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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Microsoft keeps getting better and better! Will it ever end?

OneTime said:

Dunno about that - it depends what you want to consider "getting better and better".  Market share describes popularity and maybe a measure of how you compare to the competition.  Market cap as you say is "how big is the market you serve" and that has increased.

I am surprised that so many people dismiss how dominant Microsoft was in the past.  They had the technology, the investment, and the vision.   They toppled IBM.  They were also extremely ruthless.  

These days, Microsoft is "just another" technology company.

Marketshare describes popularity, but they aren't like for like comparisons when there are hundreds of millions more computers in homes than there were in the 90's. The market in general has increased. It's like saying Sony's PS4 isn't as successful as Nintendo's NES because the NES had a much larger marketshare despite the PS4 selling almost twice as much hardware and three times as much software. 



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dx11332sega said:

It's dominates the shooter , western rpg, racing genres as exclusives franchise IP's.

I think saying it dominates the shooter genre, or the western rpg one, is abit of a stretch.
Halo is basically at the level of "meh", and something you can easily live without (if your into shooters).
Theres so many other big 3rd party shooters, that dominate halo, that its mainly for the old fans of xbox, that have a history with it (from when Halo was big).

As for western rpgs, they are usually multiplats.
So how can xbox dominate that? also ironically I think PC is probably the best platform for that.

Raceing? Forza is without a doubt more cherrished than GT right now, and often scores better, and releases like every year almost.
This is probably the closest xbox comes to dominateing in a genre. Even then, GT isnt so bad, and 3rd party also cover alot of ground here (multiplats).

Will any of this change in the future?
Will halo infinate, be a maga hit, thats a must play for shooter fans? imo no. First previews looked bad from art direction, graphics, gameplay ect.
They gave it a year or so more of developement, and while it looks a tiny bit better, its still plagued with the same issues it had at its preview.
I think halo infinate, falls flat quickly... and soon to be forgotten, it doesnt stand out in anyway, in a positive way = forgotten in the sands of time.

Maybe in future, depending on what they do with bethesda, and how well those games turn out, they could dominate the western rpg genre.
However this is still a maybe, MS might just multiplat some of these games (their big budget ones, that depends on multiplatform sales to generate its insane profits). If they go try to dominate, the genre by keeping them exclusive, it'll be at the cost of profits.

Forza will keep being forza, and wont really push xbox into a position where it dominates the racer genre.

And again differnt tastes.
The fact that Playstation is more likely to get the odd japanese game (esp rpgs), which might not even make it to xbox, is alone a bigger plus for me, than anything else xbox offers.



dx11332sega said:
Salnax said:

Now if only Microsoft had some exclusives people cared about.

I think people want Halo in it's purist form that is achieve-able with Joseph Staten coming back he worked on Halo combat evolved, Halo 2 , and Halo 3.

People love Fallout series

* Agreed, people love fallout, but almost all of that comes from Fallout 1+2, and New Vegas. Last entry Fallout 76, was a disaster.

There's Doom series

*This one is huge atm, and has tons of good will amoung gamers. Last entry was very good as well.

Elderscrolls series

*They take 20 facking years (seems forever) to make a sequel to any TES game! and last entry was the horrible MMO Elder Scrolls Online.

Wolfenstein series

* Also huge atm, not nearly as big as Doom, but its good, and has good will amoung gamers. Latest entry was fine.

Forza Horizon series

* Forza is forza.

Fable making a comeback

*They cocked up, their Fable as a game service plan.... and so when back to the drawing bord. Hopefully a return to glory days past, and a decent rpg.

Perfect Dark Series with Veteran Devs that worked on God of War and Last of us and many other developers

*Is way to beloved on this forum, for what it actually was. People moved on, as much as gamers here seem to express love for this (older nintendo fans, that also bought a xbox) I think the market for Dark series, is smaller than people think. Basically could be a one-off, and no more dark series games, because its a sales flop.

People loved The Outerworlds

*it reviewed okay, but didnt by any means set the world on fire. It was mostly because it launched at a time, when xbox was super dry on decent exclusives, that it got any attention at all.

Psychonauts series is loved.

*Its a multiplat, and also.... I wont say niche, but its a smaller seller, type game.


