LogFAQs > #980022865

PraetorXyn posted...

Its dead in the water outside the US just like every other Xbox.

At this point, theres nothing Microsoft can do.

The things against them are:
1. If you have a gaming PC, an Xboxs only purpose is backwards compatibility with a handful of older exclusives that havent been ported, remastered, or added to collections that were remastered / ported.
2. If someone primarily plays Japanese gameswhich Xboxes historically havent gottenand their whole library is already on PC or PlayStation, why would they switch now?
3. Since Xbox has gotten shellacked for two generations in a row, sales demonstrate most people have PlayStations and most of their libraries are on PlayStation rather than Xbox, so again, why would they switch now?
4. People have Steam achievements / PlayStation trophies and a lot of play progress outside the Xbox ecosystem, so why would they start over on Xbox?
5. One of the reasons a lot of people (myself included) bought a 360 was to play online with their friends, but with the advent of crossplay that lets PC / PlayStation owners play with their friends on Xbox, theres no reason for them to buy an Xbox to play with their friends.
There are probably even things I cant think of here, but thats a start.

All of this is true. I'd also add that Microsoft needs to figure out a way to get better involved with their studios. Sony is still far more involved with executives flying out to check on progress and status as well as lending a hand with their very robust development pipelines and support network, which also helps. Cory Barlogs interview about how Shu called GOW 2018 a bad game during his visit springs to mind. The candid and potentially demotivating response really pushed the team to do better, and see where it got them.

Xbox and Microsoft gives their studios freedom it often feels like a lack of direction and a disconnect from what people want. 343 has failed Halo three times in a row. Rare spent five years floundering with their game 'Everwild' which now seems to be canned. Avowed got internally restarted and the devs are already trying to lower expectations and the news seems to spend more time saying what the game won't feature. Hellblade 2 spent five years in development but seems to be 5-6 hours long. Whatever that Minecraft game last year was flopped and has already had its supported ended. Plus Minecraft has become a mess of multiple editions with the infamous super graphics update getting cancelled after years in development.

It also helps that PlayStation Studios games have been regarded as quality releases since the late PS3 era, so this prestige culture is likely ingratiated into the development studios all the way to higher up SIE corporate. Long story short Phil Spencer is a PR master but a simply fucking terrible leader.