Major Xbox Outage Leads To Confusion And Frustration Over 'Offline' Games

The home console thing is one of those mistakes you learn about with hindsight. I remember moving house and trying to play my PS4 games but because I didn't have internet yet it wouldn't let me play them because it wasn't the 'home console'. It's the same thing here with Xbox.
Surely the logical solution is to automatically set the console to the "home console" and then change it if otherwise?!?!

Ah, so this is why Valhalla wouldn't load, weird the that I can play Nobody Saves the World which I only have due to Gamepass.

Oh that explains why I couldn't play Fifa last night. I was sure I had a few hours left in the trail... all is good, life goes on

Kept me off games most of the weekend. Ah, well. It happens.

I had this happen like twice yesterday. A restart fixed it through. Wouldn't've known there was an outage if it wasn't for this article.

Xbox has a huge DRM issue that needs to be adressed..

We want seriously play offline all games Xbox Game Pass

All ok over here in the UK.

Haven't had a single issue with it in the Netherlands. Been able to play games all weekend without a single problem

Was a disaster all Friday night for me, shame as it was the only night I had to myself in a while and it was pouring out, so i really wanted to play some Forza Horizon. I only have the Series X (Microsoft-wise) and it’s set as my home XBOX. Still couldn’t play any digital game I hd downloaded regardless if it was gamepass or owned.

Microsoft really needs to fix this mess. I don’t want to be locked out of my games because of a technical/server issue on their end.

This should be a learning experience for Microsoft and I hope there is sufficient uproar about it for them to make some changes.

We shouldn’t be restricted from playing games we own in this manner. It’s not user friendly.

Gaming consoles should work without the internet.

FACT.

“Sorry, I don't get the drama around having an 'always on' console. Every device now is ‘always on’. That's the world we live in. #dealwithit”

Remember this? It seems Microsoft need to learn the lesson again.

Nightmare for those who share gold/gamepass with another console in the home.
My HOME xbox is set to my sons xbox one s, so he has my benefits, but now I can't log in on my series x.

This is really not a good look for xbox...

Now imagine an all streaming subscription future with outages and network issues like this.....

No thanks

So wait, the systems that require an internet connection to verify ownership of games when the system isn't set to Home, WENT DOWN, and everyone is surprised things went haywire?

I know some people didn’t have issues. Though, I did. And whilst I could play all my owned games nothing else was available.

The DRM needs a compromise. End of story.

Also the current sales should be extend an extra day.

Ah yes. Most pro consumer company.

@A01 Also, if your Xbox is already set as your home/main console you should be able to play all your OWNED games no matter what, IMO this kind of DRM issues are unacceptable and they deserve all the backlash they’re getting.

@Kienda I completely agree, but seeing as how this has happened before and nothing has changed I doubt they'll change gears now.

It's actually not that complex. For almost 4 yrs, i have been bouncing my original xbox one between my GF's place and my mother's. ( She was extremely ill and i needed to be there for days to weeks at a time.) My mother's house is in a very rural area with not internet, or crazy priced wireless internet. Worked fine for me all the time. Guess i just figured it out early?

Yeah DRM can die in a fire... this is why I still do physical games.

And this is precisely why the only digital purchases I will make are 100% funded with MS reward points...yes it's annoying when I can't play something which I 'own', but to be fair it means that £0.00 has come out of my pocket to 'buy' said product...my actual cash on hand still goes to fund booze / pizza / ladies of negotiable virtue / recreational narcotics / rock 'n roll etc. If it's a single player game I really care about I'll buy physical and make sure I have all the patches / add ons downloaded and saved to an external HDD...MS can't be trusted and probably never will be as far as I'm concerned

There's a lot of talk and all, but...... Isn't this exactly how Nintendo and Sony do digital/primary console, too? I've had problems with all 3.

Wow, sorry for all the folks who had problems, heard it this morning that there were problems, counting myself lucky we didn't experience any problems in our house (3 xboxes , set my son's series s as home console ).

