It looks like we can’t go a full week these days without another contentious decision/statement from Xbox. In an interview with The New York Times, the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, stated that Xbox is not directly competing with other console makers anymore. Here’s the full statement:
“Our biggest competition isn’t another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies.”
Committing To The “Play Anywhere” Strategy
Between the recent price hikes to Game Pass, unrealistic profit demands, and the insane fact that Halo is coming to PlayStation next year, I feel like Xbox is starting to go the way of Sega. But I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. I don’t feel like I’m being harsh when I say that Xbox has been losing to PlayStation and Nintendo for the better part of a decade now. When your consoles just don’t sell as well as your competitors, it’s obvious you’d explore different strategies.
In the same New York Times interview, Matt Booty said Xbox wants to meet people where they are. And to be frank, there are millions more PlayStation 5 players than Xbox Series X|S players. Game exclusivity has been a losing race for Xbox, and they never quite recovered from the loss they took in the Xbox One/PS4 generation.
With that tangent out of the way, what the heck does competing with TikTok even mean? While it feels like it’s a throwaway statement, it also suggests they want to be seen as a platform for entertainment rather than just another console maker. They could have also just said they want to be seen as a publisher rather than a console maker, but that would be admitting defeat in a way. Most people shouldn’t have many gripes with Xbox games finding their way to competing consoles, but it is sad to see brand image sink to such depths for Team Green.
