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[Business Insider] "With the next Xbox, Microsoft has a 4-part strategy to end the console wars once and for all"
- Thread starter Neat
- Start date
...and ironically the new boxes that are coming out in 2020 are more powerful relative to the PC market than they've been since 2006 and do more unique things than they've done since then. There's more developers of more sizes taking more risks than we've ever seen. The only difference is that it's going to be more accessible and being a "console gamer" no longer makes anyone feel special or exclusive. And that's the real issue I think console gamers are dealing with. Some console gamers are hiding behind fake objections. Based on the HZD on PC thread, it's obvious that it has nothing to do with quality. It's about identity and feeling part of an "exclusive" club or "special". It's time to let that go.
Agree. The people who won't let it go enjoy it as a sport. It's a sport they've felt like participants in since the SNES vs Sega Genesis days. It's time for everyone to get ready for retirement. Maybe we can spend more time debating which games are better and less time on which piece of plastic is "winning".
Imagine being a grown ass adult, worried about how much a piece of plastic sells over another piece of plastic. I'm just here for all the dope ass games I'm about to play.
4. With Game Pass, Microsoft could win the race to create the first major "Netflix of gaming" service.
Sure.
Does the Netflix model work in the games industry though: TBD
Sure.
Does the Netflix model work in the games industry though: TBD
I hope people are ready for when Sony launches their own PC store and starts grabbing third party exclusives there too.
A lot of the fuel for console wars comes from comparison of how 3rd party games look and perform on each respective platform. As long as we get comparable sets of dedicated hardware, this will be an issue.
If this continues,
Sony strategy is high risk high reward. Their strength is unparalleled quality of their first party games which attracts people for sure and traps them in their ecosystem, but imagine a world where Tlou and Uncharted 4 flopped for some godforsaken reason. It would prove to be such a devastating blow for everything for PS.
However MS going low risk medium reward. They can't compete with competitors first party games no way, and while people enjoy their Indie and AA games on an unparalleled Gamepass service, they can work on AAA which are much more less risky than right now because their entire strategy isn't revolving around it. They can make THE Home console for all third party games and they WILL, unless Sony does something about Gamepass.
Let's wait for PS5 reveal.
Sony strategy is high risk high reward. Their strength is unparalleled quality of their first party games which attracts people for sure and traps them in their ecosystem, but imagine a world where Tlou and Uncharted 4 flopped for some godforsaken reason. It would prove to be such a devastating blow for everything for PS.
However MS going low risk medium reward. They can't compete with competitors first party games no way, and while people enjoy their Indie and AA games on an unparalleled Gamepass service, they can work on AAA which are much more less risky than right now because their entire strategy isn't revolving around it. They can make THE Home console for all third party games and they WILL, unless Sony does something about Gamepass.
Let's wait for PS5 reveal.
Fast forward 6 years and we will be in the same position as we are now just like the last 3 gens. And then we can q another load of articles again claiming this and that. It's rince and repeat at the start of every gen that with these so called opinions of the future.
The concern isn't so much with Xbone forward compatibility, I think people understand that's getting dropped in a few years by most devs. The issue is the lower-powered Xbox that's also coming and won't be as powerful as Series X. I'm expecting that ~0 games will have Series X as their minimum requirement in the next 5 years, and the lower-powered console will be the target. That'd limit the ambition of games, since levels/AI/physics all getting scoped on the lower-powered console to reach the widest audience, and Series X just getting graphical enhancements.
I would equate risk to money. Microsoft's approach isn't cheap. I'd argue subscriptions are high risk, high reward. I also believe the question shouldn't be who's going to win or who's approach will make the most money. It's whether they can all co-exist and continue to do the right things so that the industry as a whole remains healthy.
This sort of ignores that the playstation platform was notorious for weak first party efforts (gran turismo aside) up until the latter half of the ps3 era.
The ps1 was the first system to break 100m units by a MILE, and the ps2 broke 155m units with far weaker first party efforts than Nintendo, MS, or Sega.
