Was Microsoft stupid of chasing consoles and abandoning PC?

It is quite ironic that Microsoft is at best a court jester in the PC kingdom it built. If they had taken the initiative before Valve, they would be the ones dominating the PC digital market. Of course they tried, over a decade ago, but failed miserably because unlike the people at Valve who are passionate game developers/engineers/artists etc, Microsoft's top brass was and is still made up of soulless men in suits and ties who only speak the accounting language and nothing else.

So was Microsoft stupid for chasing the console market when the PC could have been the far more lucrative and easier option? These days they're getting trounced by Sony and to a lesser extent Nintendo in the console space and are firmly behind Valve/Ubisoft/EA/Blizzard in the PC space. They're basically stuck in no man's land and was it really worth it for one successful console that was by all accounts not very profitable?

Nope. I am very happy that they are in the console space myself.

@Juub1990: Sure, whatever you say pal.

They've done decent enough on consoles.

They also forced archiac Japanese companies to step up their game.

That being said, maybe if Microsoft didn't popularise online on consoles.... maybe we wouldn't have seen so much dumbing down of online gaming for the lowest common denominator. I fully convinced if XBOX wasn't around ... console peasants would still have terrible online, because the Japanese arm of the industry is in its own bubble.

@Juub1990: "Well you're a shill not like your opinion counts."

Well then don't fucking ask for opinions dopey.

They seem to have done alright for themselves and they've pushed console gaming much further than it would be under Sony's or Nintendo's dominance. They would probably have still been a bigger player on PC if they didn't try to charge people to play multiplayer on PC way back in the Games for Windows Live days

@Juub1990: I'm glad they're in console gaming because it won't let Sony & Nintendo monopolize the market, while abandoning PC gaming was a big mistake , it's better lose the saddle than the horse , another thing that really frustrates me is that they start these ambitious projects and they always left them unfinished , canceling great IP's like Scalebound ... such a shame

Why is he a shill?

@boycie

These are valid responses. A lot more thought out than "Hur hur, I like them". His response was just expressing his love for Microsoft which honestly there is nothing wrong with but they didn't address any points made in the OP nor did he even make an argument.

They seem a lot more thought out that your OP to be honest. Which is mostly twaddle in my opinion.

It's cool to diss my OP but address it instead of just "bro your opinion sucks". Your jab might have had some validity if it bothered providing something of substance but it doesn't.

Okay, what does it matter what clothes people wear to work? Does wearing jeans a T-Shirt make the company more games focused? I actually work for a company that produces accounts software and we don't wear suits we can wear what we like.

@Juub1990: My answer was simple because honestly these questions get asked all the time here and usually by the same people, just phrased in different ways. Would me saying that I’m happy Microsoft is in the console space because I like the games that have come out on their systems, features they’ve brought to console gaming, and because I prefer console gaming over PC gaming be any more meaningful or something that you haven’t read from me before? I seriously doubt it but whatever there you go make of it what you will.

What implications in the OP? Don't go adding subtilty and nuance where there is only twaddle and conjecture.

If you gotta ask then you didn't get them. Now stop quoting me and wasting my time.

Not sure I gets yo homie. Microsoft did chase pc gamers, it was half-hearted and misguided though.

Porting games not really pc games like Gears Of War, turning Age Of Empires into a free2play looking mobile game and GFWL live, which, compared to something like Steam, was positively a disaster. And indeed, they originally expected you to pay for it, just like xbox gamers.

To this day games are still effected by GFWL, like Mortal Kombat Kollection and Operation Racoon City. Unplayable without user-fixes.

Not to say it was all bad. They re-released HD versions of Age Of Empires games on Steam, as well as Alan Wake.

But that's a small pittance compares to their sins. The bastards.

@Juub1990: If you don’t want people quoting you then perhaps you shouldn’t be posting on a public forum.

You still didn't explain your problem with work attire, Is it all people in suits or just games companies. How about if someone wears a suit but forgoes the shirt and wears a gaming T-shirt?

I don't want to be rude but there are landmarks in gaming history that you didn't take into account, and that is probably the reason why you came to this conclusion

When the success of the ps1 weakened nintendo and pushed sega out of the console market, there was a space in the console race. Especially since games, powered by microsoft directx, was miles ahead in quality compared to the consoles.

Not only that, pc gaming was plagued by piracy a lot more than consoles. Hallife 2 was actually pirated through the first steam version. There was hack where you could download halflife 2 through the steam client, and it was halflife 2 that was used as advertising for the steam client.

