This right here is what I was thinking: since AAA is expensive to make, why not make an AA or even an indie-like game that builds upon itself within the ecosystem? I think that is more of a solid plan going forward.
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Timing is everything, but it does leave an impression of this regime trying to bring back the community. One thing for certain, it was probably best to remove the old marketing since it was considered as a backlash.
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I donât think this has anything to do with this regime. All this was probably planned I believe for the 25th anniversary before this regime came in.
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1000% but I also think Xbox has been very strategic in both how early they announced Sharma and tying all of this stuff to her. Itâs like a new top coat of paint on everything. Makes it look shinnier to people who were feeling dull about Xbox.
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Not necessarily Imo Exclusive could go a long way depending on their goal. Exclusives as in games works for Nintendo not so much the rest probably because Nintendo itself is defined by their IP and not hardware. For now, I donât think exclusives play a significant role for what Xbox is trying to do, it can however help.
I however think if Xbox manages to make windows the definitive standard platform with this Helix hybrid and are successful with OEMs it might foster a push for exclusives in some capacity. If the Xbox mode on PC is suddenly a hit where it reaches and is engaged by with hundreds of millions to over a billion people and if the OEMs are a part of that success maybe even the big push that makes that hit possible then I would imagine exclusive games could become a factor as the OEMs might become competitive and expect that any competitor not pushing the Xbox platform be not given an advantage over them.
Not just that there is the possibility it could lead to less software sales. If your games are on other platforms why will people patronize your store this effect leads to fewer game sales in your store that discourages third party from wanting to engage there without some huge incentives. For example, Steam gets over 20,000 releases every year compared to consoles that may get a thousand or two thousand yearly and then there is a lot of third party now making Steam their preferred platform. Capcom for example has deferred to steam citing that more than 70 percent of their income comes from there. If Alinea is to be believed it was said that RE9 only sold a few hundred thousand (300,000) copies on Xbox while selling 1 to 2 million on PlayStation with the most being on Steam. So, there is the possibility if youâre not the market leader business on your store could crater something that the last financial report might have indicated when it says no increase in software and services.
I agree games are platforms, but not all games are or can be. Forza definitely has gotten bigger by going to PC, but what has worked for Forza hasnât worked for others. HI-FI Rush, Gears, the outer worlds among others havenât seen success out there. I think a balance that ensures a healthy business is best. As I said exclusives are not significant for the plan, but they can help with the current standing. Perhaps time exclusivity and day and date with GAAS games. South of Midnight and Avowed certainly worked well with that.
In my opinion though what Xbox needs is to be available everywhere not just the United States as well as great marketing that speaks to everyone. I think the OEM idea could certainly fix the everywhere situation but they also the need marketing everywhere.
I know it just feels like many are using it as a narrative of change happening when itâs not, at least not yet. It certainly a good way to make things look like theyâre changing and at the same time make the old regime look bad. Sheâs essentially been given the credits of the old regime which I hope sheâll be able to show she deserves.
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Yes and yes. And I think thatâs by design. If itâs working honestly thatâs good in of itself. I think the video you uploaded some time ago said the same as well. Shade shouldnât be unceremoniously thrown on the old regime, but it also is a real opportunity for Xbox to leverage the sort of âfresh lookâ the massive leadership change has. It allows a certain energy Phil couldnât really generate at the end of his tenure or even Sarah if she had succeeded Phil because for a lot of people they were already the devils and everything good they did had to have an asterisk. Thatâs not really fair, but itâs also good of Xbox to make use of the opportunity and flip that on its head.
Agreed. I just hope she doesnât bungle it. Itâs weird we know nothing about her yet. It really is a clean slate.
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I thought the same but timing leaves an impression, whether itâs correct or not. Even so, this does leave a good impression of what Xbox has been moving, new regime or not.
Have to agree with @Haven that besides the replacement for Everything is an Xbox for Return to Xbox, the emphasis on users already there, the green lighting of features that had been worked on previously for release and likely the pushing of Xbox console sales to Xbox One owners.
This admin is likely continuing what was planned, with adjustments to fit in with their work to change perception of the brand.
Right, though I wouldnât be surprised there are aspects that are from new regime, mainly This is Xbox campaign removal. Honestly, this would stay if old guys were there, and honestly, the vibe would still feel awkward. If anything, resuming plus something from this team could create the perfect storm.
It didnât feel awkward to me, the old admin was pushing exactly what the new admin is now. Just that the new one is saying things to get the console warriors invested, even though everything the old admin did brought in more support than anything the one before it ever did.
