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GRTV News - GDC devs share their thoughts on Xbox and the PS5 Pro

They're very eye-opening thoughts to say the least, ones that could have a major impact on the console space.

Audio transcription

"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News. Today we're going to be talking about a rather quite surprising development that came from GDC, that being the Game Developers Conference. We don't usually get major news beats from GDC, it's very industry focused, great for networking that sort of stuff. There are always a few different bits of information largely relating to technology. I mean this year we got Marvel's 1943 Rise of Hydra. But now that the event is over, we've seen some people come back from GDC where they've had a chance to talk to developers and different people working in the game sector and share some rather sort of surprising opinions. I say surprising, some are surprising, some are kind of in line with what we were already thinking. So let's start first of all with Xbox. A major game company doesn't know why it continues to support Xbox. GamesIndustry.business Christopher Drink reveals some crazy developments from his time at GDC this year. So we've known for a long time that Xbox has been losing or already lost a hardware race to Sony, PlayStation and Nintendo, but it's seemingly plugging the gap with Game Pass and the other intrinsic features that it supports on the Xbox family of devices. However it would seem that Xbox is in bigger trouble than we might have assumed, at least if GamesIndustry.business Christopher Drink's experience at GDC this year is anything to go by. Speaking of the GI microcrust, Drink revealed some shocking revelations from unnamed developers and their opinion on Xbox and the brand and how the brand is performing. Drink stated, I heard it from a very prominent company and one not so prominent, was Xbox's performance in Europe is flatlining. You can follow our monthly coverage of the games market and you can see that Xbox's sales are falling and it's been falling all throughout last year and it's falling even harder this year. The phrase of one major company who released a big game last year said, I don't know why we bother supporting it. We heard that retailers in Europe were considering or had already been cutting back their Xbox stock on their shelves, whether that's hardware or games, that kind of thing. And now you've got publishers or third party publishers going, we're putting a lot of work into creating an S version or a Series S version of the game, when to be honest with you, the market for us is PC and PS5. So Drink also went on further to state that he assumed that further Xbox exclusive games will be coming to PlayStation down the line if these initial games perform well. He then noted that he believes Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer due to the fact that developing a game for Xbox might not be worth the time and resources it requires, even if it does open the door to Game Pass and to on console and the variety of other features that the console platform enables. Check out the video where Drink makes these claims below. Now, picking up on that, we have this one or this next story, which I'll be honest, it's sort of in line with what I was already thinking anyway. Report, even developers aren't sure of the point of a PS5, bro. Considering we've just left the PS4, PS5 crossover era, it does seem strange."

"So even though we're nearly four full years into this console generation, you'd be forgiven for feeling like the PS5 and the Xbox Series XS launched last week. Apart from the shortages, another reason why it feels like this console generation has had little impact is because a lot of major games still have still launched on PS4 and Xbox One. And yet Sony is still reportedly planning on releasing a PS5 Pro this year, something that has baffled general consumers and seemingly developers too. Speaking on a new episode of GamesIndustry.biz's microcast, Christopher Drink spoke about the developer response to a PS5 Pro. A couple of companies said this isn't going to grow the market. It's not going to move the needles and drink."

"This generation doesn't even seem to have got started really, let alone feel the need for a mid generation update. How about we just get some original next generation software up and spinning? Sony apparently still has some unreasonable expectations for the console as it is likely to come with some new hardware features that can make your games run a bit better. For those who are happy with the current PS5's performance though, it does beg the question of why this upgrade exists."

"So yes, it's interesting because we don't often hear sort of devs and publishers opinions on these sort of big industry topics. We've always been under the sort of mindset here at GameRadar, particularly as we talked about in the sort of gaming gossip episodes. We don't really understand the point of a PS5 Pro either because it doesn't, we don't feel like we need it right now. I don't feel like the PS5 is utilised to its full capabilities yet so why would I upgrade to a PS5 Pro? That's sort of where I stand on that matter. And it looks like developers are in the same boat as well. You know, if they're still looking to tap the PS4 market because of how many consoles are out there and the Xbox One market, why would you spend resources developing something specifically to be able to utilise the PS5 Pro's capabilities? It just doesn't line up really. And as for Xbox, well, we've been seeing it for a while. Xbox sales, hardware sales we say, have been struggling for years."

"They've pretty much never had a foothold in some countries like Japan. We've seen over the past sort of year on year sales for the Xbox Series consoles in the UK are down nearly 50% whereas PlayStation and Switch are down at most 18% or something like that. Xbox as a whole in the hardware race has been struggling for a while but again, that's why we know that they put a lot of resources and effort into things like Backcom Pass and Game Pass and cloud gaming and cross-saves and all that stuff to make it so the Xbox ecosystem is more attractive for other reasons instead of just like, here's console, play console."

"But again, if you've got developers and publishers out there saying, why do we bother spending resources developing a game for Xbox if the market is on PC and PlayStation 5? It does make you start wondering, are we staring down the barrel of what happened to Sega and stuff like that in the late 90s where we just see them sort of stop supporting the console and just move away from being a hardware manufacturer and becoming sort of a software developer in their entirety? Maybe. I think that with the way that Microsoft is structured, I think if they do sack off the console race at some point, sack off hardware, I think we'll still see them make controllers because I think you probably see a lot of Xbox controllers still get purchased specifically for PC and stuff. But I think that we'll see a bigger focus on things like cloud gaming in the future. I think that Microsoft have had the foothold in that industry and the leg up on Sony, so we'll see them sort of exploiting their strengths a bit more down the line. But again, we'll know more in the future. We're still expecting Microsoft to have some sort of handheld system out later this year. They've mentioned that they're already working on the next generation of systems anyway, so even if they do sort of ditch and exit the console race, it won't be until sort of like 2035 or something when we're looking at not the next generation of consoles, but the next next generation of consoles, if I had to guess."

"But anyway, that's all the time we have today's episode of GRTV News. We'll be back now tomorrow for the last one of the week, actually, because we're going into Easter weekend, so stay tuned for that. Otherwise, thank you for watching. We'll see you all. Take care, everyone."

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