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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#931

Post by cortesoft »

Barrin92 wrote: post #551
cortesoft wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chasing the highest margins" is almost the entire point of a market based economy, and is the main selling point for capitalism. I get your complaint, but if you reframe it I think it isn't the real problem here. The whole point of a market-based economy is to allocate resources to making things people actually want. How does the market figure out what people want more of? Well, profit margin. If someone is making a…

>"Chasing the highest margins" is almost the entire point of a market based economy, and is the main selling point for capitalism That's news to the ALDI brothers and Henry Ford. Capitalism used to be about the exact opposite . We moved from low volume - high margin, extractive feudal-like economics to consumer capitalism, high volume low margin. You create wealth by churning out commodities at low margins that the a…

I don't think those previous capitalists were any different than the ones today, they just didn't have the same opportunity. It wasn't possible to build a company the size of modern ones with the technology at the time.

Look, I am not saying there aren't horrible flaws with capitalism. There are a ton, and we should, as a society, work to mitigate them.

I just don't think the solution to the problem is for us to ask capitalists to not seek the highest margin. This is not a problem that is fixed by people just being more moral.

We fix this problem through public policy.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#932

Post by ebbi »

omcnoe wrote: post #588
ebbi wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a publicly listed company. They needed someone without the emotional attachment to 'Gaming', but with business nous, to make the decisions needed to meet her mandate, which is to ultimately increase shareholder value. A 'Gamer' would have found that more difficult to do.

Would we say that about any other industry? Can you run a film studio if you have never watched a film in your life? Can you run a publishing house if you’ve never read a novel?

I should have been more clear and my initial comment didn't portray the intent: sometimes Good business decisions requires a longer time horizon for the strategy to play out.

But with companies on the stock exchange, Good business practice often comes at the expense of market perception -> share price. And when that happens, there is a lot of pressure on the Board -> CEO to ensure gains are being shown immediately.

So my comment isn't to suggest that a Gamer could be a good person to run the business with good business nous, it's that their experience in the industry would most likely lead them to make decisions that are Good but need a longer horizon, vs immediate impact to satisfy the shareholders.

It happens with any company, and we're starting to see this happen with Apple as well. As their main product lines have started to taper off in growth, they have needed to do things to offset that, often making decisions that are contrary to what Apple would usually stand for or would not have considered, say, 15 years ago.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#933

Post by ebbi »

rustystump wrote: post #574
ebbi wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a publicly listed company. They needed someone without the emotional attachment to 'Gaming', but with business nous, to make the decisions needed to meet her mandate, which is to ultimately increase shareholder value. A 'Gamer' would have found that more difficult to do.

Press Q to doubt. There are plenty of biz savvy folks out there who at least gamed in high school or college.

I should have been more clear and my initial comment didn't portray the intent: sometimes Good business decisions requires a longer time horizon for the strategy to play out. But with companies on the stock exchange, Good business practice often comes at the expense of market perception -> share price. And when that happens, there is a lot of pressure on the Board -> CEO to ensure gains are being shown immediately.

So my comment isn't to suggest that a Gamer could be a good person to run the business with good business nous, it's that their experience in the industry would most likely lead them to make decisions that are Good but need a longer horizon, vs immediate impact to satisfy the shareholders.

It happens with any company, and we're starting to see this happen with Apple as well. As their main product lines have started to taper off in growth, they have needed to do things to offset that, often making decisions that are contrary to what Apple would usually stand for or would not have considered, say, 15 years ago.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#934

Post by folkrav »

rcxdude wrote: post #918
MarkSweep wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Split Fiction has a couple of mechanisms that make it accessible for people who are not experienced gamers. There is a general "reduce damage done by enemies" setting that make dodging attacks unnecessary. If you get stuck on something, there is a "skip to next checkpoint" button. This is very helpfully for the one or two really oboxiously hard parts. This is an improvement in accessibility over the developer's previ…

TBH, the whole of It Takes Two made me think 'these people are pretty terrible, I'm not sure I want to help them'. The stuffed toy bit was just the cherry on the cake. Good gameplay, not very good writing IMO (Split fiction is better but still... irritating at times)

To me that was kind of the point of the story - people that entirely forgot why they ever did any of the things they did, their kid included, slowly realizing it was their damn fault all along.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#935

Post by remarkEon »

dsfnajlsdfnafn wrote: post #293
piltdownman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent - but you can't get away with Hollywood Accounting Practices in the same way. Also one must consider the likes of Hideo Kojima who can sell ~7 million copies of a new IP that is effectively a cinematic Walking Simulator as an Auteur acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also shipped over 5.4 million copies as a AA, in what is also arguably an interactiv…

> acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system. Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with…

I could not disagree harder with this sentiment. DS and DS2 are beautiful games with deep, meaty narratives that are satisfying and rewarding, which is why players spend hours walking around digital wastelands delivering mail. Only Kojima could make “post-apocalyptic UPS guy, the video game” and have it work.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#936

Post by brianwawok »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #545
healsdata wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now. There are studios that routinely put out games that people love. For example, my wife and I will happily pre-order the next co-op game from Hazelight Studios. FromSoftware, Ghost Ship Games, and others fall into the same boat for many people. The difference, in my opinion, is that games from these studios don't focus…

With the obvious exception of Elden Ring, most of the games from these studios are quite modest small to medium sized projects. I wish devs would stop trying to make every game an uber-game. They need all the monetization because they've already blown the budget before work even started. Nintendo figured this out. When will the other big players?

Nintendo is selling first party games for $80. No thanks.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#937

Post by brianwawok »

philistine wrote: post #821
monocasa wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that electricity was quickly commoditized does not guarantee that AWS will commoditize.

S3 is. But obviously not all of it.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#938

Post by brianwawok »

ErneX wrote: post #665
hoherd wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that is crazy to me (and maybe this is a premonition) is that if you play MS games online on Xbox, you have to have a subscription, but if you play on other platforms you can play for free. They are literally punishing their own users with additional fees. I thought this was just Minecraft, which is why my kids and I always play Minecraft on our iPads instead of on the Xbox, but when I recently bought F…

I think they changed it not long ago so you can play free to play games without the online subscription. Just like on PlayStation network. But paid online games you need to be subbed yes.

Which is real dumb when in like self hosting a Minecraft server. Pay to play online has turned me off Xbox, I won’t buy next gen

Re: Resetting Xbox

#939

Post by MYEUHD »

soulofmischief wrote: post #820
tracker1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2…

> Also, the [Cyberpunk 2077] developer owns the GOG storefront and so 100% of your profits go directly to them.

That's no longer the case since a few months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46422412

Re: Resetting Xbox

#940

Post by 3997531578 »

tpxl wrote: post #672
account42 wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For games like Starfield, monetization isn't even the main issue but rather political ideology. You can only do so much ESG-approved preaching before customers go elsewhere.

For games like Starfield, the problem is the game is bad, it has nothing to do with politics or ESG.

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