Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Resetting Xbox

news.xbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 981 posts

Re: Resetting Xbox

#241

Post by chrisfosterelli »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #227
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With due fairness, these are two different sets of leaders and two different strategies. A lot of the strategy you outlined -- buying all these studios, replicating netflix, giving away day one games, raising game pass -- was a strategy put in place by Phil Spencer. Phil pushed for this investment with the promise it would pay off later for MS. He's talked publicly about having to convince Nadella to put up ungodly a…

I certainly enjoyed gaming their rewards system for years on a series S. $300 for the box, maybe spent $40 over roughly 4 years for gamepass. It was nice while it lasted!

I totally agree. Being able to buy three-year cards for gold and then convert them to GP for $1 was an absolutely killer deal in terms of bang-for-buck. I stopped renewing once they closed that 'loop-hole' personally, I only play a few games a year (and usually ones that are on sale) so full price game pass just never made any financial sense for me. I already spend less than that per month and play whatever I want.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#242

Post by WorldMaker »

mghackerlady wrote: post #175
babelfish wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are approx ~3 billion "gamers" worldwide, why shouldn't Xbox set a goal of 1/3 of them using their platform?

Because approximately most of them exclusively play mobile games

Which to be fair Xbox still owns King and thus Candy Crush.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#243

Post by ifwinterco »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #198

The crazy thing about Xbox games, or any game today, is that they require infrastructure, they require maintenance and subscriptions, and they require a constant release cycle, and moreover, a thriving community of humans who are playing the same exact game at the same exact real time as others. It seems like the primary lost art of gaming is single-player, offline, solitary modes. Anyone could literally pick up an A…

Yes, this is part of why I lost interest in video games (probably mostly just getting older if I'm honest).

However at the risk of sounding basic, RDR2 (2018) and Cyberpunk (~2022, once they fixed all the bugs) are both really good single player games that are a lot more fun to play than anything from 1980.

How many more of those will we see? Not sure

Re: Resetting Xbox

#244

Post by abtinf »

bronson wrote: post #228

> In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. Darn it! The ONE studio that I really wanted them to set free and go back to how well things worked before, and they tighten their grip. Whyyyy?

This likely represents increased freedom and faster decision making for Mojang and King.

Moving up the org reporting chain lets you do more, because you have fewer people to convince.

It’s not as good as being fully independent, but that will never be an option for Minecraft again. Actually being spun off might even be worse, because any new owner will be even more fixated on just the numbers.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#245

Post by spenczar5 »

_verandaguy wrote: post #234
mattalex wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150M at 5B revenue is not great: that's 3% margin! The bigger issue is that console manufacturer revenue is highly cyclical. This is hard to see in e.g. Xbox and Sony since they are both part of a larger conglomerate, but really obvious for nintendo. You generally have a cycle of - "Launch": high marketing costs, low/negative HW margins - "Mid-cycle": lowering manufacturing costs, large game sales, high margin DLCs -…

> 150M at 5B revenue is not great Considered as a raw percentage in a vacuum, sure, I guess, but we're talking about... - A company which has undertaken a concerted, long-term effort to consolidate the industry under its umbrella (something they themselves call out as a problem in this post), reducing consumer choice - A company which has captured a significant chunk of the console market. They're one of the big thre…

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year.

The issue is rate of return. They are evidently spending $4.85bn on Xbox per year. The US federal interest rate is 3.5% so if you just put that money in US bonds you would get about $175M per year of much purer simpler gravy.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#247

Post by dagmx »

righthand wrote: post #223
dagmx wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would Asha pull him out? How do you think she even had that kind of authority or seniority?

By making big arguments to C-suite that were invested in the company’s direction. Same thing that happens in meetings where some dumbass says something like “we could build a cookie banner ourselves or pay Y company $12k/yr to run our cookie banner”. C-suite is full of these types of people that just make baseless arguments. Most management is not knowledgeable in their domain.

Okay so your entire argument hinges on her having the ear of Satya , and out arguing Phil?

But even then you wouldn’t be able to deny that Xbox was floundering under Phil.

And for all of this you’d still be left with conjecture?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#248

Post by blauditore »

freedomben wrote: post #190
tracker1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the graphics abilities have been there for a decade... what we need are better games and gameplay. More fun games without gotcha, pay to win, loot box efforts. Too much effort is going for dazzling graphics at the expense of overall gameplay. How many people are still playing CoD, WoW and so many other games from over a decade ago? How many refreshes of Final Fantasy have we seen? The graphics can only carry y…

> Too much effort is going for dazzling graphics at the expense of overall gameplay. Yes, 100%. I love good graphics, but game play is the most important thing. If you don't have good gameplay the graphics mean nothing. A game with great game play and great graphics is something to behold. I recently finished Split Fiction and they really nailed it. I hope studios take notice!

This has been a recurring theme since the dawn of video games: Everyone talks about graphics (devs and gamers), but ultimately the good and beloved games are the ones with great gameplay.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#249

Post by Jare »

summarybot wrote: post #106
babelfish wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are approx ~3 billion "gamers" worldwide, why shouldn't Xbox set a goal of 1/3 of them using their platform?

"Let's go from 1 in 15 gamers to 1 in 3 gamers" sounds nice, probably gonna need employees for that!

You need the right products and services. If you know what those are, then you need employees to build them. Until you figure out what those are, you are (sadly) better off with fewer people.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#250

Post by matchbok3 »

taurath wrote: post #170

> We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes. This is the new trendy management style - a few executive owners and then everyone else are expendable ICs, with a…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN