I love my Xbox One but...

I love my Xbox One but... I tend to sometimes feel a little bit let down when I begin reading about or seeing people talk about an indie game or smaller game. Reason being, when I become interested in one of these situations and I investigate further into the platforms the game is on the majority of the time I feel like I see the following list:

PC

PlayStation 4

Again, I love my Xbox One but it is a bummer that so many developers make great games and don't seem to see a benefit to releasing it on the console I own. I fully understand that it makes more sense to release it to the audience with larger numbers but at the same time hasn't the framework for the PC and XB1 become so close that making the effort to release it on all platforms would be worth it? I know there are added steps for certification, etc, etc but I would love to see more of these games on Xbox One.

Thoughts?

Some of it probably comes from Sony chasing deals with indies or just straight up funding/supporting some indie games to get the console exclusivity for said games. Sony also tend to do more permanent deals than Xbox (though they also do some timed exclusives every now and then).

Also, while it seems simpler than ever I would guess it still requires some work for small devs to port games from one console to another and they might not think it`s worth it to try to hit the userbase that has an XBONE, but not a gaming PC or a PS4.

@odinsmana: Yeah I can definitely understand the idea of the user base being more receptive on the Sony side of things. Sometimes I just wonder if I made the wrong purchase?

I traded my Xbox One in yesterday to help get a fancy new PS4 Pro. I wanted to believe in Microsoft, I only had a 360 last gen, and although I day one purchased and mainly use my PS4, I wanted to think having the Xbox One around would be useful. After the barely mediocre Halo 5, lackluster Gears 4, and then absence of exclusives, we decided to get rid of it. It was in a box for the better part of a year anyway, and Microsoft has announced nothing that look interesting to me (hell they've announced almost nothing at all).

If anything comes out that turns out to be a must play, I'll just get it on the PC. Sony has outclassed Microsoft at every possible turn this generation, and it doesn't look like anything is going to change in that regard. Scorpio could be The Lord himself on a technical scale, if they continue to have nothing exclusive worth playing on their platform, it'll be a pointless box gathering dust.

I was more saying that the amount of people that only have an XBOX is small enough that it might not be worth for some devs, not that XBOX people don`t buy indie games.

As for whether or not you made the wrong purchase I guess it depends on how much you like the big XBOX exclusives. I like the PS4 exclusives (Like Yakuza, Uncharted etc.) enough that even if the console got overall fewer I would still buy it.

I do love my xbox one. I've only had it for a couple months, and been playing the shit out of it. It was the cheapest entry point to the current console generation for me, and I don't care much about exclusives on either side.

Being able to play forza is nice and I'm very happy I finally got to play quantum break. And I'm gonna wanna get a ps4 at some point for more yakuza and tlou, but that's about it. The third party stuff that's always been the most interesting to me is everywhere anyway.

It's got backwards compatibility for some of my favorite games from last gen, which is more than just a bonus to me. And my laptop is just about good enough to still handle pixel graphics indie games I might not get on the xbox. Plus I've seen a bunch of indie games I was interested in or already had on steam on the xbox (Virginia, Long Dark, Shantae...), so I never got the feeling it was particularly lacking in that regard.

If an indie game if multiplatform, I sometimes just buy it on my Xbox instead to show some love and hopefully, encourage other indies to jump on board. Other than that, I mostly stick to just playing my PS4 because that's where everything else is at. It's certainly gotten better over the past year, buy still seems like Sony is just running rings around them most days with the sheer amount of games coming to the platform.

Matrick & Co. really torpedoed the Xbox out of the gate in the worst way possible and I give Spencer props for trying to keep this ship afloat, but I'm not sure what's going on at this point. It seems odd that a platform in desperate need of exclusives keeps pushing back and/or cancelling exclusives. I hope they have shit to show off that's coming out this year because it's February - fucking February - and Sony has three great exclusives out this year already and there's no signs of them slowing down.

@guitargod: Neither true, nor helpful.

