Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Xbox Series X (coming 10 Nov 2020)

lostPod said:
With all the hardware increases ... I don't see how cloud gaming won't be emphisised going forward, right?
Click to expand...
Yeah that looks likely. However that requires huge up front CAPEX investment by Microsoft. We are talking tens of billions to support millions of concurrent players. However at least cloud gaming would be cheaper for consumer and casual players.

Series S is looking like the bargain of a century! 😛 You can buy a used one for less than the price of 32GB DDR5 RAM.

Tough time for Xbox. Planning for project Helix is hell. If the device is powerful it will be too expensive, if it's affordable, the performance upgrade over a Series X might not justify the cost. Very difficult to lock down specs, especially with component prices still creeping up.

Subsidising it by taking huge upfront losses no longer works. In the past it did because gamers bought several full priced games. Today, someone might install Minecraft, Valorant or Fortnite and only play that.

I wouldn't rule out another price hike for current gen consoles!
 
Macalicious2011 said:
Yeah that looks likely. However that requires huge up front CAPEX investment by Microsoft. We are talking tens of billions to support millions of concurrent players. However at least cloud gaming would be cheaper for consumer and casual players.

Series S is looking like the bargain of a century! 😛 You can buy a used one for less than the price of 32GB DDR5 RAM.

Tough time for Xbox. Planning for project Helix is hell. If the device is powerful it will be too expensive, if it's affordable, the performance upgrade over a Series X might not justify the cost. Very difficult to lock down specs, especially with component prices still creeping up.

Subsidising it by taking huge upfront losses no longer works. In the past it did because gamers bought several full priced games. Today, someone might install Minecraft, Valorant or Fortnite and only play that.

I wouldn't rule out another price hike for current gen consoles!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would not be surprised to see MS have other OEM build Helix (like 3DO). Exclusives would be even more important to get folks to be willing to buy this expensive hardware. Allowing PC storefronts on the hardware would be an interesting play.

I think the Series S was a mistake (even though I have one, lol). It seems like the Series X never really got to stretch its wings because of it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pdoherty
diamond.g said:
Yeah, I would not be surprised to see MS have other OEM build Helix (like 3DO). Exclusives would be even more important to get folks to be willing to buy this expensive hardware. Allowing PC storefronts on the hardware would be an interesting play.

I think the Series S was a mistake (even though I have one, lol). It seems like the Series X never really got to stretch its wings because of it.
Click to expand...
They could licence the Xbox brand to Asus, Acer, MSI and Corsair. That reduced inventory risk and the lack of quantity discounts for for bulk orders which for Xbox are currently tiny. However, they can't disappoint fans that are excited about a first party console and Xbox culture returning to the glory days of Xbox 360.

I remember a few years ago, an Xbox executive mentioning that they made the Series S because they didn't expect to be able to lower the price of the Series X. They were not wrong!

Exclusives in the traditional sense, are dead for xbox. The two recent announced exclusive will also be avaiable on PC. Furthermore the exclusivity windows might be limited with the titles releasing on PS5 or Switch a year post release.


It will be interesting to see how this all pans out!
 
Macalicious2011 said:
They could licence the Xbox brand to Asus, Acer, MSI and Corsair. That reduced inventory risk and the lack of quantity discounts for for bulk orders which for Xbox are currently tiny. However, they can't disappoint fans that are excited about a first party console and Xbox culture returning to the glory days of Xbox 360.

I remember a few years ago, an Xbox executive mentioning that they made the Series S because they didn't expect to be able to lower the price of the Series X. They were not wrong!

Exclusives in the traditional sense, are dead for xbox. The two recent announced exclusive will also be avaiable on PC. Furthermore the exclusivity windows might be limited with the titles releasing on PS5 or Switch a year post release.


It will be interesting to see how this all pans out!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would definitely be disappointed if the next gen wasn't first party. I probably would be done with xbox. Xbox has exclusives? LOLOL /s
 
Spinning the studios off would be kind to the gaming eco system. However a write off is more tax beneficial, quicker and easier.

Going forward Xbox will likely double down on the winners: cod, forza, fallout, Minecraft and halo. They can probably also generate more money from promoting gta6 for Xbox than developing and selling new AA titles.
 
Macalicious2011 said:
Spinning the studios off would be kind to the gaming eco system. However a write off is more tax beneficial, quicker and easier.

Going forward Xbox will likely double down on the winners: cod, forza, fallout, Minecraft and halo. They can probably also generate more money from promoting gta6 for Xbox than developing and selling new AA titles.
Click to expand...
I am back to thinking MS wants to go the Sega route.
 
diamond.g said:
I am back to thinking MS wants to go the Sega route.
Click to expand...
I agree. The ROI on Xbox over the past that MS would have seen a multiple higher return by buying S&P index, its own shares or data centres. It’s a $80b acquisition spend on studio acquisitions that has titanic opportunity costs.

At this points it’s a distraction on the Xbox balance sheet and it might be better to spin Xbox out as its own business.

