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Kotaku UK Rumor: Xbox One, Windows 10, Halo 5, & Minecraft notably below expectations

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Savitar

Member
After all the mistakes with the Halo franchise in the last few years is it a surprise that 5 didn't do so well. Especially when you barely play as the character people want to play as. It doesn't help that MC's story really should be done. Plus you got the Halo collection being a disaster really did not help.

Xbox One isn't selling as good because people know the PS4 is the better console and let's face it, nothing MS has done has won back a lot of the trust they squandered with the whole online only fiasco. Flip flopping and being able to throw a switch is something people will not forget lightly.

As for Minecraft, that I'm curious about. Has sales stagnated or reached it's peak?
 

Boke1879

Member
This makes sense. With everything we've heard as well it seems they are moving away from the XBOX ONE branding.

We'll get a slim announcement st e3 and I think they'll go all in on Scorpio. The Xbox One was a huge misstep for them and I think they want to distance themselves from it
 
Halo 5 should've played it a little more safe instead of totally reworking the aiming mechanics and screwing with all of the multiplayer gametypes. I think most Halo fans just wanted a shiny, updated version of Halo 2...not a reinvention of the wheel. I know Halo 5 has found a dedicated and passionate fanbase, but I would argue the majority of Halo 1-3, Reach and even Halo 4 fans have moved onto Destiny.

And that can kind of be an analogy with Microsoft's other failings...no one wanted an Xbox that helped you watch TV or came with an expensive webcam. They just wanted a shiny modern Xbox 360.
 

Berordn

Member
That blame rest entirely upon Don Matrick. I hope he is happy having basically destroyed all the progress Microsoft made with the 360. I would have never expected myself to go Sony, and I'm still bitter at them about the Dreamcast. But Sony simply has the best videogame consoles on the market right now.

I have a strange feeling that he doesn't particularly care about the state of the medium.
 

Yoday

Member
And here I thought it was because it was a mediocre game with very little drive to keep playing. The progression system was terrible, and it has the most unsatisfying loot system I have ever experienced. The problem wasn't install base, the problem was a F2P game with no real hook or reason to spend money.

I'll never forget finally getting a new piece of gear for my character of choice, being excited because it was blue quality, and then losing all interest in the game when I discovered that said ring raised my overall health by less than 1%. The loot had to be practically worthless because they had to balance the game around playing against human controlled enemies. Any real character advancement would have destroyed the balance.
 
I can't imagine the mental gymnastics required to look at Minecraft and say it underperformed. They recently announced they've sold over one hundred million copies.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-02-minecraft-sales-pass-the-astonishing-100m-milestone

Were most of these copies sold before or after Microsoft bought them?

June 2014: 54M
June 2015: 70M
June 2016: 100M

Are the numbers huge? Yes. Is Microsoft crazy? Yes. However, they spend billions on it. Billions!
 
I'm not so sure I buy the Minecraft part if I'm being honest. Its still putting up huge numbers. I hate to say it but I think he's misinformed on that one.

But Halo 5, W10, and Xbone all being big misses sure sounds right. Halo 5 was hugely down compared to its predecessors and Xbone will be looking at selling around half of what the 360 did
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
I get the xbox and halo bit but how is Windows 10 and Minecraft underperforming? What did they expect it to do?
 

pastrami

Member
Minecraft is a big miss?

Huh? That can't be right.

Why not? They spent $2 billion to buy it. You don't spend that much money without having big plans. That's half of what Disney paid for Marvel and Star Wars (separately).
 

Par Score

Member
win 10 installs fell short from projection ? that doesn't sound right unless they had unrealistic projections.

They gave it away for free to anyone who had one of their last two OSes, and they got less than half of them to upgrade.

A majority of their current user-base apparently doesn't want their latest and greatest for free. Let that sink in.

Windows 10 did way better than Windows 8, but 8 was an outright Vista level disaster (Don't worry Windows Me, your title is safe for now) so that's not really a great consolation.

How the hell did Minecraft underperform?

What am I missing here?

Minecraft underperformed on the Xbox One / Windows 10 store, compared to it's performance on platforms people actually like and enjoy such as the PC, mobile, Xbox 360, etc.
 

blakep267

Member
A large majority of the 100 million sales happened before MS even owned Minecraft.

Heck, MS has very obviously not recouped anywhere close to the amount of money they spent on Minecraft yet.
I just looked it up and MC was at 54 million before the sale. That's not a large majority
 

Chris1

Member
Could the Minecraft stuff be referring to story mode? That came out after MS bought them.

