Third-party publishers are second-guessing their continued support of Xbox consoles moving forward.
According to a new report from the head of GamesIndustry.biz Chris Dring, the predominant feeling around last week’s Game Developer’s Conference was the status of Microsoft and Xbox.
“The other thing I heard—I heard it from a very prominent company and one not so prominent—was Xbox’s performance in Europe is just flatlining,” he said via the GI Microcast.
He continued: “You can follow our monthly coverage in the games market and you can see that Xbox sales are falling, and it’s been falling all throughout last year and it’s falling even harder this year. The phrase one major company who released a big game last year said [was], ‘I don’t know why we bothered supporting it’.”
Lastly, it was mentioned that third-party publishers view the market right now as PC and PS5.
One thing to note is that this report specifically mentions European sales. It’s unknown, however, if the publishers referenced were European publishers or studios based elsewhere.
Insider Gaming has reached out to Microsoft over these potential concerns. As of writing, none of our requests for comment have been answered.
What do you think the future holds for Xbox amid the concern surrounding publishers and future support? For more Insider Gaming, see what Xbox head Phil Spencer would like to see from an Xbox handheld.
This is why Microsoft needs to buy another big publisher like EA and Take 2 also Ubisoft. I hope this wakes them up.
They have plans for multiple new pieces of hardware and this is happening?! They need to buy more publishers to secure exclusives. The ABK deal should open the door for other games to be exclusive.
I think the damage is done and if new hardware is imminent they need to buy publishers with games in the pipeline just make them exclusive for the time being then just get out of console gaming next generation and focus on Game Pass. This is the only way to hold for now I think they should use the election year to their benefit for acquisitions if certain people want donations they’ll have to please the companies something the FTC hasn’t been doing as we’ve seen this whole administration.
Maybe this is the wake up call they need because Phil is an idiot! Satya seems to be the same. The worst part is they can’t just make games appear the only way is to pay to get games on their platform and I don’t know if they would be exclusive and that would still result in low sales. The other option maybe is let publishers keep all or more profits than Sony but that’s really going to hurt them because unless that incentivizes publishers to make games Xbox exclusive to then result in more sales.
Phil needs to break the black card out and make some magic happen again.
This is bad even if they fire Phil the culture he created is still there and any internal replacement would just continue what he did. Xbox could honestly be shut down.
Nintendo,xbox,playstation. It will only be good for games if they all get segad
Wow way to sensationalize something that you by own admission don’t know the context.
Well, when you want your games everywhere and they’re even on PC, that’ll happen. Why support the Xbox console when you can just release it on PC. I was an Xbox owner, but once I went PC, I never looked back.
Xbox made their enforcement system so crazy strict and they messed up the social aspect by removing it from the home screen and making screenshots disappear after 90 days, now people who were enjoying it for the light hearted trash talk and social media aspects on top of the gaming experience are being told that we just have to accept the changes. Left and right my friends are getting banned by their AI enforcement program. They are hurting themselves by going so hard on enforcement that lobbies for xbox players are dead. I’m not saying people should be able to use hate speech and stuff like that, but cussing on mature games or on a adult account should NOT get you banned. It’s ridiculous the words they have outlawed too. I got banned for talking in a comment about my bad experience on COD, I censored bad words, but even that’s not enough. I got a week suspension since I had already gotten two prior for “feed items”, that’s all they say when it’s a post on your feed and not a comment or message. You get no screenshot of the offending item which could be years old & then your banned. If they actually showed you what you posted that was so bad iy warranted a ban, then more people could avoid doing so again. However they only show you what it was, if it’s a comment or message. Otherwise you get banned and if you post a lot, good luck figuring out what post it was. It’s made so many of my friends give up on xbox at this point. They are really failing their customers here.
Dx
I love xbox bc it connects to my PC. I love being able to have the best of both worlds. I have always thought of XBOX as an extension of PC world… I hope they keep diving towards the future. Xbox has made it so I can easily keep up with all the games my potato PC wouldn’t run at a reasonable price…