Microsoft finally admits Xbox One sales were less than half of the PS4
theverge.com
theverge.com
As a 360 user those days I saw some of the writing on the wall. Xbox E3 events focused hard on American features which turned the Xbox to a smart TV box. Aside from games we gained nothing for most of Europe.
With the upcoming streaming revolution all you really needed was a Netflix app. Not the dozens of TV features made for NA based users. None of these features tied customers in and as soon as PS4 released people just jumped ship. Games rarely worked throughout generations anyway.
So in summary: Xbox Live won over vast numbers of gamers to the new multiplayer console era, but in my geographic location people just jumped back to Playstation because PS Online gained feature parity.
What's the "killer app" of the PS4? Apart from exclusives, both seem similar. Both seem to be considerably worse as a media box compared to the good old 360 with it's magnificent built-in DLNA compatibility and CD-ripping.
It also had very strob library of exclusives. If somebody told me I’ll spend 400h in front of TV playing souls game I would’ve laughted them off, but Bloodborne did it. They also had other strong titles like Uncharted, Horizon, Last of Us.
It seemed to me that Sony invested a lot more than Microsoft in making games during the PS4 era. Microsoft seemed to think Gears of War and Halo were "good enough" while Sony was producing a lot more exclusives. Microsoft must have realized they were getting slaughtered due to lack of games since they started buying gaming studios towards the end of this era.
All of the Xbox One's benefits mainly came later when they added backwards compatibility, 4K Blu-ray support, Game Pass etc.
At least for some gamers that I know: PlayStation VR
[1] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/phil-spencer-is-exactly-wh...
Not to mention that momentum was clearly with Sony towards end of the PS3/360 era and Microsoft killed all their momentum with the reveal. The results that we saw with PS4 and Xbox One are clear.
Who thought that was going to please the end user? It's so customer-hostile that I couldn't believe they said it out loud, let alone at a major conference.
https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-one-publishers-will-decide-on-re...
Microsoft should just make their in house developed games free at this point. I’m not paying for gamepass. Their games should be included in Xbox live.
Paying for the ability to play online sucks.
Controllers are now largely PC compatible.
Lots of games are moving off physical media.
Prices tend to be better for PC games.
Media is transferable to a new PC.
Modding.
Updates are quicker.
People like to talk about how consoles are simpler but... I think that's stupid. People got caught up in dumb PC master race memes about hardware nerds getting the absolute best graphics performance possible and missed the fact that its not that hard to make a competent pc that will do just fine for a very long time for comparable prices to a console. And, it's a computer!
PC gaming sucks.
This is particularly irksome on the Macbook when playing Minecraft because you can't just CMD-Tab back in (because Mojang's UI competence is on par with their optimisation competence) - you have to click out of the not-visible Minecraft and then click on it in the dock. (CMD-Tab only works when it's not fullscreen.)
Consoles have system updates that remove features. Consoles add advertisements to the home screen. They can only play games approved by the hardware manufacturer, from their store, and pay their 30% "subsidize our hardware" tax. You have to pay $60/yr to use your own internet. You have to use their online chat system. You can't host private servers. You can't easily share your screen or have a second display for social features. You have to use a controller for all games, and if a game doesn't support controllers it just never gets ported. You also can't install mods, do any serious creative work, or emulate games from competitor's systems.
Console gaming sucks
I got my son a PS5 for Christmas last year. I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months because I could sit down, open the game within ~30 seconds, and then go back to my responsibilities.
PCs are great, but they'll never compete with the effortless convenience of consoles.
> I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months
I congratulate you on beating Elden Ring over a few 20-30 minute sessions.
> Previously, I had a PC that never got turned on except for gaming. When I would sit down to play, I would have to wade through ~30 minutes of OS updates, Steam updates, and then game updates. Every. Single. Time.
Idk man. To me this sounds like nonsense. I've got a big desktop machine I turn on once every couple of months to check out VR stuff and this doesn't resonate with me at all. OS updates, Steam Updates, and Game updates are very negligible to me. 30 minutes sounds very wrong.
At least PC updates let you choose when to update, which could be right after you finish gaming that day.
Assuming they are singleplayer games of course.
Not only that, but windows anti-virus scanner runs all the time and routinely consumes about 20% of my CPU for no reason. I have yet to find a way to turn that off for a specified time period.
