Someone Please Tell Microsoft Why People Buy Gaming Consoles

Even though E3 just got under way, most of the larger companies have already made their ads bigger, and surprisingly, Microsoft's offer already feels like a lack. I say "surprisingly" because Microsoft was the only company to debut major hardware in the show.

Normally, when a company announces a new console and 22 exclusive titles, as Microsoft did on Sunday night, you'll be in a hurry to declare it a loser. The large number of ads made by Microsoft is amazing, but the commotion and fear could not save the company from a replay by the fans.

There is one important reason why Microsoft is perceived as a loser despite all the news that fell on one of the E3's longest press events: It has no games. Both Nintendo and Sony left fans freaking with announcements of major exclusive games soon, titles such as the highly anticipated Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Saga 2 for Nintendo, and Spider-Man, Detroit, and a new Sony Uncharted game.

Microsoft, for its part, had a new car racing game from Forza and ... in fact that's it. Most of their "exclusive" games for which they buy a console because it is the only place to experience the game, are exclusive to "Microsoft", which means that they can also be played on a PC or are "timed" Like the rise of the Tomb Raider of 2015. That means that for a short time the title will only be available for Xbox One. Later will be available in Windows, PS4, and in rare cases, Nintendo Switch.

With its small, exclusive gaming bank to attract people, Microsoft is going to need some other way to attract consumers, and it desperately needs it. Last night Sony announced that it has sold more than 60.4 million PS4 to date. Nintendo has not made the numbers available, but as it only went on sale in March, the estimated 2.74 million units sold is impressive. Microsoft has not made its own numbers available, but in January SuperData estimated that the total consoles sold between its launch again in 2013 and January 2017 to about 26 million.

Microsoft is losing.

Personally, I thought that Microsoft could use the crazy power of its new console to produce the best VR solution we had yet seen as a way to woo consumers. However, as Wired and Polygon put it, this is not the case. "Our main focus is to make our mixed-reality experiences a success on Windows 10 PCs," Microsoft's Alex Kipman told Polygon last week.

Instead, Microsoft hopes the power of its console will be enough for people to drop $ 500 on the new Xbox One X. Xbox boss Phil Spencer told Eurogamer in an interview published today that "Xbox One X is for him Client who is looking for the most powerful console that will run each game will play better than any other console. "

What's great, for the console player with a lot of energy, the Xbox One X could be an answer, but the players with a lot of energy do not usually go to the consoles. They are looking for PCs that they can build themselves. Spencer boasted during the Microsoft event that the Xbox One X could do 6 calculations of teraflop, certainly a lot of processing power. However, the guy sitting next to me muttered, "My computer makes 8 teraflops." As Gizmodo pointed out Sunday, a high-end graphics card, such as Nvidia 1080Ti, makes 11.3.

So while the Xbox One X is certainly powerful, people who urgently need that power can get something almost twice as fast by building it themselves, and because many of the Xbox exclusives are exclusive to Microsoft, those computer players do not even Be penalized for your PCs.

Which makes it look like Microsoft has gotten into a corner. The Xbox One X could be the fastest console, but it is not the fastest gaming machine in any way, it also has no fresh exclusions like Nintendo, or cool exclusives and VR like Sony. Much could happen next year as the Xbox One X, and games optimized for its insane performance, hit the market. It could turn out that what people really crave for a console is insane graphics, and that the console spins all around for Microsoft. But right now, it feels like the company that gave us the Xbox 360, one of the most popular consoles of all time, is heading towards the last place.