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Phil Spencer: Amazon and Google are ‘the main competitors going forward’ in relation to Sony and Nintendo’s ability to create a cloud infrastructure
- Thread starter Fiery Phoenix
- Start date
They said they are not against it. Honestly I think it would be smart of MS to actually just put their games actually everywhere at this point, it's just money on the table
Long-term maybe. He has said many times that he believes that Xcloud or streaming is years away from overtaking local.
I think that's the plan for the future and why they signed a deal together. As is I think it's limited to 720p/30fps. Hopefully it rises to 1080/60 when it's live on Azure
He is talking about infrastructure. In which yes he is 100% correct
Don't think he's just speaking about Stadia, but Google Cloud/AWS. Once streaming becomes more mainstream, publishers will want to use these services to build their own sub.
Not yet.
I think you have to consider the Twitch and YouTube ecosystems here too and the discovery they provide, especially when the free version of Stadia hits. That's how I expect their gaming services will ultimately gain significant traction and why Microsoft is investing so much in Mixer right now.
I expect Amazon's game streaming service will piggyback on Twitch and will likely be Twitch branded. And basic version included with Prime
Those are the main competitors for MS though, not Xbox. Not sure why Phil would throw this out there because his division absolutely competes with Sony's gaming division and Nintendo. Why should it matter if Sony cant create it's own cloud infrastructure when it's clearly not in their business model to do that and there are plenty of choices in that market to partner with to meet that (currently minor) need anyway?
That's silly. LG sells OLED panels to Sony, Samsung sells chips to Apple, Amazon sells iPads. Businesses are not fanboys.
How involved are you in a competitive software business?
From my experience in the industry, that is absolutely not true - and as software/infrastructure as services rise, it becomes even less true.
You do business with your competitors all the time, and the lines between customer, business partner, vendor and competitor are extremely blurred.
Sony has PS Now on Azure, Netflix is on AWS alongside Amazon Prime Video, etc.
I have no idea how you could think that businesses don't work with their main competitors.
Maybe you should explain that to Microsoft because they've spent years not putting Halo on PlayStation.
I don't know if you remember this
They resolved it, but only because they found a mutually beneficial deal, not because they didn't mind losing money in the short term.
Not sure why you're looking at it through the lens of fanboyism.
Yes businesses work with each other, but there is a very big difference between back end deals and front end consumer facing platforms.
Microsoft obviously see Playstation and Nintendo as competitors to their console business, which is why they haven't got all their biggest games on those platforms.
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This is a thoroughly disingenuous take, ignoring the fact that Xbox Series X is also in their product stack. Also considering that VR has not proven itself to be anything more than a niche market whereas cloud computing is a global trend ... you seem more disconnected from reality than anything else.
What does next-gen controller evolution look like?
Also, please cite your source(s) for next-gen exclusives arriving in 2022 and beyond. The source I suspect you're alluding to does not state what you claim.
It's always funny when people are doubtful on cloud gaming. They are counting on enthusiasts roundly rejecting the paradigm to put a stop to it, but what these gaming companies really want is to have a massive user base like cell phone gaming. This is why they talk about 7 billion potential customers. In a world where cloud gaming takes off enthusiasts would be a very small segment of the market.
2012:
Q: What is your general reaction to your competitors this year? Nintendo was showing off the Wii U while Sony was showing Last of Us, Beyond, etc. What was your overall thinking on those two camps?
Phil Spencer: I think, to not not answer your question, it is worth noting that there is another competitor that is not here that has a developer's conference next week (after E3).
Q: Apple?
Phil Spencer: Right, so if we think about where our ambition is, our ambition is to create an entertainment platform for everyone on the planet. We think there are a couple keys; having unique content on our platform. We started off with Halo, but we obviously have a breadth of content on our platform from big core games to things like the Nike fitness program that we showed, to things like Dance Central and our sports offerings. It's a real breadth of content on the platform. Live and the connected service is pretty key to what we do.
eheheheheh
=========================
2013:
Microsoft sees Xbox becoming "entertainment platform for everyone on the planet"
main competitors: Apple
=========================
2020:
Microsoft sees Xbox becoming "streaming platform for everyone on the planet"
main competitors: Amazon, Google.
