Nextbox infinity anticipation station

[01101010]

Yeah well at least he has come around to the always-on thing and the problematic used games situation...

[Paelos]

The good news is that both are publically traded companies, and they have to own up to investors. They can't hide behind doubletalk in an earnings call. They can only show the numbers, and in the case of microsoft the investors are very interested in how things with this Xbone will go after the Windows 8 fiasco.

[KallDrexx]

The good news is that both are publically traded companies, and they have to own up to investors. They can't hide behind doubletalk in an earnings call. They can only show the numbers, and in the case of microsoft the investors are very interested in how things with this Xbone will go after the Windows 8 fiasco.

Not really, XBox is such a minor part of Microsoft's revenue.  Also, you can't call Windows 8 a fiasco when talking about investors since, well, the stock has only gone up in the past year.

Let the fanboys and haters have their circle-jerks and live in the real world. Trying to discuss with either is only worth doing if you happen to like having arguments that will never resolve.

While the fanboys and haters on these forums have our own circle-jerks here.....

[Margalis]

Pretty much. I haven't had mess with drivers much in the past few years. I haven't had to mess with BIOS since I built this computer. Meanwhile with my "just working" consoles, I've had a PS3 and a 360 outright die. I was trying to watch Arrested Development on Netflix on my PS3 the other night and PSN was disconnecting every 10 minutes. Meanwhile on my computer and iphone it was working fine. And lets not forget that 24 day PSN outage a couple years back. You've got long installations and day 1 patches just like on the PC. My dad and my sister have both had 360's brick in the middle of updates that required looking up extremely non-intuitive steps to fix. It's been a long time now since this shit "just worked".

This is IMO a huge problem with console gaming, one of the fundamental value propositions has slowly been eroded.

These days playing a console game means some combination of long installs, having to perform research on which version to buy from which retailer, updating firmware, manually entering long codes using a controller, waiting significant amounts of time for bootup process as well starting a game, etc.

Any one or two of these things is not terrible but together it's a death by a thousand cuts. Meanwhile with Steam you can preload games, buy digitally, etc, so the gap has been closing from both sides.
---

As far as sales predictions: high initial sales, probably moderate sales after that. The real issue is going to be a couple years down the road when all the features like TV crap and voice are either widely recognized as garbage or rolled into competing devices. MS is putting out hardware that is supposed to last for 5+ years in a market that can iterate yearly.

[MrHat]

The Kinect 2 does seem to me to be a very impressive, very cool piece of hardware.  I just wish it wasn't connected to an always on, always watching, always judging conglomerate.

[Merusk]

Let the fanboys and haters have their circle-jerks and live in the real world. Trying to discuss with either is only worth doing if you happen to like having arguments that will never resolve.

While the fanboys and haters on these forums have our own circle-jerks here.....

I wasn't implying this forum was immune from the same difficulty, only that you have to ignore those individuals as a gestalt philosophy.

[jakonovski]

This is what they all want (an actual Sony patent):

[eldaec]

Sales are going to depend on how well CoD and EA Sports titles are marketed. They'll have nothing to do with things in this thread.

If Microsoft didn't have delusions of TV related grandeur the story here would simply be 'XBone hardware specs not great when compared to a PC, and has terrible drm'. Which is all jolly good, but the former was true of the 360 and most consumers don't really understand the latter.

What may eat the consoles lunch is the tablet/phone market stealing the casual space. If iOS and android can be made to beam images to the TV screen in a reliable and consumer friendly manner, then you don't need a console for party, casual, indie, or anything except GPU intensive gaming.

Whether or not the XBone is terrible (it is, but so was the last gen) won't decide its fate.

[Soulflame]

Has there actually been a good JRPG in the last 4 years?

Xenoblade Chronicles.

[Rasix]

Resonance of Fate and Persona 4 weren't bad either.  Although, I can see some people not liking either with their various quirks and deviations from core JRPG mechanics.  Xenoblade Chronicles is pretty outstanding.  Just really fucking long, especially if you're a completionist.

[Simond]

Denial doesn't translate in to dollars, nor do fanboys and haters convince the consumer market about a purchase.

If they did, then the Wii would have been the WORST selling console of the last gen, not the best.

Let the fanboys and haters have their circle-jerks and live in the real world. Trying to discuss with either is only worth doing if you happen to like having arguments that will never resolve.

Wii sold lots of console boxes but the software sales died on their arse. That's no way to run a profitable business.

