Futility, thy name is XBox

I was looking over the VGChartz table that I linked in my previous post, and I noticed something interesting.

I used VGChartz's Tie-Ratio tab for my cost-benefit analysis of Game Pass, but gaming system Tie-Ratios aren't the only data available to us. Tie-Ratio is the number of games sold for every console. To calculate a Tie Ratio, you naturally must know: 1. the number of games sold, and 2. the number of consoles sold. And VGChartz have, helpfully, broken those numbers out separately.

And if you switch from Tie-Ratio to just look at the hardware numbers, you can see something interesting.

Death Watch 2024, Continued -- Embracer Group will cease to exist, and XBox (!) is starting to spiral

About five months ago, Dan Olson AKA @foldablehuman AKA Folding Ideas, posted a two-and-a-half hour video about the meme stock movement with the catchy title, "This Is Financial Advice." I won't try to recap the entire thing (although you should definitely watch it if you haven't), but I do want to draw attention to the portion about Bed Bath and Beyond's desperate last-ditch attempt to stay afloat: a financing arrangement known as "death spiral financing."

Very quickly, the arrangement involves a company with more debt than they can repay, not enough revenue to meet operating expenses, and no fat remaining to trim from their operation. This company, BBBY, accepted a financing deal from a private equity firm, with the understanding that they would release shares to the market in order to raise the funds needed to repay them.

The simple fact of such a deal is enough to drive down share prices on its own, and a flood of new shares will also depress the share value, which means that the number of shares needed to repay their PE financiers keeps increasing, in an ever-increasing spiral of share dilution and devaluation that ultimately failed to repay all of their debts, let alone raise enough money to continue operating.

BBBY was forced to file for bankruptcy, was de-listed from NYSE and NASDAQ, and no longer exists. And this was the model that immediately came to mind when I learned of Embracer Group's latest galaxy-brained plan to save themselves from a very similar situation, using a very similar-sounding financing scheme.

The Math Has Not Changed: XBox Game Pass is still not a good deal for the average consumer

It's been a good while now since I last posted about how, for the average consumer, Game Pass is simply not as cost-effective as just buying the games you're actually interested in. My conclusion, based entirely on the numbers, was that most consumers would be better-served by just buying what they want. 

Well, E3 has happened since then, and Microsoft and Bethesda showed off all the games that will be "coming day one" to game pass... eventually. Naturally, this has caused a lot of people to lose their minds. 

Paul Tassi's take, over at Forbes, is pretty typical:

It’s clear that Microsoft is slamming the accelerator on Game Pass, with or without a console attached to it, and they’re going to try to not just have a large roster of old games, but continue the idea that every new first party game debuts there, and now that includes all future Bethesda games too [...]

Sony, meanwhile, has taken the opposite path. This generation they’re not only sticking with selling individual new releases as they’ve always done, not rolling them up into any sort of subscription, but also increasing the price of their PS5 games from $60 to $70 [...]

It’s not ideal for each game you go to purchase [...] but once you really start digging into this math, the longer this goes on, and the more games are released for both systems, maintaining a roster of games on PS5 is going to be very, very expensive compared to Xbox.

Let’s say you want to play 12 Xbox Series X first party games over three years, and 12 first party PS5 games over three years. 

No normal consumer is going to want to do this. 

E3 2021 is over, and the verdict is "meh"

So... E3, hey? Yeah.... E3.

First, the good. 

Unpopular opinion: XBox Game Pass is not a good value for the average consumer

Have I mentioned lately just how crazy it makes me, every single I hear someone describe Microsoft's "Netflix for gaming" Game Pass subscription service as the "best deal in gaming?" Because it really, really does, and it keeps happening.

Just fucking Christ... People, it's real talk time. 

For most gamers, Game Pass is not a good value. 

That's not just my opinion; quite simply, it's the math. So, let's look at that math. Specifically, let's look at the average attach rate of a videogame console.

Nobody's ever going to call it that Microsoft continues terrible naming streak with XBox Series X, and the memes are already starting

From Kotaku:

That didn’t take long! The next-generation Xbox was announced last night, and people online already have nicknames for it.

In the English-speaking world, it’s either being called “Xbox Sex” or simply “Sex,” a shortening of “Series X.”

Of course, it's always possible that someone at Mircosoft saw this coming, and figured that it wouldn't be entirely negative for their new console to be called "The Sex," but given their long tradition of terrible console names, I somehow doubt it. And so "The Sex" will become the most awkward product name ever to be put on a child's Christmas wish list to Santa, right after the XBone. 

