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I thought for sure way back when the original Xbox came out that they were playing the really long game (no pun intended) to get a foothold and conquer the livi

I thought for sure way back when the original Xbox came out that they were playing the really long game (no pun intended) to get a foothold and conquer the living room. After nearly 25 years I don't see that happening and it seems like they are going to end up going the Sega route and just develop software.

JohnMakin 2y ago
Ironically, the fact that Xbox is so windows-friendly is exactly why I think its sales suffer and why they're going to end up just making software - for me as a gamer, I don't feel the need to own an xbox when I can play any xbox exclusive on my PC (and often with much better performance and peripherals). I can only play Playstation exclusive games on a Playstation, and the Playstation exclusives have been consistently very, very good. Pretty much everything on the Switch is exclusive to that console. So why would a budget-constrained person ever buy an Xbox?
- cchi_co 2y ago
  [dead]
AlexandrB 2y ago
I thought the same thing. It's crazy to see the state of Xbox today. Microsoft just seems bad at spotting, nurturing, and retaining talented game developers. Look at the recent layoffs where they nuked Tango Gameworks despite HiFi Rush's success. Going all-in on Gamepass has also devalued their own games in many consumers' minds. Why buy it when you can just get it on Gamepass? I suspect the recurring revenue is not making up for the lost unit sales within any reasonable timeframe.
- cchi_co 2y ago
  [dead]
kalleboo 2y ago
The really tried to conquer the living room with the Xbox One, making it more about media than games, and the gamers revolted while the non-gamers shrugged. I think that's when the rest of Microsoft wrote it off.
- Freebytes 2y ago
  For one thing, they need to hire someone to be "Chief Executive of Naming Things That Make Sense" because they are terrible with naming stuff. "I got an Xbox One!" "Oh, the first one?" "No, the XBox One not the original XBox 1." Or, looking at the .NET evolution: .NET Framework 4.8 .NET Core .NET Core 2 .NET Core 3 .NET 5 There is no .NET Core 4 because people would get confused with .NET Framework 4 which is still getting bug fixes and has support. And they wanted people to move from .NET Framework 4 so they called it .NET 5 instead of .NET Core 5.
bee_rider 2y ago
The idea of a sort of home-computer situated in the living room instead of the office made a whole lot more sense before smartphones.
Freebytes 2y ago
Well, the name of the company is Microsoft, not Microhard.
ThrowawayB7 2y ago
> "to get a foothold and conquer the living room" They did try it, remember? During the Xbox One launch, there was a heavy marketing blitz to position it as a living room multimedia machine and console gamers absolutely tore them to pieces for it. They gave up after that debacle.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Ironically, the fact that Xbox is so windows-friendly is exactly why I think its sales suffer and why they're going to end up just making software - for me as a gamer, I don't feel the need to own an xbox when I can play any xbox exclusive on my PC (and often with much better performance and peripherals). I can only play Playstation exclusive games on a Playstation, and the Playstation exclusives have been consistently very, very good. Pretty much everything on the Switch is exclusive to that console. So why would a budget-constrained person ever buy an Xbox?

cchi_co 2y ago
[dead]

AlexandrB 2y ago

I thought the same thing. It's crazy to see the state of Xbox today. Microsoft just seems bad at spotting, nurturing, and retaining talented game developers. Look at the recent layoffs where they nuked Tango Gameworks despite HiFi Rush's success. Going all-in on Gamepass has also devalued their own games in many consumers' minds. Why buy it when you can just get it on Gamepass? I suspect the recurring revenue is not making up for the lost unit sales within any reasonable timeframe.

cchi_co 2y ago
[dead]

kalleboo 2y ago

The really tried to conquer the living room with the Xbox One, making it more about media than games, and the gamers revolted while the non-gamers shrugged. I think that's when the rest of Microsoft wrote it off.

Freebytes 2y ago
For one thing, they need to hire someone to be "Chief Executive of Naming Things That Make Sense" because they are terrible with naming stuff. "I got an Xbox One!" "Oh, the first one?" "No, the XBox One not the original XBox 1." Or, looking at the .NET evolution: .NET Framework 4.8 .NET Core .NET Core 2 .NET Core 3 .NET 5 There is no .NET Core 4 because people would get confused with .NET Framework 4 which is still getting bug fixes and has support. And they wanted people to move from .NET Framework 4 so they called it .NET 5 instead of .NET Core 5.

bee_rider 2y ago

The idea of a sort of home-computer situated in the living room instead of the office made a whole lot more sense before smartphones.

Freebytes 2y ago

Well, the name of the company is Microsoft, not Microhard.

ThrowawayB7 2y ago

> "to get a foothold and conquer the living room" They did try it, remember? During the Xbox One launch, there was a heavy marketing blitz to position it as a living room multimedia machine and console gamers absolutely tore them to pieces for it. They gave up after that debacle.