There are stealth and the possibility to sneak through, but the game never rewards you for taking that route, and in fact it's always easier, and more fun, to just blast through everything with your guns and powers. The game has four different characters to choose from, but the game never really differentiates them so much that you feel like changing to another character makes any significant change to your play style. And the story in Redfall, of which Arkane at least always delivers something interesting, is poorly presented and boring at best, something that multiplayer games are known for since the story isn't their focus.
And there is a case to be made whether first party games from Xbox really NEEDS to be constantly great. Sure, Redfall’s technical state is unacceptable to anyone’s standard, so the game shouldn’t really be shipped in that state, but the game’s problem runs deeper. The game needed a complete overhaul from the ground up, as many of its mistakes were on a design level. Because underneath all the bugs and performance issues, lies a decent game, not an outstanding one. But the real question is: Do people really care if most games are of exceptional quality? Or rather, do people that use Game Pass to game really care about having killer apps, when all it takes to wash the bad taste of a disappointing game is to just install another game from a catalog of hundreds of games? Even if that catalog consists mostly of “only” good games? Not great, not masterpieces, but good enough games? Game Pass's biggest strength lies in the bang for your buck that it gives, the sheer size of games it provides for the relatively low price, lessening the impact of a few bad games, and even the absence of truly groundbreaking games. Why? Because “it's cheap enough, I don’t care” and “ I’ll just uninstall it, and install another game inside the service. There are plenty of games to play, so who cares?”
Honestly? Microsoft needs to figure out what they want to do with their gaming segment. If they want to ditch the hardware business and focus on services like Gamepass, then they should drop the pretense and start making games that mesh better with that kind of strategy. Instead of going for these Frankenstein single-player-games-that-have-alot-of-multiplayer-focused-features-in-them products that they have been putting out recently. Or if they still want to be a player in the hardware business, or being a storefront in which players flock to get all of their gaming need, they have to stop putting these half-assed multiplayer features in single players, like season passes and co-op modes, in a effort to artificially increase the amount of time players would spend with the game, and stick to a single philosophy that gives said game the identity that every great game needs. Either way, Microsoft needs to figure out what they want to do with Xbox, because this strategy on being a jack of all trades is not only not working for them, but it's actively destroying the Xbox brand.
In the year of 2023, this is what it feels like Xbox situation is right now:
So how did Xbox manage to put itself in this situation? At the start of the generation, when the Series console was about to be launched, there was so much promise for it. The backwards compatibility initiative, that not only made Xbox 360 and the original Xbox games playable again on modern consoles, made playing old games exciting again. Gamepass was already a thing, and had already caught many gamers' hearts with its treasure trove of content and a relatively low monthly price. But most of all, they showed exciting first party games. Games on multiple genres, that (some still) seems to have a lot of potential, that could change the image that Xbox always had of being a machine to only play Halo, Gears and Forza, and games like it. Some of these games were:
- Avowed
- Halo Infinite
- Fable
- State of Decay 3
- Grounded
- Perfect Dark
- Redfall
- Starfield
- Indiana Jones
- Hellblade 2
- Forza Motorsport
Some of these games that were released, while considered good, were a disappointment, like Halo Infinite. Others were just straight out horrible, like Redfall. But most of them are still missing in action. And worst of all, is the horrible pacing at which first party games are released, and this feeling of “Next year will be the year for Xbox!” that never goes away. So what is going on?
I think this problem is multifaceted, but the pacing problem, of games being announced too early and the big drought periods between big releases, is mostly due to Microsoft’s management being straight out inefficient and incompetent. There is no other way of putting this. Xbox has currently 23 first party development studios under its wing. And more often than not, a single studio can handle multiple games at once, much like Bethesda already does. So even taking into account that games nowadays can take up to 5 years to complete, and assuming that each of those 23 game studios does only 1 game per time, Microsoft should be putting out several games per year. And yet they don’t. And they got plenty of time already to organize themselves to fix whatever pipeline problem they supposedly had. Games announced for more than 3 years, like Avowed and Fable, were never seen again after their initial reveal. The year 2022 barely had any games coming out directly from Xbox. Most of their games nowadays have constant delays, and it isn’t uncommon that such delays are bigger than a year. All of this shows just how disorganized Xbox is internally as they can’t seem to properly manage the teams to focus on the problems at hand, or build a proper timeline around how ambitious a game is or plan the scale of the project around the time that is given to it and how long would it take to release most if not all games, in order to avoid droughts that we are seeing nowadays. And it’s not just the management side that they seem lacking. Most of their games have seen technical issues, likely due to Xbox having problems at either recruiting or retaining talented personnel to resolve these issues at a reasonable pace.
