I feel like Cloud Gaming is a solution in search of a problem though. The times when you would like to have Cloud Gaming right now (out of town, hotel, traveling, ect) are the times it either sucks or doesn’t work at all.
It’s going to be a long long moonshot for gamers to get out of hardware and move to cloud. Not to mention a lot of gaming companies (Nintendo, and others) have a lot of investment to reject or fight back against cloud gaming since they’re still interested in selling hardware.
The problem is, the consoles aren’t selling well. Cut out the console, problem solved.
Well, Xbox consoles aren’t selling well.
What Cloud Gaming needs is product. Microsoft exclusive games that are just so unbelievably awesome, next gen, high tech, and irresistible that everyone wants to play them - but have hardware requirements almost no one can afford the hardware to play. The problem for Cloud Gaming is you need some magical games that are enormously resource expensive to compute, to discourage local hardware, but results in a data output that’s also easy and doesn’t require like a high end fiber line.
Yes, this is an Xbox thread, we were discussing Xbox.
Well sure so am I, but it’s in context of the market. If all the consoles are sipping in sales it’s actually an opportunity imo. Anyway this is a sidebar not trying to get into a back and forth on it.
I don’t know what the other option would be. Staying the course, hoping that console and PC utilization picks up so they can sell more games? Been trying that one for a while now. You mention that what cloud gaming needs is product, but I say one thing Xbox has is a hell of a lot of product, what with all the various studios they’ve swallowed up over the past few years. If you’re looking at playing games in the future and you’re looking at buying a console at north of $500 versus just subscribing to a service, that’s a pretty strong argument for going cloud. But again, that assumes there’s an infrastructure in place for all that, and that they can hit console level performance through the cloud. Might be a disaster, I don’t know. But I could see them going that way.
There might be a time when cloud gaming doesn’t come with a lot of compromises in the result, but we’re not there yet, and I don’t think it’s going to be soon.
MS’s interest in the cloud seems obvious, it’s “easy mode” for a chunk of the gaming market from a certain perspective. Recurring subscription revenue, just assume they will correctly thread the needle right on capacity, no hassle with retail inventory, and a lot of freedom with hardware decisions as a result. Wish away the consumer drawbacks to the service or believe they won’t meaningfully hurt your sales, and boom, money printing machine, without the machine!
It’s a very different approach, but at a high level similar to Apple’s motivations in their “pursuit” of the gaming revenue through their own sort of half-assed services solution (from customers via subscription or from devs via a cut of transactions).
How can we get some of that sweet gaming revenue with the least ongoing effort?
It’s like the South Park underpants gnome “Step 3: Profit” meme in reverse. Start with an actual tried and true plan, then start erasing steps because they’re hard and you’d like to wish them away until you’re down to just ???, Step 3: Profit.
I don’t mean to say this represents all of Microsoft (or Apple) and their current approach to gaming, but this is the case someone in MS has probably been making for years. Maybe leadership will never pivot, or maybe the Xbox is already a dead console walking.
If they release a new console with a good line up of amazing exclusives from the studios they’ve acquired, they might be able to turn things around.
That is to say, sell more consoles than they have the last two gens; I don’t think they’ll ever outsell Nintendo and Sony at this point.
Then again the PSOne, a new player in the console game at the time, greatly outsold the N64. And the Gamecube and Wii U failed to reach their predecessor’s sales numbers. So, there’s still a chance for some Xbox glory.
I think exclusives will sell a brand new console better than they will sell a console that’s already been out for some years. If I remember correctly, the Series X didn’t launch with many new titles, just updated versions of Xbox games which didn’t help.
I think that the future is a handheld Xbox that can be docked and used as a PC.
Honestly.
The other option is to just be Nintendo, it’s very simple!
I joke, but that’s sort of it. It’s really, really, really hard, but make games people can’t ignore, give them a platform, and do it all with a plan to be profitable and sustainable from the start, not treat it as a money pit you’ll monetize with an untested future strategy.
No guarantee of success! I’d argue MS has (hopefully not had) a lot of potential in their catalog, but have also established a history of dropping the ball with franchises and talent under their umbrella. They’ve tried to buy their way out of things, they’ve risked their actual sales in pursuit of a subscription model that’s untested, and I don’t know if any organization their size who is so beholden to shareholders will ever have the mettle to ride out the difficult path to a sustainable platform.
I’m still glad they’re trying, and there’s plenty of good that has come from their platform. I think it’s been great for consumers, but I’m not optimistic about it lasting.
That’s my guess. There’s been way too much talk about a handheld including from top execs for it not to be coming out.
It certainly seems like their best play to maintain relevance in the console space.
I don’t think Phil has the pull to make something like that happen anymore. If they were thinking about a handheld before, I really doubt they’re considering any new hardware now.
Every motion they’re making atm looks like capitulation to Sony and Nintendo, and frankly, I think that’s what they should be doing on hardware. Focus on the PC. Build an Xbox App to rival Steam if that’s what it takes. Then with all the studios they now own (who all are or were PC focused), release their games across PS5/Switch/PC. Support your own machine awhile longer maybe, but if you’re starting on GAME X at Microsoft in 2024, the Xbox shouldn’t be in the hardware catalog for release. Save the $$$.
It’s got to be frustrating for Microsoft. They have more than enough resources to compete. Arguably this generation is the closest it’s ever been, with Sony having the weakest first party catalog in their many years of competition. Microsoft’s first party catalog is pretty weak too but they also completely dominate in categories Sony hardly competes in (flight simulator, strategy games) as well as having the best new feature this generation (Game Pass).
But it’s like American politics, there’s some huge portion of voters that won’t change their mind regardless of new info. Japanese gamers just aren’t going to buy a non-Japanese console. Euro gamers don’t really care about Xbox. The only markets MS can compete in are the English speaking markets. There’s basically nothing MS can do, since gamers just don’t care what they do. Gaming has become somewhat fossilized.
That’s said the Activision-Blizzard acquisition will undoubtedly turn out to be the nail in the console coffin. The whole reason to by ActiBlizzard was to make their games console exclusive - they also aren’t profitable if they are console exclusive. Oops. How did they get that far into the process without realizing that?
I really don’t know how that happened except to say they fully planned to have all this stuff be exclusive and then when they saw the books reality came crashing down like a tidal wave. That and the US Government in their face in court… that also played a likely role.
I suspect the next shoe to drop comes on the day Black Ops 6 ships and it does not exceed sales of prior CoD games and in fact they have to figure out some way to equate all the people playing on Game Pass with the millions in lost day one sales on both Xbox and PC. That’s going to be a bloodbath IMO.
What REALLY sucks (even for the rest of us not currently invested in the Xbox ecosystem) is how many good studios, jobs, and products will have been trashed in setting Microsoft’s huge piles of cash on fire.
Much though I love those games, I’m pretty sure Sony would take that trade every day of the week.
Yeah, I doubt Sony is that worried about not dominating checks notes PC games.
Niche PC games at that.
Actually, it occurs to me that they kind of did take that trade, because PC strategy games is the niche that Sega of all people decided to go into hard with Relic, Creative Assembly and SI.