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Phil Spencer on what the hell is happening in the games industry and why exclusives have become a risky business

JohnnyFootball

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
SneakersSO said:
Platform holders get a 30% cut even if its a physical piece of media that is sold. This isn't just digital store fronts. So yes, Sony gets a 30% cut of every copy of every game not published by them that is sold for their platform.
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Which is why there no disadvantage to selling Xbox games on Playstation.
 
YeulEmeralda

YeulEmeralda

Linux User
While the PC, Xbox and PlayStation clans have been fighting eachother for centuries the evil smartphones invaded the country.
 
digoutyoursoul

digoutyoursoul

Member
If the console market has not grown then why take the time and resources to release your games on more consoles ? And what kind of return do you expect for these games?

You have done a poor job in growing a brand with bags of potential never realised . Throwing more hardware at the problem and gaslighting the customer isn’t going to fix Xbox’s problems. Better management teams will.

And if you as a company spent a bit more time focusing on bringing your fan base top quality content rather then constantly talking about services , controllers , after two decades you are still learning and where and how you play, your console share just might of grown.

I don’t think I’ve disliked a leader of a platform like this guy before. Absolute arse hole.
 
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ahtlas7

ahtlas7

Member
Do explain things, Captain Phil.
the captain GIF
 
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Oppoi

Oppoi

Member
Bumblebeetuna said:
Personally I couldn’t care less, but I’m sure to you it would be life defining. But I guess your deflection means you have no evidence 🤷‍♂️
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You mean to say your posts keep me going? No. People like you keep me posting. Right here, and it's nothing but shitposts.
 
Humdinger

Humdinger

Gold Member
Just an observation, not trying to stir console war sh*t, but I haven't seen anyone defending Phil for the past month or so. In the past, when there were negative Xbox threads, you'd always see a half dozen people defending Phil or Xbox -- trying to explain, telling you you weren't seeing the big picture, blaming things on Sony ponies.

To be clear, I am not talking about regular Xbox fans -- the people who like their Xbox but are clear-sighted enough to understand that Phil and company have made some bad choices and are reaping what they sowed. I'm talking about the Xbox Defenders, the guys who talk as if Phil is a trustworthy fellow just trying to innovate for goodness sake and why can't you guys see it. I haven't heard a peep from any of them for months.

I mean, it's not hard to understand why. It's just different, that's all.
 
S

SHA

Member
I don't see Playstation that different, they're on the same boat, both of them are equally threatened against mobile, it's the same when the 3ds and ps vita numbers kept on shrinking till they got kicked out of the market. The different factors they're dealing with this time is, steam and other clients are already ahead in the game, genzers don't have the same attraction from their older relatives or friends to consoles, there's a clear gap between them and it's irreversible, it used to be another child hooking up the second controller to play on the same TV but that's no longer the case, everyone seems embracing solitude nowadays, it's a different time, it became a hobby attached to current 30
to 60 years old demographic.
 
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D

DeltaPolarBear

Member
Humdinger said:
Just an observation, not trying to stir console war sh*t, but I haven't seen anyone defending Phil for the past month or so. In the past, when there were negative Xbox threads, you'd always see a half dozen people defending Phil or Xbox -- trying to explain, telling you you weren't seeing the big picture, blaming things on Sony ponies.

To be clear, I am not talking about regular Xbox fans -- the people who like their Xbox but are clear-sighted enough to understand that Phil and company have made some bad choices and are reaping what they sowed. I'm talking about the Xbox Defenders, the guys who talk as if Phil is a trustworthy fellow just trying to innovate for goodness sake and why can't you guys see it. I haven't heard a peep from any of them for months.

I mean, it's not hard to understand why. It's just different, that's all.
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The acquisition lawsuit changed everything.
1. Xbox was forced to admit they come last in gaming. For the last decade they hid the numbers and pretend nothing is wrong, but then they had to tell the truth in court. Until the court-case we still had people sending tears emojis and claim that Sony is "scared" of Xbox.

2. The cost of the acquisition made Xbox a huge liability. And the MS head office finally went to look at what Phil was doing in the back yard. Xbox finally overspent and emptied the (very finite) warchest.
 
RickMasters

RickMasters

Member
Topher said:
I don't believe that for a second
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Well….. they are slowly gonna be porting all their games to Playstationnand many times Nintendo. Seems pretty helpful to their competitors to me. It’s only Xbox that is gonna lose, here. And MS are clearly OK with sacrificing Xbox for those “industry growth”. I’d say it’s safe to believe them on that one topic. Maybe they are doing Sony and I the so a favour by slowly bowing Outland putting all their games on their competitors platform.
 