[Paelos]

Not really, XBox is such a minor part of Microsoft's revenue.  Also, you can't call Windows 8 a fiasco when talking about investors since, well, the stock has only gone up in the past year.

Yeah, I can. The sales have been markedly bad in all reports, and the investors are reacting to the announcement of the gaming console, and the overall moment of the market. The entire Dow Jones is up over 2000 points since January.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/14/ms_windows8_sales/

There's some good information on the product. The market is reflecting that info plus some horizon info. It's a blue chip stock, but the returns on 8 have been nowhere near the projections.

EDIT: http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/05/30/how-the-xbox-reveal-affected-microsofts-flagging-reputation/

Also there's a Forbes article on MS and the reveal.

[Merusk]

Denial doesn't translate in to dollars, nor do fanboys and haters convince the consumer market about a purchase.

If they did, then the Wii would have been the WORST selling console of the last gen, not the best.

Let the fanboys and haters have their circle-jerks and live in the real world. Trying to discuss with either is only worth doing if you happen to like having arguments that will never resolve.

Wii sold lots of console boxes but the software sales died on their arse. That's no way to run a profitable business.

Not for 3rd party devs, no.  Nintendo-property games sold fine.  The parents I know who own one say their kids still play it, as do my own kids and they buy the 'stupid' games like Mario Party, Mario <sport> etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

Respectable numbers on all those games, outselling the 'big' games on the 360 in many cases.

Then there's also the circular problem of; Hardcore gamers refused to buy/ use the Wii, so hardcore games didn't sell well on it, so 3rd party games weren't developed for it, so hardcore gamers had nothing to play on it.

[HaemishM]

The difference between the Wii and the Bone is that Nintendo sold the Wii at a profit. The Bone will almost surely be a loss on every hardware sale for the first few years, at best break even. There's also the problem that Microsoft doesn't really have much in the way of first-party software developers even if you count Halo/Forza. They are pretty much going to have to rely on 3rd party software and Live subs, because they will likely have to pay out the ass for all the TV/Movie/Music/Entertainment they want to put on the console.

[Rendakor]

Chaos Rings series, Zenonia series, Chrono Trigger and various Final Fantasy remakes. There's also some The World Ends With You thing.

On the non-jrpg front you should get Waking Mars. It's like whoah.

Thanks, haven't heard of Chaos Rings and I've been meaning to try Zenonia but keep hearing mixed things. TWEWY is iOS exclusive, and I don't have much interest in ports regardless.

[Severian]

This is what they all want (an actual Sony patent):

Horrifying. The UK's Black Mirror (new dystopian sci-fi/Twilight Zone series) had an episode called 15 Million Merits showing where we're headed. The future begins now.

[Jeff Kelly]

Setting up  a slim line PC in the living room is not the same thing.

I don't want Mouse/Keyboard Interface not even to start games, how would this even work when I'm sitzing on the couch without a table nearby.

A console is more than just an underpowered PC. The whole control and usability scheme is designed for the living room and to be used without mouse/keyboard.

I've tried a few times to set up a PC as console replacement but it never clicked for me.

- not all games can be played with a controller or they support controllers but still need the keyboard or mouse.
- Need to select the right graphics card/driver combo to get native 1:1 pixel ratio1080p output without overscan
- not all games support TV resolutions like 720p or 1080p
- audio over HDMI from a PC is still a major hassle
- if you want it to be reasonably low noise it gets either expensive or is a hassle to build yourself

and a few other issues.

All this just to play games that are for the most part slightly better looking 360 ports anyway.

If I wanted to play Civ or any other mouse/keyboard game I'd still probably rather play it at my desk than in the living room anyway.

For me to consider it it would pretty much have to be 'boot, insert game, play, without using mouse or keyboard ever' without the fan noises driving me nuts or costing triple or four times what a PS 4 costs.

That's why I think that a steam box might be a game changer if done right.

You could potentially get more than the XBone offers. (It's Linux so you could probably extend it to be media center or DVR) with a UI concept that's hopefully better suited for couch gaming.

[Kageru]

That's pretty much the point of steam "big picture" mode as I understand it. Which would also be them testing the steambox UI in advance of the hardware.

If they could get some of the PC manufacturers on board I think the steam box could be a very interesting challenge. But the PC manufacturers are used to being followers which is why microsoft keeps laughing as it burns them.

