I'm curious what would happen if they don't make a new console. What happens to all the digital games purchased by people 5-10 years after the last console is at end of life? The way these consoles are designed, surely they'll need servers to be up indefinitely for these digital games to work. Will Microsoft do that? Will they be sued when they try to get out of it? Will they refund the money for goodwill? Will they make an emulator on PC to preserve everything? I don't think we've answers to these questions yet, and whatever happens with ubisoft's lawsuit would probably set the precedent for the same.
While that's true, it's crazy how Marvel Rivals comes out of nowhere and grabs the attention without sweat. Same for Helldivers 2. Clearly there are lessons here, even when entering saturated market.
It's crazy how average gamers with spare $40 can completely fathom within 30 seconds of the gameplay showcase that they need not burn their money, but people in the industry with 100s of millions on the line are like "yup, this is the next star wars".
Clearly Xbox is still trying to integrate and learn hard lessons about managing its multitude of studios. They simply aren't at the level of Sony when it comes to predictability and consistency to pull it off.
Sony was able to time it with the last of us but that's the exception I'd say. Their Horizon show was probably supposed to be out alongside their remaster of the first game and Lego game, but yeah, that didn't quite work out. Similarly Concord's secret level episode will feel a bit off now that the game and its studio is shut down.
Ultimately, what do we want? Good media. If stars are aligned it's even better but if not, good media is forever good, and with Xbox they are still trying to figure out the good part.
It'll surely be a big bet. Whatever they're doing clearly works, so they may hesitate to change it too much, but as someone who isn't into multiplayer games, I'd be more interested if CoD is sorta broken up into various experiences. Especially if they can bundle up all the campaigns, that'll be really sweet.
"What we've seen is it's allowed people that might have been on the fence, might have had some of that friction, might have been like, 'I haven't played in a while' to actually come back and try the game," he said.
"We've gotten to the point now where Black Ops and Call of Duty have been around so long - I've been working on it for 16 years," Leslie added. "And really the challenge for us is how do you bring along the fans that love Call of Duty, but how do you create an environment where you can welcome new fans in?"
They are talking about saturation of IP, not about making users stick to GamePass subscription.
At this point I wonder what's stopping them from keeping Red Engine preserved or open sourcing it. After ditching it for Witcher 4, they've added Phantom Liberty, Next Gen patch for Witcher 3, DLSS FrameGen, RT Overdrive, RT Ray Reconstruction, Mod Tools, probably a PS5 Pro Patch, and now Mac port. That's a lot of work for an abandoned engine.
Everything that Sony claimed turned out to be true. Games are now exclusive to Xbox, they run worse on PS5, Xbox would get exclusive Call of Duty content and early betas and Xbox is using its market dominance by putting all ABK titles on GamePass.
I'm curious what would happen if they don't make a new console. What happens to all the digital games purchased by people 5-10 years after the last console is at end of life? The way these consoles are designed, surely they'll need servers to be up indefinitely for these digital games to work. Will Microsoft do that? Will they be sued when they try to get out of it? Will they refund the money for goodwill? Will they make an emulator on PC to preserve everything? I don't think we've answers to these questions yet, and whatever happens with ubisoft's lawsuit would probably set the precedent for the same.