It looks like a lot of people disagree with me but I do find it confusing because they are not coming out and saying they are going third party. They still talk of another Xbox console on one hand and everything is an Xbox on the other. Also, there are rumors of a handheld and PC hybrid. I am sure casual gamers that do not follow news are even more confused when they see a sign that says this is an Xbox when it displays a phone. Most probably think MS is coming out with an Xbox Phone.
Their messaging is making them sound like SEGA in the mid '90s during the transition from 4th-gen to 5th-gen: aimless, befuddling, alienating. MS have all these different suits talking different parts of what should be a clear & concise business strategy, but it's so uncoordinated that it seems like several separate ideas in conflict with each other.
So on that front I guess I can understand where Tassi's coming from. However, Tassi also rubs me as a
MASSIVE Xbox fanboy, so the place he's coming from in saying this isn't the same as myself or others. He'd probably rather MS announce something - anything - that would position Xbox as a 360-tier console competitor in the market again. He'll be waiting forever, because that wish will never be granted.
I'm sure MS's plans still involve hardware, but if they're really moving into this multiplatform publisher business model and seeing their gaming hardware more PC-like, then they need to simply rip the band-aid off and get all the main people on the same page to deliver a unified message or statement, and soon. Like why care about what people like Boomstick are gonna feel about it; those kind of people are extreme fanboys and will just find other ways to keep up their fanboying for the brand. Some of them (again, Boomstick) are already doing that, i.e it's a "platform war" for them now.
I understand they are a software company, but if their software was great wouldn't they be selling more hardware? I'm not sure how successful transitioning to 3rd party will be if they don't improve their output.
Have always said that MS do release some good titles, but most of the good games they have are in niche genre spaces or lack mainstream market appeal. The IP they have which are in less niche spaces and have mainstream appeal...are IP they purchased through M&As. TES, DOOM, Gears (bought the rights from Epic), Minecraft, WOW, COD...none of those IP were built internally at XGS.
Meanwhile IP XGS used to have that were mainstream hits have more or less all declined, especially Halo, which is virtually a carcass these days. Even Forza Motorsport is a joke now; Forza Horizon is still quality and is pretty mainstream (certainly for a racing game), but that was technically done by a 3P dev that MS acquired back in 2018.
Otherwise everything else that's quality from them, like Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, etc.? Specialized market niches and not global mainstream appeal like a Mario, Zelda, Spiderman, GOW, etc. But MS's problem is, like SEGA in the mid-90s, they have a lot of
duds or middle-of-the-road games to go along with whatever good titles they bring out. Bleeding Edge, RedFall, Crackdown 3, Hellblade II etc. not to mention promising games they've cancelled in the past like Phantom Dust reboot or Scalebound.
That type of situation didn't affect SEGA as hard because they had a good number of major hits that were market-leaders and standard-setters across Genesis (Sonic, Streets of Rage etc.) and arcade (Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, etc.) at the same time, and most of the middling games they released in that period were either obscure arcade titles or oddballs on non-main hardware, or even games they didn't develop themselves but instead published (usually with very few realizing SEGA were the publisher). Microsoft hasn't put out a mainstream AAA release that is industry-leading or standard-setting within some major context, over the past 15 years. In fact the last time they probably did such from a 1P POV was either Halo 3 (2007) or Gears 2 (2008).
This isn't the same thing as me saying MS haven't released
any good games since 2007/2008, because they have. However,
none of those games were major touchstones in the industry, or elevated the gaming space in terms of production values, game design etc. (let alone sold any gargantuan number of copies) the way games like Uncharted 2, TLOU, Super Mario Galaxy/Galaxy 2, BOTW, Witcher 3, GTA5, PUBG, Fortnite, GT7, Skyrim etc. did. And as a platform holder, IMO you
NEED to be putting out those types of games at least once every couple years or so; you're supposed to lead by example and Microsoft completely failed to do so without resorting to buying up big IP like Minecraft, or more recently buying 3P publishers like Zenimax and ABK.
But then, the problem's become that yes, while MS now have some of those market-leading IP under their ownership, they had ZERO involvement in growing those IP to begin with and the vast majority simply do not associate those IP strongly with Microsoft or especially Xbox hardware. That's just a fact. When you ask the average person (especially a non-gamer) what they think of when they hear Nintendo, they'll tell you Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros., Mario Kart etc. When you ask them what they think of when they hear PlayStation, they'll tell you TLOU, Spiderman, Uncharted, God of War, and probably some 3P stuff like Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil etc.
When you ask a typical core or casual gamer, or non-gamer what they think of when they hear Xbox, they'll likely say Halo...maybe Forza and Gears...and that's about it. Maybe COD if they were heavy on it during 360 but stopped gaming afterwards, otherwise they're more likely to associate that with PlayStation than Xbox. So immediately, if you're MS you have a major problem because Halo's been increasingly irrelevant for the past decade, Gears isn't a massive IP like it used to be, and Forza was never as prolific as the other two even at its peak, let alone the disgrace it is today. The typical casual or non-gamer, or even a lot of core gamers, aren't going to subconsciously associate Xbox with TES, Warcraft, Minecraft, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Crash, Spyro etc. because Microsoft never concentrated on Xbox as a console strongly enough the past 10-15 years to build cache between the brand and those IP within the market.
You don't just suddenly get your console to have the brand power boost of those IP simply because you spent billions to buy the publishers; you'd have to
earn that mindshare over years of hard work, and Xbox (at least as a traditional console) doesn't have anymore time left to do that. Phil's bosses have run out of patience, and they're clearly ready to move on.