[GameSpot] Xbox Is An Increasingly Unstable Platform For Anyone To Invest In

Topher

Identifies as young
Xbox is going through an identity crisis. The most recent wave of layoffs at Microsoft, which cut about 9,000 jobs including numerous positions at studios under the Xbox banner, suggests as much. These cost-cutting measures are said to be in the service of some realignment or reorganization that's always purported to set up these companies for greater success. And yet they keep happening, further eroding any trust and goodwill the brand may have built up from previous successes. After several waves of job cuts, restructurings, pivots in strategy, and any other corporate jargon I've neglected to mention, I'm beginning to suspect that Xbox's growing instability deserves more scrutiny and concern from its developers and consumers alike.

Let's be direct: The journey that Xbox has been on over the last decade appears to be a failure. Its famous spree of purchases and the subsequent management of its studios has churned out about as many blemished games as it has delays, cancellations, and studio closures. That isn't to say Xbox hasn't produced hits and gems, but along the way there, Xbox has also built up quite the track record of critically panned games, cancelled projects, and defunct teams.

No matter the aspect that you place under the microscope, Xbox is clearly bleeding through the bandages it keeps applying. Take a glimpse at the stable of teams at Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft's internal publishing division. Its most recent layoff resulted in the closure of at least one team under the banner, The Initiative, and the cancellation of its game Perfect Dark. Turn 10, one of its stalwart developers on the Forza franchise, has been reportedly cut to the bone. Rare, which was working on Everwild while maintaining the live-service title Sea of Thieves, is invariably in a worse position on the other side of the layoffs than it was before.

The brunt of the damage from moves like these falls on the affected teams and their workers, and it's a disappointingly common move for Xbox, which has done this at least once before when a similar reorganizing shuttered four teams in May 2024, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. These closures came within a few short years of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda.

Another layoff followed shortly after the completed purchase of Activision Blizzard, cutting several jobs across its teams and leading to the cancellation of a survival game at Blizzard. The fact remains that bringing Bethesda's tremendous portfolio of megaton hits like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls in-house, as well as Activision Blizzard (and mobile developer King), should've stemmed the bloodloss, but Xbox's hemorrhaging and proclivity for retail therapy only seemed to worsen with each purchase. Anything else suggests the reckless endangerment of an entire industry.

These moves should've uniformly led to greater stability for developers under the Xbox banner and a greater deal of games on the platforms. They didn't. Some studios, like Obsidian, have miraculously flourished under these conditions, producing new franchises and hits in existing ones, solidifying its place in Xbox's crumbling hierarchy of studios. Others, like Arkane Austin, haven't been as lucky. And gamers and developers alike suffer when that's the case. If everyone's going through it, who exactly is benefitting from Xbox's continued vision--or lack thereof?

The motivation behind many of these purchases is an obvious one: Game Pass. Since its launch in 2017, the subscription service has been Xbox's biggest talking point, and as the years have passed, it has grown into the single biggest driver for engagement with the gaming division. Following the Xbox One's opening fumbles and hurdles, Microsoft devised a silver bullet that could rebuild its ecosystem and assure its biggest and smallest games had an audience. The service has even paid for the development of independent and third-party titles, making it a lifeline to some.

But Game Pass has been a pain to grow despite its occasional surges, and its continued upkeep remains costly despite Xbox's claims that the service is profitable, with some major caveats. As a result, Xbox has even transformed Game Pass for the worse, introducing tiers that sell greater benefits for high-paying subscribers, all the while stripping access to portions of the expansive game library from members at the lowest levels. This move is a sharp reversal of Game Pass' earliest promises to connect gamers to the breadth of the console's titles. What once was often touted as the best deal in gaming has now become so diluted that it is now more anti-consumer than its original incarnation. Another line crossed.

And though Game Pass funds the development of a number of projects, and still does, many developers have spoken up about how Game Pass has actually hurt their teams and titles. Mike Rose of the indie publisher No More Robots has been pretty open in the past about how Game Pass can assure a huge launch audience, which is great for teams struggling to find players, but also noted how the team's games would see little change in sales after being on the service. Instead, it typically got spikes just as it was entering the subscription service. Raphael Colantonio, founder of Arkane and later Wolfeye Studios, has become one of the service's biggest critics, recently opining that it is an "unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by [Microsoft's] 'infinite money.'" An isolated incident would be one thing, but grievances like Colantonio's have continually cropped up over the years, even if there are other stories that cite Game Pass as instrumental to a game's success.

The evidence points to a concerning trend in the Xbox camp that doesn't appear to be going anywhere, and the more it's left as-is, the more likely it seems that developers will have to make a tough decision about their futures in Microsoft's ecosystem.

Of course, it's hard to prove either side is wrong or right due to the fact that Microsoft obscures any numbers that could illuminate or disprove these arguments--numbers that Bloomberg's Jason Schreier refers to as "squishy metrics" subject to the whims of "dark accounting wizardry." This means that teams looking for a publishing deal with Xbox simply need to take the company at its word when evaluating whether Game Pass is the right move for their game and their business. But what good is that word with the uncertainty that has persistently hung over Xbox's motivations and decisions for much of the last decade? Is it worth it to take that opportunity and fund that game if the near-future of your team continues to hang in the balance? Doesn't Xbox owe its developers more than false promises of stability once they join the Game Pass service considering how impactfully it can hurt a team's bottom line? Doesn't it owe the same kind of dependability to its subscribers?