Hell, at least the XBox One X acronymized to XBOX; Series X is just a bizarre choice. And I don't want to hear about how they have multiple consoles planned for this generation, which is why they're all going to share that "Series" monniker. It's still confusing and weird, and can only serve to confuse consumers... and, occasionally, amuse them.

Yes, I forsee a lot of very strained birds and bees conversations between clueless videogame-seeking pre-teens and their suddenly-very-concerned parents, as to why their children are requesting "The Sex" for XMas. Another solid job done, Microsoft! GG!

This is going to take a lot of work...Stadia's launch plagued with missing features, sparse game selection, and unplayable lag

When Google announced Stadia, their first-to-market (if you don't count Sony's PlayStation Now) video game streaming service, there were lots of questions. What would its subscription model look like? What would its game selection look like? What features would the service have? Could even Google get the thing to work? And would Google stick with Stadia for the long haul, even if it wasn't an instant hit at launch?

Well, we now have the answers to those questions, and they're... un-good. One might even call them double-plus un-good. Let's break it down.

Keanu Reeves wins E3 Everyone else was just.. meh

I know that we weren't expecting much from this year's E3, what with Sony not being there at all, and with EA doing several single-game announcements rather than a press conference, but even I was expecting more than this.

Cinelinx looks to be first off the blocks with their list of winners and losers, but the consensus of opinion seems to be that the only real winner was Keanu Reeves... and even he was only OK, with a stilted, obviously unrehearsed presentation that Reeves basically overcame through sheer charm. The double reveal that a) Reeves had actually done mo-cap and voice work for am NPC in CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077, and b) that he was not only appearing in the game, but at E3 to announce when the game would be coming out, was probably the most scene-stealing moment of Microsoft's conference.

The second most scene-stealing moment of E3 was probably Ikumi Nakamura's instantly meme-worthy appearance as she announced her game, Ghostwire Tokyo, during Bethesda's presser. Nakamura was sincerely enthusiastic, and charmingly goofy, and has become something of an overnight sensation on social media as a result; her game looks pretty decent, too.

We got confirmation that George R. R. Martin really has teamed up with the makers of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to make a video game; Elden Ring has a terribly generic name, and a meaningless, moody cinematic trailer that hints at an epic scope and dark tone (very much on-brand for both GRRM and From Software), but told us basically nothing about the game itself. Oh, and Forza is getting Lego content added to it, which actually looks surprisingly fun. 

And that... was basically it for genuinely memorable E3 moments, this year. Oh, sure, some stuff happened at E3. It's just that most of it wasn't all that memorable or noteworthy.

Microsoft's mixed messaging Windows 7 users to get GWX upgrade nag screens again... and also DirectX 12. WTF, MSFT?

Before we get started, I just want to point out that Microsoft announced both of these Windows 7 developments on the same day.

First, from The Inquirer:

THE NAGS are back, and we're not talking about the invasion of the killer horses that we dreamt about after a particularly cheeky late-night cheeseboard.

Microsoft has confirmed that starting next month, Windows 7 users will start to see pop-ups warning them that their beloved operating system is reaching end of life on 14th January 2020.

This will send shudders of resigned recognition to all those who lived through the saga of nag screens that plagued Windows 7 and 8.x users when Windows 10 was rolled out as a free upgrade and made it very difficult to opt out.

The good news is that these "courtesy reminders" contain some learnings gained from that whole debacle, with a promise that this time you'll see far fewer, and that there'll be a definite "don't remind me again" checkbox to get rid of them.

And then, from The Verge:

Microsoft is making a very surprising addition to Windows 7 this week, with the support of DirectX 12 for the nearly 10-year-old operating system. While Windows 7 support will end in less than a year and Microsoft will start sending notifications to PCs next month, the company is allowing some game developers to implement DirectX 12. The first game to appear with DirectX 12 support on Windows 7 is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Microsoft heard feedback from Blizzard that features like multi-threading in DirectX 12 were bringing substantial framerate improvements to World of Warcraft on Windows 10. Blizzard wanted these same features on Windows 7, presumably because it still has a large base of players on this older OS. Microsoft originally launched DirectX 12 as part of Windows 10, and has not made it available for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 users.