@RevGaming They definitely are still, just because one miss hap doesn't mean other things they do isn't pro consumer still

Simple as this..... DRM need to dissapear. is time to push microsoft to stop this absurd practice. I understand DRM for gamepass titles cause you rent them. but there is never a justification for games you own. digitsl or physycal. games should be yours. remember how microsoft had lot of backlash when they tried to implement DRM on Xbox One launch. but it seems they are now quielty doing it again. This has to stop NOW!

@RevGaming This is exactly how both the PS4 and XBox One (and now the PS5 and Series) work.

I mentioned not too long ago how I tried to move my base PS4 upstairs where the connection is just WiFi, and it became useless (even more so than the xbox because of the way cloud save transfers work on PS).

The more shocking part is that people don't realise that this is the way both platforms work, and that they have worked this way for nearly ten years.

I made it to the final fight of Elden Ring on Friday, went to go try it out, little did I know I wouldn’t be able to. It just kept telling me the person who purchased the game needed to sign in (SPOILER ALERT: That was me and I was signed in).I couldn’t access a single digital game on my Xbox. It was quite frustrating.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, it seems to work differently on Playstation. I lived remotely with my PS4 Pro and even PS5 for a while. Would bring them to civilization to update and download new games, never had an issue. The issue Xbox just had must have been different, my XSX is my home console and I couldn't play digital or GP games for almost 2 days

@Envy lol. One?

I am just pointing out the double standards around here.

If they have an issue where playing offline in a properly setup "home console" that was already registered, then there's definitely a problem to fix with the DRM system. It sounds more complicated than that though since some reported it working right, and some reported it was still requiring a login. It doesn't sound like "home console" just doesn't work without online, it sounds like some other condition caused that for some people. I don't think I experienced any outages where I am (for once) because I was playing Fallen Order on the "second" (not my Home Console) unit those days without issue, so login was working for me, so I can't say if Home Console was working in my case.

The frequency of outages with XB is a problem by itself though. For being the biggest, most robust online service that used to be the famous stable one, that was the only one that charged, it's down a lot. Like Splatoon 1 era WiiU often. Like PS3 often.

For those saying there shouldn't be a home console or DRM, it's a mixed bag. GoG and the like manage to make it work, but they mostly sell older games (and Cyberpunk? LOL). Home Conole is (supposed to be) a way to register one machine with the licensing server that is permitted to retain the licenses locally, so as to work without the licensing server, as long as the licensing server grants that serial permission. Which makes sens and is "generous" for DRM. It's also what makes sharing work, really, as a loophole (and I'm shocked Nintendo ended up doing it the same way, and I don't expect to be that lucky next time with them.)

The idea of "DRM at all", even though GoG manages, a DRM-less console would mean rampant piracy because most people are jerks. I'd love it, let it work like Amazon forced music to work, but....we know what gaming culture is like, and how rampant piracy would become. I wish DRM weren't around, but, imagine how many seconds it would be until a single FIFA license ends up on a reddit or 4chan post and played by hundreds.

@A01 Some games like Forza Horizon 5 can be played solo, but you still need an internet connection for the daily, weekly, and seasonal content to update. They sure need to fix issues, but the problem is bigger than the digital vs. physical game discussion. There is an element to being online that doesn't have anything to do with multiplayer that even having a physical disc won't solve.

When you see the amount of hate Sony got for GT7 going down for 48 hours - this was most peoples entire collections.
People have a right to be very angry, as despite promises we would always be able to play offline - that's not what they have delivered..

I'm reasonably ambivalent at present as I'm not using my Xbox a lot, but I sympathise with anyone affected, which appears to be the majority...
I hope they listen and fix it.

@SplooshDmg And this is the same cloud platform running half of the internet for most of the corporate world. That's a bit worrying...

For DRM, the catch with Steam of course, is your games are only valid for you to play unless you share out your entire library, so someone else can't just log into your PC and play your games under their account. And you cant share the games on 2 PCs at once. So in that sense, I see Steam as more draconian... Consoles have to handle multiple user logons, of course.

The concept of a home console is idiotic tbh, I have 2 Xbox consoles, (Series X and the older One X) both are in my home and only have my account logged in. Why should one of them not work correctly when the internet is down or Xbox services are offline?

