Has Xbox lost the console wars?
theverge.com
theverge.com
Since 2010 mobile gaming has eclipsed revenue of both console and PC gaming _combined_.
Also since 2010, console revenue has stagnated while PC revenue has continued to grow.
This is the landscape to evaluate the different gaming brands. Xboxes are nothing more than a user-friendly gaming PC brand. The total addressable market for Microsoft is much larger than what Sony could hope for. Sony is in the worst bind long-term, trapped in consoles without any leg up in PC or mobile. They invested in VR instead which never became a strong category. In terms of revenue, VR is barely competing with Arcades.
If you had to stack rank gaming devices, iOS would be winning the console wars, followed by Android. In a distant third would be PlayStation, and then Microsoft and Nintendo neck in neck.
If you look at it by company, Tencent would be at the top, then Sony, then Microsoft and Nintendo.
Microsoft is definitely in -- at best -- third place no matter how you count it. The FTC trying to restrict the conversation to an era of console war that expired over 13 years ago shows they have no business trying to regulate this space.
I just wish someone would make a motion-controlled RPG which had:
- the exploration and immersive story of Xenoblade Chronicles
- the amazing imagery and intricate puzzles of Pandora's Tower
- the endless grinding potential of The Last Story
- on-going content like to Diablo 3's Seasons
- the fluid transition between ranged combat and melee of Red Steel 2
- the wonderful archery of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on the Wii
and a story/world where constant replays make sense --- say something like to the Gates of C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine books. (and yes, I should spend more time playing Ring Fit Adventure, but )
I think we had a few that tried.
We got instant classics released soon after the initial announcement: Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, etc.
The PS5 is really the only console with any amount of exclusives, and even then Sony is opening up to PC more and more.
So to answer OP, none are really worth by themselves. Online games obviously create different considerations though.
One reason is that the cheapest steam deck is twice the price of the cheapest switch while being much less portable. If you want a Switch-like TV experience you need to spend an extra $150 on the dock and a controller whereas that comes in the box on a Switch OLED with a vastly better screen for $350. The Steam Deck is obviously more capable but it definitely has tradeoffs even for someone willing to go through all of the effort of piracy and emulation.
Since the docks weren't initially available, I purchased a $20 USB-C hub from Anker on newegg (with passthrough charging, SD card, USB/USB-C/HDMI) although there are even cheaper ones some as low as $10 for HDMI only. It fits pretty easily in the nylon bag with the charger so it's now a portable dock which I can also use for work due to the full linux desktop on the steam deck (I combine it with a collapsing BT keyboard and mini mouse when not at a desk).
Controllers you can get pretty good USB ones for $10 with better form factor than the switch and easier to replace.
The openness of the steam deck really helps with peripherals.
Have you used the Steam Deck?
It's a janky experience if you try to use it in the living room. For one thing, the Bluetooth chip is terrible. I realized this when I emulated Donkey Kong, was doing terribly, then unplugged it from my TV and started winning in handheld mode.
The issue isn't the TV introducing lag, I followed instruction online to install the driver for the Xbox controller Dongle and the difference was night and day.
This is just an emblematic example. I had to buy a wifi extender because the Steam Deck literally crash itself (It will actually report "out of battery" when the battery is full) when it has a bad wifi signal, due to some sort of hardware flaw.
Steam Deck is a very janky experience, which perhaps isn't a surprise when you realize Valve has the highest profits per employee in tech, they accomplish a lot with a small staff, but they have huge resource constraints when producing products like the Steam Deck.
If they haven't improved performance in TotK (or Switch 2 is out by then), I will play that game emulated on a PC.
Super Mario Odyssey framerate was better. Not great, but not "did Nintendo seriously consider this to be good enough to release?".
Not everyone buys top quality hardware.
But there are multiple drivers in the Xbox store and it took some research to see what had to be installed. There are still times I have to disconnect and reconnect the controller for the headset to work.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/ref...
Also, a console just works (99% of the time), and I don't have to fiddle with drivers and editing config files and the other random crap that can crop up with even the best PC games.
Another anecdata point - I have several hundred games for PC on Steam, and can’t remember the last time I had an issue with drivers or having to do anything to get games to run.
A gaming PC would be better in most ways but as far as value for dollar, xbone was well worth buying.
I still occasionally play F22 TAW and Chamanche Gold. No issues.
I've had way more issues like you describe on Xbox with stuff like Halo Infinite than with stuff on PC like Destiny 2. That includes driver issues! (Headset sound on Xbox).
I imagine contingent of people who spend big bucks on mobile games _probably_ wouldn’t be spending that money on AAA PS5 games otherwise.
Just curious if you are making that comment after reading the article, or is your general opinion? Because one of the big points of the article is that Phil Spencer said they tried to by Zynga, and the major reason they want Activision is for the mobile assets. This is Spencer’s testimony quoted in the article:
The deal, as we’ve talked about, expands our business to the mobile platform... the existing business that we run today as the third-place console business is a very difficult business to drive profit and margin. So the opportunity for us to expand in a meaningful way onto mobile, the world’s largest gaming platform, was really both a strategic and business opportunity behind this deal.
It really is that big a market.
Every time I want to play a game I have to consider if I want to bust out my laptop, turn on my TV system, or just swipe over to a game on the phone I'm already holding.
I obviously prefer to play my PC or PlayStation, but will play my Switch if I am in the bathroom, riding shotgun on a long car ride, etc. Mobile games, for me, are essentially waiting room games or something I will whip out if I have exactly 7 minutes to kill.
I don't generally think, "I want to game" and then decide which one is worth the effort in the moment.
But to properly reply to your comment: indirectly, yes. I'd go so far to argue that the rise of mobile gaming yet another reason why the Vita couldn't gain traction (releasing in 2013, around the time mobile games started to really show they can do more than arcade-y style minigames), and why Nintendo decided to pivot to a hybrid model. the 3DS's middling sales (for a nintendo console) definitely put some pressure on even the uncontested king of handhelds, so what chance would any other platform have?
Meanwhile Microsoft in this era would flounder with Windows Mobile and fail to gain traction with Windows 8S or whatever they were trying to do with tablets in this time, so I guess their enthusiasm to try that in their gaming division was negative. I'm honestly still baffled Valve beat MS to making the most obvious Xbox handheld, that we now know as the Steam Deck.
So I'd say it was competing the same way handhelds competed with consoles. There would never be apples to apples comparison, but the markets definitely tug on one another, the markets keep eyes on one another, and the audience have some significant overlap, enough to be kept in mind with marketing. Sony and Microsoft wouldn't be marketing cloud gaming on mobile if they thought none of their audience were interested in playing games on their phone.
Remember that the PSP was also a pretty good multimedia device pre-smartphone. So it lost that userbase as it became the Vita. But of course it's primary purpose was games and the Vita focused on that in its western marketing: "console gaming on the go". It couldn't sell itself on mobile style games if it ever expected to succeed, so while it may have overlap I can't say it was a direct smartphone competitor either.
And it took similar resources within Sony to develop and market it. Another of a dozen reasons why it failed: Sony decided very early on to put all its chips into the PS4, and ditched first party Vita support after the first year. This woildnt make sense for a phone competitor.
As a result, it seems that it's a different market.
And that does line up with the above link: most of that revenue os generated by a snall minority of gamers. Most games are indeed played for free for a few hours/days with no money obtained outside of Ads. But that whale market is small but insanely lucrative.
