Will Next-Gen Xbox Follow The 3DO 'Third Party' Licensing Model? 

Good eye there lol

You can’t just casually have running man in the background and not mention one of the best movies ever made 😊

That's pretty cool! Just watched videos about both of those games recently, and they both look very interesting and advanced for the time. Would love to hear your insights. I always thought the 3DO business model would've worked brilliantly if there was a way to bring the initial hardware cost down to consumer friendly levels. The high initial price really hampered the 3DO's adoption. I wonder if they could have partnered with one manufacturer exclusively for the first year and done a more traditional game revenue sharing model so they could sell the consoles at a loss. The 3DO company could have even held a bidding war for rights to that exclusive first year to get better terms from the manufacturers. Might've had to increase the fees to developers/publishers as well to finance the hardware loss, but there was a lot of room to increase those fees while still being far lower than the competition. After a year on the market at a lower price, enough units might've been sold that components would be cheaper and that manufacturer competition + economies of scale could have made the price consumer friendly without subsidization. Alternately, the business model would've worked amazingly for innovative but inexpensive hardware like the Wii (though that obviously wasn't an option at the time). Anyway I'd love to hear your thoughts, and congrats on being part of one of the most interesting times of the videogame industry imo!

If you're allowed to say, what kind of work did you do on Po'ed? Po'ed is one of my favorite games on the 3DO btw. Killing Time is #1. Really showed what the HW could do.

​@RetroGamerBB Actually I had to sign a NDA while in development. But I doubt it matters anymore. I worked on the graphics engine itself.but was much more involved in Killing Time, as that engine was asked to do far more. The fmv like in game animations (ghosts) were extremely demanding on that engine Everyone knew this but we were told to ignore the terrible frame rates, as they wanted a showcase title. It's still the game I feel most proud of, and still play to this day.

​@@poedottaviano6924killing time was the best use of FMV in a game hands down.

@RetroGamerBB Actually the initial idea was far from final product. The initial frame rates were actually umder 10fps, and the ip was almost scrapped. Believe it or not, the engine was extremely well optimized at release. It was a game well ahead of it's time.

Not surprising as that's the one thing in the Xbox ecosystem that isn't really selling. If they could move Xbox to be a service you access through other devices, it would save Microsoft a lot of money. Even now, the Series X consoles are still regularly sold at a loss, as they hope to make that money back later though Live subs and game sales.

@@dftfire yeah but how's that going for them tho? PC subscription aren't growing at the hoped for rate, Steam is stunning their PC market and they're neglecting consoles although that's their main business. Although they're overshadowed by Nintendo and Sony they still sold 25+ million console, they basically throwing their costumers for hope of potential ones, I guess time will tell how that's turn out but I still think they're not trying enough

@@ekoreko9795 If you mean for the Xbox division, consoles are their main thing then maybe -- though I'd imagine they make most of their money though the Xbox Live subs. But if you mean for Microsoft overall -- nope, not even close. Xbox is a tiny bit of the money Microsoft makes. Windows, Office and Azure bring in most of it. Xbox to them is probably equivalent to something like Apple Watch or Apple TV is to Apple

Consoles suck this a good thing. They need to make affordable pc. People want performance...console aint it

@@c523jw7 no such thing, if Xbox can't get money from their store or subscription they're not going to sell you a PC at loss, you'll be paying as much as pre-built with some proprietary bullshit thrown inside

again? xbox isnt obsolete you incel

The 3DO launched at $699 US, the PS1 was $299. Assuming "licensed Xbox-es" would be nearer to the 3DO price, I can't see that helping sales, given already it's the worst-selling console of this generation. And the more third-parties who make Xbox consoles, the smaller the slice of the pie they each get. So even if they were sold at a higher amount, would it still be worth it?

