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Eurogamer - The big XO19 interview: Xbox boss Phil Spencer on Game Pass, streaming and Project Scarlett

CyberPanda

Banned
"I'm not going to sacrifice performance for the sake of price."




At Microsoft's big XO19 event in London yesterday, Xbox boss Phil Spencer told the gathered press all about Game Pass, the company's video game subscription. He spoke about the Yakuza games coming to Xbox for the first time. He spoke about Final Fantasy games coming to Xbox for the first time, including even Final Fantasy 14. And he spoke about Project xCloud, Microsoft's take on video game streaming, which already seems like a cool proposition as it plans integration with Game Pass in 2020.

That's a lot of Game Pass. And why not? It's such an incredibly good deal for gamers, and, it seems, is doing the business for Xbox, so it feels right it should form the basis of Microsoft's video game strategy in the near to medium term. And yet, it seems, doubts linger.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz, Spencer's counterpart at Sony, Jim Ryan spoke about his company's rival video game subscription service PlayStation Now, which is on the up after a recent price cut. Essentially it's the same as Game Pass, but there is a stark point of difference: Sony will not put its big first-party PlayStation exclusives on PlayStation Now at launch. Microsoft puts all its big first-party games on Xbox Game Pass day and date with their launch in the shops. Why does Sony keep the likes of God of War, Spider-Man and Days Gone off PlayStation Now at launch? To have those launches be "clean and pure", Ryan said.

This was on my mind as I sat down to talk to Phil Spencer at XO19. This, his interest in streaming longer term, whether he's done buying studios after aquiring the likes of Obsidian, Ninja Theory and inXile, and of course righting the wrongs of the terrible launch of Xbox One with Project Scarlett.



Game Pass is clearly a big deal for you. What are you most interested in when you try to measure the success of a title on Game Pass? Is it engagement? Is it downloads? Are you just looking at pure subs? How do you work out if a thing that is on Game Pass that you've put there is successful?

Phil Spencer:
Players. How many people play a game. But I think we'll get more sophisticated than that over time. As Game Pass continues to grow, I don't want us to think that every game has to reach every subscriber. Because the subscriber base is already too big for that. What I love is when creators can understand that in a base of players that's that large, there are sub-communities inside of Game Pass where you can say, hey, I'm gonna go do a black and white puzzle game because I know there are a few million people there who will go play that game. Somebody else can say, I'm gonna do a turn-based strategy game because I know there are enough people.

I really want to foster diversity, not every game trying to reach every player from now until the end of time, which so many games I see that are pure retail today, their model is, here's how I bring people in and here's how I keep them playing forever and ever. That's great for some games, but I don't want every game to be that kind of game, because it's just not true that the creative lends itself to every game being that game.

https://youtu.be/DG9pearQJ3o


You touched on this in your opening remarks, where you said this enables games with a beginning, middle and end. I found myself marvelling that I'm cheering that games can be games again, that this is the world we live in.

Phil Spencer:
The number of single-player games being built has gone down as an overall percentage of the games being built. I say that and people throw Sony's first-party at me or something, and they've done a great job building single-player games. It's not really about that. I see all of the games all of the publishers are building. I have - not because I'm smart - I have insight into what's coming and what the publishers are thinking. The thing I saw a couple of years ago was, everybody is kind of chasing this perpetual, how do I keep everybody into all of my franchises all of the time? This is when I said, Game Pass can actually enable great single-player games and stories to be told.

There was a little bit of conflict when I said that. But it was nice to see something like Outer Worlds. Yes, it's from one of our studios, but to boot that game and know that if I want to be done in 20 hours from now I can be. And if I want to play it for longer I can. There are certain games where that's what they should be, and I love that.

In that context, how do you view the success of a title like Gears 5? It's obviously not about sales for you. So how do you justify the investment in a big project like that? How do you measure its success when you've got this game that's coming out on Game Pass day and date with retail?