@SplooshDmg And MS already track connected hardware and family accounts, so there's no excuse for not allowing proper home sharing.

@SplooshDmg If I'm still understanding that right, Steam's sharing is still garbage. You can authorize 5 accounts each on 10 computers, but you have to share out your entire library, and if anyone authorized is playing any game in your library, when you go to play any game in your library, you kick them out. So if you have two family members that want to play games from your household library at the same time, too bad, buy two copies of the games. Physical is still less restrictive because you can both grab different games from the shelf and play them at the same time. Console digital is still less restrictive because you can swap home consoles and both play games at the same time, and even both play the same game at the same time, even together.

Until Steam lets you both play at the same time, or at a minimum lets you both play different games from the library at the same time, just as physical does, it's so worthless it might as well not exist.

Astonishing that gamers lack the nerd genes nowadays. :/

@SplooshDmg That's why I said "at least allow it so two people can play two different games at the same time, mirroring physical." I'd rather two be able to play at the same time, but I'd find it an acceptable comparison to physical with the latter. Right now consoles do the latter but have quirks. Steam's solution isn't really a solution at all. You can share your games, but you cant play ANY owned games at the same time is honestly insulting as a pro-digital argument vs physical.

I'd like to play Yoshida's video of "this is how you share" for Gaben. Like some say Phil does, Gabe gets an undeserved free pass by gamers, I think. His sharing plan, simply isn't one.

You're right that "sharing" kind of isn't, and is kind of a work around, though an officially sanctioned workaround (Sony's more specific than MS that it's explicitly to be in the same household, and in theory they IP monitor and ban people if they're not on the same network. Rare but it could happen.)

I'm all for blocking actual piracy or group sharing. But the idea that in one household you have to buy $120-140 of a single game for multiple people to engage with it is kind of insane, and a better solution really needs to be available. But Steam's idea that, to compare to physical, if you buy a library of 600 games, and only one person in the household can play any of the household's games at once like it's 1986 and there's only one TV in the house is truly absurd.

Two people should be able to play a game at once, and so far, all 3 console mfrs seem to acknowledge and permit that (while Steam doesn't) but with imperfect systems. With Steam, though, they literally don't let two people play any two games from the same 600 game household library at once....

Personally I think the console solution is far ahead of Steam's, and that's why I chose console and went digital instead of returning to PC as a big factor. It's not perfect, and it still needs improvement, but Steam's idea is a joke. It sounds like it's stuck in the "gamers are angsty teens in the basement" era....which to be fair, describes most of the PC base

Consoles let you truly share, in a weird way, but as you say, only with 2 people at once. It should be better. Buying games "for the household" is just common sense. Again, I much prefer being able to play the same game at once, as it is now, and I'd be furious after buying digital largely because of that if they took it away. But at least, for Steam's method, I could understand the argument you can't play the same game at the same time (same as physical), but you absolutely should be able to play different games at the same time, otherwise, it's both useless, and is pretty much an argument for physical 4 life. I left PC in part for the draconian nature of Steam's push for digital, even for physical games, and looking at it now, it's not actually much better than when I left it. Despite internet praise.

If Consoles adopted Steam's approach after I made my digital purchases based entirely around how it works currently I'd be utterly livid. I'd demand an exchange for my digital library to a physical one for free. I wouldn't get it, but I'd raise heck demanding it.

Had issues Friday but Saturday/Sunday were fine, had no issues playing Forza/Dead Cells/MLB. Glad the got whatever issues fixed though!

@SplooshDmg Same here, nothing would launch on my PC and XSX wouldn't load any game I tried. Tried offline mode and nothing either. I didn't try any disc games though, I'm guessing those still worked? I was going to try my One X, but decided I had already wasted enough time. It was not cool being locked out of playing games I paid for. I don't play Gran Turismo 7, but I was still pretty put off by it losing service for a while. More understandable being it is a live service game though. This is way worse and eroded my trust in the platform

still having issues, so friggin frustrating. since ms is so cozy with valve, why dont they ask them how to make a service that doesnt blow chunks on pc.

