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Xbox’s leadership shift proves it: the gamer era is over, AI runs the show now (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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So, who exactly is she? Well, externally, she’s the former VP of Product and Engineering at Meta, CEO of Instacart, and current board member for Coupang and Home Depot. She only recently came to Microsoft in 2024 as the President of CoreAI. Don’t worry, if you’re double-checking to see if any of that is related to gaming in some sort of way, let me save you the trouble; it’s not.

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[–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

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

Taking into account 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, and only if you buy all your games from Steam.

Big successful companies generally don't come up with big new good ideas, they steal them from other products that have already been proven.

In this case the PC company Valve “stole” them from Xbox and Sony. That doesn’t really help your argument at all here, on the contrary it just goes to show how much easier valve has had it as all they’ve had to do is follow a blueprint, keeping their costs lower which uniquely helps them subsidize them.

In 2004 the Microsoft video game division reported profits of 2.75 billion.

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 behind that sustained profitability?

Do I really need to tell you the answer or do you think you can guess?

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Okay. Pick a gaming feature that you believe was created by console manufacturers from 2002-present.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

    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 locked ecosystem; and then call it revolutionary, and a the first of its kind.

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Now that several of the points you’ve made have been proven concretely wrong, and you just keep moving the goal posts further and further each time, I feel like your argument has been muddied to the point that I don’t really know what it is anymore. “Yeah Xbox was the first to build a product like that, but we used to have 30 different products that did some of those things, entirely separately from each other without any integration or cohesion, most of which have been largely lost to time because the way Xbox did it was so much better it became the expected standard for the next 20 years for everyone else to copy, so therefore they don’t get any credit”

    OK.

    Let’s recap:

    • You thought that infrastructure doesn’t have an associated cost in the real world like it does on Xbox and PlayStation.

    We proved that was wrong because there are all kinds of fees, taxes, and mechanisms in the real world that exist to fund infrastructure.

    • You thought that game developers on PC invented the unified identity system that’s now an industry standard, which is the thing you’re paying that subscription for.

    We proved that was wrong because Xbox Live was the first to do it in 2008. Prior to Xbox, there was no app that provided this functionality.

    • You thought that the infrastructure behind these things doesn’t cost any many and that Xbox only started charging for it out of greed because they were making billions of dollars in profit with or without it.

    We proved that you don’t know the difference between revenue and profit, or the fact that this infrastructure and hardware subsidization lead to Xbox being unprofitable for years after you thought they were profitable.

    Now you’re changing directions to other products that did something entirely unrelated to what we’re talking about, in order to find some parallel in an entirely different market. We’re REALLY grasping at straws here now.

    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.

    Such as?

    Public malls

    You mean those things that have proven to be economical failures? This just disproves your own point??

    smart phones (still replaces multiple products without a data plan)

    So hardware that doesn’t cost you a dime to use day to day unless you… use their infrastructure to make it interact with other people in a more convenient way? You mean exactly like Xbox Live

    Like you’re arguing against yourself at this point so you don’t really need me anymore? I’m just going to “declare victory and walk away” so to speak unless you can figure out what point you wanna make. I’m not going to give you anymore of my time to this game of whack-a-mole.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Let's promis to only quote once per reply shall me? I don't know how you're doing it but I'm not going to write you a high school length essay with every reply. If you think I sound a bit two sided it because I am, every reply we make generating five different conversations.

    Such as?

    I listed them below that sentence... You discussed them.

    Public malls, Your personal geographic experience of malls is limited and also irrelevant. Dial your mind back to the 1970s and turn off your adversarial mindset and I'm sure you'll be able to make it work. Also malls are absolutely huge, and big booming business in some areas.

    Cell phones - No, it's hardware that didn't require an extra subscription fee so they could expand "infrastructure". I can absolutely use a phone to make a phone call through numerous apps with just a wifi connection.

    I cheated two quotes.

    Now you’re changing directions to other products that did something entirely unrelated to what we’re talking about, in order to find some parallel in an entirely different market. We’re REALLY grasping at straws here now.

    Again, it's analagous to the "infrastructure development" of literally every other tech industry; and exemplifies how everyone else somehow expanded infrastructure, without additional subscription fees.

    Feel free to leave if you're not enjoying the conversation: or do I need to like... Send you $5 a month so you can integrate NOT clicking reply into your Lemmy experience. (Revolutionary idea, lets start this business.)

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