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Xbox Game Studios & Bethesda Softworks | OTXXV | Next year is finally this year.
- Thread starter Andrei Rublev
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I'm glad they are but I think it's shortsighted and at odds with concerns that Phil has stated before about ecosystems and growing digital libraries locking users to them. How does releasing games day and date on steam help Xbox in this regard? If gamepass is a gateway to get people looking at your storefront and turning their PC into an "Xbox". Why not invest in the app? Why give people options to ignore it?
It helps Xbox because it allows them to sell more games and reach more users.
The majority of Steam users are NEVER going to meaningfully engage with the Windows Store or PC Game Pass, no matter how enticing the service is or becomes. Xbox might as well sell their games to those people who are never going to move over anyway.
And maybe, just maybe, after many years and dozens of game releases, those people's mindsets change and they become amendable to PC Game Pass or even Xbox consoles because they've been exposed to what the platform has to offer.
Xbox consoles + PC users. And their MAUs will explode with ABK.
Xbox division as a whole will be more than fine, +-500 million MAUs, many franchises, some of the biggest GaaS of the market, high sales of games and profits, +50% more revenue in this FY. Just the hardware are strugling. And i don't see them having the will to make it better.
As long as the Xbox gaming business as a whole is doing well, the console business will be around and will benefit.
I think this isn't the right attitude to have for Xbox. Might as well sell your games on PlayStation if we think people will never move over no matter what. There was a big opportunity for MS to make every windows PC an Xbox if they took the Xbox app and storefront seriously. No one can beat steam but that doesn't mean Xbox needed to cede to steam and hut their long term prospects in the process.
PlayStation is a platform.
Steam is not a platform. It is a storefront on a platform.
Releasing games on Steam only benefits Xbox as a business. Steam users' only option to play Starfield is to spend $70 and that's going to make Xbox a LOT of money.
Also, even with Steam releases, PC Game Pass is doing really well. Hasn't it had like 200% growth in the last couple of years or something?
Isn't valve trying to supplant windows with steamOS using steam deck as a trojan horse? I'm not sure I buy steam not being a platform. Isn't a storefront just a platform without a dedicated machine?
hard to not really consider Steam a platform even if it's on pc/mac/linux. It has social networking, a store, cloud saves, networking, achievements, etc.
Greenmangaming or humblebundle is a storefront.
If Xbox took their games off Steam or had never started putting them on Steam, we would all be angry at them and wanting them to do it.
The grass is always greener. Day one Steam is the right decision for the business.
I just don't see Steam as a competitor to Xbox.
The grass is always greener. Day one Steam is the right decision for the business.
I just don't see Steam as a competitor to Xbox.
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Personally I'd want it less If the Xbox app was worth a damn. It's a bungling from both ends of the argument.
Unless you're suggesting Windows is a platform, it is an operating system for which platforms run on. It's like saying PlayStation or Xbox are not platforms but rather whatever software that their operating systems run on are the real platforms lol
yeps and only one part of the strategy, hence the record revenues even with low console sales.
They're on Steam for now. I'm confident they'll leave eventually, when they don't need to sell on Steam for PC development to recoup it's costs and hit a ceiling with PCGP growth.
What I'm not glad about is Xbox having PC gaming in their sights. I don't want Xbox coming out with more garbage software that's just going to fuck with my Steam games.
Basically. Just because Steam exists doesn't mean you can't try. I don't get what Xbox's problem is, why they keep sandbagging so hard on PC while higher-ups insist that's where they want to look for growth.
I still struggle to believe Quake 2 won't be there. If not there, where?
Didn't they say there wouldn't be any panels for games? They could still announce Quake during the opening livestream or whatever they do.
View: https://twitter.com/idlesloth84_/status/1686746619838906368?s=46&t=gf8rfJgiXtRzEKTUzSF5Yw presentations or panels. I would take presentations as the opening stream right
I guess. I still think this leaves enough room for Quake 2 to be there. I just don't know where else you announce it otherwise. But we'll see next week.
