Yeah all these people saying “im glad i dont use Xbox” are missing the point of whats happening here

What gets me is it didn’t have to be this way. Corporate greed, unnecessary acquisitions, and blindly chasing trends are what got us here.

Besides the stuff you said: Trends and the Internet. We are moving way to fast to one thing to another so media has a hard time to react.

That’s a really good point too. I saw a video today about how the Switch 2 is ‘losing momentum’ and needs more games. Like it hasn’t even been a month 😂

Hotter take: capitalism is dead, but we are still tied to it’s lumbering, massive, rotten corpse

Stop telling the truth

They™️ will kill me for this shit man

(Yeah, the Xbox we knew is kinda dead but you get what I want to say I believe it's part of the industry shift.)

Since Twitter is melting down on my post (lol), I just have some extra thoughts on the whole think. I don't believe it was better in the past, it was just different. Change is a part of every industry but I believe we simply reached the point in the "hobby" where we went from a group of people is

Doing something creative and easy accessible (money wise) to the hard capitalist reality. And it doesn't matter if it's corpo 1 or corpo 2 at the end we're out of the phase we're companies actively invested in the consumer itself. Late stage capitalism aka milking time. 🤷‍♂️

A friend who works in the industry told me once "if you believe "my favorite company" wouldn't do that!" than they're already doing it since 2 years."

Anyways. You should buy a Playdate. play.date

So true. I remember being like "Riot would never!", back in the day and here we are, lmfao. (Not me crying in the corner, no no)

Idk man, I feel like Sony and Nintendo are going to keep doing the console thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Xbox is nothing more than a branded 3rd party box, and you can play their games anywhere. The death of exclusivity means the death of the console, if I’m wrong why isn’t horizon on Xbox?

Not every brand goes the same way but Nintendo announced price hikes for older consoles and killed Nintendo selects long time ago. PlayStation is running after the gaas money back. Multiple double aa and Indie game studios are shutting down. And so on

I mean, has anyone expressed an interest in having it? That said exclusivity is a sales tool, it does not benefit you as a player of games, it benefits the people who want you to play on a certain box.

Don't deflect Xbox's unique incompetence away from them by generalizing the situation to an "industry" one. Tons of companies are doing just fine and don't lay off half of their workforce every three months.

I don't deflect anything.

That post definitely is. No other company is destroying jobs/projects as much as Xbox is doing right now. While there is an industry problem, shifting the blame away from Xbox to talk about how "everyone" is doing it is not only not true but also how Spencer is getting away with it by the press

Sigh I don't say Nintendo, EA, Sony, Square or whatever is doing the same mistakes. I said the industry you know (and loved) 20 or 10 years ago is dead and gone.

Like I shit a ton on Xbox and its leadership but there is simply and industry wide problem when it comes to trends and how capital is reacting to it. Success doesn't mean it's positive. Failure doesn't mean someone is the sole reason. Change simply means stuff is different now.

again, it's deflecting to generalize the Xbox situation to the whole industry. It's shifting an individual-specific blame to a wider, more elusive and less approachable target. It's giving invidiuals an escape. You may not realize but this is what it is.

Bro, I'm not calling Phil Spencer a saint and I don't give him an exit pass The claim was the Xbox we knew is dead and I simply responded No, I wouldn't say that because the core is still the same but the industry we knew (& people still hold on) is dead I gave my fair share of critic in other post

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

How is the core "still the same" when they've laid off virtually everyone who worked at Xbox during the heydays of the 360? The article you quoted does a more thoughtful analysis. Xbox's own decisions (being a 3P pub, acquiring studios) is what led them to kill their own legacy.

Have you seen the total numbers of layoffs in the last 3 or so years? It is generalized for the most part in the US (less so in other regions due to better worker rights)

No shit, an article goes more into the topic than a one line I throw out 10 min before I went to bed. The core is the "console" and the pillar franchises and this will (probably) not change.

We are just in the same stage as the last 3 layoffs, everybody is rightfully mad and in 12 months we talk about the showcase again. Games media is a niche an normie consumer will not notice or care about the layoffs since they get their infos from youtuber or streamers.

And just wait until the next wave of layoffs on the sector hits. Ubi, EA, and Sony, next

And I take it personal if you put me into the same corner as somw fucking fanboys.

