Xbox is in a period of transition, as it struggles to find a strong footing in the post-Xbox console era.
The console wars are over, declared GameStop (and the White House?), with Xbox thoroughly trounced by PlayStation and Nintendo. But, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn't doom and gloom about Xbox's platform future, at least not yet.
Xbox and gaming DOES compete with TikTok, Instagram, etcetera ...
Obviously, the gaming industry does compete with TikTok and YouTube Shorts and the like. This is why you've started to see games appear in your Netflix app in reverse.
Streaming media platforms have grown faster than gaming has. Social media apps like TikTok has grown faster than gaming has. When it comes to choosing what to do in your leisure time, you typically only opt for one hobby at a time — if indeed doom-scrolling counts as a hobby.
If you search the web, there's a variety of analyses that put daily social media use at anywhere between 2–3 hours per person, depending on whose figures you look at.
Gaming is generally regarded at a lower ebb than that, hitting 1–2 hours, while simultaneously having a smaller audience — particularly if you separate hyper-casual mobile gaming out of the equation.
Doomscrolling, Netflix, or traditional core gaming obviously compete for our free time and attention. It's not really an activity you do at work (generally speaking ...) and in those short hours you can truly call your own of an evening, the immediacy and ease of access of things like TikTok do seem to be winning out.
At least, to some degree.
Companies are eager to point to forever games like Fortnite and Roblox at bucking some of these trends, but both of these kind of occupy the same social space as things like TikTok and Instagram Reels in my view.
Fortnite and Roblox are hyper-social, and hyper-cultural in their design and functionality. The throwaway mini-games Roblox is known for could be analogous to the scrollable algorithmic content you find in a social media feed, complete with in-game messaging systems and platform-exclusive memes and cultural notes.
Microsoft could and should be offering experiences that align more closely with this. Roblox is obviously on the Xbox platform, but the Xbox platform itself could and should be the vehicle that competes with TikTok et al. for the cultural relevancy Satya Nadella seems simultaneously envious and ignorant of.
... but Microsoft's anti-culture corporatism is WHY it can't compete with social media.
A very recent, relevant example of Microsoft's failure to adopt and lean into culture can be found in its new Copilot AI personification. Mico, an impersonal blob, will now appear when you use Microsoft Copilot's voice mode.
Nobody cares about Mico, nor will they ever care about Mico. However, they did care about Cortana, back when Microsoft's first AI-like assistant debuted on Windows Phone.
Why? Because Cortana is the famous AI from Halo. Microsoft itself acknowledged its own 90s assistant Clippy with Mico, but only if you tap him lots of times as a weird easter egg. You were SO close, Microsoft.
Microsoft can't complain about TikTok eating its lunch when it's reluctant to lean into its own cultural identity. Mico should be Clippy or Cortana all up, instead of this forgettable slime mould. And don't get me started on renaming all of its iconic brands to "Whatever 365 Copilot."
When Satya Nadella referred to the Xbox strategy as being "like the Office strategy," I rolled my eyes so hard that I saw the inside of my skull — and even my brain matter looked disappointed.
The mind that would conflate gaming with Microsoft Office is exactly the reason why Xbox can't compete with TikTok. It's not because TikTok is somehow inherently better as a medium — it's because it has replaced the corporate and controlled, unhuman and cold environment that Xbox as a network has become.
Xbox has lots of social features, but they're hidden away and buried in menus upon menus, instead of being front-loaded and celebrated. The Xbox PC app won't even let you reply to developer updates, and you can't share clips or content anywhere there either. It's the antithesis of Steam, which has gradually become a social platform in its own right.
The mind that would conflate gaming with Microsoft Office is exactly the reason why Xbox can't compete with TikTok.
I get that Microsoft wants to remain cautious here. Moderation and safety is incredibly important on these types of platforms, but the vast majority of players are now adults who don't need to be treated like children. Microsoft has robust tools to protect kids already anyway.
People are flocking to platforms like TikTok and platforms like Roblox because they feel like they can be themselves, express their creativity, and find others who share their values and interests.
Xbox has increasingly become an anti-social platform afraid to dip its toes into the oft-murky universe of social media, for better or worse. Roblox is bigger than all of Steam by the way.
And it's not because the games are good — it's because it's pure culture and restless memery. Given that Microsoft owns Minecraft, which offers similar social potential, you'd think they'd have gotten the memo.
It's the over-sanitization of Xbox and indeed other platform holders what's making them uncompetitive against more chaotic, admittedly potentially less scrupulous rivals. A change of mentality is needed, in my view, and it needn't come at the cost of safety.
Microsoft DOES NOT get social media, and is at the very apex of uncool.
TikTok is eating into gaming, but it doesn't need to be this way. Microsoft talks about it as if it's simply the result of a generational reality they can't compete with. I say, blaming TikTok is a cop out. Millions of people use Xbox on a daily basis, and there's no reason it couldn't be more social, if not even more social, than TikTok.
Microsoft had platforms within Xbox to facilitate this back in the day. Stuff like 1 vs. 100, the Netflix watch party system, social status and sharing feeds — all gone.
There's doubtless some way to keep users within the ecosystem even after they've finished a play session with their friends, and the obvious answer has to be social, in some form. I'm not paid enough to know exactly what that might look like, but it definitely doesn't look like throwing in the towel or tossing blame around.
Microsoft's ethos under Satya Nadella has been to basically decline to fully compete, and simply build tools and platforms for others to compete on top of instead.
The problem is, it's unwillingness to actually compete with companies within its own industry will preclude it from doing anything to actually grow the industry. Contradicting its own claims.
Nadella says innovation requires margins. Margins require customers, though. The next Xbox sounds like it could be more open than ever, but if they get it wrong, it risks becoming simply Steam-first PC gaming with extra steps.
If Microsoft truly wants to compete with TikTok, it can't keep running away from the mature social layers that its actual competitors are promoting and developing with rapidity.
It's not just about social features, though, Microsoft all up just isn't cool. There was a brief moment in history where Panos Panay and his slick Surface reveals made it seem like Microsoft was capable of being cool. Those days are gone now, and Xbox is suffering in the collateral, in my view.
I have absolutely no expertise or evidence to back this up, but in my humble opinion, I reckon the winner in future decades in gaming will be whoever manages to directly link their gaming platform to a more robust social layer.
That layer would potentially couple with video, and retain users inside the ecosystem even after gaming sessions are over. I'm not sure Microsoft is cool enough to even begin to explore that, but Steam sure might be.
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