Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox's Soul | Asmongold Reacts 

Microsoft put all their eggs in the Bethesda basket, but the eggs clipped through the basket and broke.

At this point, Xbox is getting into that "Disney Star Wars" territory where it doesn't even matter if the next product is good. The majority of their dwindling fanbase has gone through all the stages of grief and moved on to accept that their brand is cooked.

Xbox 360 was peak Xbox.

The Cortana comment was 100% on point. This is a major reason why AAA games are falling short by having to water down characters to fulfil the illusion you would get a wider market appeal

You know things are bad when IGN actually has a good take

360 was there Golden Age.

Not everybody wants to be sitting at a desk with headphones, 3ft from a monitor pixel counting and sweating their @$$ off. Some people like relaxing in a lazyboy, controller in hand leisurely gaming on their 65" TV with what little time they have to do so, that is the general console gamer.

>No games >Buy studios >no games >close studios >Still no games What is this strategy called?

xbox had lost their soul after 360 era.

Xbox is on their Sega arc. From making console to being a third party developer.

That BetterHelp video just got pulled while I was watching it, lol.

Sony: Censorship and shitty rules Xbox: Killing studious Nintendo: Copyright abuse Steam: Chillin' n Winnin'

It's really not that complicated: if they released awesome exclusives none of this would be happening. If starfield, halo and redfall were amazing we simply wouldnt be having this conversation.

i would buy a console if i would not have to pay yet another subscription to use my already payed for internet for most games online features

Listen guys it’s pretty simple. Game pass has done to games what Netflix/HBO/Disney/prime vídeo has done to movies. You pay a subscription and you get lots of mediocre games and movies. This is the age of quantity over quality, it’s just that it is more noticeable in the gaming industry because it is still comprised of people that LOVE (mostly millennials) their hobby with true passion. You just can’t make memorable content on a subscription based platform. I can assure you that Netflix will never make a gem like The Gladiator just as game pass will never produce an OG halo CE quality game EVER again.

Asmongold suggesting that corporate leadership is known for taking responsibility for their failures is a truly comical take.

XBOX Is the gaming equal to Disney, buying everything up and doing nothing with the beloved properties

That moment when you pulled new Xbox and HALO:CE out of a box on Christmas. I can still remember that smell that the packaging had. Peak console gaming.

As a physician I can confirm this is a battle

3:45 Exclusivity used to be games that would be a risky investment for 3rd party publisher and Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo would take the financial risk for a different "out of the box" game franchise. A recent exemple would be Helldivers & Helldivers 2 or if we go back in time, Naughty Dogs and Insomniac are a good example of that with Jak and Daxter & Ratchet and Clank. And much of Nintendo portfolio. Now it's a thug of war about who can snatch the most 3rd party publishers / developers. That is a shitty situation.

To my my opinion the biggest mistake they made was not wanting to be the "dude bro console" anymore, heck former 342 studio head Bonnie Ross stated to the Washington Post in an interview and reaction on the bad reception of the Halo series. That for more than a decade they tried to replace the o. fans with a new modern fanbase, and perceived the o.g. fandom to be a threat to Halo. I never understood why this interview wasnt picked up by the gaming community. Or Matt Booty his words years ago, that Perfect Dark & Fable remakes would be as authentic as possible; but that it would be remakes for a "modern global audience". And that The Coalition would go further with the path they went on (which most fans didnt liked) Gears. I think they already messed up way before the Activision take over.

When Xbox one dropped, it was the beginning of the end. That’s when I switched to PC

Exclusive games DRIVES competition which is extremely consumer friendly because then you just buy from the winning side and the consumers win for example: when EA got exclusive rights to madden the madden brand dropped hard because they didn’t have to compete with 2k anymore Edit: you yourself gave an example of Sony pushing Xbox to improve to try to be competitive

If they can't even make good Halo's, how can you trust them in the slightest.

And remember 343 is still open 😂

I miss Fable.

14:50 for that to work, high speed internet would have to be free and unlimited. The tech is there, but the consumer cannot afford the collaterals.

Guys this is happening in every consumer based industry. Housing prices are tanking everyone's bank accounts and consumers aren't spending. Retail and the fast food industry is having the same problem, people are just broke

Winning the console wars needs a definition. If you're selling the box at a loss or very small profit, it's about selling games and subscriptions to make profit.

30000 people used to work here. Now it's a ghost town.