The only thing I would have changed from the This is an Xbox marketing, was to show off Series consoles being used. Before switching over to another device, because theyâre on the go, or are visiting friends and family. Just always keep Series consoles in the ads.
Edit: Not saying itâs what the new admin should have done, itâs something the old admin needed to do from the beginning.
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Itâs a neat idea with a poor execution.
Itâs a good idea, the main thing I would have worried about with the idea of always showing off the Series consoles. Would have been that everyone thought you would need a Series console to do play Xbox everywhere.
Which would need another ad that shows shows someone buying or checking out Play Anywhere game on mobile, streaming it if available on game pass or stream your own game and picking it up again on Series X/S when they get home.
It kind of makes sense now why Phil Spencerâs retirement was fast tracked. If you look at all that has been planned for the 25th which Iâm sure most be quite big taking all that and putting it in the hands of someone new early would make them look like the best thing ever.
Youâre right. I donât think Phil Spencer or Sarah Bond would have been given any praise regardless of what they did, as far as the general consensus they were killing Xbox even though it was a mandate from on top but putting a new face with all the preparations for the 25th celebration makes that new face like the best thing ever.
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Great points. Its an interesting discussion b/c neither side of the topic are wrong. And my views are completely based on how I feel about it.
For example, say Iâm interested in Saros. I look into it and discover in order to play it, ps is requiring me to buy a $600 usd playstation on top of the $70 game when I already have a near exact equivalent xbox. That principle really, really pisses me off and I now I hate ps for it. The reverse was true for me last gen. I had a ps only and xbox had exclusives and it really pissed me off.
We can say these companies are just executing business strategies and some make sense and some donât. But when the strategy hurts consumers, then I donât agree with it.
This same concept came up after the last xbox partner preview. The end of trailer logos were a bit of a hot topic. The trailers showed all the platforms the games were on. some thought, they should have just shown xbox. Primarily b/c that is what ps does in their shows. they only show playstation, implying that is the only place you can play the game.
why on earth do we want a company to do misleading advertising to confuse the consumer? Why would we want xbox to intentionally mislead in their marketing. We should demand the opposite. Marketing should be less misleading. When ps does a show, everyone is pissed b/c we know most of those games are also on xbox/pc but we have to look it up. Its really deceptive.
I can be a bit of an idealist, but I just think business tactics like these are not right. I want saros. I think $70 is fair. ps wants my $70. Ok, great. everyone would be happy with that, right? Wrong. ps not only wants my $70, they want another $600 for a console and then they want me to buy another game on their platform, and then they want me to buy a sub on that platform. And on and on. They donât just want $70, they want all my gaming money. Well, they lost me on that one. Just selling a game to me isnât enough.
And same with the marketing. Why isnât just marketing your product enough? Why do they have to take the next step and mislead us into thinking the only way to play those games is to spend hundreds of additional dollars to enter their platform ecosystem? I would rather not be tricked when I see marketing.
Or maybe Iâm just a grumpy old man.
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Highlighting Xbox Play Anywhere, but yeah even without that Iâd say both the idea and execution were fantastic. Xbox was actually everywhere and doing a serious global marketing campaign for once. Online gamers were obstinate in thinking that the campaign was for them. Everyone who complained was already deep in the console market and either owned an Xbox or was very unlikely to switch from Xbox. All feelings of the console being de emphasized from a marketing campaign seemed moot to me when yeah that wasnât the point of the campaign and people complaining werenât being targeted, but the noise they generated did defeat the campaign. It seems counter productive to me that gamers would be this against the ecosystem expanding and having different modes of access. Sure throw a bone and put the console in the center, but thatâs literally just a bone. The targeted audience (mobile, PC, and non gamers) arenât buying a console period and console gamers are fixed where they are. Plus that wouldnât change the fact that Microsoft was having trouble financially justifying console production and pricing was awful. On paper the timing was great. Canât sell consoles (from supply and cost issues)? Push subscriptions and grow PC.
People do treat it like a war effort and not a for profit business after their money. Thereâs a level of patriotism where some actively want the worse situation (lower value proposition to them or other consumers) because they think it makes their chosen brand stronger. Weâve seen crashouts online of people taking pride in paying more or having less offered to them.