Topher

Topher

Identifies as young
RickMasters said:
Well….. they are slowly gonna be porting all their games to Playstationnand many times Nintendo. Seems pretty helpful to their competitors to me. It’s only Xbox that is gonna lose, here. And MS are clearly OK with sacrificing Xbox for those “industry growth”. I’d say it’s safe to believe them on that one topic. Maybe they are doing Sony and I the so a favour by slowly bowing Outland putting all their games on their competitors platform.
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Whatever Microsoft does they do for their own sake. If they put their games on PlayStation then that is not to help "industry growth". That is to help Microsoft gaming revenue growth. Phil Spencer said as much.....

"you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth"

“We’re a business. I’ve said over and over. I don’t get any luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft."

Xbox consoles are being sacrificed for the greater good of Microsoft gaming. There is nothing altruistic about any of this.
 
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RickMasters

RickMasters

Member
Topher said:
Whatever Microsoft does they do for their own sake. If they put their games on PlayStation then that is not to help "industry growth". That is to help Microsoft gaming revenue growth. Phil Spencer said as much.....

"you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth"

“We’re a business. I’ve said over and over. I don’t get any luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft."

Xbox consoles are being sacrificed for the greater good of Microsoft gaming. There is nothing altruistic about any of this.
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I was being sarcastic about their use of the term “industry growth”. That’s why I dropped in quotations especially. There words not mine. I know they are not doing this for the goodwill of anybody. They don’t even give a shit about their fan base, anymore. Willing to sacrifice their customer base to seek money on platforms outselling their own, instead of doubling down and giving the brand value. Such a waste of potential, Xbox. Really bad leadership, Ever since Peter Moore left.
 
Topher

Topher

Identifies as young
RickMasters said:
I was being sarcastic about their use of the term “industry growth”. That’s why I dropped in quotations especially. There words not mine. I know they are not doing this for the goodwill of anybody. They don’t even give a shit about their fan base, anymore. Willing to sacrifice their customer base to seek money on platforms outselling their own, instead of doubling down and giving the brand value. Such a waste of potential, Xbox. Really bad leadership, Ever since Peter Moore left.
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Ah....my bad. That didn't sound like you so I should have picked up on your sarcasm. lol

Jim Carrey Reaction GIF
 
D

DeltaPolarBear

Member
Varteras said:
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So who is doing all these internal projections?
Because that is basically what the problem is. A bad internal projection means you misinterpreted the sales potential of your product.

I dare say that having good internal projections close to reality is how any business needed to be successful. If you can't separate the wheat from the chaff, you can't sell the wheat. Redfall was apparently acceptable for release too.
 
ChorizoPicozo

ChorizoPicozo

Member
DeltaPolarBear said:
So who is doing all these internal projections?
Because that is basically what the problem is. A bad internal projection means you misinterpreted the sales potential of your product.

I dare say that having good internal projections close to reality is how any business needed to be successful. If you can't separate the wheat from the chaff, you can't sell the wheat. Redfall was apparently acceptable for release too.
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Cost is going to inform a lot what these "projections" need to be.
 
Varteras

Varteras

Member
jm89 said:
You just know phil is contemplating his existence right now.

c1b9eb3d-bfce-4d1b-847e-10303f133bc7_text.gif
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A buddy of mine was saying last year how he's pretty sure that everyone will look back 10 years from now and talk about how much of a waste it was for Microsoft to buy Activision. He didn't go into much detail as to why. But he was confident that it wouldn't lead to a bunch of exclusives for Xbox, that Call of Duty would be a shadow of what it was, and the company would lose too much talent. In the short span of time Microsoft has owned them, he's already looking pretty strong in his prediction.
 
D

DeltaPolarBear

Member
ChorizoPicozo said:
Cost is going to inform a lot what these "projections" need to be.
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Ah, the classic "it costs so much that it had to be popular".
That was the logic for the PS3. It was expensive to build and was sold at a massive loss, so Sony think that it means PS3 is a Bargain. But the customers just see a console that couldn't run 3rd party games very well.
What a customer is willing to pay is not at all related to how much it costs to make it.
 
ChorizoPicozo

ChorizoPicozo

Member
DeltaPolarBear said:
Ah, the classic "it costs so much that it had to be popular".
That was the logic for the PS3. It was expensive to build and was sold at a massive loss, so Sony think that it means PS3 is a Bargain. But the customers just see a console that couldn't run 3rd party games very well.
What a customer is willing to pay is not at all related to how much it costs to make it.
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i said INFORM.
 
