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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#401

Post by honeycrispy »

LunaSea wrote: post #344
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…

Nintendo survives on a few banger licenses. Innovation left the house a long time ago.

I find it really sad that the GameCube and N64 were where they were the most innovative and also happens to be where they floundered the most in sales.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#402

Post by nxc18 »

dagmx wrote: post #20

This is incredibly sad for a lot of my friends who are finding themselves out of work despite delivering well received products. But at the same time I appreciate the candor of Asha saying that the corporate management are to blame and letting studios go back to being independent where possible. Phil Spencer really messed up. Everyone in the industry knew Microsoft were making bad calls trying to dig themselves a hol…

I don’t think Phil had any other options while existing under Satya and a relentless push to services revenue. If Windows can’t make a case for itself without moving heavily to services (advertising and pushing 365, primarily), how could Xbox?

I’m not really sure how the C-suite is escaping blame here.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#405

Post by bombcar »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #191
hbn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game Pass was never a sustainable business model. People liked it because when a new game came out, they could buy a month of game pass for like $15, play through the game in a couple weeks, and cancel. It was a really good deal because Microsoft has spent the past decade+ trying to recover from their terrible fumble of the Xbox One launch, so they were subsidizing gamers to come back to their platform. With the mone…

Traditionally if you're going to play through a game in a couple weeks and then not own it anymore, that means you sell it and someone else buys it for their own couple weeks, and the company should be happy if they make $15 per person in the chain. Also this is part of why I'm really worried about how weak the concept of game ownership is getting. See also how anyone buying GTA6 near launch will be unable to resell…

The vast majority of people buy a game, play it a few weeks, and then it sits forever - even if they could trade it in for a few bucks.

Lamepass should have been much closer to "buy a new release, get a month of gamepass games for free" or something.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#406

Post by twoodfin »

nicolas_17 wrote: post #394
xienze wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year You're neglecting to consider that any time they acquire a studio or have a flop or two -- poof goes that $150M and probably more. It's not a risk-free venture. Entertainment is all about hits, and misses hurt. Would you put up $5K to win $150 on a hypothetical roulette wheel that hits 90% of the time? The math's not perfect obviously but Xbox is a somewhat simila…

If they shut down their gaming operation and instead decide to stuff money into bonds, where would that $5B even come from? As said elsewhere in the thread: > You’re saying that they should take the money people pay to buy Xboxes and put it in T-bills instead of delivering Xboxes?

The money they’re not spending on the Xbox every year!

Re: Resetting Xbox

#407

Post by bombcar »

brikym wrote: post #326
artyom wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those metrics are hugely misleading because they account for current fiscal year revenue and margins . For Xbox being what it is today, which is mostly about the subscription and not the hardware console or the exclusives, you have to compound their acquisition frenzy of 2018-2020 or so, which totals about 75 billion+. They didn't want the developers nor the catalog. What Microsoft wanted is to change the economics a…

It seems really odd to have a Netflix consumption model for games. Generally people want to play a few favourite games for a long time and get very skilled at them. You just don't need to churn through content like movies.

The vast majority of "gamers" play freemium "games" on their phone. The next largest likely buy a console for one or two games, and maybe pick up another now and then (back in college one person's lamecube was permanently playing smash bros; another was on golden-eye - the two xboxes were for halo and madden respectively).

Re: Resetting Xbox

#408

Post by __turbobrew__ »

gbrindisi wrote: post #124
kristjansson wrote: post #32

> 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. xbox-specific issues aside, this proposes an interesting view of the future of work.

I also notice the growing trend to have EM carry individual contributor duties, I thought it was mostly a consequence of using coding agents but perhaps it's not: the EM figure as we know might just be a consequence of the golden zirp times (do you remember the endless technical EM vs non-technical EM debates?)

I think non-technical EMs are fine, but they need to manage an appropriate headcount. I see EMs who manage 2-3 ICs and have no other responsibilities, those EMs need to either take on more ICs or start coding.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#409

Post by tcmart14 »

sethops1 wrote: post #260
dwroberts wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t know why this is being downvoted because it’s absolutely on the money. She’s a very green exec that is doing the classic “change everything to make it look like I’m doing something” while also not really achieving anything. The rebrand to ‘XBOX’ is a good example of how they’re already out of ideas

Maybe they should try pivoting the Xbox into being a TV platform /s

And they should make an accessory that is an always on camera! Wait a second.... I think I've seen this one before.....

Re: Resetting Xbox

#410

Post by georgeecollins »

mattalex wrote: post #207
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…

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 -…

Sure, 3% is terrible. But the point is you spent a fortune buying all these studios-- aka key strategic intellectual properties-- and then you manage them badly. Then you just sell or shut them down at their absolute bottom and you end up just destroying value.

Older forms of media understand this. WB loses money and its still really valuable because people see the potential of Batman, Harry Potter etc.

IP studios are really valuable because they can drive attention to your platforms. Try starting a premium streaming service or a console without IP. But you can't manage it like tech. It's not going to grow all the time and returns are uncertain.

MSFT could be in the XBox as a platform business. They could have a few in house studios to prime the platform pump. Once it started being a content business they got lost.

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