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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#151

Post by bashmelek »

speak_plainly wrote: post #11

At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five. They're making actual games. Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat, like Xbox, has also put them in a slow-motion death spiral that's going to become painfull…

That is encouraging, but my stock portfolio paints a different picture. Nintendo is unfortunately doing terribly this year. I still believe in their core mission, even if some of their litigiousness and anti consumer practices have put me off

Re: Resetting Xbox

#152

Post by ErneX »

protimewaster wrote: post #65
jeppester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xbox is ahead of Sony on this path. Their studios often, if not most of the time, release physical games that require a full download to play. I doubt that they will go back to where Sony are now.

> I doubt that they will go back to where Sony are now. I agree. However, I do think they would get some positive attention (and some accompanying sales) if they were to backtrack and announce a console more like the 360. It feels doable if they care to do it. Physical media should still be viable for holding all the game data for a while longer. Blurays can manage up to 128 GB, and I think the average game install s…

Another issue is that Xbox game discs this generation are 50GB while on PlayStation 5 they are 100GB.

I think the reason for going with 50GB for games on the MS side was to remain compatible with the previous generation of consoles.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#153

Post by johnnyanmac »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #114
wincy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where Nintendo is at. It’s hilarious how much fun me and my kids are having playing games like Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, Pokemon Pokopia, and the surprise smash hit has been Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. My kids make all the neighbors and have them get married and laugh about it and it’s just such a goofy concept. The graphics are good enough that you no longer notice there’s graphic…

Nintendo are basically the only people who held out against in game spending, for which I salute them. I spent a few years in and around the industry and there was so much insanity around the need for in game monetization that it just made things much worse. And because the game studios didn't care about it, none of the money stuff worked, making executives even more upset. All to catch some vision of F2P money which…

Nintendp dabbled briefly with it. But they know their audience and very much did not want to risk any PR hit by associating too closely with the typical gacha/lootbox model. They saw the Roblox/Fortnite smoke long before most of the industry and turned off very quickly.

But there's one specific statistic to why Nintendo can keep doing what it does in a way no one else can: 98% retention rate. You get into Nintendo and you basically never leave. Even for Japan, that's well above the 70% retention rate you'd expect. Keeping that kind of institutional knowledge for an entire career makes them really good at what they do, and the unfortunate decades of Japan's economy meant they were less tempted by amassing huge loans or risks on experimental stuff.

Maybe they didn't become trillionaires, but it means they amassed a huge war chest and can weather storms that US companies are currently in the middle of.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#154

Post by alexp2021 »

mjr00 wrote: post #50
rockyj wrote: post #24

This is a total mess IMHO. - The make around 5 billion in revenue per quarter - The problem according to them is profit margin - around 150-160 million So first of all, they are big! Secondly they are not at a loss. They just have a "thin, non-growing margin". So to fix all this they are trimming down, so they can "return to growth" (which I think is ridiculous). Some points - - They are huge business even now - 5 bi…

> - The make around 5 billion in revenue per quarter - The problem according to them is profit margin - around 150-160 million > So first of all, they are big! Secondly they are not at a loss. They just have a "thin, non-growing margin". So to fix all this they are trimming down, so they can "return to growth" (which I think is ridiculous). How is that profit margin distributed though? King (Candy Crush etc) and Moja…

Really 191 players or 191k players?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#155

Post by jerf »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #118
zitterbewegung wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xbox around 2021 had around a 12% profit margin and the gaming industry as a whole was around 17-22% . In 2023 the target for the division was put to 30% . We see this new restructuring because the target was put this high. Microsoft really wanted Game Pass to be a steam competitor which is pretty much what everyone in the industry tries to do and fails. The push for Game Pass prices to be higher was to get the 30% m…

>Microsoft really wanted Game Pass to be a steam competitor which is pretty much what everyone in the industry tries to do and fails. Gamepass is quite literally the most anti-steam strategy ever. It's a massive loss leading (or rather, low margin leading) service relying on a pseudo-rental service to provide value. Steam got to where it is by keeping all its costs lean and developing a service around taking a cut fr…

I wrote a while ago about how companies seem to have gotten the idea into their head that subscriptions are unconditionally good, rather than a contingent good based on the exact circumstances of the subscription: https://jerf.org/iri/post/2023/streampocalypse-and-first-pri...

