So why is Microsoft keeping the Xbox brand around?

Well... No.

Ditto

Considering there is no Xbox Division, they are a organization within Windows and Devices Group I find this hard to believe.

@Juub1990: because MS sells software services and games are software. So in the overall scope of how you run your business model, sometimes you keep things functioning to make money in other ways down the road.

As it stands now, MS as a company is moving their entire company to selling services as their primary function. It's why they spent a fortune on LinkedIn. Xbox being part of windows allows them to make money off of the brand this way.

What I see personally happening is MS slowly moving away from the console business all together and focusing on making Xbox a service to play PC games on Windows, be it with Windows branded gaming equipment or your own PC.

There's definitely a market for it, even though PC gamers here don't believe it since they don't understand they are on the extreme end of the gaming spectrum and think 'well you could just build your own', when the reality is there's a lot of people that would PC game but are either intimidated by building or their lack of technical savvy.

Valve tried and failed at hardware but I see Scorpio becoming the Steambox Valve couldn't make work because of the Xbox brand. I will also be really surprised if at this E3 they don't announce a Steam app for Scorpio. On the windows developer blog Spencer has done a number of presentations running the Steam portal on an Xbox, and with the Xbox domain reserved on Steam, there's gotta be more to it than most people are thinking.

That's why I think MS' focus isn't on exclusives, because they know they will have access to the huge volume of PC games soon.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the subject, but people really need to stop acting like MS cancelling Scalebound as the end of the world. Now if they cancel Halo 6, that's when I think people need to start worrying.

Its called an investment.

Xbox is profitable now and will be for many years as they have built a household brand name.

Execs dont go into this thinking short term rather the income streams over many many years. They need a presence in home entertainment and they have exactly that.

The initial costs are not lost as if they ever did sell xbox, the goodwill (brand) and business will be worth billions.

Its like buying shares, using your logic a $50,000 investment is "losses". In reality i will hope to receive dividends and sell the shares at some point for a profit.

You must be young...

Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, all cost much more than XBL, not to mention paying for long distance minutes. And that was for much less than you get with Xbox Live. Paying $60 per month for Xbox Live infrastructure, and server upkeep is much better than paying for the modem hardware to make your Super Mario Kart cartridge open up the online mode, then pay the 9.95 per month just to connect to another SNES without and server inbetween.

When I was in high school, many kids in my class were paying $21.95 per month for SEGAnet, and then some games required a payment on top of that to use other servers.

If you think Microsoft was a pioneer of charging for an online platform, your out of touch with reality. It may suck paying an extra $60/year, but not only is it much less than people were paying prior to XBLIVE, but it also adds a ton of features that we did not have with the more expensive prior online options.

It's a way to force directx into the industry. Think about it M$ makes a console dependent on Directx so devs HAVE to keep developing for DirectX no matter what, even if truly crossplatform technologies like opengl become better they still need to keep DirectX in the mix. For the average game developer making a game with opengl would be much simpler and profitable since they could easily run it on Linux, Mac, Windows and consoles like PS4 with minimal changes and less resources but if you introduce a technology for gaming that is exclusive to Windows system and make it a requirement then you are keeping all the other operating systems at bay because gaming is one of the forces in the PC market that drive most sales. In other words, if M$ controls gaming they control the PC market and M$ cares about controlling the PC market more than anything, they don't really care about gaming.

Notice their behavior in the gaming market, they aim for a big blockbuster like Halo but they care little about supporting smaller games and studios the way that Sony does. Sony aims to create a healthy and creative developing environment that creates a healthy gaming environment for the long run by creating smaller pockets of development and variety, M$ aims at creating a blockbuster hit that will generate so many sales and followers in the short run that developers can't ignore their console and, consequently, directx. Now that M$ has that following and the developers, and that PC gaming is becoming more and more popular they are basically abandoning the console and moving to PC taking advantage of Directx's momentum and trying to create a PC environment for gaming that is completely limited to Windows and dependent on Directx, that's what their UWP strategy is about.