What would the Switch have needed to accomplish to bridge the gap to mobile? Sell 1 billion units?
People usually have the latest Play Station or Xbox, not both, but lots of people have a Switch in addition to either.
I think it's a bit silly to suggest that there isnt a decent overlap in the market. Any Japanese company has a mobile division, and they all utilize their console IP's there. They wouldn't do that if all their audience were candy crush players.
There's plenty of overlap between all of them. Hell, most mobile games are mostly adaptions of what are usually called casual or what used to be called "desktop" games on PC. Genshin Impact is an open world RPG, there's CoD Mobile and Mario Kart too.
There's a habit to separate various kinds of media in it's own little lockboxes and it's completely wrongheaded and old fashioned in an age where tech is consolidating so rapidly.
But they have largely separate audiences. The number of people for whom they are in legitimate competition is vanishingly small compared to those who are exclusively on one side of the divide or the other.
Mobile, console, PC, handheld? Potato Potahto. I can play PC games on a handheld. I can play Xbox games on an iPhone. I can play Switch games on a PC. I can play "Mobile" games on a TV box.
The industry is so busy categorizing that they missed that everything runs on everything now.
But if you define the market that way, it probably also includes books, movies, television, and sports. Not so useful when working on antitrust.
I don't think that the categorization is actually helpful, if anything it distorts reality by making it seem as if Microsoft are on the backfoot regarding gaming. Meanwhile, Sony is releasing games on Windows.
I play games on my PS5 and never ever on my iPhone.
When my friends and I talk about what games we are playing no one, ever, has mentioned a mobile game. We did discuss Pokémon go, but not one of us actually installed it.
The technical reasons for justifying segmented software markets have faded away. In spite of personal preference, your wife could play that exact same solitaire game on a PC or laptop if they wanted to, just like you could play PS5 games on your iPhone. Just like you should be able to play Xbox games on a PS5, or vice versa, with the only barrier existing to prevent this being the walls the platform holders themselves built. This absolutely results in market segmentation, but of the anti-competitive kind.
This will come to a head whenever AR glasses catch on proper, since that dissolves segmentation based on screen size. What's "mobile", when everything is mobile?
That's the market segmentation right there. My wife could play solitaire on her PC but she doesn't want to. She has her phone on her all the time. She is a very casual gamer. I, on the other hand, want to play games in surround sound with a large 4K TV. I have a switch but have never played it disconnected from the TV.
>What's "mobile", when everything is mobile?
The games. As as has been said on this thread, "mobile" games are actually either skinner boxes or casual games like solitaire. Console games are big investments in experiences - be the investment money, like GTA or Halo, or time and passion, like Celeste.
I hope that we will see some interesting games for VR/AR. So far there have been exactly zero high-investment games. Superhot, for example, was interesting, but played well without VR, and was short.
Here's the thing: I don't remember the last time I played a first person game other than Superhot. They aren't that fun. I don't have great proprioception in the real world, so how is that going to work in VR where I don't have legs? How will I time jumping off a building? How will I know when to strike? These are all reasons why most 3D games are third person. Games are fun.
Solitaire is a mobile game? It didn't start out like that! Not just that it was for a long time a PC game, but also as a card game that required a big ass desk to play. Same with gambling games. You've been groomed into expecting that different hardware form factors require different software ecosystems, but that is a box that the industry has drawn for itself (with a few notable exceptions trying to break out of it).
As for the AR/VR talk, I was speaking more generally, not about AR/VR specific experiences. Given the panacea of AR glasses with perfect passthrough in a pair of Oakleys, virtual screens can be any shape or size. At which point the hardware distinction between "big screen" experiences like movies and GTA and smaller, casual games like solitaire are effectively at an even footing on the same device. At that point does it make sense to have separate stores for different hardware?
Not that I think it does today. If I purchase Solitaire, I should be able to play it anywhere on anything. If I purchase GTA, I should be able to play it anywhere on anything.
Try to sell mobile games to "console/pc gamers", you just don't sell them, different market.
From a personal perspective, all my friends who play videogames avoid mobile like plague.
These were a bunch of weebs who also played stuff like Final Fantasy 14. And many mobile games marketed towards those current/former RPG players are similar in all but raw technical scope (and even then, we have Genshin impact now. That gap is closing). But sure, if your friend group focuses on FPS or fighters I can see a lack of interest.
No one has tried to really make a 3d platformer mobile game, though. I wonder how much of that is due to technical/logistical issues and how much due to lack of audience demand. There are some 2D platformers, so that's not the issue.
Sony has a stable of desired exclusives (and even exclusive series). Microsoft Gaming doesn’t earn a dime on PC hardware sales. Hell, even the Windows group doesn’t earn more than a couple of bucks on a Windows sale.
It’s Microsoft Gaming that is in a bind here.
Consider a future where TV sales dwindle, cannibalized by personal screens like tablets and headsets. Or imagine smart tv platforms clamping down on media that they don't get a cut of (anything over that 'obsolete' HDMI port).
Those trends are slowly underway, and part of the reason the console segment is not just stagnating, but shrinking. Sony has a big piece of a shrinking segment and no easy way to move to the other gaming segments. Microsoft on the other hand has 3 generations of games that run on Windows, which is still the dominant OS in a growing gaming segment.
If we could define the console wars as: who will escape the console segment before it disappears? That is the lens by which I say Sony has the worse hand. They're more likely to become an Atari or Sega at this point than Microsoft is.
But what does it matter that Microsoft owns the OS? They don’t see a dime more because of that except for the OEM Windows fee and tiny sliver from OS ads.
Steam is the predominant sales platform on PC, which again Microsoft doesn’t earn a dime from.
Sony has ported or is porting all their successful 1st party and 3rd party games. Nothing is stopping them from doing that for all the games they think customers care about. And the supermajority of customers care very little beyond current gen, maybe one gen back.
I don’t see consoles shrinking a whole lot either (once you cut out the spike from COVID). I use my PC with a bunch of fancy tricks and Big Picture and it still has plenty of weird bugs. The most recent annoying one is having to manually override DPI scaling on Ori, and choosing my TV as the monitor for Ori and Halo MCC. Funnily enough both Microsoft games (although I am not saying Sony’s games would fare much better).
Maybe that a revival of Steam boxes / Steam machines will change that in the future.. or hell, maybe the EU breaks open the console walled garden. Who knows.
It's a huge hill to climb to catch up to Steam's market share, but we've seen Microsoft leverage Windows to climb similar hills time and time again. The strategy is at least viable enough that Valve has been shaking in their boots for years, trying to build up a war chest of games on Linux. The Steam Deck is a great strategic accomplishment for them.
There's no doubt that a Console is far from the same experience most people have with a PC or a phone. Different, not better. Why do you think most that identify as a gamer own both a Console, a phone and a PC if it is basically the same experience? I own one of each for the exact same reason I own both a car a motorcycle and a bike: They are not at all the same or even related outside having wheels.
https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/mob...
The viewport is a small number of inches, the types of games are wholly different, the controls are awful.
These are not only different consumer segments, they're wholly different products. The FTC is making the right call.
This blog post by their head of product is a great example of the problems in the industry—he talks gleefully about all the manipulative techniques he pulled in from Zynga, and doesn't seem to have any clue that he's sacrificed the mission in pursuit of relentless growth.
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-us...
I feel for that lone engineer with 4 people breathing down the back of his neck.
It's kind of sad, that in the pursuit of cashing in on their "whales" that they've essentially neutered it as an educational app.