Gamepass as a subscription to make sure you always have something to play, that has a lot of old games or indie games and other games that have no commercial value makes sense to me. The back catalog for any of the current consoles is plenty deep with games that have lost their ability to move units independently but still have a lot of value and can also give that perception of value. Such a plan is picking up pennies, but it's a lot of pennies.

I've never understood putting your new releases out on gamepass and bragging about that as your primary value proposition. Many new games are, say, 20-30 hour experiences, assuming you play them from start to finish once. One does not need to spend too much time with "this % of other players got this achievement" to see how many players tend to drop off of a game even that long. So if you put your new game that you would have sold for $60-80 dollars to me directly and it translates to three weeks of engagement on your $15-ish/month (depending on level) subscription, it's hard to see how that is an economic win. Put that game on Gamepass in a year or two, sure, that can make sense, but on release? And that not as a mistake, but a deliberate strategy? I can not fathom the mindset that leads to that.

As a deal for customers it seems to have been pretty good but I've never understood how Microsoft expected to make money on that plan. The streaming-video proposition of making a high-budget release to keep your subscribers makes quite a bit more sense, you could never have counted on getting $70 out of a customer for those anyhow, and even that economic proposition I think has proved more complicated than the streaming companies expected. The Gamepass model has just seemed insane.

I expect it to move to more like what I described at the beginning. As a way to turn a lot of old and hard-to-monetize content into a subscription stream it's brilliant. As a way of releasing new AAA titles it's crazy. Movie studios played with that model and I don't think they liked it at all.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#156

Post by torginus »

hbn wrote: post #16

It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO. Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the interv…

I had the sinking feeling from the start, that a total stranger was brought in to do a butcher's job.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#157

Post by pyth0 »

tracker1 wrote: post #145
ryandrake wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I'd love to hear specifics. OP is all over this thread vaguely insinuating about "political content" but notably hasn't yet pointed out any specific examples that are objectionable.

[flagged]

Just so I understand your objection, they are woke because in the game one of their studios made, the woman in the game wasn't attractive enough for you?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#158

Post by ToucanLoucan »

vel0city wrote: post #134
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's by design. The outrage merchants post day in and out to signal allegiance to this bizarre cult. People also don't respect how WILDLY influential GamerGate as been. There's good arguments to be made that Trump and his shitty White House would never have come to pass if not for moot re-enabling political discussions on 4chan at the behest of some combo of Epstein and Bannon, explicitly to stoke reactionary rage at…

I agree. A lot of people assume rational actors and don't understand "meme magic".

Even calling it memes is overly charitable. It's deliberate stoking of rage at scale to accomplish political ends.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#159

Post by foepys »

tracker1 wrote: post #71
mjr00 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The make around 5 billion in revenue per quarter - The problem according to them is profit margin - around 150-160 million > So first of all, they are big! Secondly they are not at a loss. They just have a "thin, non-growing margin". So to fix all this they are trimming down, so they can "return to growth" (which I think is ridiculous). How is that profit margin distributed though? King (Candy Crush etc) and Moja…

On the margins, that's crazy thin for the size of the org... One bad quarter could turn from a few million in profits to hundreds of millions in losses. It's too close, and there's no way to build/store funds for any kind of storm at that level. Now, I think the vast majority of the pain is more than self-inflicted... I think actual business, marketing and focus need to start taking priority over idealistic political…

Billion USD grocery chains operate on 2-3% margins just fine...

Re: Resetting Xbox

#160

Post by xg15 »

For that kind of announcement, I found it surprisingly open and detailed (at least if everything in there is true).

Still, some points are telling.

> Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.

So the layoffs are not because they're operating at a loss and had to cut costs urgently. The margins are there, they aren't even thin, they're just not thick enough...

> In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players. They bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX.

Was a bit surprised that Minecraft got such a special status, but not at all surprised by King. All the studios getting nerfed, except the engagement maximizing mobile games...

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