Xbox's biggest crisis right now isn't games. It's hardware. (Opinion - Jez Corden)
Xbox's biggest crisis right now isn't games. It's hardware. (Opinion - Jez Corden)
The PlayStation 5 is on track to outsell Xbox 2:1, again.
"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn't share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage against Xbox, but perhaps the split is even worse than that beneath the surface. "
I don't think it's hardware. It's a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
Microsoft tried to answer that question with Game Pass, seemingly going all in on that concept, paying or outright buying publishers to bring their games to Game Pass. Some people may love Game Pass, but most people I know either never subscribed to it or only tested it when it was like 1,-€ for a month or whatever.
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way? Sure, the Series X is a bit more powerful than the PS5, but it's close enough that it basically results in slightly different behavior for games with dynamic resolution scaling, with the PS5 sometimes even pulling ahead oddly enough (probably a more mature SDK, not sure).
The controller is...well, a decent controller. It doesn't do anything special like adaptive triggers, yet it costs almost the same as a DualSense, and if you count in the optional (!) battery pack, it's quite a bit more expensive even.
Playing online costs just as much as on PS5 (why do you have to pay extra to play online in 2023, anyways?).
Of the few mentionable exclusive games, most are honestly just mediocre (also in terms of critical acclaim).
What's left? Backwards compatibility for 360 games? Sure that's nice, but surely not a system seller for most people, especially when they don't already have a ton of 360 games.
I just don't see many cases where someone would prefer the Xbox Series X to a PlayStation 5, without even taking into account what platform their friends are on.
If you want to win market share, deliver a better product. With better services. With better conditions. For lower prices.
That is how it works. Crying to the public about how unfair it is because Sony has such a large installed base already because of how Microsoft fucked up the Xbox One generation (at or even before launch) is NOT how it works.
50I don't think it's hardware. It's a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way?
The thing is, it's not even Games Pass or the hardware. For me, as a PC gamer, having an Xbox would be redundant. Anything an Xbox can do, my PC just does strictly better without a cumbersome UI and additional online subscription.
I own a PS5 for access to Sony exclusives when they launch, instead of waiting 1-5 years for the PC ports. I also get access to PS Plus' extensive classic collection and indie collections, which, regardless of the price of the subscription, broadens my gaming library extensively--something Xbox simply doesn't do.
Why would I purchase a console that only gives me access to the same games on a worse system vs a console that expands my library considerably?
36The console experience is different enough though. I have a PC I can game on with no issue, but I rarely do, because i love my sofa, my LG OLED and my soundbar. At the end of a tiring working day, after taking care of my chores, putting the kids to bed, I just can't get back to the computer, especially if I had to use it all day long for work...
But, at the end of the day, it's all a matter of preference: do you like PS 1st party kinds of games? Go for PlayStation. Are you more eclectic? Go for Game Pass. Your kids want a potent enough machine for Roblox and Fortnite? The Series S is there for you. Do you travel a lot? Go for a Switch or a Steam Deck (loving mine btw).
Plus, the ultimate question: How much does a PC/a console or a new game cost in your country?3@Vestria @narc0tic_bird Yep exactly. When it comes down to similar platforms, experiences you can't have on the other platform(s) are what differentiate them at the end of the day IMO.
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Whenever people ask which console they should buy, my first question is "what do your friends play on?" Hardware/Games you can argue till you're blue in the face. Playing with friends should be a main motivator in deciding what platform you choose, if you are limited to one.
14I used to think that not having a built in rechargeable battery was a dull idea.
However: Whenever I wanted to play on my PS3 the batteries were empty and the controllers needed to be recharged.
Around the time I got my first Xbox I came to the realization that I had more units than I ever thought consuming AA or AAA batteries, so I decided to go all in on rechargeable batteries.
I love it. Whenever my Xbox tells me that the controller needs new batteries it takes me 20 seconds to swap in a new pair.
I don’t ever think about having to plug the controller. I don’t care if I pick it up and it’s dead. Etc. etc.
And best of all, there’s literally no drain when it sleeps. My switch controllers drains the battery when it’s resting. The PS3 drains the controller. Don’t know about the PS4 and PS5.
13Xbox owner here. I love the xbox for gamepass, have been subscribed for years. Think I also prefer the xbox controller. I miss some of the exclusives of PS5.
But it's very much an opinion I believe. I totally understand if people buy a PS5.