The PlayStation making the 3DO obsolete had little to do with the business model, and more with timing and the crazy pace of technological advancement those days. The big issue with the business model is what they touched on a bit in the video. Hardware manufacturers have to make money somewhere. If they can't make money on subsequent game sales, they have to sell the hardware for a profit. The only way I could see Microsoft getting around that is by taking a cellphone-like approach where the cost of the hardware is subsidized by a service contract (in this case, for Gamepass). So let's say the NeXtBox (or whatever Microsoft would call it) costs $650 to manufacture and sells for $750, but if you sign up to a 3 year contract for Gamepass when you buy it, you get the console for $500. Microsoft pays the manufacturer $250 so they make a profit, and Microsoft makes money from the Gamepass sub and game sales.

​@@dftfireNo, it wouldn't. Worst case scenario potential buyers will just consider the 3rd party Xboxes Inferior to the MS brand and completely snub them.

@@mappybc6097 And if that did happen, then that just proves it's pointless for third-party companies to make them? Why would they want to be sitting on loads of unsold consoles? I've yet to hear anyone explain why allowing other companies to make Xbox consoles would be a good idea

Brand-marketing-collab consoles like the V-Saturn (JVC/Victor Saturn(?)) and Hi-Saturn (Hitachi Saturn) would actually be pretty nice nowadays, even if it’s just mostly marketing.

It's called the Xbox. Ik you can't play your steam games, but I've got a 3080 and I still choose to use the Xbox most of the time . It's weaker than my PC, sure, but it just works 99.9% of the time. I've never owned a PC that was even remotely as low maintenance.never. Being able to run cp2077 at 3x the fps SEEMS objectively better, but virtually every game I (attempt) to play on PC requires some tweaking

​@@frogfarmer3551 well that was a long way of saying "hey heres a console that doesn't do what you want it to, but buy the Xbox anyway" 😂 I'm sure OP is aware of what an Xbox is and if they wanted it then they'd own one already... The closest thing that already exists that he'd _actually_ want would be a Steamdeck, but its primarily a handheld not a console.

I hope the platform uses custom fine tuned software so it can be comparable to current video games in polish, but if the hardware can do it you would dual boot or virtualize an OS which supports Steam, or Steam could be ported to it similar to what happened in the Steam deck (with all the runtimes, wrappers, ...).

@@craigsampson3386you could use a deck as a console though. The USB port supports 4k60 output, though not many big games will likely hit that. Just need to plug a usb-c to hdmi adapter/cable in and away you go

@@craigsampson3386 your comment seems a bit inflammatory, but I think we're both half right. Op wants a game console without headache, and as an LCD steam deck owner, that's everything but. Xbox plays games reasonably well for a reasonable price. The exclusion of steam games is the only thing op might disagree with.

Console market didn't stall. The xbox never was popular. Playstation and Nintendo still sell well over a hundred million each generation.

@@thug-21 360 sold well and had a lead part of that gen cause it was cheaper than PS3, developers had no problem supporting it either. cost of the console and library of games is important as we still see last gen still hanging on still today

These games cost to much and too long to make now. No first party sony games this fiscal year and only one last year. They need to figure out a way to reduce cost and time needed to make these games. Live service games can't compete with fortnite and roblox. Very few games and reach that level. It's weird time for games

​@@jonathanligas3889 also launching a whole *year* ahead of the PS3 helps lead console sales initially when you're the _only_ competitor 😂

​@@chillnspace777 You don't have to equal those games to be successful.

Well I believe MS's thinking is that they aren't making the money back on their console production costs so they want to increase the availability of games and services on the platform to compensate. Since they have shown over the past decade that they aren't capable of bringing in the numbers they want with game sales. So if they allow multiple vendors to sell games on the platform (Sony, Nintendo, google, or whoever) they can make more money and sell more Xboxs. Along with producing the Xbox console, license it, and then that company calls it a Ybox or something. Sort of like with GPUs, AMD makes the card and gives the design to various companies, Its all pretty much the exact same machine but with slightly different features and such. Then AMD/Nvidia rake in the cash with less effort since others are doing the work of production and all. But with your question I imagine the machine would essentially be like all the others so they can still use it in a server rack. Nvidia has Geforce Now but there are of course still various GPU models and manufacturers out there and it all works fine. How that would work in the console world with locked settings and such I dunno but it seems like thats MS's end goal.

