This has been evident for anyone following the gaming industry, but now Phil Spencer basically admits it. Good for them, actually.
Microsoft has always been the niche player here. Nintendo is usually the one on top when you look at the actual numbers.
so long as Nintendo remains a more niche player
???
I don’t think its as much as microsoft lost its just that all the consoles are the same, and pc and steam deck by extension plays all the games anyway for cheaper.
… and better (except for bad ports)
So, Steam won?
Yeah, but no one else is even competing in the same league.
Microsoft needs to merge their ecosystems and make the Xbox a PC Game console for your tv. I shouldn’t own 2 different units that have Microsoft operating systems that can’t use the same software in 2025. Xboxes should be PCs that run Xbox games. Make a forked version of Windows that’s TV friendly and have the ability to “boot” into a version of Windows that users can run their own PC games on.
I understand how tricky that can be for piracy and whatnot, but there’s gotta be a better way by now. At the very least, Xbox should include Steam/Epic games integration.
This kinda sucks to see. Less competition is a bad thing for everyone. Maybe it’s just me hanging onto every bit of nostalgia I have, but the Xbox generations were special.
I know that it can’t like…physically remove any of the good times I had with the systems over the years. But these consoles have been part of my life since 2001. So many friends and memories were created with these systems. In a way, it feels like your friend is dying, LOL. I know that’s extremely over dramatic, but like damn.
Some of the exclusives that came to the system were really special. It’s sad to see that over the past decade, there were really only a small handful of exclusives that were notable. Especially when early on we had some absolutely amazing stuff.
On a more serious note, I am extremely curious what this means going forward and how they will handle digital purchases a decade from now.
They’ll still make the Xbox consoles as long as they are selling. They’ll hopefully just ease off the “Exclusives” going forward.
It was a shitty way of trying to move consoles anyway.
Although they are late to the party, Sony is also trying to sell on PC and other storefronts. So my guess is that the console market isn’t treating either of them super well atm.
Relevant bit
Over the weekend, Spencer sat down for a lengthy interview with XboxEra in which he discussed his favorite games, talked about what various Xbox studios are working on, and dished on the industry at large. And he was also honest about Xbox no longer being part of any console war, as it shifts to selling Xbox games on other consoles, like PlayStation.
“I would love to make all of the money for all of the games that we ship, right? Like, obviously we make more on our own platform,” said Spencer. “It’s one of the reasons that investing in our own platform is important. But there are people, whether it’s their libraries on a PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s they like the controller better, they just like the games that are there.”
“I’m not trying to move them all over to Xbox anymore,” added Spencer.
Now, I don’t expect that to mean the sudden cessation of manufacturing of current Xbox hardware. I’m not entirely sure I believe that any of this means we won’t get another generation of the console at some point, either.
But I can see that happening. And everyone can already see how Microsoft has begun to pivot away from focusing on its console, has begun a far greater foray into cloud gaming through the Xbox Game Pass platform, and it has even begun moving away from the exclusivity we wrung our hands over months ago
