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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#811

Post by jerf »

xienze wrote: post #299
jerf wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a while ago about how companies seem to have gotten the idea into their head that subscriptions are unconditionally good, rather than a contingent good based on the exact circumstances of the subscription: https://jerf.org/iri/post/2023/streampocalypse-and-first-pri... Gamepass as a subscription to make sure you always have something to play, that has a lot of old games or indie games and other games that hav…

> it's hard to see how that is an economic win I _think_ the thinking is that not everyone is going to buy more than a couple full priced new releases per year (in general). $80 or whatever is just too much for most people to drop on a game they "might" like. On the other hand, most people would have few reservations being perpetually subscribed to a service that lets them play every new game "for free" (so long as t…

I agree that's what they seem to have been thinking.

I don't entirely understand... well... from a rational perspective anyhow, of course companies are not entirely rational... why it didn't become clear that this was a silly idea and not working. It's easy to make Gamepass stop cannibalizing your main game sales. You don't need a big announcement, you don't need to advertise your plans. You don't need a huge internal political fight. You just... stop. You just stop putting your brand new AAA games on your cheap subscription service plan. You don't even have to remove the old ones, they turn into your old AAA games naturally in the fullness of time. Nobody has to lose face. It's easy. It's like falling off a log.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#812

Post by schnitzelstoat »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #576
taurath wrote: post #170

> 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. This is the new trendy management style - a few executive owners and then everyone else are expendable ICs, with a…

What does Peter Thiel have to do with Xbox? Are we just saying things we don’t like?

He's referring to this list of invited guests: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/24/peter-...

Re: Resetting Xbox

#813

Post by butlike »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #252
butlike wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can blame her for the last 10 years because she's CEO _now_. That's what you do. You blame the head of the organization for the organization's problems.

That doesn't make much sense to me. How can you blame someone for a problem they didn't cause?

Because they decided to be the figurehead and take on that responsibility. It's like a king who takes on their predecessor's war when they assume power. No one looks to the previous king when the current one has all the agency.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#814

Post by throwaway613746 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Resetting Xbox

#815

Post by butlike »

scott_w wrote: post #343
narnarpapadaddy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s their job to fix it. If they don’t, the axe falls again. Humans often think in terms of deontological ethics. Corporations operate in terms of consequentialist ethics, and the only consequence that matters is that the numbers go up.

You’re mixing “blame” and “accountability.” Sharma isn’t to blame for the problems but she’s now accountable for fixing them.

I still think "blame" works here since we're assigning responsibility to her. The fault or wrong was caused by someone else, perhaps, but she is now responsible for that fault.

> Blame: assign responsibility for a fault or wrong.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#816

Post by simoncion »

biglyburrito wrote: post #752
cyberax wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure is laughably bad. I'm genuinely at a loss to name a good recent Microsoft product.

I still love developing for the .NET Framework using C#. However, the number of reasons to keep using anything made by Microsoft continues to dwindle with each passing year. As you already said, Azure is awful and only in second place behind AWS because of how much worse Google Cloud Platform is. Windows is back to sucking again, this time so hard that I'm seriously considering learning Linux and/or switching to macO…

> As you already said, Azure is awful and only in second place behind AWS because of how much worse Google Cloud Platform is.

I expect Azure is in second place because Windows-only shops use it because of the Official Microsoft Active Directory integration (which might be called Entra now?).

For basic "Create a VM, attach disks and networking, and use it as a computer." tasks, it is my professional experience that Azure is the worst of the Big Three US "cloud" providers by far. Their "control plane" is flaky and unreliable, so it's something that you'll probably only notice if you create, destroy, or modify VMs a lot. [0]

If you have a support contract, Azure makes it much easier to talk to a human than GCP does, but I never encountered an issue that they were able to solve. "File a ticket, but don't expect support to be able to help because they won't understand the problem, and it will eventually go away." was the lesson I eventually learned.

[0] And the word on the street is that a huge chunk of Github's reliability problems are caused because of the move from AWS to Azure. Having used all three pretty extensively, I believe the rumors.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#817

Post by pfdietz »

nayroclade wrote: post #772
lelanthran wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh yeah I forgot 5 BILLION dollar in revenue is a signal that the market does not want your product Doesn't matter how big the revenue is if the market is not interested at the price you are selling. I mean, by your logic, if I sell a dollar for 64c, and do $5b revenue, that's an indication that the market does indeed want the product, but not an indication that the market wants the product at the price you need to…

They are not selling at a loss though. The real issue here is that businesses such as Microsoft do not exist to serve a market or make enough money to survive and pay their employees. They exist to increase the value of their owner's shares. This is predicated on an unsustainable model of continual growth, with the expectation that every market they operate in can produce high margins and endless expansion. But deman…

Overall they are not selling at a loss, but parts of what they're selling are being sold at a loss. The market is telling them to slim the f- down and get rid of those money-losing parts.

This is all normal and justifiable. Where is the logic that corporations need to preserve dysfunctional parts of their operations?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#818

Post by butlike »

Dig1t wrote: post #324
butlike wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the Star Fox comment. Tell me if I got this wrong: A remake (1) of a remake (2) of a remake (3) (1) A remake (Switch 2 Starfox, a remake of StarFox 64) (2) StarFox 64 (A remake of Super Nintendo's StarFox) (3) ??? I don't know what the 3rd level of remake you mention is, but I'm curious!