Phil Spencer:
Gears 5 sold well for us. It sold better than Gears 4. And we feel good about it. If people want to make the choice of buying Gears, that's an option we want to give them. I'm not trying to funnel everybody who wants to play Gears into the subscription. It's about giving gamers choice. Certain players will make the decision as part of Game Pass that they'll either want to start to subscribe, or they're already a subscriber and they stay subscribed.

Right now the easiest metric to talk to Rod or anybody about the success is, how many players did we find with this game? And let the gamers choose how they actually want to get the entitlement for the game. It is an evolution, there's no doubt. Studios have been trained that, what I look at is what are my day one sales, what are my week one sales? And as an industry, the press wants to know. Hey, how do I judge if Gears 5 has been a success? What I will say is we're incredibly happy with Gears 5. It did review well. It has a tonne of players. We're taking feedback on certain things. The economy - I see the feedback on the game as well. But I thought it was a great release in the Gears franchise and it drove a tonne of players who wanted to go play, and that's awesome.

https://youtu.be/30IhupH1-Cs


You've committed to having your first-party games launch on Game Pass day and date with retail. In fact you put all of them on there. This is in stark contrast to Sony's approach. Sony does not put its big first-party games, the God of Wars, the Spider-Mans on PlayStation Now day and date. There is a really interesting quote from Jim Ryan in a recent interview with our sister site GamesIndustry.biz, where he talked about why Sony does this, and I'd love to get your take on it.

He said, and I quote: "... given how some of our first party IP is incredibly special and valuable, we just want to treat them with amazing care and respect, and have those launches be clean and pure."

What I think he's saying there is, our big first-party games are too good to give away on a subscription. That's such a different approach to what you guys are doing. How do you apply that thinking to Gears 5, for example? Does putting it on a subscription platform day and date detract from the sense of it being this big, great first-party title?

Phil Spencer:
It hasn't in any other form of media. I don't think people look at Game of Thrones and say somehow it wasn't quality because it shipped inside of a subscription. I think most people would look at the amount of investment and the quality of execution that happens in TV at least in the subscriptions as being incredibly high.

What I'll say for us - and I'm trying to figure out how much I want to dive into this because it could get messy - giving developers a business model that's already working at scale inside of a subscription - and I think there's some confusion out there whether Game Pass works. Game Pass works as a business model. There's no doubt about that. Even today. It works. It works incredibly well - allows us to go and invest in the studio acquisitions we've done and the quality of content we're building over the next two or three years that's gonna show up. It's an integral part of the business model that allows that. And we also do retail.

I think those games can be and will be very special. I think Gears 5 can be a game of the year award winner. I think Outer Worlds can be a game of the year award winner. The fact it shipped inside of Game Pass and found more players does not take away from the experience. In fact it's more inviting to more people.

Gamers in general, there is sometimes a tendency that the more walls we put up around things, the more valuable it is. But if we're focused on growing the games industry, we should not be less accessible. We should be more accessible. We had this argument for years over cross-play. Should we allow people to play across different platforms? Or does that somehow diminish the value of an individual platform?

The thing at the highest level, which will probably get me in trouble, is as gamers you should focus on what you want, not focus on, like, my P&L [profit and loss statement], or the P&L of the console you chose to invest in. I see this dialogue about somebody worried that somehow Xbox is gonna make less money, or their console is gonna make less money if they tell me a game is going to be on a different platform before it actually comes out, or it's gonna be in a subscription, which is really what I want, but somehow that's gonna mean less money for them so I don't want them to do that because I'd rather pay more money so...

You should focus on you as a gamer and the things that matter to you. We as the people running the business - I am incented to run a good business inside of Microsoft and in the long term. I've been here for 31 years. I don't know that I'll make 31 more, but I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. We're building an Xbox business for the long run. I'll tell you, Game Pass today is a strong part of that, and it continues to get stronger, and it supports the building of great IP.

https://youtu.be/gkHZCytttY0


You have 15 studios now. You've been on an impressive acquisition spree. Are you done now?

Phil Spencer:
No!

I do think we can sometimes get a little infatuated with putting a bunch of studio logos on a slide and that becomes the news. They're not trading cards. They're studios. And we want them to build great games. I love the fact we're here announcing three new IP, two from our internal studios. As I look forward, there's not a show I can look at where we're not gonna be announcing new games, just because of the breadth of studios we have. It's not really some kind of PR battle about how many new acquisitions we can put on stage. Because if we're not building great games, the acquisitions don't matter.