D

DeltaPolarBear

Member
ChorizoPicozo said:
i said INFORM.
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Not trying to start a fight or anything. But sometimes you had to push a product out to decrease losses. But at least internally they need to know their projection was out of whack.

it's like how The Last Guardian on PS4 was never going to be profitable, but since Sony is aware of this they didn't make a big deal out of it.
 
ChorizoPicozo

ChorizoPicozo

Member
DeltaPolarBear said:
Not trying to start a fight or anything. But sometimes you had to push a product out to decrease losses. But at least internally they need to know their projection was out of whack.

it's like how The Last Guardian on PS4 was never going to be profitable, but since Sony is aware of this they didn't make a big deal out of it.
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that is what i am saying. The cost of something will inform how much money needs to be made. BUT companies could have different incentives or ways to look at things.

in the example of the Last Guardian. Sony knew it was not going to be a mainstream game. but they felt a responsibility to release it. (because they already have announced it). Knowing those things TLG´s budget was lower than Horizon Zero Dawn for example.

LfJSUOu.png



NOW. regarding CoD........is CoD.
 
Varteras

Varteras

Member
SneakersSO said:
Its absolutely appalling that Microsoft wants to paint the larger industry as having, coincidentally, the same particular set of issues they seem to be the facing. I get it - he doesn't wanna get canned and all. This industry requires journalists to hold the feet of someone like Phil far closer to the fire though. They can't simply let these folks roll over on them like this.

Whats even worse is how the entire industry, not just Phil mind you, can't seem to decide what to do about Nintendo in this larger talk. Yes, the PS4/Switch generation did see growth coming from the 360/Wii/PS3 generation. Sure, Phil wants to make the correct argument that that growth was in significant part fueled by users leaving Xbox and going over to PS (and PC, increasingly), but new users were coming in. Heck, they themselves back in 2022 were touting numbers about some significant % of XSS users were brand new users to their ecosystem. Sony said a very similar thing bout some significant % of PS5 users were brand new to console gaming back in 2022 as well, then Sony went on to sell even more consoles in each subsequent year (so far) after that, while Xbox sales cratered.

How come journalists don't go into these interviews armed with the fiscal reality this industry is living in? Sure, I get going after Geoff Keighley for not mentioning the historic layoffs at the TGAs last year, but Phil has done at least 3 interviews now with gaming media folks, and to say that hes been treated with kids gloves would honestly be underselling it, given that Phil is essentially going on an 'apology/excuse tour' as to why he had to kill exclusives at XGS. If you care about the folks being laid off and you cover this industry, you should know about the financial aspect of this industry and how the significant metrics for it are going in. If an industry is a collection of folks operating within a market, a body if you will, then the money is the literal blood of it. Every 3 months, the entire industry is forced to spill the beans on how they are doing, and yet none of the folks covering the media side of it care to talk to execs about it. I've legit seen CNBC go after Spencer harder than these folks who are actually in the industry are.
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Out of curiosity, do you think that the 7th generation being a bit of a perfect storm, that allowed for three rather successful consoles instead of the typical one or two in a generation, skewed perspectives on the console space?
 
TheThreadsThatBindUs

TheThreadsThatBindUs

Member
Thick Thighs Save Lives said:
Spencer’s views point to a collision of rising budgets, diversifying business models, and the exceptional financial risk now required to meet the audience expectations of a AAA release. He specifically pointed to the astronomical budgets of big-budget games, which have created a knot of problems that has been a challenge to disentangle.
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This is where goons like Spencer and all the other gaming business suits are not fooling anyone.

The only people pushing this narrative of the gaming audience expecting these absurdly colossal games is the very AAA publishers themselves.

When you actually look at the market and what's popular among actual gamers, it flies right in the face of this categorically false narrative.

The most expensive games are nowhere near the most popular, with GTA really being the sole outlier.

Publishers want us to believe that big $300m games are what the market wants because it's really what they want to produce and shove down our throats because they think that by dangling massive empty open world's with nice window dressing in front of us, they can keep us "engaged" enough to buy up all their shitty MTXs.

Games like Helldivers 2, Palworld, Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Mario games, Pokemon etc etc are not big AAAA $300m, cinematic open world grind-a-thons... and yet they're the most successful games of all time.

This is why Xbox has gone to shit, because Spencer is not acute enough to actually read the market, but instead just parrots narratives he's probably heard from other game publisher execs.
 
A

Allandor

Member
Well phil has a valid point here. The console gaming community is shrinking. The new generations don't play on consoles so much. So while the numbers look good in terms of revenue, they don't last that long because console gamers get older, loose their interest or simply die out. So the industry needs to get to the new generations. But do far, this is not really working. Nintendo did it, but they also attracted a lot of people that don't buy that many games.
 
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