This is just baffling, even for Microsoft. I can see bringing the new Chromium/Edge browser to Windows 7; Microsoft have a significant number of large-volume license-holders to whom they're trying to sell additional years of Windows 7 support ($300 USD per PC for three years, and only if you have a volume license), so adding new functionality to the platform for them makes a certain amount of sense. But WoW players? In a year in which they're trying desperately to convert individual Windows 7 users into Windows 10 Home (or Pro) users, for Microsoft to be giving those same individual W7 users additional reasons not to switch makes no obvious sense.

Oh, and these same PC gamers, who've mostly rejected both of Microsoft's ecosystems, i.e. Windows 10 and XBox Live? Microsoft has more goodies in the bag for them, too, even if they don't play WoW.

It just. Won't. Die!

Do you remember the Universal Windows Platform? The new paradigm for Windows software distribution, which Microsoft has been pushing since Windows 8, when it was called Metro, and which Windows users have been resoundingly rejecting ever since?

Metro, and Windows 8 with it, was so unpopular that Microsoft was forced to allow OEMs to install Windows 7 instead on machines whose purchasers were paying for Windows 8 licenses. Valve's Gabe Newell saw Microsoft's attempt to seize control over software distribution as so profoundly anti-competitive, and anti-consumer, that it birthed the Steam Machine initiative, whose SteamOS has since given rise to Steam Play/Proton, which is well on its way to making Windows irrelevant for gaming. And UWP-exclusive titles are virtually non-existent, since they can only be installed via Microsoft's storefront of desolation, while basically the entire PC gaming industry distributes their games through Steam.

That is the legacy of UWP for Microsoft: repeated failures, alienated consumers, and a well-deserved reputation for monopolistic bullshit. Well, apparently Microsoft still see UWP as their key to global domination, because it's baaaack!!!

Microsoft tap Phil Spencer to fix the Windows Microsoft Store

The Windows Store has been a wasteland of shit ever since Microsoft first launched it alongside Windows 8. Married to a Universal Windows Platform that never did take off, it has long been a developer- and customer-forsaken place; intended as the channel through which all applications would flow, to both desktop and mobile devices, it's instead become something of an albatross: an awkward, burdensome reminder of Microsoft's monopolistic sins.

This is at least partly why Microsoft rebranded the Store last year; Windows Store had negative connotations for consumers from which they wanted to distance themselves, in much the same way that the Windows 10 name was intended to put more distance between the current Windows version and the wildly unpopular Windows 8. Microsoft only changed the name, though, apparently hoping that a re-brand would be change enough.

Consumers, however, weren't fooled; when they remember to use the new name, it's normally as an afterthought. And, critically, nothing else about the Store was changed; it's still a developer- and customer-forsaken place, where it's both easier and more desirable to search for TV shows than software. This is especially true of games; even when they're running Windows 10, PC gamers use Steam, not Microsoft's terrible storefront, unless they're given no other choice. And Valve is working hard to ensure that they have other choices in most, if not all, cases.

The situation was clearly untenable for Microsoft, and it seems they've finally decided to do something about it: they're tapping the one person in their senior leadership team who seems to understand what consumers want, and to understand that it's important for a business to provide what consumers are asking for, to finally fix the thing. As reported by WCCFTech:

Phil Spencer, previously Head of Xbox at Microsoft, was promoted last year into the Senior Leadership Team where he now reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella as the Executive Vice President of Gaming. Spencer has since suggested that gaming isn’t the proverbial red-headed stepchild at Microsoft anymore, thanks to the importance placed by Nadella himself in this growing market.

We haven’t heard much from him after E3 2018. However, he briefly appeared on yesterday’s Inside Xbox: X018 Special live from Mexico City to make a few statements, the most interesting of which directly addressed the state of Windows 10 gaming on PC.
When asked about what will come next, he expressed the intent to focus on improving the Windows Store (now formally now as Microsoft Store) so that it can be properly tailored towards gamers.

Creativity is officially dead and so is VR

I must have gone to bathroom, or something, when this bit popped up during Sony's E3 event last week:

It's a very pretty video, with very pretty music, and it takes just over two minutes (2:10, to be precise) before actually fading into any gameplay from the game itself. And yes, it's Tetris. Like, literally, just Tetris but with Tron's aesthetics.

According to the game's Wikipedia entry, Tetris Effect has been in development for 6 years. It took them 6 years to add Tron's glowy graphic style to the now-34-years-young Tetris. Oh, and a pause button, or "an all-new Zone mechanic that allows players to stop time," as it's gushingly called by UploadVR.

