ThePanzini

@mellotronrules:

think about how many salaries and cash advances the ABK 69billy could finance (with most Sony Style AAAA games having a 300milly-ish price tag). of course that's a reductive calculus, but i just don't think MICROSOFT is interested in owning that space- and so they won't! otherwise they'd be more willing to open the wallet.

Xbox has the same running costs everyone else does regardless of how big their games are, ABK cost $6b a year to run. Using rough napkin math Obsidian have 300 people with a 100k average salary that would be 30m a year to run, its been 5 years since their last major game that would be 150m at least, you'd need to sell 3m copies to break even just for the staff. Outer Worlds sold 5m the margins are often thinner lower down the scale.

@shindig: Game Pass needs feeding constant content its much cheaper producing that content which tends to favour smaller games because there quicker, but those big games are the ones really driving a platforms growth and new subs, it must create enormous pressure thus causing them to release stuff undercooked.

Even if Xbox was going full third party you wouldn't announce it all in one go, likely you'd announce handful of ports next week with some kind of recommitment to hardware next generation, similar to the One X. If Xbox goes down the lower spec route a Switch-like could work.

@cikame: It's not selling 50m, the Series is on about ~28m and last year was Xbox worst for 17 years, sales collapsed they're forcasting significant drops over the next two quarters. Its not far off the original Xbox 24m which MS killed at this point. Their install base just isn't big enought to support all the studios they own.

@tp0p: Xbox made a bet they'd bring in enough subs to cover the money being spent on those studios, given how wildly they missed those targets I'd guess they haven't, especially so with COD on the horizon.

@bigsocrates: I have no idea, it could be good or bad until it happens we won't know. This generation Playstation and Xbox have already been rising prices in tandem along with everyone else.

I didn't like Xbox hardware but bought it anyway cause I'm an idiot, and I'm not a fan of Game Pass the concept I'd rather people purchase the stuff they want, so is that good or bad.

Third party with hardware could easily be a plus more revenue steams to prop up the console, game pass or anything else. We might get multiple vendors or even different publisher backing it as they won't be too happy with Sony having so much control.

I'd guess Playstation would make an effort to encroach on Nintendo, maybe Portal is the start we've already had rumblings of a new handheld. More Nintendo like games on Playstation would be a plus.

I don't see this as a net negative some good some bad, Nintendo cut $100 off the 3DS price without outside pressure and that'll always been there.

@bigsocrates: Why would Xbox care? They'd probably prefer people buying games without the cost.

Playstation & Nintendo will carry on as normal physical is still too important for them, 14 Apr 2023 - Sony Opens Its First PlayStation Exclusive Store In India.

@bigsocrates: If Xbox goes third party with its own hardware just for Game Pass and the few customers that like the ecosystem, I very much doubt they'll compete with Sony, they'll have a box if people want one.

You'll either get and Pro with higher margins geared towards performance or Series S low spec box which basically breaks even, the end user will help pay for the R&D.

@bigsocrates: Yeah totally day one first party or even GP itself was a bold idea.

The XB1 sold well out of the gate the issue was the second half of the generation and you could see GP wasn't having an impact on hardware, the leaked emails show Xbox was conflicted about day one first party and it impacting profitability.

The Series X has a compact design with split motherboard and vapor chamber cooling, these are all far more costly than boring black box or Sony's router. Spencer would not have design the box but definitely agreed to the ethos behind it, MS from the outset would have know their box is harder to produce with a higher component price and therefore more difficult to reduce costs for.

MS could have had another Titanfall or two if they built the Xbox 1.5 and even capitalized on the chip shortage.

@retris: From the leak Playstation's first party has 60-70% physical split, not just EU worldwide really.

@bigsocrates: I have no idea what they should have done differently, beyond not releasing first party games day one on GP and building hardware that doesn't loose so much money.

As we all know MS greatest weakness is games both hardware and GP attributed to this, and Xbox hasn't addressed any of its long standing problems.