In my other comment, I pointed to this post by Duolingo's head of product as a good example of someone talking openly about exploitative practices without even really seeming to see the problem. This is honestly mild on the scale of industry discussions of how to manipulate people into giving more money.
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-us...
The game design patterns aren't new nor novel. Retaining players with repetitive grinds, using guilds to create peer pressure to stay, daily rotating events with a trickle of currency used to obtain desirable characters/gear. You could trace all that back to WOW and several Korean MMOs. The only difference is that they can reach a wider audience now, some of which they drew in from the console market.
Is there a website that curates games?
Edit: turned this into an Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36468335
It's kinda a joke, but when I asked myself the question "can I play anything interesting on mobile", the answer I found was that one.
Also, manufacturer- and publisher-friendly, given the heavy restrictions on the platform. It's bad for preservation that the Xbox One hasn't significantly been cracked yet.
You might as well compare console games to casino games.
Consoles, handhelds and PCs can still make a ton of money even when studios are not centralized.
Consoles games aren't the same products than smartphones games. Only xbox, playstation and the nintendo consoles are in the same market (edit: and PC)
I do agree console war is outdated and not relevant anymore but it doesn't mean the FTC is wrong. Of course they may be wrong for an entire different set of reasons.
Edit: is pc gaming really growing? That surprises me, I used to really be in to pc games (late 90s). GPUs are ridiculously expensive, is it really big now? It was niche in my day
The current console generation came with a fairly large price hike and Microsoft responded by also releasing a more affordable but less powerful model.
The problem is that a non-technical consumer can go out and purchase a PS5 safe in the knowledge that they're getting the same gaming experience as anyone else that owns a PS5. Someone considering an Xbox now has to choose between the series S and X.
They now need to compare specifications, figure out which one is more powerful and worry whether the console will be able to deliver decent fidelity and performance in newer games.
On another note, it'd be nice to see exclusivity agreements die entirely. Microsoft has always been fairly good at making their titles available on PC and Sony is moving in that direction but still makes heavy use of timed exclusives.
Do we need Windows Azure .NET Live? No idea, maybe it's similar to Microsoft Active Core X except targetted at a different market? Here's a blurb telling us it's "For the smart professional", presumably as opposed to products which are only for dumb amateurs ?
Just give the console a number. And. Increment.
That's it. You can still have Pro / Slim / whatever models, but I have no idea why Nintendo and Microsoft both willingly threw away the easiest marketing strategy there is: your kid has the 4 and the 5 just came out. 5 is larger than 4 therefore the kid knows what to ask, regardless of age. The parent also knows what to buy because 5 is larger than 4.
Nothing convinces me that this isn't the reason why new Playstation models sell like crazy before any decent games are out. 4 was larger than 3 and 5 is larger than 4. That's it.
Nintendo got out of it by starting a new line of consoles with the Switch, but Microsoft's marketing just keeps giving this one away to Sony for free. It's unbelievable.
The Wii U on the other hand completely flew under most people's radar. People were over the Wii and then Nintendo releases the Wii U. Most people thought it was an addon tablet because that's all they kept showing, just Wii remotes and the tablet.
Compare that to PlayStation 4/PlayStation 4 Pro/PlayStation 5 (and yeah, I'm not going to argue that 'pro' isn't a stupid designation for a slightly-more-powerful-than-before console), but it's at least obvious where they sit in the lineup.
Seems pretty intuitive..
It should be pretty obvious that Series > One > 360.
I think it’s absolutely baffling that somebody might find such a perfectly logical and reasonable naming system confusing.
But why does Series > One?
What is obvious about series being better than 360? why would someone think that if they were just presented with those names and nothing else?
Why would someone think x is better than s without doing any research?
AFAIK, S is “no physical media”
AFAIK, “series” means “fancy”
I’ve only ever purchased XBox consoles and currently rock an XBox One.
Lemme fix your marketing, XBox: call the “no drive” ones “cloud” or “online” or “vapor” or whatever.
Call your next one 9006 so it is simultaneously “over 9000”, and puts you back in the semver race with PlayStation. /s
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/compare
Yes the names are not as easy to compare as PS5 vs PS4, but upon cursory investigation it's blatantly obvious that the X is more powerful than the S.
The part I emphasize is exactly the argument of the person you're responding.
You wouldn't google Playstation 4 and 5 to find out which is which. I have no idea why Microsoft would do this. Try sending your mother out to buy one. Would she know which one to buy and understand the difference?
"it's not even obvious which is the more powerful model, there's no mention anywhere of what X and S stand for."
At a glance the difference between the X and the S could be like the PS4 vs PS4 Slim, or the PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition.
Do they? I don't. At this moment, I couldn't tell you the name of Microsoft's newest console, because their naming convention is so convoluted. Meanwhile, I can tell from a glance that the PS5 is newer than the PS4.
Granted, I'm not a console gamer, but neither are (most) parents buying consoles for their children.
"Ehh, people will know what we're talking about" seems like a haphazard marketing strategy.
Edit: I googled it. Xbox X and the old one is Xbox One X? That is simply hilariously stupid.
Sony/Apple/Samsung have this one solid - just release the next semver and market the hell out of it. Don't make me confused when I'm thinking about paying you money. Note: even the ones that aren't "on the version treadmill" do poorly: "iPhone mini" vs. "Samsung Fold" etc are niche products and exist to essentially sell the mainline item.
It wasn't very long ago that kids were struggling to get their parents to stop calling xbox and playstation "the nintendo". Young parents today are probably comfortable with the brands of xbox and playstation, having grown up with those brands, but expecting them to be up-to-date on the latest models isn't smart. There can be a considerable gap in understanding between those who are tuned into gaming matters and those who might be making the actual purchase. The value of simple branding should not be underestimated.
If they want me to check on google, they failed.
Also it is funny that you attack people on.. hacker news for not understanding the versioning.
It just proves that microsoft does it in a bad way.
But fret not, there's an easy shortcut to see which Microsoft product is newer. Just try them side by side and whichever has more advertisements is newer.
Everyone subscribes to Game Pass, but nobody buys many games.
Kind of like how Apple hasn't "lost" any "laptop war"
In short, Ford doesn't release the Ford 5 because it knows the Ford 4 is old news. (Also, get a horse, ya durn kids.)
Anyway, research:
https://www.windowscentral.com/heres-some-interesting-stats-...
> Most Xbox One gamers reside in the 25- to 34-year-old bracket, followed closely by the 35- to 44-year-old bracket.
> 56 percent of Xbox One owners live with a married spouse or partner, 10 percent live alone, and 23 percent live with their parents.
> Many Xbox One owners have an annual income of around $75,000.
I'd say I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, but both of those references are outdated these days.
I don't know a single kid that would not know which models are current gen and which are better or worse. Argument about non technical parents is valid but any kid today will know which Xbox to get and will tell their parents. Kids these days know much more stuff than you seem to think, they spent 1/3-1/4 of their lives on the internet. My 11-12yo nephews built PCs just following youtube guides, they do video montages of their Fortnite games to put on youtube and almost every single friend of theirs is similarly familiar with current tech.
Xbox having lower numbers is purely fault of PS dominating the market over last decade, people will continue buying it cause they trust Sony to deliver exclusives and they have existing game libraries. I converted two Sony fanboys to Xbox with Game Pass and they both love it. Noone these days buys a PS "because they are confused with Xbox naming", 5 minutes of googling answers any questions. The only people who might really have an issue with this are boomers+ who are not even going to buy a console for themselves cause "games are for kids and a waste of time".
