| AngryLittleAlchemist said: 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 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. |
Well, would 30 million units in North America and only two or three million units for the rest of the world qualify as being back in the original Xbox days? If they release an XB2 in 2020 and Sony doesn't do anything to completely screw up, that's where I see them sitting by the end of an XB2's seven year life cycle.
1. I'm thinking that the transition will be a very slow one taking years. Like I said before I don't see them up and abandoning the Xbox consoles right away. It would take them until 2022 to slowly phase it out, while they slowly phase in either an online storefront ala Steam, or a subscription based "games as a service" model.
2. It would benifit consumers if brand new AAA games only sold for $45 and MS only took $7 out of that $45. They would have to do a ton of work to convince developers that the $45/$7 model is better than the $60/$18 model that steam currently uses though. Skipping point 3 since I mostly agree with it.
4. But MS already has to sell a game almost twice to make the same profit per game as steam. For every $60 game sale the console developer gets about $9-$10, and they might even have to pay for packaging/discs. Steam gets $18. What makes the problem worse is that MS may still be losing money on the sale of XB systems, and may still be counting on game sales to recoup that loss. If that's the case then they certainly need two console game sales to make as much money as Steam makes from one PC sale.
5. Yeah I agree they would enter a pricing war with Steam. That's the biggest reason why I think the digital storefront path is very unlikely for MS. I think them beating out Steam is very unlikely like I said in another post on this thread. I think they'll go for "games as a service", but the whole storefront is a possibility, which is why I brought it up.
6. They wouldn't need a huge massive campaign if they did a slow exiting of the market over 5 years time.
I'd like to see the Profit and Loss sheets for Microsoft's Xbox division, but they don't put that information out anymore. So how can we say that matching their current (game division) profits would be impossible if we don't know their current (game division)profits?
| jason1637 said: The risk of making another Xbox after the One X isnt that high. They already have an established install base will end up selling 50m+ while having terrible press at the start of the generayion. If they just drop out of the console world they are losing 50m+ users and tens of million xbox live subs. Also they are already in the works of making a new xbox console after the One X. |
Have they said that?