Available soon on Windows, PS4, and PSVR, Tetris Effect should be all the proof you need that creativity is dead. They spent six years making a VR version of Tetris, in an environment where you can't turn around and spit without hitting a free version of Tetris, and thirty four years after Tetris was first released. In thirty-four years, nobody has succeeded in adding anything of worth or note to the gameplay of Tetris, and I don't expect that Tetris Effect will succeed where everyone else has failed.

The fact that this utter failure of creativity features prominently on UploadVR's list of E3's Biggest VR Announcements should tell you everything you need to know about the state of VR, right now.

E3's winners and losers

So, it's that time again... when everybody looks back, and tries to decide who "won" E3 2018. I thought Microsoft had the best press conference, but that Sony would probably be declared the winner by most commentators, but how do those predictions stack up to reality?

ScreenRant named XBox, Sony, Bethesda, and Ubisoft as their winners, while declaring Nintendo, Square Enix, and EA to be the letdowns of E3 2018. [Oh, shit, Ubisoft! I forgot all about Ubisoft!]

USGamer declared Microsoft to be the winner, and Square Enix to be the loser, with a few other "witty" additions:

• Losers: The crowd during Bethesda's Rage 2 Andrew W.K. performance; Walmart Canada; People who aren't emotionally invested in Super Smash Bros.; [their] health.
• Winners: Todd Howard; The people who have been yelling for a Metal Wolf Chaos release in the west their entire lives; Masahiro Sakurai basically saying fuck it and making Smash Bros. game people can't complain about; being hella gay.

[Dammit, why does everyone have to be a fucking comedian all the fucking time?]

Tom's Guide ranked their list:

1. XBox (grade: A)
2. PlayStation (grade: A-)
3. Bethesda (grade: B+)
4. Nintendo (grade: B)
5. Ubisoft (grade: B)
6. EA (grade: C)
7. Square Enix (grade: C-)

[Looks like someone's grading on a curve, but whatevs.]

It's early days yet, but so far, it looks like my take on things was pretty darn good. I do feel a bit bad for overlooking Ubisoft, though, so let's address that injustice.

Your mileage may vary...

I suppose I should have begun my review of Microsoft's E3 XBox presser with the disclaimer: I am a PC gamer. I do not own an XBox; I have never owned any gaming console. My Steam Link is as close to console ownership as I've ever come, and that does not look likely to change in the foreseeable future.

XBox's Play Anywhere initiative means that everything released for XBox is also released for Windows. And since nobody buys games from the wasteland of shit that is the Windows Microsoft Store, that means that they'll be coming to Steam, too. Which means that I'll have all of those games to look forward to, once I've played through some of my list of shame. The fact that almost none of them will be out this year is not an issue for me.

Some actual XBox One owners, however, appear to feel differently. Apparently, there was some expectation that Microsoft would have first-party exclusive 2018 releases to announce, in spite of the fact that Microsoft had said last year that nothing of the sort would be happening. This year's XBox E3 was always going to be about XBox's future; it was always going to be about waiting for next year, having missed the playoffs this year.

Will Microsoft attract new gamers to the XBox ecosystem? Will this conference turn around the XBox's fortunes, or reverse their momentum relative to the Nintendo Switch? No. No, it won't.

This is how you do it: Microsoft does E3 right

This is how you do the E3 hype thing:

• Start by announcing a new Halo game.
• Move on to showing actual gameplay footage in the next game you announce, a sequel to the much-loved Ori and the Blind Forest.
• Announce a totally new IP, Sekiro, again with a trailer that includes actual gameplay footage.
• Pause as rarely as possible for speech-making. It is a press conference, after all, and there's corporate messaging to get through, but nobody cares about your corporate bullshit, so don't dwell on it.
• Lather, rinse, and repeat, until you've announced 50 different games.

This is what people watch E3 to see, and wow! did Microsoft ever deliver. The range and sheer variety of games announced was staggering:

Fall Update to make your PC as powerful as an Xbox?

I just came across this priceless tidbit from Paul Younger at PC Invasion:

The next Windows 10 update will be the Fall Creators Update and it’s coming on 17 October. Along with a lot dribble about how they want to make Windows 10 a “platform that inspires your creativity”, there is a section on gaming.

The update for gamers reads:

The fuel that often inspires creativity is play. With the Fall Creators Update, we’ve updated Game Mode, which allows your games to use the full processing power of your device as if it was an Xbox game console, right from a new button on the Game bar. And to take advantage of this power, we have a fantastic lineup of Xbox Play Anywhere games coming including, Cuphead, Forza Motorsport 7, Super Lucky’s Tale and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. And, if you love these Xbox play anywhere games, coming on November 7 you can play them on the most powerful console on the planet, Xbox One X.