Sony brought the ps3 back to relevance on the strength of first party titles and the ps4 has obviously benefited from that as well, but historically Sony has proven they can move a lot of units even if TLOU doesn't exist.
I had that in mind but I thought whatever money they are bleeding with Gamepass they can make it up (by some fraction) in sheer numbers of gamers in their ecosystem. GP literally has no competition for value for money. AND I don't think MS will ever fund too many self contained AAA SP experiences if it doesn't have MP to get people to buy GP.
While Sony over here has UC, TloU, GoW, GT, Spidey that must be extremely costly to match that perfect standard with with no fall back, thus the high risk.
Sony studios could keep it knocking out of the park (like they have been for decades) everytime but we have to admit it is risky.
Or am I underestimating just how much GP is actually costing MS.
What? How does that fit to the personal opinion of the OP and when sites like Push Square exist? Please come up with specific examples.
50 years from now console warriors will be fighting over subscription fees and streaming service UI.
I can't see how a system like gamepass is good for these companies. For users they are great but are they even profitable for Microsoft? For the studios?
Except that time Wii won the console generation and gamers changed the goalposts.
Netflix model for games does not seem sustainable to me (it isn't even really sustainable for Netflix) but what do I know...
Best of luck to Microsoft!
Best of luck to Microsoft!
Exactly. Its basically saying msft no longer cares if you buy their console... Its basically saying the PlayStation will sell more, but ultimately msft wants people to play their games more and that no longer requires their console.
So, ignoring that it has always been about content and not consoles, your argument is that Amazon is a company that Sony can not compete against in content? In what world does Sony not have content that could be exclusive to their service?
How are we defining "biggest digital media companies" to begin with? Amazon does sell product digitally and is even in the content production side on video (Amazon Originals), but that still isn't Amazon's primary business and the small steps they have made into the video game content market does show a huge interest in the idea of them hosting a service like PS Now, Stadia, or xcloud.
Once again, Amazon is not competing in the video game platform market in the same way Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, and now Google are. Of the four platform holders, two already offer a streaming service (Sony and Google), and one is limited but obviously happening (Microsoft). Amazon is not one of those four and Nintendo has not shown anything in regards to streaming. If Amazon has the intentions of becoming a platform holder than the longer they delay the worst it will be for them no matter how large they are. They do not have the content to break entrenched companies like Sony and Microsoft.
Sony's corporate leadership can make mistakes and fail to compete against a company like Amazon, but your assumption that they're doomed to fail from the start is not thinking about the future. It is delusional narcissism that declares your opinion on what may come to be absolute. Sony competed just fine against Microsoft in the physical video game market. Sony is well positioned to stay competitive.
I don't even know how to respond to this... Twitch is a service where people, called streamers, can stream their video game sessions from their own PC or console(s) to viewers all across the world. It is not a service you use to stream a game you play from Twitch like streaming a game on PS Now or Stadia. Twitch briefly sold games you could download and play on your own computer. They no longer offer this service.
Game pass is so good it got me using my Xbox again.
Microsoft heard everyone saying give us games, and went all in.
To be honest give me game pass on my iPad Pro, what is stopping them?
Microsoft heard everyone saying give us games, and went all in.
To be honest give me game pass on my iPad Pro, what is stopping them?
Haha, the amount of COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT in this thread is incredible. Microsoft is going to end the "console war" because of point 1: THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE CONSOLE WAR ANYMORE. Because they aren't that worried about the console competition in so far as they can run a profitable and sustainable service. The people who keep trying to spin this as "Pfft. No way MS will win the war! How stupid!!" are being utterly short sighted in understanding what is happening. You are still a very important customer to Xbox, but the ecosystem no longer orbits around you and your influence. Xbox is embracing the strategy of opening up gaming to everyone, which means although we WILL get the high end game built expressly for Series X, it also means we're going to get games that are just not for you.
And that's OK.
And that's OK.