The last 2 months (June/July) of Game Pass Ultimate gift card sales on Amazon US have been a nice step up over Jan - May. June was the Xbox showcase, so we saw a big bump up in June's rankings. While July's rankings saw the 1 month GPU gift cards drop 4 spots, the 3 month gift cards saw the same movement upwards, up 4 spots.
Will be interesting to see what these rankings look like for August and especially, in September.
Will be interesting to see what these rankings look like for August and especially, in September.
| Month | 1 month gpu amazon video game sales rankings | 3 month gpu amazon video games sales rankings |
| Jan 2023 | 15 | 48 |
| Feb 2023 | 15 | 50 |
| Mar 2023 | 19 | 44 |
| Apr 2023 | 23 | 52 |
| May 2023 | 33 | 93 |
| June 2023 | 10 | 35 |
| July 2023 | 14 | 31 |
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With XBox amassing more studios, it theoretically seems like a good idea to push their own launcher to all their studios. But good luck herding those cats.
An even better idea is to partner with Gaben.
An even better idea is to partner with Gaben.
love seeing this sort of stuff it's cool to see how events change stuff like this to see the impact
Speaking of Steam, rumors are swirling of Fantasian coming to Steam soon (which actually would surprise me because I would have expected April 2024 at the earliest, but that's not the point). I'll be crossing everyone of my extremities hoping to see it come to consoles including Xbox.
That'd be a pretty nasty bomb to drop at TGS this year, Mistwalker back on Xbox.
That'd be a pretty nasty bomb to drop at TGS this year, Mistwalker back on Xbox.
Yeah, June's Xbox showcase really helped and propelled the rankings upwards big time. September results will be fascinating to watch.
It's not really fanatical to say that you won't buy games unless they're on Steam, but people also aren't as rabid as it might seem, or else GOG.com wouldn't be around anymore.
I have a problem with Valve's glacial pace when it comes to Steam's development, but it's still the best storefront for a good reason.
- the only store that comes with a full screen launcher for TV use, 10 years and counting.
- ships with SteamInput, which allows you to use literally any console controller you want, be it Xbox, Xbox Elite, DualShock/DualSense (incl. the gyro and touch pad), Switch Pro, N64/SNES controller re-releases, and even Joy-cons.
- comes with remote play since 2014 and introduced share play(?) for local MP games in 2019
- mod support through Steam Workshop
- user community provides game guides accessible from the overlay
- cloud saves since 2008 or 2009
- screenshot uploading since 2011, making it easy to share them
- you can gift games to other people since forever
- family sharing since 2013(?)
I realize that some things seem quaint in 2023, but cloud saves aside, I don't think any of the other storefronts can match any of this. Not everyone needs every feature I listed, but when you consider how long Steam has been around (and survived other miserable attempts like Games for Windows Live), while providing a much better service than anyone else, it's not surprising that people show a clear preference over other stores and launchers that don't add any value to the user experience.
Adding to that Steam's level of social interaction which is way above anything else. You have activity tab, groups, discussions, reviews, trading and what not. Chat on Steam is perfect, I was impressed by the quality of voice calls. You can also follow developers, games, read news and patch notes directly on the platform you are playing. And there's market, you guys wouldn't believe how many games I bought by selling trading cards and in-game items I got for free.
MCC is such a great package of games, no BS monetization, tons and tons of content and you can level up doing whatever you want. That said, please fix H2A performance >_>
I don't want the people that still struggle with installing games to start putting out updates to Windows that try and "improve" my gaming experience. I don't trust them to not eventually break something, which has already happened to me a few times in the past.
(Yes, there are still problems with people installing games on the Xbox app. There's about a dozen posts on the feedback hub right now from people getting errors related to UWP C++ runtime packages.)
I enjoyed my time with this game up to a certain point ha ha. It has a pretty similar tone and feel to Lost Odyssey with the text vignettes.
