So, it seems that some of you have mistakenly come under the impression that I am some sort of shill or fan of Microsoft’s strategy. I am writing this to assure you that I not, in fact, a shill and have lots of problems with Xbox/Gamepass, I merely desire to sort valid criticisms from invalid ones. I think that Xbox’s strategy has far more problems than either of its two main gaming competitors. I also think it is very unfriendly towards gamers. And I think its also in a very dangerous position right now. I think Xbox might die. I’m not talking ten or twenty years from now either. But let me lay out my issues below. And yes, this is going to be a long one.
Well, my main point is that Xbox/Gamepass will never make money, but first lets take a little detour and talk about how they will never treat players well. Xbox will and would, if it ever got dominant, cut costs and kill the things people like about it. They view making games not as an end in itself but as something they have to do in order to get people into their services. This means that if they ever do get people into their services they will deem themselves to have done “enough” in games and cut back on costs. We saw this happen in the 360 generation. A good gaming ecosystem requires constant expensing for game and ecosystem development. There is no “light at the end of the tunnel” where you get to sit back and relax, and money men just don’t get it. Obviously, the main case in point here is the later 360 generation. And its not that they pivoted to Kinnect, its that they killed their existing things while doing so. Its that they broke Xbox Live when switching to Xbox One. Its that they think we will buy anything placed in front of us, while fifty years of gaming history proves that we won’t.
My next little detour, and it’s a nice scenic one, is to compare first party development to running an orchard. Trees, or dev houses, occasionally give fruit but take many years to get there. And some need to be pruned along the way or give a bad harvest from time to time. But they must consistently be watered or they will wither and die. Microsoft first did not water, and then actively cut down, its trees in the early 2010s. Their alternate plan was to just rent trees, or pay another grower for its apple harvest. Now their competitors have orchards full of adult, totally developed, trees that regularly bear fruit. Now Microsoft has to buy and transplant fully grown trees into its orchard. And rather than just apples their bulk lot purchases have left them with a bunch of pear and orange trees and other shit that just might not work. This is not, if you can’t tell, a moral issue, it’s a financial one. I despise the fact that Microsoft is wasting money through poor, short-sighted management.
My next one is that I think Microsoft is putting the cart before the horse in valuing IP over development teams. I am firmly of the opinion that a good team is worth more than a good IP. Even in extreme cases. In the long-term Nintendo -the group of people- is worth far more than Nintendo -the bundle of IP-. If split in two and forced to compete then Nintendo (people) would kill Nintendo (IP.) MS clearly does not get it and builds teams around IP instead of doing the reverse. This results in bad games that in turn kill the IP, too.
And what is an Xbox game, anyway? I know what a Nintendo game is, its “systems first”, “all ages fun”, “safety first”, “never breaks” and other generally positive things. I know what a Sony game is too, its “esoteric”, “trend setting”, “smart stories” and “great presentation.” But what is an Xbox game? I have no idea. Good games might show up, but only by random chance (Flight Sim, Forza) and not due to corporate strategy. There’s a reason the appeal Xbox has relied on is fanboy inertia, Thanksgiving sales and sometimes system power. This is a damn shame, because I easily could have told you what an Xbox game was in 2004 or 2008. It was playing online with friends, hunting cheevos and having games that ran best on Xbox. None of that is true anymore, its all either universal or, in regards to games running/looking better, just plain gone. In losing that they’ve ensured that they will never reach and keep a dedicated audience in the same way that audiences self-select for Sony or Nintendo.
Xbox does not know how to build studios and in turn cannot build IP either. Its based its future on Gamepass but it hasn’t worked out its game pipelines. Why would people retain their subscription if there is no new game to play? And in going out to purchase things, why do they ignore “cheap but plentiful” stuff like Embracer while buying groups which take years to output games. To me it seems like they have zero interest in long-term building of their own studios. This is not a moral issue, like some people here make it to be, it is a cost issue. Buying a pre-built studio literally costs more than building one, but they can’t take the time to build. And Activision was probably one of the most ill-fitting groups they could have purchased, regardless of price. Their output is 90 percent free to play/GaaS and thus doesn’t fit well into Microsoft’s self-proclaimed future of Gamepass.
Xbox has not built a superior product in a long time. We’re talking eco-system here but its true with systems too. And even worse, they have no desire to. We know from documents revealed in the FTC trial, that they think their current console output is “good enough” and they want to switch focus to mobile, PC and Japan. But “good enough” isn’t good enough if you are the lesser player in a market. Who on earth would look at a “good enough” competitor with a smaller userbase and lots of missing third parties and actually pick it over Playstation. In trying to be “good enough” in all markets the end result is that they won’t be good enough to actually win in any of them- and will lose in all of them. Then a clueless idiot in Redmond will throw up his hands and say “oh well”.
