Xbox CEO on the Industry's Accessibility Crisis
IndustryComments
We saw this with the transition to digital-only consoles a few years back. The convenience of no discs just meant the end of the used game market, which was the only way many people could actually afford to play.
I'm not buying the part about player attention. The real barrier for people I know is just the upfront cost of a console and a game that costs seventy dollars.
which part of the hardware cost is the actual dealbreaker?
Does this mean more push for cloud gaming... or maybe a shift toward lower spec requirements? I wonder how the news about custom Steam Machines fits into this... maybe we're seeing a divide between closed ecosystems and open hardware...
The shift toward Games as a Service (GaaS) models creates a perpetual rent cycle. When the entry cost is a recurring monthly fee rather than a one-time purchase, the cumulative cost over a five year cycle often exceeds previous hardware generations.
It is not just about the money. The real crime is the live service bloat designed to keep us logged in for a thousand hours. Why admit there is a crisis when you are the ones designing the treadmill?