Millionski

@AI-Generation yet it sold worse than expected in North America, production was cut 30% and highly anticipated games like Metroid prime 4 did not review well.
DKB is sold not that impressively even being an amazing game (one of my fav last year).

Its only fair if we discuss full picture. I really notice a pattern that people tend to bash xbox and use PS/N as an example of "how it should be" while ignoring problems that they are facing.

I would even argue Nintendo is being roasted in the internet even more than xbox lately with all key card situation, lack of S2 editions, paid upgrades and so on.

@Martsmall AI features and optimizations are not bad at all is used as a tool during the development process, and most companies adopt it one way or another. I did not see anyone excited about copilot for gaming so this seems to be the right move.

Wow that great! This kinda shows that Asha and her new team simply worked with AI before but they are not necessarily AI fanatics.

If AI is used for enchancing graphics, fps and maybe recommendation feed in store then I see 0 problems.

I guess I dont understand why its also bad and I should be upset so patiently waiting for people to educate me.

@Fiendish-Beaver I have several points where I dont agree about GP and moreover dont think its the main issue:

1) GP introduced day 1 games in 2018 and GPU came year later. Price was 10-15 respectively. With stacking you could go as low as $5 a month and also $1 deal was very common. Somehow it was working without PS/N ports. Moreover, after Zenimax they brought every game to GP right away without a price hike. It was only after ABK where it became the problem - and problem was not spyro or starcraft - it was COD. The recently adressed it by removing it. Hence, I dont think current model is not sustainable. Again instead of reducing the price they could strip out day 1 whatsoever or keep increasing the price of GPU - both did not happen.

2) Sure you can sub-unsub where needed. But many games can not be beat in 1 month by an average GP player. Not every GP player is super hardcore beating 10 games a month. The goal is to keep you subbed for a stable income for MS. You sub for one thing, then play another and now you are on the hook. It works like a buffet - sure a hungry student will come by and eat half of the menu and they will lose money but they make money of an average customer.

3) Not sure where is 13 pounds coming from. Ultimate is 17 now. All the stackings were done by minority but anyways it was nerfed multiple times. You can save maybe couple of bucks now at best, not the 50-66% discounts we had in the past.

4) You are not considering that some people cant afford or simply would not buy Fable at all - so it does not translate into lost revenue but they could be subbed for GP. 17/m is better than 0.

5) Average console player has less than 10 games per whole generation. MS would earn x2.5 more money if average person would be subbed to GPU the whole gen.

@Fiendish-Beaver fat revenue was earned only on 2 games out of 10 ports or so. We will see how eday and fable perform - that will be interesting and deciding on the future of exclusivity too.

I just dont agree with the logic that they cant reverse these decisions. Somehow they were fine with 8 years or so of only xbox & PC (so no ports to PS and N). PC is growing by itself and they have the power to start selling more xbox consoles if thye want to. It just seemed in the last 5 years that they dont want to but now thigns are changing (or at least being discussed).

Matt Booty specifically said "ecosystem" and not just publishing. so they need either features or exclusives games to bring people on board.

Also if you think about MS did so many uturns and pivots since 360 so they can do anything but somehow people here act like nothing can be done with exclusives or console pricing or something else.
As soon (IF) they have a goal again to grow consoles base - all of the above will happen.

GPU caused the problem but with current pricing its out of the window. I know it was reduced to 23 but I would suspect many moved on already. The other sub with day 1 is PC GP but 99% of people on PC dont use it anyways. I dont think GPU causes too much damage today.

@Fiendish-Beaver Valve and MS are very big players and will have a big impact on consoles. They are already taking major console features and bringing them to PC. Surely there is a big difference in the experience today but will it be in 5-10 years? To me sounds like steam machine will be pretty much on par with consoles in terms of experience/ease of use. They are kind of coming late and underpowered so thats the problem but next gen if they do steam machine PRO it can fully compete with consoles.
For MS its jsut depends on how they merge windows with xbox - definitely they will be the latest in the game but when it happens what would be the point of consoles?
its been always price, ease of use and exclusvies. There arent many exclusives except Nintendo, price is not low anymore (we are looking at 800-1000 consoles next gen) and ease of use is solved by Valve and being worked on by MS...

I think the problem that needs to be solved next gen is every game should get a default profile for Helix and every game should be xbox play anywhere (As series s/x not going away anytime soon).

Right now it feels like a small curated list. It grows actively so its promising but still a case by case situation.

@FraserG do you know how game profile work depending on the graphical settings selected? my understanding it does not preset any settings? so whats the behaviour between min vs ultra settings with default profile on?

And do you know if these profile simply switch between performance and turbo TDP and set up fps limited to either 60 or 120?