But it’s not just a problem with the day-to-day operational activities that I believe they are having problems with, I believe there is an issue with the overall strategy that Microsoft is going for. Or at least, a disconnect at what Microsoft wants Xbox to be, versus what they are doing with Xbox. I think most can agree with me that Gamepass sits at the center at whatever Microsoft wants Xbox to be. The Netflix of gaming, a console juggernaut, whatever it may be. But the problem is that Gamepass, being a subscription model, demands the consumer constant retention and attention at all times. So the games that most synergize with this strategy, at least for it to work and be sustainable in the long term, are games that either require hundreds of hours to be finished, of which there are few, or games who are build around the concept of being replayed over and over, much like Multiplayer and “Games as a service” games. And therein lies the issue: For Gamepass to be profitable and sustainable, it needs more games that retain players for a longer time in the service. But the games that are usually seen as “killer apps”, the ones that draw players to a certain ecosystem in the first place, are most of the time one-and-done games, barring exceptions. In other words, single player games. Not to mention that this need to focus on games with replayability also lessens the appeal of the service, because it lowers the amount of diversity of genres in it, at least from its exclusive games. And what is the biggest appeal for a console or a service? Its exclusive content.
Don’t believe it? Just check for yourself. Sea of Thieves? You can’t even manage a proper ship without other players, which is the only way to traverse around the game. Halo Infinite? Not only has its multiplayer portion been released as Free to Play with constant battle passes being created for it, but the single player portion was once promised to be constantly updated with new content. Grounded? A co-op focused game. Even games that can be played alone without feeling like you are missing out have multiplayer or co-op features put into them, like State of Decay 2. And even before the Series X and S was released, many of Xbox’s beloved IPs, like Gears of War 5 and the Forza series, had stuff like microtransactions put into them, since it would be the most obvious way to “compensate” the financial loss, compared to how much they could gain for multiplayer centric games, since the single player retention appeal would be lower. And which service would benefit from such inclusion, since the game would basically be given for “free” in said service? Gamepass. I mean, Microsoft measures a game’s success nowadays not by how many copies it sold, but by how many players the game has(Basically measures how many downloads the game has, regardless if someone played 100 hours of it, or just 1), and how much time the players have spent on total in the game. That tells you everything you need to know.
And it goes without saying: This need to put… mechanisms into place to make even single player games “viable” in a platform like Gamepass ultimately influences the game’s quality. And recently we just had the perfect example of this: Redfall. Redfall was a game that was marketed at being completely playable and enjoyable solo but much, if not all, of its marketing focused on the co-op aspect. The studio that made it, Arkane, is known for its Immersive sims single player games, and yet here they are doing something completely different from what they usually do. And when playing through the game, you feel the conflicting designs in it, as if there was no clear direction other than appealing to their current fanbase, and what the platform they were publishing their game demanded of them to be successful. There are stealth and the possibility to sneak through, but the game never rewards you for taking that route, and in fact it's always easier, and more fun, to just blast through everything with your guns and powers. The game has four different characters to choose from, but the game never really differentiates them so much that you feel like changing to another character makes any significant change to your play style. And the story in Redfall, of which Arkane at least always delivers something interesting, is poorly presented and boring at best, something that multiplayer games are known for since the story isn't their focus.
And there is a case to be made whether first party games from Xbox really NEEDS to be constantly great. Sure, Redfall’s technical state is unacceptable to anyone’s standard, so the game shouldn’t really be shipped in that state, but the game’s problem runs deeper. The game needed a complete overhaul from the ground up, as many of its mistakes were on a design level. Because underneath all the bugs and performance issues, lies a decent game, not an outstanding one. But the real question is: Do people really care if most games are of exceptional quality? Or rather, do people that use Game Pass to game really care about having killer apps, when all it takes to wash the bad taste of a disappointing game is to just install another game from a catalog of hundreds of games? Even if that catalog consists mostly of “only” good games? Not great, not masterpieces, but good enough games? Game Pass's biggest strength lies in the bang for your buck that it gives, the sheer size of games it provides for the relatively low price, lessening the impact of a few bad games, and even the absence of truly groundbreaking games. Why? Because “it's cheap enough, I don’t care” and “ I’ll just uninstall it, and install another game inside the service. There are plenty of games to play, so who cares?”
Honestly? Microsoft needs to figure out what they want to do with their gaming segment. If they want to ditch the hardware business and focus on services like Gamepass, then they should drop the pretense and start making games that mesh better with that kind of strategy. Instead of going for these Frankenstein single-player-games-that-have-alot-of-multiplayer-focused-features-in-them products that they have been putting out recently. Or if they still want to be a player in the hardware business, or being a storefront in which players flock to get all of their gaming need, they have to stop putting these half-assed multiplayer features in single players, like season passes and co-op modes, in a effort to artificially increase the amount of time players would spend with the game, and stick to a single philosophy that gives said game the identity that every great game needs. Either way, Microsoft needs to figure out what they want to do with Xbox, because this strategy on being a jack of all trades is not only not working for them, but it's actively destroying the Xbox brand.
