Im sure the 3DS had more tea than Vita had bricks.
That's what you read like.
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Microsoft: Xbox One is the “Highest-Engagement Console” in the Market; Explains Strategy for Gaming
- Thread starter Rychu
- Start date
That's what you read like.
I feel like that's a pretty narrow view and stuck in the past. Microsoft is primarily a services company, not a hardware company. The console market has evolved and services are becoming more important. If hardware sales was the only thing that mattered, Sony wouldn't mention things like how many PS+ subscribers they have. There's no doubt that Microsoft is not equal with Sony in hardware sales, but that's only part of the picture.
It becomes even murkier when you consider stuff like cross-play and focusing on both Xbox and Windows -- a combined ecosystem. I don't have an Xbox but I have bought multiple Xbox games on my PC. If hardware is all that matters then I would be invisible in the ecosystem. That's not the case though, metrics had to evolve to more accurately measure the industry, and those metrics will only continue to develop. It's no longer as simple as just going by hardware, and those changes were not purely driven by the fact that Xbox can't reach the old measure of success in hardware sales.
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Haha. What's the matter?
Look, I work on corporate affairs, I was just making an observation, it's top tier PR because to a clueless shareholder it sounds pretty fantastic while in terms of market it's still weak af.
Not talking about the console or the games or whatever, from a corporate view, it's amazing.
No, I saw the other ones... I was just joining in... this forum is starting to get too serious.
Great post. I think we're not seeing this move to services solely as a reaction to being behind. MS knows there's money to be made from these services and they're going all in on it.
It's a shame that it handicapped the hardware at launch but they're moving in the right direction now.
Traditional games are making way for GaaS. Active user engagement is far more important than a single sale. Same how streams are becoming more important than sales in music.
Ugh, your posts are down right sad. I know positive MS threads are an absolute cesspool but you're trying way too hard while ignoring posts that explain it like Matt's post and many others.
I appreciated it, but just look at the crap going on in the rest of this thread. It's a mountain of sadness at the state of humanity.
Single sales are a big part of engagement. I buy ... umm, fuck do I buy a lot of games. I am a better stat for sony and ms and steam and nintendo than probably 90% of the rest of their customers just on that alone.
I disagree. Per $ investment you are far more expensive to any of those companies than someone who spends more on a few games.
Exactly. In the past consoles were all about the hardware. You buy the hardware, you buy a game. It was a game box through and through. With each generation that has taken steps forward. Services and the ecosystem of the console is growing more important. Someone might not just own a PS4, they might subscribe to Playstation Vue and PS+, maybe they only buy a new game only once in a while but use Playstation Now a lot. How does Sony describe that customer? It can't be done with just summing them up as 1 PS4 sold. It's no longer that simple.
The services aspect of consoles is growing quickly and becoming just as important as the hardware aspect in a lot of cases. The method of measuring those has to develop along side it. That's what businesses do, they have to find ways to measure success. Was some of it brought on by Xbox being behind in hardware sales? Maybe. But this would have happened regardless of who 'won' the generation or sold the most. This is a natural development of the console industry's growth and changes.
I disagree here, MAU has the same importance as other metrics, like sales number, gold subscription number etc, that's why you need them to see the full picture.
Look at Nintendo, they reported sales number for wiiu despite the bad sales.
Shortly after the start of this gen, Microsoft is not reporting any console sales number, not gold subscription number, instead they report MAU and now ''highest engagement console''. Wondering why...
I think I edited badly - I am not talking about sales as in % off, I'm talking about sales, as in quantity of games bought.
I know that. But what I'm saying is that they keep needing to develop more games to keep you spending. Whereas a gamer who keeps playing and spending on a single game is going to be far more profitable.
It's only weird if you don't know metrics and all because you don't get it doesn't make it a PR spin.
For a company that is focuses on both PC and Xbox, how well would hardware-focused metrics like sales numbers and gold subscribers help? I buy Xbox games on PC, so i've bought neither hardware or a Gold subscription. By those two metrics, I and anyone else that does as I do is invisible. Sony and Nintendo don't really have that concern as they're purely console focused. Some of it may be driven by not selling as much hardware, but it also doesn't make much sense for a services company focused on a larger ecosystem to only measure success by one aspect of that ecosystem. The console is still clearly the larger piece of the pie, but this isn't early last gen where a game console was just for games and services was a minor consideration.
So if Spencer and Nadella are to be believed and Xbox is more than just a console, those metrics of console sale numbers and gold subscribers is only a part of the picture.
We still do get a bit of insight into hardware numbers via NPD, but it tends to be more abstracted than a hard "Xbox sold ___ consoles in ___."
nothing, Microsoft loves being as obtuse and weird as possible. They really twist and push some words to their extremes. Like last year's E3, they pushed the word "Exclusive" to its limits and then some.
But it's just weird to me they keep saying this. I am pretty sure they don't know Sony's numbers so... how?
