Xbox woke up and realised India is a market it actually where it sells controllers and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions (consoles have been unavailable here for quite a long while now) and in order to jumpstart that it did a marketing campaign focussing on the latest addition to its offerings — Xbox Cloud Gaming.
In this episode of Day Zero we discuss what it did, what the outcome was, what’s next, and why we’re extremely skeptical of the future of Xbox in India, even if in the short term, Xbox has been able to win developer mindshare and interest with its Xbox Developer Accelerator Programme.
Along with this we also discuss on-ground realities in terms of sales, user feedback, and why being at retail matters in markets that are not the US. In addition to this we dig into how Xbox Cloud Gaming’s infrastructure in India has impacted the overall experience, which seems to be a cause for concern.
Furthermore, we also talk about what to expect from Xbox with its upcoming developer showcase later this month.
Also, we zoom out on the bigger picture concerns plaguing Xbox, namely its parent company going all in on all things slop and how it ties into the tech billionaire delusion of ending consumer ownership of computers, consoles, and any kind of hardware, gaming or otherwise.
To round off the warranted doomerism, we also muse on the possibility of Xbox pulling a Meta and gutting its studios wholesale to chase Microsoft’s AI ambitions.
Oh and in one bright note: we also reveal the winner of the limited edition Ghost of Yotei controller — Darren Rodrigues. Congratulations, we’ll be sending it across soon.
Day Zero is a video games podcast from Rahul Majumdar and Rishi Alwani. We break down the bytes and bits behind the decisions that make and break the world’s greatest entertainment industry.
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