As a programmer, you should be able to imagine a scenario where you identify the hardware the game runs on and scale things accordingly, and/or have a settings menu with predetermined settings and let the user do the scaling, so the game will run well enough on both old and new hardware.
Some games will run well on old hardware while some won't run at all. And it's all okay.
PC gaming works exactly this way but is ten times more complicated, and multi-platform titles on PC has so far managed to outdo their console siblings every single generation, if you have the right hardware.
To me as a PC gamer it all sounds awesome. No more starting over from scratch building a new games library, no more buying rushed 7/10 games at launch just to have something to play on your new $500 toy. And Gamepass is there with an already big library of games from day 1.
I still doubt that this is the way to "win the console war" but it'll create a solid ground for the future without destroying the past, and in the end when they get people to "jump in" it'll all contribute to making it much less likely that people "jump out".
Put this context in 6 or 7 years ahead. Makes sense, the main or core service will be streaming and the consoles will coexist with other platforms in order to play games.
Said that, we all have to admit that MS it's the one that has it all in terms of tech and resources to be the no. 1 for videogames streaming services.
Said that, we all have to admit that MS it's the one that has it all in terms of tech and resources to be the no. 1 for videogames streaming services.
I honestly still can't understand why people struggle to grasp it. I can play games from 2001 on my current PC. And the tools and development has come a looooooooong way in 2 decades. Starting it now I could definitely see how someone could do this providing they exercise caution. It's really not some super foreign concept when PC has been doing it forever.
I don't think its concern trolling. I think people really just can't see it coming. It's been super obvious for a while but I think a LOT of console gamers still just don't see the potential and really think its a bad idea or won't work. I expect a lot of surprise over the next 10 years in the console space for sure.
Microsoft isn't using a Netflix model. Netflix's content model consisted of older content that was not in heavy purchase or rotation but they had a substantial amount of quantity versus quality which is why PSNow is actually that model. That said, it's is even more sustainable for video games as developers cannot generate money off of a PS1 game in the current environment and gamers cannot play it without compatible hardware, where as offering it on a Netflix game service means potential perpetual revenue and possibility to use it as a advert for newer titles like how Ghostbusters shows up on Netflix before a new movies releases.
How is renting games better than owning games?
To the OP... I say yeah right.gif
I can see every title being like Minecraft in a few years. They are already porting to Switch, but PS4 would be "too much" now.
Very Very Very much disagree. The idea of server side render farms for gaming dies in the next ten years.
For a year. Like it does every single time and yet no one cared before.
No game released only for the new consoles will use all of what the new consoles have to offer within the first 3-4 years let alone 1
Also as a side not if the game is developed which the new consoles as the main platform which many will be the game won't be weakened for having to run on weaker systems. Great example: The Witcher 3 on Nintendo Switch (and absolute potato PC's)
Lol... you really believe this? Like seriously? That as the tech ADVANCES and becomes better at handling these things, and at a lower cost as well; that the concept will go away instead of grow?
My god. No man... Servers in general are going to continue to grow. Look at PC technology in general.
Content is king.
If you don't have the content to drive service/streaming/console adoption, even with the right strategy you'll lack the core ingredient to drive people to your brand.
If you don't have the content to drive service/streaming/console adoption, even with the right strategy you'll lack the core ingredient to drive people to your brand.
Yes because in 10 years we are going to have 100 Tflop consoles. There's a VERY real diminishing returns effect that we are close to hitting in computer graphics. It's already estimated that photorealistic dynamic graphics only require around 40 TFLOPS and it's possible we could hit that in a mid gen refresh of the next generation.
When you have 100Tflop consoles there's no point in running expensive servers when you can just make the client rendering cheaper and more readily available.
For all intents and purposes the average user is likely not going to see a tangible difference between a 100 Tflop gpu and a 500 Tflop gpu when eventhing is basically photorealistic. The end of console wars and hardware wars in general is approaching very quickly.
Eh? It was almost a complete ocean of negativity in the lead up to XBO launch. And the 360 had been successful.