If he doesn't know, no way grandma and grandpa are going to be able to get him a birthday present.
The kids may know and understand this, but parents may not. If you go to a store today, you will only find the latter two, and you won’t have an issue picking the one your kid asked for (i.e. the X). But when both generations were on sale, the parent might end up buying "One X" instead of "Series X" because it’s cheaper, or buying "360" instead of "One" because it’s clearly bigger (by 359 no less).
The Xbox line-up is just comical. I walk through any gaming department and see an "S", "X", or sometimes even both "S" and "X" on Xbox games. If it was just "Xbox 7" and "Xbox 8", you'd at least have some idea of what's going on.
It's like someone who knows nothing about cars trying to figure out SE vs LE vs CE vs XLE trimmings when looking at accessories.
Wtf, there are two different S's and two different X's? I thought 'Xbox One _' and 'Xbox Series _' referred to the same products.
Xbox One _ :: PS4.
Xbox Series _ :: PS5.
I don't think non-numbers are a bad naming scheme, just the simplest. It means its easiest to keep up with and archive, but it can also mean it's hard to tell audiences what fancy new features you're marketing. If the Wii was the Nintendo 5 and the Switch was the Nintendo 7 I'm not sure if it would be quite as snappy in consumer minds.
Labelling the Switch as a new version of the Wii doesn't make much sense because it occupies a different niche, comparable to PlayStation/2/3/4/5 vs the PlayStation Portable.
PlayStation's addition of "Pro" in it's own naming scheme clearly distinguishes the more powerful console. Delaying the release of the pro model until later in the generation's lifecycle also helps reduce friction.
NES -> SNES
GB -> GBC, GBA, GBA SP
DS -> DSi, 3DS, 2DS
Xbox is the opposite, if you get the cheaper console games will look worse and/or run at lower FPS. It only has one option for internal storage, leaving you with ~360gb after accounting for the OS, five or six modern games can fill that pretty easily. Official external storage costs about as much as the console itself.
For many people the trade-offs won't matter but it does make the PlayStation a much simpler choice if you're looking for a console for a kid that doesn't already favour one or the other.
Microsoft has never been able to do that.
On the hardware note, I would not discount the impact that covid chip shortage had on the ability for MSFT to pivot on this problem.
HiFi Rush is exactly what you describe. Published by Bethesda but developed by a smaller studio. Very well received without requiring a huge investment.
I'm pretty technical but I'm definitely a casual gamer, the Series S serves me perfectly.
Funny thing is, that video was made within Microsoft. It's fascinating that everyone can be aware of the problem, but they still can't steer the behemoth.
Xbox as we know it (the console) became irrelevant, but that'd be assumed by everyone incl. Microsoft the moment they promised to bring Xbox exclusives to PC. IMO that was the first visible point of them committing to change course for Xbox. If anything, nowadays Sony seems to be pigeonholed to their own world, while Microsoft seems to be thriving.
Consoles make money via licensing - each game sold they get a cut. Is MS willing to give that up? If no then they are still in the console business - and Windows is an internal competitor; MS earns nothing when someone buys a game for Windows.
I don’t know the statistics but I feel like that misses a huge market segment. Lots and lots of people just have laptops for school / work that won’t run AAA games. Moreover, lots of people want to game in their living room and, while I know they exist, I’ve never met anyone that hooks their PC up to their TV to do that. Doing so might not even cross the mind of less tech savvy people.
They earn money from each Windows license though and gaming helps to keep Windows relevant against Linux and macOS, especially for younger people.
This might also be a case of Xbox having a different user segment, as compared to the PlayStation, and certainly compared to Nintendos offerings. I might be completely wrong, but PlayStation seems very much like the console for people who want large worlds, larger than life scenaries and single player games. Xbox is for when you want to play with friends, either in person of online.
What new games can you actually play in person, like splitscreen? Seems most don't allow it, or at best it's 2 player.
On Xbox we play Castle Crashers.
With one Switch: Super Bomberman R, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Overcooked 2 (these are also on Xbox), Zarvot, Mario Party, New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World
You can also play through Donkey Kong Country, Pikmin 3, and Untitled Goose Game with two players.
But in general I think Valve has beaten Microsoft to the console-ization of PC gaming with the Windows-less Steam Deck. Maybe the Steam Machine is ready for a comeback.
No idea if PS5 has this, but XBox’s ability to suspend games and instantly start back in the game is indispensable for someone with a minimum of gaming time available!
The gain I get is how much easier it is to use. I'm fairly tech savvy, but Windows has been a curse and there've been too many times I've spent my intended gaming time troubleshooting Windows, or a game's display settings, or drivers etc.
Steam as software never felt great to me. I don't have the greatest eyes and I find it difficult to use. Xbox UI is just stupidly simple and intuitive.
I like that the Xbox gamepass experience is so streamlined I can sit down on a couch, turn on my controller, and that will turn the console and TV on and I can be playing a game in 10 seconds. On PC it just ain't even close.
The main reasons why game studios love consoles, and the gamers as well, is the development and user experience of using them.
I vastly prefer my Xbox. I sit on the couch, power up near instantly, pick a game. Play my games. Everything’s works. The UX is just sooo much better.
I have had both PlayStation and Xbox consoles every generation since the inception of both and every generation I just find Xbox more inviting. Maybe it’s some form of dyslexia but I also have never internalized the PlayStations button labels. Every time it tells me to hit a shape I need to look at the controller.
The last time Xboxes were remotely interesting to me was with the 360. Every generation since has been dominated by unremarkable competitive FPS games.
PvE games are for unskilled gamers. PlayStation and Switch are the preferred platforms for unskilled gamers. PC is the preferred platform for skilled gamers who can afford a good PC. Xbox is the preferred platform for skilled gamers who are poor (Xbox controllers are better for shooters than PlayStation controllers).
For what it's worth though, the really skilled FPS players have always been on the PC side.
Nerds. The word you’re looking for is nerds.
Biology catches up fast, and it doesn’t matter what gaming hardware you’re using. I’d suggest chasing fun or develop competency in a longer term skill instead of working on your “skilled” gaming clout.
But what do I know, maybe I just need to git gud.
Now, you are free to argue that Quake has been dead for a while and competition isn't as strong but the guy's reflexes seem just as good as they did 20 years ago. Yeah, he's been around for some time.
There are many formidable old school guys in their 40s, even 50s, that still play high skill games and they will kick your ass.
I'm still in the 40-50 range. My reflexes and hand-eye coordination haven't deteriorated significantly. It's not about age, it's about practice, talent, and will.
I still kick some ass in CS, TF2 and Quake. I get tired a lot quicker, of course. But it's mostly my unwillingness to waste my stamina on games rather than work.
My PS5 also hasn’t gotten a ton of usage playing PS5 games, but there are finally some interesting ones brewing now. It’s been nice as a “PS4 Ultimate” with backwards compatibility though.
The first game I played after getting my PS5 was… Bloodborne. I’d tried it on PS4 then sold the PS4 as it offended my eyes how ugly the game was back in December 2020. Two years later when the PS5 finally became available where I could just walk into my local store and buy it, it looked very pretty on the new PS5 hardware once the market calmed down. Such a delightfully weird and creepy game.
It is interesting the US is trying to block the last place player in the market from growing, which is also the only US company in the market.
