Some publishers reportedly questioning support for Xbox amid flatlining' sales

Thread: Some publishers reportedly questioning support for Xbox amid flatlining' sales
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Some publishers reportedly questioning support for Xbox amid ‘flatlining’ sales | VGC

Microsoft is planning to bring the majority of Xbox games to PS5 at some point, it’s also claimed…
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Some third-party publishers are reportedly expressing doubts about continuing to support Xbox consoles amid "flatlining" sales in Europe.

That's according to GamesIndustry.biz head Chris Dring, who said his takeaway from GDC last week was that he thinks "Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer".

"The other thing I heard—I heard it from a very prominent company and one not so prominent—was Xbox's performance in Europe is just flatlining", he said.

"You can follow our monthly coverage in the games market and you can see that Xbox sales are falling, and it's been falling all throughout last year and it's falling even harder this year.

"The phrase one major company who released a big game last year said [was], 'I don't know why we bothered supporting it'.

"We mentioned on a previous podcast that we'd heard retailers in Europe are considering or had already been cutting back their Xbox stock on their shelves—hardware, games, that kind of thing—and now you've got third-party publishers going, 'we're putting in a lot of effort trying to create a Series S version and an X version of a game when, to be honest with you, for us the market is PC and PS5'."
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Dring continued: "And with Xbox putting some of the games on PS5—from what I understand the majority of them will be coming across at some point, assuming it progresses as Xbox believes it probably will—I think Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer, and that was the thing that came out of GDC for me."

He added: "I thought it would be fine, but then I didn't really factor in that some developers and publishers might just go, 'yeah I don't, you know, is there any point?' And that is when you can lose it."
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Well, on the software front, isn't this what happens when you introduce a service that rewards people for not buying games?

I never understood how GP was going to do anything besides ruin the Xbox division, and it appears those fears were founded.


Also, an even more telling sign of MS' utter incompetence is the fact that Phil Spencer is still employed. Whose dick(s) is he sucking?
 
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Xbox has done everything in their power to tell people not to buy an Xbox, and if they do, not to buy any games on it.

I'm also hardly surprised hardware sales fell even further this year after first the speculation over then confirmation of Xbox games going full multiplat with PlayStation ports.

We're genuinely at the point where you'd be a complete mug to actually buy an Xbox. Literally the only thing they've managed to improve in the last year is the reasons to own a PS5.

And while this report is only regarding European sales, does anyone seriously think sales in the rest of the world aren't following suit?

I'm still 50/50 on wether we'll get a 10th gen Xbox. A bit of me thinks it might be one last roll of the dice to see if sales improve, and heavily lean into the Gamepass strategy if they do, or maybe go even lower end than the XSS and either have a streaming box or a Switch like handheld/home dock hybrid, but also wouldn't be surprised if MS just write off the current sink development cost and call it a day for hardware.

It's truly shocking how Xbox went from being the ascendant new king in waiting of console gaming to circling the drain to the sewer of third party publishing in just a decade. The fact PlayStation looked at them and decided they were all in on the same strategy even more so.
 
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Stilton Disco said:
Xbox has done everything in their power to tell people not to buy an Xbox, and if they do, not to buy any games on it.

I'm also hardly surprised hardware sales fell even further this year after first the speculation over then confirmation of Xbox games going full multiplat with PlayStation ports.

We're genuinely at the point where you'd be a complete mug to actually buy an Xbox. Literally the only thing they've managed to improve in the last year is the reasons to own a PS5.

And while this report is only regarding European sales, does anyone seriously think sales in the rest of the world aren't following suit?

I'm still 50/50 on wether we'll get a 10th gen Xbox. A bit of me thinks it might be one last roll of the dice to see if sales improve, and heavily lean into the Gamepass strategy if they do, or maybe go even lower end than the XSS and either have a streaming box or a Switch like handheld/home dock hybrid, but also wouldn't be surprised if MS just write off the current sink development cost and call it a day for hardware.

