They probably realized that they’re better off paying 3rd party devs to put t
Comment on Microsoft Plans Major Job Cuts at Xbox Gaming Division
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Microsoft is exiting the console business
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Then why buy Blizzard and Activis—!?
Oh. To enrich gamepass…not to make new games.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That’s my theory. They’ll pump out a few cookie cutter games on the existing IPs, but relatively little creativity is going to be allowed. It’s all for gamepass.
They’ve been touting Gamepass as the xbox seller for a long time now.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 weeks ago
Yeah with their “everything is an Xbox” nonsense it’s pretty clear they want to focus on the platform, marketplace where you buy games. Playing them is kind of second. I’m sure they’ll still have something, but it’s going to be more geared towards cloud streaming, pc, handhelds, and “play where you want” so they can just do the digital side. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get partners like Asus to build boxes now.
overload@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That would be a shakeup. If they released a Gaming veraion of Windows on a PC with quick resume that also played much of the Xbox library going back to the OG Xbox, that could appeal to a lot of people. Xbox is run by the same company that has an operating system installed on 71% of the worlds computers, and they still haven’t figured out how to leverage that.
nostalgicgamerz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So we’ve always have had 3 competitors. Who is going to replace them?
Valencia@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Xbox will still exist as a platform, just not the console. It’ll probably just be stuff like the Xbox ally x; Xbox partners with brands to sell hardware with cut down versions of windows that has access to 3rd party markets like steam and such, but a major emphasis on the Xbox/windows store.
Either way, I don’t think there has to be a third platform if Xbox went away. PC looked kinda shaky there for a moment in the '00s/'10s, but at this point it seems pretty well poised to become the dominant platform. Xbox and PlayStation already port games to steam and even GoG. Nintendo is the harder nut to crack, I’m not sure what’d it take for them to get out of the hardware business. I read somewhere they have enough cash on hand to operate at a loss for like a decade or something.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
This is a couple days delayed response, apologies for that I’ve been pretty busy.
With the rise of game streaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna I predict that the console market is basically over. I honestly don’t expect Microsoft to release another console and if Sony does it’s almost certain to be the last. Nintendo may stick with it longer since they just released the Switch2 but they seem to be prepping for it with the digital key thing.
It sucks for the players but it makes fiscal sense for the Publishers and Console Makers (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) if there is an industry wide pivot to game streaming where players are required to pay every month. I know that some games don’t lend themselves well to this, yet, but it’s blatantly obvious (at least to me) that this is where the industry is headed.
We’ve already reached the end of “Console Exclusive” games and I think what comes next is “Platform Exclusive” games. I think what comes after that is the Publishers establishing their own Platforms for their own games.
This is precisely what has happened with the rest of the entertainment industry and there’s no reason I can see for gaming, which is a subset of the entertainment industry, to do anything else now that the streaming technology exists.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Likely no one. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of consoles is the last one.