10I don’t think it’s hardware. It’s a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
They know it's a losing battle to try to build the same product as an entrenched competitor after they burned themselves with the Xbox One, which is why they much prefer you're a subscriber to Game Pass, with an Xbox or not.
Some people may love Game Pass, but most people I know either never subscribed to it or only tested it when it was like 1,-€ for a month or whatever.
They've got like 25-30 million subscribers, so it's quite popular. Probably half or a third as popular as Microsoft would like, but it's popular. I myself have plenty of friends who want to play more games than they can afford, and now they can afford them because of Game Pass. Especially the flash in the pan zeitgeist stuff like Exoprimal or Rainbow Six: Extraction that they can say they've played but will never touch again.
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way?
Quick resume. To be honest, what sets the PS5 apart from the Xbox hardware in a positive way? The SSD speeds that ended up not even mattering much for Ratchet & Clank, from what I hear of the PC port.
The controller is…well, a decent controller. It doesn’t do anything special like adaptive triggers, yet it costs almost the same as a DualSense, and if you count in the optional (!) battery pack, it’s quite a bit more expensive even.
By contrast, I know tons of people who hate the PS5 controller, not the least of which for its short battery life and inability to swap batteries like you can for Xbox. As a fighting game player, I know competitive players who hate the d-pad, and Sony did everyone dirty by requiring the use of a PS5 controller only even though the entire scene has had controllers for a decade that would work just fine, and even work on the PS5 when running a "PS4 game" on a PS5. Xbox's controllers are backward and forward compatible. If Sony had some kind of reason for requiring the functionality of the new controller, sure, have at it, but they put this requirement in place for games that make no use of the new controller's features at all, which is a dick move.
If you want to win market share, deliver a better product. With better services. With better conditions. For lower prices.
I think they did exactly that, but as far as which console sells more units, it's still PlayStation, because they have a couple of games that, at least for a couple of years, you can only play on PlayStation. But I think Microsoft saw that they were never going to be able to compete with that directly, at least before their acquisition spree, so the Xbox is just a low-cost machine that gets you into Game Pass, long-term.
9Is the Xbox controller being backwards/forwards compatible actually a feature? I thought that the only difference between them was the presence of a share button. Not to discount your point about it being bs that ps5 games require a new controller.
I guess the answer to your question about what hardware advantage the ps5 has it has to primarily be the controller. The new vibration and adaptive triggers are super engaging. I also personally prefer the way it feels to a ps4 one. Unfortunately I don't have an Xbox so I can't compare. Obviously that's a personal preference thing though, it's completely valid for you to dislike them.
That said, let's be honest, I got it for the exclusive games.
4Game Pass is great if you want to try a lot of different games and see what you like without having to do research or worry about whether or not a particular game is worth your $$. Especially if you like playing small indie games and tend not to replay them anyway - this way, $10-15 and you can play multiple new and old indie games for the price of one (or less), plus try a few of the big games, and maybe get surprised by games you didn't think you'd like but gave a shot because they were included. And if you do want to replay any eventually, by then, the price will have dropped and you've still saved $$.
This is offset however by the fact it's still buggy and frustrating as all hell sometimes. I hate the way it works with virtual drives. And it doesn't work for stuff you want to mod or play the dlc for (no way no how am I actually buying a game/dlc on that platform).
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It's ironic and somewhat revolting to see the behemoth that is Microsoft crying that it can't compete and it needs to acquire other publishers, when it already has a collection of studios and franchises, means to fund brand new studios and make even better hardware. If they aren't competitive now, it's because of their own bad decisions.
Although it seems that despite their hardware not being as popular, they seem to sell GamePass for PC at least decently.
6Can’t compete… because Sony is paying publishers to make games exclusive for the PS5.
As a PC gamer at heart exclusives suck.
Over the years I almost bought a console on a few occasions due to exclusives, or games shipping first on console.
Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV, then GTA V.
By the time RDR2 came out I had bought an Xbox One S - because it was the cheapest 4K BD player on the market.
Oh, the irony. Still haven’t bought a 4K BD. Prices were ridiculous. Probably still are. Found that 4K streaming titles on Apple TV were so good I didn’t need better than that.
But since stumbling into the One S led me to buy RDR2 on release day.
Halfway through I upgraded to the One X, and when Series X came out I had it less than a month later after putting in a pre-order about a month before release.
A colleague who pre-ordered PS5 six months before I even thought about the Series X had to wait 7 months from release for his.
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why do you have to pay extra to play online in 2023, anyways?
