His post is clearly a pretty bad take Xbone tracked ahead of X360 at the same time. Look how that turned out..

XSeries is tracking about or ahead of where x360 was without even most of their biggest games launching, coming out from covid, and we still have not even seen the sales effect of Starfield and forza at the end of the year. Going into next year we are looking at Hellblade 2, Avowed and another number of big Console exclusives.

Honestly i think his point is pointless since it can and is going to be seen that all the fruits of Phils labour when it comes to xbox is now only starting to hit and they are going to be hitting hard from here on out imo.

Rol should be more worried about how so many Japenese gamers are embracing PC now imo. even more so with PC's getting smaller and smaller.....

Here's a link
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2023/08/phil-spencer-gives-his-thoughts-on-baldurs-gate-3s-xbox-series-s-issues

"In terms of the two platforms, I want games to launch on both platforms. There are feature differences between the platforms. We have an ability to kind of handle that and how it works. Where teams are going to choose to focus their time and their effort is up to them. We're here to support them and what they want to go do. We want to make sure that games when they're launching on competitive platforms are also launching on Xbox.

So we're going to learn from this experience as well because we don't love that. But I don't think it's something that's a fatal flaw in the system. It's partners prioritizing their time, us listening and being a good partner to them. And you see some amazing games doing great work across S and X. Diablo looks great, Starfield looks great. Forza looks great across both. And I want to make sure console gaming is accessible to more people, and we think the price point of the console is a pretty important part of that."

That's basically throwing Larian under the bus, if they had budgeted their time better it would have worked on Series S... I guess not since it's not coming later either.

There's been plenty disgruntled developers about the Series S parity
https://www.destructoid.com/xbox-series-s-compatibility-hardware-technology-developers/

And, in other testimony, Alexander Battaglia of the technically-focused Digital Foundry has noted that they frequently hear of studio frustrations, hindered by the Xbox Series S’ reduced memory limitations and facilitating the need to adapt design plans specifically to fit a “next-gen” game’s design onto the cheaper model.

But got to have a cheaper box to push game pass and expensive additional storage!

"Sure he hasn't done the best but with what he had to work with compared to what Jim had to work with is a night and day difference.."

Sure is night and day difference, Phil had a war chest of close to 80 billion. What did Jim have to work with ;)


Anyway it's good Jim is leaving, but it probably won't change much.

What exactly do you think your showing me here?. Clearly devs have to decide where their time goes so i dont understand how this proves anything you or the poster before you was trying to say. The original poster said how spencer trew Larian under the bus when looking at his quoted text and link and now yours that isnt the case. How you guys drag that out from that is more on you than anyone trowing someone under the bus...

Also it is a night and day difference since Jim got hold of a billion doller company that was riding on success. Phil got control of an xbox brand that was imo ready to be dropped by MS if it didnt turn its self around. Google is also a billion dollor company and stardia got dropped like hot eggs. Lets not act like if something is not doing good it cant be dropped. But like i said with without trying to twist things thanks to your strawman tactic here. Unlike Ryan Phil has been fixing a broken ship Ryan was steering one that was perfect before he got there. I hope you Sony fans are going to enjoy the next few years when you see if he done a good job or a bad one.

So you agree with Spencer that if Larian had better prioritized their time we would have split-screen on Series S in BG3, or is it perhaps a memory limitation...

Read it again

But I don't think it's something that's a fatal flaw in the system. It's partners prioritizing their time, us listening and being a good partner to them. And you see some amazing games doing great work across S and X. Diablo looks great, Starfield looks great. Forza looks great across both.

It's not a problem with the Series S, it's Larian not prioritizing their time correctly according to Spencer. Forza dropped split-screen entirely btw. And does BG3 not look great?

And why do you keep calling me a Sony fan? Just because I'm not a fan of MS? The world isn't black and white and I don't have any allegiance to any corporation. Maybe you're blind to my criticism of Sony and Nintendo. I don't make exceptions and don't hold back, that's just me.


Anyway if you're looking for something to play tonight, Cocoon is excellent (I'm at about 40%) and included with Gamepass. I bought it since the devs deserve a sale for that little gem. Highly recommended. (If you like puzzle games)

Why are you trying to use stawman tactics once again to put words in my mouth.. Where did i say that? or where did MS say that?. Thats you putting them words in my mouth and theirs.

"Edit" and yes i do like puzzle games so i will take you up on that offer of Cocoon . And i am sorry for always thinking of you as a Sony fan i know you always call shit out even on sony platforms and Nintendo and PC .

