Is Microsofts console exclusive strategy a failure?

Is MS exclusive strategy a failure?

No!

why?

Because now MS can make money for the PC community who might actually purchase their titles instead of relying on xbox fans who don't buy or play games and just watch youtube videos and try to make arguments about PS4 games.

Not really sure. Personally I really don’t care if every single game that they had was also playable on the PC, I simply have no interest in gaming on the PC at this point in time.

Microsoft has too few exclusives and too few studios to spread across 2 platforms.

Unlike Nintendo who seems to be supporting both a handheld and a console just fine. Or Sony who also makes VR crap, but can still support their core playerbase.

And I don't have any interest in gaming on consoles.

This is proof that the strategy is good.

For gamers, maybe it's a good strategy, but for the xbox brand, probably not a good strategy.

Xbox One was a failure because of the arrogance and stupidity that went into its design.

Its directly responsible for everything else, including lack of 3rd party exclusives and Japanese support.

People really don't seem to understand how Microsoft and Sony differ in their thinking.

Sony is a content and electronics company. Their whole deal is to make content which they use to sell electronics. They own movie and TV studios in order to sell (professional) camera equipment, blu-ray players and TVs. They own game studios in order to sell PlayStation. That's why they focus so hard on buying/creating studios and exclusive IP.

Microsoft is a software and services company. They make hardware in order to sell software and services. They make Surface devices in order to sell Windows. They make Xbox devices in order to sell Xbox services. They want you to use Xbox Live, buy games from Xbox Store and then use the account you created to go on to buy Office 365 and other Microsoft services. The only reason Xbox consoles exist is to get gamers into the ecosystem in a way they understand.

Sure, Microsoft will be happy if you buy an Xbox console, but they're more interested in having you sign up for an Xbox account (which is also a Microsoft account), putting your credit card in and subscribing to stuff like Game Pass and Office 365. That's why XPA is a thing, and why Microsoft doesn't release Xbox console sales figures anymore.

Sony and Microsoft approach things very differently from each other. People need to understand this.

For who? For them, I dunno... For me, as a gamer, definitely not

Exactly

Its a great strategy that gamers should be supporting. Gamers should not be forced to buy redundant hardware to play games. If you have a PC that is game worthy you don't need to buy an Xbox. If you are console gamer that doesn't care to game on PC, Xbox can be for you. If you decide to switch anytime in the future, your games follow along with XPA. Why some gamers complain about this is beyond me.

This reminds of me of this "we don't love or console, we just hate yours" or "we hate your console more than we love ours" either works

no clue, but more games is good

Exactly. It's a win-win for everyone, including MS.

They seem to be making a lot of money, but it's not working for me.

Nintendo wasn't able to offer ample support on a two console front until recently. MS is just having a "bad" go around with the X1. I use that term loosely because the thing still sells and it does have a good library.

@Pedro: @Juub1990: It's good for us gamers but bad for the Xbox platform. You can argue that some people don't want to play on PCs but then you end up with games like Cuphead selling more on PC than Xbox even though it was heavily marketed as an Xbox console exclusive. It starts to make the hundreds millions microsoft spent on the Xbox seem pointless and a big waste of money, at that point they might as well just stick with providing games as a service and it seems they're heading that way with Xbox Game Pass and how hard they tried to push partial cloud computing earlier in the gen.

@R4gn4r0k: Don't forget that the Playstation and Switch get 3rd party exclusive games from Japan so even if their 1st and 2nd party may be lacking at times they still have 3rd party exclusives to fall back on which Microsoft doesn't really have the option of.

How can it be bad for the Xbox platform when they increased the amount of devices able to purchase their games? Instead of only having the console market to sell their games (and services), they now have millions of Win10 PCs. That means more revenue for the Xbox division. Sure they might sell a few less consoles now, but so what. The big money is made from software sales and subscriptions.

And MS has sold between 30-40 million XB1s so far, so it's safe to say that the console ecosystem is vitally important to the Xbox platform.

I think you greatly underestimate how many people just have no interest in PC gaming. I'm one of them. Its not a diss, its just I have never wanted to build a gaming PC and I enjoys the ease of consoles. So for MS if you are playing on Xbox, which they own - or Windows which they own, they don't give a shit. You are in their eco-system either way. Whatever their reasons, some 30+ million (guess) Xbox One/S/X owners purchased their console despite PC gaming's abilities. They are doing just fine, lol.

Their entire gaming strategy in general is a failure.

Considering gamers aren't buying their consoles or spending money on games. It seems like their whole strategy is stupid, then. And should focus on the Sony model which benefits both gamers and the company.

Yeah I don't want to make it out as this extreme that Xbone had nothing because it still had a lot of good to great games:

New IP: Ryse, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive

Existing franchises: Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon, Forza

It just can't have these droughts that it is currently having. Droughts are what killed many Nintendo consoles.