Wouldn't be surprised if they turned Minecraft annually like Halo/Forza if it's really doing under expectations. Minecraft Kart 1 year, Story Mode next, etc

What caused Halo 5 to be a big miss? MCC? Halo 4?

MCC mostly I'd guess, people just had enough of it & the reviews didn't exactly help.
 

Boke1879

Member
You guys gotta remember MS spent a ton of money to acquire that IP. How much has the game sold since MS bought it?
 

rje

Member
Probably talking about how sales have most likely stagnated. No one is questioning it's overall success but MS did spend a ton to buy the series.

Well they didn't buy the IP when the game was selling like hotcakes. Notch probably got the better end of the deal. MS got robbed lol.

A large majority of the 100 million sales happened before MS even owned Minecraft.

Heck, MS has very obviously not recouped anywhere close to the amount of money they spent on Minecraft yet.

Were most of these copies sold before or after Microsoft bought them?

In 2016 Minecraft is selling 50k copies *per day*. If that's underperforming expectations their expectations were crazy.
 

Xater

Member
When they say there's supposed to be 2x as many Xbox Ones out there right now, I'm guessing they're probably implying PS4 has 2x as many consoles sold?

MS certainly did not expect to be beaten by Sony as handily as they have been. If it wasn't for the US market the situation for them would be super dire.
 
Halo5 MP is probably the best its ever been. If that doesnt suck people in, i dunno what they need to do at this point. All the DLC is free even though a lot of it is somewhat disappointing with the extensive reuse of assets in all the MP maps, its still all free.

I think they could have done more to get people to "replay" the campaign. As it is now, theres no reason to go back to it. Like maybe daily and weekly campaign bounties that gets you reqs.

This is what worries me about 343. They dont think outside the box enough. They just tend to follow what other people are doing. Theres very little actual innovation, at least not the way people want. Like Forge, its great tech, but then you go in a forge map and it just has a "forge" look to it thats disappointing.

Microsoft needs to innovate more and stop following what everyone else is doing. Especially when it comes to Halo. They need to hire really creative people, people that think outside the box and much better MP map designers.

Edit: Also, i feel like Halo needs to get to the point that it needs to be visually jaw dropping. It needs to blow people away when you look at it.
 
You guys gotta remember MS spent a ton of money to acquire that IP. How much has the game sold since MS bought it?
I'm pretty sure its sold a lot. What are they expecting it to sell 150 million? At some point it has to slow down. There's only so many people who play games.
 
A large majority of the 100 million sales happened before MS even owned Minecraft.

Heck, MS has very obviously not recouped anywhere close to the amount of money they spent on Minecraft yet.

It was never about the money in the first place, they were pissed that the top paid app for iOS and Android in the US wasn't available on Windows phone for so long.

BTW; they expected the acquisition to be break-even in 2016.
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
Yeah the PR for Halo 5 just stopped after release
Fans around the world have discovered the pure entertainment of what The Verge calls “an absolute masterclass in how to craft a first-person shooter” and currently the highest rated Xbox One exclusive, first-person shooter game of 2015, according to Metacritic.
 
UWP and windows 10 store is a disaster so far...yet people still flock to defend it ad say it will change everything.....reality is a lot different.
 

Mendax

Member
i think they are talking about the w10/bone version of minecraft rather than the java version or other console versions
 
After all the mistakes with the Halo franchise in the last few years is it a surprise that 5 didn't do so well. Especially when you barely play as the character people want to play as. It doesn't help that MC's story really should be done. Plus you got the Halo collection being a disaster really did not help.

Xbox One isn't selling as good because people know the PS4 is the better console and let's face it, nothing MS has done has won back a lot of the trust they squandered with the whole online only fiasco. Flip flopping and being able to throw a switch is something people will not forget lightly.

As for Minecraft, that I'm curious about. Has sales stagnated or reached it's peak?


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I think the Xbox division once Spencer took over has done the best it can to win fans over and try to get dump over the hump that they were in. But the shit hole Mattrick put them in maybe to deep to climb out of.

As someone who isn't a huge Halo fan I thought Halo 5 was a solid if not great game. The MP is awesome but I can sympathize with huge fans of the franchise who wanted to play as Master Chief and 343i didn't deliver that. Imagine if Uncharted 4 starred Sam as the main protagonist and Nate was only playable for 3 chapters. I'd be pissed as hell.

But I think Spencer and his team should he commended for trying their darnest to get this Xbox ship on the right path. BC I think was really big, for the first 2 years of the generation I'd argue that Xbox One has the best exclusives in comparison to PS4.

All this doom and gloom for MS and their Xbox division is straight bs. They aren't going to win this gen in terms of overall sales, but they just aren't gonna take their ball and go home.
 
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