E3 2019 happened less than 20 days ago but has already been forgotten. It was overlooked by the gaming world and proved to be a disaster. Not only did PlayStation dodge the whole event out of embarrassment for their lack of offerings, but Microsoft may as well have done the same. It was the worst E3 ever, and it’s especially grim when we see it as a forecast of what’s to come: that is to say, services and mediocrity.
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Why Xbox is moving towards streaming
Last week I sat down with my brother and tried to calculate — through sheer analysis — what Microsoft would do at this E3.
I didn’t post any of it online, so I can’t claim any victory points for it, but after a few hours of discussing the state of the industry, along with Xbox’s past, present, and possible futures, I concluded that Microsoft was going to announce a new generation of Xbox consoles and push streaming as their next big move. Today Phil Spencer confirmed that Xbox is going to push a streaming service, and new hardware. Turns out my prediction was 100% correct.
Here’s how I reached my conclusion.
E3 2017: The Twilight of Living Room Gaming?
This year’s E3 has me convinced that Xbox and PlayStation are in deep trouble, and that the de facto winners of this decline are the PC and Nintendo Switch. Xbox tried to advertise “exclusives” that were all going to be available on PC as well, while Sony kept talking about VR. The 4K revolution is dead in the water. Nobody cares about 4K, even though we recognize that it’s an improvement.
VR and 4K are things that would’ve been nice to have if they were fully-functional and properly showcased three years ago. But by now we’re so starved for quality games that we just want to have things to play on our existing machines. I’ve seen people argue that they’re totally satisfied with their PS4 and even their Xbox, and that they look forward to the release of the titles in development, but the overall excitement for this generation of machines is lower than I’ve ever seen with previous generations. The logic of a console cycle is that you’ll be given a front-row seat to the cutting edge of gaming for the duration of the console’s lifetime, building up a library that will some day stand as a distinct epoch of gaming innovations. Each console has its own gimmicks, branding, and eccentricities that you can incorporate into your identity, and the rituals you learn on that machine become part of the shared identity you have with your fellow gamers. But now there’s nothing special about consoles, since they all share the same controller layouts, hardware is always just a mid-tier PC, and the distribution models and features are homogenized. PC has never had the epoch-ritual-identity quality that consoles offered; they were generic machines that did a lot of stuff, and also gaming. Consoles are now in the same boat, and without that strange generational epoch psychology, they just become worse PCs with a smaller library and less features. This E3 proved that Sony and Microsoft have absolutely nothing interesting to offer.
Nintendo Switch stands apart from all of that, and is winning as a result. This E3 was a huge success for the Switch because they are creating an epoch-ritual-identity framework that people can become invested in. The games, tone, and features of the Switch are distinct and flavorful, and you can be guaranteed that you’ll be able to build a library that will some day stand as an epoch of gaming.
The “AAA” games shown at E3 were boring and mediocre. The indie games looked interesting, but we’ve learned by now that indie games usually fail to follow through on their enticing designs and premises, so we have to take them with a grain of salt. VR and 4K editions of exiting games are not even close to worth the cost, and only push us further into the outdated living room as the hub of entertainment. I suspect many gamers will look at this E3 and decide that traditional consoles are enjoying their final twilight days.
I’ll be discussing the games, hardware, and announcements themselves in future posts. This was more of a broad evaluation.
NEWS ROUNDUP: Greenlight replaced / Carmack implicated / Windows accused
Microsoft lays off 18,000 people, including Xbox Entertainment Studios
Is 18,000 a lot of people? It sounds like a lot. It kind of sounds like the population of a city. Here’s the report.
With a new CEO and pressure to create a new vision for the company, it’s not surprising that things are getting majorly restructured. It’s also not surprising that they shut down the idiotic Xbox Entertainment Studios, headed by Phil Spencer. Nobody cared about the Halo TV series, or anything else they promised. Satya Nadella wants to focus on mobile and cloud, which means Xbox has become a red-headed stepchild of a past era. We already know it loses billions of dollars a year for the company, and the vision of “taking over the living room” from Sony is pretty much dead. Of course they say they will focus more on games, but Microsoft hates gamers and specifically wanted the Xbox One to shift focus away from them so they could get TV viewers and sports idiots interested (so they could collect information about them and sell ads, of course). It’s all going down the drain.