It's truly shocking how Xbox went from being the ascendant new king in waiting of console gaming to circling the drain to the sewer of third party publishing in just a decade. The fact PlayStation looked at them and decided they were all in on the same strategy even more so.
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This is exactly how I feel. There hasn't been any vision for the Xbox since the 360. From Kinect onward, it's always been badly conceived ideas stolen from others and then with this generation they simply tried to buy their way into the living room. None of it has worked and everything they've done has felt like a sad Hail Mary -- two skus dividing the market up, heavy reliance on an untested streaming service, jumping on the DEI bandwagon, heavy investment and reliance on consolidation with little in the way of output, old franchises left to wither and no new franchises taking their place. I mean I could go on and on. And yes, telling people not to buy an Xbox was fucking stupid; probably the dumbest thing I've seen a company do ever. For that alone, Spencer should be gone.

Bottom line: they need new management and games, games, and more games. I think it's too little too late on both counts.
 
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HeresJohnny said:
This is exactly how I feel. There hasn't been any vision for the Xbox since the 360. From Kinect onward, it's always been badly conceived ideas stolen from others and then with this generation they simply tried to buy their way into the living room. None of it has worked and everything they've done has felt like a sad Hail Mary -- two skus dividing the market up, heavy reliance on an untested streaming service, jumping on the DEI bandwagon, heavy investment and reliance on consolidation with little in the way of output, old franchises left to wither and no new franchises taking their place. I mean I could go on and on. And yes, telling people not to buy an Xbox was fucking stupid; probably the dumbest thing I've seen a company do ever. For that alone, Spencer should be gone.

Bottom line: they need new management and games, games, and more games. I think it's too little too late on both counts.
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And some people still love Spencer.
 
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lock2k said:
And some people still love Spencer.
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Spencer is a snake; he puts on his Gamer skin suit and goes out there and talks to the gullible and gets them to believe he's one of them, but he's not. He's just another corporate dingleberry clinging on to the ass of Microsoft, honestly. What has this dude done to garner any kind of support at all? The brand has been in decline his entire tenure.
 
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Seriously, fuck Xbox. I was excited by their offerings when they first entered the videogame market but all they're doing now is being a glorified streamer for gamers. What a fucking waste of studio acquisitions.

I don't want Sony to have the only high end game console on the market.
 
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HeresJohnny said:
Spencer is a snake; he puts on his Gamer skin suit and goes out there and talks to the gullible and gets them to believe he's one of them, but he's not. He's just another corporate dingleberry clinging on to the ass of Microsoft, honestly. What has this dude done to garner any kind of support at all? The brand has been in decline his entire tenure.
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But but, he loves the xbox game voodoo vince so he MUST be one of us 🥲
 
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As a PC gamer, I can tell you the worse business choice Xbox made for themselves (when it comes to me as a consumer) was making Xbox exclusives day 1 pc releases. Any and all incentive I had to buy an Xbox instantly went away. Had they not done that, I would have bought an Xbox for Starfield, and several other Xbox exclusives like Forza. But this entire gen I've had no reason to now. And I'm 99% sure they don't get any money from Nvidia, Intel or AMD when I play their PC parts, and thanks to always getting free Windows updates I don't think I've had to pay for a Windows license sense Windows 7. So MS killed any hardware sales with me, Killed any software sales other than gamepass with me (which I got for basically $3 a month for 3 years, you can't tell me they made any money off that) so where is the business case for Xbox anymore?
 
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Looks wise, performance and accoustic wise, this is by FAR by favorite console ever. It's an absolute technical marvel.

Now thats not counting the games, OS or the controller I don't agree with, but let me give it praise where its due.
 
Hostile_18 said:
Looks wise, performance and accoustic wise, this is by FAR by favorite console ever. It's an absolute technical marvel.

Now thats not counting the games, OS or the controller I don't agree with, but let me give it praise where its due.
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It's also a good looking console compared to the atrocity that is the PS5's design.
 
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Remember the whole point of XBOX was to chase set top boxes. MS believed that people would be doing video calls on their TV and other dumb bullshit.
Instead smart phones were invented and TVs got software installed on them. The trojan horse plan was not useful anymore.
They didnt want to make a videogame machine they wanted a trojan horse. They thought they could use the same stratgey as they did with windows by creating a monopoly and strong arming and it failed.
And then they went woke. Decided to ditch the dude bros and Halos for diverse and inclusive gaming.
 
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