I understand the frustration that people have experienced when you pay for a service and then for 24h or more you can't access to the content you have paid for even if it's a shared account we should not have to experience thoses issues what should happen is there should be a safe offline way when theres any issues online with servers your console switch at home main xbox by default and then when you connect back online the shared account is still there, they need to figure a way if they want a future of cloud and streaming gaming that is safe for everyone to access online or offline which you can only do if you don't put your console as principle elsewhere but i don't mind much cause i always survive the wait.

@SplooshDmg But, then, the console manufacturers have come up with a different solution, the home console, that works differently and serves a domestic use scenario Steam's system fails to serve. Similarly some may not like the side effects that go with it, but I still say it's better for a domestic situation than Steam's awkward basement teen solution. Steams' solution sounds great for "letting your friends sometimes play your games if your 17 and love sharing your stuff with your friends" It does jack squat for an at-home situation of multiple players. Which is the console's usual environment. The console situation's quirks with "home console" suit it's domestic uses more than Steam's "internet buddies" domain.

Again, I can understand the argument of not playing the same game with one copy, though they day the end that is the day I end gaming and move onto a new hobby. I used to buy 2 copies of every game. But games used to be $40 on DS and $50 on Wii, and that made a lot more financial sense. That's too much money to spend. I don't spend less now, I just buy more games. And I'm not the only one using that system. I think a lot of people would be very unhappy if they broke that feature. It doesn't allow spreading accounts to a dozen friends, it lets 2 people use the library, and by Sony's terms, 2 people in the same residence. That's more than fair. Again, for a domestic environment, not teens sharing with internet buddies.

But we're over a decade into having this system. Ripping that away and breaking the value for customers like me would be grotesque. Thankfully no company is proposing such a thing yet, and even Nintendo joined into this system, so hopefully that's safe. But seriously, if PS or XB drops that feature next gen, I probably drop PS or XB. And Steam's a non-starter. Taking an advantage of digital and turning into something much worse than physical, as Steam does, is not an option that should be accepted. And right now digital has advantages physical doesn't so it's a net plus for everyone.

Seriously, how is sharing your library only if the owner isn't playing it of any value at all if most people will be playing the same hours? It's of such little value I can't even comprehend how it can be defended.

I'd argue that in terms of the "loophole" the console makers aren't too fussed about it (again Sony explicitly states the "in the same residence" clause, meaning, in a rare moment for them, they actually did think it through, have a very specific use in mind, and specifically states that they can IP check and ban you if you share it with an internet buddy instead of a housemate. Xbox is more lenient about it, but that does show that it's not a mere loophole.) That guy that used to post on Push that was a Sony employee, used to get angry at the people sharing it outside the home, citing that clause, saying it could ruin it for everyone. So Sony knows. And so does MS. And Nintendo (probably...maybe.) Remember, the DRM Xbone was going to let people share individual games, as well, explicitly. It's not all a loophole.

Nintendo got away with everyone buying their own copy of Pokemon twice back in the day, but I don't think many people today (physical Switch aside) are going to be into buying multiple copies of $60/70 games for the home. If people loved blowing that kind of money, they'd not be buying Game Pass to begin with...

@Zuljaras I noticed that when I tried to install windows 11 Microsoft has made it so you can't install it without being connected to the internet didn't realise you couldn't setup the xbox without the internet 🙈

@SplooshDmg I think that's combining two points. My point is both systems have pros and cons, bit Steams is virtually not having a sharing system at all, it's just letting someone play on your account with a ghost login for security basically. I get the business argument against it, but that's the same as the business argument against demos. Steam really should just stay "no sharing", it's basically that only hyped as something else. I get the calls to improve home console, but a worse system that's worse than what Matrick proposed, which stream has, isn't the right answer either. I liken calls for that to be like the people calling to limit console purchases to 1 per household.