The one-time cost of a game isn't going to cover the ongoing costs of hosting the servers hosting the game.
6You do realise that the game developers/publishers need to host the actual game servers themselves, and they don't get any piece of the PS+/Xbox Live subscription cake, right?
Yeah sure, the store, friends network, voice chat and what have you do cost money to keep operating, but how does it all work so well on PC then - where it's free - yet on console they want >50 bucks a year for it? They get 30%+ from game sales, you can't convince me that paying for online is anywhere close to being required for sustainability of the service.
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If you haven't figured out why you're paying for online play in 2023 I'm afraid you never will...
2I'm not. I'm playing on PC 95% of the time, and I play the Sony exclusives only in single player on my PS5 anyway.
What I'm saying is that this could be a differentiator for Microsoft that they just don't seem to be interested in (it would obviously lose them a lot of revenue from existing customers at first). I feel like more people would get an Xbox for multiplatform games if they save over 50 bucks a year because they don't have to pay for online play. Heck, I'd probably spring for a Series S for the odd round of Sea of Thieves and the likes on the big screen TV (I know, I could connect my PC, but it's just very comfortable that way). But having to pay for online is a no-go for me, especially because it's not my primary platform.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of the folks that only play FIFA or the likes would get a Series S if it's marketed correctly, and they didn't have to pay for online play.
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Honestly, if I had not been burned previously by Xbox losing my online purchases, I think I would consider buying an Xbox for game pass.
I don't hate the concept, and I've heard great things about the Xbox game pass library.
I'm also not a big fan of not actually owning my games. I have 40 year old games that I still return to every year. The idea of finding something special on Gamepass and having it just disappear like a streaming show does... Not compelling to me.
2You're right. Hardware is close enough to parity to be irrelevant. The competition in the 2-party console market (Nintendo doesn't count, they're in a different league) is in exclusive titles. It's why the MS-Activision merger had so much focus on Call of Duty and such: MS will take all their new titles exclusive as soon as they can and that's what drives sales. People choose consoles based on what games they want to play, or what consoles the friends they play with use if there are cross-platform titles.
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Call me dumb if you want, but I still see a big issue in MSFT's naming convention for XBox. They need to stop trying to be clever and just do something sequential.
42They're just following the naming convention established by Windows: 1, 2, 3, NT, 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11
27Only if.. if Windows used same scheme as Xbox you'd get:
Microsoft Windows, Windows 95 , Windows XP, Windows One, Windows OS NT, Windows OS One.
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Frankly MS doesn't really care about as much about hardware considering the cost of production, as long as their services are profitable.
Sure they would prefer not to be outsold 2:1 but as long that Gamepass PC exists and sells well, they're fine with this.
10Exactly. Microsoft also has the benefit of double-dipping - they have Xbox, but they also get a healthy cut from PC as a vast majority of gamers are going to be running Windows.
This article feels very much like a fanboy wanting to keep the stupid "console wars" going, when really Microsoft is happy to just rake in the cash.
9vast majority of gamers are going to be running Windows.
Vast majority of PC gamers are on windows, yeah. But overall the PC gamer market and console gamer markets are similar. There's a lot of overlap too as PC gamers also have consoles.
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That is a circular problem. People don't buy Xbox because it doesn't have exclusives appealing enough to make them pick it over the alternatives. As much as I'd wish game exclusivity wasn't a thing, it does effectively attract customers. They had many IPs which could attract players, even before the ActiBlizz acquisition.
The Xbox Series S sounds appealing in theory but they could have gotten all the benefits of that simply by supporting the Xbox One for an extended period of time. As for cloud, I doubt it is that which is holding back their sales. If they say the demand is still small they are likely not keeping too many units for that.
9Xbox because it doesn't have exclusives appealing enough to make them pick it over the alternatives.
Soon. Their acquisition of Bethesda and now Activision will push a lot of in-demand titles to Xbox and PC going forward. They'll be a lot more "competitive" with Sony now.
4I'm skeptical, because they had Halo, Banjo & Kazooie, Conker, Perfect Dark, and they don't seem to know what to do with those. Killer Instinct 2013 was nice but it's been a decade we don't get anything else from that. We are only now getting to see some of the projects from the newer studios they have been acquiring, but Redfall definitely didn't get my hopes up.
Are they gonna keep buying publishers whenever their output dries up under them? Is the problem really a lack of studios or is it that they can't manage them well.