Because acquisitions make markets less competitive, not more. There are a zillion US companies making games, and if the platform gatekeepers become an issue, then the US can force them to open up their platforms and quit their rent-seeking.
This is just simply not true as a blanket rule.
Also, I don't understand what you're saying. Activision is not in the console market, only Microsoft is. Buying Activision makes the console market more competitive because it makes Microsoft's console more compelling in that market, a market where they are floundering.
You could also look at the game market, which as you say has a zillion US companies making games, and Activision under Microsoft would have to continue to compete in that market.
How does this reduce competition, and in what market?
It is, which is why the FTC needs to approve mergers.
> Buying Activision makes the console market more competitive
Why should the FTC care about the console market specifically rather than the gaming market in general?
> How does this reduce competition, and in what market?
The very notion of "console exclusives" reduces competition because it removes incentives to compete on hardware cost or quality and instead compete only on whatever IPs a company happens to own.
It isn't, which is why the FTC often approves mergers.
> Why should the FTC care about the console market specifically rather than the gaming market in general?
They should consider both.
> The very notion of "console exclusives" reduces competition because it removes incentives to compete on hardware cost or quality and instead compete only on whatever IPs a company happens to own.
Why is competing on hardware cost or quality more valid than competing on exclusive content? And if that's the rule, why is the company with better exclusive content, Sony, allowed to acquire more studios, like Bungie?
Both are 1) buying a game making company, 2) making a game, 3) withholding it from the competition.
There doesn't seem to be many examples of them buying studios to take existing cross platform megahits exclusive.
Edit: They apparently bought Bungie recently? Wikipedia kinda doesn't include it in their list of PlayStation studios in a normal fashion so I missed it. I suppose that is buying a big IP in Destiny (in reaction to the MS-AB takeover?), although that's basically a 1 game studio (next to no-one is really going to care about Myth or Marathon), so it's still a fair bit smaller than the sort of stuff proposed with MS and A-B.
Many may not like it but it is not about what is fair, but what keeps the market healthy.
But windows gaming isn't like console gaming. You don't have to pay license fees to microsoft to publish on windows - its a general purpose platform thats relatively open. It has nothing to do with the console market for you to count it except to purposely misrepresent the market.
It would make Microsoft more competitive/powerful
IMO the only of the big 3 that can truly be said to "built is library" is Nintendo.
Bungie is puzzling. Frankly, I’m not even sure what’s there to buy. All they got is Destiny that’s a pretty so-so game popularity-wise.
Who else has Sony bought?
Secondly, most of those game studios already have a close relationship with Sony, they can be considered 2nd party, and mostly make PS games. Sony’s competitors aren’t losing out much.
P.S. Frankly, I don’t think Sony ever intended to be in the game development business - they are a hardware company. There is a pattern to the game developers they buy - almost all of them are “tech wiz” developers; i.e. optimisation gods while gameplay of their games are usually so-so. The raison d'être of their acquired studios are to showcase the power of their hardware and coincidently provide development tool chain feedback as well as development knowledge which Sony’s “ICE team” will then share with other developers, not compete with their 3rd party developers.
That said this might have change in recent years as exclusives become a differentiator for their console.
The PlayStation all started with Ken Kutaragi who worked in Sony’s digital research labs. It started as the “Play Station” a CD addon for the SNES. But due to contract disputes Sony got dumped for Philips in a very public fashion - probably Nintendo’s biggest mistake ever. Sony went ahead on its own and created the “PlayStation” (aka PS1 today) and the rest is history.
Don’t see where Sony Music comes into the story.
Sony purchased Bungie to essentially teach them how to make successful live service games, not for the IP. They hold so much power inside PlayStation studios that they, as per the recent The Last of Us factions leaks, review and determine if a multiplayer title meets their requirements for success (factions didn’t).
I don’t think it’s a good thing (as I personally disapprove of the way Destiny operates & see a focus on these sorts of games from Sony as a major blunder) but the business logic of the purchase is obvious.
Yes, because no one you know has an XBox, it obviously means that Microsoft isn’t selling any…
>Spencer: Can I promise? I am able to promise, yes.
The kind of obnoxious reply I'd expect from somebody on Xbox live, not their chief.
Maybe he was thinking out loud, but they should have known full well what the judge was asking and by refusing to answer the clarified follow-up they seemed to be doing whatever they could to weasel out of saying anything meaningful.
If that was their response, I'd have no issue with it. I dislike the "technically I can but won't" answer followed by silence. It shows an attempt to deceive.
It's a prod to get people to say what they actually want, instead of asking a vague questions with a stronger implication because it waters down the actual meaning of the words and is as weaselly as the response. Asking for the ability, requesting an action and giving a command are different things. Doubly so in hearings by government officials.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
You obviously have information that is counter to this, I for one would appreciate if you could produce it. Xbox executives can then be charged criminally and prosecuted.
Is that written enough for you? 4 seconds of googling.
I remember the Xbox and Playstation being prohibitively expensive. I just looked it up, the Playstation was $749 AUD [1] and the Xbox was $649 AUD [2]. I had to wait yeeeears for the price to fall so I could get an Xbox.
Today, I can get a Playstation 5 Digital Edition for $649 AUD on the Sony website, or $794 AUD for the "normal" edition from Amazon.
The Xbox series X is similarly priced, at $749 AUD.
Given inflation since then, these are prices many teenagers could realistically save up for now.
[1] https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/82336/ps2_debut_november_3... [2] https://news.microsoft.com/2002/03/14/xbox-goes-global-with-...
Games sold on the consoles have around a 15 usd flat royalty for big titles, not sure how that affected low cost games at the time. The 360 needed 5 games to brake even, but I believe they had an attach rate of around 3 at launch and that was unreal and unexpected at the time.
It's actually doubtful whether they were really selling at a loss per se even then, most likely the notional loss represented amortizable R&D. Which is a loss on your annual balance sheet but - if you understand your business, can finance the R&D cost affordably and have a steady nerve so as to stick with the plan - this can be profitable eventually. The era of straight up dumping (exporting products for less than their BOM price, which may be illegal in some international trade rules) was last century. In the Sega era it really was possible you'd spend $100 on the actual product, sell it for $80 and figure you'll make up for it on royalties.
This needs to be noted that it’s average as in 5 games per unit sold. So two consoles and 10 games sold to one person. The attach rate is a term related to games sold with the console at time of console purchase.
360 for sure was selling for a loss on cogs, that was rectified with the Xbox one that I believe was 400 cogs for 500 retail. It frustrated a ton of folk because 360 was 300 retail, but this was a clear change to make the console profitable without sales since they were worried people were buying it as a media device, hence the media focus of the Xbox one.
Just to be clear they managed to reduce the cogs with the Xbox 360 small and sold them at a profit without license sales.
The PS1 cost 299$ at launch.
Nintendo64 cost 199$.
Here is an article comparing it:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/every-game-console-pric...
Inflation is simply a manipulative way of covering up fraud, but those vomiting the fraud.
Your #1 debt is likely to be a fixed rate mortgage. That payment gets less in real terms every time there’s inflation. And even if it’s not yours it’s still most people’s. So most people are helped by this.
Student loans also have fixed rates.
Did a lot of online gaming on the PS1 and N64?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/microsoft-to-raise-prices-o...