Hopefully they will fail because M$ monopolizing the PC market has been going on for too long now, the industry needs variety and options to stay healthy and evolve like other developers that have been critical of UWP have said. M$ failing in gaming is a good thing for the industry because they've never cared about gaming in the first place. We need a more open, truly crossplatform-oriented future not a future limited and dependent on one company and one environment.

Your own chart shows they have been profitable since 2007.......

This is why the new direction MS is going in, in putting the focus on XBL engagement instead of console sales, is the right move (despite what PS fanboys say). And also putting their 1st party games on PC is a no-brainer... they should've done it from the outset.

They dont have dignity and dont want to quit even though they clearly have no clue about gaming and are getting humiliated by Sony.

MS is supported and subsidized by the Military Industrial Complex, every intelligence entity in existence, and, most of all, by the Cabal. Profit, monetarily speaking, is of very little concern to any of these organizations. The worth of money is an illusion. MS, like Sony and Nintendo, along with a plethora of other companies, is tasked with purveying content and technology designed to manipulate the minds of the world's populations. In particular the youth is the target, as their minds are most malleable. The continued existence of the Xbox brand is directly attributed to the above. It is the same for the Playstation brand, Nintendo consoles, etc.

Your thoughts, in the eyes of certain entities, are commodities. Your mind is one of the most important commodities.

This argument is so fucking stupid.

SONY has their own choice, as does NINTENDO.. no one is tying their hands behind their back and forcing them to do this.

XBL has been around since 2002, SONY did not implement pay to play until 2013.

This was SONYs decision, be pissed at them.

you're probably a cow anyways

Way to use a chart from 2012 ROFL! You guys/gals are totally beyond words. One word.... wait for it... PROFITABLE! Fanboys suck period and should never discus the competition.

@Juub1990 said:

This thing just bleeds money. According to many reports the brand has never been profitable from the early days of the original Xbox to now. Xbox 360 despite being their best-selling console costed them billions of dollars and never made it back.

https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years

Then there were reports in 2015 they were still losing money on hardware on the X1.

http://learnbonds.com/122889/microsoft-corporation-msft-loses-money-on-xbox-one-sales/

I know console makers typically lose money in the first few years and recoup with software licensing but it doesn't seem like Microsoft ever made money let alone profits with the Xbox brand. Why are they keeping it around? It's been over 15 years and this thing still isn't turning into money. I used to love the Xbox and Xbox 360 but am puzzled by the Xbox One. Sony is making a killing and although the Xbox One isn't doing badly in terms of sales it doesn't seem like the future is bright for it.

I ask again, the Xbox division itself tends to ax things that cost them money. Why hasn't Microsoft sold or just discontinued Xbox yet? Not that I want them to but at this point it is simply confusing.

Nvidia and Xbox 360 RROD cost a lot of $$$$

Thats a fvcking stupid reply

Yes, it was Sony's choice and yes, I'm also pissed at them. But wasnt for MS and its stupid fanbase who supported it and Sony probably wouldnt ever think about charging for such a thing

Servers also cost money on PC but why MS doesnt charge for online for its windows store games? Oh right, because they know PC gamers wouldnt buy into it

Its a fvckin SCAM, pure and simple, and MS and its supid fanbase that paid for it are the ones to blame for 1st and foremost for this being a thing today

Xbox One advertises Windows 10.

@oflow:

You seem to have dropped your comment to me. Here, let me pick it up for you.

<<

oflow just mentioned you:

@reduc_ab_: you need to stop smoking weed.

>>

@Juub1990: XBox 360 and XBox Live actually made money for Microsoft. It was the original XBox that lost them about 5 billion, but they had were pretty close to getting out of the red before starting the R&D for XBox One. Sony lost over 10 billion with the PS3. They lost billions like 4 years in a row, before final making like $350 million in profit after discontinuing their stores and selling their HQ in New York. Laying off thousands of workers in the process. Don't think they are hurting for money at all.

