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Post by GamerL on Jan 28, 2018 17:22:27 GMT -5
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. Not sure I agree with this, Microsoft did actually contribute some pretty significant things to the medium, e.g. - Created the OS that the biggest gaming platform of all time is running on and some of the most popular game development tools as well. Your favorite game probably wouldn't exist without their software. - Depending on how you count, they also developed the two best-selling games of all time: Minesweeper and Solitaire (certainly the two most-played games, though). This was casual gaming long before it became an industry trend. - Created an online service for consoles that has been widely emulated by the competition - Innovated features like achievements, hard drives in consoles, downloadable games, digital media distribution, custom soundtracks, etc. - Made indie development - and by extension small downloadable games - for consoles fashionable (XBox Live Arcade) - Significantly contributed to the creation of an entire genre (with MS Flight Simulator), seeing something like this in 1982 was absolutely mind-blowing - Published/financed some absolute classics: Halo, Age of Empires, Forza, Fable, Gears of War, Viva Pinata, etc. Yes, thank you, finally someone gets it. Microsoft was absolutely relevant in the gaming world at one time, the question is has that relevancy been slipping and I think it has. |
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Post by Purple Moss on Jan 28, 2018 21:03:12 GMT -5
Well said, condroid! Plus your forgot this one: - Fulfills the ancient prophecy that says there can only be three stable competitors at a time in the Console Wars, lest the World fall into chaos (contact your local sage for more details). More seriously now, yes, sadly*, -- speaking for the console side here -- the Xbox One is the token third console. Microsoft just doesn't seem to be a big name anymore. As much as I can curse exclusives for being, well, exclusive, competition is vital in this market -- and especially competition from a Western company, nowadays when the Japanese side is dominating. Simply put, variety is healthy for the industry as a whole, and ideas from all sides are welcome (like the aforementioned backwards compatibility)**. You wouldn't want a monopoly, would you? And I can't think of any other company that would dare get into the industry at this point, though if Microsoft left, surely the void wouldn't last long. * Hey, I may have a PS4 now, but I grew up on Xboxes, goddammit  ** All of that said, the concept of consoles and exclusives is a debate for another day. Side note: Microsoft really needs to consider the Japanese market! I found some sales figures from two weeks ago: Those figures are just embarrasing, it probably costed more to ship them there. It's such a big and important market to simply be ignored. OH crap. Are we talking about "How to save Microsoft" now? |
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Post by soniti254 on Jan 28, 2018 21:25:47 GMT -5
As an American, I can't really speak about why the Xbox brand does so poorly in Japan. However, as I understand it, the Xbox brand was simply never popular in Japan; especially since most people over there seem to be more into mobile gaming. For instance, I seem to recall reading that Metal Gear Rising was only released on PS3 in Japan, despite also being developed for the X360; chances are MGR was not the only instance of something like that happening. I think Microsoft more or less just stopped trying with the Japanese market; why bother trying to sell something to a market that clearly doesn't want it?
To be honest, aside from Windows, I never really found Microsoft relevant to me as far as gaming going; I only bought a classic Xbox about half a year ago and have hardly touched the thing at all. Honestly, I don't think I'd have ever bought it if it weren't for the exclusive SEGA games; I just have no interest in the consoles themselves.
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Post by GamerL on Jan 28, 2018 21:59:06 GMT -5
I think Xbox flopped in Japan for two simples reasons.
1. It was big, no joke, the original Xbox was huge and considering how cramped living space tends to be in Japan most weren't going to want to bring that monster into their homes.
2. It was American, I think frankly a lot of Japanese gamers were biased against buying an American console, it's as simple as that, so that even though Xbox had a healthy amount of Japanese games at the start it was pretty much destined for failure by virtue of the fact that it coming from an American company, not Sony, Sega or Nintendo.
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Post by scroogemcclunk on Jan 29, 2018 11:05:39 GMT -5
The Japanese tend to be xenophobic weirdos, and you can tap dance around that fact all you want, but it's true.
