Xbox continues its “reset” with dramatic restructuring
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I seriously doubt that is going to happen. 343 Industries, now Halo Studios, has the dubious distinction of being the only AAA game studio that has somehow never made a universally acclaimed game over almost 20 years. Sure, there are some good parts of Haloes 4 and 5 and Infinite and MCC, but all of these games have a giant asterisk next to their quality.
You would think Campaign Evolved would have been a lay-up, but despite multiple studios working on the at a drastically smaller scope than even the original Halo, it still currently has a "Mixed" review on Steam.
"Make the greatest Halo game ever" is too high of a bar to cross, I think a slightly more realistic goal for would be "make a decent Halo game that majority of players like", which at this point, I'm not sure if it is achievable.
It cannot be understated the extent to which the console industry, including third party publishers and devs, needs Sony and Microsoft to both stay competitive. In that light the drastic moves being done at MS are long overdue, but maybe not sufficient. It's also an open question if consoles (outside of the Nintendo universe, which is a very different audience) have a future at all.
Nintendo has the worst hardware, but consistently delivers a small number of really great games you can't play anywhere else. Any game you can play on a Xbox you could also play on a real PC and have a vastly better experience and far more utility. Xbox is just a shitty, ad infested, crippled gaming PC. Playstation is heading in that direction as they lose more exclusives, but at least their hardware is better than Microsoft's so the games look/play better.
Microsoft might as well give up and just sell a bunch of low-mid range gaming PCs in console shaped cases, running windows, ship them with controllers and just brand them as Xboxes. At least for now. Eventually Microsoft wants games as a service, where you buy a dumb terminal/cheap thin client and they stream games you pay excessively high prices for but never actually own to your screen.
Xbox now is a game studio, not a console manufacturer. Look at them through that lens. Doom, Halo, Overwatch, Fallout, whatever else, whether you are into them or not, they own a lot of franchises and those are their core now.
Basically just trying to challenge Valve on the scale of Microsoft's access to hardware and undercutting their price while doing the same thing with a different default store. Also compatibility with actual Xbox games, which won't be a thing on the steam deck.
Sure, because that seems like a thing current Microsoft would do for their users...
The only thing I'm not certain of is the exact shape of the "exit button". It could be a "desktop app" like Windows 8 had, instead. Could be some way to add third party games to the Xbox launcher UI. Barely relevant, anyway.
[1]: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/03/11/project-helix-buildin...
So we're talking about taking a PC, which is a general purpose gaming platform able to use multiple stores equally, and giving Microsoft control over what can and can't run on it?
Of course Microsoft would backtrack, exactly as soon as the financial benefit to them outweighs the reputational cost.
They've been salivating over recurring revenue ever since Apple pivoted their model into leveraging hardware locking to privilege first party services.
When I was talking about backtracking, I meant doing so before the release of the project, which would be reputation damage with no profit. And if it's out, as specified, then there's not really any backtracking to speak of anymore.
A shitty one at that.
But, that's exactly what they're doing right now, and you're still not satisfied? What would be different compared to today? It very much is exactly what they're doing.
Because of this eco-system for kids, xbox has great multiplayer support (including locally for friends), and the software was a clearer focus with less bloat. I don't see xbox market going away any time soon unless people stop having kids
second, nintendo exists for "family friendly" market.
Consoles like Xbox serve parents who aren't tech-savvy enough to hunt for PC deals and don't want their kid to have free access to the internet.
For what its worth I used to work on a parental controls app startup and this is a consensus I found talking to customers (parents), they like their devices to do one narrow thing so they can control how their child spends their free time. There are of course adults who play it but this is the core of the market, and the strongest value-add in my opinion.
They cannot make user and customer focused software. They cannot make user and customer focused hardware. They do not care about customers.
Although I guess they have proven to be okay at data centers.
What should the Xbox be if Microsoft was a competent organization, like half of what apple is? And I'm not an Apple fan by the way
- since they have a monopoly of PC gaming, much to the pain of PC gaming users, that should afford them the ability to effortlessly Port x86 base games to an x86 gaming console platform
- because of their extensive relationships with PC hardware manufacturers, it should afford them the ability to produce a very powerful but cost-effective gaming platform
- Maybe even since steam runs primarily on x86, Microsoft could have partnered with steam to get their games onto that platform relatively seamlessly
- The PC gaming has several decades of dos and windows games that could have been updated, remade, or the like, so there should have been a wealth of ip available to them
- and with good coordination, should have been able to bootstrap dozens of software gaming studios to make actual good games exclusive to their platform
Well Microsoft succeeded at some of this. They did not succeed to the necessary degree, especially with treating their own custom games
I switched from PS to Xbox a few years ago, because my family and friends were playing there.