UHAUHUHAAUH
Q: What is your general reaction to your competitors this year? Nintendo was showing off the Wii U while Sony was showing Last of Us, Beyond, etc. What was your overall thinking on those two camps?
Phil Spencer: I think, to not not answer your question, it is worth noting that there is another competitor that is not here that has a developer's conference next week (after E3).
Q: Apple?
Phil Spencer: Right, so if we think about where our ambition is, our ambition is to create an entertainment platform for everyone on the planet. We think there are a couple keys; having unique content on our platform. We started off with Halo, but we obviously have a breadth of content on our platform from big core games to things like the Nike fitness program that we showed, to things like Dance Central and our sports offerings. It's a real breadth of content on the platform. Live and the connected service is pretty key to what we do.
eheheheheh
=========================
2013:
Microsoft sees Xbox becoming "entertainment platform for everyone on the planet"
main competitors: Apple
=========================
2020:
Microsoft sees Xbox becoming "streaming platform for everyone on the planet"
main competitors: Amazon, Google.
UHAUHUHAAUH
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Yup. Businesses exist to make money, not be fanboys. If they can team up with a competitor to help their bottomline, they will.
I do wonder how much of this is Phil positioning this so that he can make sure the Xbox division within Microsoft keeps getting a significant amount of funding. I imagine part of his job is fighting for a higher budget and I have to imagine that having Amazon and Google as your main competitors is a much more convincing way to get a higher budget than saying their competitors are Nintendo and Sony. Microsoft really does not want to lose out on Cloud or Services to Google or Amazon so I feel like this is a great way to make sure his department is funded to the fullest. Positioning this as such is smart move on his part. I mean, there's also plenty of truth to this as other posts have mentioned with the future seemingly going towards cloud based services.
I guess content doesn't matter here then, right? I don't understand this tbh. Both Amazon and Google barely have any content to compete with. Sony can rent whatever service they want, and it's not like MS can just use the infrastructure they have by the flip of a switch.
They still need their hardware installed in their centers to run games in the same way as Sony. Sure, they'll have to pay less to run their service since it's their own, but their work isn't cut for them just because they own Azura.
They still need their hardware installed in their centers to run games in the same way as Sony. Sure, they'll have to pay less to run their service since it's their own, but their work isn't cut for them just because they own Azura.
Imagine owning a business and refusing to work with your competitor because pride lol
Weirdly that doesn't seem to be their focus at all, at least not for the time being
In the meantime they encourage that transition and continue to try to disrupt alternative models as much as possible.
Whisper it, but MS has been pivoting away - not abandoning, but pivoting away - from the console business for some time now. It's not a model that ever worked very well for them. The 'console war', I dare say, is over in this regard.
Cause they are ignorant or the last 5 years of networking technology and how it's genuinely changed.
Latency is only a problem if you make a garbage infrastructure. You can't replace locally processed games you can get rid of latency caused by bad hops also use better packet priority or queuing tech that didn't exist up until the time period mentioned. it will take time but some players big and small are adjusting just a matter of when one of the big cloud companies does.
Every time cloud compute services come up in threads here, gaming side people react in ways that don't make a lot of sense. I don't think the gaming crowd have a good understanding of that space.
You're still looking at this from a low-level, emotional, consumer focal point. That specific use case was not deemed financially advantageous, so they didn't do it. Putting Halo on Steam in 2020 was, so they did do it.
Businesses exist serve their shareholders.
He is very specifically talking about the long term with Cloud Gaming. Also Sony is partnered up with Microsoft to use Azure for PSNow. They are a partner by this point, not competition. Microsoft wants everybody to use Azure, and not Google or Amazon's cloud serives. Microsoft does not see Sony or Nitnendo making their own cloud that can compete with Azure. Microsoft's goals are much larger than "just" console sales, though i expect many to ignore this.
Eggs in one basket? Microsoft are not Nintendo, they dont rely mainly on gaming. They have their hands in many areas. We hear about it all the time about this and that with Mictosoft yet they are supposively making multille Series X systems. How does that translate into putting all their eggs into one basket?