Is the Series going to turn it around? We already know the answer, they aren’t even going to try. They “lost the most important generation” and know that there’s no reset anymore. But that’s bullshit, because all those important systems were started in gen 6 and Xbox ended that one damn near tied. It was their golden age. And as bad as the Xbox One was, the Wii U was worse. And despite losing that war, and rebooting their online ecosystem entirely, Nintendo ended up creating one of the three most popular games systems of all time. Here’s the actual message. They already know that their upcoming output is not enough, and the ship has sailed on not losing to PS5. They’ll spend 2 billion dollars on it now so that they will win the streaming service war in 2028.
Streaming is a road to ruin. The film industry is falling apart due to streaming. And not just the bit players, the big ones. Disney is the biggest entertainment provider out there, ever. And it’s the biggest streamer, with no fewer than three big streaming platforms. And its being hit harder than all the other ones, because stream subscriptions cannot make up for the cost of production in the same way that direct sales did. And its going to be even worse for games.
Streaming is horrible for third party IP maintenance. Limited time streaming will leave games inaccessible after the end of the deals for many of their players. In turn, their IPs will fade from availability and memory, and will lack the ability to generate long-tail sales. Nobody is going to want to be a third party game provider for Microsoft, not with good games anyway. They already aren’t, just ask Bobby what his opinion of putting his company’s games on Gamepass. Get him under oath first too, just to be sure.
And Microsoft has failed to create an inviting streaming experience for new users. Gamepass is overly complex with different tiers and price plans. And it still charges ten dollars for multiplayer on Xbox, a “service” that costs it pennies per player and actively helps drive game engagement. Let me just re-iterate that. I hate the fucking ten bux. I despise it. I despise it as a player, I despise it as a games industry follower. It hurts everyone and helps no-one. It doesn’t even help Microsoft, long-term they’d make more if they got rid of it and became the free multiplayer console.
Gamepass does not make financial sense for Microsoft. Games cost a lot of money to make, and most people don’t actually buy many of them. Between games people are going to turn their subs off. People aren’t dumb anymore, we all prune subscriptions like aggressive gardeners, its silly to think that Gamepass won’t find itself in that very same bucket with Peacock and Max and all the other shit that people only pay for one month of the year. By relying largely on timed access Microsoft is actually putting itself in a worse position than its tv analogs who are, themselves, already in a bad position. An old game does not hold value in the same way that an old tv show does. But even worse than having small value from old games, with timed access Microsoft is going to have no value from removed games. Its going to find itself with an exceptionally small back catalog that grows only at a glacial pace. I’d go so far as to say that timed access measured in periods of less than five years is a waste of money.
Continuing to pump money into Xbox is a waste of money for MS stockholders. The most telling example of this? The Activision trials have been a media circus that made the news nearly everywhere. And through it all, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. Not a fucking blip on Microsoft’s stock prices. Investors think of the games division, if at all, as a drain. And that’s a really bad place to be even in a publicly traded company. Gamepass is currently on the road to failure and when it gets there they are going to cut the division. Sell or close everything. Because there’s no going back to just Xbox. Because if Gamepass is on the road to failure then Xbox has already arrived there and built a house. Xbox is a tech laggard and its fucking embarrassing. They haven’t lead the way on anything since Kinnect, with even cloud being only questionably implemented. Their software (dev tools) has sucked too, from what devs seem to have been implying. They have given up on putting resources into finding new ways to have fun and instead have put loads of resources into finding the next way to fuck players over. Just a miserable fucking pack of leeches, it is no wonder that Bungie and old-style Lionhead were so desperate to get out.
And finally, though I know this is but howling into the wind, my recommendations to Microsoft’s directors, if they should ever happen upon this… Its not too late. Define yourself. Do it by re-focusing on your core western strength. W/CRPGS, “weird systems games”, CoD, “name games”, like Sid Miers or Will Wright, PC games like Myst, Second Life or Sims. When people ask what an Xbox or Microsoft game is, that should be the answer. Fix the ease of use and support shit. Roll out your own mobile service but separate it from GP. Brand it with King stuff. It’s a different market, can fail or succeed on its own. Save Vicarious Visions! Save Arkane Austin, but kill Redfall (this is a freebie, since its already dead.) Don't buy something for under market value unless you actually have a use for it. If you don't have a use for it then buying a ten for five still costs five while giving you zero. Make online free for everyone. Simplify Gamepass pricing. And build Xbox Home.
Addendums:
In paragraph 3 I talk about games publishing as if it was an apple orchard. Only now, re-reading this before posting, do I realize the irony of talking about a world where Microsoft sells apples.
