I think they could have displaced Sony by investing in exclusives and buying 3rd party exclusives, but it seems like they were not interested in doing so ever since the Tomb Raider incident.
The industry itself wouldn’t have grown, but I think they could have kept a bigger portion of the pie by being more agrressive for a longer period of time.
Well first and foremost, would that be good? Your suggestion would be that Microsoft keeps the industry stagnant but just try to steal more market share from Sony. I’m not heavily invested in Xbox doing better than Sony, I’m invested in gaming becoming better overall. I stick with Xbox because it feels like they have the potential to do that. Exclusives don’t make gaming any more fun nor does it provide any more value to me. Xbox Play Anywhere and Cloud Gaming and even porting games (namely multiplayer games like Sea of Thieves) to other consoles all do.
That said, I mean, up until very recently Microsoft wasn’t super interested in spending a lot of money on Xbox, and it’s now that they are spending money on Xbox that they are more interested in maximizing future profit by treating Xbox like all their successful services rather than just stealing market share. Also, they’d have to money hat a LOT. The biggest problem Xbox has always had has been all the defacto exclusives that came as a result of their lack of favor in Japan (as the newest console and only non-Japan originated console). Winning at Sony & Nintendo’s game had always been an uphill battle without any homecourt advantage and all for the reward of still being stuck in a waning market. Even if Xbox had Playstation’s market share, they’d still be dealing with all the same problems (we know because Sony is). It’d still be costing them more and more to develop and publish games and secure exclusives all while there’s no new gamers to offset those costs. Console hardware would still cost more to make without any real growth in sales.
I don’t think competition exists in late stage capitalism or at least mature markets, like video game consoles, as we as consumers want it to. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all set in their own lanes at this point. They don’t really significantly affect on another from a consumer sales perspective. Most gamers are entrenched and the cost of conversion is too high for the companies themselves. However, they do compete as businesses in financials and user time and attention. Xbox isn’t going to steal a significant market share from Sony at this point and they don’t want to (it’d cost too much to even try), but they have stolen users from Sony games and other games on the PS platform. Xbox is currently one of the biggest (arguably the biggest) publishers on Playstation. As a consumer I do have concerns about how the lack of direct competition will lead to more stagnation in the console market. However, Xbox and Playstation do compete in other ways now. They compete for monthly active users (gamers in their games on Playstation, PC, and now Xbox with Helldivers) and published game sales, and moving forward I think this is how competition will continue to work for them. Competing for a dwindling consumer market that increasingly is more difficult (more expensive) to support at all (much less convert) doesn’t make sense to Microsoft as a business, but for us as consumers (as console gamers) we’re already seeing what happens as all platforms realize they don’t really compete with each other in terms of hardware. No one is really subsidizing their console hardware anymore and they aren’t shying away from price increases blaming market conditions. In days past Nintendo had to price themselves lower to convince gamers to buy the “budget family friendly system”, but now they know everyone will just upgrade. We also know next Gen hardware from Playstation and Xbox will likely be at minimum $700 with rumors getting really high up there. The initial promises of the console market are dying alongside hardware based competition.
The future is a foreign land. I think gaming will continue to evolve as does how gaming companies compete with one another. We likely will see a Playstation storefront and some form of Playstation play anywhere and more pushes from Playstation in cloud gaming and subscription models. Then as the lack of competition for console hardware leads to more stagnation and price increases in that space, we’ll likely see periods of better access and pricing through those other strategies.
He is part of the current form of modern “journalism”. They have a strong point of view and will not be moved from it. Any information that they get is just something to use to forward their point of view. It’s not something I’m very fond of but everyone is entitled to their way of doing things.
COD remaining multi-platform wasn’t a issue. I never saw Microsoft promise to port over its exclusives In-House games, over to Sony more or less give up on trying to sell their consoles
Talking of COD, Microsoft promised to bring that to Nintendo Switch?
I don’t think there is any growth in AAA gaming not matter what screen you get it on when kids have mobiles and TikTok those kids aren;t going to spend big on gaming at all and have no interest in the sorts of games either Sony or MS offer other than Minecraft from Xbox
I don’t see how people can make out that a console selling over 70 million units isn’t a success If consoles were old new and Sony part of the dinosaur era why is Xbox looking to bring their games over to Sony consoles when Xbox is on all the screens, Cloud and PC already.
Console gamers are the ones who spend big on gaming for me along with the big PC gamers. I hope next year will see Xbox push its brand for the 25th birthday and hopefully do some deals over Black Friday