Xbox Is Killing Time Til Acti is Bought

There’s been some doom and gloom this week and, as usual, it’s around Xbox. Revenue from Microsoft hardware sales plummeted by 13 per cent. And we should apparently be very, very worried.

I’m kidding – it doesn’t matter at all to customers. So long as the product is out there and Microsoft is backing it, why should we worry about the specifics of whether sales on hardware is up or down? It’s console warring for the modern age. Instead of bashing the opposition for not having Bluray support or whatever, you write 2,000 words on an internet forum using words like sustainability.

But there is some truth to all this debate: Microsoft still have an image problem. I’ve said it time and time again. The marketing around Xbox is not paticularly good. And that has been especially true since the Activision deal was announced.

Because when you are dealing with the biggest piece of gaming new probably ever, and that piece of gaming news drags out for the best part of two years, there’s not much oxygen for anything else.

And naturally, conversation has already turned to who they’re going to buy next. It’s Sega, by the way. Well, it should be Sega.

But until the excitement of the Activision deal has died down, what else can Xbox really do to keep people that level of excited? Especially when a huge amount of their console-only fans are already buying PlayStation 5s by default?

It doesn’t matter how good Starfield is. There is a sizeable amount of people who won’t play it and will, in fact, actively attack it, because it is not available on their console of choice. Those people are losers. But it doesn’t change the message.

The Future of Xbox

The message is clear: Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy XVI constitute a good year on PlayStation, but Forza, Starfield, Redfall, HiFi Rush and possibly Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 constitute a bad one on Xbox. Why? Because you can remove HiFi Rush for not being AAA, you can take out Call of Duty because it’s either not exclusive or it’s been “bought”, you can take out Starfield because it’s “Probably going to be buggy” and that just leaves Redfall, which was bad.

Oh, and Forza. Nobody talks about Forza in these discussions for some reason.

I have high hopes for Spider-Man 2 and I’m enjoying the bit I’ve played of Final Fantasy. This is not a comparison of Xbox Vs PlayStation, but a comparison of where each brand sits in these discussions.

And for 18 months they haven’t been able to turn that around, because the only thing that breaks through in the same way as Spider-Man 2 is the fact that they are buying Activision. And aside from the few weeks of excitement here and there when a trial is happening or when the thing was announced, it is largely very, very boring. Most people won’t care until Call of Duty shows up on Game Pass. Depending on Sony’s stance on their marketing agreement, that might be years away.

Now that the deal is as good as complete – hopefully it will be finalised here in the UK over the next couple of months – Xbox need to start focussing on turning around their reputation. It’s not about selling consoles – it hasn’t been about selling consoles for years. But it is about changing minds. And in some cases, that will be the more difficult task.