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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#481

Post by CivBase »

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…

It surprises me that there isn't simply an option to postpone the update for up to 12 hours until shutdown. I'd much rather let my system take 10 minutes to shutdown when I'm done than have to wait 10 minutes on startup before I can use it.

How often could they realistically have updates that seriously need to be installed ASAP? Especially if you're not even doing anything that requires going online.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#482

Post by bombcar »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #449
bombcar wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing money can do is enable polish - you might not be able to directly force the next great game, but you can make your games excellently coded and polished.

Polish and Microsoft is a funny pairing over the last few years. More and more things are coming apart at the seams as the vibe-coded duct tape is failing.

Sadly, the only real remnant of the old Microsoft polish seems to be "we'll extensively document how our code fails, and do nothing about it."

Re: Resetting Xbox

#483

Post by weakened_malloc »

pandaman wrote: post #393
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…

Acquiring a game studio only makes sense if you see a way to make it grow either by providing capital or better management. E.g. Activision acquired Treyarch in 2001 for $20M, which was probably 4-5x of its annual profit at the time. Seeing that very few people played (or even heard of) Die By The Sword or Draconus you could imagine that there was still a room to grow so there was a good chance you break even on your…

> What was Microsoft plan to increase profit?

IMO, at the time, it was to buy ABK and make CoD an Xbox exclusive. That clearly didn't play out when everyone screamed about it being (rightly!) anticompetitive, and so they had to resign themselves to accepting that day 1 gamepass exclusive was going to be their way to get people to switch over from PS. That also didn't work.

The 'K' part of ABK was also probably going to be their way to drive mobile into Xbox as well with their 'everything is an Xbox' push at the time.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#484

Post by jonhohle »

mattfrommars wrote: post #439
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 -…

> 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. There is absolutely no reason to be in sync with Sony on their console release date. They could have effectively released consoles bit more frequently. But they choose not to do so. Their acquisition has been questiona…

As a Blizzard and Overwatch fan, the acquisition has not been ideal. Activision nearly ended competitive professional Overwatch and significantly scaled back their big esports events to look more profitable. Lately, they seem to be chasing Marvel Rivals for no good reason, but at least in the younger competitive leagues, Rivals is picking up steam and Overwatch no longer looks like a contender, despite being significantly more balanced competitive play.

It’s possible stadium sized esports wasn’t directly profitable or was break-even, but seems like it could have had the potential to catapult the idea into the mainstream when there are 7 figure prize pots, and the games are accurate to anyone with equipment.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#485

Post by corimaith »

georgeecollins wrote: post #410
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 -…

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 ar…

The mismanagement here was actually Microsoft giving studios free reign and they flopped with projects like Starfield. This needs to be understood really within the larger industry trend of quality decline of AAA, which I suspect has to do with changes in overall dev culture and discourse than corporate decisions. There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#486

Post by nonethewiser »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #5

They will just continue smash thru exactly what is killing them because they do not know how to reset. More micro transactions, Halo 14-39, games launching before they're ready, price increases, etc. All of that looks good on paper, so they will take no action against. The XBOX is hitting icebergs, and instead of slowing down, they will just call for more speed.

>They will just continue smash thru exactly what is killing them

Well, not exactly. Maybe partially, but definitely not entirely. They got a shit return on a lot of money they spent which drove down margins now they are cutting that. They lost 64 cents per 1 dollar invested so they are investing less.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#487

Post by nothercastle »

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…

This model is going away expect piracy to increase accordingly

Re: Resetting Xbox

#488

Post by nonethewiser »

rybosworld wrote: post #141
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.

That messaging is for investors. To a dev's ears, it's a meaningless thing to say. It reminds me when Elon took over twitter and made a comment to the effect of "we need to rethink the entire tech stack from the ground up". Someone asked Elon what was wrong with the tech stack, and he called them a jackass.

It's quite insane that twitter went from 7500 -> 1500 employees and the site didn't implode. 80% of the people gone.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#489

Post by senkora »

evan_ wrote: post #390
hx8 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The inflation rate is about 3%, so the people at Xbox worked very hard all year to have about the same value they put into it.

Only if you count the value of the games produced as $0

It's a question of "value created" vs "value captured". They captured about as much value as the risk-free rate of return.

Value that is created but not captured (e.g. the value of consumers enjoying games and consoles above and beyond the price that those consumers paid) is typically not considered when making business decisions.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#490

Post by nonethewiser »

dzonga wrote: post #217

Xbox lost their identity. Xbox was a Live Games platform. they lost that identity trying to please everyone not their core audience. compare to Nintendo - who stuck to their identity - as fun games first. graphics not necessary. they can cut so many jobs - but unless they return to what makes Xbox great. the platform / ecosystem won't recover.

They immediately benefit from cutting things that hemorrhage money. The consumer's opinion can worsen and it's still a good move. When you lose 64 cents for every dollar invested you can simply stop spending - it's that simple.
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