I feel that answering these questions requires more foresight than I've observed from the brand. After all, this is the gaming giant that settled on the multimedia-heavy approach to the Xbox One that crippled the console out of the gate, and then took away Xbox users' ability to purchase and own digital movies and TV shows recently. It's also the company that settled on an "Everything is an Xbox" marketing campaign that deemphasized the system itself after giving up so much ground to its contemporaries. The campaign isn't an affront itself, but when paired with the worsening Game Pass service, which is how the company can afford to turn smart TVs, Amazon Fire Sticks, and even your PC into an Xbox, the rottenness of the tactic becomes more apparent. Xbox's direction seems to pivot with the wind, and it means that the consumers who buy into its products, as well as the engineers who make them, and the developers that then work to give them value, constantly feel like they're sold up the river for the next big thing that the company does.

I don't feel answers coming any time soon. If the latest layoffs are any indication, Xbox's path forward is set in stone, and whatever may come of it has already been deemed worthy of the sacrifice it took to to be realized. As Christopher Dring of The Game Business succinctly puts it, the Xbox we knew is dead. And with it is any semblance of faith this industry and culture can muster for it.



Marty Deeks Facts GIF by ION
 
Alternate thread title: Xbox trolling greatest hits, infinite repeat.

Literally one of his main points is referencing Ralph Constantino, the failing developer that bombed at retail with Arkane at Zenimax so badly that his teams were forced to make GAAS and roguelike games, bombed with his indie game Weird West, despite taking payouts from subs 3x, and is now complaining that he's not getting yet another bailout.

Zero new information in the entire article. Softcore porn for PS fans to click on.
 
Still shocked they are giving it another go, honestly.
They are

We have pretty good info on their chipset here, usually on the first page

 
They are

We have pretty good info on their chipset here, usually on the first page



Oh.....I know they are. Still hard to believe looking back at the train wreck called Xbox over the last 12 years.
 
Still shocked they are giving it another go, honestly.
I think their best bet is to go nontraditional with some sort of PC hybrid

I do think people generally underestimate how popular something like that would be. Same with Steam console, if Steam OS can basically eliminate the "hassle" associated with PC gaming.

Kids stream PC gamers and that would allow them to be just like their favorite streamer. All these fucking stupid meme games like Chained Together that get a billion views are PC only

Gaf is boomers that think the next gen have boomer tastes meanwhile the vast majority of kids prefer gaming on their phone. They also love watching the streamers we all make fun of
 
Still shocked they are giving it another go, honestly.
Probably to transition Gamepass users to PC.
-No more paid online.
-Transfer users to PC Gamepass, reducing sub fees and possibly extending current subs to match the new pricing.
-Steam used as bait to keep them too.
 
Xbox #1!!!! In Phil I trust. Sony is going 3rd party on Xbox because they see the light
 
Alternate thread title: Xbox trolling greatest hits, infinite repeat.

Literally one of his main points is referencing Ralph Constantino, the failing developer that bombed at retail with Arkane at Zenimax so badly that his teams were forced to make GAAS and roguelike games, bombed with his indie game Weird West, despite taking payouts from subs 3x, and is now complaining that he's not getting yet another bailout.

Zero new information in the entire article. Softcore porn for PS fans to click on.
rd-btc-cry-harder.gif
 
Yep, I bailed. End of 2023 was my breaking point. Drove to Best Buy with my consoles and traded in the Xbox for a shiny new Lenovo Legion prebuilt gaming tower PC with 2 years no interest financing.
I'm still paying it off.

PC PC PC
 
I much prefer the Xbox eco-system, largely because it overlaps nicely with my PC setup, to other console platforms. And while we can say what we want about Nadella's over-extend on AI, his tenure has seen Microsoft become a lot more open, and this applies to Xbox as well. In terms of a platform, I think Microsoft is changing what "Xbox" as a platform means, largely because its walled garden failed so now it has to sell its software to as many people, via as many different methods, as possible. Arguing it's an "unstable platform" doesn't really land for me when prior console generations literally went into cupboards, all of your purchases included. Xbox started the change there with the Xbox 360, which brought all of your digital purchases from the OG Xbox along for the ride, and continues till this day. Meanwhile, my 3DS purchases are locked to my hardware, and I still can't play my digital PS Vita PS 1/2 Classics on modern systems because... ? What "Xbox" means is likely changing - good or bad, that's up to you - but I wouldn't say it's not worth investing in, when Microsoft have shown for two decades the opposite. That I can still fire up OG Xbox Splinter Cell and play my DLC from twenty years ago is common practice in PC Land, but in the console space, that feels like a miracle.

With those positives said, it's hard not to lament the changing of Xbox into something more generic. "Team Green" (Read: "Green Rats") isn't much of a team anymore, and with that loss comes the loss of any kind of brand identity. While I think their platform as a whole is worth investing in, it's hard to say the same about the brand when it doesn't mean anything. Like so much about Microsoft, it now lacks any kind of meaningful personality or expressed view point. "I'm an Xbox fan" - what the fuck does that even mean in 2025? It's not a console, it's not a digital store, it's not a style of game, and it's not a way of thinking. "Xbox" is just a line in Microsoft's financials that encompasses their "gaming" endeavours. If they want people to invest, they need to give them something worth investing in beyond cross-platform digital license retention. They need to make "Xbox" mean something. And on that front, I think Xbox is in trouble.
 
Ehh as long as they dont lose major 3rd party support from like the likes of ea, capcom, 2k and others dont really care more than enough games I can play on xbox since I prefer their ecosystem. I got my Sony and Nintendo systems if I'm ever in the mood for one of their exclusives. Got a pc too but that's for rts and vr.
 
Not this shit again.gif

Topher Topher

I think its time to accept it, Series consoles will go down as legendary lineup in history. You might try to fight it. But I can see people are getting behind them.

I think it has something to do with their recent games output.
 
I've bought like 2 games on their digital library and claimed and a handful of free games, and that's all I'm ever going to get on it. I don't think it'll stick around.
 
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