Maybe...
Candour is a gift in times of strife and turmoil, where the truth of a matter can be as ephemeral as a phantom's breath in a Bîaŵac. (Does... does anyone get that reference other than me?) What I'm trying to say is that is can be refreshing to hear someone state the truth how it actually is after living for so very long under the delusions of what everyone wants the world and it's truths to look like. And who better to elucidate the situation than that one person placed at the very top to be aware of every side of the matter? Yes, I'm talking about Phil Spencer and the real state of Xbox outside the pomp and marketing and all of that guff- that in reality Xbox might not actually be the place to buy and play your games despite having what I believe is the objectively most powerful console on the market right now in terms of hardware capability. The power is there, but if the numbers are to be believed than the market share just isn't.
And as 'sterile' and 'uninteresting' as terms like 'Market Share' can be to the layman; everything we love within the entertainment industry is a balancing act of popularity. Being a hipster can only work up to a certain degree, because at some point the thing you love diverges from popular success so much that it becomes no longer profitable to pursue and thus is eventually discontinued. That one online game that you and only some small handful of people really saw the potential of, and which you flocked to in hopes it would grow into something the world would love one day? Yeah, when that game got shut down, consider that heartbreak a mere shadow of the absolute chaos awaiting for the day when Xbox slips too from the popular eye. You know, assuming that the powers that be would allow the console to get that far. But then, by Phil Spencer's account we may be beyond that point already.
Recently we talked about Phil Spencer's comments regarding the failure of Redfall and his failures in managing that game and allowing the Xbox community to become disappointed once again- now we've become a bit more clear on why that happened. Bethesda is apparently not as lock-step with Microsoft as marketing might suggest with their dual showcase events and playful synergy-named events. The merger is a slow and ongoing process and the two different corporate entities have yet to combine their vastly different styles to content creation- though they're working on it. And within all that movement it could be considered actually somewhat understandable for a game which was being developed under the supervision of Bethesda to somehow fly under the radar of Phil and even Bethesda themselves, as it morphed into an absolute monster of design. Of course, there's still the missing piece of the recipe explaining how Redfall itself became such a disaster- but at least we know why the safety rails were uninstalled on that fateful day.
But the conversation has since moved on to other, much more dire, comments that Phil has made considering the wider Xbox infrastructure as a whole and though the man doesn't say it, from the outside it's hard not to hear the resignation between the lines. He bemoans the fact that Xbox just isn't in the races compared to Nintendo and Playstation, and how the common adage of 'just make good games' would be insufficient to bridge that growing chasm because as he says "There's no world where Starfield is an 11/10 and everybody just sells their PS5s". Of course, he is very right. Starfield probably isn't even going to be a 10/10 knowing Bethesda's track record, and with the ongoing pressure that Sony is placing with it's dedication to high quality AAA defining games- Xbox doesn't currently have the talent pool to even stand up to what the Station is swinging around. But then... what hope does Xbox really have of toughing out this generation?
The Xbox one famously gave a lot of ground to the Playstation market, what with it's wild veering away from being a gaming console to instead becoming a 'multimedia device'. A direction that would have perhaps been a decently fine step if it came hand-in-hand with the same sort of support that the 360 got in terms of games, or even a dedication to that aspect of console market building. As it was, the Xbox one couldn't sustain itself in any direction to any degree and ended up floundering in the face of it's peers. Recovering from that would entail rewriting the prejudices summoned up from that 'mistake in direction' and reaffirming that Xbox is still the place for games. Which, for the moment, would actually be somewhat untrue. Playstation is the place for games and gamers. So why do we believe that adding games wouldn't go some way to changing that perception?
Afterall it was great exclusives like The Last of Us, like Ghost of Tsushima, like God of War; games that redefined generations, those are what gave Sony the boost it needed after the messy PS3 era which cost the Playstation name it's luster. Final Fantasy 7 Remake has married itself to PlayStation, with 16 coming for Playstation first too. It doesn't even feel like there's any room for Xbox to wiggle it's way back into the competition. But by god have they gone to buy the studios to make those games0! It feels like half of all the medium-weight developers to ever grace the industry have been swallowed up by Xbox and must be toiling away at some crazy titles to have not produced so much as promising trailers for any of their products. The most we've gotten is an announcement for 'The Outer Worlds 2' from Obsidian which... yay. That slightly mediocre RPG is getting a sequel; let me hold myself before all the excitement just spills out.
To that end, I can kind of understand what Phil means when he says that good games just aren't going to change a generation worth of bad direction. There is a shadow hanging over the Xbox brand right now, tainted by bad releases and let-downs, telling the gaming audience not to trust their logo as the seal of approval on a brand. The best we can hope for right now is what 'Halo: Infinite' achieved; which is still only just working the growing pains to becoming somewhat what was promised. (Sans core features like split screen) But then, what is the future in his eyes? Because Phil is not someone to shrug his shoulders and give up. How can Xbox change it's image completely in the eyes of the millions? Game Pass seems like a step in that direction but what's next... wait, you don't think Xbox is going 'STADIA'; do you?
Why not? Cloud gaming, the ability for people to play high quality Xbox titles without having to invest in an expensive console- it's been a hypothetical up until now but we've already seen Microsoft's experiments and betas in production. I can totally see Xbox expanding this out to be their newest direction, expanding the potential base of gamers beyond anything Sony can mimic with their limited infrastructure. But that direction would most likely come at the cost of matching Sony's slate of games, which is going to frustrate the existing audience and I think Microsoft knows that. Reading between the lines and somewhat expecting the worse, I think the future of Xbox is them fully conceding the dedicated gamer market in order to appeal to the underserved casual demographic. And I hate how plausible that sounds as much as you do.
But until that end it very much does seem that Xbox is solidly sat on the back foot of this console generation with no means of fixing itself. Whether he meant to imply it or not, Phil has cast further doubt on the quality of Starfield, implying that even doesn't believe in it at this point, and given that Xbox doesn't have anything else due for the rest of the year, and Sony has two Final Fantasy games, I wonder if the rest of the Series X is destined to be nothing but a wash. You know what could change the world's mind on this matter? Providing some update to prove that their apparent system crushing game 'Perfect Dark' still exists. And the new Obsidian open world fantasy game actually coming out. And that Activision deal coming through. And dad coming back from the shop with those cigarettes. And...
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