Oh i see. Microsoft is getting alot of positive feedback and attention over Gamepass. Can't have that, it must mean no more physical games. Microsoft spends bullions in cloud infrastructure, that's not good, say goodbye to traditional gaming.
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The only thing that sets Stadia back is not having a back catalog.
I'm really not, I'm just scrutinising what is being said.
I don't care if Halo is on Playstation, I'm just accurately stating it's not on there because if it was, it would undermine Microsoft's ability to compete with Sony.
Because Microsoft's strategy is clearly still to compete with Sony.
It's not even just content though, Sony still posts higher MAU numbers and has more PS+ subs than XBL Gold subs, so they cant even beat their "non-competition" in services.
erm....Amazon has their cloud but their Prime Videos are nowhere near the impact of Netflix and HBO and Disney+ (and ironically, while both netflix and prime video are on Amazon EC2, netflix app seems to perform much better than prime video for whatever reason)
don't think the tech (and the size of the company) determines the success of the product or the service. Especially for the media business, it is always about the content and the outreach.
don't think the tech (and the size of the company) determines the success of the product or the service. Especially for the media business, it is always about the content and the outreach.
Who says Sony would want it? After all they held out for the longest time to even support EA Accesss. Sony will protect itself much more than Microsoft.
thats where the tweet was confusing to me why say sony cant compete with your cloud when they're your partner.
I bet plenty have replied, but I'm pretty confident it's AWS, unless something has changed in the last 2 years. My company is an AWS customer (well, who isn't?) but for one of our products we were being pitched by an AWS sales team and they used Sony and Playstation as a customer success article. It wasn't specific to PS NOw, just Playstation, but I'd be surprised if they split up their big cloud services like that.
PS Now runs on Playstation derived hardware (as in blades with the guts of PS3 and PS4 consoles in them), which I very much doubt AWS have.
I think it must be talking about other web services that they provide for Playstation.
You just answered your own question. Xbox as a division should not be tied to choices the rest of the company makes. Unfortunately since the company is going more service based since they have now just one OS to work with going forward. Their whole initiative is cloud/software services subscriptions/server infrastructure for other companies. That all now bleeds into how xbox's division is run and path going forward.
Azure, xCloud, Gamepass all are comparative to Enterprise part of the company. This was one of the issues during XBox's original conception that had people over time leave the project. Because they thought they were building a console to challenge SOny/Nintendo. But in reality what Bill Gates wanted was a center piece in your living room that you could record/play your content. Hence why it had a harddrive. It wasn't really for games originally. It was for the OS and other things they were planning down the road. Which during 360 you could see early stages of streaming locally your recorded content using Windows Media center on PC in conjunction with your xbox.
Xbox has never had the correct mindset as a division for just being built to play games and have a brand of games that were unique to it. Like PC developers being a huge backbone in the early days.
Now Xbox is just being controlled in a sense by the bigger part of the company and it's decisions going forward are now more influenced by what the rest of the enterprise divsion visions are than what XBox itself envisions itself as.
GoFreak commented on it earlier, your going to see these series of devices more and more resemble more of PC's for them. On top of them just being XBox branded PC's with actual windows desktop OS and custom UI for gaming.
You will eventually see it blur into just being a software platform that will have Microsoft/XBox branded PC's some of which may not even come from them.
That's their end goal, to get out of making dedicated console, and make a dedicated hardware agnostic platform that either can be streamed or downloaded to play their content/services.
I am not a fan of that.
User Banned (1 day): Console wars
Phill Spencer is a funny guy.
He is focusing on 7 billion people when he can´t get 100 million.
Well at least the damage control for being trounced next gen by Sony is already set up.
Keep the PR machine running Phil !
i didnt realize sony was building there own cloud infrastructure(which is what the article is talking about)
Getting your console into a home means a lot though, and denying that is pretty weird.
And that part of the interview still references the chase as a whole, not just cloud.
It is saying "we don't see them as competitors because we belive the future is in cloud", not just saying "we don't see them as competitors in the cloud space specifically".