In paragraph 5 I mention game companies having an identity to their games. Looking back, some people might identify Gamepass as the Microsoft identity. That misses the point. If the first thing you think about when looking at a game library is how the games are purchased then you either aren’t a player or are actively a seller- terrible mindset for building an appealing ecosystem.
Well, my main point is that Xbox/Gamepass will never make money, but first lets take a little detour and talk about how they will never treat players well. Xbox will and would, if it ever got dominant, cut costs and kill the things people like about it. They view making games not as an end in itself but as something they have to do in order to get people into their services. This means that if they ever do get people into their services they will deem themselves to have done “enough” in games and cut back on costs. We saw this happen in the 360 generation. A good gaming ecosystem requires constant expensing for game and ecosystem development. There is no “light at the end of the tunnel” where you get to sit back and relax, and money men just don’t get it. Obviously, the main case in point here is the later 360 generation. And its not that they pivoted to Kinnect, its that they killed their existing things while doing so. Its that they broke Xbox Live when switching to Xbox One. Its that they think we will buy anything placed in front of us, while fifty years of gaming history proves that we won’t.
My next little detour, and it’s a nice scenic one, is to compare first party development to running an orchard. Trees, or dev houses, occasionally give fruit but take many years to get there. And some need to be pruned along the way or give a bad harvest from time to time. But they must consistently be watered or they will wither and die. Microsoft first did not water, and then actively cut down, its trees in the early 2010s. Their alternate plan was to just rent trees, or pay another grower for its apple harvest. Now their competitors have orchards full of adult, totally developed, trees that regularly bear fruit. Now Microsoft has to buy and transplant fully grown trees into its orchard. And rather than just apples their bulk lot purchases have left them with a bunch of pear and orange trees and other shit that just might not work. This is not, if you can’t tell, a moral issue, it’s a financial one. I despise the fact that Microsoft is wasting money through poor, short-sighted management.
My next one is that I think Microsoft is putting the cart before the horse in valuing IP over development teams. I am firmly of the opinion that a good team is worth more than a good IP. Even in extreme cases. In the long-term Nintendo -the group of people- is worth far more than Nintendo -the bundle of IP-. If split in two and forced to compete then Nintendo (people) would kill Nintendo (IP.) MS clearly does not get it and builds teams around IP instead of doing the reverse. This results in bad games that in turn kill the IP, too.
And what is an Xbox game, anyway? I know what a Nintendo game is, its “systems first”, “all ages fun”, “safety first”, “never breaks” and other generally positive things. I know what a Sony game is too, its “esoteric”, “trend setting”, “smart stories” and “great presentation.” But what is an Xbox game? I have no idea. Good games might show up, but only by random chance (Flight Sim, Forza) and not due to corporate strategy. There’s a reason the appeal Xbox has relied on is fanboy inertia, Thanksgiving sales and sometimes system power. This is a damn shame, because I easily could have told you what an Xbox game was in 2004 or 2008. It was playing online with friends, hunting cheevos and having games that ran best on Xbox. None of that is true anymore, its all either universal or, in regards to games running/looking better, just plain gone. In losing that they’ve ensured that they will never reach and keep a dedicated audience in the same way that audiences self-select for Sony or Nintendo.
Xbox does not know how to build studios and in turn cannot build IP either. Its based its future on Gamepass but it hasn’t worked out its game pipelines. Why would people retain their subscription if there is no new game to play? And in going out to purchase things, why do they ignore “cheap but plentiful” stuff like Embracer while buying groups which take years to output games. To me it seems like they have zero interest in long-term building of their own studios. This is not a moral issue, like some people here make it to be, it is a cost issue. Buying a pre-built studio literally costs more than building one, but they can’t take the time to build. And Activision was probably one of the most ill-fitting groups they could have purchased, regardless of price. Their output is 90 percent free to play/GaaS and thus doesn’t fit well into Microsoft’s self-proclaimed future of Gamepass.
Xbox has not built a superior product in a long time. We’re talking eco-system here but its true with systems too. And even worse, they have no desire to. We know from documents revealed in the FTC trial, that they think their current console output is “good enough” and they want to switch focus to mobile, PC and Japan. But “good enough” isn’t good enough if you are the lesser player in a market. Who on earth would look at a “good enough” competitor with a smaller userbase and lots of missing third parties and actually pick it over Playstation. In trying to be “good enough” in all markets the end result is that they won’t be good enough to actually win in any of them- and will lose in all of them. Then a clueless idiot in Redmond will throw up his hands and say “oh well”.
