Has Xbox Lost the Console War?
There was a time when Xbox ruled the roost; when they were the de facto king of consoles. During this time, the Seattle-based company published new franchises that completely hooked us, and got us to buy into the ecosystem. Halo, Gears of War, Fable, Forza – these are just a few of the games that Microsoft released during the golden years, and that have had a lasting legacy on us all. But now we’ve got an Xbox that doesn’t have any exclusives, has just price hiked their games and consoles to a ridiculous level, and is developing a hideous handheld 3 years too late. So, how did we get here, and has Xbox just completely given up on actually being a relevant player in the video game market? Has Xbox finally lost the console war?
In some strange and somewhat insane twist of fate, Xbox has managed to go from unknown entity in the gaming world, to then creating one of the best brands with the coolest franchises, and now to pretty much complete irrelevance. From Bill Gates getting the Rock to unveil the company’s first console to destroying Sony’s PS3 in the mid-2000s, it’s now been tumbleweeds at Xbox for years, and they don’t really seem to have any kind of strategy. Well, they do, but we’ll talk about that later – STAY FOCUSED.
The troubles all started, of course, in the Don Mattrick era of Xbox 360. This crazy guy thought it would be a good idea to become obsessed with the Kinect. A yes, a camera pointing at your living room 24/7, making you leap around and smash the place up while trying to cast fireballs in terrible gimmicky games. He loved it so much that his sole strategy for the Xbox One release was to bundle it with every console – at our wallet’s expense, of course. Needless to say, despite having some great launch games like Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, and Ryse Son of Rome, the Xbox One launch was an unmitigated disaster. Mattrick was fired, and Phil Spencer was brought in to save the day. He quickly cut the Kinect and worked on repairing relations with the Xbox community. I think the Xbox One launch – and the entire recent history of Xbox – would have charted a very different course if Spencer was in charge from the beginning. Either way, the terrible hardware decisions and expensive pricing versus the PS4 overshadowed the Xbox One’s great lineup. But all wasn’t lost yet, and there were some great signs of Xbox recovering their position in the video game market.
To me, there is a clear delineation between Phil Spencer taking over Xbox in 2014 and what came before, and that’s because of the brand and community building he tried to do. The company had had a great start to the previous generation, with the Xbox 360 costing far less and coming to store shelves much sooner than the PS3. All of us eager goobers ran out to buy one so we could T-bag our friends in Halo while the words Blu Ray were a twinkle in Sony’s eye. But all of that good will was destroyed with the Xbox One launch, so Spencer had his work cut out for him.
Even though the Xbox One had a rocky launch, Spencer crafted a great narrative around Team Green. He got Major Nelson on board and really pushed the Xbox Podcast, while taking a clear and open approach to communication with fans. He also wore a T-shirt to appear non-corporate. Realizing the Xbox One was underpowered, he introduced the Xbox One X and pioneered the idea of a mid-gen refresh. He also created Game Pass, which in 2017, when it was released, was a crazy good deal. There were also still tons of interesting exclusives to get excited about, even if they didn’t set the world on fire. These included games like State of Decay, Recore, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, and loads more. The feeling at the time was that it was a good time to be an Xbox fan.
This all changed around 2020, when the Xbox Series X launched without Halo Infinite. PlayStation was already ahead, and the PS5 came with Demon’s Souls. They also made a big hubbub about making it a clear cut, fresh start into a new console generation. The Xbox Series X, meanwhile, was just another rectangular black box with the same controller we’d been using for almost 10 years. (Yes I know it’s different but come on, you know I’m right.) We didn’t know it at the time, but this period truly marked the start of Xbox giving up, zoning out, putting their feet up and saying “I’m out.”
Look at it this way, if I said to you “name a cool thing Xbox has done in the 5 years since launch” – what would you say? Because I sure can’t answer that question myself, and that’s because it’s all been downhill. In the last five years, we’ve witnessed the total decline of what Xbox used to be, and the rebirth of something that’s alien to the concepts Phil Spencer set out with 10 years ago. For instance, the Xbox brand has seen the slow erosion of its identity, with key figures like Major Nelson, who was at the company for 22 years, leaving. Then there are all of the job cuts that have happened, with Microsoft firing 1900 Activision Blizzard employees, as well as 650 of its own staff. They’ve closed numerous studios, like Tango Gameworks who made the hit game Hi-Fi Rush, and Arkane Austen who made Redfall. Well, actually that last one is understandable but you get the point.
