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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#871

Post by dieselgate »

philistine wrote: post #833
thih9 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sandboxes. Minecraft was one. Now it’s getting called a platform, at least in the submitted article. That’s good for engagement and monetization I guess, but sounds way less fun.

Pokopia and Tomodatchi only look like sandboxes at first glance. They are far more directed. They're not a perfect square with you in the middle. They're a star shape with you in the middle.

I genuinely don't understand the relevance of the square vs. star map layout - does that matter or is there an analogy I don't understand?

Re: Resetting Xbox

#872

Post by scott_w »

WorldMaker wrote: post #270
munificent wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's fascinating how "profitable but low margins" equates to "struggling" to so many. A high revenue but low margin business is a lost opportunity to invest that same revenue in a different area with better margins.

If you shut down the things that bring in $5 billion revenue, you no longer have $5 billion revenue, you have a gamble that some other industry can ramp up to that quickly. $5 billion has never been "quick money". (Inflation would have to get a whole lot worse for that to happen and that point the company has too many other problems.) That's "Opportunity Cost" among other bits of what used to be past corporate wisdom…

People are pointing to treasury bonds that would give a similar rate of return with no risk at all.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#873

Post by scott_w »

butlike wrote: post #815
scott_w wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re conflating the fault/wrong and the solution. Sharma is not responsible for the prior decisions but she is responsible for subsequent decisions.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#874

Post by coffeebeqn »

Alien1Being wrote: post #721

They had 20,100 employees at one stage. ( Xbox plus the Microsoft Gaming ) That is around the same size as Finland's military....

That’s the size of active duty but it’s a conscript army so in case of a war there would be a general mobilization of the 900k trained conscripts

Re: Resetting Xbox

#875

Post by Strom »

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.

Both of those games are live services games. They're not just getting some occasional bug fixes, they get big content updates.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#876

Post by pandaman »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #789
weakened_malloc wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What was Microsoft plan to increase profit? IMO, at the time, it was to buy ABK and make CoD an Xbox exclusive. That clearly didn't play out when everyone screamed about it being (rightly!) anticompetitive, and so they had to resign themselves to accepting that day 1 gamepass exclusive was going to be their way to get people to switch over from PS. That also didn't work. The 'K' part of ABK was also probably going…

Yeah, they could have spent the money on founding new studios. With that sheer amount of money you could pretty much poach any talent you wanted too, but it wouldn't be as obviously anticompetitive. Instead, they paid way over the odds for IPs that seem past their prime.

IMHO, there is no room for a 70B investment in games at this time. The industry is mature and won't be growing any time soon, at least in the West. There had been a rush of investors founding new studios and propping old ones in the past decade but the vast majority of those had already been wiped out. And all of those were probably just a fraction of what Microsoft had spent just in this acquisition.

Another crazy deal like this is the EA's buyout, I wonder if it will come through or the investors will eventually realize that they are not going to see their money ever again.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#877

Post by jonhohle »

beart wrote: post #513
jonhohle wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Blizzard and Overwatch fan, the acquisition has not been ideal. Activision nearly ended competitive professional Overwatch and significantly scaled back their big esports events to look more profitable. Lately, they seem to be chasing Marvel Rivals for no good reason, but at least in the younger competitive leagues, Rivals is picking up steam and Overwatch no longer looks like a contender, despite being signific…

Overwatch released in 2016, but the merger took place in 2008. I feel like overwatch was always more of an Activision game than a Blizzard game. Or at least, pre-World of Warcraft Blizzard would never have entered that genre of gaming.

I was referring to the Microsoft acquisition. That’s Blizzard canceled a bunch of their esports work.

There’s definitely some Blizzard DNA in the characters and lore. I like to think it’s as close to what StarCraft Ghost could have even been.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#878

Post by pie_flavor »

khurs wrote: post #866
jrmg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the esteem Phil Spencer was held in, seemingly both by fans and industry insiders. I never understood Phil’s strategy. Buy a plethora of studios. Pay an order of magnitude over the odds for the big ones - just to be sure you get them! ‘Rescue’ smaller ones of questionable financial value - as part of Xbox they’d somehow be successful enough to justify the price paid. Heavily manage the studio heads…

Wasn't it a strategy to have exclusives on xBox and take games away from Playstation?

Which games of their output were Xbox exclusive? They were basically transitioning into a publishing house with no real hardware impact. In fact what did Phil in finally was trying to sabotage the hardware brand itself with the 'This is an Xbox' campaign. I said out loud when I saw the first ad, 'Phil will get shitcanned for this.'

Re: Resetting Xbox

#879

Post by bluGill »

tommit wrote: post #863
bluGill wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you…

> but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell. sounds like there is a win-win in there somewhere. I wonder what that would look like. for real though, what are we talking about here? 30k a day is not enough because ... habits? plus, it's incredibly hard to spend that much. that's exactly why, after a certain point, it's basically impossible to get rid of wealth.

What does enough mean? That's why I didn't use that word. Beans and rice is enough, but I'm glad I can afford nicer food. I don't need as large a house as I have and yet my house is modest by modern standards, and I would like larger.

I'm not arguing your idea that there is a point where you no longer can find anything to spend money on. However that point is different for different wealthy people and I don't know and you don't likely don't know either where your limit is or my limit would be. It would not surprise me if I personally had the money and decided to buy a yacht and then later sold it when I realized that while it sounds good I wasn't actually using it. But I don't know. Maybe if I had the money to afford a nice yacht I would use it all the time. Similar for those mansions. Would I live in a mansion or would I buy one first test symbol and then realize I didn't actually care and downgrade? I know someone who has made a lot of money remodeling the mansions of rich people who have decided downsize. For them downsize includes a master bedroom that is bigger than my entire house. And there were other bedrooms in that mansion, but it is still a down size.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#880

Post by markus_zhang »

zzixp wrote: post #848
markus_zhang wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I heard that ID also got gutted, from Scott Miller on X: https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/2074198967550685268 Is it true?

Yes from what I can tell :/ I was in the console/platform dev org so not a ton of insight into studios, but I've seen a ton of ESO and Id folks posting on twitter

That's really sad.
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