Do Digital Libraries Keep You Stuck to Your Console?

Will you look backwards...or forwards

On the Kinda Funny Xcast this past May, Xbox’s very public Head, Phil Spencer, made a telling comment.

“We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games.”

I have a lot of problems with this statement.

First, while Xbox One did quite handily “lose” the last console generation to the PS4 (117 million units to 51 million units, yikes!), Phil shouldn’t be putting this in quotable form in the public sphere. Xbox Series has had some struggles with its game library this generation, but it has a lot of good things going for it and when you’re asking people to plunk $500 on a Series X—well—nobody wants to back a loser.

Next, the Xbox One was released right around the same time Phil Spencer was named the Head of Xbox, on the heels of the Xbox 360 battling PS3 to a near tie…something Xbox would consider a huge success today. Phil is admitting his shortcomings at the helm of the ship.

Still, what’s past isn’t future. The biggest question I wanted to ask today is…

Do our digital libraries really anchor us to our consoles?

As always, I look to my own experiences to find some footing.

I didn’t start buying games digitally, in a serious way at least, until my Nintendo Switch. Indie games started hitting that console hard after appearing only lazily on the Wii U. The first game I ever played on the Switch was a digital purchase, I Am Setsuna, followed closely behind my (the incredible) Shovel Knight Treasure Trove. Today, I’ve got around 50 digital games purchased on the thing.

But, who cares…I would never not have a Nintendo console, digital library or not. So let’s ignore that for now.

I also owned some digital games on my PS4. A ton? No. But I was up to about 15 or so. Nidhogg, Fall Guys, Last Day of June, Super Mega Baseball, Rocket League (before it went free), Unravel…and some others…plus what I had available thanks to the PS+ Game of the Month service. It was also a library of games I was still playing.

You just can’t quit Nidhogg.

So in April of 2020, when I acquired my first Xbox console by having a masked Best Buy employee place it in my trunk in a touchless transaction, I was walking away from a good handful of games when I handed the PS4 down to my son.

I was an Xbox guy (an Xbot as some call us…perhaps less flatteringly) until February 2022, nearly two years. In that time, I built up my Xbox digital library with banger after banger:

• Red Dead Redemption II

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

• All the Life is Strange games

• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

• Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2

• Death’s Door

• XCOM 2

• …and on and on, I have a good bunch!

And yet in February 2022 I bought a PS5 and have watched my Series X largely collect dust since then. I split my digital library in two. Gross. To Phil’s credit, I did agonize over the decision just a little bit. A bunch of games I’d have to double dip for on PlayStation, but still more of them I was happy to have played and left in the past (I’m looking at you, Valhalla) and my Game Pass games were never going to be mine forever anyway.

If my game library was even bigger, would it have stopped me? I can’t say for sure, but I’m confident that it wouldn’t. My issue with Xbox at the time was its exclusives, as few and far between as they were, weren’t of interest to me personally. Halo Infinity had finally arrived, but I don’t play shooters. Same for games like Forza Horizon. Meanwhile, there was a load of PlayStation games I hadn’t played, including PS5 exclusives such as Demon’s Souls Remake, Returnal, Sackboy, Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank…games in genres I love that were best of breed.

And so I left my library behind.

I’m reasonably assured that, as gamers, we will look forward to what’s best for the future instead of sitting on the games we played in the past. On top of that, 90% of our libraries aren’t exclusives anyway. We can build what we need again.

Can Xbox win PlayStation players to their side?

Of course they can! They already did it with me!

Microsoft has given Phil Spencer every tool and resource he could’ve asked for. They’ve bolstered Xbox Studios by bringing huge studios into the fold such as Mojang (Minecraft anyone?), Playground Games (Forza, Fable) and of course the massive purchase of ZeniMax Media (Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Prey, Fallout and a ton more). And as if there was anyone else they needed, they’re still currently attemption the seismic atomic bomb purchase of Activision-Blizzard (Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro and everything else you can think of).

Literally, if nothing else, Xbox will dwarf both PlayStation and Nintendo COMBINED when it comes to first-party games. No matter what.

Game Pass is a loss-leading game service that puts all of Xbox’s first-party games in your hands for free, along with a plethora of big 3rd-party titles and especially indie titles, for just $11 (or $17 for Ultimate) per month. You don’t own them, and you lose access when they’re gone, but for most games that’s fine enough and the games tend to stick on the service for many months, if not years.

The Series S is a $300 discounted console that, despite lacking in serious power, will play all the current-gen games, digitally, for the price of a Nintendo Switch. The margins must be razor thin, and they certainly sherlock Series X sales, but it’s a price-point that allows reluctant Xbox gamers to join the ecosystem, and pay into Game Pass, with very little risk.

But for all this, Xbox One “lost the last console generation” and they’re being outsold 2:1 in this generation. Some Xbox voices will say it’s all about Game Pass now, but PS+ has been revamped with new tiers and is coming on strong fast. Its lineup is out of this world. If Xbox’s best feature is matched, what happens next?

It comes down to the games.

No more excuses, Phil

Xbox can match, and beat, its primary competition by bringing their exclusives to market and making sure they’re the games people want to play. Games that make gamers look at their consoles and say, “Hey, you there, why can’t you play THAT?!” Special games. Not with narrative adventures such as As Dusk Falls and Pentiment, two well-reviewed games that basically made up Xbox’s entire exclusive output in 2022. Not Forza. Not Grounded. And you certainly can’t release a Halo game was so quickly forgotten. You needed a Breath of the Wild, not a Redfall.

It has to be special!

Xbox also needs to recognize the boundaries of Game Pass and stop giving their games away for free on Day 1. This is a more debatable point, but from my prospective, if Xbox isn’t making the best games then what’s Game Pass matter? They seem to have hit a ceiling with the service, too, going years without announcing updated subscription numbers, meanwhile they’ll be giving away StarField for free on it in September.

Giving. Away. StarField. For. Free. Millions of sales evaporating in a poof.

This is why Xbox doesn’t announce sales much anymore. You’d be hard-pressed to find coverage of it. They’re about “players.” How many people have played the game. But that can be such a misleading stat. For example, I don’t play (nor like) racing sims, but I was one of the MILLIONS of people that downloaded Forza 5 and played it for 20-30 minutes or an hour. Now we’re immortalized in their 30 million Forza players statistic. I didn’t buy the game and I left Game Pass shortly afterwards, what’s it matter?

How did that help Xbox? We don’t know.

Can the Day 1 thing, already. Put your exclusives on there Day 60 or Day 90, whichever. Day 365 or longer like Sony seems to be doing with PS+. Modern games are expensive to make and, without a doubt, StarField will be the most expensive game ever made…and you’re just giving it away. Sure, you can crow about how many people PLAYED the games but, you’re a business, not a charity.

It better draw in 10 million new subscriptions to Game Pass, I tell ya what. StarField need to be a generational game. It has to make people rush to buy an Xbox or sign up to Game Pass (long term) and that’s an unfair expectation to put on a game or team.

No more excuses, Phil. You have the resources. You have the talent. You’re on TV nearly every day. It isn’t working. Year after year you say “next year” and all we have to show for it in 2023 was a surprise hit in Hi-Fi Rush (that did next to no sales) and the promise of StarField.

Stop blaming digital libraries. Win the hearts and minds of gamers or step aside.