Reportedly, some third-party video game publishers aren’t sure why they should keep making and supporting games for Xbox consoles due to poor sales in Europe.
Microsoft’s biggest mistake was making the S and not going all in on the X. Having two hardware specs makes developers lives so much harder and leaves a big chunk of the console base with poor specs you have to optimise the hell out of your build for. Whereas Sony put a single target platform in everyone’s hands.
I liked the Series S! Though, I would have bought the Series X instead if it was discless.
Please don’t take this as me being a dick, I’m genuinely curious. Why not just get a Series X and not buy disks?
Because it actually fits on a shelf, it’s way quieter, and can be thrown in a backpack if you want to take it places.
Those are the things I miss after upgrading from the S to the X.
Also “why not get an X and not use disks”… Well why pay double if you don’t need to use disks? The performance difference isn’t huge except on a few games made to utilize the X.
If there was no S then all games would have been optimized to the Xs level. Instead the S is compare able to the older Series X. The smaller form factor vs the mini fridge is basically the only thing going for it.
Indeed, a lot of people seem to only show awareness that the S doesn’t have a disc drive with no mention of how the S has a lower clock speed on the CPU, a 3x slower GPU, and 6GB less memory.
As a developer, those two SKUs are wildly different and are effectively different consoles. To have a smaller install base and multiple hardware specs, I can totally understand why developers are eager to give up on Xbox (I wonder how many devs had to write specific shaders for the S since the compute speed is so much slower).
Sony only differed SKUs on disc drive alone (which makes a lot of sense since even the people in this thread seem to have made their purchase of an S primarily on that feature).
It feels like I am paying for parts that I won’t use and may be a point of failure. Also the drive is taking up space. The entire unit may be smaller without it.
Moving parts are the bane of engineering; introducing a lot of risk into the equation. It’s why we want to move off hard disc drives to SSDs. It’s also electronics waste to buy a component you’re not using.
Man that article really made me think of the Larian BG3 XS debacle.
I hope this is just a bit overstated, because I don’t want to feel the pressure to buy an PS or build a PC.
I do want to buy a SteamDeck, and this only reinforces that decision though.
The pc portable space is gonna get really interesting in the next few years, the demand is clearly there
There will be more options, sure, but the fundamental limits on the performance of a handheld PC haven’t really changed since the steam deck launched 2 years ago.
We need either a big battery breakthrough or a big architecture breakthrough to actually push the space forward.
There are plenty of interesting games to play that don’t need super-powerful hardware, but the Deck doesn’t even handle all of those flawlessly. Case in point the Persona 3 remake that had very noticeable frame rate drops on the Deck.
Steam Deck is already a prebuilt, portable computer, for the price of a console. I know I’m in the Xbox community but it’s never been easier to try a PC.
I have a SteamDeck and really enjoy it. Even if you get the base model, you won’t be disappointed. I play way more of my Steam library now.
Going from Xbox to PC is way easier than leaving PS for it. If thats any consolation. I had to ditch my PS library and data.
Games Journalists try to go 5 seconds without creaming their pants writing an article about “Xbox going away”:
Seems like they did F up with the Series S, making it harder to develop for Xbox. It’s a bit of a shame, because I really liked the S for what it is: I was spending a lot of time in a different city for work, having many free evenings in an apartment, so I bought one and used it to watch movies/series and catch up on some games.
Now that I’m not traveling anymore, I stick to my PS5, and my Series S is in a box for many months now, though I’ll probably use it again when the new Senua game comes around. This shows that another key things would be a strong collection of exclusives to get people to buy the console, which is missing.
I find poor sales hard to believe taking into account the pandemic and supply chain issues both consoles faced for a couple years.
PS5 has sold double the units of xbox series S https://www.vgchartz.com/article/460059/ps5-vs-xbox-series-xs-sales-comparison-january-2024/
PS5 also costs 25% more, so it’s not selling more because it’s cheaper. It’s just better and has better games. I’m not sure why that’s hard for you to believe.
I wasn’t saying that playstation hasn’t sold more consoles. I also not arguing that it doesn’t have better games. It does, Microsoft is very clearly dropping the ball even after they acquired as many heavy hitters as they did. My biggest regret this generation was switching to a Series X from the PS4 instead of either tossing money at a PC or picking up the PS5.
What I’m surprised by is that the conditions when consoles have had didn’t seem to be taken into effect.
It’s been going on for years now, ever since Microsoft abandoned Gamescom and pretty much gave up on a European presence.
https://www.pcinvasion.com/microsoft-not-attending-gamescom-or-tokyo-game-show/
I understand where they are coming from, but it’s also hard to feel bad for them considering how bloated games are now. Larian did have a hard time due to the Series S, but that also lead them to solving problems all the other platforms were having as well.
Supposedly there’s a few lower-income countries where the Series S is a lot more popular - but I guess I doubt such areas would have such high game sales numbers, especially in the AAA $60-$70 bracket.