@Fiendish-Beaver I dont believe all this talk is for nothing. Exclusivity will be back in some form.

Will it be like pre-ABK? Of course not. But I think we will see more timed exclusives and some games might be permanent exclusives (although I think smaller ones). I think they are realizing PC push is a long road, next gen adoption will be slow but they do have a capable device today that will be relevant for a while - xbox series.

Sony pulling from PC is definitely a precedent they are discussing right now as well.

@Weebleman i think many are forgetting the elephant in the room - there are 30M+ of series s/x consoles. Regardless of Helix and PS6, current gen will stay with us for a long while.

Noticed how Sharma talks existing xbox series consoles? We all know it has at least 5+ solid years as a main platform (along with ps5).
So MS definitely have tools to start selling more xbox series consoles asap.

I think the games of smaller caliber would not sell drastically better on PS if launch day 1 but it did hurt the brand. So MS did not earn a lot of cash but they did harm brand a lot. I think (hope) with Asha they are realizing its not worth it.

Also for now we dont know if there will be a cheaper version of Helix - we have 2 series consoles and 2 rog ally PCs so it totally makes sense to have 700-800 Helix S next gen

@BacklogBrad this is something I am trying to figure myself. PS does not have many games but some games are really amazing and I had great experience with them. I would not want to miss games like ratchet or last of us. But until I bought ps5 PRO my ps5 was gathering dust the moment I beat most exclusives.

Having more boxes honestly complicates the experience so I would probably stick with one ecosystem and maybe pick up ps6 later just to beat bunch of games and sell it

@PipOwO PC is making a big leap in the ease of use. We will see the steam machine soon and based on steam deck experience - it should be very close to console.

Windows is behind all of them but they are making right improvements.

My point is the ease of use argument might not be relevant next gen

Assuming Helix gets the job done here is my setup for next gen: Helix in main room, series x on second floor and xbox rog ally x as a handheld.

I do have s2 and ps5 pro. I dont think there will be any rush for ps6 given how small sony 1st party output is and dont see drastically improving next gen. We will also see a lot of cross gen ps5/ps6 exclusives so ps6 could be delayed all untl ps6 pro and 4-5 years into the gen.

I am pretty sure that:
1) live service will stay multiplat: likes of sea of thieves and forza.
2) Small games could be permanently exclusive - they did not sell well on PS anyways. Likes of south of midnight and hifi rush.
3) big AAA games probably be timed exclusives. They need bigger installbase from PS to make money back but there should be some exclusivity window for xbox & PC.

Ideally I would love “red lines” strategy with certain games being permanent exclusives. And to have at least timed exclusivity for other games

@Pigrotto since there was no official commitment to bring all games to PS or S2 they can do 180 at any point.

I am only confident that all live service (and semi-live service like forza) games will be multiplat. The biggest ports were sea of thieves or forza.
But games like hi fi rush or south of midnight sold pretty bad so at the bare minimum games of such caliber can be exclusive.
Although, the biggest question I have is treatment for big games like fable, gears, etc that are expensive and kinda need this $ stream from other platforms…

@Fiendish-Beaver yeah 75 did not make sense. Obviously counting every single thing just to reach this number.

That said I dont mind indie games - its great addition. Stuff like planet of lana or replaced can compete with bigger games

Amazing game for xbox play anywhere - opportunity to play couple of races on xbox ally x sounds amazing. And based on fh5, I am sure it will perform great on ally x

Lord of the rings and spiderman games

Why diablo 4 and its dlc not play anywhere? its first party title which I own on xbox but cant continue on rog ally?

@IOI how long is the exclusivity window? unless you already have GPU you might be paying the price of the game across several months prior to ps5 pro lunch.
Kudos for MS to pushing the cross-progression and I agree that performance on the $900 PRO console should be better.

I personally plan to play it also on xbox ally so for me the play anywhere aspect is more important than extra performance from the PRO. Although for games where I need maximum fidelity I also use the PRO (got mine just before price hike)

I think they did 50% of the work of this. The pain points I still have are:
1) single hub for updates
2) re-designed lock-screen
3) re-design library to look more like xbox consoles
4) improve performance - xbox app is little laggy
5) re-design pop-ups including fully removing unnvessary windows ones. For example. when launching any new game first time it will ask to "allow make changes" - this can be automated/preset to say "yes" at all times. these little things kill the immersion imo.

I also think they need to double down on adding more games on xbox app on PC, its missing a lot of games overall compared to steam or even xbox consoles.

I hope these are resolved either across the board or specifically on Helix (not sure if it will have its own version of Windows/xbox OS).

will it be xbox PA?

