How Microsoft plans to make Xbox great again [The Verge]

ReCore

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Can I plz see gameplay already
 
I'm sorry: save the Xbox One from what exactly? It's outselling the 360 to a ridiculous degree. Just because it isn't the top selling console doesn't mean it's failing. Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank with the Xbox One.

Record breaking BF sales in history.
 
Great read.

Some interesting points, but, this stood out to me:



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.

Rod Fergusson, one of the original creators behind Gears, said the name change at BlackTusk was a decision by leadership at the studio. There's no reason to believe he's lying about that.
 
In theory, the Xbox One was an improvement on everything fans loved about the Xbox 360: a more powerful Kinect, new hardware that merged the console with your cable box, and lots of talk about the cloud.

Fucking hell, do your research. None of those things were beloved.
 
no it was announced at E3 but since then there been radio silence.

At this point we all know it's coming Q1 2016 on PC.

I wish them luck, it's not going to be easy to convince PC gamers with a remake of an eight years old game that will in all likelyhood not look better than it does on Xbox One which released in August 2015.

I like Gears but no way I'm paying 40€ for a straight port months later. Too little too late.
 
Great read.



Rod Fergusson, one of the original creators behind Gears, said the name change at BlackTusk was a decision by leadership at the studio. There's no reason to believe he's lying about that.

I'm not referring to the name. Didn't they go from developing a new IP to a Gears-only studio now?
 
At this point we all know it's coming Q1 2016 on PC.

I wish them luck, it's not going to be easy to convince PC gamers with a remake of an eight years old game that will in all likelyhood not look better than it does on Xbox One which released in August 2015.

I like Gears but no way I'm paying 40€ for a straight port months later. Too little too late.

frankly we don't even know that.
 
Fucking hell, do your research. None of those things were beloved.
The Kinect sold over 20 million or something, right? And consumers had a positive reaction to the media streaming abilities of the 360, so a logical jump was to include all of cable TV in that package. The cloud is a logical extension of the boom of online multiplayer gaming last gen.
On paper, it does sound like they took the successful aspects of the 360 and tried to extend those, but the author is correct in pointing out that by leaving the focus on games by the wayside, they fully botched their launch.
 
ReCore, at its heart, harks back to a different era in gaming," Pacini says, "and trying to put a new spin on it, based on games that myself and Inafune-san have done in the past that aren’t really being done anymore." He name-drops games like Metroid and Zelda as possible inspirations.

Interesting.

On Quantum Break said:
The story lives in a high-brow, low-brow greyzone, somewhere between the films of Christopher Nolan and Roland Emmerich.

Seems like a pretty big greyzone.
 
Ok... -_-


2nd thread.. No big deal.

But like, what are they losing specifically? I just don't remember Sony being this.... Vocal constantly when they were losing one whole generation in America on how they were going to make the PS3 better again. I remember it only being talked about after the hacks.

Regardless like, ugh, this is annoying for me. Microsoft just needs to make better games and that's it. Get more color and creativity. Get abstract and weird... Tbh, Microsoft really only has America and that's who they should make sure feels right. The rest of the world doesn't care and they shouldn't waste money fighting for it... Reach out but focus on what they are strong at and it's here.
 
Considering Microsoft's overall company strategy since Nadella took the reins, this seems incongruous. I have a feeling the rest of the company might not agree with Phil on this. GaaS seems like the most likely next step for Xbox.

Agreed,I see Xbox being a sort of app or store front.
 
Yes. Not ridiculously. It never was. But it's still ahead of the 360 sales curve.
this will not be the case probably by spring, if not already. we know MS had 16M shipped up through recently.. so assuming say 1.5-2M by the end of the year, and knowing that outside of holiday XBONE is selling worse than 360, they will end this year at just about even, and 360 will have pulled ahead within the first few months of 2016 when (in 2008) 360 was selling around .5M every month outside of summer.
 
Ok... -_-


2nd thread.. No big deal.

But like, what are they losing specifically? I just don't remember Sony being this.... Vocal constantly when they were losing one whole generation in America on how they were going to make the PS3 better again. I remember it only being talked about after the hacks.

Regardless like, ugh, this is annoying for me. Microsoft just needs to make better games and that's it. Get more color and creativity. Get abstract and weird... Tbh, Microsoft really only has America and that's who they should make sure feels right. The rest of the world doesn't care and they shouldn't waste money fighting for it... Reach out but focus on what they are strong at and it's here.
Making better games is part of the equation, but there's no denying that they still have a bit of an image problem that they need to rectify. The PS3 didn't have an image problem so much as a pricing problem, so they didn't really need to tout how they've turned the ship around; just announcing price drops and hardware revisions was enough.
 
Microsoft needs to unlock the 2 GPU...

Without at least PS4 graphic parity, it can't be "great". Maybe, next time...
 
This article really talks up Shannon Loftis. I hope she delivers and gets more new IPs from independent developers.