I'm failing to see what advantage the other companies would get though? Microsoft would keep all the Live sub money, and cuts from the game sales. The third-parties would only make money on the consoles. But given the current Xbox Series X is still regularly sold at a loss, I'm not sure how that will work out? I mean, the 3DO launched at $699, the PS1 was $299. Guess which one sold more?

So it's just the PC

@@dftfire I see the appeal for ppl who want more power (proper 4k, 60fps) but not a full fledged PC with all the config and whatnot....how large is that audience? am not too sure

@@sumomaster5585 For such people though, Microsoft could just release an "Xbox Series X Pro" if the audience was big-enough. The fact they haven't released such a console yet suggests it may not be that large... 🤔

It wouldn't be worth it though to the third-parties. Xbox Series S and X combined have sold around 21 million units. If say five or six companies were each making their own Xbox consoles under-licence, that means they could sell around 3-4 million each. Given we hear the Series X even-now is often sold at a loss, what incentive does any third-party have to take losses on hardware on Microsoft's behalf? 🤷🏻‍♂️ (Remember: the 3DO was a massive flop, and launched at $699 US. The PS1 was $299.)

@@dftfirewe live in different times. The cellphone model was pointed out. You have Apple making OS and hardware, while Samsung make hardware and bloatware over Google OS (Android). So I’m sure there is something to be worked out here, maybe even profit share of the OS. Nobody talks about that how easy it was relatively to release games on the 3DO, with super low license fees. It was like $3 vs $15 on the 16bit consoles. If the raised the license fee a little to add to the manufacturers it would have probably eased the upfront cost knowing they could get back end sales. If the manufacturers revenue was based on market share, it would have gave competition. Today, for example, samsung could make an Xbox and have it integrate easier with their phones and tablets. I think getting in early is not a bad idea, before steam takes this idea and becomes what Android is in mobile for gaming. Xbox could become the next winCE or win mobile if it doesn’t act in time.

@@sloppynyuszi The smartphone model works though as far-more are sold. If you add-up all the Switch, PS5 and XBS consoles sold to-date it's around 220 million. Last year alone, around 1.2 billion smartphones were sold, meaning they surpassed the total number of consoles in just 2-3 months. Far more people need or want a smartphone in their life than want a games-console.

@@sloppynyuszi I also don't see why we'd need Samsung to make an Xbox when they could just release an app into the Xbox Store to achieve the same thing? You can currently pair a Samsung phone to Windows 11 or 10 to access files, notifications and apps on that phone. And last time I checked, Samsung haven't made their own version of Windows. Yet it still works 🤷🏻‍♂️

​@@dftfire lol the price point was not at all it's demise. It was lack of software for months after release, the original plan was upwards 10 launch titles. It sold very well at launch. If price was the issue, the jaguar should have eclipsed the 3do in sales.... But it didn't

Yes, adding an "Xbox mode" to a future version of Windows would make more-sense. Though whether any AAA studio would want to use it is another question. Outside of that mode, they don't have to pay Microsoft any money, just like they do now. So the "Xbox mode" would have to offer something to make it worthwhile.

Nope pc isnt as user friendly or cheap as a console.. I want a console that can access pc games

Well, how-about hypothetically a PS5 which had an Xbox app so you could play games from both service? That's Microsoft's plan, eventually... "Xbox everywhere".

only sane reply so far. Whats most likely is that Xbox will become Microsoft's/Windows's gaming section/division. Like what Steam is to Valve with products like Steam Deck, Steam Link, the Steam Controller, and, well, the Steam Store and Client. Microsoft will probably have an "Xbox" app in Windows or an Xbox mode that will just replicate the software experience in Windows, then MS will release dedicated devices like what the Xbox already is that fit under this umbrella and run this gaming version of Windows. It's almost obvious if you consider that Microsoft has a much closer connection to regular PCs than to video games.