But are we done? I don't think so.

You're still on the hunt then?

Phil Spencer:
Yeah. There are great creators out there. Our business continues to grow. The company is incredibly supportive of what we're trying to build. Microsoft talks about gaming as a key pillar of its consumer interest and its strategy. We're getting a tonne of support from Satya Nadella, Amy Hood and the board. And we're running a good business today, so we've earned the right to continue to look.

What are you looking for?

Phil Spencer:
I look at the geographic diversity of our studios. I love the fact we now have three studios here in the UK. You can go back decades... you could argue the UK is as strong as any country in terms of its impact on the history of video games. I love that we're here in such strength. Now we have studios in Canada, studios in other parts of the US. I think we have a hole in Asia. I've said that both to Matt and publicly. I would love to have more of an influence in our own first-party team from Asian creators. There's nothing that's imminent, so it's not a pre-announce of something. But if you just plotted where we are on the map with our first-party, that's a real opportunity for us.

I love the fact we can stand here and announce Yakuza and Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy coming. That's through third-party relationships, which take time. And we've been really focused on that. But I think we could have stronger first-party creation capability there. We have in the past and I think we should again.

You could just buy Nintendo and that would be sorted! I know this isn't your focus here, but you are launching Project Scarlett in a year, which isn't far. You have started to talk about it a bit more. With that in our consciousness now, is it a tough sell for Xbox One for the rest of the year? Is it, ultimately, a waiting game until next-gen?

Phil Spencer:
For certain people we're doing things like Xbox All Access, which has the upgrade program of buying an Xbox for a monthly fee. You and I are probably too close to it. There are millions of people who play console games today on any of the platforms who couldn't name what generation they're in, or when the next-generation is coming. I look at our Xbox stats all the time. We still have millions of players who play on Xbox 360 every month. Still. That hardware is 12, 13 years old and they're still playing. Maybe they know there's an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 out there. Maybe they just enjoy playing their games.

You say, is it harder to sell a console? We're gonna sell millions of consoles this year. Yeah, for people who are aware, which is the reason we wanted to talk about it early, who know what an E3 is, or a Gamescom or an XO, we want to be transparent with those people. But we shouldn't lose sight that there are millions and millions of our customers who, just because it's the holiday season or birthday or somebody's got some spare cash says, hey, maybe we're gonna add a game console to our family. Let's just go to the store today and see what they have. And they're not thinking about what's next year or what's last year. It's very much a now decision. We want to have a great value proposition for them, and great games for them as well.

https://youtu.be/B1EUNegbdy0


You had talked about new future Xbox consoles plural. But I think you're talking about Project Scarlett in the singular now. We've heard about this Scarlett lite, or Project Lockhart. Can you put this to bed and say you are definitely not making that? Are you still doing new Xboxes plural, as you've said in the past?

Phil Spencer:
Will I say I'm not doing something? We're focused on Project Scarlett and delivering a high performance console. There's no doubt about that. I will never remove options for us. When we launched Xbox One, would I have predicted S would have come? Or X would have come? Or the All-Digital edition would have come, which frankly is doing well, which is good to see. We also did just ship the development kit, which is another console.

But you know what I mean when I say Xbox consoles plural.

Phil Spencer:
I know what you're saying, but I will say from the team's perspective, shipping the dev kit is as much work as shipping a retail product. You're shipping thousands of them out to partners. It is a dedicated piece of plastic they're gonna plug in and develop for. It's just a tonne of work. So I won't remove options from the future.

I will say, from the launch of Xbox One, I've definitely learned that being too expensive and not powerful enough is not a great place to be. And price and performance are gonna be important, and we're very focused on both of those things.

https://youtu.be/93JlGKr2j1c


Mark Cerny, talking about PS5 and the price of silicon and SSD costs now, you're looking at a potentially high price for the console. But you're suggesting you're gonna be aggressive when it comes to pricing, that this is something you've learnt from the Xbox One launch - that you're somehow going to deliver such a generational leap but also keep it reasonably priced.