Starfox 64 (N64) -> Starfox 64 (3DS) -> Starfox (Switch 2) I assumed that's what OP meant, all of those are the exact same game with the same story and dialog, remade in 3 different game engines.

That makes sense to me, and fits in better than SNES > 64 starfox, which is more of a spiritual remake than an explicit one.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#819

Post by pfdietz »

dannyw wrote: post #796
slg wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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".

I think a lot of people in the gaming community would agree that Microsoft has ruined, or hindered (instead of helping) many studios they bought.

The mistake isn't shutting stuff down, it was overpaying for the stuff in the first place. This most recent action is unwinding the earlier mistake.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#820

Post by soulofmischief »

tracker1 wrote: post #75
hbn wrote: post #16

It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO. Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the interv…

To me, the graphics abilities have been there for a decade... what we need are better games and gameplay. More fun games without gotcha, pay to win, loot box efforts. Too much effort is going for dazzling graphics at the expense of overall gameplay. How many people are still playing CoD, WoW and so many other games from over a decade ago? How many refreshes of Final Fantasy have we seen? The graphics can only carry y…

I do still play a good bit of Black Ops II Zombies... which came out in 2012. Treyarch took notice, and the last CoD was a crappy attempt to cash in on the fact that the last good CoD game was over a decade ago.

A few great games I've played in the last 8 years, about the span of a generation, a mix of AAA and indie:

- Red Dead Redemption 2 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1174180/Red_Dead_Redempti...

- Cyberpunk 2077 https://www.gog.com/en/game/cyberpunk_2077

- Supraworld https://store.steampowered.com/app/1869290/Supraworld/

- Outer Wilds https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/

- Mini the Hollower https://www.gog.com/en/game/mina_the_hollower

- Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo https://store.steampowered.com/app/2870350/Pipistrello_and_t...

- Shadows over Loathing https://store.steampowered.com/app/1939160/Shadows_Over_Loat...

- Animal Well https://store.steampowered.com/app/813230/ANIMAL_WELL/

- Dwarf Fortress https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

- EMUUROM https://store.steampowered.com/app/1634360/EMUUROM/

- Dispatch https://store.steampowered.com/app/2592160/Dispatch/

- MOUSE: P.I. For Hire https://store.steampowered.com/app/2416450/MOUSE_PI_For_Hire...

- Split Fiction https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001120/Split_Fiction/

- Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles https://store.steampowered.com/app/1004640/FINAL_FANTASY_TAC...

If you want to see what modern AAA gaming should be and haven't already played it, I highly recommend Cyberpunk 2077. It's not perfect, mostly due to time constraints, but it excels in most categories, and it looks and plays great. No microtransactions, no DRM and the one DLC is very good. It's on sale for $18 on GOG. No DRM should be enough reason to signal to the market to produce more games like this. Also, the developer owns the GOG storefront and so 100% of your profits go directly to them.

I also cannot recommend Supraworld enough to anyone who likes classic 3D platforming and puzzle games such as Portal or Antichamber. Supraworld has ruined other platformers for me. The developer, David Munich, is a puzzle maestro who has already put out other successful games such as notpron https://notpron.com/ and Supraland. His philosophy for puzzle design is going to influence the genre for decades to come.

And of course, if you haven't played Red Dead Redemption 2 already, it's a bonafide masterpiece, deserving of 10/10. The game is an absolute behemoth in terms of development/marketing costs and profit, and is just a sight to behold. I know it borders on last-gen because it came out in 2018, but the ninth-generation of consoles was where it found its home, since the eight generation could barely handle it. Dan Houser left Rockstar after finishing this game due to being a 50-year-old man completely exhausted from inflated development cycles, so this might be the best game Rockstar will ever make.

Of course I could go on to recommend dozens of other memorable recent indie games, but I definitely think AAA has mostly stagnated. Cyberpunk 2077 initially released 6 years ago. Red Dead Redemption 2, the modern gold standard, released 8 years ago. I have heard great things about Clair Obscur, but I haven't given it a chance. There are some worthwhile remasters, like the Shadowman remaster and upcoming Thief Gold remaster done by the Kick brothers at Nightdive Studios, or the recent Final Fantasy Tactics remaster.

Game production could stop today and I'd probably be good for the rest of my life. There's still such a vast back catalogue even after playing all of the classics. With development cycles for groundbreaking AAA titles closing in on a decade and production costs surpassing half a billion, I get a sense that a mature ecosystem of AI-augmented tooling is what might end up bringing some sanity back to this business.

I'll also point out that in the 80s, AAA video games have been $40-70 since the 80's. If the price of games had gone up with inflation, we'd be paying $100-150 per AAA game, there would be more money in the industry and ideally better salaries and working conditions across the board. As consumers, we need to stop and analyze the perverse incentives driving this market and figure out how to have better dialogue with developers so that we can come to an agreement on more realistic prices but less anti-consumer bullshit.

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