Phil Spencer Explains Why Xbox Originally Decided To Compete Against PlayStation

I guess this does not contradict what I, and many others, have read over the years: Bill Gates knew the PS was giving Sony control over the living room computing market and they had to fight back, because they wanted to dominate all home computing.

At that time it was believed that TVs eventually would replace computers for most users for browsing the internet, reading email and watching movies. Remember all those Web TV devices?

Eventually it was phones that did that, and MS tottaly botched that.

I wondered when I’d see stories out of Phil’s comments. He really didn’t say that much in the context of the documentary. What he did say was great though. And says a lot he took part as no one from Sony did.

"It's clear the idea of Xbox Live has paid off and Microsoft's decision to join the gaming industry has made them one of its leaders today"

Well there's only "3" main consoles on the market and xbox I'd say are third in terms of sales and in terms of quality of games.

Its pretty clear that Microsoft want the xbox brand to move to streaming only in the future when everyone has a decent enough Internet for that to be possible but without a doubt at the moment they are still competing with Sony hence the Bethesda acquisition.

But give it 10-20 more years and xbox will be a streaming service with gamepass whilst Sony and nintendo run the home console market on their own

I for one am glad they entered the market.

The original Xbox properly introduced online gaming for consoles after Dreamcast dabbled in it. PS2 had to play catch up to that. They had to release an adapter for PS2 and then implement it into the PS2 slim.

Xbox also helped bring cross-play into the market.
PlayStation was 100% against this until Xbox sort of forced this through slowly but surely.

And finally we have Game Pass thanks to Xbox, which will probably be an industry standard in years going forward.

So without them, we'd only have Nintendo, and while they offer

@UltimateOtaku91 I've seen a theory that the Bethesda acquisition may have been more for the tech than the games. For example, cloud streaming is a big focus for Xbox's future and Bethesda's Orion technology (announced at E3 2019) would improve xCloud.

"the acquisition of multiple game studios, so the player is always winning."

Does platform holders buying up game studios really benefit 'the player' in general?

@UltimateOtaku91 Nintendo's already out of the home console market - they make portable devices you can dock. I think their trajectory would, unless they change it, remain in the mobile/phone/tablet space while MS moves cloud. Sony's really the only "plugged in hardware" company of the bunch at this point, as they actively got out of the portable hardware business almost across the board save for cameras.

@Grumblevolcano not to mention the engine market. With Unity and Unreal dominating the game development landscape and Tencent swooping in to acquire Unreal, and Sony getting in on that, there was a hole in the engine space. Phil glossed over the importance of "defending" dev engagement/tools with DirectX itself with the Xbox (I mean it's literally named for Project DirectX Box.....the code name kind of stuck) - securing an engine would be an extension of that before it gets gobbled up by someone else.

@NEStalgia Well, I wouldn't say that. The Switch is still in the home console market. It's just that it is also a handheld at the same time. Though, if you mean a dedicated home console, then I can't really argue with you there.

@ObeseChihuahua2 More or less, yeah. The main thing is its limitations are defined by it's mobile functionality. Physically, docked, it's still a home console, but the hardware can't be more than its mobile limitations, and its arguably better poised for the streamed/mobile future than a dedicated "VCR for games" like PS & XBs currently are. Though I still see that streamed future as a "big" market, but not encompassing the whole market for a long, long time. That's assuming way too much about network infrastructure and the overpromises of telecom carriers regarding "5G" (of which a big component is just tripling the amount of 4G antennas and labeling it 5G....)

@UltimateOtaku91 Xbox is unlikely to go streaming only because the streaming is done from Xbox consoles on a server rack.

The cost of producing those server racks always gets lower due to mass production of consumer consoles, even if they are a bit of a loss at launch.

Plus they have a knowledged streaming is blocked by physics from ever replacing local gaming entirely. You just can't ever move data faster than light speed, and there will always be latency that just is not there on local play.

They want streaming to be mainstream because it drastically expands their market.