We've invested a lot. No one can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years. And now we have to turn this into a sustainable business that delivers what is fundamentally one of the best sources of entertainment.
Click to expand...
The challenge we have is that we've not been monetizing that entertainment. If anything, we've been subsidizing that entertainment. In fact, there's more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft. - Satya
Click to expand...
wccftech.com

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says Xbox Must Finally Become a Sustainable Business After 25 Years of Investment

Satya Nadella says Xbox must finally become a sustainable business after 25 years of investment, underscoring Sharma's Xbox "reset".
wccftech.com wccftech.com
 
Macalicious2011 said:
They could licence the Xbox brand to Asus, Acer, MSI and Corsair. That reduced inventory risk and the lack of quantity discounts for for bulk orders which for Xbox are currently tiny. However, they can't disappoint fans that are excited about a first party console and Xbox culture returning to the glory days of Xbox 360.

I remember a few years ago, an Xbox executive mentioning that they made the Series S because they didn't expect to be able to lower the price of the Series X. They were not wrong!

Exclusives in the traditional sense, are dead for xbox. The two recent announced exclusive will also be avaiable on PC. Furthermore the exclusivity windows might be limited with the titles releasing on PS5 or Switch a year post release.


It will be interesting to see how this all pans out!
Click to expand...
Now that the rumors that the next Xbox is being looked at for cost reductions, I really wonder if the will go the 3rd party route and have others make Xbox helix platform machines.

But has that ever worked? I think both the 3DO, and Steam machine 1 tried that, and both were failures.

It’s a shame that the new Xbox president/ceo came in and reaffirmed the commitment to the next Xbox, and may now need to change or alter what the next Xbox really means.

I don’t know if Xbox play anywhere will be a requirement, I always thought that it might be a requirement to bridge gamers to cloud or pc, and get rid of individual customer owned consoles, but I wonder if Xbox even has the power to force that on developers anymore.

I am sitting and waiting to find out if I have a dead end Xbox game library, and should transition to windows pc (for vr) or steam os. With crazy pc hardware prices, probably the smart play is sit on the sidelines until the official Xbox reveal I suppose.
 
Last edited:
It looks like its going to get a lot worse over at xbox

Bethesda may be gutted, anything that isn't fallout or elder scrolls may be under the axe
 
  • Sad
Reactions: diamond.g
diamond.g said:
MS loves sitting on IP...
Click to expand...
The head of xbox is not a gamer, and so I think its more about what looks good on a spreadsheet rather then what gamers want and expect.

That video mentions starfield, so these moves may be the kiss of death for that IP
 
It's a bummer that Starfield didn't achieve the cultural or financial impact expected.

A big blunder was to not offer a 60fps mode on Xbox at launch.

Buying a steam deck as been a huge blessing for me. If EA, Xbox and Epic only focus on blockbuster franchises with a proven userbase, there will be fewer fun, unique or quirky games on consoles.
 
I would think Xbox would be better off going the streaming route and getting people in with monthly Xbox memberships that are actually affordable. I had a great experience when I used Xbox streaming (can't remember the official name), played AAA games on my iPad, MacBook Pro and PC. Make a cheap little device that plugs into your TV's HDMI like those chrome cast things and have your usual xbox controller and just have every game in their catalogue for xbox users based on that monthly subscription. I can't see buying a xbox at prices anywhere near as close to a Playstation.
 
wonderings said:
I would think Xbox would be better off going the streaming route and getting people in with monthly Xbox memberships that are actually affordable. I had a great experience when I used Xbox streaming (can't remember the official name), played AAA games on my iPad, MacBook Pro and PC. Make a cheap little device that plugs into your TV's HDMI like those chrome cast things and have your usual xbox controller and just have every game in their catalogue for xbox users based on that monthly subscription. I can't see buying a xbox at prices anywhere near as close to a Playstation.
Click to expand...
Ahaaaaaa. Glorious future. Own nothing.

PS6 and The next Xbox will be likely be sold like smartphones. You sign up for a plan and pay $60-80/month including gamepass/ps plus for 24 months💰💰
 
Macalicious2011 said:
Ahaaaaaa. Glorious future. Own nothing.

PS6 and The next Xbox will be likely be sold like smartphones. You sign up for a plan and pay $60-80/month including gamepass/ps plus for 24 months💰💰
Click to expand...
sadly that is where everything is going and people keep buying into it. I still buy my PS5 games on disc. If it were actually cheaper to buy a digital version I might be convinced to go that way. It should be cheaper digital, but of course greed has it so that prices cannot actually go down, they stay the same or move up even if you have zero packaging, zero shipping, zero anything physical to move around the planet.

I was paying $24 a month for the Xbox premium, or whatever the highest tier was (CDN dollars). I think if they had steady content coming out then that is a fair price in comparison to other streaming services like Netflix.
 
Macalicious2011 said:
It's a bummer that Starfield didn't achieve the cultural or financial impact expected.
Click to expand...
A whole retrospective can be written on how and why it failed.

My take is that the Starfield developers beseeched Todd Howard to not make a game with thousands of worlds, but much smaller and then each world can be more densely packed with POIs and unique features.

My take on the game is that it was an ok game for a play through, but getting your starborn powers was incredibly repetitive and boring. Unlike Skyrim and fallout, it did not really lend itself to multiple play throughs.
 
Macalicious2011 said:
Microns defence is that they got squeezed so hard for low prices a few years ago that there was no money left for investmenting into more factories.
Click to expand...

I'm sure there's a kernel of truth, especially if you consider that no one saw the craze with AI and building out datacenters left and right. I'm not absolving Micron of their sins, but existing market conditions were a factor.

Micron had blamed Apple indirectly (or directly) by squeezing them for the absolute lowest prices.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back