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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#851

Post by VikingCoder »

falcor84 wrote: post #379
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.

> How will they achieve cleaner code, with fewer workers? What do you mean? My experience has always been that the more cooks there are in the kitchen, the messier the codebase is. Has yours been different?

My experience has always been that the more you're trying to do, the messier the codebase is.

But that to clean up a codebase requires even more people.

So, at first blush, it looks like "more people = more problems," but if you actually give yourself some breathing room, the code can get cleaner with effort.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#852

Post by bluGill »

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…

Maybe it isn't a loss, but as an investor (never directly in them), I consider 3% profit margin a bad sign - at that return I'd prefer a savings account: FDIC insurance means that after accounting for risks the savings account is better. I know stock returns don't directly track profit margin, but that is one input into the complex consideration of stocks.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#853

Post by bluGill »

refurb wrote: post #709
account42 wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Why is it impossible for businesses to do long-term accounting?

Many reasons: - Investors bail - You run out of cash

Not exactly - stocks are already sold, you don't run out of cash from the stock price going down. You only run out of cash if you want to sell more stock to raise more cash (this happens, but it is somewhat rare).

However the owners are still going to be mad because their cash is down and they will demand changes to fix that.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#854

Post by hollerith »

benatkin wrote: post #849
hollerith wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our society uses return on investment (which is correlated with profit margin) to decide what projects and what processes our society's workers will focus on. So for example, if I can make twice as much money as a software developer as I can as a musician, that is strong evidence that my doing the former kind of work will benefit society about twice as much as my doing the latter kind of work.

I disagree. "Benefit society" means something that can't be defined or tracked so easily. And consumer behavior is heavily biased by things that aren't optimized to benefit society. I have in mind this book, Hooked by Nir Eyal: https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/

We should try our best to improve our society. Sometimes that will mean doing things that are economically inefficient. Your example of Stanford professor Nir Eyal is an excellent illustration: by advising corporate managers and product designers how to fulfill their role in our economic system more efficiently, Nir Eyal made our society worse.

We should expect more from our elite professors. Nir Eyal should've known better than to make a career out of studying how deliberately to addict users. But we should also expect our professors, politicians and policymakers to understand the basics of our economic system and to understand when a proposed change to our society sounds good or feels good, but has severe adverse effects on economic efficiency that outweigh the societal benefits. Those aren't the only proposed changes we should avoid, but they form an important class of them.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#855

Post by glitchc »

mattalex wrote: post #207
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…

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 -…

Reads to me like multiplayer and server-side games incur a hefty infrastructure cost that eats into their profits, subscriptions notwithstanding. Maybe XBox should focus more on single-player exclusives. They certainly have enough studios to do it.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#856

Post by bluGill »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #577
skeeter2020 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russ: "Anyway, next thing you know, we IPO, stock triples in a day and AOL gobbles us up. All of a sudden, I'm 22 years young and I'm worth 1.2 billion. Now a couple decades later, I'm worth 1.4. You do the math." Richard: "Okay. Well, that's a gain of $200 million over 20 years. Um, 16.66 repeating. That's less than 1% return. Inflation is, like, 1.7. I think CDs are 2%. So that's less than a CD."

I know this is a TV show reference and a point about investment strategy but... If I had 1.2 billion dollars I wouldn't care what investment strategy I had. I've got enough to spend $30k a day for 100 years. At any age, that'll do.

In generally spending increases to cover income. 30k per day sounds like a lot, but it isn't hard to spend that once you get used to having that much to spend. Your mansion with the heated indoor pool is expensive to maintain. Plus you probably have a vacation mansion someplace. Then you see a nice yacht and think "why not" - more costs. You aren't flying coach to get to all those things - and one day you realize your bills are more than the 30k/day you have to spend and you are broke despite being objectively rich.

It sounds like a nice problem to have, but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell. (I'd still like to have it, and like most I think that I personally wouldn't get that far over my head)

Re: Resetting Xbox

#857

Post by fourseventy »

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…

Tell me you know nothing about business without telling me you know nothing about business.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#858

Post by chii »

lelanthran wrote: post #640
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.

> Oy vey maybe this kind of money grubbery is not good for our society. No, it's a signal from the market that the product being sold is not wanted by the market. They've mismanaged all their IP pursuing that yummy subscription revenue. Turns out gamers really don't like to buy subscriptions. As a poster downthread pointed out, the games that are not always-on and subscription-based are doing fine. It's the recent AA…

> No, it's a signal from the market that the product being sold is not wanted by the market.

to me, it is really a signal that the cost of production is high - ala, they're inefficient, rather than the market not wanting the product.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#859

Post by SllX »

rawbot wrote: post #791
SllX wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metroid is a secondary or tertiary IP, and the Metroid Prime subseries has always had more smoke online than its sale figures would ever suggest, with only the original on Gamecube selling north of 2 million, and it was a pack-in title.

Metroid Prime wasn't a pack-in title. In fact, the bundles that did offer it bundled were short-lived.

That’s what a pack-in title is. I had one of those GameCubes, and I ended up trading in the packed-in Metroid Prime to EB Games for like $5 in store credit cuz I didn’t like the game.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#860

Post by extraduder_ire »

LunaSea wrote: post #667
johnnyanmac wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you can say that when some of their most recent well received games include Tomodachi life and Rhythm Heaven. Those aren't the kinds of games made from those maximizing bean counters.

Rhythm Heaven is a 18 year old and Tomodachi life is a 13 year old license.

17 years, if you include the Japan-only Tomodachi Collection for the DS.
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