What a stupid fucking reply.

Blame SONY.. no one forced SONY to do this at all.

You are an idiot of a cow, get rekt

Well said. You rekt'd him.

Dumb lems like him is why we have shitty practices and companies in the industry.

@mazuiface said:

@jcrame10 said:

@Juub1990: fear not

That is infuriating and hilarious at the same time. Scalebound canceled for Halo Gears Forza.

That's not even the real quote...

PS4's primary graphics API is not OpenGL. Sony and AMD doesn't like OpenGL.

@Juub1990:

Xbox is good. People buy consoles and games for it. End of story.

Of course is not the same Opengl used on PC but it is much more compatible than DirectX. Sony used a customized version of OpenGL for PS3 called PSGL and even for PS4 GNMX is very portable to OpenGL. So OpenGL is the core standard common to most platforms not DirectX for obvious reasons. Even Nintendo uses a modified OpenGL for their consoles.

Xbox Brand is MS offering for budget gamer not into PC Gaming. Also, Xbox Live Service will cover any issue with poor hardware sales and also is a huge benefit to console gamers. I purchased about 20 games for current gen and have 140+ games downloaded from bc and games with gold. Xbox brings me the multiplayer games like Sunset Overdrive, Halo, Forza Horizon Series, Dead Rising, Gears and hopefully soon crackdown 3 and sea of thieves.

I do see at some point where xbox will transition over to a service where xbox live will be all you need and a console wont be needed. If MS offered xbox live on PC and all my games would be available then i would consider going PC. Until then Xbox is needed.

Yeah exactly... and as for Xbox becoming a service and not needing a console, that'd be a fair while away I think. It's definitely inevitable though, yes (PS too probably).

Why are so many Sony fanboys making so much. Stupid anti xbox threads and btw who is the idiot that was saying xbox live sucks bcuz u Pay off it? Bcuz news flash u have to pay for psn+ to play online now

They keep it around to make people like yourself happy cause without the xbox , you'll would have anything to talk and think about LOL.

I remember reading some armchair analysis a few years ago that Microsoft is trying to 'take over the living room' because the desktop PC market capped a long time ago. It is another reason why Windows 8 and 10 have dumbfucktardend UI designs, they were built for smartphones and tablets rather than desktop PCs. That said I hope they continue to support the Xbox. If they went back to 100% PC gaming they'll probably just **** it up.

Poor cows, they hate paying for online yet they continue to give SONY money.

and VR

and the PRO that flopped

Scorpio got em shaking

While it may have been already said (I didn't read all posts in this topic), it is likely why the Xbox brand has expanded to windows. You always hope that your consumers double dip. In this case, Microsoft has a lot going on outside of the Xbox division. The unified/similar interface might make consumers more interested in windows 10, their phones, surface tablets, etc. They may believe that by investing in the Xbox brand, those consumers will look at other products they produce. I also think that the overall success (minus the disaster of RROD) of the Xbox 360 led them to believe that the Xbox One would be more successful than it currently is. EA might have believed that too, allowing the original Titanfall to be an Xbox "exclusive". Clearly things didn't go as planned.

Yah , I find it hard to believe that MS has been flopping that they lost 3 billion 3 years ago. I can't imagine how much they've lost by now. https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years

@dynamitecop: hahahah

Xbox was a trojan horse for in the living room when it first launched.

The market was blooming and sony was a real danger in it for them.

Microsoft always had issue's with getting PC's into living rooms from people, specially because they where a hassle / expensive and complicated. Sony had a good solution for this and they saw how multimedia + tv ( center of the living room ) could push microsoft with windows out of there space if they wouldn't jump in.

Xbox was a good solution specially when you looked at the decline in PC game sales and console push forwards.

It worked as loads bought into there device and they even had the market locked with there xbox 360 at some point as media device.

