Xbox Founding Team Member Says Xbox Hardware Is 'Dead' (videogameschronicle.com) 43
A founding member of the Xbox team says she believes Xbox hardware is "dead" and that Microsoft appears to be planning a "slow exit" from the gaming hardware business. Microsoft recently announced partnerships with external hardware companies including the ROG Xbox Ally, which runs Windows and functions as a portable PC that can run games from external stores like Steam.
Laura Fryer, one of Microsoft Game Studios' first employees who worked as a producer on the original Gears of War games and served as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, called the partnerships evidence of Microsoft's inability to ship hardware. "Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead. The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass," Fryer said.
Laura Fryer, one of Microsoft Game Studios' first employees who worked as a producer on the original Gears of War games and served as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, called the partnerships evidence of Microsoft's inability to ship hardware. "Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead. The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass," Fryer said.
Portable hardware (Score:2)
From what I can tell, she's talking about Microsoft's disinterest or inability to create mobile hardware, and that MS is instead potentially licensing the XBox brand / OS / software stack to other manufactures that are already making portable gaming devices. She sees this as the decline of the Xbox I guess, even though MS has already stated there will be a next gen Xbox at some point.
I'm no expert in this arena, but Xbox has always had a pretty healthy market share even though its competitors had mobile off
Re:Portable hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Flat sheet of glass (Score:3)
And modern tablets, phones, and mini-desktops are so fast and powerful that most people already have a sufficient gaming device with them all the time.
As for tablets and phones, how many people carry a Bluetooth controller with them? A virtual gamepad on a flat sheet of glass offers no tactile feedback as to where the player's thumbs are. Not all games adapt well to that.
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Yes, modern hardware is becoming smaller, power efficient, and very capable. Have you heard of new AMD Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs? With Radeon 8060S graphics? Look it up: GMKtec AI Max+ 395 mini PC. These things are such great SOCs for gaming and very power efficient. For now they are only available with new laptops, but AMD will release a desktop version of them later this year. I can't wait. Also interesting is Nvidia N1X ARM chip. ARM gaming might take off next year with AMD, Intel and Nvidia all having so
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I can play Xbox Cloud games on my VR headset, with a larger, curved screen than I can personally afford. I would keep my Game Pass sub before I'd buy a new Xbox.
As long as I can ensure that I have a cloud connection, I no longer need an xbox.
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Except for Nintendo, selling gaming hardware is a money loser (https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-loses-up-to-200-on-every-xbox-console-sold). And modern tablets, phones, and mini-desktops are so fast and powerful that most people already have a sufficient gaming device with them all the time. So it seems this might be part of a broader strategy by Microsoft to focus on services and software side of things and to let someone else take the risk on device manufacturing.
Erm, dozens of vendors in the PC gaming hardware market, not just laptops but video cards, motherboards et al. all focused at gamers.
Yeah, I know you meant consoles. I'd add the SteamDeck to that list. No idea if Valve is making money off of it but I doubt they're selling it at a big loss like Sony/MS is, not at £450. You can almost get a budget gaming laptop for that (£500-600).
I've largely skipped consoles since the early 00s. Had an original Xbox which I modded into a media centre PC
Re:Portable hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's a reasonable extrapolation.
Microsoft's historical strengths have been associated with enabling third parties.
Nokia, Surface, and xBox seemed to be them pining for a more Apple-like model where they just call all the shots up and down the stack.
Given that Nokia is dead, Surface is kind of de-emphasized, and xBox has started to see use as a brand for PC gaming, accessories, and partners... It's not a huge leap that the'll just delegate the brand to the OEMs on hardware execution as the software stack hasn't really benefitted from a locked down hardware BOM in quite some time. Microsoft played with in-house hardware and didn't seem to have particularly impressive results while sort of risking alienating their partners that have driven their strength.
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Dreaming of getting 30% of photoshop sales prices instead of 20 bucks for the os messed up a lot of their strategy. Of course it was unrealistic from the start but led to win8 and winrt and everything after that.
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Microsoft's historical strength in the consumer space has been incompetent competition.
Software can benefit immensely from a locked down hardware BOM, it allows far better QA and optimisation. Doesn't mean you have to go full first party though, can do it like Google does with Chromebooks.
Consoles are easy (Score:3)
the software stack hasn't really benefitted from a locked down hardware BOM in quite some time.
When did these advantages of "a locked down hardware BOM" go away?