As someone who built a high end gaming PC and skipped the PS3/360 and PS4/Xbox One generations, the value proposition of the PS5 is just too good compared to buying a fully specced out PC! Which sure, it can be argued a midrange PC is the actual competitor, but if I decided to start PC gaming again I’d 100% drop $2000 on a 4090, definitely a personal problem), but I had an ultra high end rig with a 2080ti and games were still stuttering in 4K, then the crypto mining boom happened and I sold my GPU for more than I originally paid for it, and bought a PS5.
To do real 4K gaming these days is something like $3500! That’s not even including if you want to use a good monitor instead of a TV to push all those pixels to. I almost convinced myself “well I might use it for ML”, but even then I’m better off renting off of Runpod for a few dollars an hour. It’d take years to break even and by then a new better GPU will be out.
Alternatively, playing on PS5 has been a dream. The Demons Souls remake is a shockingly beautiful game, one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen, and God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 16 are games that just work. If I want to play them away from my couch (one of my favorite features of the Switch), my Steam Deck streams them flawlessly using Chiaki4Deck (after a little bit of admittedly annoying config and adding a wired connection to the PS5, it’s a totally seamless, lag free experience. Played for 5 hours yesterday without a single drop.)
Even with a top of the line GPU gaming on a PC with AAA titles like Borderlands 3 and Monster Hunter World felt fiddly and janky, HDR setup was always confusing, and I’d have to identify why things were causing microstuttering which took me MONTHS to figure out. I also learned that games just sort of add experimental bells and whistles that a $1200 video card couldn’t actually run so I’d have to spend hours tweaking the settings for each game no matter how much hardware I threw at it. It just got tedious.
Maybe it's not the consoles whoch are cheap. It's just you sitting on that 300k per year FAANG salary.
I don't play Activision/Blizzard games or use Xbox so I'm not really invested, but I tend to oppose market consolidation and monoculture whenever possible. That said, lately game releases have been pretty lackluster with some major flops and lots of remakes coming out. If the underdog thinks they can turn the tide by acquiring a major studio, I don't particularly want the government in the way either.
Consoles have admirable hardware. It is a pity that consoles are walled gardens.
Steam on PC is my choice for gaming because I like Valve's platform and I prefer the versatility of owning my hardware platform despite occasional problems with drivers. PC gamers are accustomed to finding solutions.
But it would be excellent if an older generation console could at least also run Debian or Pop!OS. As it is, the older consoles are just techno-waste.
I don't think I'll ever buy another console. I'll probably go with PC gaming instead.
You see fast less intrusive versions of this when they are the too in the AAA first party games from Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft seems to not go that route, I suspect it's due to gamepass.
The hardcore market, sure. There is less these days. AAA games are more and more targeted at american adults who are farther away than ever, and we just had 2-3 years of COVID that actively pushed people closeby to be at distance. Online multiplayer has taken over in those regards.
For me personally, I was always a huge platformer fan, so CupHead and Rayman Origins/Legends were some of my go to multiplayer expeirences for more gaming heavy friends back in the day (i.e. 6-7 years ago). As well as Kirby Star Allies that had drop in multiplayer. it looks like the upcomig Sonic Superstars will also support multiplayer as well
Physical titles still exist, my local library rents out PS5 games.
Loot boxes are mostly in free-to-play titles. Sony's big-budget games like Returnal, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, Horizon, etc don't have any predatory monetization. In fact of the above only Horizon had DLC, a $20 expansion pack that was well recieved.
In which PvP shooters are you currently ranked Diamond or higher?
I also having a gaming PC where I use an Xbox controller, racing wheel, or VR controls.
I still don't understand why people like the PS5 haptics. To me, they don't feel like they add anything and just drain the battery.
I also find the the PS5 controller the most comfortable I've ever used. I was strictly an xbox controller guy through xbox 360 and ps4 eras but the ps5 controller won me over.
I have two PS5 controllers, one for the PS5 and one for PC, just so I don't have to bother resyncing every time. If the PS5 controller extra features worked on PC without a cable it would be the perfect controller.
And yea I have gamepass too but who needs an xbox when they have a PC and the PS5 has the console exclusives I like.
Just, to offer another counterpoint.
GoW seems to be available on Steam, but doesn't even hit top 100 currently played.
As someone who's looking forward to both new Elder Scrolls and Spider-Man 2, I've only considered buying a console for the second: I'll just update my PC for the first.
Microsoft doesn't know how to create a consumer product. The Xbox owners I know were also PC gamers at some point.
The PS5 is designed to play games.
I don't know what the Xbox is designed for, it's confusing l,
Microsoft's design choices have been consistently ghastly.
I begrudgingly accept my workplace choosing their platform.
Why would I pay for that experience?
Also I never once mentioned PlayStation - this is HN, not an IGN comment section. We talk about technology from the POV of the people who make it, not “gamers” or whatever.
[citation needed]
PS5 is really the only one of the two with any kind of a design identity to it. The Xbox Series is just a box.
At least the name is accurate.
That's a new kind of insult LOL. In my case, the slimmer side of PS5 barely fits my setup in a small room. Maybe my case is uncommon, but Xbox Series X won't fit my setup.
Having said that I do personally agree that physically the Xbox looks better. The software experience of the Xboxes I’ve used, however, really do remind me I’m using a Microsoft device.
If Microsoft buys Activision/Blizzard, it's safe to assume that future A/B games will go the same way, and only be available on Xbox or Windows. This is problematic because Activision's IP portfolio is massive (including huge console annuals like Call of Duty), and Blizzard games are still extremely popular. If a normal game studio acquisition is like a comet colliding and adding its mass to the Earth, this would be like the moon crashing into the Earth.
it shocks me every time how few people here seem to understand that scale changes things. is this not a forum frequented by SV techies?
The question that myself and others in the thread have been asking without getting a clear answer is how could this acquisition make Microsoft a monopoly in the gaming space?
Even with the scale there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate path to Microsoft becoming a monopoly: video games is a $200b a year industry. Activision Blizzard’s 2022 revenue was $7.5b and combining that with Xbox’s $15b revenue still doesn’t even surpass PlayStation’s $24b. Is that a monopoly? I don’t see it.
Most of the comments here are uninformed on the law and the underlying market dynamics. My job involves analyzing the games market and there is no reasonable support to the claim that this deal will significantly harm competition in itself. Various parties might not like it for various reasons, but it would be pretty bog-standard, business-as-usual in video games. Activision is big but its portfolio isn’t big enough to single-handedly sew up the market for long. Huge swings happen every decade and no content or IP is guaranteed to keep its influence for very long. Xbox is in a distant third among consoles and MS would lose more money by pulling their biggest titles from the biggest console platform (PlayStation) than they’d gain by muscling more device share. They’d also degrade the value of the product because cross-platform play is basically table stakes and gamers would move towards games they can play together. MS is proving all this by offering all other platforms access to said content (which Nintendo and most others have accepted, but Sony has performatively refused). Some smaller content will be held exclusive, but that’s the running standard in the industry and has been for all time.
So, the FTC really doesn’t have shit here. They’re going to lose the ongoing injunction case and by all likelihood MS will close the deal before the July 18th deadline.
The UK’s Competitive Markets Authority is also holding it up (but notably, no other major regulator has objected, including the EU which has the most regulatory credibility). Playstation has a huge corporate presence and its European HQ in the UK, so the CMA is likely driven by local lobbying strength combined with similar political motivations (further bolstered by pressure from the current FTC commissioners, which has been reported). The CMA’s objection is (amazingly) even more poorly constructed, based on the argument that this will make future “cloud gaming” markets uncompetitive. I’ll spare you the details, but that is even more comically ridiculous than the FTC case. Once the FTC loses this injunction, the CMA will have to fold or else they will be embarrassed as a regulatory body by Microsoft closing the deal over their objections and showing them to have no teeth (and no clue).