The entire gaming industry lost its soul when Xbox live market place became a thing and they sold the first dlc. They realized they could gut games in development and sell you the other parts and on top of that put them behind a paywall to even be allowed to purchase. It’s a giant scheme. PS3, Xbox 360, and the Wii in the early part of that cycle was the last good times to own a game console. I’ve been PC gaming since the end of that generation and haven’t looked back.

did the betterhelp video just get privated or removed?

Phil took a gamble on attempting to get Redfall ready and it didn't work. It was obvious Phil Spencer was desperate to get a game out since at the time there was nothing released for months and especially after failing to deliver the twelve games for that year and only managed to release three of them. This push from Phil Spencer caused Arkane Austin to release earlier than projected. Phil has openly admitted and taken full responsibility for Redfall and the contradiction is Arkane Austin took the hit instead.

The big companies don't produce games anymore. They produce assets to sell. That's one reason for why "AAA games" feel more and more bland. The need to be profitable is only increasing the larger those companies become. Its not enough to be profitable for the sake of making good games. The pressure is up to please investors and parent companies.

Lol what happened to the better help video?

Gamepass: 35 million subscribers PS+: 47 million subscribers Source: MS, Statista

4:36 Not at all. That's why Microsft is in a huge pile of shit: they invested everything on gamepass but the numbers are not good enough.

I genuinely can not fathom how many decisions Microsoft has put in place to make quality of game development irrelevant. I imagine it must be terrible working under Xbox and knowing that no matter how good or popular your game is, it is completely out of your hands if the studio stays around.

What happened to the Better help Video that just got uploaded??

Thing is technology has gone so far that we are now able to game on handheld devices while still being playable

PlayStation Plus actually has more subscribers than Game Pass. 48 million on plus to around 34 million on game pass.

To be honest. Gamepass killed the Xbox console. There is no way Microsoft is paying developers enough to makeup for individual sales. Sure maybe a couple games but overall no way. They should have followed Sony's strategy by investing in the companies they bought, and put out quality exclusives for their console, and then PC release atleast 6 months to a year later. That would have kept Xbox relevant and possibly the best place to game while making Microsoft the money they want.

(1:39) "This is our precious baby." *punt* "I never said how precious."

The problem with Starfield is that it was chasing a trend that had already been proven faulty years ago during No Man’s Sky initial release. Procedurally generated worlds in a vacuum are boring AF. And after the debacle that was Fallout 76, that was not the comeback Bethesda needed.

Matt Booty: We need more games like Hi-Fi Rush Xbox: "keep your booty out of this, we don't need it" 😂💀

Gamepass has 34 million subs , PlayStation Plus had 47.4 million subscribers across three tiers, Essential: 33.3 million , Extra: 6.1 million and Premium: 8 million . Also keep in mind gamepass has 1st party day 1 releases , which is proving unsustainable for the model as MS themselves have NOW admitted it cannibalizes sales , which they said the opposite for when it initially launched ....

What did the commenter mean with 'the tech isnt there yet'? Isnt Gforce now litteraly there? Or is he talking about other tech?

they got rid of that better help ad video quick

So strange they did absolutly no communication on Hellblade 2. It's not a good sign for the quality of the game if they are ashamed of it...

There isn’t enough gamepass revenue to keep the lights on. PS has exclusives but they don’t go on PS+ on day one. Everyone has paid 70 bucks for Stellar Blade. How many people actually bought an Xbox exclusive? Xbox needs the revenue outside of gamepass. gamepass is the problem.

What happened to the Betterhelp video?

Funny how sony is not even in full force mode and MS still struggling

did the gamepass conversion thing on pc and barely use it. garbage value even when it's $4 a month or whatever it ended up being.

Completely wrong about gamepass versus PS Plus. PS Plus outsells it almost two to one. (PS+ is roughly 50 mil and gamepass is roughly 30 mil). I only recently got a PS5 and was absolutely staggered how much PS+ has been stepped up from years ago. You can be completely satisfied with many exclusives and amazing games for literal years with the line up on PS Plus. And I formed this decision after thinking Gamepass was incredible, and it is great. But PS Plus is even better for me

Death by a thousand cuts. Each cut was unique and everyone knows them from one disappointment to the next of flagship IPs

I think exclusivity is fine. The company wants to compete for customers, you offer exclusive games. If that wasn’t the case, then consoles wouldn’t be a thing.

4:27 Ps+ latest numbers were at 47 million and game pass are at 34 million and that was after they changend xbox live gold to gamepass core to boost the numbers. Neither has substantial growth going on and have probably reached a saturation point which is why both either have done or consider price hikes to make the line go up.