- Easier for the audience to compare a game's system requirements to a particular device model
- Console maker's imprimatur makes it easier to sort through Theodore Sturgeon's 90 percent crap that fills more open online app stores
- Restriction against software modding reduces likelihood of cheating in online ranked play against strangers
- Restriction against software from unidentified publishers eliminates need for intrusive real-time anti-mal
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On the system requirements angle, PC gamers generally don't care anymore, however, MS can certify a few standard tiers, say, 'xbox 2026', 'xbox 2026 premium', 'xbox 2026 ultra' and the software and hardware ecosystem follows those.
Microsoft can curate a store of games regardless of the nature of the hardware. The app stores choosing to let developers run wild has nothing to do with in-house hardware.
For the software modding and third party applications, they can have their software platform do this. Windo
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On the system requirements angle, PC gamers generally don't care anymore, however, MS can certify a few standard tiers, say, 'xbox 2026', 'xbox 2026 premium', 'xbox 2026 ultra' and the software and hardware ecosystem follows those.
Microsoft tried to do something like that before with the Windows Experience Index in WinSAT [wikipedia.org]. It didn't last long: the GUI was displayed only from Windows Vista through the first release of Windows 8.
Microsoft can curate a store of games regardless of the nature of the hardware. The app stores choosing to let developers run wild has nothing to do with in-house hardware.
If next to nobody signs up for Microsoft's curated store, this curation will be ineffective. The only thing that encouraged third-party developers to publish through Microsoft's store is that Xbox consoles are cryptographically locked down not to run games from anywhere else.
An xBox Series X equivalent GPU is like $250.
Plus the cost of buying the rest of
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From a business perspective, those haven't given them the results they would have wanted.
Paradoxically, their worst products make the most money.
Re:Portable hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
Xbox has always had a pretty healthy market share
I wouldn't describe it that way. After four generations of the console market, they've never been better than a distant number 2. Here's a list of lifetime sales [wikipedia.org] for the console market. The original Xbox sold only 24 million, compared to 160 million for the PS2 it competed against. The Xbox 360 did better at 84 million, but that still left it behind the Wii and PS3. Then the Xbox One went backward, selling only 58 million vs. 117 million for the PS4, and the Series X/S is unlikely to sell even that many by the end of this generation.
Given the billions they've put into the business, it's hard to see that as a success.
Microsoft is a platform company first, a software company second, and a hardware company as a distant third. It's not surprising if they decide to get out of the gaming hardware business and focus on creating the software for other companies' hardware.
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So I hear they're discontinuing Windows 10. The spec bump obsoleting old CPUs, hardware DRM, signing into a Microsoft account, - every Windows 11 machine is gaming capable when you flood the system with ads for XBox.
58 million consoles vs hundreds of millions of new PC sales. Dedicated console vs buying a wireless controller for the hardware you already own?
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The question isn't 'are they number 1' or 'are they number 2' but 'did they sell enough hardware and software, or otherwise benefit from having the brand, to make it worth their while?'
After all, you mention the Wii, but a lot of people who bought a Wii never bought a game past Wii Sports. Many people bought PS3s to be Blu-Ray players, just like many people bought a PS2 to be a DVD player.
wince (Score:2, Insightful)
Very few games were written to use WinCE, most were written to Sega's own API. That said MSFT's troubles stemmed almost entirely from (a) GamePass which seemed like a success in the short run but ended up sucking up all the oxygen for third party games and which put a cap on the size of the market and (b) the series S which is the more popular model (and thus cannot be abandoned) but is also weaker than all the other consoles and PCs on the market (except Switch which is its own thing) meaning the Xbox is a
Re: wince (Score:3)
I blame their marketing. I still don't know what the latest XBox is, or which are the model varieties, or whether the device sitting on my entertainment center is one generation behind or two. And I've been a consumer of XBox stuff for decades.
On the other hand, I know PS5 is the latest PlayStation, and that it's three generations ahead of my PS2.
And as long as I need to go online to use my console, I will stick to PC. Nintendo was the last hold out, but now even they have abandoned offline games.
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There are only few hardware I love more than the DreamCast, but honestly, I can't imagine why you are saying Microsoft is the reason for SEGA exiting the console hardware business.
The real reason was SONY having made an excellent fist console, the PSX, and lying in gigantic proportions about the upcoming sequel, the PS2, in order to effectively cut all momentum for the DreamCast sales.
Damn lies by SONY included:
_It will do Toy Story graphics in real time!
