Is Microsoft sliding into irrelevancy?

[GamerL]

Is it me or is is Microsoft fast becoming irrelevant? I don't mean the Xbox One itself so much as Microsoft as a first party publisher, it seems like the Xbox One X for example is something someone would buy as an alternative to a gaming PC and not for any sort of exclusives, because outside of Halo there are no Xbox One exclusives, everything is also ported to the PC.

And it seems like actual first party Microsoft games have become fairly rare, not nearly as many as there used to be and the ones that do come out seem to be usually met with shrugs, Quantum Break was a flop and Gears of War 4 and Halo 5 did not seem to inspire as much attention as those series have in the past.

The one exception is Cuphead, but that's really only Microsoft in technicality, it came out not just on PC but also Steam and GOG as opposed to just the Windows Store, nobody thinks of it as a "Microsoft game" and it's not something that people would buy an Xbox One solely for.

On the horizon is Sea of Thieves, a new Rare title and it remains to be seen how well it will do, but I feel like overall Microsoft has really lost it's mojo, if the Xbox One X fails to meet their expectations I can easily see them calling it a day on their games division and selling off their IPs, whoever started the games division is I'm sure long gone and it just doesn't seem like their heart is as in it as they used to be, am I wrong? (fyi the cancellation of Scalebound seems like a clear indicator of that to me)

Also, I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing, I was an actual fan of Xbox at first, I love the experimental era of the first few years of the original Xbox and I also liked the first 3 years of the Xbox 360, but the Kinect was the real jumping the shark moment and I more or less haven't looked back since, hell I didn't even turn my 360 on for 6 whole years.

[paperchema]

It remains to be seen. I think the problem is Don Mattrick's famous stance on first party games when the XO launched. Phil Spencer has been talking about publishing more games, but with how long it takes to develop new ones, we won't see the fruits of his labor until much later.

Personally, I see no problem with MS games being on PC. Saves me the money to buy a XO. Besides, it won't budge the average gamer into building a gaming PC.

I do agree, though, that they have a serious perception problem. Games like Nioh and Bier are on PC too, but if the Internet is any indication, lots of people see them as PlayStation games

[GamerL]

To be clear I'm quite glad they port most of their games to the PC, otherwise I wouldn't be able to play them, I think it's a smart business decision to be honest.

But what surprised me is when thinking about it I realized how much less they publish than they used to, that's a real sign that this gen hasn't gone well for them.

And Nioh is a perfect of example of this, Team Ninja and Xbox used to go hand in hand for a while there but not any more, most Japanese devs are forgoing the Xbox One altogether now, there's other examples like Street Fighter and Nier coming on the PC and PS4, but not Xbox One and Persona 5 skipped Xbox One even though Catherine was also released on the 360, but the new remaster of Catherine? You guessed it, Sony only.

Only recent Japanese multiplatforms that didn't skip the XBO was Final Fantasy 15 and RE7, but it seems like by and large Japan has given up on the Xbox and Microsoft has in turn given up on them given the cancellation of Scalebound, that's certainly not a good sign.

At the end of the day even if things continue with the status quo, that is Microsoft keeps the Xbox around and continues to release the occasional game, they are either way a third wheel now, not at all king of the hill, this generation has evolved into a console war between Sony and Nintendo first and foremost with Microsoft lagging behind, that's honestly pretty shocking when you think about it.

Here's what I think really went wrong, the Kinect, people didn't like it and then when the XBO rolled around Microsoft hampered it by making the Kinect a pack in item, they really shot themselves in the foot and never recovered, you wanna bet they regret THAT endeavor?

[Bumpyroad]

Funeral service for the Kinect in Japan. Tragic.


 

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Well, for a lot of JP-made games, Japan is the primary market they're targeting, and the XB1 ain't exactly flying off the shelves is Japan. For every XB1 in japan there's like 40 Wii Us or something. Games like Final Fantasy and Street Fighter have enough of a fanbase in the west to make a port feasible, but for a lot of games it would be too much of a gamble, probably.

I think part of the problem is that the PS4 and the XB1 are probably the most interchangable consoles since...well, ever. And the PS4 is simply more appealing to most people it seems. It doesn't help that MS is probably the most personality-less major console player we've seen so far. They have barely any notable IPs of their own, and they don't have nearly the amount of 3rd party series that people associate with them either.

IDK, I'd probably end up owning one one day simply because I'd rather play multiplatform titles with the XB1 controller than the PS4 controller. But I'm not going to get another current-gen console any time soon anyway.

[paperchema]

In addition to market conditions, business relationships are equally important for Japanese developers. The creators of the OG Xbox say that many devs refused to develop games for the system on the ground that they did not want to anger Sony.

[Owlman]

I think the new Xbox will stay, but not be a massive success. Microsoft should stop trying to chase buzzword-filled dreams of "real 4K" and other nonsense and just make games that people actually want to play. Like Nintendo does. The Switch may be the worst current console with regard to power, but it also shows that power alone doesn't make an attractive console.

I personally see no reason to buy and Xbox. It's mostly a second-rate PC to me.

[kaoru]

Microsoft for a while had a pretty hard push on making it interesting for Japanese devs to go to 360, in hopes to get a foothold into that market. But that clearly didn't work out, it's installation base in Japan was abysmal (the Switch is less than a year old and already sold double of what the 360 did in its life there), so Microsoft stopped doing that, thus the Japanese stay away from the One. Which didn't even sell way worse in Japan, but also just has about half the instalation base world wide that the PS4 has. So unless it is a pretty big title that is made to also appeal to the West they just dodge the platform.