@Tharsman We don't actually know exactly what they're running in the datacenters, but it's incredibly unlikely they have actual xbox console boards just lining server racks with one console per session. That would be incredibly poor utilization of the facility.

What they much more likely have is Xbox architecture custom servers (which is really just highly specific custom PCs) running numerous virtualized "xbox OS" (which is just a custom win10 build) sessions running simultaneously, the way most cloud servers work. There's probably some cost savings with some shared components but I doubt very many components are shared between the 24/7 high availability parts and the $500 consumer box. The R&D effort sees cost savings though.

Its inevitable that streaming will "Mostly" replace local play in the market (with many games not going to dedicated local formats) if only because once market saturation is "big enough" anyone that wants to play another way will be a small niche not worth catering to. (Which is what's wrong with PS in general now, the niche players that built them are no longer really welcome now that they have a bigger mass market.) I could see a future where mass market games are all streamed and that niche that loves local play has no choice but PC which will remain geared toward an enthusiast niche that cares about that .05ms latency.

@BionicDodo I think you're referring to the likelihood of exclusive / limited-release games in the context of an acquisition, meaning players that don't have that platform are cut off from content. Fair point, but you're overlooking the good that can come from acquisitions in the sense that developers have access to better resources which should lead to better games. For example, Tim Schafer has mentioned in quite a few interviews since XGS acquired Double Fine how happy he is that he can focus on creating games and not the business side of being a game studio. I'd say better games is a win for players, and at least with the Xbox acquisitions, you have the option of playing on Xbox, PC, or even just an Android phone via xCloud.

@MaxC I take your point, but the flip side of being bought up by a bigger company is often more creative meddling from the new owner and we'll have to see some more Double Fine games before we can judge if the purchase has brought about better games. I still think that the game player in general doesn't benefit from Microsoft and Sony buying up devs and making their releases exclusive.

@BionicDodo it absolutely does. This puts more games day one on gamepass. That's a huge win for gamers 👍

@Kobeandodom No, that's a huge win for Xbox gamers.

@UltimateOtaku91 the point of that quote is going back almost 20 years to the formation of Xbox Live which revolutionized online connectivity for consoles. It's a huge reason why Xbox 360 dominated much of that generation. Because Microsoft invested in building out Xbox Live, Sony was forced to answer and now it's expected that these consoles are going to have a strong network platform for stable multiplayer, etc. So in that regards, Microsoft is absolutely a leader in the console space regardless of overall unit sales.

@BionicDodo and pc gamers, and people with phones via X-cloud.... So basically gamers..?

@Kobeandodom Oh come on, Skyrim is available to PC, Xbox, PS and Nintendo gamers. You can't honestly tell me that ES6 moving to just Xbox, PC and Xbox's cloud gaming platform is a win for gamers in general. I'm not entirely sure it's even a win for purely Xbox gamers as they would have got the game anyway. It may be a win for Microsoft as a business, but I wouldn't call it a direct win for gamers of any kind and definitely not gamers in general.

@BionicDodo any time a game is on gamepass it's a win for gamers. Very rarely would I ever go out and drop $60 on a single player game (almost never). But I will play the hell out of them on gamepass. Huge win for gamers in my eyes 👍

@Kobeandodom I think we're kinda talking about two different things though. I'll grant you that ES6 on Game Pass is a massive win for Xbox gamers and PC gamers (with high spec setups) who subscribe, my issue was with the article suggesting that it somehow benefits gamers in general. It's not a win for PS and Nintendo gamers and both of those platforms shift an awful lot of consoles, so that will likely leave a lot of gamers who don't own a good enough PC or Xbox and so miss out. I'm not saying I don't get why Microsoft would do it, just that I don't think platform holders buying up large portfolios of existing franchises is good for gamers in general.

@BionicDodo at least Microsoft gives you both mobile and pc as other platforms to play on. Sony tends to horde franchises like Spider-Man, Bloodbourne etc... Even though Souls games have been elsewhere, and Spider-Man was on other platforms since the dawn of gaming lol. I'd say out of all the big game companies, Microsoft is the most generous with their titles.