One reader disputed Xbox's suggestion that exclusive games were causing a stagnation in the console market, arguing that it should have more games, not fewer.
What a week it's been, and as I write this, it's only Wednesday, so it's still a while before Xbox head Phil Spencer comes up with another ridiculous thing as the reason why nothing works. There are 2 days. I don't know if everything about Xbox is his fault, but he's a frontman and certain things like Game Pass and the acquisition of Activision Blizzard were definitely his ideas, so he's happy to be an incompetent millionaire. There's very little room to give in. It's ruining my hobby.
Of course, I'm referring to the various post-mortems from last week's GDC (Game Developers Conference). I didn't see GDC, but apparently it's a big gathering place for developers to give talks and do business deals. And obviously the two big topics were that the PS5 Pro is a pointless waste of time and the Xbox is a dumpster fire.
How Sony and Microsoft sleepwalked into a world where they could no longer afford to make big budget games and their only answer was to throw the baby out with the bath water. I think we're way beyond mincing words at this point. But to nuke the baths and everything else within a 16 mile radius of orbit.
I think Xbox was particularly stupid, but I don't want to say that Sony itself was stupid. An alternative that only lowers the budget is to completely abandon making decent games and focus solely on live service games. This week we learned that Bend Studio is also working on it. This means everyone is working on it.
Of course, Sony wouldn't tell us that, and hasn't said anything since this whole crisis started to unravel, but this week Microsoft broke its silence in an “interview” with Polygon. I put the interview in quotes because no one seems to have actually interrogated him, but they don't correct him when he says obvious nonsense and just let him ramble.
The problem is that he keeps portraying what is clearly an Xbox problem as an industry problem, and no one challenges him on this. He continues to complain about the lack of growth and, oddly enough, now blames this “stagnation” on monopolies. This is despite the fact that the Switch is Nintendo's most successful home gaming console in history, and a large part of the PlayStation 4's success is thanks to exclusive games.
No one bought an Xbox for exclusive software since the days of the Xbox 360. That's exactly Phil his Spencer's responsibility. He's been in charge for over a decade now, but he hasn't overseen a single Xbox essential game in that time. The closest thing he has is Forza, but no one buys an Xbox just for that. But what I wonder is, is Spencer just using all this as an excuse, or is he just never having a proper exclusive, so he doesn't really understand the importance of exclusives? I mean, is it?
I think he understands because he wanted all Bethesda games to be exclusive. Although he clearly indicates that everything will change soon. That means everything he said when the first batch of multi-format games were announced was a flat-out lie.
He also started talking about Gen Z and how they don't understand the concept of exclusivity since everything else is available on both iPhone and Android (although this is clearly not true) , it seems hardly worth discussing at this point).
He says this as if Gen Z are all teenagers who have never seen beyond a touchscreen. However, since Gen Z includes everyone from the age of 12 to the age of 27, the concept of exclusive content is clearly not something that attempts to explain faxing. Machines for them. Especially if you have already subscribed to a TV service.
Gen Z will buy consoles just like everyone else, looking for great exclusives. But what do they expect to be excited about with Xbox? Halo Infinite and Starfield? Xbox's problems all come down to one thing. That means no groundbreaking exclusive content, and there hasn't been any exclusive content in over a decade. If they were the same people who published The Last of Us or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we'd be hearing very different lines from Spencer right now.
But now, Xbox is creating a narrative, as it has been doing for some time, that not only are monopolies bad, but that monopolies are the cause of the stagnation that only Xbox is experiencing. (The PlayStation 5 has its own problems, but Sony isn't as wealthy as Microsoft because it costs a lot of money to make the latest games).
Sony and Microsoft need to make more exclusives, not less. Problems began to appear the moment Sony's release schedule dried up, and this is no coincidence. The situation is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft is presenting. It's all crazy and I don't really know where it's going to end, but somehow I don't think it's going to be good news for gamers.
From reader Purple Ranger
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