My analysis of the Project Durango aka xbox one

Geometric-Crusher

"Nintendo games are like indies, and worth at most $19" 🤡
The Durango project is the development name of the console that became known as the Xbox One.

It's an interesting project and here I will analyze it from the pre-production stage until the end of 2016 (the Xbox One completely changes its path after this date) and for this I will use open sources.

The first point to address is architecture moving to x86-64 for Microsoft meant moving away from 3RL while for Sony it meant moving away from the complicated Cell processor. We all know that the PS4 is more powerful, however things would be different, Microsoft engineers are not stupid, they knew that Sony would use a GPU with more ALU (CU) and that this would be a bottleneck with the Jaguar architecture's Bobcat core, so they decided to use 8GB of RAM and surprise Sony (but they are the ones who are surprised ).

Another point to be addressed is the controversial goal of 200 million consoles to be sold. It may seem stupid, but I can see that they were somehow inspired by the PS2. It's not hard to see, Kinect 2.0 would be analogous to the DVD ROM drive in their minds. And the PS4 would be like a GameCube, cheap but without the DVD. In theory, the popularity of the Xbox would win over non-gaming consumers and expand the brand.

This point seems crazy to me and I also believe it was a fatal mistake, yes the Xbox One was never designed to be a cheap console, some analyses suggest that even without the Kinect the Xbox One costs more than a PS4 with 8GB GDDR5, so the hellish storm was made, less power and more expensive. However, when we put non-gamers into the equation, the average Joe doesn't know the dynamics of the gaming market so they could pay that price.

The strategy behind the first games is very smart, FM5, DR3, KI and some new IPs, by default the strategy is to make many initial games and only continue with the IPs that are best received by consumers. I honestly liked the 2013 and 2014 Xbox exclusives more than the PS4 ones.

Dead Rising 3, FM 5 with the drivatar system, Killer Instinct, Titanfall. Yes, Microsoft tried to please or seem attractive to Playstation consumers with games like Quantum Break, Ryse, Insomniac Sunset Overdrive (these guys have never made games for Xboxes before). FF15 E3 2013 was confirmed for the Xbox One, MGS5 was shown on the Xbox by Kojima, the exclusivity of Rise of the Tomb Raider. These things made the Xbox One the most Playstation-like console ever. Ironically this did not please the base, Many analysts say that listening to consumers is a good thing (especially in retrospect, when it works), but when listening fails, they say, "I told you so." In 2009, 2010, and 2011, the complaint was that Xbox had made too many Halo, Gears, and Forza games, but the people complaining were the ones who weren't going to buy an Xbox anyway. Microsoft listened, and the results were disastrous.

I sincerely believe that luck is as important as competence, Microsoft was competent, luck just wasn't there.
 
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Come On What GIF by MOODMAN
 
My critical analysis of this post:
This is like the beginning of the write up you show your professor to get your thesis approved. I wouldn't call this an analysis.

If you're going to analyze something, actually analyze it.
It's an interesting project and here I will analyze it from the pre-production stage until the end of 2016 (the Xbox One completely changes its path after this date) and for this I will use open sources.
Which sources?

Here is an article talking about the tech specs, and a video doing a proper analysis of the Xbox One launch.
 
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I think the RROD was a huge component of the hardware design, Microsoft did not want a repeat of that which is why they were very conservative with the consoles power and capabilities. Not sure what they were thinking with DDR RAM + ESRAM, should have been GDDR5 from the start.
That said, it was a nice quiet console even when under heavy load, and the Kinect could have given them exclusive gaming experiences had they invested more into it. But I suspect motion fatigue was a thing, the Wii momentum had dropped off and the 360s Kinect didn't shift as much software that Microsoft had hoped.
The whole privacy concerns with Kinect were debatable, considering many would have had smart speakers (Alexa, Google Now) that launched a few years later which became popular.
The TV stuff was interesting but came at the wrong time since many were looking to jump away from cable/satellite models and were embracing streaming or cord-cutting. The HDMI input should have been an optional USB accessory for the start since I suspect it contributed heavily to the console's BOM.
 
My thoughts with the original 360 Kinect bundle were, Microsoft did a good job with their lineup and yet, there's still more to that machine, they aren't done yet with the console. That's literally beyond what consumers thinks about perfection.
 
All you had to say was Don Matrick and NFL. No amount of luck was going to over come their launch stragey and motion controls.

i wouldn't confuse luck for the inability to read the industry. Microsoft is still chasing trends, way too late.
 
The fall of Xbox One is probably the most discussed topic in all of gaming forums from 2015 - 2022.
Nothing more can be added really.

It isn't shitty luck either when you have a billion funded marketing and R&A department and you come out swinging so bad. End of X360 wasn't pretty also.
 
Microsoft did not want a repeat of that which is why they were very conservative with the consoles power and capabilities. Not sure what they were thinking with DDR RAM + ESRAM, should have been GDDR5 from the start.
They weren't designing it to be a gaming focused system, hence the weird choice of RAM and small GPU.
 
The Durango project is the development name of the console that became known as the Xbox One.

