Comment on Xbox’s leadership shift proves it: the gamer era is over, AI runs the show now
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week agoand only through Steam
Now you’re being a bit unfair by bundling together console hardware and software while keeping PC hardware and software separate.
To be fair you would need to take into account every available piece of software to make the determination if those features were available for PC before, at the same time, or after consoles.
If I had to guess I’d say that in 90% of cases the innovation occured on PC due to it being an open ecosystem with freely available development hardware and higher numbers of developers. Big successful companies generally don’t come up with big new good ideas, they steal them from other products that have already been proven.
But let’s just looks at this differently. In 2004 the Microsoft video game division reported profits of 2.75 billion. The Xbox live service reported 750,000 subscribers each paying $50 a year, or $37,500,000. The absence of Xbox live would have reduced Microsoft game divisions profits from 2.75 billion to 2.71 billion. Basically a rounding error. Microsoft could have easily funded any of the developments absent the subscription just as Playstation did for years later; just as PC does until this day
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Taking into every available piece of software, those features appeared on PC 15 years or so after consoles. And only really achieved similar feature parity with early consoles in 2018.
In this case the PC company Valve “stole” them from Xbox and Sony. That doesn’t really help your argument at all here, in the contrary it just goes to show much much easier valve has had it as all they’ve had to do is follow a blueprint.
In 2004 the Xbox division of Microsoft reported $0 in profits. Xbox division became profitable for the first time in 2008. Know what was the driving force to that sustained profitability? Yup, Xbox Live.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Okay. Pick a gaming feature that you believe was created by console manufacturers from 2002-present.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Xbox Live, the very thing we’re talking about, was the original unified party system. Prior to it, there were third party voice chat systems and third party lobby systems, but these were disparate systems you had to maintain separate identities for. Difference games supported different lobby systems so you couldn’t even have just one of each either. Xbox was the first to tie these things together under one “Gamertag” as one persistent presence and identity you could use to coordinate all your friends together in to chat, join in games through, collect persistent achievements, etc.
Many years later we now have that on PC via Steam, but even then that doesn’t cover all games on the platform since there are games locked to Epic, Uplay, or indie games sold direct through a website.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It seems you’re saying is that Microsoft created this amazing playground, and then sold solutions to the problems they created when they fenced it off, and then passed that off as innovation with a subscription fee?
The party system, the group screens, the voice chat, these were all created to make up for the short comings of consoles. Our players can’t install ventrilo on Xbox. They can’t quickly type a message on a keyboard and hit enter, so let’s create a solution for the problems that we created when we made this a locked ecosystem.
So I don’t know… You’re saying everything that Xbox did was doable before on PC, but required multiple accounts and apps; but then Xbox needs lots of money to copy those features into their product? Don’t know if I buy it, and I certainly don’t 20+ years and billions of dollars buy it.
You’ve said a few times now that steam took 15 years to add these feature and it seems obvious to me why. We already had that shit. Sure it’s convenient on console, but it’s not subscription worthy.
Think of any other system that incorporated already existing features together to form a more convenient enjoyable experience and you’ll see that there isn’t a subscription fee.
Public malls, smart phones (still replaces multiple products without a data plan), Gas station/convenience stores, Google has been consolidated products together and building infrastructure for decades; and no subscription fee, and I guarantee you Googles infrastructure is light-years beyond Xbox, Xbox probably runs a lot of shit through Google.