They dropped the ball when they moved towards towards the TV segment with the xbox one and didn't look at the gamers which at the end buy there products.

Gaming was just a tool to get there box into your living room, with eventually windows on it. If tommorow there was another way, they would drop gaming in a heartbeat.

Now with pc's being cheaper / easier PC starts to bloom again, the less focus of microsoft on PC shops and Console gamers by delivering underperforming hardware shock them awake this generation when they lose big time to sony.

This also explains scorpio.

Emmmm, that's not correct.

PS4's higher level graphics API is closer to DirectX11.

PSGL is a rendering API available additionally to GCM and OpenGL for Sony's PlayStation 3. PSGL is based on OpenGL ES^[1] and Nvidia's CG. A previous version of PSGL was available for the PlayStation 2 but was largely unused.

PSGL meant to be a foundation for the future, beyond the PlayStation 3, but for the PlayStation 4 Sony introduced GNM and GNMX and also their custom shading language, PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL).^[

Sony's own PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL) was introduced on the PlayStation 4.^[9] It has been suggested^{[by whom?]} that the PlayStation Shader Language is very similar indeed to the HLSL standard in DirectX 11, with just subtle differences that were eliminated for the most part through preprocessor macros

AMD used Mantle API for Vulkan API push hence AMD nukes OpenGL's future.

AMD's Mantle API still uses MS HLSL.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-how-the-crew-was-ported-to-playstation-4

"Most people start with the GNMX API which wraps around GNM and manages the more esoteric GPU details in a way that's a lot more familiar if you're used to platforms like D3D11. We started with the high-level one but eventually we moved to the low-level API because it suits our uses a little better," says O'Connor, explaining that while GNMX is a lot simpler to work with, it removes much of the custom access to the PS4 GPU, and also incurs a significant CPU hit.

Another key area of the game is its programmable pixel shaders. Reflections' experience suggests that the PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL) is very similar indeed to the HLSL standard in DirectX 11, with just subtle differences that were eliminated for the most part through pre-process macros and what O'Connor calls a "regex search and replace" for more complicated differences.

Again, AMD dislikes hates OpenGL.

Maybe the answer lies in why they decided to get into the console business in the first place, Direct X. Someone posted a video on here a long while ago, but it was basically a panel of those big heads that started the Xbox brand and how it came to be, they said originally they had no plan to release a console until they wanted to get Sony to use their free Direct X APIs to make their games off of and Sony refused, so they decided to make a console themselves, the Xbox, "X" being a reference to their Direct X APIs. They also did something similar with the Dreamcast, which did use Microsoft's Direct X APIs.

But maybe why Microsoft even wanted game makers to make games using their Direct X APIs is really rooted in something else. I mean, ask yourself, why would Microsoft give game makers free access to their APIs if they're not vying to monetize on that directly? What I think it really came down to was to establish Microsoft's market dominance in the PC market for the Windows PC platform. Gaming was central to Microsoft's plans with Windows 95 and I can imagine that was important to a lot of people that wanted to game on PCs back in the days. When it came to console games, to have developers able to make games with Direct X APIs means it's easy to make games for the PC too. This keeps Windows PCs and their importance to gaming central to the PC market, which keeps Microsoft as a company the strongest it's going to be.

Funny too when you look at Valve's efforts to push gamers to abandon Windows and download their modified Linux Steam OS, many didn't want to make that change because Windows is just still too central for gaming. Developers and gamers aren't behind moving to Linux, not yet anyways.

Anyhow, keeping Xbox brand around is more than just to keep the Xbox brand around. To keep Xbox around means PC game making is just a hop-skip away which keeps Windows PC gaming strong which keeps Microsoft strong and central to the PC market. But, maybe now Microsoft has more ambitious plans. After all, defeating Sony, might not be something they have to accomplish so competitively. They might simply have to wait for Sony to succumb to their financial woes. After all, right now Sony survives off the money that comes from their gaming division, should game sales ever stagnate between generational transitions and whatnot, the whole company might sink with it. I mean, heaven forbid their next console ever take off slow, could mean the company right there.