If used games are destroyed, EB collapses (and games sales go through normal big retailers) I'd be so happy. In Australia it's pretty much them pushing distributors to keep steam games expensive here to protect their retail margins. They offer nothing of value to PC gamers. Not enthusiasm for the platform, range of games, support or good prices.

[Paelos]

The picture of guy yelling McDonalds like a puppet at his TV makes me 

Ah, the fact that people will actually pay for that privilege is outstanding.

[01101010]

Setting up  a slim line PC in the living room is not the same thing.

I don't want Mouse/Keyboard Interface not even to start games, how would this even work when I'm sitzing on the couch without a table nearby.

A console is more than just an underpowered PC. The whole control and usability scheme is designed for the living room and to be used without mouse/keyboard.

I've tried a few times to set up a PC as console replacement but it never clicked for me.

- not all games can be played with a controller or they support controllers but still need the keyboard or mouse.
- Need to select the right graphics card/driver combo to get native 1:1 pixel ratio1080p output without overscan
- not all games support TV resolutions like 720p or 1080p
- audio over HDMI from a PC is still a major hassle
- if you want it to be reasonably low noise it gets either expensive or is a hassle to build yourself

and a few other issues.

All this just to play games that are for the most part slightly better looking 360 ports anyway.

If I wanted to play Civ or any other mouse/keyboard game I'd still probably rather play it at my desk than in the living room anyway.

For me to consider it it would pretty much have to be 'boot, insert game, play, without using mouse or keyboard ever' without the fan noises driving me nuts or costing triple or four times what a PS 4 costs.

That's why I think that a steam box might be a game changer if done right.

You could potentially get more than the XBone offers. (It's Linux so you could probably extend it to be media center or DVR) with a UI concept that's hopefully better suited for couch gaming.

Exactly what we need... more inactivity to cater to the sedentary lifestyle. Obesity was never a problem in America when people had to get the fuck up and crank the UHF dial. 

  <-- in case you missed it.

[Ingmar]

The good news is that both are publically traded companies, and they have to own up to investors. They can't hide behind doubletalk in an earnings call. They can only show the numbers, and in the case of microsoft the investors are very interested in how things with this Xbone will go after the Windows 8 fiasco.

For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Microsoft generated revenue of $20.5 billion. Entertainment and Devices was ~2.5 billion, but that includes Windows Phone and Skype, not just Xbox. From what I know Skype is pretty big, like almost 500 million a quarter big. Windows Phone is small in an overall market sense but their growth is like 120% year over year. So Xbox revenue is already somewhere south of 2 billion per quarter right now. The new one, even if it 'fails', will not fail hard enough to be significant.

[Morat20]

I think the higher price -- weren't they talking like 499 or 599 -- is gonna be a problem for sales. Now they're also pushing that 2-year live contract model, but people are moving away from that in phones. People aren't that fond of contracts, but it'd still help sales. (People will gladly pay 300 over two years rather than 200 up front, in general).

But still, sticker shock is gonna be a problem -- and I don't think MS's gee-whiz kinect is gonna be nearly the draw a good blu-ray player was for the PS3.

As for Windows 8 -- honestly, it's like the people doing the designing and marketing just assume you replace hardware whenever you need. That it is, effectively, free. They're flabbergasted that the entire business world hasn't moved to surface, deciding to stick with keyboards and mice and the hardware they have.

Windows 8 could be Jesus 2.0 on tablets -- but 90% of the people using it are using hardware they were running windows 7 on, and none of them want to touch their damn monitor to work. They just want to click on Word or Excel or whatever they do for a living, and start using that.

[Ingmar]

They're flabbergasted that the entire business world hasn't moved to surface

[citation needed]

Worth noting: Windows division revenue up 23% in Q1 of this year (which is Q3 in Microsoft calendar land.) That would be the quarter after Windows 8 released. Doesn't seem like it is being rejected en masse to me.

[Morat20]

I'm going more by their grudging 8.1 release and their general post-8 PR, which boiled down to "It's great with tablets" and "Surface is great" without actually addressing the fact that the complaints were, by and large, by people using desktops who weren't power-users capable of locating (or often lacking even the permissions) to turn on desktop mode properly.

It's not "OMG, no start button". It's "I've been using Windows for 20 years and you give me defaults that are utterly unlike anything I've use, and optimized for a touchscreen. On my desktop."

Honest to god, desktop seemed an afterthought with Windows 8 which was just fucking weird. The default UI  makes no sense for a keyboard-mouse-monitor combination, like everyone they sell to commercially (and a giant chunk of their home users) sit down to. If that was the default only for tablets, that'd have been different.