So it wasn't that straightforward to stay within the pc market and microsoft had the means to build a succesfull console. When Ms released their first console, they put it on the map with the stronger hardware, but the xbox360 was the core of their business strategy. The xbox 360 brought a lot of pc gamers to the console, and it was a business strategy from microsoft to make the system so powerfull and so versatile in features, for a reasonable price , that you had to be an idiot to still invest in a gaming pc.

and it worked, but the problem with ms is that they didn't capitalize on their business strategy. They invested so much in setting up xboxlive and the xbox 360 (by selling it with a loss in the beginning) only to **** it all up with the launch of the xboxone.

They had playstation by the throat but it is actually the ps4 that capitalized on the xbox success. Because that increased market of console gamers that was built more than a decade ago, is mostly playing on a ps4.

Why? They made billion from xbox and they were never into PC gaming market to begin with (before the original box).

I wouldn't call a company STUPID just for making a decision. I believe everyone here can look back and say if I would have done something different it might have turned out better. I think MS is doing better than you think there are selling games to the PC crowd and making money. In fact software(games) is were the money is, of course so people here think that you need to sell consoles in order to sell software. That's were the PC come in for MS, they don't need to sell a PC in order to sell software(games).

Microsoft is better off with consoles. Apart from Age of Empires, most Microsoft games I see mentioned here are console games anyway. I never see anyone else (apart from myself) mention the real true-blue PC games Microsoft used to peddle: Flight Simulator, Combat Flight Simulator, Close Combat, MechCommander.....

We're really the only true pc gamers on this forum. Others just boast about console games with some graphic effects.

Sad.

Not true. Sega and Nintendo introduced online gaming to consoles in Japan as far back as the Famicom Modem and Sega MegaNet in the late 1980s. And they continued to offer online gaming services in Japan with the Satellaview and SegaNet in the 1990s.

Sega and Nintendo attempted to introduce online gaming to the American console market with the Sega Channel and XBAND in the early '90s, but they failed because the American console market wasn't ready for online gaming. If anything, Sega and Nintendo were held back by America's limited online infrastructure at the time.

Sega eventually succeeded in popularizing online console gaming with SegaNet in the late '90s. It was SegaNet that popularized online console gaming, not the original Xbox Live. In terms of user numbers, SegaNet had more users than the original Xbox Live did... because SegaNet was free, whereas Xbox Live had a subscription model limiting its user base. Xbox Live didn't surpass SegaNet's peak user numbers until the Xbox 360 came along.

Combat Flight sim with a Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick was so great. Really expensive joystick but the force feedback was so strong it could snap your arm off!

I for one will say that I'm glad MS got into the console market in the first place, they gave us Halo, a game I adore so much because it was the only reason why I got into the Xbox from the start and it was obviously Nintendo wasn't gonna compete with Sony again right after the N64 fiasco, MS sure gave Sony competition and as for MS glory on PC, I never saw them doing anything radical with PC.

Don't you mean, "abandoning PC gaming?" Because Microsoft is still a primarily PC company, with Windows still being its bread-and-butter.

No, its very true. don't blame infrastructure, online gaming was big on PC in the 56k days and it xploded as soon as AOL broadband era came around. The implementations including the PS2's pathetic bolt on modem were awful. Xbox did the implementation in a standard format in a way that actually worked.

It goes beyond the physical, the software just wasn't there and the Japanese were MILES behind in this, you only have to look at how long it took the PS3 to get its crap together to see this, and you can see how Nintendo still don't have a clue what they are doing when you can't even do online chat properly in 2018.

Microsoft did it "right", I never said first.

Sega did very well especially for the time, but they ultimately failed.

@Juub1990: You're a shill. Does yours count?

cough cough

@Jag85: Really? I had no idea all of this online stuff was done in the late 80's-early 90's. My first ever online console gaming was Dreamcast Fantasy Star Online and within that time, I always assume that was Sega's first online attempt.

You learned something new here everyday in SW :)

In my personal opinion they were stupid, they gave all PC publishing away to Valve, closed down all their PC studios that were making money, now the future of Windows gaming is under threat by Linux so they will lose the entire lot in the end.

They should have doubled down on PC gaming and had their console / mini pc hardware business on the side.

The future of DirectX itself is on the edge, the thing the Xbox was named after, what a shit show.

Also to the person saying MS gave you Halo... it was originally a not a Microsoft game you know right?