[dsparil]

Semi-realistically, I could see them dropping the XBox if the successor to the XB1 doesn't do better and whatever CEO they have then decides it's an embarrassment. From what I've read, they're basically permanently in the hole from the RROD fiasco even though the 360 sold roughly the same or a little higher than the PS3. Even without that, the XBox has never been a huge money maker or even consistently profitable so it only exists to further MS's own goals which are capricious.

They've sold half the PS4 this generation, and if the Switch somehow ends up outselling it before a successor comes out, that's where the embarrassment angle comes in. If the successor stays in third place, they could conceivable throw in the towel having "lost" two generations.

The Xbox is supposed to be part of their larger plan for a universal app platform (UWP) across desktops/laptops, tablets, phones, consoles, and HoloLens. The phone part is dead, the tablet side hasn't been a runaway success either, and HoloLens is still unreleased. General reception to UWP hasn't been amazing either, so if that gets dropped or shrunk down to Windows 10+ only, there might not be any strategic reason the actually keep it around.

On the other hand, the company overall is fine financially so they could run it at a loss indefinitely. Plus, having Windows ports may be a deliberate move even if it doesn't help Xbox sales. If it harms PS4 sales (or other competitors) in some way, that could be enough of a reason. Games that never would have had PC ports pre-Xbox seem to get them now. That alone could be enough of a reason.

---

Regarding Japanese developers, Microsoft has a strategy of courting them during the 360 era in a failed attempt to bolster their Japanese sales e.g. Blue Dragon. They didn't try again for the XB1.

Edit: What kaoru said.

[Arale]

They were never relevant in the first place.

Except, of course, for their atrociously disobedient operating system having a near-monopoly on usefulness solely due to EXEs.

[GamerL]

Jan 26, 2018 7:56:38 GMT -5 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 said:

It doesn't help that MS is probably the most personality-less major console player we've seen so far. 

And that wasn't always the case, Xbox used to have a lot more personality back in the day.

But that too was ruined by the Kinect, used to be the Xbox brand was synonymous with hardcore gamers, it was like "the gamers gaming console", that all also died with the Kinect where suddenly they were going after the Wii's "casual" audience with lots of lame footage of families playing motion control games, so much for hardcore gamers.

Then when the XBO rolled around it seemed like they emphasized everything but games, like "you can watch sports, TV, movies!" it was clear they wanted the Xbox to be this all in one media center where video games was just a bonus.

Jan 26, 2018 11:14:11 GMT -5 Arale said:

They were never relevant in the first place.

Except, of course, for their atrociously disobedient operating system having a near-monopoly on usefulness solely due to EXEs.

Nah, they were certainly relevant over the course of the 6th and 7th gens, I mean hello, Halo? Not so much now though. 

[Arale]

Yeah, BUNGIE was relevant.

But it's not like Microsoft actually had anything to do with that, considering that Bungie was already a veteran FPS dev and Halo was already being developed.

Microsoft's acquisition of Bungie forced potential players to buy an Xbox, which (I suppose similar to my EXE example) did make them relevant *in a sense*, but it's forced relevancy, achieved through money alone. They didn't actually DO anything.

[Deleted]

Despite Microsoft's mistakes with the launch of the XBO, I'm very satisfied with my Xbox One X. Graphics aren't everything, but there really is a night and day difference between 1080p and 4k. On top of that, the X allows for upgraded backwards compatibility of 360 titles. This is a feature I'd love to see implemented on the Pro, as PS2 games on PS4 still suffer terribly from aliasing.

At the very least, it's good that MS is out there pushing things in a different way than Sony. Backwards compatibility clearly isn't a priority for Sony, and we all know how arrogant that company can get when it's the undisputed leader in a hardware generation.

[GamerL]

Jan 26, 2018 19:38:17 GMT -5 Arale said:

Yeah, BUNGIE was relevant.

But it's not like Microsoft actually had anything to do with that, considering that Bungie was already a veteran FPS dev and Halo was already being developed.

Microsoft's acquisition of Bungie forced potential players to buy an Xbox, which (I suppose similar to my EXE example) did make them relevant *in a sense*, but it's forced relevancy, achieved through money alone. They didn't actually DO anything.

Uh yeah, you're not telling me anything I didn't already know, Microsoft is a publisher, not really a developer, though some of the games they publish are by teams they also own though that's not always the case like with Epic Games for example, it's the same deal with Sony (though I believe Sony owns all the developers whose games they publish)

So just to be clear, I'm talking about Microsoft as a publisher and game console maker.

[ZenithianHero]

XBOX One just exists. It is just a platform to buy if you don't care about Japanese support. That's how I see it. It's equivalent to plain flavored greek yogurt. Sure it's yogurt but it should taste way better if you add some extra topping to it (ie exclusives).

Jan 26, 2018 19:43:46 GMT -5 @jasonx said:

At the very least, it's good that MS is out there pushing things in a different way than Sony. Backwards compatibility clearly isn't a priority for Sony, and we all know how arrogant that company can get when it's the undisputed leader in a hardware generation.

That's probably the only positive thing I can think of with XBOX One.
But even then I am likely still own a 360 because of a few games I want that are not compatible yet or may never will.