Consoles are built for games, so you can safely assume they're not going to consume unnecessary resources and tank your games performance. Games are (usually) built for consoles, so you can safely assume the game will be able to utilize the hardware much more efficiently than your PC that it has no clue about all the hardware/system specs.
That's just a couple reasons I can think of for not being able to just play a game on your PC, and I'm sure other people have more examples.
I really don't think there's any overhead with running a windows PC...
It seems like all the comments are from technically competent people. They seem to indicate that they know exactly what causes the issues and they know how to solve them.
Just because you're technically capable doesn't mean you want to deal with Windows BS everytime you want to game, and this is coming from a primarily MS centered developer.
I don't own any apple products and I only have Linux installed on a laptop I never use anymore. My desktop and work laptop are Windows. And windows still annoys me to no end when it sucks unnecessary resources, forces updates, makes connecting any Bluetooth devices a major PITA, can screw up your performance if you installed the wrong drivers, and everything else the other comments mentioned.
See this is what I don't get maybe that's where I'm an exception and in the extreme minority. But everytime? Maybe you need 30-40 mins to setup a Windows 10 PC "properly" to your taste but after that you barely need to touch anything and it will just work.
If anything I do agree that Windows has _too many options_ and some of them are overlapping with each other + confusing the user. See the Windows 10 System Settings window when the classic (Win 7) Control Panel also exist AND on top of that you can override all of them with the Group Policy Editor (which imo the best way to handle the system)
Minecraft is even worse - starting ManyMC is under a minute (good) but then launching (a medium-ly modded) Minecraft is sometimes 15 minutes of wait. In contrast, the same version with the same mods on my M1 Macbook Pro is under a minute (including starting the launcher.)
FOR YOU. For me, it can (and I am on hdd.) Don't presume that your experience is the experience of everyone - there's literally no way that can be true.
Windows reports (as of yesterday afternoon) no problems with any of my drives.
> That means that something is wrong with your setup.
Sure, possibly, but I installed Windows 10 on a clean drive in a new PC a couple of years back and if that's "setup wrong", how the hell is anyone supposed to get it right?
I have a gaming PC, a couple of consoles, both stationary and handheld but the Steam Deck quickly became the main device for gaming for me.
Even now, I think getting PC hardware for the same retail costs as the consoles would be tough.
Certainly at launch of those consoles, there was no chance.
Now here's the thing. I don't care about "horse power". It really does not matter. This time I get to say, "I just want to play". And that's what I do. I don't think about the graphics, and they're fine. Tbh, on my $800 black friday from four years ago RTX 2080 LAPTOP, that's meant max graphics settings + raytracing on every title I've tried. But I also wouldn't care if I needed to set them to Low.
Being able to run a game on lower graphical settings if it's a bit above your paygrade is a lot better than not being able to run it at all.
Either way, got a lot more value from the Wii for the year or so I used it religiously than the many years I've had my XBone.
The wii was great. Wii sports was amazing. The Wii U was also really awesome and the wii sports equivalent, nintendo land, was really good. the asymmetric screens for multiplayer were super fun. Nobody else used it really.
I set it back up at one point but it never grabbed me again.
There are efforts to replicate that experience on a PC (mostly SteamOS) but they still have a lot of issues. I like my Deck and have used other consoles way less after getting it, but it's not for everyone. It still requires fiddling to get "all the current games" and a lot of launchers don't work when offline without some extra care [1]. Regularly launchers want the password again, which is horrible to type in with gamepad-like controls. You also need to configure the games to work properly. I don't want to configure the game so it looks alright at 30/40/60 fps, I want it to be done already.
It's like people preferring iOS for having less options, choices and being simpler in comparison to Android, but way more extreme.
[1]: How can it be so bad? Almost nothing with a launcher works right away, especially since there are separate launcher installations per game that need to be started regularly and have their own offline-mode settings
I generally can just come home, turn on my PC, and double-click the shortcut for my game.
I have hundreds of games in my Steam library and maybe 4 have a custom launcher, which I agree can be a bit annoying but in 90% of cases just means I am clicking 2-3 more times before the game starts (adding ~10 seconds, maybe).
Regarding multiple stores... What's that matter? Once I buy the game, I'm clicking the icon or start menu entry. Multiple stores does not matter at all once the game is purchased. From the purchasing side, I'm fine with looking on GOG first and then heading to Steam if the game I want isn't on GOG -- not really seen as an annoyance for me.
To each their own, but I feel like your trying to make it out to be much more annoying than it actually is.