Microsoft is an absolutely idiotic company. Today, they're pathetically trying to get a piece of Steam's pie, but if they hadn't been completely retarded, they could have completely owned every aspect of PC gaming. Imagine an alternate reality in which--instead of wasting dozens of billions of dollars on the Xbox (which still hasn't turned a profit overall)--they had used that money to secure exclusive software development deals for Windows. Microsoft could have easily paid off developers to make exclusive Windows games, and they could have made their own online store earlier on.
They could have been the ones to do Steam before Valve, and they would have been raking in all that Steam money. Basically, they gave up what they had (PC gaming), so they could fail to get a less lucrative market (console gaming).
Microsoft has always been a stupid company, though. I mean, Bill Gates basically missed out on the internet. Microsoft wasn't even going to support TCP/IP until someone else in the company realized that it was absolutely imperative to do it. Pretty hard to make a bigger mistake than that. How the fuck can a "genius" head of a company miss out on the fucking internet? It was obvious to everyone. Microsoft got lucky once, and basically everything else they got away with was carried by that.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 12:16:40 GMT -5
Yes, every intelligent person must inherently understand every single aspect of every single issue.
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Post by GamerL on Jan 29, 2018 17:39:10 GMT -5
The Japanese tend to be xenophobic weirdos, and you can tap dance around that fact all you want, but it's true. Microsoft is an absolutely idiotic company. Today, they're pathetically trying to get a piece of Steam's pie, but if they hadn't been completely retarded, they could have completely owned every aspect of PC gaming. Imagine an alternate reality in which--instead of wasting dozens of billions of dollars on the Xbox (which still hasn't turned a profit overall)--they had used that money to secure exclusive software development deals for Windows. Microsoft could have easily paid off developers to make exclusive Windows games, and they could have made their own online store earlier on. They could have been the ones to do Steam before Valve, and they would have been raking in all that Steam money. Basically, they gave up what they had (PC gaming), so they could fail to get a less lucrative market (console gaming). Microsoft has always been a stupid company, though. I mean, Bill Gates basically missed out on the internet. Microsoft wasn't even going to support TCP/IP until someone else in the company realized that it was absolutely imperative to do it. Pretty hard to make a bigger mistake than that. How the fuck can a "genius" head of a company miss out on the fucking internet? It was obvious to everyone. Microsoft got lucky once, and basically everything else they got away with was carried by that. Well, Japan loves American movies, but yeah, when it comes to the tech industry, especially video games, Japan sees that as their bread and butter so they're not gonna let some damn yankees come in and take over, so the Xbox failed in Japan because of xenophobia first and foremost, but like I said it's size probably didn't help either. Because it had perfectly healthy Japanese support for pretty much it's whole life span and even the 360 has a few things at the start, but it never got off the ground and there really can only be one reason why. As for the rest of your post, I can see what Microsoft was going for from the vantage point of the late 90s, there were all these incredible PC games coming out but PC gaming was a very expensive, somewhat elitist thing as opposed to the console world at the time, remember, the Xbox was originally conceived as the "DirectXbox", it was literally meant to be a thing that simply played PC games without having to own a gaming computer, while that didn't turn out to be feasible, they still wanted to bring a PC gaming like experience into the living room. However you are right it was short sighted to then ignore PC gaming, but you gotta remember, there was a time there when everyone and their grandmother thought PC gaming was dead, around the release of Crysis, which was the very last PC exclusive AAA release with super cutting edge graphics for a decade and counting now, the whole "buy a new card for every major release" culture was just seen as too damn expensive and especially once Spore released the following year and people made note to make it the most pirated game ever to prove a point, the attitude was that PC gaming was on it's way out. Obviously that turned out to not be true thankfully, but Microsoft would have practically needed a time machine to not look at where gaming was in the 00s and not think that consoles were the future. |
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Post by Owlman on Jan 31, 2018 6:05:59 GMT -5
Yes, every intelligent person must inherently understand every single aspect of every single issue. I wish I was an "idiot" like Bill Gates, provided I'd still the $100 billion he has. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2018 12:20:36 GMT -5
The fool!
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