FunkMiller
I wanted to complete the full quote by
Heisenberg007
with the question before it too to really get the full context and really try to take a look at all that Phil said, sentence by sentence. The question starts at 35:08
Question:
"When you see the community talking about the console side of things do you think you've lost the focus or maybe you put too much onto the PC side? Do you think the console is still getting the console love that it deserves?... Of course looking forward and using the power of this next gen, do you think you guys have lost that focus or is it still there and can we see more love on that side?"
Notice that the question is just about the Xbox console platform and what the fans expect from the console, it never mentions the competitors.
Phil goes to answer this:
"We'll definitely continue to focus on making our console experience as great as it can be, i liked the homepage refresh and some stuff... I will say, this might be disruptive aswell, we have a diferent vision. Play the games you want with people you want anywhere you want, we want Xbox to be something that people who buy our console can feel like they are a member of obviously who are playing on PC, who are playing on Cloud... you fell like full members of our ecosystem, Gamepass players can play on many different devices and we are fully commited to that"
So far so good, that's the answer you would expect, just talking about your ecosystem/platform and what is good about it and your vision. Maybe it was a missed oportunity to reasure fans about the power of the console and working with devs to make sure they can optimize properly for the console, like getting the best version of 3rd party games for example. Or even first party games like Ghostwire.
But then he deviates and goes on to talk about everything else, unprompted. It basically feels like a message to warriors to me with all that talk about "winning the console race", almost as a preemptive excuse. Maybe he had in mind the poor consoles sales when the question talked about "the console side of things" and thats why he felt like he needed to talk about the competitors.
"
We're not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo."
Ok, fine. You don't need to outsell them, but it sure feels like you intended to with the introduction of a cheap entry level console. Sure, your vision is to grow Gamepass as a multi device service but one of the cheapest and best ways to enter that ecosystem is a console.
"There isn't really a great solution or win for us, and I know that will upset a ton of people, but it's just the truth of the matter."
But is it really the truth? Why talk about "winning" at all, isnt that something warriors do? What does "win" mean in this context? If Xbox got as close as say 10 million consoles sales from PS5 i would consider that as a huge win all things considered. The best solution known so far is having a catalog of great games, the early 360 vs PS3 shows that and in the same generation we saw that solution in play again with PS3 catching up, or the WiiU to Switch.
"When you're third place in the console marketplace, and the top two players are as strong as they are, and have, in certain cases, a very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that make being Xbox hard for us, as a team."
This just feels like throwing shade at Sony and painting them as the enemy that won't let them compete fairly while at the same time you are making the biggest deals ever with Bethesda and Activision.
"Our vision is that everybody who is on console has to feel like they have a great experience and they are a first class citizen, they've invested a ton in our platform."
That's fine.
"I see commentary that if you just build great games, everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games, all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way."
Ok fine, if you want to get really technical maybe not EVERYTHING would turn around, maybe the console shares would not shift in a DRAMATIC way, but it would sure as hell help a ton. Little by little as the library of great games builds up the market would realize that having an Xbox is essential, and the market share would reflect that. Isn't that why they built the Series S in the firist place? As a great entry to their ecosystem. If you don't expect great games to turn things around then why buy Bethesda and Activision and make their games exclusive in the first place?
"We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games."
Im sure this plays a rol for sure and they have data to back this up, but we also know that 30% of PS5 owners never had a PS4 before. We know the Switch is a big success with the WiiU selling so little and 0 backwards compatibilty and at that point you already had a digital marketplace in place. And technically wouldnt discs work in the same way here? The 360 sold way more than PS3 initially when the PS3 was BC with both PS1 and PS2 and people still choose to go to the 360.
"So when you go, and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome. But this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console, that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay to the reality of most people. Like 90% of the people every year that walk into a retailer to buy a console are already a member of one of the three ecosystems and their digital library is there... this is the first generation were the big games that they are playing were already available last gen, Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft... like the continuity from generation to generation is so strong."
This is kinda repeating what was already said. Im just going to say that we know a lot of people that have said something akin to this before "i switched to PS4 because of the exclusives" "i bought a Switch because of Mario and Zelda" "i bought an Xbox when they acquired Bethesda".
"I see a lot of pundits out there that kinda want to go back to the time when we all had cartridges and discs and every new generation was a clean slate and you could switch the whole console share, that just not the world that we are in today."
This kinda feels like a strawman argument no? I've not seen any pundit make this argument in a serious manner. In fact from my perspective most people are actually happy that consoles finally moved to x86 and that that allows for these new gen consoles to be backwards compatible "in an easy way". In fact most people expect the next next gen consoles to be BC with this gen and the previous one! Same with the Switch 2, BC is an expected feature at this point.
"There is no world where Starfield is an 11 out of 10 and people start selling their PS5. That's not going to happen."
Of course not, who would do that knowing how great PS5 games are right now. Nobody expects that to happen, so why bring that up at all? The objective should be to convince people to buy an Xbox too, thanks to their great games, thats it.
"So what we have to do, and we have this unique vision because we see what creators want to do, creators want to build games that can meet players on any screen. People play with their friends regardless of what other screen they are on. The console is the core of the Xbox brand, there is no doubt, so we will stay focused on making sure that console experience is awesome but i know some people want to hold us up as just being a better green version of what the blue guys do... and i'm just going to say there is not a win for Xbox in staying in the wake of somebody else, we have to go off and do our own thing with Gamepass, Xcloud and the way we build our games."
Thats awesome, its cool they have a different vision, but at the end of the day it all goes back to games! Thats what people will be doing with Gamepass and Xcloud and if you want to grow that segment at the end of the day you need great games to move people into it. When people say they want Xbox to be a green version of the blue guys i think they mean they expect the same quality of experiences, not the same experiences per se. Big AAA games that only a first party could realistically achieve.
All in all after writting all this i kinda better understand what he was trying to say but i still feel there was no need for him to go on this tangent "rant". I don't think it achieved anything other than muddying the watters for no reason.
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