There's also some nice technical benefits, but compared to my friends, who cares?
An open platform becomes a slum and an exclusive one opens up. Friendster MySpace Facebook instagram and so on
If you allow everyone you lose the community by definition.
Most of those same arguments can be made for Netflix, but it's a lot less expensive to buy a DVD or Bluray to get around that restriction for the shows that matter to you. I think most people who are serious about movies have some kind of collection of physical media.
I know that leveraging that kind of control over what games people are allowed to play and keeping their hands in players wallet at all times pulling out cash at regular intervals forever is where Microsoft wants things to go for everyone, but it'll feel like a massive loss as someone who loves games and enjoys the fact that when the mood strikes me I can pull out my PS1 and replay Symphony of the Night or even my old Atari 2600 and play a game of Night Driver or Riddle of the Sphinx. As long as the hardware holds up I can enjoy my old games or loan them out to friends and family (props to old hardware by the way, most of my old consoles including both the Atari and the PS1 are still working fine while I'm already on my third PS5 controller).
I'm with you on the quick resume feature though. The PS5 actually had that when I got it, and it was handy, but they removed it in an update for some reason. I'm guessing it was either breaking saves or it took more effort to keep working with new titles than they wanted to expend.
Or maybe they do realize this and are willing to sacrifice the IP at the altar of Moloch.
If they're under the same roof, my optimistic hope is that they'll try to focus on how to differentiate the IPs. But realistically we'll probably just end up with even more micro transactions
Halo Infinite from 343/Halo Studios stands out in particular. They thought that game was ready to ship in late 2020 and showed it off on their summer showcase, where it triggered such an intense backlash they delayed the game for a year and it still came out with minimal content.
Halo and Rare going under Activision could be a good thing. But if you want to be cynical, they are moving all of these studios out of "Microsoft Gaming Studios" and into Activision, Bethesda, King, etc. to make it easier to sell each of those individually or spin off the whole thing altogether.
At least with the Netflix model they fund every director available, including independent and C-list directors, and release everything quickly, using quantity to mask quality issues. Bigco Gaming is addicted to the 5yrs+ in-development blockbuster model and it's not producing many hits and the public notices that sort of thing.
Are those opposing goals? Why say "while" as if they are in competition with each other?
> Our goal is to make an actually good game for a "modern audience", but we'll leave some nods to the originals so those fans come back too.
AAA games got too big to fail, so they had to be made to appeal to everyone, even if that meant they no longer appealed to fans of previous franchise titles. You Just Can't Make A Game About Things Like Space Marines With Dudes As The Primary Target Audience Anymore, apparently!
Crunch had to die because even though every game everyone's ever loved was made under crunch, crunch is stressful, it's bad to work hard on making something good, so that had to go, so millions could be wasted on making unsuccessful games.
Then, all the studios had to get bought up and consolidated and then laid off—who could've seen that coming a mile away?
It's been such a bummer to watch an industry I once cherished for its incredible output in terms of both technology and entertainment die a slow decade-and-a-half-long death, but, here we are.
I remember people hated on Reach because it didn't follow Chief and they added all the gadgets, then people hated 4 because of the weird undersuit Chief wore and a bunch of other nitpicks. Infinite has been hated for a slew of other reasons, but now Reach is considered good and 4 has a rising reputation. It seems to me that PvP players and story players have two extremely different outlooks on where the games went wrong, but at least we agree on one thing - keeping 5/Guardians on Xbox only was stupid (I still haven't played it).
I really would have liked Halo games based on idTech though. I can't see why idTech can't be a complete package for Halo, especially 7 and 8.
Firing a bunch of id staff probably crushes that idea more than it was previously though.
The Fallout TV show probably had to be the final straw for how much independence Bethesda gets to have. Boy, to have been a fly on the wall in that conference room.
"The TV show is doing gangbusters and you're telling me you don't have any F*CKING RELEASES IN THE CAN?!?! Stick Starfield, Todd, you're done with your 'art'."
Are we gonna ignore Bethesda reselling Skyrim in different coats for 15 years?
No, not TES VI. Starfield.
In all seriousness, I've not played Starfield, and I'm sure it's at the very least a serviceable game (at least by my Bethesda fan standards), but regardless, it wasn't the right game to make at that point in time, no matter what Todd thinks.
Prior to the release gap between TES V and TES VI, the longest gap there had been between new mainline games in that franchise was six years. They're now fifteen years deep.
Somehow I doubt merging once-competing-now-heavily-downsized studios will be a recipe for success (see also the merging of Bethesda and Obsidian Software). Not that managing an army of game developers among one of the world's largest armies of developers is an easy task... but it does seem like the key is smaller teams with more creative liberty (hopefully working without the burden of an existing IP with such lofty expectations)