I hope that as well. I guess the proof is in the pudding, and so far 2016 looks pretty good. We'll have to wait for 2017 and beyond to really gauge how well she has done.
 
I am puzzled, who "loved" kinect?

When the kinect on 360 came out a lot of people bought it. The problem was thinking a fad was a paradigm shift.

That said, for voice commands I love the thing. Once Cortana comes out I'm hoping it'll eventually be as useful as Amazon's echo.
 
I'm not referring to the name. Didn't they go from developing a new IP to a Gears-only studio now?

That was also supposedly a decision by leadership at the studio.

That’s when the Microsoft Studios mothership presented it with a unique scenario and a difficult choice.

"We could continue working on the IP we were working on," Crump says. "Or we had the opportunity to take on Gears of War."

"Microsoft was in discussions with Epic," Crump says. He and other senior members of Black Tusk assembled to discuss the studio's future. "We were hugely invested in what we were working on. You don’t spend a year and a half working on a game without getting attached to it. There was a lot of discussion."

The committee understood that not everyone at the studio would react positively to the change. "I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some people on the team who were disappointed when they found out the thing they’d been working on for so long was going to be shelved," Crump says. "If you’ve been in the game industry long enough, you’re going to go through project cancellations. People go through this period of mourning a bit. You have to give them that space and time to go through that, the sense of loss that people have around something they’re invested in."

But according to Crump, in the end, the final decision was a "no-brainer."

"We went around the table and everybody was in favor of going for Gears of War." On Friday, January 21, 2014, Crump, former General Manager Hanno Lemke and the management team announced to the studio that its in-development project would be canceled, and Black Tusk would immediately transition toward Gears of War.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/28/9005697/gears-of-war-present-future
 
I wonder if they're going to be announcing an event in the near future. It's kind of random that both The Verge and Kotatu would release articles about this narrative at the same time.
 
Wow Microsoft Xbox One PR coming at full force. This and Kotaku. Anyone sense incoming damage control? I guess they got news that they lost November NPD.

It's kind of random that both The Verge and Kotatu would release articles about this narrative at the same time.

Not when there is an obvious reason behind it.
 
I hope that as well. I guess the proof is in the pudding, and so far 2016 looks pretty good. We'll have to wait for 2017 and beyond to really gauge how well she has done.

Agreed. Hopefully we see some new partnerships unveiled next year at E3 and Gamescom, though. All the internal studios are pretty much accounted for, so MS needs a few major partnerships for a solid 2017 lineup to come together.

Wow Microsoft Xbox One PR coming at full force. This and Kotaku. Anyone sense incoming damage control? I guess they got news that they lost November NPD.

Sure. They paid for articles from Kotaku and The Verge all because of an NPD loss.
 
What? He is right, it is outselling Xbox 360 and it will ve 299$ this holiday so >20m by year´s end is doable and those are good numbers.

this is very very wrong on all accounts.

Monthly XBONE sales (worldwide) have been behind monthly 360 sales during the same period for a while now. (360 was 400-700K per month worldwide in 2007 prior to holidays. XBONE hasn't even been half of that for most of the year)

XBONE SHIPPED number was recently in the 16M ballpark. Sold through was WAY lower. Current totals prior to November NPD are believed to still be <=16M. No way in hell XBONE is selling 4M units worldwide in two months.

oddly despite the above facts, XBONE still does seem to outsell 360 during holidays at the same points in their lives. With that being said, again no way is MS able to hit 4M in two months when Sony isn't going to even hit 4M in the same period. And when holidays are over, XBONE will then resume tracking behind 360.

tl;dr XBONE is selling "better" than 360 because of a much bigger launch, faster worldwide rollout, and the odd occurrence of during the first two holidays selling more than 360 during its first two holidays. However monthly the XBONE is actually selling much worse, and by the first few months of 2016 will actually cumulatively be behind where 360 was in its first few months of 2008.
 
Wow Microsoft Xbox One PR coming at full force. This and Kotaku. Anyone sense incoming damage control? I guess they got news that they lost November NPD.

If you'd bothered to read the article, it says quite clearly that these interviews were conducted several weeks before Shannon Loftis got her promotion, which was announced in mid November.
 
It's too late for this generation.

The Xbone is locked into "also-ran" status for the remainder. There is nothing Microsoft can do to fix this, especially worldwide. That said, there's an opportunity to repair things for whatever Microsoft has planned for their next gaming venture - whether it's a new box, full-blown cross platform development ecosystem, or whatever.

My recommendation? Remove the ambiguity around the stupid parity clause. Talk straight about what developers can expect, without hiding behind NDAs. The market leader is doing that and winning handily. Spencer and co. have no excuse for continuing this charade.
 
I did. Use the voice commands daily and some of the functionality is great. Nephews/Nieces enjoyed playing Kinect games as well.

Same here. I guess having the console connected to the tv provider helps a lot with usage. I could probably live without it and not miss it, but its not as shit as people keep saying.
 
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