You are talking like their Xbox and W10 gaming division makes the same revenue, which is not. Xbox brings them more money from Gold, 3rd party royalty, 1st party games, MTX, services like GP, EA Access. On PC side, they make money from 1st party and a few 3rd party titles, available on their store. If they wanted to, they could easily show the numbers for WS too, but instead of this, they are hiding the numbers.
Nobody says they have to measure the succes by only one aspect, that's why i said all the numbers are important, but, instead of showing them, Ms keeps them in secret.
That's exactly what i said.
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Ultimately, isn't it a good thing for us, the consumers?
The big three are doing their own thing now:
Sony with their traditional single player approach.
Microsoft with their focus on service and player engagement.
Nintendo with their Switch, straying from the graphical showcase race.
The big three are doing their own thing now:
Sony with their traditional single player approach.
Microsoft with their focus on service and player engagement.
Nintendo with their Switch, straying from the graphical showcase race.
Larger Norwegian corporations would classify this as Investor Relations not Public Relations.
Having a highly active userbase is gold for companies that have the ability to monetize the active userbase.
Ahh I see your distinction. I don't know about that though - people who play wow pay 15/mo to one company and I would wager that for a silly high % its the only $ they spend. (I can only speak to the 100's of guildmates Ive had over the years, and a lot of them at the time wow was the only game. Hell I pretty much stop buying other games when IM playing wow)
And then theres GAAS need to actually have people playing it - look at that capcom puzzle game and all the MOBA-likes that have gone belly up in the last year. It will happen again in the next yer - companies will be far too late to an oversaturated PUBG style market and go belly up.
There is a cap to how many will play any kind of game and not everything can get shoehorned into being a service. EA was going for the gold and got smacked for it, though I dont know if it just means they will keep trying but be less obvious about it.
EDIT: I should take this opportunity to point out that a lot of GAAS get designed to keep you only playing that game. Take Destiny - they know exactly how many minutes it will take you do do the random weekly tasks, and make sure that the minimum is just enough to eat up an average players gaming time for the week. They even put in gating to, at first I thought to keep people from playing too much, but its really more so that you have to spend all the time each week instead of front loading it.
Wow has daily tasks that accomplish the same thing - anything to give that sunk cost to keep you paying.
Some F2P games are the worst on this and just take it to new levels making timesinks that are literally unplayable without spending money. Once you have paid once you already fall into the sunk cost trap, and it can spiral out form there.
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Don't let context and language get in the way of someone going off about things in the frame they want in order to prove a point using whatever circuitous logic they can come up with!! /s
I never said they make the same revenue, just that hardware & gold subscribers is not a good summary of the health of a division anymore. In the 360 days those were the main things. Did that person buy an Xbox and is that person a gold subscriber? That and how many games the average users buys was a pretty good look at how the Xbox division was doing.
That is not the case anymore. Xbox is both console and PC. There's more services that the console offers than just Gold, same thing for Playstation. As the services component of consoles has grown, the metrics of how to measure the health of a division have changed. A console sale and a Gold subscription is still important, but there is a lot more beyond that that needs to be measured. This is not exclusive to Xbox. The Surface division brought in $1 billion last year, but they never said how many Surfaces were sold. Hardware numbers are fun for consumers, but obviously to Microsoft and its investors, it's not an important consideration.
I would like an option to hide threads other than bloking the OPs
if anyone knows how to do it PM since I no longer will see this thread.
if anyone knows how to do it PM since I no longer will see this thread.
There are a few users of this forum that others are better off not engaging with.....
Was going to make the joke as well, but you perfected it with the gif.
As a huge baseball fan this reminds when baseball changed to a more metrics and analytic way of doing business. People didn't get it and dismissed it as rubbish. Now if any company or sport aren't using hard core analytics they are dinosaurs. I feel that's what is happening here with so many people still put all their emphasis on consoles sold as the only stat that matters and calling everything else PR rubbish. It happened with MAU, engagement, etc...
It's interesting to watch this in real time. Gaming is changing folks.
The thing is, the smaller the base, the higher retention "looks like" because the competitor probably has the casual market in lock which means the retention is quite low for a good portion of its userbase.
For that I'm gathering they're not talking in terms of "more spending overall" but more "relative spending" which means their base is more "attached" to the console in average, which is obvious because the competition has millions of people who bought the console for, say, Crash, or Fifa or whatever.
If i remember corectly, they started hiding the console sales number shortly after launch, but before going all in pc gaming.
They didn't change, they improved, that's why we still get this kind of numbers from Sony and Nintendo. This changed only for Microsoft, after the disastrous launch of xbox one. I have no problem when the company shows MAU, this is correct, but show me also other numbers so i can analyse the full picture, not just the numbers you want me to see.
This isn't their own thing now, lol. Every company wants to have a higher player engagement.
These sort of quarterlies don't help them? Their quarterly was fantastic! They kept the same number of users as the holiday period which is very, very impressive as there is almost always a drop off from the holiday quarter to the next quarter. To maintain the same numbers is excellent. They did 2.25bil, which is again, excellent.
