Sales of Microsoft’s Xbox are crumbling, to the extent that the Company has given up issuing sales figures period.
Now Microsoft is looking to generate new revenues for the Microsoft Studio by targeting the millions of Windows OS users whose detailed information they obtained when Windows 10 was launched.
The migration away from Xbox by millions of gamers is a blessing for Sony who is raking in the coin with their Playstation 4 offering.
At one stage Microsoft executives who gave the world Zune Music and Windows mobile phones had this notion that Xbox would become the home entertainment hub in Australian homes after the massive failure of Microsoft Media Centre.
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Microsoft is a great enterprise and B2B technology Company, they are utterly lousy at making and selling consumer products.
I remember in the early days when we launched Windows NT magazine and then Windows Mag, Microsoft was seriously out there with their Exchange and SQL product offering, then there was Microsoft Office and a host of tools for administrators.
A seriously stand out product was Windows Server and Exchange.
Now they have Azure.
What got in the way was ego, arrogance and heap of Microsoft employee who did not have a clue about the consumer electronics market. They wanted a share of the consumer market but did not have the talent in the Company to develop products like the iPod.
This is a Company who employ PR Companies like Ogilvy PR to hose time serious questions about the performance of the giant US software Company.
I remember when on one occasion they loaded up a Microsoft press conference with people who asked only the right questions of Microsoft management.
After being ignored at a Windows 7 launch once, I simply blurted my question out to senior Microsoft executives minus the microphone which Ogilvy staff were controlling.
I asked why after promising a full blown Music Download service in Australia in partnership with Sanity, at a prior press conference 12 months earlier, had Microsoft chosen not to proceed with the launch of the new service.
I was told by Ogilvy minders that my questions were bang out of order.
Really, at their prior press conference they had laid on a band and the CEO of their music partner, to brag about the new so called Windows Media Centre music service that was coming.
The reality was that their partners at the time could not stand dealing with Microsoft management in Australia and simply pulled the plug on the deal.
Another Microsoft consumer initiative bit the dust.
In its first eight years, the Xbox 360 established the company as a powerhouse when it came to console gaming.
When it launched the Kinect motion controller in 2010, Wired called the event “the most lavish product launch” in video game history – complete with Cirque du Soleil performers, an animatronic elephant, and an Xbox orb large enough to crush the front row.
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By the time the company announced the Xbox 360’s successor – Xbox One – three years later, the company was riding a tsunami of success.
Since then and like their Windows Media Server, Zune Media Play, Nokia phones and countless incarnations of Windows phones Xbox has gone the way of most Microsoft consumer initiatives.
Microsoft forgot one thing when spruiking Kinect the games, the holy grail that made Xbox famous.
During the hour-long kick-off presentation of Kinect six minutes were allotted to new game announcements.
Fans felt betrayed and poured their fury into forums and game blogs; critics dubbed the event a disaster.
Desperate to turn around the mass exit from Xbox Microsoft started spruiking Halo and Killer Instinct. But it was too late, the migration to PS and the new Sony subscription services was underway.
Because of the Kinect hardware, the Xbox One cost $100 more than its closest competition, Sony’s PlayStation 4. When Microsoft finally debuted the system on November 22nd, 2013, it landed with a thud. It’s been trailing PlayStation ever since.
But guess what, the great minds at Microsoft have yet another grand consumer plan.
Now they are set to invest hundreds of millions of dollars creating Xbox for Windows OS users.
Microsoft claim that they have one priority: win gamers back, at all costs.
Shannon Loftis, general manager of Microsoft Studios told The Verge recently “This year really felt like I came home,” says Shannon Loftis. As general manager of Microsoft Studios, Loftis is in charge of producing the next crop of Microsoft video games.
The Verge said, in an industry dominated by men wearing ratty graphic tees and sneakers, Loftis is chic and professional. She embodies confidence.
Already a lot of gaming Companies as well as some of the best game developers in the world have moved to developing games for Apple iPhones and tablets as well as Android devices as opposed to Xbox.
Verge added, a 22-year Microsoft veteran, Loftis was there in the late 1990s when Microsoft used games to entice home computer owners to Windows.
In the early 2000s, she produced games for the original Xbox, and was involved in that console’s efforts to connect console gamers via the internet for the first time.
Today, Loftis, like Microsoft at large, is refocusing on producing games – a large part of her job is finding the developers to create Microsoft’s next big franchises.
To revive Xbox, Microsoft needs to land the next big franchise. To do that, the company must persuade game developers – with all of their talent and experience – to come back to Microsoft and collaborate with them.
And to do that, outside developers and potential second-party partners must believe in Microsoft she claims.
That’s why Loftis’ first action as general manager of Microsoft Studios is to convince gamers why it’s worth playing on the Microsoft platforms including Windows OS gaming, as well as Xbox console gaming.
We prove to game developers why it’s worth [making games for our platform].”
Collaborating with Microsoft Studios needed to be faster, easier, and better. The company’s future depended on it she said.
