Submitted 12 hours ago by Innerworld@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://gamesbeat.com/what-an-xbox-founder-thinks-of-the-new-xbox-ceo-seamus-blackley-interview/
It’s insane how Microsoft is handling Xbox:
They have everything in place and are still getting slapped around by Valve and Sony and are now talking about shutting down everything?
As a long time IT guy… this is how Microsoft does everything
They thoroughly shit the bed, it’s an astonishing display of incompetence.
I guess they’re going to go all-in on AI despite only 3.3% of MS365 subscribers paying for Copilot. Stonks?
My feeling on Xbox since Xbox One days has been pretty much “this is an awesome platform, you’re sitting on a gold mine Microsoft, what the fuck are you doing?”
The last bit of brilliance they did utilise properly was GamePass, and of course they cocked that up by getting greedy.
Last few years have been extremely rough. The only lucky thing about this is that instead of full Xbox exclusivity Microsoft was pushing Xbox/Windows cross functionality. …Yeah, I’ve been pivoting to PC, but Steam/GOG instead.
Enshittifying
It’s been a sad thing to watch. I was the biggest Xbox fan in my circles in the 360 & One days. But by the time Series X came out, I was so disappointed in their games that I still don’t own it. Microsoft bought so many companies that I thought would bring games. Yet, most of them aren’t producing anything.
I think MS has been surprised and confused by the success of Xbox ever since the very first one came out. It kinda stuck, and the upper management probably never really had a good idea what to do with it, as it just never really worked with them being oriented on business offerings. Remember Ballmer going wild during Xbox One reveal? Yeah. I think during this gen and previous more and more of the business people came into Xbox, and thus the meandering of the brand. They have no clue what gamers want, they’re penny pinchers and pencil pushers.
Microsoft is quietly sunsetting everything they cant make money on with AI.
So, everything?
It feels that way. Every ongoing product MS has feels decrepit and ready to collapse.
They’re still scamming the shit out of businesses with their corporate software. Oh and they have Azure which I’m guessing makes money.
I’m so happy that in the recent years Linux made leaps and bounds in terms of usability so now we have an alternative that actually works well, especially since Microsoft just stopped caring about desktop Windows users.
They can’t even make money with their AI, they only survive off the windows OEM licenses, Office 365 subs that businesses are locked into and their backend server and sql stuff. That’s enough to make them a walking dead for a long time.
So, also AI?
This is for the best. As someone who is forced to work with a lot of Microsoft infrastructure let me tell you things have never been this broken before. They keep doubling down on AI and it simply doesn’t work.
I feel you brother. It’s bad. They are pushing AI features at the speed of light but forgetting that other things need attention too. Log a support ticket and it spews out AI shit that I have already tried or doesn’t help.
My favorite last week was 2 dead support numbers and a third that let to AI which happily told me it has a solution that will fix the problem. The link it sent brought me to the bing search page.
I was so happy to finally talk to indian support a day later.
didn’t the new exec come from their AI division?
Is this how they put her out to pasture? “Your AI division has been such shit that we’ll put you in charge of a division we plan to close…”
There are already a bunch of documented but umimplemented functions in a few Xbox related API, like GameInput.
The console wars have ended. The PC is victorious.
Some victory. PC sales were plummeting in favour of mobile and now component prices. Console space is now done with any semblance of competition - Sony is now a monopoly and will start behaving as such. And xbox’s portfolio of many many IPs will go straight to the bin.
Ah fuck I forgot about mobile and I hate to consider it.
No, many of them will go to PCs or Sony over giving up
You mean Tencent mobile games
Microsoft owns King. The candy crush franchise creator.
No
No, the new player in the game, AI killed everything.
My PC will still boot when the people turn on the data centers in the next 6 months. Can AI say the same?
After letting go of Tango disregarding their massive success, that part is pretty obvious.
Ain’t that quiet.
“Cortana, play a game for me.”
“Cortana, am I having fun?”
xbone was the beginning of the end. when the enshittification kicked in before we had a word for it.
Enshitification has been a thing since the 1940s. I remember in the 80s my grandma saying she used to get pretzels from the corner store. Big soft gooey chewey pretzels.
Now, in the 80s, I could only get a factory made crunchy pretzel rod.
And today? Unless you’re buying a whole bag, you can’t get pretzels at all.
Gone are the mom and pop bakeries too. :(
If you are ever on a road trip and go by a Wawa gas station, stop and get their soft pretzels. buy as many as you can and freeze them for later.
The german grocery store Lidl also has decent soft pretzels.
Agreed. I’m still convinced that the always online/DRM shit they pulled with the Xbox One at launch was a catastrophe they never recovered from. Even though they quickly reversed that decision after backlash, I think the damage was done.
yeah at the very least it signaled their intentions.
They’re sunsetting the platform alright, but nothing about it is quiet
I was thinking the same thing. We’ve known about it for years.
When xbox first hit the scene it was a breath of fresh air. Now its just a stale fart, its time for it to die.
Its got to be deliberate. They’ve had so many chances and fucked it, and they’ve had so many successes that they’ve just cancelled or discontinued for seemingly no reason.
Tax write-offs like Batgirl?
It’s been for a few years now.
This isn’t new. I heard them say years ago “yeah Sony won the console war but that doesn’t matter” implying cloud gaming
That makes sense. Microsoft didn’t enter the console market for gamers or gaming- they entered it to beat sony. The PS2 had a linux distro you could load on it to try to sell it as a computer to circumvent luxury import taxes. If it WAS a computer, it would compete with Microsoft Windows. They were worried that a console could just sell software instead of games and be a competitor, so they threw a ton of money trying to run Sony out of business.
Microsoft never really wanted to win gaming. The war was against an enemy that wasn’t really a threat. So not killing off a console wasn’t really a “loss”.
Is this the real reason everybody is trying to sue valve these days?
That’s a 360
What can I say but… at least their hardware was on average a little more functional than Sony’s.
He’s aged so much he looks like a prospector who has been struggling to find any gold at all …
Xbox as a 3rd party publisher can succeed. As a console vendor, it’s too late to stop the multiplatform strategy this gen. They’re not Nintendo. At least on the Wii U, Nintendo was still releasing great games and the 3DS sold like 80 million units and Nintendo were also releasing great games there and all those studios would converge on the Switch. They can’t be serious launching a console without a great launch year lineup of exclusives marketed well to convince people that they won’t cut tail and run if a new console doesn’t take off.
The advice for the new Xbox CEO that I believe in is to rip the bandage off and embrace 3rd party publishing. Timings for a new console seem awful. Fable is supposed to release this year. Forza Horizon Japan this year. Obsidian has already released their two big games last year. Perfect Dark cancelled. Forza Motorsport studio seemingly on life support rather than working on a new entry. New Gears of War should release soon. Elder Scrolls VII I’m not betting on that before the 2030s. Also these unreleased announced games are marketed as multiplatform already. Is it going to be another attempt at a Halo as the launch title after a string of crowd goes mild Halo releases
mechoman444@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I love how corporations work. “Hey, we completely fucked this up. We mishandled it, made decisions our customers hate, and now we’re scrapping it because we might lose money.” “Could we fix it? Sure. But that would mean changing the business model that made us money 20 years ago, and that’s terrifying. There’s a risk we might lose money.” “And sure, the board won’t lose a dime personally. But the stockholders, basically meerkats who scatter at the first loud noise might panic. And we can’t have that. We might lose money.”