People have been saying that for the last 300 years. Linux will never be a major threat to window. In fact iOS is probably more of a threat than Linux.

Oh. And you too. ;)

Ahahahahahahahaha

wut.

@Jag85: Yes. PC gaming.

It is actually. Where do you think's MS recent love for Linux came from after decades of fighting with it and calling it a cancer? Do you know Azure Sphere is MS own version of Linux for IoT devices and they admitted 'Windows' is too bloated for that. They also recently joined Linux Foundation.

The average Joe doesn't need a PC to do its usual stuff, they can pretty much do it all on their cell phones and surprise Android (Linux) owns more than 50% of that market. In the enterprise world Linux is by far the most used OS for servers, hell Linux is a dominant OS even on Windows Azure then couple with the fact that several big corporations like Google, Facebook has banned Windows machines for in house development and are only allowed once you get either an approval for some specific work or to test their software on it.

You might have been right if you said in the consumer space or gaming but then again Android happened.

In terms of consoles, the West was well behind Japan in terms of online gaming, up until SegaNet eventually popularized online console gaming in the late '90s.

In terms of PCs, Japan had online gaming since at least the MSX's LINKS in '86. It was the first online gaming network to feature graphical online games. In comparison, Western online games at the time were text-based. But after Japan was hit by recession in the early '90s, Japanese PC gaming eventually declined by the mid-90s.

In terms of mobiles, Japan had smartphones with online gaming since the late '90s, long before the West. Japan's i-mode service which launched in '99 was essentially a precursor to the iPhone.

Nevertheless, Microsoft did do online better than Sony and Nintendo. However, most of what Xbox Live did was already done by SegaNet. On top of that, SegaNet offered most of the same online features for free, instead of charging money for it like Microsoft did. If Sega had succeeded, then console online gaming could've been free like PCs, instead of the paid subscription model that Microsoft popularised in console gaming.

If there's anything I can give MS for bringing to the console industry is adding a damn hard drive to a game console at least, making it the standard.

MS was an interesting addition to the console space for sure. It kept the other players on their toes at least. I do think now that their latest foray into the market isn't doing so hot, they could be doing more for the PC space like they used to. BLAH BLAH BLAH Bring back Flight Simulator!

No Microsoft breathed a fresh air for western games on consoles. Before that the whole market was completely biased toward the western games and praised Japanese games much more that western developers had no chance competing the japanese games on consoles.

Yes. The only time they've had any success was in the early days of the 360, and only because Sony botched the launch of the PS3. Otherwise their console efforts have been flops.

Meanwhile PC gaming brings in about as much money every year as all consoles combined and Steam is one of the hottest things going in the world of gaming and basically prints money for Valve.

They had the potential to be in on the ground floor of a huge money maker, and they blew it to go be a "me too" in the console world.

@kali-b1rd: true but if you remember that era Dreamcast was making a huge push for online gaming until Microsoft knocked them out of the console wars. I think it was inevitable that we got to this point in online console gaming but it may have looked differently if Sega was leading the charge. We will sadly never know. Miss ya Sega!

MS didn't knock Sega out of the console wars.

Sega's own internal power struggles between the US and Japan divisions and the PlayStation are what killed Sega.

@vaidream45: Microsoft made the Dreamcast’s OS, you realize.

@boycie: very true. I’ll rephrase. Microsoft took Segas place in the console wars due to a major lack of focus. Especially leading up to the Saturn release with the major divide between US and Japan divisions. The whole 32x thing right before the Saturn came out was terrible. Imagine if Sony came out with PS5 right after the Pro was released lol. Either way, Sega was really pushing that online component and it was partly why I bought a Dreamcast back then just to sadly see it die soon after. I sold it and got a ps2 and gamecube. Kinda still wish I had that Dreamcadt though. It’s kinda like the Wii U. It failed but it was a great console with great games.

@Sevenizz: yup. I remember. Ironic how they ended up taking their place in the console wars. I originally thought the Xbox was gonna flop and Sega was gonna give Sony a run for their money. Just shows that the console wars aren’t about raw power cuz the PS2 was the weakest of the three but had that dvd drive that we all wanted and tons of great games to play. This is why when people say the 1X is the best console right now I don’t get it. It has the most power for sure but that is never enough to win the war. Man that Dreamcast sure pushed out some great graphics back then and most games were running at a smooth 60fps. This thread is really making me miss Sega consoles. The arcade approach and sheer fun factor is something lacking in todays market.