None of this changes anything to the conversation though? If we're talking about "consumers", the Xbox brand is already largely dead. Nobody is buying their consoles compared to the 360 days. I think you should read the article.

Many western developers/publishers (plus Sony) are doing similar. Microsoft is just an obscenely massive company, the recent layoffs account for about 4% of the company. The number of employees even increased in 2024, despite other big layoffs happening last May.

Game Pass was to be the Netflix of Gaming...well now it truly is with things getting randomly canceled

freezing cold take actually

Wanna see the comments on my twitter post?

Xbox unfortunately is dead to me after this. Perfect Dark looked so damn promising. Microsoft and Phil Spencer can eat the fattest dick. P.S. Fuck Don Mattrick too. After the reveal of the Xbox One it was all downhill here. Here's hoping that Microsoft brings their games to Switch 2

Not that hot of a take. Maybe a warm take.

The AAA industry has been dead, it's death knell was the PS5 being too expensive and rushed out the door with no games. It's not the PS5's fault, that's just the moment you can pinpoint what AAA video games were was over and what AAA video games are began. Can probably extend most of this to AA.

Even the PS4 had very few games when it started up until Bloodborne and The Witcher 3 in 2015. The rest before were ports and remasters

Yeah and the PS3 was a wreck at launch as well. The PS5 itself isn't necessarily an/the issue, it's launch is just a timestamp for the flat lining of the previous era of AAA games, in my opinion.

Sure. But tbh I never liked the ps4 as a system, so I kinda embraced the ps5 as the necessary change hardware wise. More stability and smoothness overall. But I guess they didn't count the fact that fewer games will be released in between... also too reliant on ps4 games...

Man, the games are still GOOD though. Its upsetting where we are at but creativity has not gone anywhere so its hard to be too jaded at the moment.

I personally think the end of the supply chain is a biiig issue. And MS is part of that along with Sony and valve. Games have been a deflationary product. But costs have gone up to make AAA games.

A cart from 1992 would be well over 100 today adjusted for inflation. Now be clear I'm not saying corporate greed is not the heart of the problem. But its wild that up until now games have been 60 bucks for like 20 years. How did they try to monetize out side of that 60 buck cartel?

Micro transactions. My good friend was hired to develope web 3 nft games. He realized about 1 year into it that this WONT make games better. He quit and the company fell shortly after. Now would we have micro transactions or nfts in games?

If they could charge more for a game other than 60 bucks for the past 20 years? We cant really answer that question in the real world. But them and time again great games like elden ring , death stranding and the like come around for 60 bucks and sell mega units.

And that is amazing and we need that. But simple matter of fact is unless the industry changes if games dont make quota people will get fired. That is the nature of capitalism we choose to play in the sandbox of.

Bottom line is AAA is getting to big, too unmanageable. My prediction is we are going go get smaller well crafted games and this will be better. But the industry probably wont be the same as it was.

If anything Xbox is pivoting late and clumsily.

Nah, Xbox is dying by thousand self inficted cuts because the run after short term investor growth.

They're so immense that it's tough for people at our level to even understand what is going on. They've literally never made more money/had more games in development, yet it's never enough. I agree today is terrible but the 'xbox ded' takes do not make sense right now.

Pretty sure they’ve delivered more than Sony recently.

Exactly this. Anyone looking at the industry thinking things are going great is delusional. Sony is cancelling GAAS games left and right and have closed studios as well. Nintendo seem like the more successful with their model, but even they have to raise prices of games and console to a crazy level.

Nobody "has to" raise prices. They dare to raise prices knowing they'll get away with it

Yup. Too many people still think it's the 2000s. That era of gaming is (unfortunately) long gone.

I think it'd be more accurate to say Western gaming in particular is dying.

Nintendo isnt free of any of this

I think a lot of people are engaging in thinking traps. Like this article. I forgot why said it but the gaming market is matured. I think that means something in finances

Part of the industry change definitely comes from gaming broadly still being a hobby for those interested but not for the people making them anymore. Immediate disconnect there, and it leads to disappointment on both sides.

if you believe Playdate wouldn't do that, than they're already doing it since 2 years 😭

Playdate wouldn't release a banger console.