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Video games spending by young Americans is dropping sharply, report suggests (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

It's funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like "why don't they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?"

Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They were thinking about that back then, various people have said it, but I think they were constrained by costs and technical limitations. Bill Gates certainly wanted Xbox and windows gaming to be a unified platform. I mean look at Valve, they had the Steam Machine ages ago and they flopped, but you can be sure that they will be much popular this time around.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    True, I'm definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn't have entered the console market at all. I'd probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up "Games For Windows! Live" or whatever it was called.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yep they definitely missed the boat on that one. Which is why I think they are so keen on turning Xbox into a platform. With how PC hardware is going, they have a chance to take back some market from Valve and maybe convert people from Playstation as well. The risk here is that they can’t sell the “consoles” at a loss, so they will be undercut by Sony by a significant amount of money. But their answer to that is probably “it doesn’t matter, everything is an Xbox now, the console is for the enthusiast market”.

    Bold strategy, we’ll see if they can pull it off.

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