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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#611

Post by Daz912 »

Drupon wrote: post #579
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: that's 3% margin! Oy vey maybe this kind of money grubbery is not good for our society.

[dead]

Re: Resetting Xbox

#612

Post by petu »

mvdtnz wrote: post #514
jjcm wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-trivial amount of their ARR is still from Valve-made games. Counterstrike still nets a bit over 1b per year from just case unboxings, and Dota is in the hundreds of millions. I wouldn't call 8-10% a margin of error.

Counter Strike 2 is a 14 year old game. DOTA2 is a 13 year old game. Yes I know Valve makes money selling games. They don't make games.

While it can be disregarded just as major update CS2 is formally 2023.

Dota is live service game, getting major patches each year. Patch notes for version released 3 months ago: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Version_7.41 I don't think there's any reason for Dota 3, ever. Any change could be just a patch.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#613

Post by petters »

petu wrote: post #607
Drupon wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>150M at 5B revenue is not great: that's 3% margin! Oy vey maybe this kind of money grubbery is not good for our society.

3% is lower than buying US Treasury bonds? Effectively zero risk zero effort return vs running a business. https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/...

5B revenue is not the same as 5B in the bank collecting interest.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#614

Post by PS5has3Games »

taybin wrote: post #240
MisterTea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And between graphics almost certainly at the point of diminishing returns, and hardware prices like they are right now, I can't imagine there's a market to sell something more capable than current gen consoles. I haven't bought a console since the Xbox360 and Wii. But I have a friend who still games pretty heavily and is low income. He can not afford the latest PS5 and is still on a PS4. We were talking the other d…

I'm in software and I do alright, but I'm still on a PS4 too. Just can't justify the upgrade when there's still so many great old games available. Maybe when the next Horizon Zero Dawn comes out, I'll be forced to upgrade, but I'm taking my time about it.

Same here. At no point has the PS5 held more than 3 total exclusives I wanted. Mostly by virtue of them constantly de-exclusivating them. Right now, only Astrobot and Demon's Souls (which was there since the start) could even convince me.

I don't think I'll need a PS6 honestly, I am okay with waiting or going without titles sony is releasing.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#615

Post by arjie »

nonethewiser wrote: post #488
rybosworld wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering the trajectory of x then x.ai then SpaceX as the holding structure the Twitter purchase investors must’ve done well for themselves.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#616

Post by petu »

petters wrote: post #613
petu wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3% is lower than buying US Treasury bonds? Effectively zero risk zero effort return vs running a business. https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/...

5B revenue is not the same as 5B in the bank collecting interest.

Indeed, I had a brain fart. Thank you.

But doesn't that make situation even worse? They likely would be 100B+ market cap/total asset value if spun off into independent company, but not able to generate even 1B in annual profit? Activision Blizzard managed 1.5B income/20% margin by themselves before being bought by Xbox -- and somehow whole of Xbox now earns less?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#617

Post by d--b »

> Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management.

> We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3

I don’t understand why they need to make a big announcement when what they’re doing is cutting the stupid management structure. Everybody hates cuts, except those that cut middle management.

They should have titled this “xbox cuts middle management: Less burocracy, faster delivery, more original games, more money for everyone involved, yay!”

Re: Resetting Xbox

#618

Post by swiftcoder »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #117
swiftcoder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They spent about 70 billion on activision blizzard A cynic might say they spent most of that for King, which continues to be profitable. The rest of Activision Blizzard just came along for the ride

Call of Duty absolutely prints money, fwiw. King are weird because they basically have been doing the same game in different skins for like 15 years now.

> Call of Duty absolutely prints money, fwiw

It does print money, but it is also extraordinarily expensive to keep the money-printer fed. Current estimates place the production + marketing costs of a Call of Duty north of a billion dollars.

At that kind of spend, it only really takes 1 or 2 botched releases to make the financial equation look a whole lot less rosy...

Re: Resetting Xbox

#619

Post by dezgeg »

antiframe wrote: post #585
drewnoakes wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of these updates are security fixes. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority were.

My gaming machine is isolated and well protected through firewalls in and out. I don't store any sensitive information like payment information on them. Why can't I choose when to update them? Let me use my thread model to keep myself secure. Respect my time. Let me manually update when I want.

Ah, but you see Xbox security updates won't be for your security. They will be for protecting the console's security against jailbreaks etc.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#620

Post by coffeebeqn »

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…

I just don’t know how great the IPs at Xbox game studios are. They have a few staples but most studios they bought have struggled to put out any major successes in the last 5+ years. There’s only a few Pokémon’s and Harry potters out there. They even ran Halo to the ground ffs
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