Again, with physical if you buy 60 games for the household and have 3 consoles in the house even if you can't both play the same game at the same time like with home console, you can at least play games from the home library at the same time. Digital saying only one person can play a game from the household library of games really makes no sense. Steam is remarkably on the draconian side of things. They almost make Sony look pro consumer there. Why own more than one console if you have to take turns playing games on any of them like theres only one? Or instead of buying 60 games for the household you buy 30 games 2 times, one for each consoles library? I get that there's the argument now that it's only for 2 so what about 3? And you're right. But making it only for 1 isn't sharing library, it's sharing a virtual login.

But valve has their market. They don't really see multiple pc gamers in one home like consoles do. It's very much dominated by lone players and lone Internet gamers. I still think valve being on the wrong side if Nin-freaking-tendo is a bad look though...

@RevGaming There isn't no double standards with most normal people that actually have a brain. The people who do turn a blind eye are normally gonna be console war people, happens to all sides.

@SplooshDmg what was the free update that wasn't ported?

@Envy

but you're turning a blind eye. You said it's only one thing that they did. Hell I've mentioned multiple things about them and nobody takes that in consideration. Nobody even mentions Nintendo neither. Those normal people... are rare when it comes to online discussion about gaming. Like on pushquare, purexbox or nintendolife.

Gamers are smart in many ways, but when it comes to emotional attachments to things (And probably people), it's like they have weak points.

Excuse my grammar. Don't even want to bother with it.

@SplooshDmg I'm pretty sure I've said "in the same house" numerous times, including that It's explicitly stated in Sony's terms. That's the entire point I'm making

I don't care about non household sharing that much. Yeah if they're going to do it it should be per game but per account (again, see also Shu's "this is how you share" video) but that's the point, for consoles were taking household environments with multiple consoles. Yes, I'd love to see a family plan, though usually family plans end up being great for 4 people and terrible for 2 or 3, so idk how well it would work, but, yeah that's something that should happen, including for purchased games somehow. It just makes sense.

Sharing with people in home is a nice perk I doubt really loses a lot of money. I really doubt many people would be buying multiple copies of games at a time even where they have multiple consoles. It's an ecosystem perk without much opportunity cost. A real family plan would be better but thats only for gp, not purchases.

Fwiw, compare to streaming where family plans let multiple users stream anything at once, and YouTube tv automatically includes simultaneous streaming for up to 5 users, I think, with their own accounts, at once. Household sharing is actually more normal in the digital content business than not. Except actual family plans tend to be the same price as so least two separate subs in some cases which isn't cool that 2 people get no price break while 3 pay the same as 2 or barely more.

@SplooshDmg I think the TLDR is "maybe the pending WWIII isn't a bad thing." Every day I'm reminded more how much the human race needs to be stamped out. Anything that exists will simply be abused until its gone.

Still, from a profit perspective, I do wonder how much money is actually being "lost" by people sharing consoles. Within a household, how many people will just start buying every game twice? Not many. At all, I'd bet. How many people are sharing games out of the household, really (including handing their password rights to someone else), and how much is all that offset or balanced by people simply buying more games overall, so that even if you forced everyone to buy 2x the copies, they'd just buy copies of less things? Money isn't infinite, and this is discretionary. And as everything else has gone up 20-30% in 2 years and salaries haven't, it's unlikely to expect profits to shift suddenly because they take away "sharing" and people now just start buying multiple copies of the same thing.

Within the household, people that bought a library on one person's account and shared it in the house, aren't likely to start double-dipping on everything. They'll maybe share the spread between two accounts. Most likely will just buy less. With "cousin kyle", what are the odds that the two splitting the cost of games, will suddenly spend double and each buy copies of all the same games, or what were the odds that previously they were just buying MORE games combined and sharing access to all of them?

That's the catch, if you "plug the leak" there's an industry knee-jerk reaction that says "we'll just double our money from % of customers!" I'm not sure it really works that way. I think you mostly just shift spend from one product to another and break even, and end up with an angry market segment in the meantime.

In Sony's case, they do have the clause, and anecdotally have executed that if the "sharing" is happening from different IPs, accounts get banned, so they do have a way of enforcing, but they don't use it often.