OP there are actually a ton of indie games that come to Xbox. In fact a few that won't be seeing PS4 any time soon. What games in particular are going to PS4 and not Xbox? I wonder if certain indie titles just make more sense on the PS4 and those are the games you are interested in.

I have a PS4 pro and just ordered a gaming laptop (for too much money) but I still mostly play on my Xbox One. I love the controller, I like the backwards compatibility and the interface (I am maybe the only person who likes the interface?) and my friends are on Xbox.

All Xbox exclusives are on PC from now on so if you have a good PC the Xbox doesn't have a ton of value but for console only players I think that the Xbox exclusives are weirdly underrated, especially if you like co-op. Forza Horizon 3 is one of the best games of the generation IMO and Gears and Halo are still fun, plus both series are available in their entirety on Xbox One, which is awesome!

The PS4 is having a hell of a year so far, but those games are single-player focused (which is great in its own way) and mostly heavy on Japanese-style design, which you may or may not like.

As for indies....I agree it is an issue for Microsoft. They are being outclassed (though a lot of big PS4 indies do come to Xbox eventually, like the Witness and Abzu did) and I am not sure why. I don't know how Microsoft seems to have botched the relationships with Supergiant Games and the Team Meat guys (though they have done some repair apparently) but it is costing them.

MS has focused on making the Xbox an affordable decent machine and churned out its core franchises this gen, which is more than enough for the casual gamer but doesn't satisfy the intense enthusiast with multiple systems and who wants to buy dozens of exclusive games.

I don't know how they can fix that or if they even want to.

Now that I have a gaming-capable laptop again I'm seriously considering trading in my Xbone for a PS4. The big Xbox titles that are play anywhere I can now start playing on the PC, so there's no real reason to keep the console around IMO.

@opusofthemagnum: I know there are a lot of good ones still it just seems as if I've had a streak of being disappointed. It kind of all peaked when I just played and finished Bastion for the first time. I looked at Super Giant Games and said "That's a developer where I would play anything they put out." Lo and behold I check into their newest games they released and boom - let down.

EDIT: I just really enjoy games that are of the indie variety as they often tend to be a) lower in price and b) great bit size lengths

I feel like Microsoft has marginalized the Xbox brand to an extent by putting out all their first party stuff day and date on the PC. It just gives that much less of an incentive to own an Xbox. Couple that with inferior ports (if only slightly, until the Scorpio comes out) and that's why we find the Xbox One in the position it's in. Still, there are some good exclusives for it and the 360 backwards compatibility is a nice surprise. I mostly don't regret buying one, but I wish it were better.

I'm still convinced that one day X Box is going to be nothing more than a program in Windows 12.

@marcsman: this is obviously true, and is likely true for Playstation as well, and probably Nintendo eventually.

In a world of tons of high powered computing devices and not much differentiation in hardware having a bunch of separate boxes makes no sense.

It is a historical anomaly. Even Sony has given up basing their hardware on bespoke chipsets.

Consoles days are numbered. Just like many people no longer have dedicated DVD players or turntables the days of the dedicated video game machine are limited. It might be 5 years from now or 15 but it will happen (and it might be your phone instead of your PC.)

Microsoft moved prematurely on this but it made sense for them because Xbox has never been a profit center. They don't give a shit if the console business dies. They care about the brand because it does a lot to prevent them from looking like stodgy old purveyors of business software and operating systems. So if it integrates with Windows that is better.

In the 90s kids and geeks hated Microsoft. Xbox did a lot to turn that around and help Microsoft look like a "fun" company. It has always had more value as marketing than as an independent business (where it has not made profit.)

I love the XB1, other than it's fucking HORRIBLE OS.

And the HDMI pass-through is janky as fuck as well.

My xbox is basically just a Halo machine and to play some multiplayer games with Xbox friends. Outside of that Playstaton does everything better for me

Perhaps Microsoft is just saving their exclusives for the launch of the Xbox Scorpio. (Shug) I guess we will find out in the future. In the meantime, I'll just use my PS4.

