We've known for a long time that Xbox has been losing (or already lost) the hardware race to Sony PlayStation and Nintendo, but is 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.biz's Christopher Dring's experience at GDC this year is anything to go by.
Speaking on the GI Microcast, Dring revealed some shocking revelations from unnamed developers and their opinion on Xbox and how the brand is performing. Dring 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 in the games market and you can see that Xbox 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 a S version, or a Series S version of a game, when to be honest with you, the market for us is PC and PS5".
Dring 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 that it requires, even if it does open the door to Game Pass on console and the variety of other features that the console platform enables.
Check out the video where Dring makes these claims below.
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t1otAXv2rk&t=537s</social>