2023-06-22 19:24:09
Microsoft is driving up the hype… and the prices
While the hand had been in Sony and Nintendo for quite a while now (one thanks to its mythical exclusives like God of War Ragnarok or The Last of Us, the other thanks to its games as timeless as they are exceptional like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Metroid Prime Remastered), Microsoft does not seem to have said its last word. After a battle to buy Activision Blizzard whose twists and turns are not about to stop, the American manufacturer has decided to impose itself in the hearts of gamers by showing its best side during the Summer Game Fest conferences.
Indeed, it was during the latter that we were able to get news of Fable (the fantasy game with iconic British humor), and especially of Starfield. Presenting itself as a real Skyrim in space, the new game from Bethesda promises an epic as long as it is memorable, and the first glimpses of the game are far from calling this aspect into doubt. However, as gamer opinion for Microsoft began to skyrocket, the company recently announced some price increases, including Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Series X. Information that risks throwing a little chill on their new hype so difficult to find, even if we suspect that the arrival of Starfield should warm it up easily.
Are video games more popular than ever among young people?
Difficult to find defenders of video games in the traditional media. Often singled out for their violence, for the addiction they can create or for the supposed brutalization for which they are responsible, it is rare that we try to give them real credit. So when Sarah Bondone of Microsoft’s executives, is interviewed by our colleagues from CNNit is normal to hope for a slightly different sound.
Following the conferences dedicated to Microsoft organized during the Summer Game Fest period, the latter had the opportunity to provide her point of view on Microsoft’s strategy for the future of video games at Xbox, in addition to reviewing their past troubles. When asked about the reactions of the players to the fiasco that the release of Redfall may have been, Sarah Bond was very good at turning the situation in favor of the players:
Our fans are deeply passionate. So when things go differently than we expected, the passion, the reaction that you see at that moment, what I see is love. They believe in us, they really want it to work. But I think it’s important to understand that it takes years and years to create great games and build the kind of portfolio that we share with you today.
Later in the same interview, Sarah Bond also returned to the issue of accessibility and the representation of diversity in Microsoft-branded games. It must be said that one of the major responsibilities of the leader is to help the program “ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program” which is supposed to highlight the least well-represented developers. According to her, representation is a major issue in today’s games, and more particularly for young players:
People under 25 spend more time gaming than doing anything else, even using social media, which is hard to believe. But the creators who make these stories are currently not representative of the diversity of the planet. And the best way to get representation, in my opinion, is to have diverse creators.
In addition to wanting to make games more inclusive and diverse, Sarah Bond therefore attacks with this speech some prejudices that still die hard. According to her, video games take a particularly important place in the lives of young people, going so far as to say that under 25s spend more time gaming than using social media. Hard to believe in his own words…and by the numbers. After checking, we were unable to confirm his wordseven if it is worth noting that playing time is indeed greater among young people than among other age groups, and that it greatly exceeds the time given to television.
Source : Frameplay
According to the figures of our colleagues from Frameplay (which date from 2020), 18-25 year olds spend an average of 7.48 hours per week in front of a video game, against only 6.2 in front of the television. However, it is the time spent in front of online videos (and therefore we imagine in front of social networks) which takes the lead with 9.2 hours per week. We leave you the graph above to let you observe the rest of the figures according to the different age groups.
If Sarah Bond’s statement therefore does not seem to be entirely correct, it nevertheless highlights that video games are indeed an activity particularly popular with those under 25, and that it does not seem ready to decrease. A positive discourse that changes the accusations that we are used to reading here and there.
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