How did these acquisitions make big tech more competitive?
“Big Tech” tends to refer to the companies.
Edit: To clarify further, I’m not casting those claims about older Big Tech acquisitions as wrong or misinformed. Nor am I trying to make any specific argument about the Democrats’ strategy / Neo-Brandeisian thought here. Just directly answering the question I replied to. I’m quite confident that this particular case against Microsoft, as argued by the regulators, is quite weak and that the political tail is wagging the dog here.
Mobile.
The real tax on innovation is the device + platform + payments + services duopoly where the gatekeepers get to pick winners (typically their own), tax everything, force tech choices and update regimes, and keep the customer relationships.
It's maddening that general purpose computing and financial transactions became this. Owned by a handful of giants.
I'm not implying one answer or the other, because I definitely don't know.
But people will ALWAYS point out the edge cases such as banking apps not working on custom firmware/rooted devices, and somehow that makes Android very bad and very walled garden.
I have been gaming since Atari (though the first I bought with my own money was Dreamcast) and even versus the Xbox 360 I'd say the Xbox One has been the console I'm least satisfied by. And Microsoft's strategy with the S/X nonsense and games now not working as well on some versions of the console versus others has put the stake in it for me. I'm going to be extremely reluctant to ever buy another one of their consoles. This generation has almost completely turned me off gaming. A lot of the other changes in gaming (gambling, loot boxes, monetization, abandoning single player gaming) have not helped either, but MS has definitely shot themselves in the foot hard as far as I'm concerned.
My son has a Switch, it might not be as powerful, but Nintendo literally got everything right in the way MS got everything wrong. You can actually play the switch when you have 5 minutes to play. It doesn't do super long updates. The games always work. The games don't get slower when an update is applied, etc.. It has excellent single player games and excellent multiplayer in the same room games. A lot of their games have great deployability.
My 360 broke twice (RROD, DVD drive failure) and my PS3 also broke, and yet I would still take either of those back over the Xbox One any day.
My kid is 10 and the other thing is the game selection on Xbox is terrible for having games that adults and kids can actually play together. The % of games with an M rating on Xbox is so high, and the longer I've played the more the M games seem repetitive. There are a bunch of Playstation games we're quite jealous of, but we haven't jumped on getting a PS5, partially cause they were hard to get? We have a family member who got a PS5, when we go over it is definitely a lot more fun. Another family member got an Xbox Series X and it has been a disaster of bugs.
That being said, its also obvious that Microsoft is playing at a different game and that it is largely fanboys and news sites keeping the "console wars" alive. (And I guess this case now but that's something else entirely) Every game that Microsoft publishes is day one also on Windows and on Game Pass. The box that is an xbox is just another avenue to playing games from Microsoft, but not the only way they care about.
I have an Xbox because it is my preferred console to play on (Xbox Live, the UI, Controller, etc) if I am playing on a console instead of a PC. I have a PS5 but that is only for exclusives.
Personally I am hoping this deal goes through because I want Xbox to be taken more seriously. Not because I want Microsoft to control these specific games or I want xbox to "Win".
But because I am particularity worried about a cocky Sony. We saw it before with the PS3 erra and we are starting to see it again with the PS5. They are making certain decisions that are not gamer friendly (cross play, paying for third party exclusives, and paying for exclusive content being some key examples). My concern is that unlike the PS3 erra where they stumbled hard, gamers are not pushing back against it this time and Sony is just continuing what they have been doing. For me personally an unchecked Sony/Playstation power in gaming is worse than this deal going through. They are both harmful for gaming, but I don't see a choice outside of it.
I used to keep a Ps4pro for their exclusives and they certainly were enjoyable. But... Seeing previous exclusives now make its way to desktop has me a bit sad about missing out on high fidelity gaming. I could have enjoyed God of war, horizon, rdr2 at higher frame rates and resolutions, if I were just a little more patient.
I'm not happy about the way Epic wrings exclusives, I shouldn't be a hypocrite for Sony.
I have thought about that option, and if Sony does continue to actually put out games on PC I will likely consider it. But I hate how long of a wait it is. And then we see how badly some of the ports like the last of us launch.
It was taken seriously by the 360 era. MS just bleed away all the good will the following generation, ceding significant market share to Sony. Now Sony is riding on the momentum from the previous generation to an easy 1st place.
> They are making certain decisions that are not gamer friendly (cross play, paying for third party exclusives, and paying for exclusive content being some key examples)
Was Sony buying any exclusives before MS attempted to take over Activision-Blizzard? (Those that they fund don’t count since it makes no difference to their competitors - the games wouldn’t be available to them either way; either it doesn’t exist if Sony doesn’t fund it or it’s exclusive to Sony if Sony did.)
Yes they were, they have been doing it for years including in the PS4 generation. The distinction between funding and paying for however is a complicated one since we don't know whether or not something would have existed if it was not for Sony stepping in.
A few examples of this practice from Sony:
FF7 remake (3 years ago) and FF16 (there is no way in hell you can convince we either of those would not have been made without money from Sony)
We know from yesterday Sony tried to make Starfield exclusive
GhostWire Tokyo and Deathloop (both of these have since come to Xbox but it is unclear if this would have ever been the case if Microsoft had not bought Bethesda)
KOTOR remake that has yet to come out
Death Stranding (The exact situation for this is a bit unclear, but I doubt sony specifically funded it considering it is on Game Pass but not on Xbox)
It is not a hard to find a list of third party exclusives that Sony has paid for.
And again this also doesnt even get into the exclusive content for games. Meaning someone playing on another platform is spending the same amount of money and getting less of a game. "But its just one mission" I don't care, we spent the same amount of money. Off the top of my head I know of Call of Duty, Harry Potter, Destiny 2, and I know there are others.
Does Sony still do it now? I’m a bit out of the loop. Which games have they demanded exclusive content and are they timed exclusive to MS?
Edit: I think the real issue with MS buying Activision-Blizzard is games that were original multi-platform, i.e. available on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, becoming exclusive to MS platforms. PlayStation and Nintendo consoles will lose games.
No one cares that God of War is exclusive to Sony’s machines. No one is losing anything - you can’t lose what you never had.
IMHO if you cannot stomach say Sony buying EA and making all their sport franchises exclusive to PlayStation then you shouldn’t be OK with the MS and Activision-Blizzard merge either.
No one loses games. Previously published games will still be playable. They may not have access to new titles in those series, but they were never guaranteed that anyway. Just like with console generations, sometimes you have to buy a new box to play the next game in your favorite series.
It seems that switch owners may even get access to Call of Duty, which they never would have without the aquisition.
Put the blame where it belongs: Don Mattrick screwed up the positioning and announcement of the Xbox One and they were never able to recover from that.
Halo's fall from grace as an IP, for instance, cannot in any way be blamed on anyone other than Microsoft, at multiple times and with multiple bad decisions. It's not due to one bad big screwup with the Xbox one; it's an ever-continuing quality problem with Microsoft.
Don Mattrick fucked up good and proper and Sony owes him a huge debt of gratitude.
I have two of their best XBOX and I'm loving the game pass and their "game streaming" actually works.
In my mind, you can't get better value than XBOX for console games.
My kids have the switch, with all the mario titles, they're super cool too. But in terms of winning, XBOX has the best value proposition + powerhouse.
