Decline Why Xbox lost (video from former Xbox employee Laura Fryer)

[911 Jumper]

Insightful video from someone who was at Xbox for a long time



About Laura Fryer

[Laura] was an executive producer for Microsoft Games Studios, Fryer was responsible for shipping games for the Xbox and Windows platforms. Some of the titles she was involved with are the Gears of War games and Zoo Tycoon. She was one of the first members of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) in 1995. As a producer, she shipped several games, including the classic Crimson Skies, and Fighter Ace, Microsoft's first massively multiplayer game. She also conceived and produced Microsoft's first release of Zone.com.

Prior to her return to MGS in 2004, Laura was the Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, and a founding member of the Xbox project, which she joined in May 2000. During her tenure, she cultivated worldwide Xbox Developer Support, created the Xbox Advisory Board, and ran Xbox game developer events around the globe.

 

[Modron]

Are you saying the ps5's 7 exclusive games is what winning looks like?

 

[deuxhero]

What do I even need a long video to tell me? The always online, mandatory kinect, and retarded name of Xbone killed them at the gate last gen. Even after they ripped that crap out with updates, the fix was clumsy. They also lacked any exclusives of quality, with their big IPs going from bad to shit (Halo). PC gaming got much bigger that gen, and consoles barely improved.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

She lost me with Xbox failing because they didn’t promote women like her. I don’t disagree that Xbox has a culture problem. They are clearly hiring people who have no business overseeing a gaming division. But come on. They handed the Halo franchise over to Bonnie Ross and fucking Kiki Wolfkill. A decision that backfired so hard the franchise will never recover.

They also have that one chick, Shannon Loftis or whatever. She got transferred over to the Age of Empires team after picking a fight with IGN on Twitter because they shat on Super Lucky’s Tale. And unsurprisingly AOE4 got infested with diversity crap (Mongol armies being 50% female LMAO!!!!).

Xbox fails because they can’t make good games consistently and they put all their eggs in the Game Pass / xCloud basket. Ain’t nobody want any of that shit.

 

[Forest Dweller]

No mention of the used games fiasco.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

For some reason they had the bright idea to turn Gears into DEI soapbox. Marcus’ son got completely cucked so they could focus on a non-sexually threatening black character who’s as interesting as a plank of wood. Kat got pushed to the main role because Coalition has a dude pretending to be a chick in a leadership position.

Gears and Halo — two behemoths neutered into the ground by a bunch of out of touch motherfuckers on the west coast.

 

[ferratilis]

Just look at their two core franchises: Halo and Forza. It paints a picture of gross incompetence and lack of care. Now think twice before you think Starcraft, Diablo, Fallout etc. will be any better under MS' helm.

Hell, they even lost the one battle where they had the home turf advantage: PC ports. Sony currently releases the best PC ports by far, on Microsoft's own OS! With Phil Spencer focusing on cloud and mobile gaming, the future doesn't look very bright for either Xbox or their PC games.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Nobody cares, Karen.

 

[ind33d]

Halo and Gears were hardcore gameplay-first skill-based franchises. You can't dumb them down for a mass audience. 343 and The Coalition are retarded. In a parallel universe where Gears 4 was just Gears 3 with more content and Halo Infinite actually shipped with half of the features they advertised, the Xbox brand would still be on top.

 

[gabel]

Quake was a hardcore skill-based game.
Halo and Gears were always popamole crap.

 

[Ash]

Gears and Halo — two behemoths neutered into the ground by a bunch of out of touch motherfuckers on the west coast.

Accidental heroes of the gaming industry. Salute to the west coast

Halo and Gears were hardcore gameplay-first skill-based franchises. You can't dumb them down for a mass audience.

Lol. Can't dumb down that which is already bottom of the barrel.

Well, I suppose you're right in that they are gameplay-centric (barely), and they can become worse by being about storyfaggotry and wokeism.

As a devout gamer of ~30 years, I would absolutely never call them "hardcore" though. Not the multiplayer components (which are OK), and most definitely not the singleplayer (trash), the singleplayer of which were some of the worst things to happen to gaming.

If I had to pick one to survive though, it'd be Halo. Gears is just peak casual bro "gamer" material with fuck all substance. Whack-a-mole has more value.

 

[luj1]

Halo and Gears were hardcore gameplay-first skill-based franchises. You can't dumb them down for a mass audience.