These companies are posting record profits. They're not bleeding cash, developers aren't getting forgotten because of Home Console features. Yes, most of that is from mtx. Mostly they're gouging every penny they can from everywhere and nickel and diming people to death. Square's western studios didn't lose money because people don't buy video games, they lost money because square mismanaged them horribly, over-budgeted everything, planned on sales that no statistics backed up (though I'm still convinced the overestimated sales were part of Enron-accounting, and not genuine overestimation), But in a world where "Free" Fortnite is the most popular, most profitable game around, I'm not sure "squeeze every corner and turn every penny" is the way to save single player games, either.

Until digital, "developers" were losing money to physical game resale, sharing etc. Moving to digital limited it to one perpetual share per license and no retailer cut. They amplified their money colossally in the shift to digital already. But, if they were to close the household sharing idea, I absolutely guarantee it would be the last digital game I ever bought, I'd go back to physical fully. I switched in large part due to that feature on all consoles, and I'd switch back for whichever one grants more rights. And I know that if I have to go back to double-buying games, I'll buy less than half of what I currently buy and the only things bought will be mostly Nintendo games and only the biggest games with the most value baked in. If it's not something the size of AC: Valhalla, it's not worth $120-140. Anything that's not a sure-hit 6 month experience gets cut.

We really need legislation to enforce that digital goods have all the same rights (including resale) as physical goods, and we're about 20 years late to that fight. We don't need to actually encourage digital to continue down a road of being worse, and removing property rights, all for the sake of corporate profits.

And Gabe's feet need to be (finally) held to the fire. He was one of the first, and one of the worst. Steam "mellowed" on a lot of things after a lot of push-back, but I remember when Steam was the most anti-consumer thing ever imagined on a scale that would make Zuck blush. It's kind of vile he gets a free pass on stuff like this. Stuff like their "sharing" is a joke, and people celebrate it. We're going back to digital stripping away property rights like it's 1999 all over again. There's argument about whether playing the SAME game at the same time "needs" to be closed or is a nice perk that few really benefit from and affect sales little (I'll be livid if/when they change that, games have jumped in price from 6 years ago so much it's too expensive to duplicate), but there's not even the slightest room to budge on the idea that a license is yours and is also yours to trade and sell. They get a free pass on digital for now because they also are making it more friendly. But even with that that legislation needs to be pushed for hard. The tech exists now. They excuse they couldn't do it before is invalidated by their push for NFTs. Now the tech exists to allow digital property rights to be exercised, and it was the publishers who made sure we knew so....

Still, personally, if they kill it, or do like Steam, I'm really probably out of gaming except for an occasional, mostly Nintendo purchase here and there. Gaming used to be a good value, but like all things humans have destroyed it between those things, NFTs, everything, it's becoming too expensive, while everything else also becomes too expensive as they push to make it an ever more exclusive luxury product. And they wonder why mobile and Fortnite is eating their lunch?

@RevGaming I definitely get what you're saying and I agree. I haven't been turning a blind eye though, I've been fighting this online for the past few days and even sent a report to support about how this should be changed. I play on PC as my main platform but I own all current gen systems so I always try to fight non pro consumer moves, especially Nintendo since they're the worse for doing things gamers hate

@SplooshDmg damn that's a shame. Does sound like a excuse but oh well

@SplooshDmg You know sucky people

IDK, I'm hesitant to take "Twitter people are doing this a lot, so it's a huge thing." Twitter people do a lot of things, most of them not suitable for public discourse, but it doesn't mean the Twitverse = the general population In Sony's case, they shouldn't be doing that, and could be banned for that. And Now doesn't work with sharing, just purchased games. In MS's case, IDK, but they were the ones advertising the "home console" sharing even in Matrick's time as a feature. As for purchased games, "nobody buys games because of game pass" Except they buy more.... And as for GP, they're losing more on "all the Twitter people doing the $1 trick" than sharing with one person, but in reality I'm not sure much of the actual total market is doing either.

