It took someone getting promoted to be able to make changes before they got their heads out of their asses. And even so from the outside looking in, phil looked like when he closed studios that he didnt put up a good fight. If phil was/is that passionate on xbox I would have told the entire board that either we drastically change and take xbox serious or I resign. And the fact this took till 2017 to have any kind of change says before hand he let everything play out. Regardless, i would have put my job on the line and told them either we change or im done. How anyone looked at XBox one and said, " gamers will love tv" was good is beyond me.
Personally I'd be very interested in a detailed documentary covering the development of the Xbox One. Who led the development efforts, their background beforehand, etc. To this day I really do wish Seamus Blackley and J.Allard were still at the Xbox division because they really did "get it". Peter Moore for that matter, at least as an executive.
I don't have any ill feelings towards Phil Spencer; he's not the second coming but he's not seemingly a bad guy and seems to be putting in an effort now that the company as a whole is backing the division. But that does lead to the question, what took them so long to finally back the division instead of trying to starve it out for that 2016-2018 period? So many cancelled games from Scalebound to Phantom Dust remake, to exclusives like Recore and especially Crackdown 3 being very mediocre. Outside of Forza, Sunset Overdrive, the Ori games and Cuphead (the latter two eventually also going to Switch and not technically 1P), and arguably Gears 5, the rest of their exclusives from 2016 to 2020 were either just outright bad and stayed that way (Crackdown 3), or launched poorly only to get patched up much later (SoT, MCC etc.).
I just really hope there is:
- literally zero CGI throughout their entire conference/event
- no long segments of Sarah Bond pretending to talk about how she cares about gamers (no matter what she does, she gives off massive "corporate suit" vibes)
- enough padding the conference with talk about about backwards compatibility and upgrades to old games. That stuff is great but it belongs in supplementary youtube videos/blog posts, not in the main event.
- a pre-show that shows all the indie (ie smaller) stuff so that the main show is jam-packed with big titles
- lots and lots of gameplay (but keep the long, drawn out stuff for Inside Xbox later)
- no actual car brought onto the stage just before showing Forza gameplay. It's been done to death now, fucking leave it.
- the Series X equivalent of what the first Gears of War did for Xbox 360. GoW was absolutely mindblowing at the time. It was so good that I gave zero shits about what Playstation 3 was doing. We just don't have that right now.
Honestly I still don't trust them to pull off even half of the above.
Feels like they haven't had a seriously good E3 in years.
Sarah Bond's cute but yeah, I kinda get that vibe from her. Bonnie Ross too fwiw, I can't believe how badly they've mismanaged 343i over the years. The two that really leave me curious (in a not-great way) are Aaron Greenburg and Matt Booty, though.
Matt and Herman at PS serve analogous roles but if we're looking at just the past two years of releases from their respective studios the latter seems to have been running a much tighter ship (I'm assuming Herman has been there for at least a couple years now as head of PS Studios...well before they rebranded as PS Studios anyway).
>It does leave me baffled to an extent though, why not have planned better ahead of time back in 2018 when the initial round of acquisitions were announced? Bleeding Edge should've been a cross-gen effort with an upgraded version for Series X at launch. Could have delayed the release until then which would've also benefited the game as a whole WRT community and quality. The Outer Worlds expansion should've had a version built from ground-up for the Series systems ready to go at the time of their launch or near it, i.e like the SpiderMan Miles Morales stuff Insomniac did.
this is a point I’ve made I really haven’t seen anyone share! This is why Xbox will always falter in this industry. A total lack of common sense. Why not delay grounded, actually finish the game, and launch it alongside the series x as a display of Xbox having more variety? Why not having one of your new studios with a ways off till their next game make something smaller scale but make it a graphical power house? Why not pay massive amounts of money for anyone to remake new Vegas ASAP now that you own the ip.
Well, I wouldn't say they'll always falter, and they have seen growth from a finances POV. But I definitely agree there has been poor planning from the top management of the division in making sure content is coming along nicely and ready in a timely fashion. The New Vegas thing hadn't even crossed my mind! They could've commissioned a remake well before talks of an acquisition, give it just enough time to be ready when the new systems came out too.
Maybe they could've seen one of their studios to pick back up on the cancelled Phantom Dust remake and finish that in time for the new system launches too.
I couldn't agree more.
When you say "Sony earned the right..." More broadly... This is mindshare and momentum in effect. Like a film buff who knows or expects the next Martin Scorsese film to be engaging because he has a history of film directing that changes the conversation.
Yeah, that is a good way to phrase it. That building of long-term rapport tends to pay off as people are more likely to just trust you to do well on a new go and not constantly question your abilities. I hope Microsoft reaches that point over the next couple of years so by, say, 2023, we don't see people questioning their 1P output any longer.
But again, they have to earn that with consistent quality.
Wrong.
I think e3 2022\23 are gonna be the real hot events for M.
For this year i still expect a lot of cg and 30 sec teaser with 3 sec of gameplay for their bigger hitters except halo and forza.
I don't expect 15 min gameplay videos for stuff like gears 6, avowed, starfield, fable etc.
