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Developers Reportedly Losing Interest In Xbox
26.03.2024 - 12:01 / thegamer.com / Chris Dring / James Batchelor
"Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer," GamesIndustry.biz head Chris Dring said. "That's the thing that came out of [the Game Developer Conference] for me."
As reported by VGC, during yesterday's GI Microcast, Dring and editor-in-chief James Batchelor talked about the word on the floor among developers at GDC last week, revealing that many are reportedly losing interest in the platform.
You've got third-party publishers going, 'We're putting in a lot of effort trying to create a Series S version and an X version of a game when to be honest with you, for us the market is PC and PS5.'
A "very prominent company" allegedly told Dring that Xbox is "flatlining" in Europe, with retailers considering and, in some cases, already cutting back stock of games and hardware. Another "major company" who released a big game last year reportedly said, "I don't know why we bothered supporting it," referring to Xbox.
We're already seeing Xbox branch out beyond its own hardware, bringing exclusives like Grounded, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Hi-Fi Rush to other platforms.
But it isn't stopping there, as Dring said, "From what I understand, the majority of [exclusives] will be coming across at some point, assuming it progresses as Xbox believes it probably will".
Batchelor added that because "the audience is so small", we might see more indie developers pass on developing for Xbox due to the cost, even prioritising Nintendo Switch. He said that, over GDC, he received a press release from an indie studio apologising to Xbox fans for not developing a port, something that may become more and more commonplace.
Xbox itself admitted that it had "lost the console wars" last year.
In 2023, we saw Baldur's Gate 3's Xbox port delayed, eventually launching well after PS5 and PC, due to problems porting it to the Series S, Microsoft's lower-budget (and less powerful) alternative to the Series X. In the end, developer Larian Studios had to drop split screen support, despite Microsoft asking developers to ensure parity between versions of all games ported to Series S and X.
Xbox consoles meanwhile have seen a decline in sales over the past few years, with 2024 already showing a harsher drop than 2023. According to Take-Two Interactive, PS5 outsells Xbox 2-to-1. However, a new Xbox console was certified in South Korea last week, and FTC documents leaked a handheld Xbox last year, so Microsoft clearly has no intent to slow down on hardware manufacturing.
Launched in 2020 in conjunction with the Xbox Series S digital-only console, the Series X is the disc version of Microsoft's premier gaming platform.
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