Iâve hated console exclusives since I was in middle school. I was a console warrior in elementary school, but like late elementary/early middle school Netflix was starting to gain popularity and I was experiencing more games on my iPad and weâve cloud stuff in school to sync data. What I noticed more and more were these platforms valuing (really respecting) me as a user and making it easier to migrate between platforms or even simultaneously use multiple devices. I wanted this for gaming. Consoles still had such walls. Even on the same platform I couldnât access all of my library or plays games across devices (like no 3ds games on the WiiU). I hated that. I also started to hate that crossplay wasnât just everywhere because I had friends on different devices. Multiplayer exclusives and/or no cross play donât just ask one person to spend the price of the console + game, but for your entire friend group to do that. When Xboxâs strategy started pushing to change all that it was literally aligning with my kid dreams. It still is. I took pride that Xbox put games on other platforms and in cases like Minecraft Dungeons even gave them cross save and cross play. Thatâs amazing and everything I want in gaming.
The argument is over the health of the business. Sure. I understand concerns over Xbox going kaplunt, libraries becoming stuck on depreciating hardware, and no new third party games launching on the platform. But Xbox has never had more third party support or been a financially healthier business (thatâs even talking about consoles where the overall userbase has remained stable and users have been spending more in the ecosystem). And beyond that itâs really not my concern that Xbox is dunking on Playstation or something. Like as a primarily Xbox gamer. I donât want Xbox to stoop down to Sony & Nintendoâs level out of some petty BS. And thatâs like actual reasons I see online. âPlaystation isnât doing PC ports anymore, so Xbox should be petty and take away XYZ game out of spite.â like guys⌠why do we care? Playstation and Nintendoâs decisions on exclusivity donât have to be Xboxâs. The entire platform isnât going to implode. One could even argue that they are making the healthier business decisions. Signifying available platforms from the start maximizes marketing budgets and also keeps Xbox showcases as must watches for all gamers. And that even works with all gamers tuning in and consistently rating Xbox shows higher than all the others.
I think the argument for or against exclusives is valid and worthy discussion either way. Theyâve existed for decades now and were all the console market knew for competition at first. There is also certainly value in them if not in financial sales then in community mind share. But there is plenty of chatter online that makes me wonder if these people actually think theyâre fighting for home and country.
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I get what Xbox was going for, as they need to go along with Microsoft heads mandates, but current customers are always on the what have you done for me lately mindset, which fair theyâre paying after all.
While imo, Xbox had done a lot of good stuff, most of what was being remembered was the price hikes to hardware and Game Pass, games going to all platform, the monthly reminders that Xbox hardware isnât selling well(which makes them worry that the support they have gotten this gen is going to stop). So the This is an Xbox campaign made it look like Microsoft was planning to abandon console to them and go 3rd party as we had people in the gaming industry pushing that narrative, which brought about a lot of discussion online about what would happen the the library that they build.
Which imo, it wasnât realistic to think that Microsoft would abandon their platform when theyâre trying to build it up, and itâs where they make the biggest chunk of all their money in gaming. But not putting emphasis on play anywhere and the Series consoles, combined with the recently delivered bad news because of tariffs/taxes and gaming outlets farming that negativity. Really made This is and Xbox marketing a poison pill everyone was railing against, not even Sarah teasing their next gen plans like 3 times or Lisa Su saying theyâll be ready to support a 2027 launch made a dent in the negativity that was going around.
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Xbox was still doing a lot for their users and consoles remained a better platform (in terms of value and features; even PC game pass offered like 2/3 of the total game library on console). All Xbox has ever tried to do is make cloud and PC more like console. I do agree that pricing and cost increases were terrible. I mean they always are. But theyâre also independent problems of the âThis is an Xboxâ. People manufactured their own negative, spiraled, and then built layers of delusional narratives ignoring reality.
Iâm not saying that it didnât all go wrong, but that it sucks that it did. It HAD gotten to the point that Xbox outright announcing next gen early (they technically first announced it like 2024 to calm people down with the PS ports, when people were also going to the absolute extreme and deciding the console was dead) and doubling down multiple times with partners to prove that itâs being built and wonât magically disappear but all that still was treated like, âOh itâs like the windows phone. Microsoft is going to kill it anyway.â People online were literally saying that Microsoft never says anything anymore and has gotten so quiet so the console must be dead AND Microsoft is saying too much and theyâre trying too hard so the console must be dead simultaneously.
Marketing wise a reset was clearly needed. Including both getting rid of âThis is an Xboxâ and moving forward with an entirely fresh face for leadership. I just think itâs unfortunate, but people are people. Xbox and Sharma are doing a better job of understanding the people in the gaming industry and even just leveraging Sharma to throw some bones and please the community.
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