Starfield is said to be the next big thing like elderscrolls in space

Fallout 76..... has me worried, whenever these guys try to take on, something they have no experiance with before.
Want to see gameplay, before I'd even be semi hyped about them doing a scifi game.  We just saw how Cyberpunk did, and it was hyped all the way to the moon and back.

etc



Doctor_MG said:

It's like saying Sony's PS4 isn't as successful as Nintendo's NES because the NES had a much larger marketshare despite the PS4 selling almost twice as much hardware and three times as much software. 

Hmm...  Yes, actually I might try to argue that.  Sony probably aren't doing as well as Nintendo were...  although Sony's era has now lasted longer than the NES/SNES did.



Fei-Hung said:

They are probably making more money now, but I preferred the old MS. You could buy Office for £120 and be done with it. Now the yearly subscription model takes the piss. It's greedy and Office itself is shite incomparison to Google Drive and their version of office.

Google's biggest issues is they are slow with products. They could have done so much better with their Nest products which are amazing but a lot fo them are more expensive than the competition and Google fails to capitalise on them.

This is why I'm uncertain of Gamepass. If it goes the way office has and teams, it will be shit and overpriced once they start gaining more traction. 2-3 years from now we will look thinking how the f did we get here.

Outside of Azure, I don't think they have brought anything great to the table since Gates left. At least Google has created decent Nest products, self driving cars, Android Auto, Chromecast, Maps and some other services which have changed how we do things

MS's greatest contribution since Windows and Office has been Azure... And maybe Surface, although they are insanely priced.

You can still do that if you want:



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OneTime said:

Hmm...  Yes, actually I might try to argue that.  Sony probably aren't doing as well as Nintendo were...  although Sony's era has now lasted longer than the NES/SNES did.

Go ahead and look at Nintendos profits from back then vs Sonys gaming division profits now. 



The 4 generations of backwards compatibility is such utter BS. XSX is only backwards compatible with XB1. Just like PS5 is with PS4. Only select games from 360 are compatible and most of the best ones from 360/PS3 era got remastered for PS4/XB1 so they can be played on PS5 as well. And the OG Xbox BC list is just sad, how sad? There are more PS2 games that can be played on PS5 than there are OG Xbox games that can be played on XSX.



wahwah said:

The 4 generations of backwards compatibility is such utter BS. XSX is only backwards compatible with XB1. Just like PS5 is with PS4. Only select games from 360 are compatible and most of the best ones from 360/PS3 era got remastered for PS4/XB1 so they can be played on PS5 as well. And the OG Xbox BC list is just sad, how sad? There are more PS2 games that can be played on PS5 than there are OG Xbox games that can be played on XSX.

By 'select', you mean 577 X360 games. And how many PS3 games can play locally on the PS4/PS5 exactly?

Last edited by Raven - on 01 May 2021

"microsoft" is such a trigger word around here lol



OneTime said:
Raven said:

Marketshare is also just a number but you didn't mind using that to prove why Microsoft sucks now. 

Did I say that Microsoft sucks now?  They're still a very big player, just not the industry thought-leaders they were in the 90s-2010s.  I don't think that even needs proving, it's just history.  

Great companies are led by great thinkers:  Bill Gates/Elon Musk/Larry Page/Sergei Brin/Steve Jobs.  When they leave, there is a vacuum, and the company coasts.

I would have agreed with you a decade ago. Microsoft under Ballmer was a bloated company with bad ideas and got on the wrong side of every tech trend from mobile to mp3. 

Under Nadella the company is completely revived. The adversarial culture has completely changed. The stock is up 45% YOY, 20 analysts last month had 20 buy ratings... no holds, and no sells.  for many reasons, of course, but standout among them is the utility computing in the cloud, and also the massive potential for its developer tools to dislodge the big four consultancy firms by bringing business analytics through Azure. You'd be mad to bet against them. I have 3.5% of my portfolio in Microsoft atm and if anything that portion will increase. 

The trouble for betting against them as well is that they're positioning themselves strategically in industries that scale incredibly well. 

As for what it means for gaming - that's a different question. I buy the idea that a native "xbox" app on your smart TV and computer is the mid term goal. If Microsoft get their way, Xbox becomes the Netflix of gaming. They seem to be well aware that it means content must be king, and that's why we're seeing a new zeal for investment.