Sony did to Microsoft exactly what the United States did to the Soviet Union during the cold war.

That stema-windows commentary it's just nuts... Valve released the steam deck so more games work under proton, just so they don't depend on windows

What happen to the better help video?

3:38 xbox has always tried to be a full media set for your TV. They never tried to battle purely as a game console

i know for me personally i dont play many games on PC if they dont have controller support b/c afte about 20 min my wrist start to hurt pretty bad and then i have to quit for a few days before i can play again, and that sucks when part of my job requires me to use a PC off and on all day thus making that pain last longer.

Funny example about the Gameboy. I literally just ordered the Analogue Pocket.

Nobody is excited for a new gears or cod game but go off king 😂😂

xbox exclusives are hurt by requiring to support Series S. devs can't push tech of a game to the limit

exclusivity is the best thing about the AAA games industry. it's what makes a very dedicated and talented set of developers try their hardest to produce amazing games that will actually sell consoles and push the industry forward. the only alternative that could ever achieve a similar effect would be if there was somehow just a single gaming platform, but at the same time this single gaming platform wasn't governed by any entitety that has an interest in selling the games that some of these developers make over selling others - so everyone would again be in the same situation of trying their hardest to actually make good products.

Exclusivity is necessary for a platform like Sony and Nintendo to be successful

100% no need to buy an xbox, I have a good pc with game pass sub and a ps5 for games that I want to play on there.

Exclusively benefits the console it's released on. How hard is it to understand. Asmon isn't that smart 😂

I just remember no one wanting to buy an Xbox because the console and controller was too big and the fat American jokes went hard.

what happened to that new video just now? lol

Could you upload your videos on higher resolutions ? I'm suffering from 1080p

Lord Gaben did it again.

Game boy isn't dead, it's just called switch now... saying game boy is dead is like saying "playstation" is dead because no one plays a ps1 anymore.... game boy is as similar to switch as ps1 is to ps5. Basically there is the the companies console lineup and then portable lineup. Just because a company changes the name doesn't mean it's previous gen is "dead", it just evolves with the new generation release, just like ps1 evolved into ps5, and the Sony PSP to the Sony Vita. The only ones that really died are labeled "DEAD" below: ### Company Console Line ### Nintendo: NES > SNES > N64 > NGC > Wii > Switch/Lite/OLED > Switch 2 (TBA) Sega: SMS > Genesis/SegaCD/32X > Saturn > Dreamcast > DEAD Sony: PS1 > PS2 > PS3 > PS4 > PS5 Atari: 2600 > 7800 > Jaguar > DEAD Microsoft: Xbox > Xbox 360 > Xbox One > Xbox Series X/S ### Company Portable Lines ### Atari: Lynx > Lynx II > DEAD Sega: Game Gear > Nomad > DEAD Sony : PSP/Go > Vita > DEAD (for now...) Nintendo: GB/Pocket/Light > GBC > GBA/SP/Micro > NDS/Lite/DSi > N3DS/N2DS> Switch/Lite/OLED > Switch 2 (TBA) The only console that might confuse people I'd say would be the switch, which is basically a console and portable... I classified it as both, some might classify it as one (and consider the other lineup "dead for now"), to each their own there.

Nintendo made a mistake with the WII U but were able to course correct with the amazing Switch and great exclusives. Microsoft should have given more love to their exclusive franchises, including the ones they acquired

I also think Xbox will fade into a handheld device before it disappears forever.

Cloud gaming is never going to be a console or PC level competitor. It's not economical to put thousands of PS5's worth of hardware in every city to get latency to a playable level (and it'll still be awful for competitive games). Bandwidth is expensive too, it's much more economical for them to just have you download the game once to a box that you're paying the power bill for instead of continuously encoding 1080p to 4K video at 60-120 fps at a decent quality level and uploading it to you. For reference, a 1080p Netflix stream uses about 3-4GB per hour, most of their content is only 24-30FPS, and I personally consider the quality bad. Keep in mind that with HDMI 2.1, the cable connecting your console to your TV can send up to 48Gbps with no latency. So yeah, I personally think cloud gaming will only ever be a serious threat to smartphone gaming.