@TrollOfWar they paid 45% premium to acquire ABK. Its a long-term investment, they cant make decisions based on 2 years of performing worse than expected. and its only COD that suffered as games like THPS, Indy and others were pretty successful (compared to their budget).

Financially ABK is already fully integrated (you wont see it separately in the statements) but from what we know most studious are kind of on their own with just some direction from MS - and that was part of the problem in the quality control department.

Not sure at this point they want to spin it. Maybe after Helix if that fails.

@Droideka75 I think Valve and MS are betting on basically making PC as good as consoles. MS definitely is furthest from that but steam machine (just by looking at steam deck) is looking very similar to other consoles: dedicated hardware, dedicated store, exclusives even (dota, cs and stuff). the only difference is slightly more wonky but more open system.

@Fiendish-Beaver I was pretty sure they would go the way of further bloating GPU and increasing price basically making it further un-affordable, while continuing improving the premium tier at $15 and kinda pushing people to that tier instead and buying day 1 games. Basically if you want day 1 then prepare to pay a lot for GPU: 30 and then 35 and so on. And eventually they could scrap this tier and the whole day 1 narrative.

However now they clearly trying to improve GPU and bring back people.

Factually we went from $30 to $23 without COD as many did not want it to start with and you can buy COD outright and still have couple $ left. a W without a question.

What I dont understand is that seemingly people just want to be upset or try to devalue good moves anyways. Not a fan of "Couldve/wouldve" argument as it can be used anywhere...

@Balaam_ I almost believed you until last sentence haha.

@CallMeDuraSouka agree on pricing. 450-500 should be series X white and black respectively.

Ps5 pro is now 900 lol and ps5 costs same as xbox so I think this argument is not relevant anymore.

@AI-Generation why there would be no xbox console games? Series s/x and ps5 will be the main consoles for next 5 years or so. Most analysts estimate cross gen period to be even longer than previous gen.

Whether for Helix - I agree we need a solid confirmation of native xbox console games support. I dont think they want to lose 30-40M of xbox players next gen and seems like that will be the unique feature of Helix vs any other PC

Congrats guys. We voted with wallets. They made very big investments into gaming and such financials are a wake up call that they have been doing things wrong and not respecting their fans.

Its the fans that actually make them money by actively playing, making content, buying games and subs - not your casual player who bought a console on Xmass to play gta and then turned it off for 5 years.

As said many times - grow PC/cloud but also pay attention to consoles. As easy as that.

@Fiendish-Beaver I like to give credit when its due. its not fair to judge in context “oh but it would happen anyways” because well we dont know. They could keep the $30 tag and even increase it to shift people to cheaper tiers for example.
Yet they reduced price for a significant amount which I personally dont recall many services (not only gaming) did in the past. You can actually buy to own COD day 1 and you still have $14 left - its a win-win change.

Sure I agree that I would love the price to drop to 19.99 and remove fortnite crew but we also have ubi+ now. So you have 2 extra subs for $3 a month which aint bad.

I already like Asha more than Phil & co because she already claims return of consoles - thats a very needed change by itself

@Balaam_ lets give credit when its due. Obviously she cant solve all problems in a couple of months. But she already shifted focus to console, made a logo rebrand, achievements revamp, GP price decrease, removal of “this is xbox” and so on.

I was very salty when Phil “retired” and had a lot of concerns about Asha but she did already a decent amount of good stuff and honestly already more than Phil & Sarah in past 2 years…

@IOI agree. MS clearly needs more time to polish the xbox mode on windows and figure out user experience on Helix.
Sony just released ps5 PRO and dropped PSSR2 patch so we have a more powerful version for people who want it. I personally dont want ps6 that early (which is next year).

New logo is better. I like the return to green colours.

First time in a long while we have some positive PR. Even if small or ridiculous thing but xbox needs to have good PR.
I can clearly see Asha’s marketing background and thats exactly what we need.
Dont undertsand why same people here are not happy when they were the ones complaining about lack of PR for xbox…

@Krzzystuff dont quote me on that but I remember reading online that in previous gens devkits were released in the same year of launching a console.
This time I thinj the issue is not the hardware itself but software to allow xbox console games and windows on one device with the decent stability and experience

I got a Ps5 PRO before price increase so I am totally fine with 2028 and feel like there is no rush for next gen.
I also believe looking at xbox mode on rog ally - more time needed to polish the experience. 2027 could be undercooked experience which we dont want.

@Balaam_ did not they say multiple times “xbox and PC games”? Lately it sounds like no plans of ditching consoles in any form

Please dont. What did we get from ABK deal? Double the price of GP, full strategy shift, almost death of a console and now they reversed it but even COD wont be there. All we got are bunch of smaller games like crash/spyro and thps.

