Cerebralbore101 said:
-_- I misunderstood what you were saying completely. Does their Xbox division really make money though? Will it continue to make money for them in the future? I've said a bunch of times in the past that I think XB1X will be their last console, and that they will keep selling the XB1X until 2022, while slowly backing out of the console market. A lot of companies see subscription based models as easy money. Why bother making a follow up to the XB1X, and take all that risk, when they can go for what they see as the easy route? Making a console means spending money on console production, and game discs, while taking the risk that your next system will flop harder than the Wii U. If MS has a bunch of money tied up into their console division, and then sales drop off a cliff, they are stuck holding the bag for all the money they spent. With digital or subscription there's no physical inventory or consoles to take a risk on. In other words they have two options. Option 1. Keep on making consoles and make more money than they would with just OS/Software, but be at a huge liability. (I mean, what if by 2022 console sales plummet for everything but Nintendo? If you were MS would you want to be a console developer in that position? Or what if by 2022 PS5 is a runaway success and MS is pushed back to the Original Xbox days, and their console division bleeds money? Would you want to be MS in that position?) Option 2. Make less money, but be in a much safer position, while possibly overthrowing steam as the default PC storefront/publisher. (I don't see them overthrowing steam, as being likely, but maybe they think they have a good chance at it.) Well those ideas aren't exclusive to PC. But I think console consumers would reject those strategies, aside from XBLive and PSN (those are already ingrained in console gaming for over a decade). Just look at the backlash with XB1 and not being able to sell your games without paying a fee to the developer. PC users on the other hand have been used to DRM for decades. They might even embrace subscription based sales models, claiming that it saves them money on games. |
Yep the biggest issue with making consoles is that it is an expense to the developer, but the profit should cancel that out.
If the console market shrinks by 2022 then Microsoft might back out, but at that point that's more of an industry thing then Microsoft themselves.
I don't think Microsoft will ever be back to the original Xbox days, quite frankily they're simply too popular in America. That could change though.
My problem is that your post just has too much hypotheticals but admittadely Sony and Nintendo probably would be the only competitors if the console market shrunk.
My problem with your PC idea is that it would require Microsoft to do a lot of work-arounds in order to make as much money as they make now. For instance:
(1)Microsoft would first have to build a consumer base on their store. They would need to get trust from consumers, which could take *years*. (2)Then, you said that Microsoft could do something like cut the 30% that Steam takes from developers down significantly. Let's say for instance that Microsoft does that, that wouldn't benefit the consumer it would only benefit developers. (3)The most postive outcome that could possibly have is some games being exclusive to the Windows store. Of course, exclusivity only helps a platform when it's a big name, and considering how big Steam's userbase is it's unlikely big games would be exclusive to windows store because of a simple. (4) If this happened though, Microsoft would need to sell 1 game twice to make back the profit Steam would make from the sale of 1 game. (5) Microsoft would also need to have deals comparable to Steam, making them even less money off software sales. (6) Microsoft would need a HUGE, ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE marketing campaign to let the public know that games like Halo, Gears, or Forza are now exclusive to PC.
It would be virtually impossible for Microsoft to make the same profit off of that kind of buisness tbh.
Also, most PC gamers don't like drm. They just deal with stuff like Steam drm because for the most part it's a fair and balanced system. All you need to do is look at Sonic Mania, for example, to see just how much PC gamers actively despise DRM.
