Abstract:
Recently, foreign media GamesRadar reported that former Sony Interactive Entertainment US president Shawn Layden said in an interview on the podcast "The Expansion Pass" that Xbox is in an embarrassing situation because Microsoft has not chosen and adhered to a clear development path.
Leyden pointed out that Microsoft's gaming strategy has oscillated repeatedly in recent years. After acquiring Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, Microsoft once launched a large number of first-party games on the PS5 platform. Later, it changed direction and announced that some new games would return to the console-exclusive route. The strategy changed back and forth, making it unclear to the outside world the positioning of Xbox.
In his view, Microsoft has two mutually incompatible paths in front of it, but it cannot do both at the same time. The first way: continue to be a host platform competitor. As a game platform, it must rely on exclusive content support. Without exclusivity, the platform itself loses its meaning. Both Nintendo and PlayStation rely on their own exclusive IP to attract users to buy hardware.
The second path: give up hardware competition and transform into the world's top third-party publisher. With the huge IP matrix of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda in hand, if you are a pure publisher, the business logic requires that the game be launched on all platforms and pursue the maximization of omni-channel revenue.
He compared the current situation of Xbox to Sega's "Dreamcast moment", when Sega completely exited the hardware business after the failure of DC and transformed into a pure software publisher. This path is feasible. Leyden suggested that the new head of Xbox, Asha Sharma, make a decision as soon as possible, choose one of the two and stick to it, and don't swing back and forth between the two modes.
Leyden admitted that it is not impossible for Xbox to compete in the console market again, but if it wants to return to the track, it must make corresponding decisions in terms of exclusive works and third-party support. If you choose to be a global publisher, you can rest assured that you can maximize your full-platform software business. If you want to take into account the dual identities of a platform and a top publisher at the same time, it is difficult to achieve success in reality.
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