Jeff Grubb has said some surprisingly honest things about the state of the Xbox division in Microsoft, presumably based on what he’s heard from his sources.
As covered by Reddit, this is what Jeff says is the state of Xbox, after being asked if he thinks their leadership is happy:
“I can tell you, they are not, They’re upset. We’re just trying to diagnose it a little bit right. You know, they didn’t release a first-party game last year, and if that doesn’t affect you if you always have something to play again, that’s awesome, but a lot of people do regret getting their Xbox.”
This comes from the same podcast where Grubb revealed that Hi-Fi Rush did not make the money that it needed to make. That conversation actually led to a broader conversation about the state of Xbox.
Of course, we ourselves recently covered the disappointing news that online multiplayer game Redfall, the first of Xbox’s first-party exclusive games to be releasing for some time, will not be launching with 60 FPS.
This ties in to a bigger narrative that Microsoft is still struggling to deal with, that Xbox still doesn’t offer enough to compete well against Sony, and this would explain why PlayStation 5 has continued to trounce Xbox Series consoles in sales.
But there are other moving parts to this conversation, as I’m sure most gamers are aware of whether they want it or not. The Microsoft-Activision decision looms large on the state of console video games now and in the future. Not only will finishing this acquisition change the relationship Sony has with Activision and Blizzard games, but it could also set precedents for future mergers and acquisitions Sony and Microsoft could make.
Microsoft has taken extraordinary steps to demonstrate that they would not be taking Call of Duty exclusive. In spite of their stated purpose of acquiring Activision Blizzard King for mobile, obviously this will also lead to Xbox games as well. And that, as well as Bethesda, looks like the future selling point Xbox Series X|S will have.
On another end, Sony’s dominance in the market has come into question themselves. More and more US government officials are questioning if their agencies are doing enough to protect Microsoft’s American jobs by ensuring fair competition conditions for Xbox and PlayStation. That has led to drama such as a US senator writing Sony and FTC head Lina Khan getting grilled for siding with Sony.
It’s unclear how that will affect PlayStation and Xbox in the future, but it seems inevitable that this ongoing situation with Xbox’s woes will eventually break, for either one reason or another.