They took down the betterHelp is a scam video :C

The Game Boy is not a bad example. Is a horrible example. Switch is just a name. They could have easily called it Game Boy and appear like Game Boy was still alive. I am sure Nintendo went away from the Game Boy name even before making a hybrid console because the name having the word "Boy" in it will appear less inclusive in marketing terms and didn't want to seem like they exclude girls playing on their handhelds and that is a device only for boys etc.

That's sad. The Xbox 360 was such a legendary system. The peek and I would say the console was one of the best.

In all honesty, they’ve been done since the 360 days. There’s zero point in owning one anymore, most people jumped ship during the Xbox one days. Ever since I switched to pc I never looked back

Game Pass has always been a shitty deal. Cancelled that garbage after my 1st month. Still think I overpaid with my $1.

Game Pass is really great cant deny that. Just switched from console to PC gaming and I was utterly shocked at how many of my games AND progress transferred to PC.

My guess is that xbox is trying to hone in their focus and resources on fewer key studios rather than being spread thin. Their biggest titles and franchises are taking too long to release. It's possible it could be a refocus with the success of fallout. It would be stupid not to grow this IP even more.

So exclusivity isn't just simply a fuck you to consumers. It actually does help developers ship out a game faster, like Asmon said, by allowing the devs to optimize a game for a singular platform first, gauging the sucess on the limited install base to check if they can feasibly launch on other platforms, and allows for less crunch while minimizing budget expenditure. For instance: Imagine the even more disastrous turn of events for Microsoft if Arkane Houston made Redfall multiplatform instead of just on Xbox/Gamepass. They would have: 1. Spent too many work hours on a game that takes away from other projects 2. Spent money on a game that didn't sell well on its only platform and would have been a bigger money sink if it was other platforms 3. Have to follow up with optimizations for other platforms on an already dying game. In the end it didn't matter cause even on the single ecosystem it still failed, and Arkane Houston got axed A positive example is FF7 Rebirth. The FF7 Remake Trilogy team was able to crank out a sequel to Remake in just 3 years from start to finish DURING Covid because: !. They kept the exact same team of devs who knew the project already 2. Only had to develop for the PS5 initially (and were able to put out two demos that got updates as well as quick post-launch fixes). Even with how much people hate on Square and Sony for only making the games PS5 timed exclusive, they saw how popular the last installment was and instead made the game a 3 month exclusivity this time around because they knew from the word of mouth about how good the game is.

I hate exclusives, but they're the only thing keeping this big studios in check for quality of a AAA game. 80% of people favorite games have been Sony for a while now like God of war 1 and 2, Spiderman 1 and 2, last of us, ghost of sushi-man, timed exclusives. Having an exclusive is the only incentive of quality standards for these company's. Microsoft thought they could just throw money out of house and call it a day.

cortana got the SBI treatment

I think you're forgetting about the virtual boy the first VR headset, if I'm not mistaken before Sony.

Xbox took a big risk when they innovated with Kinect, that's the kind of daredevil spirit they need.

I don’t understand why so many pc gamers have such a hateboner for consoles. I’m a pc players but also have all the console. I actually perfer sitting on my couch and playing rather then kbm but not everybody can afford a steam controller that isn’t made anymore. The value of the series s with gamepass is insane. Especially for casual gamers. That’s what being overlooked. They don’t have the exclusives sure but a casual gamer doesn’t drop 70 on every new release. For 30 a month for a year or 2 you get series s, Xbox live and gamepass and can play tooonnns of games. Cheaper for me to buy friends and family that rather then like 4 steam keys for a pc they don’t own lol

Based on the Xbox quote about Hi-Fi Rush's success, I think they may have planned on closing the studio even before the game dropped. Listen to it again with this in mind. 1:38 The fact that the game was shadow dropped could also point in this direction. Why spend marketing budget on a game from a studio you're planning to axe? I wonder what great game Tango wanted to make next that Xbox also didn't believe in.

24:00 Valve is a privately held company. They can't just be bought out.

I’m fine with people losing their jobs if their jobs don’t result in a better product for the consumer, and if the money being saved is being put towards said better product

The last few console generations, the Xbox was not even a consideration. PlayStation and PC is all you need.

I would like to say that "they have failed in basically everything this year" is a great quote from someone that got so hooked to palworld (the 25 million user one) :D nah just kiding

Imagine Bethesda making a expansion pack again for Skyrim for like $15 boom

Damn I've never been this early to a vid

Havent paid for Windows license ever in my life and never going to

Ah, finally learned the name of that game with the cyborg guy.... Saving that for later.

Microsoft should make Gaming televisions that have a built in Xbox.