Phil Spencer:
If you remember at the launch of Xbox One, we were $100 more expensive and less powerful. So, I won't be in that position. There's no doubt about that. As an industry that's growing so fast, we do think about price. We do think about performance as well. I'm not going to sacrifice performance for the sake of price.

Moving on to streaming. Would you consider trading selling consoles if it meant you had ownership of streaming? Like, you owned video game streaming globally?

Phil Spencer:
No. No. Streaming is not a replacement for the console experience today. I'll be open: we looked at that. When Satya and the board gives us freedom to go drive gaming for Microsoft, they don't mandate that we make Project Scarlett. They don't mandate that we go do streaming. They say we want to become a global leader in gaming. We want to build our first-party. We want to build out the platform. We've got complete hardware capability. And we looked at it and we said, should we do Project Scarlett? A bit like when we did X, we did Project Scorpio and we said, why should Xbox One X exist? And we said, we want to design a 4K console. Certain people made fun of us when we said that. Is it true 4K? I think now when people look at it they say, okay, it's capable of doing 4K. Not every game will, but it's capable.

So we looked and we said, will Project Scarlett play a role in the gaming future we see? And that's really a question of, is playing local on a local device in your home still the best way to play for many many years? We're as invested in cloud as anybody in terms of the cost standpoint, and we said yeah, local play on a device is going to be the best way to play, whether it's a gaming PC or a console. And that's for years.

So if you ask me today would I go all in on streaming, and ignore the console? Project Scarlett is the most important thing we're doing next year. Leading in the console industry is something we want to do both in sales as well as leading in things like cross-play, back compat and Game Pass and all of the innovations we've brought in Xbox One. Yeah, we're going to continue to invest in cloud because we think it allows us to bring that experience to more and more people. But we're years away from that competing from a fidelity standpoint and a kind of feel for what people do on a local device.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
If X was $500 US, it's going to be $500 minimum.

How often has a new generation of consoles by MS, Sony or Nintendo actually went down in price?
 

urmie

Member
"The thing at the highest level, which will probably get me in trouble, is as gamers you should focus on what you want, not focus on, like, my P&L [profit and loss statement], or the P&L of the console you chose to invest in. I see this dialogue about somebody worried that somehow Xbox is gonna make less money, or their console is gonna make less money if they tell me a game is going to be on a different platform before it actually comes out, or it's gonna be in a subscription, which is really what I want, but somehow that's gonna mean less money for them so I don't want them to do that because I'd rather pay more money so..."

Phil basically saying to stop worrying about Xbox's bottom line and worry about what's good for you. Now the fake concern over GamePass and financial analysis of devs/Xbox can end.

Good interview.
 
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Dabaus

Banned
I unequivocally, absolutely, vehemently, and defiantly refuse to believe gears 5 outsold gears 4. I want to see the receipts. I want to see first month sales of gears 4 and compare them to gears 5. If he’s lying about that what else is he lying about?
 

leo-j

Member
I liked his response to sony’s, our first party is too valuable to just drop onto ps now day 1. I also liked his comparison to game of thrones, but let’s be real. If sony dropped everything on ps now, they would kill console sales, since the platform is available outside of ps4/5 and it would hurt game sales. Sony games are just now doing near nintendo numbers, 10 million plus per ip. This would really hurt that imo. Microsoft isn’t as affected since their games haven’t really sold much this gen.
 

Pallas

Member
Yeah I think console prices will be $450-$500 minimum coming next gen. Good internee though, on both sides.

I unequivocally, absolutely, vehemently, and defiantly refuse to believe gears 5 outsold gears 4. I want to see the receipts. I want to see first month sales of gears 4 and compare them to gears 5. If he’s lying about that what else is he lying about?

lol
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
"I'm not going to sacrifice performance for the sake of price."

Of course you are. Otherwise, you'd have to make a machine that is as powerful as current t technology could possibly allow and the Xbox would cost several thousand dollars.
Nice troll post.

