The Xbox Series X, Holiday 2020 (1 Viewer)

[Edwin-S]

The PS3 was $600 because of the CELL architecture. Those other features were added/marketed to try and justify the price while also following from the PS2 selling well because it was a cheap DVD player. And in the end...the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 regardless of the price/features.

It was 600 bucks because SONY marketed it as a media entertainment centre designed to eliminate the need for separate movie disc players and game machines. There was even a name for the concept which I'm forgetting right now.

It came with a raft of features right from the start other than the ability to play 3D discs which was added later. SONY tried to market the PS3 to the larger home electronics market as a media centre piece with a price that matched rather than as a game machine, while ignoring their biggest market of gamers who think every console and the accessories that come with it should only cost 300 dollars.

It blew up right in their face. PS3 sales were underwhelming until they started re-focusing on the gamer market and started lowering the cost of the machine.

It is exactly why the PS4 came out with less features than the PS3 and the marketing was squarely focused on it being a gaming console, while MS repeated SONY's mistake of focusing on all the non-gaming features that XBOX1 had while doubling down with the promotion of "features" that gamers perceived as damaging to them.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I really think you're conflating different things. The PS4 eliminated some features to save licensing fees on codecs to keep the profit margin high (the fee isn't that big, but Sony already loses money on console hardware sales so they want to minimize that loss). And they probably had data showing people didn't use their PS3 for those features very much or wouldn't be swayed by having/losing those features.

But the PS3 price was overwhelmingly driven by the cost of Cell. It was an extremely powerful platform but also really expensive to make and really hard to develop for. The Xbox 360 likely cost half as much to manufacture as the PS3, primarily due to cell chips and blu-ray drives. (The 360 having DVDs was seen as a big limitation for developers at the time, too.)

 

[Bryan^H]

Redfall is one of the worst games ever made. Just hideous.

At $20 it would be way too much (actually you could not pay me to play it) Unfun gameplay, ugly visuals, and lackluster everything else. Who greenlit this abomination? Lol. Painful, and sad.

 

[Alex...]

New Series S Announced



Priced at $349, the new model features a Carbon Black coloration, and will offer more storage over the current model; that extra $50 gets users 1 TB of storage, up from the normal 512 GB.

New Xbox Series S Model Announced

During today's Xbox Showcase, Phil Spencer revealed a new model of the Xbox Series S hardware. [...]

comicbook.com

 

[Edwin-S]

Starfield sounds like Bethesda's version of "No Man's Sky".

 

[Bryan^H]

2 0 2 4

SMH--This is why you fail Microsoft.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I find it very funny that Microsoft basically bungled the entire Xbox One generation and their big lesson learned will manifest in them proudly launching FOUR games per year starting in 2024. Nothing says "we got our stuff together" like finally delivering FOUR ENTIRE GAMES PER YEAR from all of their combined studios more than halfway through a console generation.

And its hilarious that they think the new hardware people want from them is a Series S with more storage. The S is holding back the X but go ahead and make another one.

Most of the games they showed were not Xbox exclusive and the handful of exclusives aren't all releasing within the next 12 months. Sure, almost everything is coming to GamePass which is a great value for people who have it or want to subscribe, but the $1 conversion deal is gone which means you're paying hundreds of dollars per year.

And to cap it all off, Starfield looks like a bunch of typical space game tropes mixed with a more bland version of No Man's Sky. It's probably going to be successful in terms of sales but I imagine it's not the opus they're pushing it to be.

 

[Edwin-S]

I was reading one article where they start off proclaiming.how the XBOX showcase out did SONY's and the proceeded to show how it was no better by describing how many of XBOX's games aren't coming out until 2024 and showed nothing but empty game trailers with almost zero game play.

They went on and basically pissed on Bethesda's Starfield by critiquing whether anything Bethesda said could be taken seriously when Bethesda crowed about the facial animations in the game while the actual trailer demonstrated them as not so good. And that was just one thing among a host of others that they brought up


The Hellblade2 "gameplay" trailer was an embarrassment of near incoherent cutscene without any game play shown.

After all that, the article then finished by stating that XBOX's showcase performance could be a generational game changer. WTF???

 

[Edwin-S]

Just to clarify, by posting about XBOX's event I had no intent to single their event out for criticism.

All of the showcase events were rather lackluster due to thw amount of game developers describing their product trailers as "gameplay" then showing zero actual play but a lot of cut scene hype.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

It seems like developers used Xbox's show to announce games, then their own shows to show off gameplay...which is a good strategy all around, really. It gets people hyped and curious but then they tune in to the developer's show.

It's also hard to rag on MS too much when neither Nintendo nor Sony is showing anything this week, even though Sony had a show a few weeks ago and Nintendo just launched Zelda.

 

[Edwin-S]

It seems like developers used Xbox's show to announce games, then their own shows to show off gameplay...which is a good strategy all around, really. It gets people hyped and curious but then they tune in to the developer's show.

It's also hard to rag on MS too much when neither Nintendo nor Sony is showing anything this week, even though Sony had a show a few weeks ago and Nintendo just launched Zelda.