I think the goal was to leverage their desktop dominance into tablets, by basically getting their current userbase used to the tablet-style interface, so when they got their next tablet, Windows would be a familiar choice and thus more competitive.

[Kageru]

Numbers can be made to say whatever you need them to say.

That said Microsoft stills holds an effective monopoly on the corporate desktop, and those aren't going anywhere soon, so they'd have to be even worse than they are to post a loss in any realistic time-frame.

I think the goal was to leverage their desktop dominance into tablets, by basically getting their current userbase used to the tablet-style interface, so when they got their next tablet, Windows would be a familiar choice and thus more competitive.

Of course it was, that's always been their business model. "Embrace, extend, extinguish". Though it also helps them protect their corporate stronghold from the ipad becoming a dominant business tool I guess.

[Venkman]

Still tied to PC sales, and companies that turn over every two years. Average consumers don't actively choose their OS. They inherit one when they buy a new computer and don't rip it out to put in a good one

I'm curious to see how X1 (or whatever) does against PS4. Still a lot of time to clean up their rather inconsistent messaging on DRM and stuff. And whatever one does the other will counter with.

I don't think this generation will go like the beginning of the last one though. It won't be because of the tired PC vs console argument either. That's all done. Instead (and as I'm sure it was said somewhere here too), it's because people are buying more games per week on their smartphone than they'll normally buy per year on their consoles. The price points, play occasions, and net that captures self-styled "non gamers" who'll play Collapse Blast with the same obsession we'll play Tomb Raider all continue to point to what Nintendo started learning with the 3DS: a post dedicated-gaming-device world.

MS has wanted to be a settop box since WebTV. But not they need to be. This means they're not just up against PS4 anymore but now also Apple TV (especially when they get serious about games beyond Airplay mirroring), Roku, Boxee, if Ouya ever matters, if Bluestack proves there's a market, if Steambox becomes a real thing, when Google tries again, when Amazon turns it's eye on TVs, oh and it's not like the cable companies are just gonna roll over, etc.

Same battle for the same TV, but with a much wider array of competitors, and no longer in a world where one device means one thing.

[Jeff Kelly]

Ingmar, of course Windows sales are decent. You can't get anything else really. The instant a new Windows comes out you can't buy a new PC with a previous license anymore or you need to pay an additional fee. MS always offers rebates for PC vendors, but only on the current release. For example: I wanted to buy a laptop for my Dad to replace his 5 year old one after Win 8 came out. The same Lenovo model I chose would have cost $100 more with Windows 7 instead of Windows 8, just because MS no longer offers rebates on 7.

People need new PCs, people replace their old ones and they will certainly buy Windows 8 as OS if the previous incarnation means that their PCs cost $100 more. This was always the case and that means that even an OS like Windows ME or Vista had decent sales after launch. THat doesn't mean however that both were successes or that people or businesses liked them. Whenever I see just how many corporate PCs (even those bought this year) still run Windows XP I get why MS is desperate or why MS generally lost the faith of Wall Street.

Every business Unit that is not Windows or Office is losing money or barely breaking even. Both Office and Windows lose sales year over year and no OS after XP as gotten any serious traction in business (where MS makes the majority of its profits). Also tablet sales have already surpassed laptop sales and will (projected) surpass desktop sales this year, phone sales are huge, MS has no serious presence in either of those markets. Hardware progress has slowed, PCs last longer so software cycles get longer etc.

I get that - even though it might not be a huge profit center - MS tries to break out of the OS and Office mold and that the X Box One is sort of a 'Hail Mary'. A 'halo device' in the hopes of MS executives in the same vein the iPod and iPhone was for Apple. If it fails then MS has shown again that even with their big coffers of money and huge number of employees they can't break out of their legacy business model. The OS and Office market has only one way to go - down. MS knows it, the banks and investors know it. Up to now people still wait and see if MS can overcome that and they still have the revenues and money to potentially do it. No effort by MS in the last twenty years however proved to be a success story so the patience inside and outside of MS wears thin. You can see it by waning investor confidence and huge employee attrition.

MS desperately needs a breakout success.

[edited to please our benevolent overlord. The Schild loves us and we love him. All Hail Schild  ]

[schild]

That is one of the hardest to read posts I've ever seen. It looks like a zebra. Goddamn.

