A year-long restructure, where over 1000 people could lose their jobs is beyond disgusting. There's zero justification for it. Ever.
Resetting Xbox
761–770 of 981 posts
Re: Resetting Xbox
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s because the risk of making novel games is large.
Which is a problem for smaller studios but something that should average out at microsofts scale if they kept individual games reasonably small.
No amount of averaging makes upfront dev investment + massive marketing + targeting faddish and trendy consumers into a risk free business.
Another way to think about risk is opportunity cost. What other investments would give me the same return?
Re: Resetting Xbox
#763They depict how Microsoft bought double fine at the end of the psychonauts 2 documentary. If you watch the documentary it's hard not to think it may not have been a genius financial decision.
Re: Resetting Xbox
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's more art than engineering I'd say games can be either art or hype. Call of Duty is not art, really, it's hype. In the same way that no one thinks Marvel films are moving film forward, but they are hugely popular. GTA is somewhere in the middle, being mostly hype driven, but based on solid "art" in good gameplay. Indie games tend to be art over hype. Microsoft can't do the art because it's too big, too safe, an…
It can be art even if you don't consider it artistic. CoD is an example of military art. Marvel is American blockbuster art translating American comic book art to the screen. They are their own kind of artistic expression and achievement, even if you personally don't consider them art.
This is reductionist to the point of making the term useless.
Re: Resetting Xbox
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the frustrating thing reading these comments, where people seem to assume that any profit margin is good enough to sustain a business. People see a 3% return and think, "Well, they aren't losing money so there is no reason they can't just keep doing business as usual." What this idea is missing is that the investors in a company aren't choosing between "keep my money in this company" and "sit on the cash", th…
So basically: The stock market is cancer.
Talk about frustration reading these comments. People knee-deep in Kool-aid, thinking this is the only and god-given way things should be.
Re: Resetting Xbox
#766I wonder if Sony / Playatation is having the same issues or not
Re: Resetting Xbox
#767Can't say I'm surprised. I can't see a reasonable path for Xbox to do anything but just stay alive other than as MS's overarching gaming brand. Xbox is on the losing side of the consoles, with no distinguishing features to speak of. You buy a console to play games and for it to be convenient. Xbox is no more or less convenient than a Playstation, and what few exclusives there are left are on Sony's side of the fence.…
The Xbox series S is very convenient for me: it fits neatly in the TV stand which is quite slim.
Re: Resetting Xbox
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
AWS isn't a utility because utilities sell commodities for which you can switch to a competitor easily, as you're buying the same thing. There are companies selling similar products to AWS but none that sell AWS itself.
Early utilities tend to not be built on standards. See how early electric utilities within a country or even a city couldn't agree on voltage, frequency, phase, or even AC vs DC.
Still, there is a difference of degree. The engineering cost of making one city's electrical grid compatible with the consumers of a different city's grid were much lower (even if one grid was AC and the other DC) than the engineering cost of moving from AWS to a competitor because electricity is not that complicated.
Also, I doubt anyone was referring to electricity as a commodity in the early days before the industry developed standards.
Re: Resetting Xbox
#769Earlier quoted context omitted.
No? By that logic you sell a dollar for 103c and that's not enough to quench your greed. Obviously both statements are gross oversimplifications. But I could not help myself and let that slide just like that.
Just to add to your comment, people do sell dollars for $1.07, they are called mortgages. I've heard it's a pretty big business.
What they do is they sell a dollar for 1.07$ future dollars (and, realistically, less than that because of defaults but whatever).
Re: Resetting Xbox
#770At 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…
If the game industry managed to come even close to the top writing and cinematography from Hollywood then it would already be much better than it is now. Instead the part of Hollywood they are chasing seems to be the big budget wide appeal movies that will be forgotten in a decade.