It's time for Microsoft to pull the plug on Xbox.
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We just have the balls to say what everyone is thinking. How did Atari or Sega leaving the console market damaged players? If you suck so much that your console businesses becomes unsustainable despite you willing to pump money into it for decades just get out, it's not meant to be.This thread's gotten mad traction on Twitter
Took them long enough. Knowing them though, this concern is probably just performative.
MS greatest contribution to the console market to this day is instituting paid online and shifting focus to services.
MS is bad even at the stuff they were meant to be good at, Sony nameless graphic API results in more polished and performing games than the mess that is DirectX on PC and Xbox. Even their Windows Xbox store is trash despite it being key to the expansion of Gamepass.
Bunch of games no1 cares about. U can go with 2 or 3 such games but when 90% of your output re games no1 cares about(or definition of niche like aoe a d flight simulator) makes u wonder who makes decisions. Only thing missing s Mara, cgi staircase. Perfect dark. Needs CD help to show anything. Was irrelevant ip and it ll stay irrelevant. State of decay another trash. What makes them think market wants another after first 2?
Who greenlight these? Phil?
And they wonder why platform s irrelevant worlwide. Ffs try to make another gears or something. How about that cod competitor?
Yes, apparently multibillion loses business after more than two decades not being able to post more than a couple quarters with profits, not counting dozens of billions spent on acquisitions, this is why they may consider to shut it down or highly change their direction and strategy.
If they don't have to end shutting down the division they'll have to start frequently delivering greatness after so many years of broken promises, lies and building hype with cg teasers of games to be released 7 years in the future.
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I don't understand how they can spend so much on studios, publishers and IP but not one of their games looks enticing...
It all looks like the tired stuff we have all played a million times before. Basically they want to really go back to the 360 gen, but the industry has moved on a lot. They don't seem to be fully aware of that.
Looks like @Box deserves some free Icon Extra!
Edit: I'd give bootleg Jez some but he isn't signed up here.
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Are you really a gamer if you didn't pay monthly to play Pentiment, Dusk Falls and High on Life?
3 or 4 of those have the chance to be really good if MS leadership was better at managing development imo. Unfortunately, there's no telling how they'll manage to mess up the potential there.
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After seeing this?
Yeah just pull the plug already
Cos this is dogshit not even PS2 game look this bad
Anyone enjoying this turd game have fun
Hate to say it but at least for the rest of this gen, especially if Starfield underperforms, there is no magical Xbox comeback. Sony has ridiculously good momentum, and Nintendo's holding in strongly themselves, and will undoubtedly see renewed momentum when the next Switch is revealed. Microsoft are kind of just sandwiched in the market and provide no unique value relative Sony or Nintendo that actually resonates with the wider market.
When Sony were down momentarily with PS3, they still had more market relevance and brand power than Microsoft had when the XBO began lagging behind, or the Xbox Series have today. The market was also a lot different back then so it was relatively easier in ways for Sony to come back with PS3 than it would be for Microsoft to do the same. And, unlike Sony, Microsoft have a much longer track record of sustained disappointments, going back to at least 2016, but cracks were showing even as early as 2010 after Kinect released on the 360. They just didn't really get noticed at the time because of 360's strong momentum from 2005 - 2009 and Sony only having just began their comeback with PS3 (and they had a big setback with the PSN hack of 2011).
Conversely in terms of the wider market Sony's only period where people were seriously disappointed in their performance was 2006 - 2008, just a couple years or so, and things started turning around from 2009 onwards, never having any major momentum drops (tho again, some momentary road bumps like the PSN hack). MS's track record with general market disappointment has been much longer so it will be magnitudes tougher for them to overcome it and have a proper comeback that the wider market actually responds to.
The only thing currently giving any hope that Microsoft could potentially have a comeback (while sticking to the regular console business model) is their sheer amount of income flow. Which could stave off Xbox losses in the meantime because Xbox means little to MS's bottom line. Sega and Atari never had the same privilege of deep pockets, but I would argue Sega in particular gave a much better attempt at a real comeback with Dreamcast than Microsoft ever did in the last years of XBO or are doing today with Xbox Series, they just ran out of money to keep going with the system.
