With Xbox, I've heard from a very prominent company and one not so prominent that Xbox's performance in Europe is flatlining. You can follow our monthly coverage in the games market and you can see Xbox's sales are falling and it's fell all throughout last year and it's falling even harder this year.
The major company who released a big game last year said they don't know why they bother supporting it. We've mentioned in a previous podcast that retailers are considering or have began cutting back Xbox stock on their shelves, hardware & games... and now you've got third-party publishers going: "We're putting a lot of effort into creating an Xbox Series S/X version of a game where to be honest with you the market for us is PC and PS5"
And with Xbox putting some of the games on PS5, I understand the majority of them will be coming across at some point, assuming, you know, it progresses as Xbox believes it probably will. I think Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer. And that was the thing that came out of GDC for me, because I always just thought, I've always been of the belief that it is the Game Pass delivery system, it's got a good UI, it's got a good controller, if you like Xbox games it's probably the best way to play them, etc. I thought it would be fine but then I didn't really factor in that some developers and publishers might just go, yeah I don't, you know, is there any point? And that is when you can lose it.
I was watching Michael Pachter's podcast and he was talking about how it's all about GamePass for Xbox, yet I've actually been hearing that Microsoft's been putting less focus on GamePass.