That’s right, they want to make my PC perform just like an Xbox console. I hope to god my PC doesn’t perform like an Xbox when this update lands, PC gamers have PCs so the gaming experience is specifically not like a Xbox. Microsoft sometimes really don’t get it when it comes to the PC, we don’t give two hoots about the Xbox One.

Well said, sir. Well said.

Please take a second and click through to the original article. There's not much more to it, but it was so succinctly put that I think Mr. Younger has earned a few extra clicks.

A more open approach to Steam

In yesterday's blog post, I mentioned Microsoft's new and remarkably consumer-friendly approach to collaborations with VALVe (Steam) and Nintendo (Switch), especially when it comes to VR and crossplay. Well, it turns out they're really not kidding about that, according to VG24:

Mike Ybarra, vice president of Xbox, told VG247 that it’s happy to talk to the likes of Valve and Nintendo when it comes to getting multiplayer games working across multiple platforms, not just between Xbox One and Windows.

“It’s more about gamer choice, more about making an IP on our platform last longer. I don’t care about where they play, I just want people to have fun playing games because that’s just better for the industry,” said Ybarra.

“The demands of consumers and developers have changed,” he continued. “People are like, ‘we want all of our gamers in one multiplayer pool together, playing’.

“We totally agree with that. If any developer wants to have that conversation… Valve is right down the street from us, Nintendo is too – they’re like a block from us. We’re having these discussions as developers come up, and we’re completely open to that.”

It needs to be said that this openness is not sourced in altruism. Microsoft lost control of PC gaming years ago, ceding a virtual monopoly to VALVe for PC game distribution; and they lost this console generation to Sony's PS4, having been outpaced in consoles sold by two to one before they simply stopped humiliating themselves by reporting their XBOne sales numbers. Crossplay between XBO-S/XBO-X and any other platform does Microsoft nothing but good, here, which is why they're suddenly a lot more open to this sort of congenial collaboration... instead of, say, trying to seize control of PC gaming from Steam with Windows 8, or with UWP. With Windows 8 and UWP having both failed, it seems that Microsoft has finally been able to pry open their ears, and hear what gamers have been telling them for years.

It also needs to be said that Microsoft's consumer-friendly XBox division isn't exactly on the same page as the rest of the organization. Microsoft have been guilty of a lot of anti-consumer bullshit when you look at their corporate activities more broadly since Windows 10's launch, and the larger organization is still showing every holding out on almost every pro-consumer measure that's been suggested to them. The company that spent a year and a half foot-dragging and fighting in court, only to grudgingly give users control over their updates again, anyway, is a very different beast than their suddenly-consumer-friendly gaming division.

Still, it's progress, and the right tone and messaging from Microsoft at a time when big game publishers are mostly moving in a direction of more anti-consumer bullshit. I guess I'll take it. Hell, if Microsoft and VALVe can work together to make the Steam Client easily downloadable on an XBox, I might even consider picking one up for my living room.

The Nintendo Switch's fast start may not be fast enough

When it comes to Nintendo's Switch, everyone seems to agree that it's off to a good start, with Nintendo hyping its first month sales results at every opportunity. And there's no two ways about it, those numbers are pretty good:

In the 12-month period ended March 31, Nintendo earned ‎¥‎489 billion ($4.4 billion) in revenue, slightly down on the ‎¥‎504 billion it earned in the previous year. However, net profit increased from ‎¥‎17 billion in FY2016 to ‎¥‎103 billion ($925 million), beating Nintendo's own forecast by 14%.

The company said that the difference was down to better than expected shipments of the Switch, which sold 2.74 million units in March alone. That figure was attained by Reuters, which attended a press conference with Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima in Japan. Kimishima said that the company expects to sell a further 10 million units in the current financial year.

So far, so good. Where I start to have issues with the hype, though, is when Nintendo start trying to draw parallels between the Switch's launch and that of their previous console success, the Wii:

According to Reuters, Kimishima said he was "relieved" by the console's early performance. "If the 10 million target is achieved ... that means the sales momentum would be close to the Wii," he said.

There's a problem with that comparison, though: the Switch is not the Wii, and the market that it's launching into is not the same as one that the Wii launched into.