[Jeff Kelly]

Apple TV (especially when they get serious about games beyond Airplay mirroring), Roku, Boxee, if Ouya ever matters,

No they have it essentially right. Turnover is so huge with phones and tablets (but not set top boxes) that you probably couldn't keep up with state of the art gaming (on phones and tablets) even with a $99 box where there is no huge financial effort to replace them every year

Serious games need more screen real estate and better control schemes though than phones can offer so maybe a low latency 'put your favorite phone or tablet game on the big screen when you're home' solution is the better concept.

Sony's inclusion of the internet game streaming service for legacy games is ingenious because it ends any concerns about 'backwards compatibility' once and for all if done right.

You might even be able to push games on devices that might not be able to run them if left to their own hardware capabilities. So you might even be able to profit from the short replacement and hardware cycles even with a device that naturally only gets refreshed once every five years (as TV connected devices generally are)

How often do you replace your DVR, your VCR, DVD or BluRay player? How often do you replace your phone? People buying a new XBox expect to use it for the forseeable future.

[Paelos]

For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Microsoft generated revenue of $20.5 billion. Entertainment and Devices was ~2.5 billion, but that includes Windows Phone and Skype, not just Xbox. From what I know Skype is pretty big, like almost 500 million a quarter big. Windows Phone is small in an overall market sense but their growth is like 120% year over year. So Xbox revenue is already somewhere south of 2 billion per quarter right now. The new one, even if it 'fails', will not fail hard enough to be significant.

Sink the company? No that would be ludicrous to expect. But with blue chip stocks it's about meeting expectations, and you don't want to have two releases in a row be a huge meh or less in the marketplace. That starts a trend in the wrong direction, shifts EPS, divvys, etc.

Nothing sinks MS without some serious changes in options on an OS. They just don't make as much money. However, the Xbox is a completely different beast.

[Jeff Kelly]

That is one of the hardest to read posts I've ever seen. It looks like a zebra. Goddamn.

Thank you for your detailed and well presented critique of my writing and presentation style. Your comments will be greatly appreciated once you actually write them down.

[Jeff Kelly]

p.s laying out a post to look well is hard when you write it on a mobile phone screen. Automatic line breaks in the editor make the paragraphs look different than on a huge LCD screen. Let's see if I can edit that thing to look better

[Quinton]

I don't think this generation will go like the beginning of the last one though. It won't be because of the tired PC vs console argument either. That's all done. Instead (and as I'm sure it was said somewhere here too), it's because people are buying more games per week on their smartphone than they'll normally buy per year on their consoles. The price points, play occasions, and net that captures self-styled "non gamers" who'll play Collapse Blast with the same obsession we'll play Tomb Raider all continue to point to what Nintendo started learning with the 3DS: a post dedicated-gaming-device world.

MS has wanted to be a settop box since WebTV. But not they need to be. This means they're not just up against PS4 anymore but now also Apple TV (especially when they get serious about games beyond Airplay mirroring), Roku, Boxee, if Ouya ever matters, if Bluestack proves there's a market, if Steambox becomes a real thing, when Google tries again, when Amazon turns it's eye on TVs, oh and it's not like the cable companies are just gonna roll over, etc.

Same battle for the same TV, but with a much wider array of competitors, and no longer in a world where one device means one thing.

I don't think the market for non-casual gaming is going away -- there's stuff offered by the console and PC gaming titles that just does not exist in the casual space and cannot (except as after the fact ports) due to the economics of it and/or the lack of useful control surfaces, ect.

But the casual gaming space certainly is going to continue to grow and looks to be a huge audience willing to spend money in $1-5 chunks rather than putting down $40-60 at a time.  This wider audience is price sensitive and is not going to invest $500-700 in a dedicated box in their living room.  Not in a world where $100 gets an AppleTV or Ouya or Roku or whatnot.  You don't need a platform anywhere near as powerful or expensive as X1 or PS4 to watch streaming video (from the cloud or your tablet or phone) or to play casual games.

The X1 feels like Microsoft doubling down on their core xbox demographic (teen to college males, "bro-gamers" as a friend classifies them, into console-ized shooters, sports titles, etc).  I don't see either the content or the price reaching out to the larger casual audience.

[Morat20]

The casual space also grows because people often have twenty or thirty minutes of down time at irregular intervals all day.

And your smartphone? Always there, in your pocket. Ready. Available.

[Quinton]

I'd imagine even in the living room, there's a large audience for more bite-sized gaming maybe sandwiched in between some TV shows, enjoyed in 10-30minute chunks.