If that's all they have for this year then they should brace for Sony to widen their marketshare and mindshare gap over them. To the point where folks saying "3:1" or such (which sounded ridiculous to say months ago IMHO) might end up having the last laugh.
Again, Sony (nor Nintendo) are going to stand still; the longer it takes Microsoft to convince people in those ecosystems to devote some of their time and money to the Xbox ecosystem, the harder it will be to ever convince them. Right now for the new consoles we're still at a point where it's the hardcore and core early adopters buying them up. Those people want to be sold on new experiences and if they feel only one of the two players is providing that to them (via new controller features, new UI experience or most importantly new visually impressive exclusive games that can't be had on other consoles and would be impossible to run on older systems), then that's where their time and money will go.
Momentum and mindshare growth isn't linear, btw; it's exponential, and snowballs. Once that ball gets going it's very hard to slow it down, much less stop it, when you're the one with a figuratively much smaller snowball coming down on the other side.
I have felt this way about Xbox for a long time now. Not since the early days of Xbox 360 have I been impressed with them. I remember prior to its release there was an article showcasing Halo 3, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and Too Human. I was so stoked. Each game looked right up my alley. Science fiction, techno-fantasy, and space opera were my jam back then. Still are today. They sold me so hard on just those games. That was back at a time when Xbox was being built up by people who understood gaming and gamers. Back when Jay Allard, who co-founded Xbox, was the face of the brand. That was without a doubt the golden age for the brand. Xbox needs to regain its soul and you don't do that by running down a checklist. You need to show reverence for the medium. Be like Sony and Nintendo. They take the stage and just do their thing. They don't give the impression that they're conscientious of their place in the market. Microsoft always feels, to me, like they're trying to convince someone they're still cool and a big deal. Just shut up and let your games do the talking.
The Mad World trailer for GoW was next-gen defining stuff as well as, for me, PGR4 and Virtua Fighter 5 gameplay footage on 360. Was a very spellbinding time for gaming in general let alone the Xbox brand to push forward with the 360.
2005-2010 are definitely still the golden era for the brand without question; thankfully they have the potential now for an even better golden age (though for me it'll be somewhat lacking without more unique Japanese/Asian software support in the ecosystem, both in terms of release parity and timed/full exclusives). Issue is, potential is a gamble and also requires time, and there are people not in the ecosystem yet who are getting tired of parting their time to wait.
We need to really start seeing some glimpses of that future at this E3. I wasn't even asking for much tbh, just mainly gameplay (on Series X) of games they've already revealed looking at least as good as when they first showed them like Bright Memory Infinite. If the rumor of Avowed gameplay being at the show turns out to be true, then they are definitely on the right track IMHO.
"stellar reshowing of halo infinite"
I think that poll option says it all really. Whether or not this eventuates will determine the entire narrative and value of the event, i feel.. it's 314's shot at redemption.. it'll really be a measure of how effectively Microsoft shepherds and backs it's exclusive studios vs. sony.. I'm sure 314 has it in them, if the right practices and leaders have been plugged in.
Yeah this E3 will be very important for 343i as well. If they have a complete turnaround and show some stunning stuff, I think it creates a lot of goodwill for Microsoft in being able to cultivate their internal studios and steer them in the right direction. So that's something with a lot of hidden benefits if Halo Infinite's next showing corrects the flaws of the July showing from last year.
They are focusing on GamePass. They couldnt care less about selling hardware.
As you've noticed, putting Gears 5 on GP day one says it all about where their priority is
I expect some Senua gameplay, Halo, maybe some Fable. Some Bethesda stuff.
Sometimes I think the GamePass argument is misunderstood by those who posit it as a net positive. If you want the best experience from GamePass, you're still going to want to play the games locally on native hardware. Streaming alone via Xcloud isn't going to be the main method of engaging with those games for a few years tbh; even for the mobile users who are initiated into the service I think they're going to prefer native hardware to play the games on locally and use streaming as a backup (data plan limits and all that stuff).
So that means you'll still need hardware. If XBO is more or less phased out, One X is definitely phased out, that just leaves PC and Series. Thing is, on PC Microsoft absolutely loses out on the 30% cut they at least can fall back on with Series systems, and they also lose out on potential GamePass Ultimate subs since you don't need to pay for online play on PC (though IIRC the other benefit of GPU is access to both Xbox and PC GamePass libraries which is a nice substitute TBQH).
So on some level Microsoft still very much wants to move Series systems into people's homes, regardless of what they try saying publicly otherwise, because they get all the advantages of getting users into GamePass on PC PLUS they still get the 30% cut from 3P software sales on console which is very important for 3P games they can't quite get into GamePass day-and-date (or in some cases at all).
Realistically speaking a very large portion of Microsoft's console business model still relies on selling hardware since the primary environment for GamePass is still going to favor running on local, native gaming hardware, with streaming serving more as a nice added benefit until both the casual/mainstream market starts to flood in, streaming tech improves and data plans become more generous for users in terms of gaming (could be until 2025 before all three of those converge).
i get confused with the line from Mission Impossible "job 314" lol