You know what he means is within the console world where systems cost about $400-500, so what console gamers get is something that performs in that range, It's obvious not going to be a super computer at NASA.

On the other hand, Naughty Dog promoting UC4 will be 1080p at 60 fps in a Twitter promo clip, then quietly dumbing it down to 30 fps is misleading.

And Sony execs bragging PS3 could do 1080p and 120 fps. Another BS statement.
 
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C

Contica

Unconfirmed Member
I unequivocally, absolutely, vehemently, and defiantly refuse to believe gears 5 outsold gears 4. I want to see the receipts. I want to see first month sales of gears 4 and compare them to gears 5. If he’s lying about that what else is he lying about?

Gears 4 sold pretty poorly though, iirc.
 

Vawn

Banned
Nice troll post.

You know what he means is within the console world where systems cost about $400-500, so what console gamers get is something that performs in that range, It's obvious not going to be a super computer at NASA.

On the other hand, Naughty Dog promoting UC4 will be 1080p at 60 fps in a Twitter promo clip, then quietly dumbing it down to 30 fps is misleading.

How is that a troll post? I'm pointing out how he's speaking PR nonsense that isn't true.

Every console sacrifices power for price. He is attempting to give the illusion the a high price means it will be the most powerful machine ever.

Of course, he's talking out both sides of his mouth as he already walked comments like that back with his comment, "well, the next Xbox will at least be close in power to the PS5".
 
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Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
They should price it at $599, just for the boldness of it.

And funny thing is, I don't think it would be a problem. Not anymore..
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
They should price it at $599, just for the boldness of it.

And funny thing is, I don't think it would be problem. Not anymore..
No problem for me.

For gamers who don't want to pay $600, get an X for probably $300 when Scarlett releases.

If gamers want their console to not be gimped, pay up the extra $100 for better specs.

Everything else in life has gone up in prices, and people don't seem to care, so give console makers an extra $100 buffer to play with and you won't get Jaguar cpus.
 

Pallas

Member
How is that a troll post? I'm pointing out how he's speaking PR nonsense that isn't true.

Every console sacrifices power for price. He is attempting to give the illusion the a high price means it will be the most powerful machine ever.

Of course, he's talking out both sides of his mouth as he already walked comments like that back with his comment, "well, the next Xbox will at least be close in power to the PS5".


Yeah because it’s completely realistic to expect he meant strapping several Titan GPU’s and calling it a day. You knew what he meant and were being purposely obtuse.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
How is that a troll post? I'm pointing out how he's speaking PR nonsense that isn't true.

Every console sacrifices power for price. He is attempting to give the illusion the a high price means it will be the most powerful machine ever.

Of course, he's talking out both sides of his mouth as he already walked comments like that back with his comment, "well, the next Xbox will at least be close in power to the PS5".

You're clearly being facetious.
 

Vawn

Banned
Yeah because it’s completely realistic to expect he meant strapping several Titan GPU’s and calling it a day. You knew what he meant and were being purposely obtuse.

I'd like $1000 consoles. That could result in significantly more power than what we will get at $500. Will he sacrifice power to avoid that price?
 
$400 won't happen this time around.
MS did not do it last time either... However, I assume that the project goals are a bit different hardware wise.
You're clearly being facetious.
You just don't understand that engineering is about trade-offs, and someone in a PR position is not going to say or imply that the console will be weak in one way or another... so Phil will make an empty statement that could be interpreted however you want it to be, so he doesn't appear like a liar if the console doesn't meet someone's target specs (128GG HBM5 RAM, with a 22TF GPU, 16cores/32threads CPU running at 6ghz + a 12GBps SSD based hard drive, with starlink internet built-in) - I.E. as long as we don't have an actual specs sheet and price we just can't tell what he means by "this time around we will not sacrifice power for price" it could literally mean anything, but most fairly either they sell the console for a high price, they take a huge loss to bring up the user base on their platform, it could also mean that if their console is weaker than the PS5 in some manner it will cost less than the PS5.