Mostly, your argument sounds very Jim Ryan-like (single or double malt? Dying to know... ) This sort of media-executive view of the numbers of "devs are losing money due to this" based on assumptions people would double dip in the absence of it instead of shifting spend, which is far more likely. Maybe it's more vital with subs than purchases (in which case, Sony has the answer, subs just don't share, but MS advertises that they do, and Ninty advertises you get 8 accounts per fee which is just weird, and obviously exploited...they don't really even seem to care, which is also weird.) But it's not "how many people are doing it" that matters, it's "how many people are SPENDING LESS because of it." I think in the N64 days of "I think 12 or 15 games is about right for the platform (Miyamoto), is different from today when you have 20 major AAAs and hundreds of mid tier indies per year, and people consume more and more. I'd find it shocking if people really spent less because of even "cheater" sharing, or if they just buy more games (possibly spending even more because they have access to more.) I.E. Would making waves and winning the PR wrath of the Twitterers ACTUALLY enhance revenues, or would it break about even at best, or even hurt it? Like with PS fanboy arguments against GP, I think there's a lot of depth to the numbers involved here that are easy to ignore at a glance. And we're still probably talking 10% or less of the total market. But a loud 10%.

What I hate most about the internet and modern "ethics" is the "because I CAN do it, it's OK to do it, it's my unassailable God-given right to do it, and I should tell the world about it so they do it to and I become a celebrity!". If you found something nice, shut your pie hole and keep it to yourself. I don't know if that's the world, or just the US, but I either hate Americans or the whole earth. Probably the latter, but it's negotiable.

@SplooshDmg With Nintendo, they keep costs way lower than the others though. Their games and hardware are just far below what other companies costs are. Like, far, far below. So if their profits aren't great, Microsoft's must be disastrous.

The main point being highlighted mostly is that the gaming industry is unstable and unsustainable, with the argument that even with record sales and record profits it's all a fragile egg ready to collapse without dramatically increasing margins. I don't see it. If it's that bad, then it SHOULD fail. It's oversaturated and over budget across the board. They choose to make games that take 10000 people in 30 countries to make and to make them tech demo spectacles.

But to be the argument against the ability to sell and share individual games is the same or worse than the argument for $70. It's an argument that gaming should be a more extensive prestige hobby with higher barriers to entry. Meanwhile f2p dominates all...

I kind of agree on game pass, tough I always kind of did. For me, gold, streaming, and first party games are worth it still for sure, but I generally don't play much from it and mostly play from my library, but I always knew I would. But there's so many first party games this Gen later on that it'll ultimately be worth it. But the gp selection is often either things that don't speak to me, or things I already own. But if I didn't have a big library it would be great. For me the main problem is the same as animal crossing. I can't game on someone else's schedule.

@SplooshDmg So many concepts are getting mashed together though. The ridiculous profit orgy that is the new casino model for gaming can't really be compared to the retail gaming market other than to say that because a market of pure largess exists, other markets with lower margin no longer need to be served. Once we enter the Apple comparison, a company that sells grossly overpriced outdated tech as a designer fashion accessory for rich people without tech savvy we've drawn a line on what we're really comparing.

And when we talk about "lost sales" in digital land we're forgetting how much additional net profit exists in digital land without retailer wholesale pricing taking a massive cut. Games selling for MSRP, digitally was basically a 40%+ profit increase on per unit sales, even with the digital store's cut. Restricting "sharing" to only two units, only utilized by a small percentage of the market cut out multiple-cycle resales entirely. At this point we're talking about inflation in gaming that makes petroleum look like a plaything, and trying to justify it as not enough. Cut the flipping budgets. You don't need animated fruit that takes months to make (Naughty Dog, this means you!)

When they make a game, they know the market size. They know sales averages. They know what sales to project. There shouldn't be that astounding a risk factor involved unless the game is experimental and doesn't know it's market. In which case budget for the project accordingly and don't spend $150M on animating individual hair follicles in a presentation that looks indistinguishable from cinema for a game you have no idea if it has a market larger than 500,000 people worldwide. The industry wants to keep spending more and more and demands consumers pay for their egos.