They have enough studious. More than enough.

@Kaloudz there must be an affordable option:

1) helix S - most realistic
2) current series X and it will have parity for some time with helix. Maybe gets a 100 discount.
3) another Series X PRO where they put new hardware in the same box. Would be cool actually for those who want just a console similar to existing S/X just with a power bump. Likely just ray tracing, AI stuff so its easy to do patches for devs

@Fiendish-Beaver I think (or rather say hope) they are finally realizing “boys and girls” (aka fans) are the pillar of the xbox brand. They could not lure new audience over years, moreover they lost a lot of existing audience. So now they have to win fans back.

Seeing how quickly they started to pull off these new changes like GP price drop and achievements revamp shows that now MS are listening.

Basically as we were saying for years - develop your PC/cloud thing but also keep pushing the console properly.

Out of a dozen ports only several were successful and couple of those were LS. AA games like south of midnight can be exclusive permanently but would be nice to see some big games like fable also exclusive but I doubt that.

I also dont agree with “too late” or “cant put ginnie back into the bottle” logic: by the snap of the fingers they removed major “this is xbox” campaign wiping out 2 years of marketing towards that. They can do anything drastic now.

@Fiendish-Beaver Starfield sold bad on PS5 and is in worse shape than on an xbox back then (albeit it now supports 60fps).

I think the real problem with exclusivity on xbox next gen is you cant gatekeep games under rumored $1200 Helix tag. To make it work either Helix S for $700-800 needs to come as well or series X to be officially considered part of “next gen” lineup and parity support. Or even release a beefier series X PRO at the same 700-800 price point.

As we dont hear any rumours about any hardware aside from Helix, I think we will just have short timed exclusivity like 3-6 months which doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things

Great news. I just hope fable, tes6 and other big games wont follow same treatment

It all comes down if they want to build ecosystem or go full publishing (aka pull the plug). Exclusivity goes from there.

It was seemingly the publishing all the way since feb 2024 but now if they talk “back to roots” and “exosystem” - esclusivity MUST go back. Period. For sure there needs to be SOME form of decent exclusicity (at least 12 months).
I personally dont see why single player games needs to go to PS/N - data showed they did not sell well I think except Indy…

I think they are trying to reinvent the wheel and complicate things further.

There should be just 2 tiers: premium with no day 1 games. And cheaper version with the ads but same content. Thats it. Cloud, console multiplayer, PC & console libariries - all should be in each tier.

Problem with GP is people are overwhelmed with what each tier does and when they think “ok i will just get max tier” they are shocked with 30 tag and walk away

@Titntin if we include 2nd party like NG2 and 4, last year they had 8 games give or take. So a new game every 2 month or so.
But overall, its questionable value and cant be priced above $15.
And COD prob gonna be excluded too.

I feel like they are trying to reinvent the wheel for no reason. $20 was a borderline for ultimate tier - just get rid of fortnite and COD.
Alternatively, get rid of ultimate whatsoever - clearly the whole “day 1” is a problem. Premium tier at $15 is very reasonable

Honestly just dont add new COD games on day 1 (but keep some older ones) and remove fortnite pass. $20. Easy W.

Most cost of the sub comes from day 1 - its not expensive to add 1+ year old 3rd party games but thats what makes such sub lucrative providing you with big and distinct library - in othe words not sure what such 1st party only tier of GP should achieve.

@Fiendish-Beaver yeah putting first party only GP on PS/N doesnt hurt anyone imo. The only thing it contradicts with exclusicity rumours. Like imagine you are payinf 15-20 on PS5 but you dont get forza 6 (as its this year) along with xboxers…

I think such tier wont be able to provide value if priced above $15.

They cant add games every month and each year at best we have 2-3 big AAA (COD excluded) which can be bought at the same price of such yearly sub. Sure they can shuffle stuff like winter borrow in between but majority wont care.

Having access to Older games from ABK, Bethesda and Xbox sounds cool but if you think about it - any game can be picked up for $10-20 on sale that happens all the time…

No game pass? Why xbox showcased a 3rd party game if its not coming to the service/not exclusive?

@SMJ I believe there are 2 options:

1. Xbox series X life cycle will be greatly extended to a solid 5 years if not full next gen. Series S parity will be dropped. Series X will get either discount (now at 500 it would be a deal haha) or a cheaper revision (think of ps3 super slim at 250 back in a day made of cheap rubbish).
2. Helix lite/s. Literally less powerfull helix. Similar to how we have rog ally and rog ally X. This makes more sense imo.

Or maybe both.

We really need to have a cheaper entry because rumored 1200 tag would be complteley out of question for casuals. Like even if it has all exclusives in the world - people just cant afford it. Period.