The future of Xbox it's not just about Microsoft's gaming brand, but aboutentire video game industryeither due to the current size of the group, which has become enormous with the acquisitions of recent years, or because it will necessarily have to be a response to the problems that grip the sector.
Just yesterday it was revealed that Immortals of Aveum cost a total of 125 million dollars between development and marketing. We are talking about an enormous sum, yet the public perceived it and still perceives it as an economic project: a double A low-end and moreover not worth its price, since no one bought it. Something similar also happened with the latest Saints Row, whose budget exceeded one hundred million dollars, but was defined by many as a double A.
A changing and problematic scenario
In short, many gamers seem to have a completely distorted perception of how video game development works and of the costs to be incurred to include some of the features that they consider essential. Just for the sake of comparison, developing and launching Final Fantasy VII, one of the most iconic games of the PS1 generation, cost a total of $40 million, while the first Gears of War cost $10 million (the third cost $40). On the other hand, the development costs of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Starfield have well exceeded 200 million dollars.
The average gamer doesn't care too much about a market in which a video game must sell millions and millions of copies to make money. costsbut for publishers it has become a big problem, as demonstrated by the earthquake that hit the industry in 2023, including layoffs and closed development studios, the effects of which are also spreading into 2024.
Remaining immobile in the hope that the storm will pass would mean certain death in the medium/long term (in some cases even in the short term), especially for the larger publishers, where the traditional model it doesn't seem to work anymore. Not because there is a lack of traditional gamers, but because their number has not grown enough to sustain certain claims indefinitely.
Some will say that for now the only publisher to have announced new features (we'll see what) is Xbox, but let's not be fooled: the air is that of a general reflection of the entire industry, which is involving practically all the main players in the sector.
PlayStation of its own it still has the advantage in hardware sales, but it is not difficult to glimpse signs of crisis in those parts too, between canceled projects, layoffs, CEOs on the run and sudden changes to decisions taken in the recent past precisely to face the current scenario. Furthermore, the strategy to expand the offer to PC players is increasingly evident, and there is already talk of an upcoming cloud service that will allow PS5 titles to be played on mobile too.
Nintendo seems to be the calmest of the old guard, but only because it was far-sighted and did not participate in the technological race, offering an obsolete platform, on which publishers could plan low-cost projects, including conversions of old titles, remasters and so on. something else, with which to monetize. We'll see how things turn out with the new console, which as such is not guaranteed success (how can we forget the Wii U flop that arrived immediately after the enormous success of the Wii?).
So, it's difficult to say with certainty what Xbox will announce in the near future. The only certainty is that if the current situation is as unsustainable as it seems, then there will have to be changes, which may not come all at once but which will necessarily have to occur.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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