Nintendo's Wii was a pop-culture phenomenon. Launching in 2006, at the start of its console generation alongside Microsoft's XBox360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, and prior to PC gaming renaissance, which didn't really get going until 2010, the Wii didn't have to vie for market share with established competitors. Everyone was starting from zero; no platform was coming into the year with tens of millions of customers who already owned huge libraries of compatible games.

The Wii had a couple of other features that gave it a competitive edge. One was its price point; the Wii was cheaper than its competitors. Its control scheme was also unique, and intuitively easy to use; children too young to read, and whose hands couldn't really wrap themselves around the standard XBox or PS3 gamepad, could still grasp and wave around the Wii's baton, as could older players who might suffer from, say, arthritis.

The elegance and simplicity of that interface also made it easy for non-gamers to use. You didn't have to know from experience which buttons normally did things in games, or work through a lot of tutorials to learn how to control the games. The result was a platform that could connect players from three to ninety-three; children could play with their grand-parents, allowing multiple generations of families to all equally access and enjoy gaming, really for the very first time in the history of video games.

The result was lightning in a bottle; people who Microsoft and Sony hadn't bothered to design for and market to were suddenly interested in gaming, connecting to and with the Wii in a way that they simply couldn't for the XB360 or PS3. Nintendo really couldn't make enough of them to keep pace with that early demand; stores couldn't keep the Wii on shelves. The only similar example of a game console success was Sony's PlayStation 2, which flew off shelves, in part, because it was also the cheapest DVD player on the market, in addition to being a game console.

None of that is really true of the Nintendo Switch, though. Gamers who'd previously discovered gaming thanks to the Wii have now outgrown it, and are demanding more variety and sophistication in their games, along with better performance. The gimmicky control scheme of the Switch isn't really a selling point, either, with many Switch owners ditching their Joy-Cons for the Switch's Pro controller's better ergonomics. 

Unlike the Wii, where the quality of the unit was at least comparable to that of its competitors, the Switch looks and feels cheap, with a plastic screen that gets scratched by its own included dock, controllers that need extra insulating foam installed in order to work properly, and inadequate storage that make it essentially incompatible with the digital distribution that is taking over the industry... the issues just keep coming.

And while none of these might have been crippling if the Switch were launching onto a level playing field, the market that it's launching into isn't a level playing field. Thanks to Steam's 125 million users, PC (which wasn't a factor when the Wii was launched) is dominant in the current market, and Sony's PlayStation 4 isn't just outselling the XBox One, it's also still outselling the Nintendo Switch:

Sony Interactive Entertainment sold 20 million units of its PlayStation 4 console in the last fiscal year, boosting revenue by 6% and operating income by more than 50%.

[...] 

Across the entire year, 20 million units of the PS4 were shipped, 13% more than the 17.7 million units in the previous fiscal year. Given that the PS4 had 40 million confirmed sales in May 2016, that puts the total PS4 installed base somewhere around 60 million - possibly just below, but certainly not very far away.

[...] 

Looking ahead, Sony expects PS4 shipments to decline to 18 million next year. However, it expects the GNS division to improve in general, with a 14.6% increase in revenue and a 34% increase in operating income.

Remember, Nintendo are saying that they'll be thrilled to sell 10M units in 9 months, a pace of roughly a million units a month on average; Sony, on the other hand, are forecasting sales of 1.5 million units per month for the same period, and that's down slightly from the PS4's sales performance of the previous year. Sony are starting with a 60 million lead in player base, and will probably increase that lead even if Nintendo's Switch performs as well as Nintendo is hoping.

At this point, it's worth remembering that the WiiU had a player base of 13 million when it was discontinued, because developers couldn't be bothered to make games for its different OS and weird control scheme when it didn't have even half as many users as the XBox One... which itself still has only half as many users as the PS4. And the only game of note that the Switch has going for it right now is Zelda; yes, ports of Skyrim and Shovel Knight will probably sell reasonably well to Switch owners who have nothing else to play and a desire to justify their Switch purchases, but ports of games that most interested gamers already own on other platforms aren't going to sell Switches to the skeptical.

And when it comes to Nintendo's own new-game releases for the Switch... is the obligatory new Mario game going to be a better system seller than Breath of the Wild? Will anyone care about the new Mario game that doesn't already own the Switch? Are gamers really desperate enough for gimmicky tech demos like Arms to drop hundreds of dollars on a new console just to get them?

I know that Nintendo fans (and shareholders) have a lot of hopes pinned on the Switch changing Nintendo's fortunes in the highly competitive gaming market, but... how does that happen, exactly? Unless the Switch suddenly starts selling faster than the PS4, fast enough to regain some of the ground that Nintendo lost with the failure of the WiiU, I just don't think that the Switch can ever have anything like the momentum of the original Wii.