In the last 5 years, there has been a total breakdown in the ecosystem. Game Pass price hikes have hit us hard, which is in opposition to when the Xbox heads were touring the subscription service as the “best deal in gaming”. Meanwhile, there are no actual new exclusives drawing people in. Not only are there no exclusives, but the games Xbox COULD make exclusive thanks to them buying up video game giant’s like Activision Blizzard are also being published on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Now, you could argue the point that you do get all of these new releases quote unquote free if you pay your monthly fee, and you would be right, but that also highlights another problem – lack of innovation. See, while Xbox traditionally has always pushed for more powerful consoles, this generation, they’ve chosen to skip the mid-gen refresh while Sony has released the PS5 Pro. That means that games developed by studios Microsoft owns – like Bethesda’s Indiana Jones game – run substantially BETTER on PlayStation consoles, which means that that’s the place we’ll start looking to buy them. And don’t get me started on the fact that Gears of War is coming to PlayStation consoles, because it’s sheer blasphemy.
The clear lack of innovation can be seen in Xbox’s strange handheld console that comes with these little hand nub things – ergh. Valve led the charge on creating a handheld gaming device that allows you to take your PC’s Steam library on the go with you, and it was TRUE innovation. Even at the time, when I cracked open my Steam Deck fresh from the box, I thought “wow, wouldn’t it be great if there was a game pass app so I could play Xbox games on here”. That app never materialised, but fast forward three years, and Xbox finally has a handheld that can do that in development. The catch is that it’s now an outdated idea. The market has been flooded with handheld PCs that can do just that, and most of us who are going to buy a handheld already have one, so we’re definitely not letting Phil Spencer barge his way into our wallets to take what’s left for a Game Pass machine.
The latest nail in the Xbox coffin is, of course, the recent announcement that Xbox console, hardware, and game prices will be getting a global price increase. The 5 year old Series X is now $100 more expensive, and they’ve raised their game prices to $80. It’s hard not to see how the Nintendo Switch 2 and its crazy game prices have given Xbox the confidence to do the same, but the extra slap in the face here is that at least Nintendo games usually have a lot of work put into making fans happy – Call of Duty does not. What Spencer and company have also failed to take into consideration is that they don’t have any leverage to make such a big move. The Switch 2 is fresh, new, and exciting; the Series X is not.
So, has Xbox given up completely? Well, in a way, yes and in a way no. Let me explain. What I’m sure about when it comes to Xbox is that they HAVE completely changed strategies from seeing themselves as an equal to other gaming companies like Sony to a more corporate business. Somehow, the man who sought to rebrand Xbox into something more gamer-friendly has ended up doing the opposite. They might be making the Xbox arm of Microsoft more profitable for the CEO by buying out their competition and then releasing their games on as many platforms as possible, while also offering them on Game Pass. It’s the ol’ double-whammy of having a user base of repeat subscriptions but also getting $80 from people who don’t use that service. And I’m sure it’s going to make them a lot of money, but they’ve also completely lost their identity, and subsequently, they’ve completely lost touch with what gamers want.
We don’t see Phil Spencer in interviews or on stage championing the latest releases anymore. We don’t see the big flashy Xbox-branded events outside of Summer Game Fest or Gamescom anymore. And we just don’t see any pride in the brand anymore. After all, how can they market an event where none of their games are exclusive anymore? What have they got to say to fans who expect something that’s just for them when there isn’t anything that’s just for them anymore?
So, in the end, Xbox hasn’t given up in the sense that they have low-key rebranded themselves as a software publisher that’s hardly any different from, say, EA. In other words, they haven’t given up on the profit. But it’s clear that Xbox HAS given up on us – the Xbox community, and the wider video game community at large. Because who wants a world where there’s only 2 companies making innovative hardware? Xbox HAS given up on trying to be a company that innovates for its community and gives people a reason to get themself into the Xbox ecosystem in a way that they had done for almost 20 years before the Series X launched. Frankly, I’m not sure what’s going to happen when Phil Spencer eventually steps down as head of Xbox, because it will officially mark the end of an era when Xbox tried to drag itself out of the mistakes made by Mattrick’s disastrous Xbox One launch, which is ultimately what has caused the downfall of Xbox all of these years later. If someone had just grabbed his arm and whispered “No, Don, people don’t care about cameras”, then Xbox might still be a PlayStation competitor right now, instead of a Netflix competitor. Xbox has lost the console war.
Want to find out all about the Xbox layoffs with a fancy timeline and everything?