There's no way they would do the 3DO route, as it didn't work then! It only sold around 2 million consoles, and to make it worthwhile for all the companies, shipped at $699 at launch. Given Xbox is already sold at a loss, and is the lowest-selling for this generation, I'm not sure raising the cost of each console would do much to help there!

who said next gen Xbox is using NVIDIA

@@horrorjunkie96 They probably are anyway, but if Microsoft lease the Xbox name to companies like Dell/HP/Lenovo etc can make their own Xbox's, then there will definitely will be some Nvidia based machines.

An Xbox licensed console built by Asus, MSI, EVGA or Gigabyte would almost certainly be a fair bit more expensive than a Microsoft Xbox, as these hardware manufacturers only make money off hardware. I recall with GPUs its common for Asus, EVGA etc to make 30% margin on the hardware. Right now MS is roughly breaking even on hardware. So a $650 EVGA Xbox is going to have a hard time competing against a $500 playstation. At launch its even worse, back in 2020 MS was losing $100 per XSX sold. So at launch this pricing discrepancy of the traditional console model vs this licensed hardware model would be even bigger.

Also looking back at the 3DO, which tried the licensing approach, using older weaker hardware with 50% less RAM, they still had to price themselves $100 higher (399) when competing against the 299 PS1

@@AthleticHobo-br4qh Thing is, if we're talking about Microsoft turning Xbox into a PC then what we're actually comparing isn't PS5 vs Xbox but PS5 vs gaming PCs as a whole. And gaming PCs *already* outsell Playstation.

Same premise (and issues) as Steambox: the branding brings eyes and certainty of associated products. Thing is, PC is not standardized for gaming, and you are at the mercy of manufacturers. This simplifies the process, but also loses the advantage PC's bring.

Or use a phone. They need to hitnthe smart phones to get those numbers they want

Cheaper and optimized

I quit PC and went to console as so many steam games did not work out of the box. You would spend hours on the forums trying to work out how to make older windows games run on the current windows or your current GPU. I bought an AMD graphics card and had terrible glitches for 12 months until they fixed their drivers. After all that, I now just prefer a standard box where games just work immediately. The old steambox had bad compatibility. But the new steamdeck has a certification process. So you know what is going to work. I would buy a standard PC or an open xbox console if there was a certification process and it was easy to see what games are going to work well on it. I don't want to go back to random PC builds.

Cause money......?? a xbox is 500$ and lasts you for 8 years and a pc of that caliber would cost you 2grand.... I care about having the best performance as I'm sure you do aswell. But most ppl want to put a game in and hit play and they wanna do it for as little money as possible

What benefit would Apple provide other then for some kind of pc like machine? Mac game sales are getting better but are still very limited. I don't see the benefit of this partnership at all

@@chillnspace777 Well providing PC features to their consoles is exactly the point. They'd be responding to a market in which steam and Xbox both have PC/console hybrids that can also play their first party games. Being the only closed high powered console would be an obvious disadvantage for Sony. I thought of Apple because of their recent collaborations. Apple sells the Dualsense on their website and uses it on promotional materials, there's also their recent movie distribution deal. Apple are also showing more interest in gaming recently. One clear benefit of MacOs over other OS on Playstation is that it wouldn't open much competition to their PSN store, since gaming is so underdeveloped on macs. A benefit for Apple is that Sony could integrate gaming on their ecosystem, something that they've yet to achieve on their own. Sony could port their own games to apple silicone too. I'm just spit ballin ofc.

Sony aren't porting their games to PC anymore. Problem solved.

idk why people keep writing posts like this. Do you not ask yourself *why* Steam Machines failed? Because the answer to that question is essentially a list of problems that have been solved in the decade since.

