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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#371

Post by falcor84 »

dsfnajlsdfnafn wrote: post #293
piltdownman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent - but you can't get away with Hollywood Accounting Practices in the same way. Also one must consider the likes of Hideo Kojima who can sell ~7 million copies of a new IP that is effectively a cinematic Walking Simulator as an Auteur acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also shipped over 5.4 million copies as a AA, in what is also arguably an interactiv…

> acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system. Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with…

> Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins

I strongly disagree. I'd say that Death Stranding has an incredible open world "sandbox", rivaling the ones of GTA. I can spend dozens of hours there without worrying about the campaign - it's not a Hollywood movie.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#372

Post by adamwk »

righthand wrote: post #30
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…

Well this is the new Xbox boss, Aska Sharma trying to course correct her own actions after pushing out Phil Spencer (and team). Phil had a deep understanding of the game world about profit margins and how the Xbox is essentially a stake in keeping Microsoft in the minds of consumers, a place in the home. Aska has a shallow understanding and sees only the financials and wanted to increase profits. Now she is burning i…

She’s been in her position for less than 6 months. All of the problems were under Phil, so I don’t understand what you mean by course correcting her own actions

Re: Resetting Xbox

#373

Post by operation_moose »

msftgreed wrote: post #332
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…

> Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. That's the thing -- for a while they had figured out gaming. The xbox and 360 were solid consoles with lots of great internal and external games. Halo was incredible. Then the company did the thing that Amazon did, Blizzard is doing, and all the big tech companies do -- they thought their big war chest meant they should make bigger games. Budgets ballooned, game timeli…

AKA "we just passed the 8th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls 6 announcement trailer"

Also worth noting Skyrim first came out on the 360; an honor shared by GTA5, but at least they have an imminent release.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#374

Post by functionmouse »

mkhalil wrote: post #370

In this economy, if you're playing catchup to competitors you really can't have growth AND large profit margins. Why is that not obvious? XBOX brought in 5 billion, and after all development costs, marketing, operating expenses, investment in research, etc., they are STILL left with 200 million dollars. What's the problem here? Shareholder value? (as in the mythical/speculative value of MSFT, because OF COURSE they d…

if they fire everyone and stop spending money, only making money, their PnL ratio will be infinite!

Re: Resetting Xbox

#375

Post by Sebguer »

WarmWash wrote: post #309
WorldMaker wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bank offering 3.25% isn't "struggling" either. Real struggling for a bank looks like bank runs and depression. But you are talking the "consumer perspective". Right now the median interest on consumer savings accounts is less than 1%. [1] Someone getting 3.25% from their bank isn't "struggling" compared to their luckier neighbor that found a 4.25%. They are probably closer to the top 10% or top 1% and have a larger…

So you would chose the 3.25% bank or the 4.25% bank? Because it's a fictional illustrative example of "people always prefer more money", not a case study on banking lol Microsoft's ownership wants to put their money into the 4.25% bank, not the 3.25% one. Don't lose your mind overthinking it.

you think you have some amazing analogy but it's utterly nonsensical. where is microsoft putting this money that is going to earn it more? are they low on cash on hand? why are they not investing every dollar they have on these magical free returns that just need more cash?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#377

Post by jasondigitized »

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…

More capable than current gen consoles is going to be local AI. Calling it now. It won't be as much about graphics as it is about selling some notion of human like NPCs and smarter enemies and some other use case they can sell to the masses.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#378

Post by ghaff »

mrandish wrote: post #253
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…

> Phil's strategy made sense on paper It was a risky bet that became even higher risk when MSFT spent ~$80 billion dollars rolling up game studios near the peak of the historic COVID gaming bubble. They bet it would greatly increase Game Pass sub growth. Instead, Game Pass sub growth slowed down. At the time I thought it was a reasonable plan - but not at the prices MSFT was paying for content. Then the DRAM drought…

I needed a new DVD player and I pretty much splurged on an Xbox. But I haven't really used it for gaming.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#379

Post by falcor84 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #83

"And we will streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base, shared services, and 50% reduced vendor spend." How will they achieve cleaner code, with fewer workers? Seems like a well-intentioned platitude.

> How will they achieve cleaner code, with fewer workers?

What do you mean? My experience has always been that the more cooks there are in the kitchen, the messier the codebase is. Has yours been different?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#380

Post by operation_moose »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #305
nkrisc wrote: post #214

Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates. I never played it very frequently so I disabled the sleep mode so it wouldn’t just stay on in my media cabinet heating my house. But of course that meant any time I spontaneously felt like using it there were 10 minutes of updates to download, so I would get annoyed and just do something else. Oh it can also play movies? Sorry movi…

> Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates. My experience with Steam is very similar (I don't have it run on startup because I like my PC to do other things from playing games). Online updates really have ruined gaming for a lot of people. Just like vinyl, humans seem to prefer a physical "thing" they pick up - put in the machine - and instantly have access to the "thing".…

I've been replaying a lot of Gamecube (emulated) games recently and its kindof shocking just how quick you can get into the game.

From hitting run Run to first Player Input is seconds in most cases. No console bootup, no system updates, no game patches, no agreeing to game EULA version 5.129912342, no denying the game access to online content on every third screen, etc.

I'm sure its loading slightly faster emulated, but 90% of it is just not having the junk that has accumulated over the last 20 years.

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