Japanese studios just don't do that (excluding Kojima and Kamiya, and Square-Enix which can't plan a market, sales expectations or budgets for some reason, which is why they're a terrible example in all this. Their problems are internal, not external.) Obsidian is another entity that's a bad example. They started as a division of what was, at the time, a mega-publisher. (Black Isle division of Interplay.) The publisher went down in a hostile takeover and they went out on their own, but without the budgets they needed and previously had under being a subsidiary of a larger company, and never really found footing as an "indie". They already worked at publisher-scale prior. BUT. Back in their Black Isle days, the games they made, games just like PoE (Icewind, BG, Fallout) sold like 100,000 copies and that was considered a smashing success. How is it they could fund these styles of games with 100,000 sales and consider it profitable and a roaring success, and suddenly 100,000 is Virtual Boy level failure? Something broke in the business model and costs in general.

That said, I also can't understand what happened with PoEII either. All I can think of is the demand for Infinity Engine style games is actually very low and PoE1 was such a success not because of quality but curiosity and hype by customers that really didn't end up liking that retro style game.

The interesting common thread (Obsidian excluded, who had special circumstances as being a division of a publisher that tired to strike it out alone and it never really found stable ground - it needed to be bought because it was born of a larger company from the start), is almost all of them aren't examples of market failures for their product. Platinum, Square, etc, is that they're all examples of companies that didn't fail to sell substantial amount of product that should have yielded strong profits. They're examples of woefully mismanaged companies that failed to set realistic sales expectations and budget accordingly, with expenses that eclipsed realistic sales figures, and then blamed the market for failing to engage. It's not about big vs small. It's about small spending like they're big and expecting sales to be even bigger, then being surprised and flailing when it doesn't work.

Someone will rage for saying this, but the problem with gaming is the developers. From 1999 to today, budgets ballooned far beyond reasonable sales expectations, and the current idea to fix it has shifted to be a split of turn it into a vending machine/casino (which is even more profitable) or make it an upscale super-premium luxury lifestyle premium products like a digital Gucci bag. Nobody's even considered talking about reigning in budgets, short of Nintendo and companies like Falcom. Devs will insist "but customer's demand this level of presentation." Do they though? Or are they told they should? Look at the top sellers. Most of which actually don't have that level of excess.

And, yeah, PC having competitive market places and lower overall MSRPs does tend to give that market a different room to wiggle than the console space, though that money goes out the window on hardware and time spent troubleshooting.

The last GP game I played was FH5 and Halo. Halo I played for like 3 hours and put it away until coop comes out. Or forever, whichever comes first. But when Starfield and the others come out, I'll be using GP heavily. It's probably break-even, really, but I get streaming so it works out better. Definitely not obsessed with GP like some are, but it's fun to have.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, that's really it in a nutshell. Now that GaaS is discovered as a limitless profit machine, it's rendered any other market as appealing as selling commodities near-cost. It's not that retail games have no market, it's just that the profit potential on gambling is higher, and usually lower cost. It's a bleak reality that kills off (or moves to indies) what used to be "games."

The cost for games in the past I think is overrated though. We tend to forget we were actually buying hardware not just software at those prices. Those were full daughter boards with some of the games compute hardware on it. SuperFX games came at I think $60 or $65 but you were literally buying the GPU with the game. So for, what $120 you got a full game and a GPU. You can't even get the heatsink for that price today. Plus Nintendo was skimming off the top of that business like crazy....

I still don't see myself dragged back to the hardware costs of PC, probably ever, or the troubleshooting nightmares, but I do get the software value of it and customization, I really do!

@SplooshDmg LOL you need to come back up here to the coastal elite where if you're not making 6-figures you have the discretionary income you had, in raw dollars, in 1991. I always get a kick out of "inflation means spending more" no...it means spending less because the percent of your income non-discretionary consumes keeps doubling every few years... and that's without our 2 year inflation bazooka.

Where did you get a 980 Pro cheap?? (Not for gaming, for business!)

Heh, well, I never leave the "PC roots" because work, but leaving it for gaming? Yeah...can't see going back. The costs, yuck. And the troubleshooting, I know you don't have problems. I knew people back then that never had problems. Me? One problem after the next. Heck, even my XSX died on me, but at least that, even outside warranty, wouldn't cost more than a GPU to replace the whole kit

Remember the intro of Cole in inFamous static charging everything he passed? I think that's me....