"This cannot continue": Xbox leaders lay out "hard truths" behind sagging brand

Xbox seems to excel at all the benchmarks that measure platform success but it fails at every subjective metric: it's just ugly

the interface is ugly, the subscriptions are ugly, the specific way they tighten the vice on the consumer is ugly, the terms are ugly, the controller is ugly, the company is ugly, the branding and marketing is so ugly

Sony and Nintendo might be just as evil but they offer a comparatively beautiful product. Xbox 360 started out beautiful and ended ugly. Microsoft seemingly has an uglification fetish.

Metro is the ugliest UX in history

An Xbox has sat in my living room since the first one came out way back when I worked at Microsoft. Many enjoyable hours of Halo, Rainbow Six and what have you. The most current hardware (Xbox X) I mainly use to play remasters of old games (currently, Mass Effect) and as a Blu-ray player. Latest Call of Duty? Soooo tired. Jack up the Game Pass sub price? It’s just not worth it anymore. Xbox spent a ton of money pushing game streaming. Right, because I do what I can to reduce latency, and now I’m going to stream the game? If I’m going to play casual games, I’ll do it from my phone.

There are paper cuts that start to add up. Like if I hit A to play a game, now I have to hit A again on some intermediate screen to activate the Play button on that screen. WTF is that for? Further examples abound.

Part of the problem is on my end, as I’m growing a bit tired of the game industry in general (gambling-lite, with some gameplay thrown in). But part of it is the floundering of the platform I’ve used for over two decades. I’ve got a Switch that I’ve had a lot of fun with, and I think when it comes new hardware time, it’ll probably be a Steam Deck.

I never understood what the heck they were thinking.

I've been an Xbox diehard since the early 2000s but bringing your exclusives to PlayStation just makes me genuinely consider switching to PlayStation.

You are telling me I can now get all the games I want to play on PlayStation, or some of the games I want to play on Xbox? You're really making the case for me to switch.

And the whole "This is an Xbox" marketing strategy, claiming a Firestick streaming Xbox is as good as an Xbox? Firstly it's dumb and no one is buying it. Secondly, if people did believe it, at best you're just canabalizing your market share. You're not going to build any sort of brand loyalty to a dime a dozen streaming platform.