Microsoft’s future, part 2
I feel like an archaeologist who just found one of those “missing link” skeletons, because even though I’ve been talking about how Valve’s push for Linux is justified and smart when you consider the potential downfall of Windows, there hasn’t been much evidence to support that fear besides Gabe Newell himself, who you could argue has a conflict of interest. I need somebody in the tech world who is intimately familiar with Windows, its history, and its politics, who can attest to the problems today — somebody like Paul Thurrott, who asks What the Heck is Happening to Windows?
There are some important bombshells in here as far as I’m concerned, including the fact that Windows 8 was designed by a prominent “Steve Jobs” wannabe who messed it up so bad that it was responsible for restructuring Microsoft itself, including kicking out Steve Ballmer! (Still believe Don Mattrick’s quitting in the face of the “Xbox 180” fiasco was a coincidence?)
The Xbox 180 reversals and the Windows 8 catastrophe are deeply connected: mismanagement, scattered thinking, poor judgment, and lack of vision in the face of incredibly strong competition.
Whenever I criticize Microsoft, there are those who accuse me of being a Sony fanboy. The type who hates Microsoft out of some juvenile, Highlander-type “There Can Be Only One” nonsense. After all, I run a Metal Gear fan site, not a Halo fansite; I complain about the bro culture and Xbox tactics all the time; I seem to go out of my way to pick on bad news when it comes to Microsoft, but I don’t mention Sony’s troubles! But the truth is, I am mostly a PC gamer, and as I wrote before this new generation started, I want Steam to lead the way of gaming. I don’t hate Microsoft because it competes with other platforms that I like more, I hate it because it’s evil and it is going to drag down an awesome platform out of pure hubris, unoriginality, and greed, just like they poisoned the console culture with the Xbox brand and billions of dollars in dirty shenanigans.
Speaking of Windows 8, Paul Thurrott gives us insight into the warped mentality inside Microsoft at the time, and the consequences for its failure:
… I had found out from internal sources immediately that the product was doomed from the get-go, feared and ignored by customers, partners and other groups in Microsoft alike. Windows 8 was such a disaster that Steven Sinofsky was ejected from the company and his team of lieutenants was removed from Windows in a cyclone of change that triggered a reorganization of the entire company. Even Sinofsky’s benefactor, Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer, was removed from office. Why did all this happen? Because together, these people set the company and Windows back by years and have perhaps destroyed what was once the most successful software franchise of all time.
He goes on to touch on some of the main problems with the jumbled Windows 8 interface, which can’t decide whether it’s a tablet OS or a desktop OS. This is exactly the same as how the Xbox One can’t decide whether it’s an always-online Kinect media hub, or a next-gen game console meant to be controlled with a controller.
With a new CEO obsessed with chasing iOS with “mobile” and Google with “cloud”, but rejecting “traditional” hardware emphasis, it will be very interesting to see how the half-baked abortion, the Xbox One, fares in such turbulent times, with investors hoping to see the Xbox, Bing, and Surface scrapped since it’s clear Microsoft doesn’t know what it’s doing with any of them… and losing billions every year.
Steam Machines revealed, but confusion still abounds
If you’re confused about the new lineup of Steam Machines, which range from $500 to a whopping $6,000, you’re in good company. As I said before in “The Amazing Valve Strategy” Part One and Two, this is a unique and long-term strategy for keeping PC gaming alive and hedging against the possible failure of the Windows platform, not a “monkey-see, monkey-do” attempt to rival the existing console market.
Here’s some reactions I’ve seen already, with my rebuttals:
News Roundup | So many things, Xbox One and otherwise
…But mostly Xbox One! You may have some catching up to do.