It's an interesting project and here I will analyze it from the pre-production stage until the end of 2016 (the Xbox One completely changes its path after this date) and for this I will use open sources.

The first point to address is architecture moving to x86-64 for Microsoft meant moving away from 3RL while for Sony it meant moving away from the complicated Cell processor. We all know that the PS4 is more powerful, however things would be different, Microsoft engineers are not stupid, they knew that Sony would use a GPU with more ALU (CU) and that this would be a bottleneck with the Jaguar architecture's Bobcat core, so they decided to use 8GB of RAM and surprise Sony (but they are the ones who are surprised ).
I do believe the plan was always for PS4 to use 8gb ram. Sony was just waiting for higher density GDDR5 chips to become more readily available.

Sony had considered a high speed cache with ~1tb/s bandwidth, while cutting the main mem bus down to 128 bit, but they decided against it as it would've made game dev more complicated.
 
The Bone might be the worst follow-up to a successful console since ..
 
I do believe the plan was always for PS4 to use 8gb ram.
The rumors at the time as well as the fact that Killzone Shadowfall only uses 4GB of memory are compatible with the idea that the PS4 would only have 4GB. Sony's plan was to make a $399 console as opposed to the $599 PS3.

Microsoft made the wrong choice, as no Xbox was more expensive than a Playstation before that, how do you sell 200 million consoles if the launch price is $499 ? If I was sitting at the table while these things were discussed I would be opposed.
 
My analysis:

1. Initially, they underestimated Sony as a competitor.

2. They assumed Kinect would attract a more casual audience, so no first-party games were developed by internal studios, relying instead external publishers first-party titles.

3. Their primary focus was capturing the TV market.

4. In terms of hardware, they opted for the same fast cache chip formula, which was not powerful enough to support 1080p resolution.

5. The Kinect hardware added an additional $100 to cost, and it was imposed on consumers.

6. The always-online and the policy against second-hand purchases were significant missteps.

7. Ultimately, greed and a flawed understanding of audience desires led to their downfall, from which they never fully recovered.

Proposed solutions:

1. Launch a console with at least two strong exclusive games, followed by the release of more exclusive titles.

2. Regarding hardware, they could have retained the chip excluded Kinect.

3. Focus on acquiring better studios and produce more first party titles.
 
The 360 benefitted greatly from being the home of multiplatform releases like Call of Duty as well as having far better online multiplayer framework than Sony or Nintendo.

They earned that of course by designing a brilliant console, but they've never really recovered from Sony closing these gaps. Forza, Gears and Halo just aren't that interesting anymore.
 
I think the RROD was a huge component of the hardware design, Microsoft did not want a repeat of that which is why they were very conservative with the consoles power and capabilities. Not sure what they were thinking with DDR RAM + ESRAM, should have been GDDR5 from the start.
xbox one has a lot of multimedia functions and the DDR memory was cheap, the problem is that the xbox was not designed to be cheap from the beginning of the project but if the PS4 had come with only 4GB the correlation of power between the consoles would be different but the lower price of the PS4 would always be there.
But I suspect motion fatigue was a thing, the Wii momentum had dropped off and the 360s Kinect didn't shift as much software that Microsoft had hoped.
I'd say that it is all a matter of perception, the Nintendo GameCube was described by Nintendo as a gaming machine but the console was crucified for lack of multimedia support, the Xbox One brought multimedia, even using Blu-ray media paying royalties to Sony but that time (and many propaganda ) decided that the important thing was to be a dedicated video game machine.
 
Orbis was rumoured to ship with 4gb initially. Then 8gb, and then they kind of sucker punched MS by going with GDDR5. Another smart move was the ARM chip in the PS4, this allowed for background tasks and superior share functions.

But the Xbox One was a huge clusterfuck. Kinect included was bad analysis because these fads were on the way out already. They treated many markets as second rate, which caused bad blood as well. The focus on TV and being a set top box... no one ever cared about multimedia functions on a console outside of storage medium. And the console was significantly less powerful. With this straightforward architectures this was quite catastrophic, and typically you saw a lower Xbone resolution as opposed to a PS4 version throughout the entire gen. The console literally had no technical advantages over the PS4 i'm aware of. About PS5 vs Series X you could say its SSD speed for example.
 
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We're all autistic?
I'm better than you at dildo archeology.

Anyways the X-Box branding was always off putting. I never got one cause it didn't feel to its purpose. Like X-box One wth is that name even. Kinect was a turn off too.
 
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They treated many markets as second rate, which caused bad blood as well.
Yeah, no shit. Not only was the launch very limited in a global sense. Wasn't it initially just US and UK? No matter, by March 2014 there were gray market imports from Germany being sold here in Finland. Or rather, gathering dust in the shelves. Whereas PS4 (that was officially launched here along with the rest of Europe) was still consistently sold out everywhere.

But even more insulting was the fact that if the whole set-top box thing was supposed to be so important and essential functionality, the HDMI passthrough didn't support PAL signals, and it took MS ages to fix that. Un-fucking-believable.
 
The latter half of the 360 wasn't great, but the Xbox one was the true beginning of the end.

