It is time for the Xbox to fade

When Nintendo got into the status of the Juggernaut in the 1980s and 90s, his only real real competition Sega, a Japanese publisher, who developed countless memorable titles.

Sega was a pillar. It exhibited “Sonic the Hedgehog” downs, competed against Game Boy with its own handheld device and carried out attack ads against “Super Mario”. Like Nintendo, Sega seemed to be a video game hardware that would be there forever.

But that didn’t happen. In 2001 Sega abruptly pulled the plug. It announced that it was no longer in the hardware business and could not compete with the Sony Playstation series. It supported the Dreamcast console only two years after its publication.

Instead, Sega became a mercenary publisher of third-party providers who developed games for his former competitors. Suddenly Sonic and Mario stopped being enemies and instead became buddies.

In the same year, Microsoft entered the ring to challenge Nintendo And Sony For the game crown. But his attempts to disturb the industry and make a name for itself with the Xbox led to it became a constant third place in video games.

Twenty years later, the Xbox experiment had its time in the sun. Microsoft couldn’t make it in a real video game powerhouse.

Now it’s time for the Xbox to be SEGA 2.0.

The deal

At the beginning of 2022, Microsoft completed a deal for the purchase of Activision Blizzard, the productive game publisher behind “Call of Duty” and “Elder Scrolls”, for almost 70 billion US dollars. After more than a year of the caught with the supervisory authorities, the deal finally completed in October 2023.

After a large merger or takeover, massive cuts inevitably follow to eliminate the employees. And lo and behold, Microsoft has brought an ax to the knees of the Xbox Division, crippled some teams (343 industries) or get rid of others (Tango Gameworks, Arcane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Studios). In fact, the layoffs occurred so quickly and angry after the deal was concluded that the FTC had submitted a complaint.

There were thousands of layoffs – IGN reported in September that 2,550 players have been released since the takeover. At the beginning of this month there were more cuts, reporting that Microsoft took employees in safety, sales and games.

It is worth noting that Capital M Microsoft – the Tech -Riese with a great presence in the AI ​​- is going well in the middle of all this darkness and fate. It is just his video game department that has problems.

In Europe, Xbox has never been able to find a footprint in Asia compared to Playstation compared to mobile gaming or Nintendo. There was a short panic that Xbox would leave the European market as a whole. Heck, even used versions of the old Xbox 360, which was published in 2005, sold the latest Microsoft console in Japan last year!

It is only a matter of time before the brand is folded or, as it has always been fate, the new iteration of Activision becomes a publisher of third-party providers who plays for PlayStation consoles and computers.

Why shouldn’t Microsoft Xbox simply rename and rename as a “Microsoft Gaming” around the world? Console sales disappear, they don’t need You buy a system and you do not advertise for you to do this. Why take care of the Scharade?

Your Xbox Games digital library will continue to live in the cloud, you can play it on a new launcher, Xbox gift cards disappear from your framework of the grocery store, and not so much will change in the industry and the number of employees and the number of the published games.

When a report like this comes out, you know that the end is almost. Kotaku wrote in October:

“If a new game is announced in 2024, you can usually rely on it to switch to PC, PlayStation and possibly. But it is a little less a guarantee that new games or ports end up on Xbox consoles, and it seems that Microsoft is aware of it and asks Devs why.

Last month ‘Enotria: The Last Song’ started on PS5 and PC … but not Xbox. The developers said that this was because Xbox had stopped communicating with them. The Xbox boss Phil Spencer later turned to the team and ‘Enotria’ is now planned to arrive on Xbox in the future, but it is only the latest example of games that skip the Microsoft console. ”

It is difficult to sell Xboxes. So why not turn everything into an Xbox?

Microsoft has never been good enough to sell Xboxes, so it is now to turn every device on the planet in an Xbox. Marketing is fully progressing with the promotion of the devices of other brands:

Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, was open when it comes to how things dropped in the Xbox team in his 23 years. Last summer he spoke about why Microsoft had to deal with console development: Most consumers are already committed to one, and Nintendo and Sony have expansive digital catalogs that cannot be beaten.