I used to come to Xbox's defense a lot early in the cycle but I just can't anymore. It's kind of hilarious how many more worthwhile titles the PS4 has.

In a real way the hardware itself is fine, and the "S" model is tweaked enough in how it used the CPU/GPU that any deficiencies don't matter much. The hardware was always less of an issue than that of the hearts & minds thing. Gamers like to be appreciated, yet they payoff that attention with opening their wallets - often very wide.

My biggest issue with the Xbox ecosystem is:

• I really never like Halo, I bought 1, 2, and 3 but never really liked them.
• I liked Gears of War 1 & 2, but everything after that turned me off
• I don't like racing games as much as I did in the PS2 era, so Forza isn't a draw despite be a fine game
• Many Xbox and Xbox 360 games I liked were lower-tier and oddball games that were snuffed out
• Xbox was killed off too fast, and Xbox 360 has a qulaity control issue that never really addressed to my satisfaction...at teh end of both I felt burned.

It is hard to justify a Xbox One when many of the 'exclusives' they have are of little interest to me. If you are not into Halo, Forza, Gears, Crackdown, or whatever weird games Remedy Entertainment puts out.

@zevvion: @guitargod I own both Ps4 (Ps4 pro now actually) and an Xbox One (I converted to the Xbox One S last August) and I find myself playing more of whatever currently has a bunch of games out for it. The thing is, while you can argue right now that Sony is killing it in the exclusive department (they totally are), it's the difference between three years and three months. We've two, going into the third, really great months for Playstation exclusives. The issue is that it's taken three years to get to this point. Microsoft tends to put out most of their exclusive games out in the Fall, so their Spring months are usually lighter than Sony. On the flipside, Sony tends to put all of it's big games out in the Spring, and they've had three pretty lousy Fall line-ups for exclusives, with last year literally just being "The Last Guardian". Last Fall, Microsoft had Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4, and Recore. And while yes, Recore isn't the best game (I actually like it, been meaning to go back and finish it), Forza Horizon 3 is the highest rated racing game of all time and Gears of War 4 was also incredibly well received across the board. That's still three exclusives, against Sony's 1. And it's been like that for the past three years, with Sony literally shitting the bed on exclusive line ups during the fall months, and instead relying on third party games (which usually end up running better on the system anyways). Sony is just now coming into their own here in Spring 2017 with all of these great games that happen to be exclusive to Ps4, including:

Gravity Rush 2

Yakuza Zero

Nioh

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Nier: Automata

Persona 5

I'm sure I'm missing another exclusive or two, but you get the point. All of these games are exclusive to the console, and yet Microsoft has one exclusive game that is out this Spring, which is Halo Wars 2. Don't get me wrong, I've been playing Halo Wars 2 and it's actually a surprisingly solid RTS and a great sequel to that original game, but it's more of a niche title at this point that isn't going to tell millions of copies. Hell I'll be surprised if it sells a million. Now I know that Voodoo Vince Remastered and Phantom Dust Remastered are both supposed to be out this spring too (the later of which will be shocking considering no single footage of that game has been shown yet) and while I'm excited about both of those games, I just don't see either of those two releases being big releases. And ever since Microsoft started this Xbox Play Anywhere program, it's just made the argument of owning an Xbox One become less and less relevant for most gamers. I've found myself embracing Play Anywhere fully because I like getting a digital copy of the game and having it on both platforms, and Recore is actually a solid game if you play it on PC, the Xbox One version is pretty flawed although I do know they have patched it and I haven't tried it post patch on the system. But with the exception of Nier: Automata, the rest of those Sony exclusives I listed above are console exclusive, so they aren't coming to PC anytime soon.

It's been an interesting couple of years, and this generation has been a weird one too. I'm really excited to see what Scorpio turns out to be, as I'm still very disappointed in PS4 Pro. I own a 4K tv and yes there is an improvement on some games, but mostly it just feels like a wasted product. Hopefully the scorpio is the jump that Microsoft has been promising.