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If Microsoft never entered the gaming space.

It would be a Sony and Nintendo cartel. O wait, it is anyways now. At least in the console space. Thank jeebus for steam.
 
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If Microsoft never entered the gaming space, Jez Corden wouldn't have become a miserable, obese drone.

Feel bad for him and everyone whose mental health relies on how Xbox is doing, and what could have been for them instead!
 
They've brought some good games and ecosystem features over the years but they've also been the harbinger of all things dirty when it comes to monetization too. Subs/paying for online, introducing mtx, and ads on the system. I'd say it's a wash.
 
Microsoft really pushed online forward with OG Xbox + 360. I think 7th gen would have been quite a bit different (worse) without them.

PSN on PS3 was incredibly barebones in comparison to XBL.
 
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I think what we're seeing now is the death of our version of gaming. Physical, console, AAA story rich games. It's probably a few years overdue Think about it. You've got $100 million to invest and you want a good return on your money. How low on that list of potential investment vehicles is "Western AAA video game"? Yeah, and you're a gamer. Imagine investors with no emotional attachment to the medium! Anyone who only plays the high budget stuff is in for a rough decade.

Outliers aside, I don't think we will see many projects with budgets over $200 million making it beyond the pitch stage. We've got a lot of games already in process that may or may not come out, but I'm talking about brand new projects being signed off and funded.
 
Microsoft should leave now, for sure.

But the great gaming memories from the original Xbox and 360 are priceless.

I'm glad they came in, even if it meant the premature death of Segaga.
 
SNG32 said:
Would gaming as a whole be in a better space?
Click to expand...
They started fucking up late x360gen under matrick, before they made tons of right moves, 84m of x360 units sold are proof of that. After that so many bad decisions made by their top bozos, each year was worse than previous one.
Once they put their exclusives on pc it was beginning of the end, day1 exclusives on gamepass should have been reversed after first year max, before current gen launched, but they just kept going in the direction of 7th circle of hell, and kept speeding up, it is what it is...
 
Online MP would be free.
Achievements/trophies wouldn't be a thing.
Quick Resume would be the norm on all platforms, instead of being patent-locked to Xbox.
 
Microsoft is now a cancer upon gaming. During the first years, the MS culture wasn't dominating Xbox. But After the Xbox One, more and more of that corpo MS culture seeped into Xbox.
I guess now console users know why so many PC gamers hate Microsoft.
 
No, the OG Xbox brought online out of the box gaming and built in hard drives back in 2001.

Xbox Live was revolutionary, it wasn't until the PS3 where so had caught up with online.

If anything, Xbox as a brand is a little underappreciated with some of things it piorneered for consoles back in the day.
 
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SEGA and Nintendo vs. Sony was a thing. And it *kinda* worked. (Obviously it didn't, because SEGA split.)

We needed that third player. Microsoft filled a pretty big gap with the Xbox. My issue is, as evidenced with Kinect 1.0 and the Xbone and Kinect 2.0, and what we've seen the last few months -- MS just chases the wind. They don't seem to have a cardinal direction. I wish they did. Gobbling up studios and saying "First party!!!" wasn't really it.

I hope they figure things about. But if past is prologue, then ... they won't.
 
We paid a high price for all those Halo multiplayer memories.

The best scenario would be that they entered but Xbox One never came out and that was it.

I think the accumulated damage since then is catastrophic. Industry is simply in a worse place for it.

Of course there will be those that go on that studios would have been in trouble without gamepass money or whatever. Very cute take.
 
LectureMaster said:
Then I would never have met my man adamsapple adamsapple , which would be a huge loss for GAF.
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garnett-kg.gif
 
spons said:
Achievements ravaged my sense of casually enjoying games by making everything competitive. Can't even turn that shit off. Horrible.
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unironically I despise achievements with a passion

Everything around maintaining a retarded "profile" that others can see is trash and I'd prefer it never came about. Go be a woman on insta or something if you want to maintain a profile and a social status, keep it out of gaming.

and the notifications popping up in games for hitting story points or whatever are so patronizing. Let each game determine its own system of bonuses for feats, and keep it out of being a unified system
 
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danklord said:
They made a great controller, that's it.
Click to expand...