TO cause more Fear, more Butthurt, more Anxiety, more Nightmares, more Emotional REKT among pathetic miserable butthurt COWS, who are simply too sensitive.

They are keeping it around because they invested too much into it. If they drop it, there's no bringing it back without another major investment. It makes more sense to try and morph it into something that serves corporate interests, even though the original intent of the xbox division has largely failed. The xbone, and soon scorpio, can be the most future-focused console out there by blurring the lines between it and its PC stuff

Because trust me, as much as cows hate to admit it, no way would us as gamers ever benefit from a monopoly on console gaming. They think a sony only console world would be great, but it would be a shit show

Yep, anyone with half a brain would know this... but that's the problem, cows on here aren't very intelligent.

Microsoft keeps the Xbox around because it is profitable, for the great hardware, for the great games and all the revenue that comes with it and the Xbox Live services. Same reason Sony keeps their PS around.

well its funny because sony was losing billions a year as a whole and PS brand wasn't profitable for them for years. If you took the same timeline from 2003 to 2012 and showed the PS division it would come up with a loss as well. either way in now way shape or form would i want to see MS or sony exit the console market. I wouldn't mind seeing nintendo switch things up (pun intended) focus on handhelds (new 3ds) games (for the 3ds mobile, pc, and consoles (both PS4 and XB1) I think it would be a huge benefit to them.

@FastRobby: dont even bother arguing, you cant fix stupid

Microsoft has done alot for console gaming... Sony's PS3 would of been a s*it show if it wasn't for brand loyalists. All console online would still be like the PS2/Nintendo Wii because Japan havn't got a clue about what makes the PC market dominant to bring it over... Microsoft kept Sony relevant. THIS IS WHY you need competition.

I wonder, if the Switch is a big hit, maybe Microsoft will partner with Nvidia instead, and make Microsoft Surface's with Tegra 2 chips instead of pathetic consoles.

It's offset by owning other aspects used in gaming. The idea that this "bleeds money"is absurd when there overall profit margin is in the billions.

When Sony pictures are making dick, the Vaio PC was crap, and the overall financials of the company were in the red, that is bleeding money.

There is no blood loss for the body in MS case.

There are many reasons, but one thing I believe is true is that there are people at MS who know that Xbox is a beloved brand. Not everyone there would see it as a business, because no such endeavor could exist without any passion whatsoever.

Just with like any other company in the world, some employees will be better than others....some will be in it strictly for the money, other employees will be more passionate individuals and truly enjoy their jobs. That would be one of the reasons why sometimes they would stick with it, despite some bumpy roads.....yes the motivation is ultimately financial for many, however this does not mean that it is the only driving force with a popular brand such as Xbox.

If you work in an industry that you love, it's difficult one day to just get up and start lobbying for your employer to eliminate that division. Quite the opposite, I would assume there would be a ton of resistance from employees as you would go down the ladder of authority within a company. So yeah, to me it's a complicated answer with many elements to consider.

I'd say it's because at some point in the near future, they want to turn Xbox into a gamin OS to go onto a PC. They just want to keep the numbers high, so they can fleece more money from them.

While the PS division is making good profits. Xbox struggles anywhere but US.

IF M$ really cared about producing a quality produce for their customers, they would have brought out something like the Xbox one Slim. But that was damage control from M$ as had miscalculated that the bare minimum they could get away with was.

Lol

this thread has been resurrected like the Xbox Brand by the Mighty Soul Shooking, Keyboard Shaking, Wet Track Dripping X1X!

Mangy, day after day, nuttin but insecurity and massive jelly from the usual anti-fans....

Mighty X1X MonsterBox MasterRace sure has'em shook to the core.

It's good to be King. lol . :P