Let's rewind :)

"What exactly do you think your showing me here?. Clearly devs have to decide where their time goes so i dont understand how this proves anything you or the poster before you was trying to say."

As the previous poster I also think this statement "But I don't think it's something that's a fatal flaw in the system. It's partners prioritizing their time" is a bit of a lie. Shifting the blame to Larian, instead of admitting that the lower and slower amount of RAM is what is causing the issues.

"The original poster said how spencer trew Larian under the bus when looking at his quoted text and link and now yours that isnt the case. "

It is the case, Spencer is blaming Larian in that statement, not the RAM issues with Series S.

Series S has 4GB less RAM, running at 66% of the speed of Series X RAM. That's fine if you just want to have higher res textures and push more pixels on Series X vs Series S. It's a problem when you want to run multiple instances of the same game (split-screen) together.

Here another link about the RAM issues on Series S
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/xbox-series-s-suffers-from-vram-limitations-just-like-8gb-gpus

Then he says "us listening and being a good partner to them". So why can't they make it work. Instead the listening and being a good partner led to allowing Larian to drop feature parity and only have split-screen on Series X. MS couldn't make it work for Halo Infinite's campaign co-op and dropped split-screen for Forza 8 as well.

Of course Spencer embellishes by saying it's not a fatal flaw, which it isn't, but the lower/slower ram is a flaw that is limiting developers in what they can do. Larian is not to blame here, no matter how they prioritized their time, it's not going to add more RAM to the Series S. And I'm glad Larian didn't restrict what you can do in split-screen just to make it work with Series S.

And here we have direct proof that consoles with different specs add more development time and costs. Which I already said when PS4 Pro and One X came out. It's not as simple as adjusting a few settings. It can be a giant pita.

(And be prepared for me to criticize Apple as well when I make the switch :p Already have plenty, I'm so bad with iPhones my wife has to hold hers up to show me a picture cause as soon as I touch it, it rotates or goes away or turns off lol. The real reason I have no smart phone, I'm incompatible :p)

So.. we're just gonna keep pretending that this has been a great year for Sony...  Okay..

Oh, btw, I think Phil Spencer had something to do with Xbox´s gamers being able to play MLB The Show on release date on Game Pass, and I think Jim Ryan had something to do with playstation players NOT being able to play MLB The Show on their subscription service.

The numbers were inflated by Playstation shortages.  

Good, Jim Ryan is a suit. PS needs someone who actually plays games

If you want me to factor in Sony's down year, it's only going to look even worse for Microsoft because they aren't able to capitalize on it. Much of this has to do with the tone that has been set during the first two years of the PS5 and Xbox Series, so finally having something to show with Starfield is too late. It also doesn't help that it's a Bethesda game which is best played on a PC. The Sony list you posted is very short for 2023, but in terms of hardware selling power it still trumps Microsoft's 2023.

As for your second statement, it's a stretch. I don't think that the PS gamers who don't like Ryan view MLB on the subscription service as something of importance. But Xbox gamers certainly do care a lot about Gamepass, so I concede that this example makes Spencer more likeable; the question is if such a little thing can offset the shortcomings of his leadership.

When Xbox One tracked ahead of the 360, I told people that it will not only be impossible for the Xbox One to stay ahead, but also not possible to come reasonably close in lifetime sales. A snapshot in time can be very misleading, hence why it's important to understand how sales momentum works.

That's why Xbox Series tracking ahead of the 360 means just as little as it meant for the Xbox One to track ahead of the 360. The 360 had a poor first year and was only able to pick up momentum because the PS3 was an even bigger blunder and caused third parties to make their games multiplatform from which the 360 greatly benefited. The Xbox Series has no such unexpected advantage on this scale, because it was already clear at the time of its reveal that it would get lots of major third party games. A few Xbox first party games can never have the level of effect that dozens of AAA third party games had for the Xbox 360.

2023 is not the year where Xbox Series sales should be down notably year over year when you are aiming for a successful generation. Even if both Starfield and Forza turn out to be big for Xbox, they'll likely only manage to make the full year of 2023 flat in comparison to the whole of 2022. That is still not a promising result for sales going forward.

As for Japan and PCs, one has to do nothing more than look at Japanese software sales charts. Of Japan's current top 20 most popular gaming IPs, almost all of them are exclusive to Nintendo. But because of this final statement of yours, I am willing to amend my previous statement that "the Xbox fans in question seemingly have no clue about anything." You can scratch the word "seemingly" from it.