Comment by mrandish

Comment by mrandish 2 days ago

> This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.

I don't have any current Gen console (nor have I played one) but as a long-time tech market "interested observer" my understanding is that XBox had a bit less raw power last Gen and tried correcting this Gen and succeeded in having a bit more raw power than PS5. However, it apparently didn't matter to the market. So it seems to be another example like Betamax vs VHS, where the product with somewhat better technology didn't win because consumers found other factors more important. In modern game consoles, I assume those factors would be some mix of exclusive titles, compatibility with existing previous gen game libraries, marketing+brand perception and, more recently, the console's subscription game service.

It's interesting that Microsoft apparently didn't internalize this lesson, since Nintendo has been remained competitive for ~20 years by combining significantly weaker hardware with high-quality franchise games plus a clever differentiating factor (novel interaction (Wii) or portability (Switch). Of course, it would be wrong to conclude "CPU/GPU power doesn't matter" because it's more complex than comparing mips, flops, rops, etc. It also depends on how much, and how well, developers and game engines optimize for a platform's hardware.

Microsoft definitely learned their lesson about high-quality franchise games with their recent (and very costly) acquisition spree including Call of Duty. Although, to get anti-trust approval it can't be platform exclusive for at least a decade. I'm wondering if MSFT's claims that they're happy to be a games software company selling on all platforms may actually be true. If so, it may not bode well for the future of the XBox hardware business - which would be sad because more competition is generally better for consumers.

astrospective 2 days ago

Part of the issue is Xbox segmented the market with the less powerful Series S and put constraints on releases needing to have feature parity between the two, quite a few devs have had issues with. It delayed Baldur’s Gate 3 for months until MS waived off the split screen co-op. Seems bizarre to chase power at hard and then make it harder for your devs to develop to it.

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/is-the-xbox-series-s-holdin...

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mrandish 2 days ago

I agree that the XBox senior leadership has made a series of critical strategic mistakes going back over a decade which have nerfed the otherwise generally quite good hardware, software, game and online service execution. Just with XBox One the long string of gaffes and fatal errors was... impressive.
* Going all-in on bundling the Kinect, a very costly depth camera interface peripheral, with every XBox.
* Committing to making XBox an "all-in-one entertainment system" by building in an expensive HDMI input capability to enable being an electronic program guide, digital video recorder, Blu-ray disc player, streaming TV service and music service. The Kinect camera peripheral also had a built-in IR blaster to control all your other living room devices.
* Announcing pervasive DRM that would tie game discs to the user's account, prevent reselling or lending game discs.
* Aggressively pre-announcing no backward compatibility with previous XBox games. A senior XBox exec apparently told the media (on the record), "If you're backwards compatible, you're backward."
While the last two mistakes were walked back before the console even shipped, building in & bundling costly hardware couldn't be walked back. Nor could the significant investment in developing operating system and application software to support electronic program guide, IR control, video streaming and recording. These large hardware and software investments certainly came at the cost of investing as much in hardware and software to better render games, play games and support game development. You can kind of understand why MSFT thought each of these things would be good for MSFT strategically, but they were all tone deaf in terms of what their market wanted and fatal distractions from the main business of being a good game console.
I hope someday a definitive case study will be written giving insight into how otherwise smart, experienced executives can make so many catastrophic strategic errors over such a long period of time.

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maxhasbeenused 2 days ago

I'd say your observation on hardware and software is quite accurate, except I don't agree PS is the one that's winning.

PS is suffering from decreasing fan loyalty due to the not-that-good subscription service and not-that-exclusive game titles. Also, their pace of new hardware seems to be off considering the half-dead PS VR2 or that streaming handheld thing. The way I see it, the subscription service is supposed to be a counterpart to MS's game pass or XGP; the handheld thing is most likely to be a compromise from current gen (PS5) performance and NS's pressure. But don't forget their legacy from previous generations, they have *the most* experiences in developing and publishing 3A titles, which is why PS is still my most played consoles.

On the other hand MS had the issue of XSS dragging XSX down (as mentioned above by others), and their hardware sales seems to be losing momentum due to "If I can play it on Windows why would I need a XBOX". But from their past doings I think MS is always on the chasing of "Combining their all platforms together". While Windows Phone might turn out to be a failure, XGP actually did succeed, thanks to the huge user base they have on Windows.

Whereas NS has the exclusive advantage of their cartoonish/pixelated artstyle. This alone, in my opinion, saves them a ton of money. Not saying the artstyle is worse than realistic ones, but the development cost is indeed much much lower. Not to mention it requires much less computing power to render, resulting in cheaper hardware products. Their console can't run 3A, but that is actually a smaller downside than some may think. Because cartoonish/pixelated game and smaller indie game is a huge market.

So... Though the 3 manufacturers are competing in the same game console market, they each found a smaller but more suitable target market for themselves. If there has to be a "winner", profit-wise, it should be NS undoubtedly. Just look at their hardware upgrade cycle and console/game sales/profit.

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mrandish a day ago

I agree. Sony isn't winning the console market. In terms of both unit sales and combined hardware/software profitability, I think it's pretty clear Nintendo is doing best. Although, Sony might possibly net more total revenue due to higher priced hardware, from a Return on Capital perspective Nintendo is doing better.
I think Sony probably feels they are doing okay, although they think they should be doing better than they are. It's Microsoft's XBox business that I think is in long-term trouble. While they may be profitable at the moment (I don't follow it closely enough to know), the brand and forward trends aren't looking good. To me, the massive acquisition spree buying leading game companies was a very risky 'bet all the marbles' kind of move. It was so expensive that to justify it, they not only have to win but win big. It's a huge bet on making their Game Pass service not only grow but increasingly profitable. And it has to win PC gamers and console gamers with a unified service. Maybe it'll work but the high costs and constraints limit the number of ways they can win while the number of ways to lose remains vast.

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