Aya Neo/GPD do small runs since the market they're serving has been small. The scale of the market is increasing and the economics are changing, meanwhile the economics of the traditional console model are veering in the opposite direction. You are applying old rules to a new situation.

@@scheeseman486 but $700 won't cut it anymore. Console manufacturers cannot sell on a loss. Even if the current market is willing to spend $700 on a console, manufacturers really need to sell above that price, so they would end up with a $1000 price tag. I don't see the console market shelling out $1000 especially when cheaper alternatives are available.

For real ray tracing and dlss on a console would rule

I am of the opinion that they are.

Doesn' t matter. The Problem is not the hardware but the clear Vision that microsoft is always lacking quite so often. They have to figure out, what they wanna be, and then offer the right service. if you wanna be a console, than you should have some good dang games on that thing. Why should someone bother to buy Xbox if you already have a pc at home? Nintendo switch is not so successfull because of their High-End-Graphics (they dont have that). Nintendo knows what they offer, and this is what they promote. Having fun with games and family. Doesnt matter if you have a decade old chip in the device and give devs nightmares to tinker solutions around limitations. In the end, gameplay is King. And if you offer a lot of different gameplay-mechanics that only your device can handle, people will buy your stuff. Sony is next who understand the concept. But besides faster and better process-nodes, they are lacking in innovation in other spaces. Nintendo for example is the other way around. What they are lacking in process-power, they are innovating in other fronts (For example Hand-held-Console-thing, the way users interact with the device/having the b.... to change Input-styles, new screen-gimmicks like the 3DS and so on). And of course the power of exclusives. People tend to downplay that nowadays, but GOOD Exclusives are the easiest way to make your device "special".

Both green; makes sense.

And where is the problem?

@@gothpunkboy89 Well, look at PS5. It's already too generic, Sony can't do this for another generation. Sony are already having to rely on PC sales, they can't afford to release another generic AMD box.

Their lineup has changed a lot from the PS3 era, which wasn't that long ago. PS3 had Infamous, Killzone, Resistance, LBP, Heavy Rain and Beyond, Journey, Sports Champions, Motorstorm, Twisted Metal, MAG, SingStar and the Japan Studio games. None of that is around these days and Playstation pretty much reinvented itself in the PS4 era. I think it's good that the PS5 has so far been mostly about sequels, to solidify and refine all the new IPs. PS6 is still years away. Perhaps by the time it comes along, it'll be time for change again.

I’m worried that what you said will end up happening of Xbox leaves the console hardware market. Sony will get lazy if Xbox hardware leaves and Nintendo doesn’t want to get competitive again to fill in the gap Xbox will leave behind. Game CONSOLES (not games themselves) could probably enter a dark age if this does happen.

You say this like Microsoft isn't the wealthiest company in the world. They know what they're doing.

@@fcukugimmeausername apparently not since they can't manage their studios

@@Zoeila They clearly can.

@@fcukugimmeausername they clearly cant their first party output has been ass since 360

Genuinely who tf cares.

They’re trying to do what the Steam machine did years ago. SteamOS running on different devices made by different companies to run games like a console. It failed. Xbox is dead, at least hardware-wise. Won’t be surprised if their online plan dies too, which would completely kill Xbox for good.

Not as a brand or service, but increasingly as a home-console it would seem. Maybe their future handheld-decide might sell better? Hard to say... the Switch has clearly won this generation, though the PS Vita sold very-little so tricky to predict which way it would go 🤔

If the hardware Xbox does die, Sega, SNK or some other company better come back in to fill the gap they’ll leave behind in the console hardware market. Or the others just follow them and make all games digital/streaming only to make more money. It would be incredibly sad and dystopian if that happened. I’d probably never buy another new game again if it did.

@@faheemabbas3965 I doubt Sega would attempt to re-enter the console race, given how small it still is. They could make far-more money simply re-releasing all of their back catalogue on Android and iOS, as increasingly that's where people now game.