I still think that mouse and keyboard gives me better control on the game, and I don’t like the stuttering that happens when using a controller to look around in an RPG. Compare that to a 144Hz mouse and monitor.
It's also only in a single place in the start menu. But the start menu isn't a great place for big-screen gaming. It doesn't have the sorting features, metadata (play time, friend are playing, screenshots, ..) and is not usable with a controller. It just isn't intended as a game library selector. If you want to integrate them into a single place with at least some of the features (like Steam) it's additional effort (in the worst case, per game).
Purchasing the game isn't always possible on GOG or Steam. EA didn't have all their games on Steam for a long time, Epic has their exclusives and probably some others I'm forgetting. You also always have to interact with stores from other companies, even if you buy within steam. I have 7 accounts only for PC gaming that I'd still need even if I didn't chase lower prices. That's one on consoles.
Windows also has popups on startup, trying to get you to do something and updates take much longer than on console (and can also delay startup after the last shutdown), sometimes driver issues. A couple of launchers start in the background, popping up because they want an update, some special one-time event and so on .
To get it all running while using a gamepad on a TV, without needing a wireless keyboard during a typical gaming session, is a lot of tinkering that many would like to avoid.
If I just want to play a game for 20-30 minutes, that's a lot of friction and annoyance.
Playing older games often requires a separate console (increasing cost) but generally works. On PC it's often pretty painful (controller config doesn't match up with DirectInput vs XInput, compatibility patches needed, other weird issues).
With the console you just push the button and it turns on and your games are right there.
And they are simpler and just straight up better to use on TVs. You're never forced back into an interface designed to be viewed 20" away to log into some launcher or install some crap. You know the game is just gonna work with your controller and you don't have to tweak settings or diddle with Steam to make it work. And it also has nice integrated things like a Blu-ray app and a Netflix app with a sensible TV interface and 4K playback.
Prices aren't even really better on PC. I find it's either the same or like a dollar or two off.
Plus you can just suspend the game and do something else and come back to it reliably. I've never found that to be the case with PC gaming except on the Steam Deck and that's one of favorite features. It actually makes PC gaming viable for me now.
On the other hand: currently, you can hardly get a PS5 or Xbox Series X for this price (because of chip shortages and scalpers). ;-)
For $40CAD/month, I got an Xbox Series X and Game Pass. I pay off the console in 2 years with no additional interest, and I immediately had access to a library of great games when I first turned it on.
I also have a $3000 240fps Fortnite gaming machine (Ryzen 5900x, RTX 3090) because I'm serious about competitive Fortnite. But I acknowledge the absurdity of that.
Also despite all my PC parts being made in the last two years, it still takes approximately 20 seconds to get to the desktop, I have to wait on the Epic launcher to do whatever it does, or Steam takes 5-10 seconds to load/update, and launching a game like Fortnite takes another 10-20 seconds.
If I want to play a game on the Xbox, all that time waiting for boot+desktop+Epic/Steam launcher is simply removed.
The flexibility and customizability and open nature of PCs is a double edged sword.
I do enough computer work at work. When I get home I want to sit in my recliner and play games. I don’t want to get the thing to work. I never want to fix it. I never want to find an unofficial patch. I just want to play some games.
Every second I spend on the hobby not doing the hobby is wasted.
The 2 consoles are probably my last. I'm all in on XGPU. It finally gave me a reason to plug the XB1 in again. Now I can play current gen games on a 7yo XB1. And on my Macbook. And hopefully on my iPhone. I'm no longer tied to a TV at home. I also don't need to purchase more gaming hardware.
If Microsoft can leverage their cloud products even more they may lose the console war and win online and cloud gaming.
PS4 was double of Xbox active users for the division.
PC was more inline with Xbox, and a lot different from what Steam said it was..
also PS5 related—I'm still appalled that a proper web browser was not included.
The main gripe for XBone was half the features didn’t work in Europe and for some reason the UI was terribly sluggish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
and this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
That made me switch to the XBox One, and I was quite happy with it.
I've not knowingly paid directly for anything Sony. Indirectly, I've watched Spiderman on cable, so I expect my cable provider paid them pennies out of my monthly fee.
Xbox also does DRM, is there a reason why you are okay with that DRM?
(and blu-ray was a Sony invention - https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00017948)
In other words, Microsoft may be required to report revenue from their gaming division, but that doesn't mean they're required to specifically report how many Xbox One consoles were sold.