[Laura Fryer] The Future of Xbox

Joe Biden GIF by PBS NewsHour
 
Xbox will continue to flop around for another generation or two selling off Backwards compatible chips to the likes of MSI and ASUS who will generate endless trash, completely diluting the xbox brand with madcatz level third party systems until the brand completely loses its identity (some would argue it already has) before all thats left of it is a built in app in windows that you keep getting pop ups for.
 
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"There is literally no reason to buy this handheld"

"I don't love watching all the value that I helped create slowly get eroded away"

"I'm sad because from my perspective Xbox has no desire or literally can't ship hardware anymore.This partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely. Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead."

Laura hits the nail on the head again.

She was part of what made Xbox successful in the 00s.



 
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dorkimoe said:
if they actually wanted to compete and sell consoles they would have made COD and all bethesda games xbox only
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I believe that was the original strategy. This was a concession to get it through regulators. I am aware Micrsoft made these deals before being forced to but this was after delays. It looked to me like they changed strategy at that point in the acquisition. I am guessing they were getting pressure from within to get the deal through.

TheMule1983 said:
At least some sort of timed exclusivity or exclusive stuff for Xbox cod players. Instead they bundle the game in ps5s
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This baffled me. Unless it was an existing deal before the acquisition and it was more preferential than breaking the contract, I have no idea why you give the current competition a bundle.


The only thing clear to me about the future of "Xbox" is that it is no longer a console (not saying they will not have one, just that "Xbox" is not a console). Everything else is still a bit chaotic for now. Maybe they settle down into a streamlined strategy and come out of it with a stronger brand. I'm struggling to see it rignt now and expect Game Pass to lose ultimate subscribers as they weaken the brand. PC subs might compensate for some of that loss unless they do something really dumb.
 
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I like this lady and her videos. She has good insights, legitimate development experiences, and doesn't sugar-coat stuff. Seems authentic, and her love of gaming comes across clearly at the same time.
 
Regardless of how we got here, we're simply here, so it makes sense to try and create a console like experience from other devices for the diehard XB fans to have something along with trying to merge it with PC hoping some can be onboarded to that. I wonder once they put most of that behind to just be a massive publishing studio if they rebrand XBox to something else like Microsoft Gaming.
 
It's unusual for her to be so blunt about Xbox. You can tell she has a lot of great memories regarding its early days and a lot of frustration with the direction it's going in. I think it's because she genuinely cares about it, though.
 
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They probably had a chance if they would have done something last year and come together on a real path forward, but now they have just sat on it for too long with vague messaging.
 
the calm before the storm 2.0?....🤔

in his video about the subject, Brad Sams came across... like it was worse than "trimming the fat" as some people like to say.

hey Mr. Spencer, why the layoffs?
 
The brand had been healthy as hell until they got infected with pc-philis! 🤢

The results ⚰️ are speaking for themselves!

Sony, make conclusions until it's too late!
 
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dorkimoe said:
if they actually wanted to compete and sell consoles they would have made COD and all bethesda games xbox only
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That was never in the cards. Firstly, governmental oversight committees basically told them no on CoD from the very beginning.

Second one--they tried with Starfield and it failed. No one was interested in buying a system for it. True, it didnt help that it was subpar, but still.

Their other exclusives(Redfall, Forza Motorsport, etc.) all landed with a resounding thud while Sony and Nintendo were dropping at least 1(or more) high profile GOTY contenders every single year.

You also had inadvertent consequences of some games, particularly Baldurs Gate 3, becoming PS exclusives for a time because you made two systems and your lower end couldn't run it well. Same with Black Myth: Wukong.


Games cost a fortune to make--you can't get mad and roll up and spend $80 billion dollars to try and(in historical Microsoft fashion) buy your way to victory when you've already convinced your audience they don't need to buy games anymore.

Making CoD exclusive might have changed the equation IF they could have, but without that ability, you NEED the install base of the other systems to make revenue. It's impossible otherwise.

What it seems to be is the standard Microsoft status quo we've seen in phones, wtc.

Enter a market, try and get success, find some success, but you're not the top dog, try and *buy* your way to success, it doesnt work, get mad and essentially give up and chase a different trend.

Game Pass *is* a good value, but it is terrible for the industry. I don't see a way that it ever really "grows" to the levels they want and need it to, because the gaming audience doesn't seem particularly keen on "Netflix for Games' as to how they want their gaming to be in the future.

Kind of how GAAS is being stonewalled outside of the ones already established.
 
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Black_Stride said:
She only talked about the Ally?

Nothing about the 10th gen chip they announced??

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Does that change the essence of her story? What this partnership cleared up was the question if there was a path forward for Xbox gamers who wanted to play their entire digital library including games that weren't Play Anywhere. But it's still part of Microsoft's plan to gets out of the hw business and let other companies manufacture and sell Xbox branded handhelds/PCs that area running Windows 11.
 
Great video as always, also she's so cruel at the end:
Maybe next year is the year.
Maybe next year is the year that the fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements.
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Such a shame. I loved my Xbox consoles. I know a lot of people will cheer their death in the hardware industry, but I vastly preferred their console experience over what PlayStation offered. By console experience, I mean the controller, UI, and console features; not the games (Sony clearly trumped them there).
 
I wonder if they'll even succeed at making their next XBox PC that has hardware BC.

But either way it clearly signals the end of their plans to be a real player in the console space IMO; they only talk about backwards compatibility at the hardware level and don't mention actually having a true "next-gen console" that 3rd parties would develop for.

So what it really represents is Microsoft trying to get market share in PC Gaming. It will "support other stores" but almost certainly not have them be as integrated as the Windows *cough* Xbox Store.
 
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