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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#621

Post by XorNot »

petu wrote: post #616
petters wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Blizzard managed to so thoroughly destroy itself that I'm not sure the comparison is fair. It's a ghost of what it once was in gaming.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#622

Post by menshiki »

Keyframe wrote: post #297

This reads like corporate death rattle. Microsoft never had any clue what it takes to make a console - a console. Now it seems they've also completely lost the plot on what makes a business - a business. They should've been Steam, instead they ran out of it.

> Microsoft never had any clue what it takes to make a console - a console.

The 85 million people who've bought the Xbox 360 would disagree.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#624

Post by dsign »

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…

What are the updates for, I wonder?

Video games, like all forms of art, are about stirring emotions. I don't own, nor have never owned an Xbox. But when I think of the device the first thing that comes to mind is "Microsoft" and "Windows". So I consider all the little beancounters and MBAs at Microsoft who are always optimizing for profit and that have made Windows nightmarish, and I imagine them with access to an "emotions machine" they can manipulate to make number go up, and can't help but think that the device is a pocket dimension of hell but more or less useless otherwise.

All said, in order for Microsoft to fix XBox, they will also need to fix the Windows desktop experience. Otherwise people will think "ouch, I don't want to buy a cousin of that creature. Better go for a Nintendo or Steam Deck or something..."

Re: Resetting Xbox

#625

Post by mnky9800n »

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.

I would be afraid that the size of the revenue versus the margin would make small fluctuations in revenue create large fluctuations in margin.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#628

Post by mike_hearn »

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.

Margins that low are dangerous because businesses can often see year to year margin variance higher than that.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#629

Post by techpression »

teachrdan wrote: post #501
corimaith wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now. I'm curious what you mean by this. It seems like gamers have never been more vocal and there have never been more avenues (social media, short form video platforms, etc.) for them to voice their opinions than we have now. How exactly do you know that developers have never been more disconnected from their audience? An…

I think developers = studio in this case, management included. It’s the same issue as Hollywood really, making content for a loud minority will not generate revenue. Compare how Marvel Rival performs to any Marvel Hollywood content after Endgame.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#630

Post by slg »

7thpower wrote: post #599
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.

The awareness of a poor return on investment is a good thing for society. We want to do more with fewer resources. Making terrible decisions, such as investing in distractions for your company and consumers, and then letting your workforce pay the tab.. is the thing that is not great for society.

>We want to do more with fewer resources.

Who is the "we" here? Because the profit margin not being high enough is certainly not a problem for consumers. The only people who should care about that are the company's shareholders and "shareholders" certainly isn't synonymous with "society".

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