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4That's true of PlayStation now too. Sure, it takes a couple of years, but I'm fine with that if it means saving hundreds of dollars and not having a machine next to my TV that only collects dust after playing 3 games on it.
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They could be pushing out perfect dark games, banjo kazooy, what else do they have? So many things!
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20 million units of a gaming console hardly sounds like a crisis. People have gotten far too used to sales number of mobile phones. Consoles are not something everyone buys.
9Xbox hardware is fine, games are fine, controllers are excellent (long battery life), price is fine..
It's the brand image that's shit. All thanks to random naming system that erodes any brand loyalty someone would have.
8I agree with you about the brand loyalty. But the fact remains, they put out a console in 2020 that in some ways was actually weaker in power than the console they put out in 2017. Great for customers since it's so cheap, but not great for developers when other modern systems are so much more powerful. Larian can't even put out Baldur's Gate 3 on XSS because it can't handle split screen for that game, which means no XSX version either.
As for games... Everyone's different but as a big fan of the Xbox during the 360 era, the Xbox Series have no (exclusive) games that have appealed to me personally. And the ones that I am excited about (Fable, State of Decay 3, Everwild) have no release dates and are almost certainly years away.
3Yeah. I stopped buying XBox after they let my account get hacked and restored none of my purchased content.
I occasionally consider giving Xbox another try, but then the whole tiers of systems and naming nonsense takes long enough to parse that I remember why I stopped buying Xboxes.
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Yeah, no. It has nothing to do with hardware. It's entirely cultural and they simply don't have the ability to market it globally.
Go to some random child on the street pretty much anywhere, say "PlayStation", and it doesn't matter what language you or they speak, they'll probably respond positively.
Do the same with "Xbox" and I guarantee you'll more often than not get a response of confusion or lack of interest.
Outside of NA, Xbox isn't a particularly popular console brand. Not because of hardware, but purely out of familiarity.
In my experience, Sony has always dominated the market in pretty much every other continent.
They can market the shit out of it, but there's a sort of "ingrained preference" for PlayStation in most countries, especially non-English speaking ones. It's a bit cultural, but also very much a "stick with the familiar brand" situation.
Original Xbox didn't have wide availability. 360 barely had competition with the PS3 where I live (and I expect in many other countries as well), and PS4 continued to outsell Xbox One because it's just... there. Why move to another brand when you've been perfectly fine with the other one for, what, over two decades now?
This is why, when everyone was complaining about CoD, I was always of the opinion that Microsoft has the data and knows that it's in their best interest to have it continue on PlayStation. They know that they can't hit PlayStation-level Xbox sales globally, even with a major exclusive like that.
It makes way more sense to keep publishing it on a system that has a built-in audience and guaranteed sales instead of rolling the dice and losing a shit ton of money trying to push a brand that no one's interested in.
It's a different situation in America, but most of the world doesn't care. Like, at all. They'll always have lower sales numbers.
6As a current Switch owner deciding what to pick up next time I spring for a new system, the lack of anything portable from Microsoft and Sony is kinda wild to me.
4I still rock my Vita, and it makes me unreasonably angry that Sony didn't seem to take it seriously.
3Well Sony tried twice and it didn't really pan out either time.
1That's a good point. No company has had a great time throwing their handheld into the market across from a Nintendo product.
Steamdeck and Evercade seem to be holding their own, at least.
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I don't think it's hardware, more brand and exclusives. The casual player bought a PlayStation 4, so they buy a PlayStation 5. The gaming enthusiast knows that there's just more varied and interesting games coming out on Sony's platform. In terms of performance, the Xbox also frequently under performs against the PS5 regularly (not by significant margins usually, but still) when on paper it should be the more powerful console.
Myself, I have an Xbox Series S along with a crappy old 1080p plasma and 3 years of Game Pass, and I'm at a time in my life where I don't have the time I used to to play loads of games all the time. I'm happy with the Series S, but if you're coming fresh to this generation of consoles, I can't see why you wouldn't just buy PS5 as that's where the games are.
3Are xbox games typically available on steam deck, or would you specifically need a windows system?
1A lot of Xbox exclusives are available on Windows, yes, but Steam Deck compatibility is something you'd need to check on a game by game basis.
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@Hdcase Microsoft has a focus as publisher to publish on PC/Steam, Playstation and Switch, alongside mobile platform and TVs with pre installed streaming and access to Game Pass. The Xbox consoles is only a slice of the entire eco system Microsoft is building up.
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