You're assuming those millions of Windows 10 users will buy anything on the Windows 10 store outside of the Xbox exclusives and Age Of Empires 4 which likely won't happen anytime soon so Microsoft will still have to rely on Xbox for most of their software sales and PC gamers sure as hell ain't paying for XBL. The Windows 10 store in its current state is too crappy to compete with all the other launchers and stores on PC let alone Steam. It's more than a few less consoles, the Xbox One's console sales have been stagnating for quite some time with 2017 being the first year Xbox One sales falling behind the Xbox 360's around this time of their life spans. It seems obvious that a lot of people that would have bought an Xbox One have jumped ship to PS4 and PC. Playstation has almost double the numbers of Xbox One consoles sold. The Nintendo Switch has even sold faster and outsould the amount of Xboxes in some countries despite it being less than a year old and the Xbox One being available in those countries for 5+ years.

Yes mediocre games like crackdown 3 sea of thives halo wars 2 its failure i dont interest for buy xbox one x or xbox one S near the future

How is it bad for the platform? Xbox gamers are not loosing games and people who don't game on PCs are going to jump to PC gaming just cause the game on the Xbox is on the PC. Cuphead selling more on PC is simply Cuphead selling more on PC. You are under the false assumption that if it wasn't available on PC, PC gamers would have bought an Xbox One just to play the game. That is largely a fallacy.

To say that the "hundreds millions microsoft spent on the Xbox seem pointless and a big waste of money" is to ignore the fact that they make the majority of their money from Xbox Live services and sales which runs on Xbox hardawre. But I don't think that you are trying to be logical with this discussion so this discourse maybe pointless.

The Xbone was a failure well before Microsoft started releasing their first party games on PC. This gen is just what happens when you release a console that is less powerful than its competition for $100 more and have a very small assortment of first party studios that only put out a fraction of the games that your competition does. There was absolutely no reason to buy an Xbone at launch. It's cheaper than the PS4 now, which helps, but it would help a lot more if Microsoft were able to offer a better list of upcoming games that won't be on the PS4.

I have no reason to buy a Pc because X1 has all the PC games I want to play.

See it works both ways

That makes no sense.

It really doesn't but when you waste your money on a gameless paperweight you have to justify it anyway you can.

than neither do you.

i said the exact same thing you did but backwards

Think its pretty awesome with what MS is doing. Sea Of Thieves closed beta is a good example of whats to come. Amazing to see the numbers between PC/xbox blow up on twitch and the amount of chatter on twitter witj people foaming out the mouth for earlier release date and the occasional Sony fanboy asking when it will release on Ps4.

Then we have Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2 following up. MS buying companies to assist with game development, like PlayFab. Playground Games rumored to be working on next Fable. MS silently oiling the machine. Hard to find another console that can stack up against the X for multiplayer/co-op gaming.

I think it's a great strategy for various reasons, and ultimately gives customers more choices. However, it's not perfect in a brutally competitive market. Real full exclusives still have value, I mean I see a lot of people comparing Gamepass to Netflix, and I know one of the reasons I like Netflix is all the Original programming they have, shows like Black Mirror that I really enjoy are Netflix exclusives and make it easy to forget about the Cable subscription.

Of course, Netflix does not have Game of Thrones, so I had no choice but to watch that elsewhere, and in that example if we apply that to the Videogame world, well what I do is look for alternatives on my console....SF5 is a lifetime exclusive for PS4/PC? Ok, are there any other great fighting games I can play on my console? Things like that.

What I think was that Microsoft did not want to invest too much in developing exclusives because of the rocky start of the XOne. They wanted the "platform" to be as attractive as possible, and now seeing the response to the X and the GamePass, I think they will be more compelled to invest in original content.

It's not just the MS exclusive thing. It's the games MS is releasing. They're not as good as it use to be. I mean forza is just forza coming out every year now. Gears should've ended and the last Halo was mediocre. It's like they're afraid to do something new now because everytime they do they fail. There's only one game i can name that is good and that's Cuphead

It's great! I don't need to buy one!

Almost makes me want to buy one just to say thank you. I'm sure I can use it somewhere.

Horrible product decisions and lack of gaming focus at launch is the biggest failure.

Lack of content that is not also available on the primary console competitor's box is the second problem.

True exclusive vs console exclusive is trivial for two reasons. There is hardly any of it to begin with. And the PC/console hardware cross-over market is not nearly as big as the trolls on this board would have you believe.

Same here. There are millions of gamers that do not like playing games on a PC and those millions of gamers don't care if all Xbox console exclusives also appear on PC, they will still buy a Xbox because they want to play the games on a console and Xbox is the only console that they can play the games on.

Just look at how well PUBG has been selling on Xbox despite the PC version being better and out for much longer. That's proof that despite how the Playstation fanboys try to downplay and criticize it, console exclusives are still nearly just as big of a deal as a complete exclusive and can sell very well to the millions of people that don't want to play games on a PC.