I always said their best contribution was making a standardized PC controller, 360 with Xinput, that was really good. The Series version drops connection from its wireless receiver, which I purchased because it was dropping on Bluetooth.

So yeah, the one good thing I trusted them on failed and I still use 360. lol
 
Not necessarily.

We've seen Sony become arrogant this gen

The 360 era made Sony wake up to the competition and come back with the PS4

So no, MS kept Sony in check for some time - which was good for the industry as a whole

But now, M$ pockets were too deep and too foolish.. they bought up too much to churn out content for their big bet on Gamepass - which hasn't paid off
 
ResurrectedContrarian said:
unironically I despise achievements with a passion

Everything around maintaining a retarded "profile" that others can see is trash and I'd prefer it never came about. Go be a woman on insta or something if you want to maintain a profile and a social status, keep it out of gaming.

and the notifications popping up in games for hitting story points or whatever are so patronizing. Let each game determine its own system of bonuses for feats, and keep it out of being a unified system
Click to expand...

Nah, I like profiles. And you can turn achievements notifications off.
 
Competition, as messy as it can be, is always a good thing.

It humbled Sony after the PS3 era, but they're back to their old ways.

We need Xbox consoles around. Otherwise we need someone else in the space. Nintendo marches to the beat of their own drum and Sony gets complacent.
 
No paying to play online on a game you already paid for
No timed exclusives
No timed DLC exclusives
No fucking indies in the game shows
 
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DarkShadowXI said:
Competition, as messy as it can be, is always a good thing.

It humbled Sony after the PS3 era, but they're back to their old ways.

We need Xbox consoles around. Otherwise we need someone else in the space. Nintendo marches to the beat of their own drum and Sony gets complacent.
Click to expand...

To me Sony had their best generations with PS1 and PS2 in terms of software and exclusives. They were the most dominant in those gens and so many classics came out those gens. Who knows if Microsoft wasn't around maybe it would have still been Japanese centric and not as westernized.
 
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crunchyBiscuits said:
Not necessarily.

We've seen Sony become arrogant this gen

The 360 era made Sony wake up to the competition and come back with the PS4

So no, MS kept Sony in check for some time - which was good for the industry as a whole

But now, M$ pockets were too deep and too foolish.. they bought up too much to churn out content for their big bet on Gamepass - which hasn't paid off
Click to expand...

Too many variables at play -Nintendo decided to let Sony and Microsoft duke it out while pursuing their own path. With only Sony in the room, they may have attempted to take them on more directly and make a high budget Zelda game on decent hardware.

We will never know.
 
Nope, the problem is leftists, DEI and wokeness. Glad the Asian devs are still mostly sane and break the western AAA bubble. Sony is worse than MS on gaming as trash like intergalactic, concord, fairgame$ are even worse than anything from MS atm, sony still hasn't layoffs or shut down many of these horrible dei infested studios yet. Hollywood too is mostly destroyed by leftists invading the industry, hopefully mass layoffs will happen there as well. The entire western big budget entertainment industry need a full reset.
 
Microsoft left the gaming space that mattered most and let Valve win by default. If they stayed a PC publisher and PC online gaming specialist then they could have had a gaming division that made money hand over fist instead of a trainwreck that required tens of billions in life support.
 
Say what you want, but MS has been a net positive for console gaming.

Without Xbox, online console gaming probably takes much longer to take off. Live set the template for friends lists, voice chat, matchmaking, achievements, and a real unified online service.

The 360 era also pushed HD gaming, online multiplayer, digital storefronts, and mainstream console competition forward in a major way.

MS made mistakes along the way, but Xbox absolutely raised the bar and forced the industry to compete harder.
 
Xbox filled the gap left by the loss of Sega, but if I'm being honest, I'd have preferred if Sega had continued within the console space instead.

Let me put it this way, if Sega released a new console I'd snap it up in a heartbeat regardless of power. I certainly wouldn't buy another Xbox.
 
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