It’s time for xbox to fade away

When Nintendo Skyrocket to the Juggernaut status in the 1980s and 90s, its only real competition was Sega, a colleague Japanese publisher who developed countless memorable titles.

Sega was a pillar. It pulled out “Sonic the Hedgehog” game, went up against Game Boy with his own handheld device and ran attack ads against “Super Mario.” Sega, like Nintendo, seemed to be a video game hardware -Stalwart that would be forever.

But that’s not what happened. In 2001, Sega suddenly pulled the plug. It announced that it was no longer in the hardware industry, unable to compete with Sony’s PlayStation series. It withdrew support for its Dreamcast Console just two years after release.

Instead, Sega became a mercenary-a third-party publisher who developed games for his former rivals. Suddenly, Sonic and Mario ceased to be enemies and instead became friends.

The same year, Microsoft entered the ring to challenge Nintendo and Sony to the game crown. But its attempt to disturb the industry and give a name for themselves with Xbox resulted in it becoming a perpetual third place in video games.

Twenty years later, the Xbox experiment has had its time in the sun. Microsoft was unable to forge it into a true video playing center.

Now it’s time for Xbox to become Sega 2.0.

The deal

At the beginning of 2022, Microsoft signed an agreement to buy Activision Blizzard, the productive gaming publisher behind “Call of Duty” and “Elder Scrolls” for almost $ 70 billion. After more than a year of entanglement with regulators, it finally closed the agreement in October 2023.

After any major merger or acquisition, massive cuts to employee numbers inevitably follow. Look and see, Microsoft has taken an EACs to the Xbox Division’s knees that paralyzed some teams (343 industries) or let go directly from others (Tango GameWorks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Studios). In fact, the layoffs happened so quickly and furiously after the deal closed that FTC filed a complaint.

There have been thousands of redundancies – IGN reported By September, 2,550 game workers had been released since the acquisition. More cuts came earlier this month with Reports That Microsoft dismissed staff in security, sales and games.

It is worth noting that in the midst of all this gloom and downfall, the Capital M Microsoft – tech giant with a huge presence in AI – is doing well. It’s just its video game department that has problems.

Xbox has never been able to get one foothold in Europe Compared to PlayStation and not even a footprint in Asia compared to mobile games or Nintendo. There was a short panic that Xbox would leave the European market in everything. Heck, even used versions of the old Xbox 360, which was released in 2005, Outsold the latest Microsoft -Console in Japan From last year!

It is only a matter of time before the brand is folded, or which may have been its fate all the time, becomes the new iteration of the Activision-a third-party publisher who postpone games to PlayStation consoles and computers.

Why shouldn’t Microsoft just rename and redirect Xbox as “Microsoft Gaming” around the world? Sales of console has subsided they don’t need You need to buy a system and they do not advertise or go in for you to do so. Why bother with the charad?

Your digital library with Xbox Games will live on in the cloud, you can play them on a new launcher, Xbox gift card will disappear from your grocery clock, and not so much will change in the industry in addition to employees’ employee numbers and the number of released games.

When one Reports like this Comes out, you know the ending is almost. Kotaku wrote in October:

“In 2024, when a new game is announced, you can usually trust it to be released on PC, PlayStation and possibly Switch. But it has become a little less of a guarantee that new games or gates will land on Xbox consoles, and it looks like Microsoft is aware of this and asks Devs why.

Last month, ‘Enotria: The Last Song’ launched on PS5 and PC … but not Xbox. Devs explained that this was because Xbox had stopped communicating with them. Xbox manager Phil Spencer later reached the team, and ‘Enotria’ is now planned to arrive in Xbox in the future, but that’s just the latest example of games jumping Microsoft’s console. ”

It’s hard to sell Xboxes, so why not just turn everything into an Xbox?

Microsoft has never been consistently good enough to sell xboxes, so now the move is to turn any device on the planet to a Xbox. Marketing goes full steam on at Promoting of other brands’ units:

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has been open when it comes to how things have gone down over his 23 years on the Xbox team. Last summer, he talked about Why Microsoft was struggling with console development: Most consumers are already committed to one, and Nintendo and Sony have expansive digital catalogs that cannot be beaten.