And while they might lose some sales of Xbox consoles to PC gamers, I don't think that is a huge loss since PC gamers generally like to stick to PC gaming so most would not have purchased a Xbox anyway and Microsoft also doesn't make much money off of the hardware sales. The place where they really make money is in the software and services, so it's a great thing for them that they can now sell their software and services to both Xbox owners and Windows 10 PC owners, and no matter which of those platforms you buy from, you are still in their ecosystem either way, so they are happy.

Yep, spot on.

Lol, they don't know their own business. Their gaming division is in total chaos. With record low revenues, this gen has been really bad for Microsoft.

Xbox one ruined it the moment they followed Wii trend. As i said numerous times they thought motion controls would have been the future therefore they tried to provide what Wii did PLUS power enough to play all kind of multis, something Wii was lacking.

Therefore imho the brand name Xbox One. One system that does it all. The problem to that is that motion controls got dumped hard from casuals and whole market and they ended up with a pricier, inferior product to PS4. I dont think there would be a reversal of how things are if X1 had a few exclusives here and there. Maybe slightly better overall sales but imo theres no saving this generation whatever the case.

Exclusives though DO matter, its what makes a system more appealing than the other in the end of the day for majority out there. For example look Switch. What Switch sales would be if it didnt have Mario/Zelda/Xeno 2 out as we speak ?

The strategy was fine its the lack of stand out games utilizing that strategy thats the problem. There have been 3 OK XBOX games released: Gears, FH3 and FMS7. Nothing standout, nothing brilliant and games that had the potential to be brilliant turned out to be not that good ( Quantum Break ).

There are a few upcoming games and TBH only two of those games look like they have the potential of becoming stand out games and those games are We Happy Few and Sea of Thieves. Weather they will be great games or not remains to be seen, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Not having true exclusives isn't the reason, really. They screwed themselves out the gate with DRM plans and things just got worse from there. The cost of the console was too high with a peripheral not everyone wanted. And while dumping the price of the console made it more competitive in the US, it also started giving it a bargain feel.

It became a lot of gamers' second choice when buying a console, and the exclusives began to thin on top of that. Putting their exclusives on PC took away some value from the box, but it's not like Xbox purchases on Windows 10 have come anywhere close to overshadowing their console sales.

All it is is just a way to supplement their consoles weak sales with another platform to leverage. Xbox One's gen 6 level sales don't pay bills. If it did, third parties would make AAA exclusives for it despite whatever strategy is happening with the first-party.

All this prattle about it being anything else is a grand delusion. Gen 6 is over and recycling the same 30 million numb nuts living largely in one territory for hardware upgrades does not drive software sales. This is why you get breadsticks and salad while literally everyone else gets a meal. **** off with any contrarian fairy tale.

Lack of exclusives is definitely not the reason that the Xbox One is behind this generation. As I've said before, there are millions of people that only care about console gaming and don't want anything to do with PC gaming, so therefore console exclusives are nearly just as big of a deal as complete exclusives and the Xbox One has some great console exclusives. Just look at the excellent sales of PUBG on the Xbox for proof of that.

The reason that they are behind is simply because they launched a less powerful system at $100 more than Sony and also received very bad PR from their DRM plans. If they had launched at the same price point as the PS4 and not have had their initial DRM plans, the Xbox One would be much more competitive with the PS4 right now and at the very least would still be the dominant brand in America.

And even though Microsoft has since done a lot to fix their early mistakes, first impressions are so important and Microsoft screwed up their first impression with the Xbox One. I would say that Microsoft now currently has the better console and are definitely more pro-consumer than Sony is nowadays, but Sony has just built up too much momentum in the fallout from Microsoft's botched launch and there is absolutely nothing that Microsoft can do to completely catch up this generation. At this point, they just have to try to keep their current player base happy and generate goodwill with gamers which I think they have been doing a good job of with how pro-consumer they have been lately, and if they keep that up, then they will have another opportunity to take back the crown next generation especially if Sony gets too cocky again and screws up like they did with the PS3.

@hrt_rulz01: When you saw the title thread, you should already know what to expect lol.

I only see it failing with people like us. Gamers that post in forums, watch conferences, own multiple systems. We aren't the majority of the consumer market.

I've seen my friend Jeremy at my local Gamestop answer yes when someone asks "is it true I can play Xbox games on PC?" Then ask them what are your specs and the majority of these people look at him like he asked them to split an atom. It's been going on at SW forever. Posters act like this forum is indicative of a true world consumer market.

The X1's struggles are not a mystery. They shit the bed on reveal, the media ran with the resolution gate when they were in the bottom and word of mouth kills.

We Happy Few isn't an Xbox console exclusive anymore its going to be on PS4 and there will be mac and linux versions as well so it can't even be called a Microsoft exclusive