Is the Series going to turn it around? We already know the answer, they aren’t even going to try. They “lost the most important generation” and know that there’s no reset anymore. But that’s bullshit, because all those important systems were started in gen 6 and Xbox ended that one damn near tied. It was their golden age. And as bad as the Xbox One was, the Wii U was worse. And despite losing that war, and rebooting their online ecosystem entirely, Nintendo ended up creating one of the three most popular games systems of all time. Here’s the actual message. They already know that their upcoming output is not enough, and the ship has sailed on not losing to PS5. They’ll spend 2 billion dollars on it now so that they will win the streaming service war in 2028.
Streaming is a road to ruin. The film industry is falling apart due to streaming. And not just the bit players, the big ones. Disney is the biggest entertainment provider out there, ever. And it’s the biggest streamer, with no fewer than three big streaming platforms. And its being hit harder than all the other ones, because stream subscriptions cannot make up for the cost of production in the same way that direct sales did. And its going to be even worse for games.
Streaming is horrible for third party IP maintenance. Limited time streaming will leave games inaccessible after the end of the deals for many of their players. In turn, their IPs will fade from availability and memory, and will lack the ability to generate long-tail sales. Nobody is going to want to be a third party game provider for Microsoft, not with good games anyway. They already aren’t, just ask Bobby what his opinion of putting his company’s games on Gamepass. Get him under oath first too, just to be sure.
And Microsoft has failed to create an inviting streaming experience for new users. Gamepass is overly complex with different tiers and price plans. And it still charges ten dollars for multiplayer on Xbox, a “service” that costs it pennies per player and actively helps drive game engagement. Let me just re-iterate that. I hate the fucking ten bux. I despise it. I despise it as a player, I despise it as a games industry follower. It hurts everyone and helps no-one. It doesn’t even help Microsoft, long-term they’d make more if they got rid of it and became the free multiplayer console.
Gamepass does not make financial sense for Microsoft. Games cost a lot of money to make, and most people don’t actually buy many of them. Between games people are going to turn their subs off. People aren’t dumb anymore, we all prune subscriptions like aggressive gardeners, its silly to think that Gamepass won’t find itself in that very same bucket with Peacock and Max and all the other shit that people only pay for one month of the year. By relying largely on timed access Microsoft is actually putting itself in a worse position than its tv analogs who are, themselves, already in a bad position. An old game does not hold value in the same way that an old tv show does. But even worse than having small value from old games, with timed access Microsoft is going to have no value from removed games. Its going to find itself with an exceptionally small back catalog that grows only at a glacial pace. I’d go so far as to say that timed access measured in periods of less than five years is a waste of money.
Continuing to pump money into Xbox is a waste of money for MS stockholders. The most telling example of this? The Activision trials have been a media circus that made the news nearly everywhere. And through it all, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. Not a fucking blip on Microsoft’s stock prices. Investors think of the games division, if at all, as a drain. And that’s a really bad place to be even in a publicly traded company. Gamepass is currently on the road to failure and when it gets there they are going to cut the division. Sell or close everything. Because there’s no going back to just Xbox. Because if Gamepass is on the road to failure then Xbox has already arrived there and built a house. Xbox is a tech laggard and its fucking embarrassing. They haven’t lead the way on anything since Kinnect, with even cloud being only questionably implemented. Their software (dev tools) has sucked too, from what devs seem to have been implying. They have given up on putting resources into finding new ways to have fun and instead have put loads of resources into finding the next way to fuck players over. Just a miserable fucking pack of leeches, it is no wonder that Bungie and old-style Lionhead were so desperate to get out.
And finally, though I know this is but howling into the wind, my recommendations to Microsoft’s directors, if they should ever happen upon this… Its not too late. Define yourself. Do it by re-focusing on your core western strength. W/CRPGS, “weird systems games”, CoD, “name games”, like Sid Miers or Will Wright, PC games like Myst, Second Life or Sims. When people ask what an Xbox or Microsoft game is, that should be the answer. Fix the ease of use and support shit. Roll out your own mobile service but separate it from GP. Brand it with King stuff. It’s a different market, can fail or succeed on its own. Save Vicarious Visions! Save Arkane Austin, but kill Redfall (this is a freebie, since its already dead.) Don't buy something for under market value unless you actually have a use for it. If you don't have a use for it then buying a ten for five still costs five while giving you zero. Make online free for everyone. Simplify Gamepass pricing. And build Xbox Home.
Addendums:
In paragraph 3 I talk about games publishing as if it was an apple orchard. Only now, re-reading this before posting, do I realize the irony of talking about a world where Microsoft sells apples.
In paragraph 5 I mention game companies having an identity to their games. Looking back, some people might identify Gamepass as the Microsoft identity. That misses the point. If the first thing you think about when looking at a game library is how the games are purchased then you either aren’t a player or are actively a seller- terrible mindset for building an appealing ecosystem.