This is only a bad look to people that don't know what they're looking at and are only looking for some console war ammo. Investors and people that actually understand what this is can see that these are great results.
Not to mention that Sony now also report MAU as well, and have specifically said how important of a metric it is.
Easy. If engagement is defined as something like ratio of users subscribing to XBLG services for X months, switch would have a 0% given that they have no paid online service.
I don't think it's fully 1:1 between them though. Both Nintendo and Sony are more hardware-focused companies than Microsoft is. Both of them are, for the most part, based around a single console and the health of that console. When you say "Playstation" it is clearly talking about PS4. That is what Playstation is, it is the most recent console they have released. Xbox/Microsoft have made it clear they are moving away from that in the last 3-4 years. They don't want Xbox to be just a console, they intend for it to be more services focused with everything bundled under an Xbox-named umbrella. We've seen this with that rumored game streaming device. The move to Xbox being a stronger and more distinct platform on PC. The emphasis on something like Gamepass as the "netflix of games". Microsoft is actively moving away from Xbox being primarily a game console.
So while Sony and Nintendo will be more focused on the hardware, Microsoft is more focused on the services. All 3 are part of both of those pools, but hardware is a lesser consideration for Microsoft (though still an important one). If investors felt that hardware numbers were important than we would see it mentioned, but both the Xbox and Surface divisions -- despite bringing in a good amount of money -- skipped those numbers. If it was just Xbox skipping numbers then I could see an argument for it being a consequence of lesser sales, but Surface had a really strong quarter and skipped hardware numbers as well. Based on that, it seems like it's just a consequence of Microsoft's focus on services and less consideration for hardware numbers.
Exactly. All investors care about is the growth and the bottom line, and they are both solid.
This is a good post.
Of course Nadella is going to use a statistic that portray his company's efforts in a highly positive light. I would imagine that the executive in charge at Sony and Nintendo would always do the same in their shareholder meetings.
In the grand scheme of things, "engagement" is only a single statistic, and does not mean very much alone without context. Some people in this thread tried to provide that context. You have to ask the following questions:
- Even though the ratio of "engaged" (or, some might say "hardcore") users appears to be higher on our platform, does the competition have a greater plurality of "engaged" users?
- If we could add another 40-50 million users to catch up to or surpass our competitor, can we still maintain this high level of "engagement" with this influx of new users?
- How can we add another 40-50 million users, so that we can have the opportunity to "engage" them?
Exactly. Doesn't that kinda prove that MS isn't the only one who sees the importance of these "made up" metrics?
Nadella talks about usage and user engagement often when citing business health metrics. And this isn't the first time the CEO has talked about gaming driving higher user engagement and revenue.
In 2014, in a memo to the company about their mission, he cited gaming as the number one driver of user time and money spent in the mobile industry and stated they would use Xbox to go after that opportunity.
For subscription-based businesses, which is where Nadella has been taking all their offerings, tracking user engagement and monetization are two standard key performance indicators, along with others like new customer acquisition and retention. I'm not trying to be inflammatory by saying any mockery on your part to discredit those metrics only shines a light on your ignorance. If you're interested in tracking the health of gaming platforms, or any SaaS-based business really, in the coming years then you should familiarize yourself with them.
In 2014, in a memo to the company about their mission, he cited gaming as the number one driver of user time and money spent in the mobile industry and stated they would use Xbox to go after that opportunity.
For subscription-based businesses, which is where Nadella has been taking all their offerings, tracking user engagement and monetization are two standard key performance indicators, along with others like new customer acquisition and retention. I'm not trying to be inflammatory by saying any mockery on your part to discredit those metrics only shines a light on your ignorance. If you're interested in tracking the health of gaming platforms, or any SaaS-based business really, in the coming years then you should familiarize yourself with them.
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Yep. They also care more about Office 365 subscriptions than Office sales.
This isn't some "Microsoft is losing so they're changing the numbers" situation. This is company-wide in areas where they are already highly successful.
User Banned (3 Days): Continued system warring despite previous infractions
It basically means Xbox is where the most real gamers are and PS4 is for filthy casuals.
People don't have a problem with MAU .
The problem people have is using it to make things certain look better while hiding other things.
Yes Sony use MAUs but we also get loads of other data from them same for Nintendo
A higher proportion of RealGamers™.
All platform holders will focus on engagement going forwards, it's not something special or unique to Microsoft. They've just decided to make it a headline metric when talking to investors.
I don't think office sales are even relevant anymore. Any major company that still buys Office and hosts them on their own servers is nutso.
Many report MAUs with more or less focus on that metric.
Activision, EA, Supercell, Facebook, Twitter, Apple etc...
My post was in direct response to someone accusing MS of inventing new metrics.
It feels like we're skirting very close to that insane rhetoric that MS is being anti-consumer for not telling people numbers.
You get data that is relevant to them. As you get data relevant to MS.