And, failing that, I don't see how the Switch does anything but follow the WiiU into irrelevance and eventual obscurity.

[Quotes from gamesindustry.biz.]

XBox Scorpio's specs revealed! Do you give a shit?

XBox One is getting clobbered in this round of the console wars. Actually, all of the consoles are kinda getting beat by Steam, which currently boats 125+ million users who remain users even if they upgrade to new hardware, which handily beats even Sony's (2nd place) PlayStation 4. But XB One never really did recover from a terrible launch event in which Microsoft talked about nothing but TV and DRM, and was only selling half as well as PS4 when Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be announcing their console's sales numbers anymore. Ouch.

The Slim version sold slightly better, but Microsoft's hopes for maintaining a presence in the living have pretty clearly been pinned on their new Scorpio console for a while now. We've been hearing for months about how Scorpio was going to be the most powerful console ever made, but details have been sparse, and genuine hype has been hard for Microsoft to maintain. Apparently they're aware of that problem, though, so they're doing everything they can to make as big a splash as possible when Scorpio is actually rolled out, which should be any day now.

Which brings us to those specs.

The specs themselves look impressive enough... for a console. And apparently performance is also pretty good... for a console. But are the specs impressive enough, and is the performance good enough, so lure gamers away from their PS4's and Steam accounts, and back to an XBox environment which Microsoft has very strongly tied to Windows 10?

Probably not, at least according to Gizmodo:

We finally know the specs for Microsoft’s supercharged Xbox One: the Project Scorpio console. They’re impressive. The GPU has nearly four times as many compute units as the original Xbox One and the memory on the console will be 108GB/s faster than the memory in both the Xbox One S and Scorpio’s primary challenger, the PS4 Pro. On paper this thing reads like lightning.

In practice it means jack shit.

As proven in many previous console wars, specs alone aren’t enough to win the race. A system needs a lot more if it wants to unseat a challenger. According to Superdata there are twice as many PS4 consoles in the wild as Xbox One machines. A report earlier this year suggest that Sony has sold 55 million units of its next-gen console to Microsoft’s 26 million unit sales. That’s not just a win from a sales perspective. It makes it appealing for prospective console owners too. If they’re investing in a console for Overwatch or Destiny 2 or any of the other multiplayer games available (or soon to be available), then they’ll have twice as large a base of players to compete with on a PS4. Sony is winning, and it’s not just because it got its souped up console to market nearly a full year before Microsoft.

[...] This highlights Microsoft’s fundamental console problem. The company knows how to make its product shine. Beating the PS4 Pro to market with a console that doubles as a UHD Blu-ray player was smart. And announcing the specs for its new souped up challenger two months before it’s officially revealed at E3 is a great way to build hype. But all that polish on the Xbox One, One S, and Scorpio can’t cover up the console’s biggest problem—games. [...] Microsoft’s exclusive Halo and Gears of War franchises are a good draw, but they lack the allure of Sony-only blockbusters.

Sony has Naughty Dog’s excellent Uncharted 4, and the gorgeous Last of Us remake (as well as the upcoming sequel). Those aren’t just critically-acclaimed games for this console generation—they’re considered outright masterpieces. The same might be said of February’s Horizon: Zero Dawn or last year’s Bloodborne.

[...] So the great specs Microsoft announced earlier this morning? Those aren’t going to be enough to help it scramble back to the top of the console heap. But its certainly a start. Which is more than Microsoft could say yesterday.

Yes, four years after launching the XBox One, Microsoft are finally starting to actually run in the current race for console domination. Sony, meanwhile, has already lapped them, killed off Nintendo's offering the process, and is winning the sales war on VR as well (something else that Gizmodo mentions), all while making it look easy.

I have to agree with Gizmodo's take on today's Scorpio spec reveal; they're very shiny specs, but it's a little late in this race for Microsoft to be leaning on specs alone. Especially not if you're a PC gamer... which, statistically, most gamers are (125+ million Steam users, 55+ million PS4 owners... do the maths).

But don't take my word for that. From PC Gamer:

How does all of this compare to our PC platform? It's a bit apples to oranges, since we have the ability to customize all of our components. The best approximation of the performance offered by Scorpio is our budget PC build, which includes a Core i3-7100, 8GB RAM, and an RX 480 8GB graphics card. It also has a larger case, PSU, and a 500GB SSD, and it costs around $700.

