Thanks for making the thread.
I think this is a huge win for the gaming community as a whole, and really deflates the xbox exclusivity issues from the merger and lawsuit.
Same. As I said in the Starfield thread, I have no idea what spurred this 180 on their strategy, but yay!
Money.
So does this mean that they’ll try to follow Sega and get out of hardware too, and just concentrate on multi-platform software eventually?
I hope not. I think they make really good hardware.
Haha. Well, sure, but internally at MS, I’d love to know what conversations occurred and who lost what to get here.
I don’t think so. They always are making hardware for Windows stuff, and will likely continue to do so. I just think they are probably not going to focus their earnings and adoption targets on hardware sales, but gamepass subs. Sega dropped hardware because their company was going to go under, Microsoft is not in that danger.
Yeah, I was being flip, I am sure if this goes well, someone will have a legendary story from the boardroom on the pivot told on WSJ puff piece in a few years.
Let’s note that none of this is confirmed by MS yet. Not that I’m saying any of this is false, just uncorroborated so far.
But without exclusives, I don’t think their consoles will sell much. Even if your company is in no danger of going under, the model of “sell hardware for a loss early to get market share” is surely over. And if they don’t try to compete on price with Sony, then that just means they will have no exclusives AND be more expensive?
Gamepass will remain exclusive to the Xbox. I think that is probably their play. Push the gamepass library to be really enticing, and make consumers choose between a monthly fee or paying 70$ a game, and let the fight happen next gen.
I think this all but concedes to Sony on this gen of consoles though.
The aside to all of this is that there are also rumors that Microsoft has been talking to other hardware makers about building their own “Xboxes” in a similar model to what 3DO did with their hardware thirty years ago. That’s less confirmed right now than the games news, but it’s also got a handful of people in the know backing it up with “Yes, I’ve heard this.”
I mean, that would make sense. They work with third party companies to make hardware for windows all of the time, they can just give a minimum spec for what an xbox needs and let 3rd party devs handle it.
We might be done with an “Xbox” as much as a gaming PC that fits on your TV stand that has an “xbox” mode that opens up a dashboard for gaming with controller. (Much like steam with the steamdeck)
Valve tried this with the Steam Box. It did not work out. However, I could see this working for a handheld Game Pass device (like the Steam Deck).
Certainly possible, but I didn’t find the article very convincing.
Other people are confirming it. Expect an announcement this week.
Yeah, this is all over multiple sites now.
Ha, well if it turns out to be true, Satya told us his plan on the witness stand for the ABK purchase:
If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market. The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in. I have no love for that world.
Well, if exclusivity of Starfield didn’t sell more Series S/X consoles (and possibly Game Pass subs), this was inevitable.
At this point, with all MS has spent, I’m not surprised.
I don’t think you can pin your hopes on one game. It takes a portfolio, IMO, of exclusive games, and the impact is not going to happen overnight.