I am losing confidence in the future output of their studios, so no matter the specs, I would take a wait and see approach to any Microsoft console, unless you are satisfied with what they are currently offering.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
It's Phil Spencer. Don't believe his lies.

Its entirely down to whether you count a GamePass download as a sale... which falls entirely into line with Phil's "don't look at the man behind the curtain" philosophy.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
MS did not do it last time either... However, I assume that the project goals are a bit different hardware wise.

You just don't understand that engineering is about trade-offs, and someone in a PR position is not going to say or imply that the console will be weak in one way or another... so Phil will make an empty statement that could be interpreted however you want it to be, so he doesn't appear like a liar if the console doesn't meet someone's target specs (128GG HBM5 RAM, with a 22TF GPU, 16cores/32threads CPU running at 6ghz + a 12GBps SSD based hard drive, with starlink internet built-in) - I.E. as long as we don't have an actual specs sheet and price we just can't tell what he means by "this time around we will not sacrifice power for price" it could literally mean anything, but most fairly either they sell the console for a high price, they take a huge loss to bring up the user base on their platform, it could also mean that if their console is weaker than the PS5 in some manner it will cost less than the PS5.

I am losing confidence in the future output of their studios, so no matter the specs, I would take a wait and see approach to any Microsoft console, unless you are satisfied with what they are currently offering.

I understand engineering just fine thank you. Not worth replying to.
 

VAL0R

Banned
"I'm not going to sacrifice performance for the sake of price."

Of course you are. Otherwise, you'd have to make a machine that is as powerful as current t technology could possibly allow and the Xbox would cost several thousand dollars.
:messenger_poop:
 

VAL0R

Banned
Phil putting to bed the idea that Game Pass isn't making money:

" I think there's some confusion out there whether Game Pass works. Game Pass works as a business model. There's no doubt about that. Even today. It works. It works incredibly well - allows us to go and invest in the studio acquisitions we've done and the quality of content we're building over the next two or three years that's gonna show up. It's an integral part of the business model that allows that. And we also do retail."
 

Vawn

Banned
Phil putting to bed the idea that Game Pass isn't making money:

" I think there's some confusion out there whether Game Pass works. Game Pass works as a business model. There's no doubt about that. Even today. It works. It works incredibly well - allows us to go and invest in the studio acquisitions we've done and the quality of content we're building over the next two or three years that's gonna show up. It's an integral part of the business model that allows that. And we also do retail."

More Phil, "we can never give out sales numbers but let's just say we're doing well". Nothing new here.

Well, except when Xbox actually is selling well and they are willing to release actual numbers. Hard to remember that far back though.

Here he is speaking generally, of course. Subscription models are great for businesses. It ensures people are buying stuff they'd otherwise not pay for. It also gives the company guaranteed revenue that doesn't require quality games.

For example, if somehow, God of War 2 came out and was abysmal, Sony would lose a ton of money because people wouldn't buy the game. But if people are already paying MS and they releasd sub-par games like Crackdown 3 or State of Decay 2, etc, those people will just kind of have to "deal with it".

MS knows how to make money. Games? Not so much lately.
 
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In an age where the most popular phone costs £1500, if I don't get the option to have an extremely powerful console for a justified price then I will skip next gen for a few years.

I'm not paying a middling £400 for a mid-range console, that will last potentially 5-7 years, hampered by bloated OS's and needless add-on tat. I want a lean, mean motherfucking gaming machine.
 
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VAL0R

Banned
More Phil, "we can never give out sales numbers but let's just say we're doing well". Nothing new here.

Well, except when Xbox actually is selling well and they are willing to release actual numbers. Hard to remember that far back though.

Here he is speaking generally, of course. Subscription models are great for businesses. It ensures people are buying stuff they'd otherwise not pay for. It also gives the company guaranteed revenue that doesn't require quality games.

For example, if somehow, God of War 2 came out and was abysmal, Sony would lose a ton of money because people wouldn't buy the game. But if people are already paying MS and they releasd sub-par games like Crackdown 3 or State of Decay 2, etc, those people will just kind of have to "deal with it".

MS knows how to make money. Games? Not so much lately.

