The controller design/feel and the more seamless/intuitive online play & party handling kept me on the Xbox side of the fence for a looooooong time.
That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are 100% on Steam.
This is an opinion piece embodying a meme that willed itself into existence this year, mostly through social media and Youtube influencers. It was interesting to observe (and tedious as a friend watched dozens of hours of these videos and breathlessly repeated their contents to me.) At some point an Xbox executive had to respond to it to assure that they are working on the next Xbox console, which should've been obvious to players given where we are in the cycle.
The will to manifest the meme into reality came from a convergence of trends. Neophyte linux enthusiasts in gaming drove a lot of it, I suspect.
xbox went up in flames with the xbox one, which was around about when microsoft as a whole started to get run by business types that had no idea what they were doing whatsoever. 2013 was when xbox permanently lost the console 'war'
I don't really want this future, but is there any reason why Sony hasn't just embedded Playstation into their TVs? It seems obvious to me that they could persuade people to buy their TV over others this way.
This is anecdata point of one, but I bought the xbox hoping to play split screen with my kids and to play some more of the ghost recon franchise which I last played on the original xbox. My kid got into the latest ghost recon on the xbox, but I don't like sandboxes so I never played it. The split screen on xbox never materialized for us, I just couldn't find any good titles.
I ended up getting a steam deck which is just amazing and the kids ended up on on tablets (minecraft/roblox) and on PCs (arma and such).
For split screen we ended up occasionally connecting the steam deck to the tv and re-pairing Xbox controllers to it.
There seems to be a point in every large tech company's lifecycle where they decide they can replace innovation with businesses deals.
Someone with no real technological vision takes the helm, and they end up listening to MBAs instead of techies, visionaries or even customers. They spend their efforts focusing solely on maximizing profits, and then trying to take a shortcut on invention through acquisitions or by chasing fads.
I mean, Microsoft makes like $20B in profit every quarter, so it's not like the MBAs are useless. They're just useless at creating the future.
I used to hate everything GAME PASS stood for but couldn't deny it was good value for the money and if you could find a game you wanted to play on it every month go right ahead.
With this year's price hikes though that's not the case anymore, you are better off just buying a good $20 game every month or buying a good $50 game every other month.
Couldn’t read the article (ad blockers just decided the whole site is an ad, perhaps?)
But I agree. I (foolishly) spent money on an Xbox last year only to find bugs that would make the Windows operating system weep. My kids have to ask me CONSTANTLY to update things, re-install game, or even just troubleshoot a damn controller not working.
Compare that to Steam, where I can just add them to my family and give them access to a huge number of split-screen compatible games across my entire catalog. It just doesn’t make financial sense to keep supporting Microsoft’s enshittification of everything.
I will never, ever understand why the Xbox didn't just go with 1, 2, 3, etc. Even after the 360, why not do 720, 1080, etc? after the xbox ONE, why not xbox TWO, THREE, etc? Why go with Series S and X? it makes no sense - literally beyond my comprehension. so, going back to the article, xbox died for me the minute the xbox one came out. the name alone was indicative of a rot and disfunction beyond comprehension.
I hope Sony dies as well because the way they be charging prices is absurd. I once had my account hacked and they couldn't get my $300+ I've spent on digital content.
They should really not charge for the old Xbox Live subscription to play multiplayer and keep the subscriptions for access to the Netflix style library of games, long overdue.
I used to follow system wars. I used to love following which home console was performing the best and then hopping online and trolling the people who bought the console with the least support. I was a huge fan of the 360 when I was younger. It had a superior controller, awesome online play, and decent graphics. I was never a fan of Sony's consoles. I didn't like the controller layout, and the exclusives never appealed to me. I typically owned a Nintendo and a Microsoft console when I was a kid. I started with the N64, GameCube, 360, and I had an Xbox One.
I stopped following mainstream gaming not too long ago, to me, I just couldn't care less at this point. The Series X doesn't appeal to me at all as I've gotten older.
It would be interesting if Microsoft went the way of Sega and stopped producing home consoles. I still think they have the superior controller.
>Things are looking worse this generation: The Xbox Series S and X reportedly only sold around 33 million units as of July, according to Statista estimates, while Sony confirmed it sold 84.2 million PS5s as of November.
I read the title and I thought xbox must be doing really bad. Turns out not the case. Especially when two sales figures are 4 months apart. Historically speaking PlayStation has always outsold Xbox by 2-3 times even in Xbox's best days. Compared to its lunch in 2000 when no one in Japan or Asia were buying it this is still not doing too bad.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if PS6 will put Xbox further behind.
I remember getting an Xbox One and being excited about the concept of it being the center for entertainment in my house. The marketing promise was that it would integrate with TVs and music and make those things better in ways that were sort of nebulous and not super well defined, and that unfortunately came at the expense of it delivering a good gaming experience.
The first red flag should have been Microsoft trying to push the weird metro/UWP interface that it had with news, the store, movies and a tv guide, and more versus a library of games, and then of course all of the bad PR around Kinect and the DRM. It didn’t have backwards compatibility at launch and most of the games were things that were already out on 360, but for some reason we needed to re-buy.
The game experience never improved and the home entertainment thing never materialized, so you were just left with something that did exactly what the 360 did and duplicated your existing DVR/cable box.
