What Microsoft should do to stay competitive.

[Mnementh]

Jumpin said:

Microsoft is too much of a soulless corporation—they’re about ROI and lack a culture of creativity beyond imitation and assimilation: “let’s buy them out so we can own their successful product” and “let’s copy that successful thing they do.”

I mean, looking at Microsoft's successes: MS Office. There are cheaper and free products out there that work better than MS Office, so why can MS get away with charging a ridiculous subscription of 70 USD year for MS Office and still win? Because the cheaper and free products are imitators of Office. But Microsoft can’t even learn from their own successes. They are blind to the fact that the Xbox (in this case) is the imitation brand. If they still had a creative soul, they could create hardware as fresh and original as the NES, a Gameboy, a PSX, a PS2 a DS, an iPhone, a Wii, or a Switch - but all they do is imitate or assimilate.

Otherwise, I’d say Microsoft needs to stop imitating Sony or Nintendo and make an original videogaming platform. But they’re effectively the Borg of the video game industry. Like the Borg, ROIs and lacking creativity. And even with overwhelming power and resources, Microsoft's Xbox tends to get bested by much smaller entities who have cultures of creativity.

Eh, I don't follow here. If all Sony copied MS. Look at it: Playstation today is exactly the vision Xbox brought into the console space: games closer to PC gaming (shooters, action games), online, patches, DLC, persistent memory (harddrive/SSD), platform achievements. Everything here was introduced with the original Xbox or early in the 360 life. Sony copied that, but combining it with the Playstation branding they got much more success. Even with stuff like motion gaming - Sony outright copied the Wii motion detectors and incorporated them into their controller. Xbox on the other hand saw it and massively changed it with Kinect. So no, MS/Xbox isn't the copycat here. The PS5 has more similarities with OG Xbox than with PS2.

If anything their biggest problem is missing consistency. OG Xbox and 360 was about convinient gaming PC, One was always on, Series about Gamepass. They aren't sticking with their guns, which alienates the userbase they have formed the gen before. And they can't rely on the extremely strong brand power Playstation has.

The thing also is, the markets are changing. Console gaming has had since at least 15 years now a ceiling of 200M users. PC gaming is stronger than ever and expanding, mobile gaming has exploded past console and cloud gaming may follow in it's footsteps. So while the console space is still big and important, it is no longer vital. And while Xbox is probably never win the console space, it actually is quite well positioned in the other areas. This overall gaming strategy - combining all the areas of gaming - this could be a massive strength of Xbox. And it is notable that Sony already knows it and struggles to follow - their GaaS-initiative, porting to PC, Playstation Now. But it all seems too little too late. How did Sony called it: MS moved past their pillars? I think that is indeed the case.