“We are not in business to surpass Sony or Out-Up-Nintendo,” he said. “There is no great solution or profit for us. I know that a lot of people will annoy, but it is only the truth of the matter. “He added:” It is simply not true that when we go out and building great games, you suddenly change the console shares in a dramatic way. “

This makes sense on paper: they significantly increase the number of people who can enter their ecosystem, considerably, on “Call of Duty” and sink their salary checks into games.

The disadvantage of this strategy is that Microsoft essentially admits that if everything is “an Xbox”, nothing is an Xbox. In fact, Microsoft endeavors to deliver to everyone who wants to deliver their own exclusive games just to sell more copies of their games – which is admirable, but it is also similar to swinging the white flag in the production of Xbox The Home of his exclusive games.

A player base with excellent games that are only available on a certain console has been the schedule of the industry in the past 40 years. Microsoft’s goal that everything that is an Xbox signals that they are not interested in selling Xboxes people because they know that it is a loss of proposal.

There are rumors that even larger, top-class exclusive such as “Gears of War” and “Halo” will also jump on more popular platforms, which could be the death blow for the Xbox brand for hardcore players. “Halo” was the reason why Millions bought its original Xbox, but when the next “Halo” ends on a PlayStation 5 or Switch 2, what is it about?

To be fair, Sony makes a similar pivot point. It ports exclusive Playstation games faster than ever on PC, with great results. The next potential marketplace for both consoles will turn into dedicated handheld devices because playing games is becoming increasingly popular.

Search for subscriptions

If his strategy “Everything is an Xbox” does not work, Microsoft also tries out new business models that are led by its game pass. A kind of Netflix For video games, consumers pay a monthly subscription for access to hundreds of games. So far it is not a hit success. Game Pass was 9.99 US dollars a few years ago, but now the level with the best value is $ 19.99 per month. Game Pass has not led to the sales of consoles increased and its growth was stagnated and limited around 35 million subscribers.

Most players expected much more high -quality publications to meet the game pass on day 1 and consistently publish every few months. This did not quite happen, either because the games have been delayed, to bad reviews or simply canceled.

Even if Microsoft Studios are consistently excellent, it seems that the majority of players are still older titles and increasingly spend their time with live service multiplayer hits such as “Fortnite” and “Grand Theft Auto Online”. As soon as someone has entered an ecosystem like Steam or PSN and selected a game to play with their friends, the money they spend on microtransactions goes to Valve or Sony.

If most of the customer base is not on Xbox, Microsoft sees nothing of this money because it only receives a cut from microtransactions that are bought via the Xbox StoreFront. If the sale of console shrinks, it makes sense to change the strategy to the delivery of consumers where they actually play games – namely not things called Xbox.

“It’s about enjoying Xbox on all of your devices,” said CEO Satya Nadella at the annual shareholder meeting of Microsoft.

If you take the box out of Xbox, you only have one brand name with no meaning and without any significant audience. By eliminating console sales, Microsoft could simply publish and develop games as part of the Microsoft Gaming Banner and achieve the audience on all devices and not on these complicated, confusing messages.

There is simply no incentive to buy a dedicated machine that should also play games that can also come out on a playstation or a PC. Serkan Toto of Kantan Games summarized excellent games in an interview with the game industry recently. Games for PS5 early. ”

In November, the hardware editions for video game hardware were flat during the year, Paul Tassi von Forbes reported 15% despite the growth of PS5 and 29% Xbox. “What exactly does it mean if you have spent $ 69 billion to acquire the world’s largest (non-GTA) video game series, publish it, and it doesn’t matter to increase your hardware?” he wrote. That is the ultimate question.

If “Call of Duty”, the bestseller game year after year, is not exclusive to your platform and has not raised subscriptions for Xbox sales or game pass. Why did you capture Activision for all the money? It makes sense to benefit from ongoing titles at Blizzard and King and to expand your market on PC and mobile.

But the Xbox is not where it is and the company seems to know. At least Xbox was better than Zure, Internet Explorer, Groove, Kin, Windows Phone, Edge, Cortana, Vista, Lumia, Sidewinder, Easyball, Holo Lens, Kinect, Portrait, Bob, Terraserver, Band, Mixr and Clippy.

Now it’s time to continue. Play over.

Jared Russo is a writer from New York who spends his days online to report the Tech industry, scold and play video games.