4 ms·
The entire story of Xbox is: If Halo didn't exist, Xbox would have died years ago. Microsoft is fundamentally culturally incompatible with basically any produc
by 015a 2y ago
The entire story of Xbox is: If Halo didn't exist, Xbox would have died years ago.
Microsoft is fundamentally culturally incompatible with basically any product that isn't Enterprise B2B. The stories from e.g. Seamus Blackley out of early-day Xbox are harrowing; the division exists despite the rest of Microsoft, almost in flagrant opposition. They've invested hundreds of billions of dollars into game development over the past ten years, managing to produce literally zero new titles achieving even same-magnitude levels of cultural and market success as a typical Playstation triple-A. They've sustained themselves on ZIRP acquisitions of big games, and given enough time have managed only to run their acquisitions into the ground.
Xbox made a call a few years ago that "more eyeballs on games is always better"; they reduced the prominence of the Xbox console, brought all their games to PC on day one, and even started selling them on Steam. That prioritization gave up all of their platform power; tithing 30% of every sale to Steam is a huge revenue leach, not to mention losing out on their own 30% on Xbox consoles. Spencer's argument has always been that Game Pass is the platform; but gamers aren't the kind of passive consumer of content that e.g. Netflix subscribers are. Gamers very regularly make value assessments like "yeah I want to try this new game, I'll pay the $10/mo for one month of Game Pass, cheaper than the $20 upfront", or "I'll be playing call of duty all year, cheaper to buy it upfront on Steam than pay for Game Pass". It was obvious to anyone that Game Pass's primary function was to save gamers money; no one sticks with the platform when it stops doing that.
There is literally no company I would short harder than Xbox, if Xbox were shortable independent of Microsoft. The world would be better off if Spencer had never taken over for Mattrick; Mattrick is actually mind-numbingly, fool-in-the-public-square level incompetent, and if he had remained in charge we wouldn't even be having this conversation in 2024, ABK would still be independent, maybe even Halo would have been sold off to a better studio than 343i. Spencer has done better, but in his valiant attempts has taken a dozen classic gaming brands and franchises down with him.
- jwells89 2y agoThe original Xbox would almost certainly have not succeeded had it not been for Halo, but aside from the RROD debacle (which I think cost Microsoft a lot of momentum that generation, particularly in its latter half after the PS3 had been out for a while), the 360 was extremely solid and probably the Xbox at its finest. It had a wonderfully wide variety in game genres that Xboxes haven't enjoyed since and plenty of non-Halo big hits. It just might've done ok without Halo's help.
- 015a 2y agoYou're probably right; its hard to say when speaking in retrospect and on hypotheticals. Ultimately I tend to feel that the success of Xbox 360 is predominately attributable to the early failures of the PlayStation 3. PS3 was WAY too expensive, inflation-adjusted one of the most expensive consoles ever made outpacing everything on the market today, and had almost no great launch titles. When you consider that X360 had CoD2 as an exclusive launch title in 2005, the story kinda writes itself; people may have bought the console on these points + the promise of Halo 3 in the future, but it likely would have done well without it. Its also important to recognize: The PS3 did outsell the Xbox 360 by the end [1]. Its definitely the closest margins of any of their competing generations; generally Playstation does much better, not just a little better. But this is not the sense that I have growing up in that generation; I have the sense that the 360 dominated. Reality is a bit different. Sadly; whatever gains Microsoft won during the X360 generation, Mattrick immediately threw away with X1 [2]. Their early DRM policies set Sony up to drop what is arguably the most effective piece of video game advertising ever made [3], the forced Kinect bundle communicated to customers that Microsoft's vision for the future is more important to them than the games themselves, and Sony got their pricing and launch lineup (Infamous?) under control. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_cons... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_JVVUnCWnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_JVVUnCWnY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA