Archived Sony Gaf: Industry is better without competition (m.neogaf.com)
submitted ago by Schopenhauer4ever
Posted by: Schopenhauer4ever
Posting time: 3.9 years ago on
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Archived on: 4/11/2017 10:00:00 AM
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Archived Sony Gaf: Industry is better without competition (m.neogaf.com)
submitted ago by Schopenhauer4ever
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[–] Schopenhauer4ever [S] ago
Microsoft always was obsessed with The Set Top Box. Remember WebTV?
Gates and crew always wanted the living room, seeing it as the logical outgrowth of the PC. That's where Xbox came from.
Nonetheless, the division had top talent that pushed technological innovation at the beginning: the OG Xbox literally predicted the modern console, for good and ill.
It introduced the programmablr shader GPU -- which is still the graphic standard, 15 years and change later -- hard drives, high speed online, headsets, digital downloads and the Western takeover of consoles through software.
In many ways, they were good for the industry.
They provided two powerhouse consoles with the best GPUs in the world at their respective launches.
But today they are a husk. Boring first party stuff, an underpowered console and a software list devoid of Japanese games or anything at all beyond PC.
And it's clear from the Phantom Dust, Scalebound and Lionheart debacles that they have little interest in anything other than limited, western blockbusters.
Spencer talks about games, but in truth he is only there to downsize the division while telling the fan base what they want to hear.
The Mattrick era had more interesting software. We saw that in the first couple of years; those were Mattrick releases.
Now, under Spencer, there is less software. You can bet that's because the big TV integratelation outlook fell apart; ironically it stole the division's budget for games with it.
If MS can't produce big, interesting games, there's little reason to buy their console. Nadella wants the division as a service, most likely.