Otherwise, and again IMO if Starfield isn't a bonafide hit commercially & critically, and doesn't do enough to instill some real hope into the future of Xbox 1P AAA releases going forward...then the means of a comeback for the brand can probably only be done by completely removing it out of the space/context of the "console war". Shifting Xbox hardware more into the PC space, opening it up to Windows, and fully bringing Xbox back to Direct X, the way it was meant to bring Direct X to the living room in the 2000s. Well the living room war has been over because there's virtually little chance Xbox can ever gain majority mindshare or market share over Sony & PlayStation, but they can still solidify the PC gaming front that Valve wants to shift away from Windows anyway, so why not use Xbox to do that?
I disagree that the Cell sucked; in fact it's because of Cell why the 360 even had the CPU it did because some IBM people told them about what they, Sony & Toshiba were working on, and MS wanted a variant of that.
What actually sucked with PS3 was the GPU. They did want to use two Cells originally; one for a CPU and the other for a GPU, but at some point Sony realized that wasn't going to be feasible. However it was too late to go with a custom GPU design so they had to pick something Nvidia already had on offer and just "make it work". The GPU in PS3 being so modest for the time (IIRC it didn't even have programmable shaders) is why we saw devs (especially 1P) leverage the Cell to speed up GPU operations, and we got some beautiful results out of that.
UC2 & 3, TLOU, GT6...there isn't a single 360 game I can think of with visuals at their level and it's not just because Sony probably afforded those games bigger budgets. The Cell had a lot to do with it, too. PS3's GPU being weak was actually the 360's saving grace in terms of having a performance edge; the "segmented memory" stuff about PS3 isn't actually that true (the RSX could access the XDR memory of the Cell, but had to go through the Cell to access it (the Cell also set up some of the graphics pipeline so naturally the RSX would need to access the XDR memory there), and I think that bus was narrower than the one for the GDDR3 the RSX itself had access to.
If the PS3's GPU was on the level of 360's that generation would have eventually taken a really bad turn for Xbox before the Kinect came out, because 3P performance would have been at parity between it and 360 if not better in PS3's case, and that's before really tapping into the Cell for its own benefits graphics-wise. 360 probably would not have held out long enough in that scenario to get the 2nd gust of wind the Kinect afforded it, as 3P support would have been a lot more favorable towards PS3 in the 2008 - 2009 time frame, and that would have been combined with Sony's 1P hits.
OP
OP
Even your biggest xbox fan ryan mcafrey already fed up
Continue to damage control jez
Continue to damage control jez
Sure, I was exaggerating, but the Cell is what made Sony comfortable going with a gimped GPU. The Cell also resulted in no proper PS3 retro to this day, it simply backfired big time. But I liked Sony intentions they were going for a really premium console it just didn't work out.
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Didn't he act similar when Starfield got delayed last? Then a few days later back to normal. I've seen this before
Just wait one month and everything will be different.
Microsoft will own Activision-Blizzard, Call of Duty and some of the biggest gaming IPs in the world.
We're talking about a Microsoft with two huge publishers (ZeniMax Media, Activision and Blizzard) and another ~20 gaming studios. They will be unstoppable.
I know it's a funny pic, but this is literally the truth:
You should never show up here again if in one month MS hasn't won ABK. We all know that right now you feel like a clown and denial is your last resort.Just wait one month and everything will be different.
Microsoft will own Activision-Blizzard, Call of Duty and some of the biggest gaming IPs in the world.
We're talking about a Microsoft with two huge publishers (ZeniMax Media, Activision and Blizzard) and another ~20 gaming studios. They will be unstoppable.
I know it's a funny pic, but this is literally the truth:
One month from now we'll in June, the month when Final Fantasy XVI will release on PS5 and you'll be here crying about ABK.
I always found Ryan way more honest about his bias and far more receptive to honest criticism... he is a person I can listen to and get value from what he says. If I could, I would apologize if I ever lumped him in with other people who just defend Xbox endlessly no-matter what they do or dont do.