This is the point I was trying to make in that other thread yesterday. Xbox has an image problem, and its marketing department seems powerless (even uninterested) to fix it.
Listen, we all know the beauty of the Series X, we know how great FPS boost, Auto-HDR, smart delivery and Gamepass are. We know the plans to bolster Gamepass across multiple devices - Xbox, PC, mobile, TV. Some people are skeptical, and it's on Xbox to prove those people wrong, but the idea is strong enough that it can work.
But they keep making mistakes, and the culmination of those mistakes is that the gaming community can't say with 100 per cent confidence that Microsoft would have paid $7.5b to make their games exclusive. It makes perfect sense, it's daft to doubt it, but nobody can say with absolute certainty. Look at insiders on Twitter who are hedging their bets. Tom Warren's tweets on the matter is full of uncertainty.
This isn't execs saying silly things (although not correcting or clarifying is). It's about confidence. Want an example?
Sony released a decent 7-hour expansion as a launch title on PlayStation 5. They shamelessly pretended it was PlayStation 5 exclusive for six months, charged basically full price for it (tagged along with a remaster at a bonus price) and their fans thanked them for it. It was mentioned as Game of the Year multiple times.
Hivebusters is a decent 7-hour expansion too. It wasn't released at launch, in fact it was basically shadow dropped on Gamepass. It was effectively free for subscribers, alongside a remaster which was also effectively free. I can't see any mention of it in regards to GOTY with a quick search, despite it being excellent.
In their respective genres, neither Miles Morales or Hivebusters is a million miles better than the other, but the gulf between the two is massive. It's not about Sony fanboys or mindshare, it's about how it was presented. The big news from the time Hivebusters was announced was that you'd be able to play as Dave Bautista in Gears 5.
We got a Miles Morales style release that should've controlled the conversation, and it was buried underneath a gimmicky character switch, a gimmicky character switch that was mocked by people who didn't give a shit about the game to start with.
Microsoft can't just expect good work to be rewarded. That's not how the world works. I get it, I've been in these media bubbles where you tut at every negative comment because it's so far from your understanding of a product, but that's not realistic.
Xbox has games now. They have great services and probably the better of the two current gen consoles. Now they need to start controlling the conversation, and they do that by being a lot more confident with their product.
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