Do I have to explain the extent of this lie?
_It will
Re: sega dreamcast (Score:2)
Microsoft helped design the Dreamcast, which had only notional security and was destroyed in part by piracy. They then went on to design their own console with stronger security, although that was also completely defeated.
Yes, Sony's lies were relevant, but there were multiple factors at work. Sega failing at designing the Saturn ("pile of chips on a board") also set them up to fail completely without a win on Dreamcast.
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The only Microsoft part in the DreamCast was the option for developers to use WinCE for their games instead of the native system.
AFAIK, nowhere has it been mentioned that the bypass used by couterfeited games to boot up was relying on WinCE code in the DreamCast.
Concerning the Saturn, there was no failure in its design. It was the ultimate ... 2D machine.
The problem was, it was pittted against the first good 3D console (PSX).
So it was a failure of choosing the right objective, 2D or 3D, not a failure of des
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It's debatable that Microsoft drove them out, but xbox did come out in 2001. Dreamcast announced the end in early 2001 with the last game made in 2002. Sony probably did more damage.
Re: Micro twats (Score:2)
"The phone was well received by the public."
No. It was not.
Just ... (Score:3)
The Switch 2 is a major problem for them (Score:3)
Sony at least has a half full of exclusives. They're the only game in town for baseball. And they have the last of us, Horizon, God of War, Astro boy and ratchet & clank.
The only thing Microsoft has is Forza.
So basically at some point in time as a kid you start wanting an Xbox or a PS5 so you can play call of duty with your friends because it runs better there. Assuming there aren't networking issues than the switch 2 hardware more or less solves that.
I don't think the difference between 4K gaming and 1080p gaming is enough to drive a huge number of upgrades. Back in the day I remember getting up pretty big edge out of going from 320x240 to 640 by 480 all the way up to 1024x768 playing Duke nukem and Shadow warrior. Shadow warrior especially because the weapons would Auto Target and the effect was more pronounced to the further away you were on the map.
There are some advantages to a more stable image here in there at distance but once you get to 1080p you have to be really hardcore to notice. Like shmup players they can notice an extra two milliseconds of lag.
Re: The Switch 2 is a major problem for them (Score:2)
I personally prefer 1080p with legit frames to 4k with interpolated frames or upscaling.
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But if you're starting at 30 FPS and using it to get up to 60 then yeah that sucks.
Most esports are going to be the former. You use it to hit the 120 or 144 Hertz refresh rates. At that point it's like an ultra complicated version of free sync or gsync. Completely different tech of course but same basic idea that you
Re: The Switch 2 is a major problem for them (Score:2)
I think Microsoft did the math and figured out that the money it costs to make a console has been increasing, not least because of security. And then it gets hacked anyway and doesn't achieve its goals as a result. Why bother? Needing exclusives to bring people to your console when you could do cross platform instead and not even need a console... Plus with the EU forcing platforms open it's only a matter of time before it happens to consoles. No console, no problem. Microsoft can simply lobby for the other
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...and I had no problem waiting and playing God of War and Horizon on Steam...
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Sony at least has a half full of exclusives. They're the only game in town for baseball. And they have the last of us, Horizon, God of War, Astro boy and ratchet & clank.
The only thing Microsoft has is Forza.
Erm almost all of those are on PC... so much for exclusives.
They weren't working with their best (Score:1)
GTA 6 (Score:2)
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Depends on whether you buy video games for video game gameplay or high polygon ray traced titties.
jebait (Score:3)
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Here's the game plan. MS jebaits sony into releasing an $800 base PS6 because, why not, no competition. MS then swoops in with a $500 xbox next gen to wild cheers for saving gaming from greed. or some shit.
Erm... you're not familiar with Microsoft.
Sony is going to release an expensive Playstation because they can't afford to keep selling them at a massive loss. They've already released a $700 one to test the waters, $700 will get you a decent but entry level gaming laptop.
Microsoft doesn't need to release a $500 Xbox in response to a $800, they only need to release a $750 Xbox. Microsoft can keep eating losses by subsidising the games and entertainment division from scraps of the OS and application divi
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Consoles can and will continue to be sold at losses because sony/ms/valve/nintendo take 30% cuts of all game sales, which ends up being large net profits. Either side just needs solid launch titles (Halo for MS has always worked out well for xbox sales, Sony could do spiderman 3 and a GTA6 next gen exclusive period, etc.)