I can't really agree that it is a good strategy for game developers to use the showcases of of other companies to springboard their own shows. The reason to watch MS's, Sony's and Summerfest is to see actual upcoming releases with gameplay, not.to treat viewers to.a."ro be continued" experience at developers.own showcase events.

You're right that MS doesn't deserve to be ragged on. Every one of these showcases put on so far deserve to be criticized for the damp.squibs they were.

 

[Alex...]

Microsoft says Xbox has ‘lost the console wars.’

Microsoft says Xbox has ‘lost the console wars.’

The FTC vs. Microsoft case is starting this morning and Microsoft is keen to show Xbox is in third place. “Xbox has lost the console wars, and its rivals are positioned to continue to dominate” argues Microsoft in a filing today. It also reveals Xbox had 16 percent share of console sales in 2021...

www.theverge.com

 

[Edwin-S]

It isn't just about consoles. It's about who becomes the dominant player as gaming shifts from a physical to a cloud-based delivery model. Microsoft is so bloody desperate to get their deal pushed through because they know it will be instrumental in them becoming the dominant market force in gaming.

If MS owns most of the major content providers with the largest share of players and makes all of that content XBOX exclusive then they will become the winners just by the fact that gamers will have no choice but to buy an XBOX or PC to continue access to some of the biggest franchises in gaming history.

 

[Edwin-S]

Frankly, MS has done more to slit the throat of their own console than SONY has. They put all their new games day and date on XBOX game pass and Steam, both available for PC.

Why would anyone bother buying an XBOX when a person could just buy a PC that not only can play all of XBOX content, but also all the content exclusively made for PC? Not only that, the PC can also be used for a wide range of non-gaming functions.

I know that is essentially what I'm going to do if I really want to play any of the content that MS's gaming combine puts out, even if the PC is a larger initial cash outlay. It just makes no sense to buy an XBOX with model that MS is pursuing.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Ideally, consoles would have an exceptionally low barrier for entry and low maintenance/upkeep over time for the convenience of simply working on your TV. I actually don't own a PC (just a sub-$200 Chromebook that I've had for 2+ years, which was preceded by a sub-$200 Chromebook that lasted 5+ years) but I do have a PS5, Series X, Switch, and a Steam Deck (which I have used as a PC, but...not really). Each platform is unique enough to be worth owning. And for the price of a really good PC I could have bought...well....almost all of them and still missed out on significant experiences.

Consoles don't need regular updates and patches for the base OS the same way a computer might. And it is designed to just fit in your living room, right under your TV, and work with a controller without any significant effort. Sure, that's not always the case and PC gaming has gotten better (as I said, Steam Deck) but the point of console is the low barrier for entry.

In the future, with streaming set-top boxes or even apps on smart TVs, the barrier for entry will be even lower.

 

[Bryan^H]

Microsoft says Xbox has ‘lost the console wars.’

Microsoft says Xbox has ‘lost the console wars.’

The FTC vs. Microsoft case is starting this morning and Microsoft is keen to show Xbox is in third place. “Xbox has lost the console wars, and its rivals are positioned to continue to dominate” argues Microsoft in a filing today. It also reveals Xbox had 16 percent share of console sales in 2021...

www.theverge.com

They know it, gamers know it, cats know it.

The problem is they do so little to try to fix where they are at in the gaming heirarchy. Oh well, the 360 was phenomenal. They will always have that I guess.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (3 months) for a good price! | ENEBA

Buy Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3 months. Visit Eneba to buy a neat Xbox subscriptions pack! Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games and Gold benefits for you to enjoy

www.eneba.com

With code UltiUS you can get 3 months of GamePass Ultimate for about $24. The monthly price is rising to $17/mo very soon so this is a HUGE savings.

Most of the value I get from my Series X is due to GamePass so I'll happily stock up. Honestly I think $100-120/yr for a big subscription service is a good range and this deal puts GPU just under that.

 

[Edwin-S]

So Microsoft shooting itself in the foot revealed that, as suspected, Bethesda IPs will no longer release on Playstation. Good thing it won't affect me much as I find Bethesda games boring to play and look at; however, it also reveals exactly why the Activision-Blizzard acquisition never should have been allowed.

It's even worse when Microsoft buys all of these game publishers and developers and then threatens to leave the gaming sphere if enough people people don't buy a game pass subscription.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Yeah, the leaks definitely expose the fact that Microsoft kind of lied about their reasoning for acquiring ABK. That said, it also shows that they've kind of stagnated as a development/publishing company.

What's really interesting to me is that the data from the leaks regarding GamePass suggests the platform has kind of plateaued and there's no future (from Microsoft's perspective) unless they get it to grow. I'm not sure if the price going up is a symptom of that (trying to increase profit) or just normal changes over time from the bigger economic picture. But they're hoping to use the PC platform to grow and...I'm skeptical.

 

[LeoA]

I hope they're backtracking like Eurogamer suggests on going all-digital with the Series X revision (Or at least go the route rumors say Sony is going to go with their PS5 revision, with the disc drive becoming an accessory).