Speaking of value, you should not be using Apple but go with Windows or Linux. The reason you went with Apple is the same reason people go for Playstation instead of Xbox.
Sony sees this as a competitive threat and EU regulators are bad so don’t understand what’s happening - their restriction of the activision sale is itself anti-competitive because it locks in the existing business model (which is favorable for Sony) and reduces real business model competition which would benefit consumers.
All this focus on exclusives is dumb and part of the old business model.
What I don't get in return a _some_ JRPG titles that ps5 has access to. On the other hand, I also have a switch (which has some exceptionally great exclusives + some of the missing JRPGs), and quite a lot of the gaming portfolio is covered by having xbox+switch.
The only thing I refuse to do nowadays is playing on PC, at all. I am tied to this unhealthy seating position most of the day already, and with consoles I can move to the couch, not to mention multiplayer there. I get why PC gaming is better in several aspects, but body posture is the single thing I am no longer accepting here.
And I was able to get a Lenovo SFF Ryzen 5600 for £300 from ebay, which is cheaper, smaller and faster than the current consoles.
It's a shame that Valve don't distribute the current Steam Deck Linux, but HoloOS does effectively the same and that plugs into the TV just as well.
You don't need to compromise with PC gaming, and when I upgrade I won't be forced to buy all my games again to carry on playing Overcooked and Moving Out with the kids.
Maybe the CPU is faster but I doubt the GPU is.
So, unless you want to permanently move your PC (and lose your desk setup with a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse) OR to have another PC dedicated for your TV setup in a living room, then no, you can't play on PC while sitting a couch.
Sony/Xbox has the exact same amount of 1st party studios, yet Sony managed to deliver more games at a consistent rate, not only that, but Sony released a single SKU as opposed to 2 for Xbox, so they didn't confuse their customers, worse.. Xbox choose very confusing naming
Also Sony puts in the effort, a very unique controller with haptic feedback, they invest in VR, and now remote play
It's easy to call it "console wars", Sony just puts in more effort and as a result sells more consoles, that's as simple as that
Microsoft has had blunder after blunder since the later ages of he 360. their goals were loftier but were never realized. Even to this day, Spencer seems to say that Playstation isn't their primary competitor, it's Amazon and Google. They don't necessarily "just" want to be a dedicated gamer box. They tried and failed in the 2010's to be that "One stop home entertainment system" and much of their 2020's seems to be shaped by trying to become the one service you play on all devices, anytime, anywhere. We'll see how it works this decade.
E.g. properly recognize the market power of a platform owner, and not let them get away with any abuse.
They're going all in on Xbox GamePass - and to be honest, that's the future. Soon, hardware will be irrelevant, and we'll be streaming AAA titles on our phones.
Why? Because mobile gaming has outpaced console and PC combined. Everyone has a phone- and everyone will want a GamePass subscription. Apple is trying this (via App Store), but didn't go all-in. Google cancelled their Stadia project. Amazon is floundering.
Sony is happy with how this is turning out, because they think they can win on exclusivity. But it's only going to give them the lead for a little while.
How is this a big revelation? Exclusivity deals have been a part of the console market since forever.
I agree they’re a bad thing for consumers, but I think this is a disingenuous argument since exclusivity deals benefit Microsoft just as much as Sony, and this acquisition is effectively just a giant version of one.
> Consider a statement from Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s testimony at a 2011 congressional hearing:
> We face an extremely competitive landscape in which consumers have a multitude of options to access information.
> Or, translated from PR-speak to plain English:
> Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.
I bought a PS5 and there's almost no games for it that aren't already on steam.
It's incomprehensible to me how Sony could win the console war when all the AAA games on PlayStation are either from somewhere else or are painfully cinematic.
And despite spending weeks on a couch stoned with a mate playing thru halo...I still despised what hid behind their console-y veneer. Corporate bloodlust.
Whether it was their unique approach to online play (pay you bastards) or their game store shelf tactics (put us where the bastards will pay the most) or their absolute bs that gaming had to always be AAA (so those bastards pay us AAA prices)...I was always sad to see they didn't die.
From idiotic naming, Nazi like banning, jacked up game prices, exclusivity and religion shenanigans, hardware format warmongering, censorship where it didn't need to be and none where it should have been (I'm looking at you uno 360), or just plain creation of the most toxic gamer population known to man (Xbox live kids)...I one day hope to hear them go the way of Sega because unlike Sega, they deserve it.
Anecdotal, but I know a huge number of people that play games casually, and almost all of them have playstations if they arent PC/switch. Why? I have no idea. Nearly none of them have any interest in any playstation exclusives, they just bought a playstation because. Why? No idea.
You might have just fallen into the trap you were warning us about. Do they know or care about "gamepass"? They know "playstation" because that's what their friends had when they were kids, etc. Brand can be incredibly strong.
This time around the Xbox Series X is arguably sleeker, but by God is the controller pure trash.
The Xbox’s controller vibrations resemble those of a cheap trimmer, whereas the Playstation’s controller has a much nicer feel.
It’s also a fact that many games are better optimized for PS5, even though on paper the Xbox should have a slight edge.
I don’t care about console wars, and I’m glad I have both of them, but some games are only on PS5, which is another reason people opt for it.
I've had both playstation and Xbox, although I stopped after the original and the 360, and I can't imagine completing something like Celeste on an Xbox controller.
> exclusives (this generation, there aint a huge difference)
The difference doesn't need to be huge, it just needs to be there. For me personally, the backcatalog of From Software games (including 2020 Demon's Souls) and Returnal were enough to push me towards PS5.
> the majority of people probably have a switch because nintendo
I do also own a switch. It's nice and all, but for me competes in a different niche: portable indie game machine. Anecdotally, I also don't know anyone where a Switch displaces PC/PS/Xbox, so the non-overlapping group logic doesn't really apply.
Sony has no answer to Forza Horizon—open world arcade racer.
There's lots of first party titles MS has no one to one answer for either. They don't have a big mascot 3rd person shooter platform game like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart.
“I haven’t watched TV in 10 years. Do people still watch TV”?
It’s not hard to find real data that goes against your anecdotes.
HN readers don't use gaming consoles? "Nintendo" is more of a household name than "PlayStation" or "Xbox"? Doesn't sound like a objective analysis to me.
Based on that, I’d agree that Nintendo and Sony are on pretty comparable footing - certainly not that one brand is notably more widespread than the other.
Death Stranding came to PC ~7 months after it released on PlayStation, which isn't too bad if they were focusing on finishing the game for the PS release rather than working on the port.
The delay in the FFVII remake was painful though, ~2 years before hitting Steam. It's a shame to see FFXVI release only on PS5 as well, the game looks interesting.
By the same token, I would happily own an Xbox as well if it had the games I want, but it's severely lacking in that department.
I had an OG Xbox, and the dpad was horrible (ignoring the size of the thing). I hate the disk shape dpad and like the traditional cross that Playstation offers.
If they made a controller that was nice I might reconsider my options, but after also having to deal with Microsoft locking hard disks, and then doing the same during the 360 era soured my attitude towards them. And this is ignoring all the other bad will that Microsoft has generated over the decades.
I've stuck with Playstation, Nintendo and Steam and I don't see anything Xbox that I'm missing so unless something fundamental changes, I'll stick with Playstation over Xbox.
Why would anyone buy Xbox? No idea.
I dont think you know the HN demographics, I would assume lot of them are gamers.