Trash and decline bringers

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I think Sony is the company the makes the least fuck ups in the game console arena. I've seen pretty much all video game console makers make really bad calls but Sony seems to make the least and when they do fuck up they overcompensate on the games and it ends up okay. PS3 looked like it was going to be shit because of the hard hardware to develop for but then they still over come it eventually and it still kind of did pretty decent. Xbox and Nintendo fuck up quite a bit (Nintendo has a tendency to fuck themselves harder though N64, Gamecube, WII U, I sense maybe the next one too).

 

[Ash]

Sony used to be a goat back in the 90s. Now all they make is braindead cinematic garbage. They also adopted a lot of the decline Xbox was putting out, like achievements and pay to play online, lowering their standards and that of everyone involved. I only still retain some modicum of respect for nintendo, and it really is minimal. Everyone sucks.

 

[caffeine]

video games lost

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Xbox lost because they tailored their experience for an american customer, when gaming was becoming increasingly globalized. You can't claim the cool factor when Sony beat both you and Nintendo to it. At least Nintendo was smart to not go into that battlefield and focus on what they've always done best.

 

[Lucumo]

Sony used to be a goat back in the 90s. Now all they make is braindead cinematic garbage. They also adopted a lot of the decline Xbox was putting out, like achievements and pay to play online, lowering their standards and that of everyone involved. I only still retain some modicum of respect for nintendo, and it really is minimal. Everyone sucks.

Sony (Playstation) isn't based in California for nothing.

Xbox lost because they tailored their experience for an american customer, when gaming was becoming increasingly globalized.

At least the 360 did well for a while...until they doubled down on the American-centric bs with the One. Lots of non-gaming services which only Americans would ever care about (in addition to all the other stuff which sunk them).

 

[ind33d]

If Xbox made map tools and modding kits standard by unifying Windows with Xbox, I could see them being successful again. Microsoft owns fucking Minecraft, but can't ship Call of Duty with a mapmaker? Just let players vote on the best custom content and add it to the matchmaking hoppers. Halo Infinite eventually achieved this, but everyone had already quit because 343 was trying to sell them the color blue for $4.99

 

[NecroLord]

ECSBAWKS HUEG.

 

[motherfucker]

>Play video
>Hear female voice
>Close tab

 

[Nutmeg]

>Play video
>Hear female voice
>Close tab

Why are you sharing your porn watching habits here?

 

[sser]

It's the green.

 

[911 Jumper]

Honestly Xbox deserves the hammering it's getting. They had a real opportunity to start again this gen and they've botched it. They've literally entered this gen with a base console [Series S] that's even more underpowered than their main rival's [Sony] system.

Xbox has an identity crisis. That's the core problem. It's evident in everything that they do. It would not surprise me if Xbox ends up, at the very least, exiting the hardware market at some point.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Honestly Xbox deserves the hammering it's getting. They had a real opportunity to start again this gen and they've botched it. They've literally entered this gen with a base console [Series S] that's even more underpowered than their main rival's [Sony] system.

Xbox has an identity crisis. That's the core problem. It's evident in everything that they do. It would not surprise me if Xbox ends up, at the very least, exiting the hardware market at some point.

The bit about being able to have gamepass on PC kinda confirms it. I think they realized trying to fight the console wars will end up costing them more than what they'll ever be able to earn. I read that MS is trying to go back to be a PC-first kinda company, so there's that.

 

[911 Jumper]

The bit about being able to have gamepass on PC kinda confirms it. I think they realized trying to fight the console wars will end up costing them more than what they'll ever be able to earn. I read that MS is trying to go back to be a PC-first kinda company, so there's that.

There's also xCloud or Xbox Cloud Gaming, to use its official name. This is what Microsoft wants Xbox to ultimately be. They want a world where any device can be an “Xbox”. Problem is Phil Spencer is claiming that the home console is still at the core of Xbox. I don't believe that. For Sony and Nintendo, the actual console hardware is central to their respective platforms, especially in Nintendo's case. That's not the case with Xbox.

Xbox's identity problem stretches all the way back to the Xbox 360 days. You can see this identity problem in the confusing console names, the frequent changes to the Xbox box art banner, the lack of memorable game characters since the 360 era. Even the Xbox “nexus” logo is a reflection of the identity problem. The console is called XBOX, but the logo is a sphere with an X carved into it.