No, he's clearly not speaking generally. Maybe it's a reading comprehension issue with you? I'm not joking. Anyway, he says Game Pass, specifically, works. GP not only works but is doing "incredibly well." So well in fact, he says, that Microsoft is allowing him to invest (I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars?) into studio acquisitions.
 

Pallas

Member
I'd like $1000 consoles. That could result in significantly more power than what we will get at $500. Will he sacrifice power to avoid that price?

You’re like the 1% then, any console that sells for $1000 would fail, even if the specs warrant that price.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
At this point, GamePass is such a good deal that I would be insane not to get the next Xbox, even at $600. And I have to believe that was part of the strategy.
I'll be there day 1 for scarlet because of gamepass also best value in gaming today. Just hoping for a good deal between now and 2022 for a few more years.
 
Smart phone and gaming console aren’t comparable, one iS practically a necessity, the other not so much.
Smart phone is a necessity yes but there's smart phones for 200$ that work perfectly fine no reason to buy a 1000$ smart phone but millions of people still do every year even after having one which is stupid,

A gaming console isn't a necessity but for gamers it is a necessity and gaming is expensive because consoles don't just read emails and take photos they fucking crunch graphics for a living and to get a next gen console that is good at it's job for a cheap price of 400$ isn't going to work this is cheap labour and abuse!
 

ZywyPL

Banned
$400 won't happen this time around.

399$ from 2013 is already ~440 in today's money, so yeah, not a chance. Such price might work if the only major upgrade in next-gen consoles was just the APU, as 7nm Ryzen and Navi are about the same size as their counterparts from the APUs found in PS4/XB1,, hence will cost about the same to produce, but the consoles will have more memory, 4K BD, SSD's and what's not, so unless Sony and MS are willing to sell them at a loss there's no way for such a low price anymore. As of recently, I even start to see more and more media starting to speak about 500-600$ range, and this is what we will ultimately get I believe, especially when X1X proved that a bigger price is not an issue if it's really justified (performance). For a comparison. And the X1X should be a starting point whenever there's a price discussion - it already has 4K BD, a bigger APU than PS4/X1S/Pro, more RAM, vapor chamber cooling etc. and that's 500$ right there, so expecting anything less from the PS5/XB2 is pretty much naive. For comparison - PS3's 599$ back in 2006 is what ~760$ is today, so even at 599$ the consoles wouldn't hit that hard on people's wallets. That being said - 549$ is my bet for next-gen consoles.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
The most hardcore gamers would buy a console at $599, but the majority won't.

The one who sells next-gen at $599 will "lose" next-gen.
Well, I don't know. I think the situation back in 2006 was very different from today. In the end, it's the software that will make the real difference. I think the price needs to be competitive, and $600 is a lot, but it's not as much of a problem anymore. But yeah. The price needs to be competitive..
 
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Psykodad

Banned
Well, I don't know. I think the situation back in 2006 was very different from today. In the end, it's the software that will make the real difference. I think the price needs to be competitive, and $600 is a lot, but it's not as much of a problem anymore. But yeah. The price needs to be competitive..
I dunno, there reports from Dutch financial analysts that predict another recession starting next year or the one after that and I honestly doubt it'll be much different throughout Europe, at least.
Really don't expect people to be willing to spend such an amount of money.

$599 is far too pricey.
That's my Guess though, but $499 seems like the sweet spot from a consumer perspective.
 
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At this point, GamePass is such a good deal that I would be insane not to get the next Xbox, even at $600. And I have to believe that was part of the strategy.
xbox monster [600€] with 200 GamePass Games for 9,99 on release day for 609,99€
showcase MS Flight Simulator

ps5 [400€] with 2 Games on release day for 499€.....
 
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pr0cs

Member
Game pass simply breaks even it doesn't make that much profits it's the same with netflix
Not even similar, Netflix is losing money producing shit content trying to shoehorn political bullshit and sjw tripe into content. A myriad of terrible superhero pieces didn't help.
 

Xaero Gravity

NEXT LEVEL lame™
Edit: Whoops clicked on a thread linked at the bottom of the page while trying to post. Sorry D:
 
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