The X/S wasn’t better. First you had to fight scalpers to get one, and then my first experience with it was browsing the store and seeing that I had to pick between buying the Xbox one version of games or the X/S version. The entire thing was built around some new revolutionary concept of streaming cloud games, which didn’t work. Games are FPS capped and if you install them locally they require 15 of the 45 minutes you have to game to download updates that should happen while the thing sleeps. It got slightly better over time, but juxtaposed with my pc and steam it was such an unpolished experience.
What it really comes down to for me is that it’s a gaming console that tries to do a bunch of stuff I don’t care about and fails at the one thing I do care about it doing (playing games). There’s a larger commentary here about Microsoft, but this isn’t unique to them. I should have been a lifelong console buyer; instead I will probably not buy another one because for the past two generations the experience has been awful, and whatever they come out with next is going to be packed with a bunch of streaming junk and AI and other stuff I don’t want, and will not do the thing I do want in any way that competes with the old faithful PC and steam.
I find it comical that the Switch was completely ignored, which just means to me that Nintendo finally won the console wars while the other two fight for second place. VGCharts has this for lifetime sales for the current consoles in the USA.
Switch 1 (57,530,683)
PlayStation 5 - (33,012,035)
Xbox Series X|S - (20,764,129)
Switch 2 -(4,243,125)
Nintendo isn't really competing in the same space. You buy Nintendo if you want their exclusive games, otherwise not. For everything else, you get to pick between PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Steam deck, etc
23 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] thread> That platform is a Linux distribution optimized for emulating Windows titles
WINE stands for "WINE is not an emulator."
That said, if I didn’t have to re-buy a bunch of content I already own and if I could avoid playing against MnK players while I’m on controller, I’d have already switched over entirely to using my workstation to play all my games. New purchases for myself and my kids are 100% on Steam.
The will to manifest the meme into reality came from a convergence of trends. Neophyte linux enthusiasts in gaming drove a lot of it, I suspect.
I ended up getting a steam deck which is just amazing and the kids ended up on on tablets (minecraft/roblox) and on PCs (arma and such).
For split screen we ended up occasionally connecting the steam deck to the tv and re-pairing Xbox controllers to it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150704163602/http://www.euroga...
Someone with no real technological vision takes the helm, and they end up listening to MBAs instead of techies, visionaries or even customers. They spend their efforts focusing solely on maximizing profits, and then trying to take a shortcut on invention through acquisitions or by chasing fads.
I mean, Microsoft makes like $20B in profit every quarter, so it's not like the MBAs are useless. They're just useless at creating the future.
What is Microsoft's BHAG for XBox?
With this year's price hikes though that's not the case anymore, you are better off just buying a good $20 game every month or buying a good $50 game every other month.
But I agree. I (foolishly) spent money on an Xbox last year only to find bugs that would make the Windows operating system weep. My kids have to ask me CONSTANTLY to update things, re-install game, or even just troubleshoot a damn controller not working.
Compare that to Steam, where I can just add them to my family and give them access to a huge number of split-screen compatible games across my entire catalog. It just doesn’t make financial sense to keep supporting Microsoft’s enshittification of everything.
I stopped following mainstream gaming not too long ago, to me, I just couldn't care less at this point. The Series X doesn't appeal to me at all as I've gotten older.
It would be interesting if Microsoft went the way of Sega and stopped producing home consoles. I still think they have the superior controller.
I read the title and I thought xbox must be doing really bad. Turns out not the case. Especially when two sales figures are 4 months apart. Historically speaking PlayStation has always outsold Xbox by 2-3 times even in Xbox's best days. Compared to its lunch in 2000 when no one in Japan or Asia were buying it this is still not doing too bad.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if PS6 will put Xbox further behind.
Huh? In Xbox's best days it was beating the Playstation 3 in sales (2006-2009).
The first red flag should have been Microsoft trying to push the weird metro/UWP interface that it had with news, the store, movies and a tv guide, and more versus a library of games, and then of course all of the bad PR around Kinect and the DRM. It didn’t have backwards compatibility at launch and most of the games were things that were already out on 360, but for some reason we needed to re-buy.
The game experience never improved and the home entertainment thing never materialized, so you were just left with something that did exactly what the 360 did and duplicated your existing DVR/cable box.
The X/S wasn’t better. First you had to fight scalpers to get one, and then my first experience with it was browsing the store and seeing that I had to pick between buying the Xbox one version of games or the X/S version. The entire thing was built around some new revolutionary concept of streaming cloud games, which didn’t work. Games are FPS capped and if you install them locally they require 15 of the 45 minutes you have to game to download updates that should happen while the thing sleeps. It got slightly better over time, but juxtaposed with my pc and steam it was such an unpolished experience.
What it really comes down to for me is that it’s a gaming console that tries to do a bunch of stuff I don’t care about and fails at the one thing I do care about it doing (playing games). There’s a larger commentary here about Microsoft, but this isn’t unique to them. I should have been a lifelong console buyer; instead I will probably not buy another one because for the past two generations the experience has been awful, and whatever they come out with next is going to be packed with a bunch of streaming junk and AI and other stuff I don’t want, and will not do the thing I do want in any way that competes with the old faithful PC and steam.
Switch 1 (57,530,683) PlayStation 5 - (33,012,035) Xbox Series X|S - (20,764,129) Switch 2 -(4,243,125)