But there's a pretty massive difficulty spike in the latter part that I eventually couldn't overcome.
It seems so hard to compare with such varying preorder periods. Also, when do we start looking at it as "weeks away from launch" instead of lined up with "weeks since preorders opened"?
Thank you so much for the data regardless, Starfield is certainly stacking up to be an absolute banger.
Because of the recent surprise delistings, I've started trying to pick up digital copies of my favorite BC 360 and OG games when they're on sale.
GTA IV and DLC is on DWG this week, so I grabbed all of it. Never did play the DLC for those—maybe someday I'll get to it.
GTA IV and DLC is on DWG this week, so I grabbed all of it. Never did play the DLC for those—maybe someday I'll get to it.
View: https://twitter.com/CallofDuty/status/1686837594842152962?t=_mpTsExDe7GM-O1beXUvlA&s=19
View: https://twitter.com/charlieINTEL/status/1686830417062621184?t=JKP30BPy2NuQDiYq1E7ihw&s=19
View: https://twitter.com/charlieINTEL/status/1686731062443999232?t=Ch0oLWTvBXbTTdQ5SmLATQ&s=19
View: https://twitter.com/charlieINTEL/status/1686839045979090944?t=utTS77Ghx3kjOLTMuZiMOg&s=19
More and more people are becoming more elitists towards Series S, they're not even hiding anymore. As someone that lives in a poorer country I feel deeply offended because Xbox only exists here because of the Series S and now people want to leave it behind just because of a single game. If it wasn't for Series S I wouldn't be able to play anything this generation. Games and consoles are too expensive and it saved my favorite hobby.
You want to know what RPG that is just as complex as Baldur's Gate 3 and that will be playable on Series S day one? Starfield.
Fuck that shit.
You want to know what RPG that is just as complex as Baldur's Gate 3 and that will be playable on Series S day one? Starfield.
Fuck that shit.
No problem. Glad people are finding this data useful. Yeah, it's not a straight apples to apples comparison, since we're dealing with different preorder durations for each game (13 versus 16+ versus 24 weeks). While we can't compare them 1:1, I think we can all safely agree that the rankings so far for Starfield are very good and do compare favorably against the other 2 games, despite different preorder periods. As for when do we start to look at the data as weeks from launch, I think we can do that now. Let's see how Starfield fares in its final 5 weeks versus the final 5 weeks of the other 2 games. But ultimately, I think it boils down to how each person wants to interpret this data, since we're dealing with different preorder durations.
Also, as I'm typing this right now, Starfield is currently sitting at #10 on the global charts. If it can maintain that until next week, then I think Starfield has a good chance of finishing in the top 10 for 5 consecutive weeks leading up to release. Let's see what happens!
I sometimes catch myself thinking "man, I wish they would have split the consoles at $500 and a monster at $800 instead" but then I see posts like this and realize they made the right call.
Yeah, it's quite obnoxious and I hope future threads are moderated carefully. Talk about abandoning a large portion of the base isn't cool and quite alarming actually.
I had been trying to buy those that went on sale weekly. Have a nice digital collection to go along with a few of the physical Xbox 360 games in my collection. I did go get a copy of Enchanted Arms off Ebay last week.
Definitely. Even before Bethesda, $300 for the Series S as a Game Pass box was a great deal, and now with the first party continuing to expand and the big hitters coming in, the ability to advertise it as a COD + MS first party box is quite compelling. If you're on a tight budget, even with the GP Ultimate increases, there is a LOT of gaming to be had there for very cheap. You wouldn't even need to bundle games in - just put the pictures on the box or make it one of those digital currency bundles like the Apex / Fortnite / Fall Guys one.
Honestly if I were them I would've made the 1TB Series S $250, with, say, $25 or $50 discounts during the holidays.
Some of us are still very happy there's a cheaper alternative and we don't know how they would have sold without it. I hope they can get it to $199, so it'll appeal to even more people.
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