[...] Put another way, the current Xbox One has hardware that looks positively pathetic in many areas. Sure, it has eight CPU cores, but each CPU is about one third the performance of a single i3 core. Eight of them working together might, maybe, match a Core i3 in a few specific workloads. The graphics meanwhile is like an HD 7770, a chip that came out in early 2012 and which would struggle with modern games.

[...] Now triple the performance of the Xbox One, and you can see how this might challenge a desktop PC for gaming prowess. It doesn't have the raw power a PC has, but it makes better use of its power.

[...] Today's top-end PC GPUs like the GTX 1080 are still much better suited to 4K gaming at high and ultra settings, and CPUs like AMD's Ryzen and Intel's Kaby Lake are much newer, more efficient architectures. If Scorpio ends up a capable 4K 60 fps gaming machine, that should only mean good things for PC gaming: we should expect all the ports from Microsoft's console to meet that standard on PC, too.

So, it's a budget PC for a budget price, meant to compete with PCs, released at a time when PC sales have been in decline for years, and that lives in your living room. You can't upgrade it, which is a bit of a bummer but not as big a deal as it would have been while Moore's Law was still driving PC upgrade cycles. It only runs Windows 10, but most PC gamers seem to be OK with that, anyway (alas). But... if your gaming PC pre-dates the Obama administration, and you're in the mood for a budget PC that will probably be good enough for your gaming needs for years to come, and have a nice, big TV to connect it to, then I guess Scorpio could be decent value. It will probably sell a few million units this year.

It's not game-changing, though, and I don't think that Sony need to be worried. Kudos to Microsoft for not giving up, but I doubt that this is going to move the market in any major way.

XBox Scorpio is unlikely to shift the balance of the console market

Microsoft have been pretending for a while now that their soon-to-be-released new console, code-named Scorpio, will once again make XBox a player in this console generation, even as Phil Spencer talks openly about the entire concept of console generations being outdated. But the reality is that Microsoft's XBox division stumbled badly coming out of the gate for this leg of the console race, and it simply may be too late for them to recover.

From GamingBolt:

Yesterday, we reported on Michael Pachter’s assessment that Sony will not release a new bit of hardware to counter the more powerful Xbox Scorpio. At the time, we agreed with what he had to say- we noted that given Sony’s massive lead, as well as the momentum and inertia that they have on their side, they are guaranteed to stay ahead of Xbox no matter what, and their best course of action was to, well, stay the course.

This is something glaringly obvious to everyone and everybody- if the Scorpio is intended to compete against the PS4, it is going up against a system with a four year head start (or around 1 if you count the PS4 Pro), and an install base likely to be north of 65 million by the time the Scorpio does launch. People this generation associate PS4 as the default console- much like the Xbox 360 the generation before that. Even if the Scorpio ends up being more powerful, it is unlikely to unseat the PS4 from the throne that it occupies in the mainstream gamer’s consciousness- precedence for this phenomenon exists with the original Xbox and PS2.

Not only are the stark realities of the console market working against them, so are the technical realities of having multiple consoles on the market at the same time, with the same brand on them, but with different specs and capabilities. The PS4 Pro has experienced all sorts of technical headaches, with many games actually running worse on the more powerful PS4 console, and only Horizon: Zero Dawn, so far, really showing off the full capabilities of the new hardware.

These issues are old hat to PC developers who have long had to cope with, and program for, the wide range of hardware on which users might be trying to play their games, but for console developers, this is new, tricky, and expensive ground. This was one of the advantages of consoles as a platform, remember: the hardware was always a known, stable quantity, helping to keep development costs down. That advantage is now gone for PS4, and with Scorpio, XBox is about to follow suit.

Of course, XBoxes just flat-out run Windows 10 now, so developers have the option to just stop making games for the XBox per se, and instead make UWP games. That would seem to be part of Microsoft's strategy, here, but it would also, in and of itself, mean that the Scorpio has failed to regain XBox's influence in the console space. It also doesn't solve the problem of developers with nothing but console expertise suddenly needing to develop a significantly expanded skill set to cope with the added complexity of PC game development... and a way of coping with the extra costs involved.

Also, there's the problem of Scorpio not even being out yet, with the first games that will truly showcase its power being at least a year away, if not more. Again, nothing new for a new console... except that new consoles don't normally launch several years into a new console generation, with the market leader having already overcome these new-console growing pains. Nintendo's Switch, incidentally, will face this same problem.