People underestimate just how dire Xbox's situation was before the Xbox One came out. From around 2010 or so, it became clear that Microsoft had very little first party to speak of and were coasting on just three pillars: Halo, Forza and Gears. And when two of those are trilogies that are wrapping up under their original developers... they were in even deeper shit.

Watch the last few years of Xbox 360 E3 conferences and once we take Kinect out the picture and the third-party showcases (which got weaker and weaker because they weren't getting the big exclusives any more like at the start of the gen), there was sweet fuck all on display.

When Phil got behind the wheel he had a massive amount of work to do rebuilding their first party.

Sources cited - zero

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂


Straight Face Trying Not To Laugh GIF

They got extremely lucky that Sony fumbled the bag with the PS3 launch. Xbox got a year headstart (1.5 in Europe). When PS3 was dealing with the typical first year lineup woes, Xbox 360 had one of the best years of all time in 2007. Yet PS3 still managed to overtake them by the end of the gen.

If both consoles launched at the same time I maintain it would've been a massacre for Xbox.
 
Microsoft is just a disaster. Even when Sony completely shits the bed like they did this gen they still mopped the floor with them.
 
The xbox one failing is entirely incompetence, they completely blew the momentum they had with the xbox 360 with kinect. Then phil spencer didn't do shit to bring it back.
 
The stumble out of the gate was irrecoverable. Honestly they did about as good as they could after that.

Making a simple Xbox 720 will remain the greatest "what if?" of all-time in gaming economics discussions. Could have beefed up the processing power with the money spent on Kinect. Had a ton of goodwill from the Xbox 360 phenom. Xbox Live was the defacto gaming service during the original Call of Duty and Madden online heyday. They could have seamlessly become the place to play Overwatch and Fortnite. Who knows what could have been with just a little less hubris. In some ways, Nintendo killed Xbox with the Wii success. Teasing MS execs into following them into that dark dark forest of motion control gimmickry.
 
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People underestimate just how dire Xbox's situation was before the Xbox One came out. From around 2010 or so, it became clear that Microsoft had very little first party to speak of and were coasting on just three pillars: Halo, Forza and Gears. And when two of those are trilogies that are wrapping up under their original developers... they were in even deeper shit.
I think Xbox Live was always the ace card for Xbox. Halo and Gears aren't what non-hobbyist normie gamers loved about Xbox. They played Call of Duty and Madden. I think the length of the generation was the real culprit. People started looking at price-dropped PS3s just to inject some newness into their living rooms. Nothing from MS first-party would have pulled those guys off COD and Madden, or away from those price-dropped PS3 slims. The gen needed to end 2 years earlier. MS was in a position to drag Sony into a new generation before they were ready. If anything first party stuff was a bit of a money pit. Fable and JRPGSs didn't sell Xbox consoles. Halo, Gears and Forza were the only titles that deserved the investment from MS. I think the money play would have been steering harder into the "place to play third party" lane. Really go for the neck by halving commission for digital sales and things like that. Could have courted Activision long before they bought them with moves of that nature. First party is a mirage for mainstream success for Microsoft. Outside of Halo 1-3, I don't ever think it sold consoles for them. Giving Bungie whatever they wanted for Destiny exclusivity would have been about the only first party move that would have had any effect on future outcomes. Imagine if they bought Epic after Gears 1. UE wasn't a powerhouse yet and compared to some of their later purchases, it would have been relatively cheap.
 
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The latter half of the 360 wasn't great, but the Xbox one was the true beginning of the end.
Correct. By 2010 and the shift Project Natal (aka Kinect) was when all their best people had left and they were left with Microsoft guys and started chasing trends.
 
People underestimate just how dire Xbox's situation was before the Xbox One came out. From around 2010 or so, it became clear that Microsoft had very little first party to speak of and were coasting on just three pillars: Halo, Forza and Gears. And when two of those are trilogies that are wrapping up under their original developers... they were in even deeper shit.

Watch the last few years of Xbox 360 E3 conferences and once we take Kinect out the picture and the third-party showcases (which got weaker and weaker because they weren't getting the big exclusives any more like at the start of the gen), there was sweet fuck all on display.

When Phil got behind the wheel he had a massive amount of work to do rebuilding their first party.



They got extremely lucky that Sony fumbled the bag with the PS3 launch. Xbox got a year headstart (1.5 in Europe). When PS3 was dealing with the typical first year lineup woes, Xbox 360 had one of the best years of all time in 2007. Yet PS3 still managed to overtake them by the end of the gen.

If both consoles launched at the same time I maintain it would've been a massacre for Xbox.

I think you can blame the Wii, and MS' trend chasing. They blatantly abanonded their core audience that supported them until that point and went all in on Kinect and other shovelware. At that point it did seem the money was there, but after 2011 it was obvious that this hype was crashing and Wii sales plummeted on a level never seen before. Its baffling that MS still continued all in with Kinect and included it with the Xbone. To me it seems you don't read the market well then.

Sony's luck was actually their half assed attempt at motion controls. They never 100% committed to it, they didn't put their mainline studios on it and they didn't forcefeed it with the PS4 either. But it was a weird time, with both Sony en MS aping Nintendo in the middle of the gen.
 
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