“We’re not in the process of smoothing Sony or Out-Consoling Nintendo,” he said. “There is not really a good solution or wins for us. I know it will disturb lots of people, but that’s just the truth of the matter. “He added,” it’s just not true that if we go off and build good games, suddenly you will see console shares change in some dramatic way. “

On paper, this makes sense: You increase the number of people who can enter your ecosystem, be connected to “Call of Duty” and sink their paychecks to games.

The disadvantage of this strategy is that Microsoft essentially admits that if everything “is an Xbox” is nothing an Xbox. In fact, Microsoft is eager to deliver his own exclusive games to anyone who wants them, just to sell more copies of his games – which is admirable, but it is also related to waving the white flag by making Xbox the home to its exclusive games.

Attracting a player base with excellent games that were only available on a particular console was the industry’s game plan for the past 40 years. Microsoft’s goal of everything is an Xbox signalizes that they are not interested in selling people Xboxes because they know it is a losing suggestion.

There are rumors that even larger, more high-profile exclusives such as “Gears of War” and “Halo” also jump the ship to more popular platforms, which can be the death knell of the Xbox brand for hardcore players. “Halo” was the reason why millions bought their original Xbox, but if the next “Halo” ends up on a PlayStation 5 or Switch 2, what is the poenget?

To be fair, Sony makes a similar pivot. It portes exclusive PlayStation games to PC faster than ever with amazing results. The next potential marketplace for both consoles will spin out in dedicated handheld devices as games on the go rises in popularity.

Seeking subscriptions

If its “everything is an Xbox” strategy does not work, Microsoft is also trying new business models that are speared by its game pass. A kind Netflix For video games, consumers pay a monthly subscription for access to hundreds of games. So far, it’s not a smash success. Game Pass was $ 9.99 a month a few years ago, but now the level of the best value is $ 19.99 a month. Game Pass has not led to increased sales of consoles, and its growth has been stagnant and delimited about 35 million subscribers.

Most players expected that more high -quality releases hit Game Pass on Day 1, which consistently released every few months. It has not quite happened, neither because games are delayed, come out to bad reviews or just be canceled directly.

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

If most of the customer base is not on Xbox, Microsoft doesn’t see any of this money because it only gets a cut from micro transactions purchased through the Xbox store. With console sales shrunk, it makes sense to see the strategy change to deliver consumers where they actually play games – namely, not things called Xbox.

“It’s about being able to enjoy Xbox on all your devices,” said CEO Satya Nadella Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting.

When you take the box out of Xbox, you have nothing left than a brand name without any meaning and without a significant audience. By eliminating console sales, Microsoft could simply publish and develop games under Microsoft Gaming Banner and reach the audience on all devices rather than this complicated, confusing messages.

There is simply zero incentive to buy a dedicated machine designed to play games that also come out on a PlayStation or PC. Serkan Toto from Cantan Games summarized the brilliant In a recent interview with Games Industry.Biz: “Activision Blizzard Agreement of $ 69 billion, rising costs, Power of Forever-Titles and Sony’s huge lead-lead lead Xbox no choice than bringing all their big games to PS5 early.”

Year-over-year video games hardware expenses were flat in November, Paul Tassi from Forbes reportedDespite a 15% growth in PS5 and 29% Xbox re -emergence. “What does that mean exactly as you partially spent $ 69 billion to acquire the world’s largest (non-GTA) video game series, release it, and it does nothing to increase your hardware?” he wrote. That’s the ultimate question.

If “Call of Duty,” the best -selling game year in and year out, isn’t it exclusive to your platform and it’s not to lift Xbox Sales or Game Pass subscriptions, why did you acquire Activision for all that money? It makes sense to take advantage of ongoing titles on Blizzard and King and expand your market on PC and mobile.

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

Now is the time to move on. Play over.

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Jared Russo is a New York writer who spends his days online covering the tech industry, ranted about sports and playing video games.