81–90 of 109 posts
For my entire life, I've seen the same cycle. Microsoft buys something great, optimizes all the good out of it, and then pulls the plug. Skype, Nokia, GitHub... Now it's happening to video games. The thing everyone needs to realize is that Microsoft fundamentally doesn't make anything, they never have. All they can do is buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher. They certainly can't lovingly craft games, th…
For my entire life, I've seen the same cycle. Microsoft buys something great, optimizes all the good out of it, and then pulls the plug. Skype, Nokia, GitHub... Now it's happening to video games. The thing everyone needs to realize is that Microsoft fundamentally doesn't make anything, they never have. All they can do is buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher. They certainly can't lovingly craft games, th…
Xbox is in complete disarray and is imploding. I haven’t owned a PlayStation in decades. If my son’s Xbox Series X (the worst naming ever) suddenly dies, we’ll either switch to PlayStation or build a PC.
Xbox is in complete disarray because none of the people in charge seem like people who have played a single video game ever.
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Curious that you focus so much on her gender.
I don’t pretend to know GP’s motives for putting it that way, but if I was going to put on my evil hat and kill off a gaming company/division I’d also put a woman in the hot seat. Not because I think women don’t understand gaming, they do; nor that I think women can’t run successful companies, they do; but because a large chunk of the gaming market is openly misogynistic and would root for the failure outcome I was o…
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Right, because we never see investors making decisions that are suboptimal in the long term because they're too focused on short-term gains. Everyone is perfectly rational, and high initial costs have never discouraged anyone from trying to displace an established dominant player; it's purely because the dominant players are perfectly efficient and don't ever try to rent-seek.
I did not claim any of that, so not sure if your reply is misplaced. It’s an easily observable fact that throughout the previous decades, investors have invested in businesses that reduce profit margins. Amazon being one of the most famous with the slogan “your margin is my opportunity”, but also Walmart, Costco, and other businesses that end up winning because they delivered acceptable products or services at lower…
I understand that you weren't the one who initially claimed they should start a business, but if you're going to jump into a thread where someone is told something nonsensical and defend the nonsense by ignoring the context, it's reasonable for others to also jump in and call that out.
For my entire life, I've seen the same cycle. Microsoft buys something great, optimizes all the good out of it, and then pulls the plug. Skype, Nokia, GitHub... Now it's happening to video games. The thing everyone needs to realize is that Microsoft fundamentally doesn't make anything, they never have. All they can do is buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher. They certainly can't lovingly craft games, th…
Microsoft didn't buy Xbox, they built the entire ecosystem themselves...
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It’s because of the idiocy of p&l tracking. The hardware, store, and games all need to be independently profitable. Once they are, they all need to be more and more profitable. Finally when it’s no longer profitable fire half the people and strip it for parts. They’re already dead, they just don’t know it yet.
They lose money on every dollar they invest overall in xbox as a business. They pretty publicly documented this (which is unusual for Microsoft). Overall gaming is a dying business. Everyone has a pretty powerful smartphone in their pockets, and there are so many platform vying for attention. AAA gaming is becoming a smaller fraction of the overall gaming pie, so I would expect prices to go up. Mobile gaming usage is…
Gaming is fine. Remove AAA from the equation, and current gaming is perfectly fine. Indies are plentiful and offer a great experience. Even lower-budget games from larger companies are fine without being plagued with every horrible practice (e.g.: microtransactions).
Also, the past 4 decades of games are still available. Hell, I would probably need two lifetimes to play all games in my queue list.
It may not be the infinitely profitable industry that attracts the likes of Microsoft, and that is a good thing. In fact, I view Microsoft failing in gaming as a hopeful sign for the health of videogames.
For my entire life, I've seen the same cycle. Microsoft buys something great, optimizes all the good out of it, and then pulls the plug. Skype, Nokia, GitHub... Now it's happening to video games. The thing everyone needs to realize is that Microsoft fundamentally doesn't make anything, they never have. All they can do is buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher. They certainly can't lovingly craft games, th…
My time to cruelly remind people that Diablo Immortal was insanely profitable for Activision.
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Curious that you focus so much on her gender.
I don’t pretend to know GP’s motives for putting it that way, but if I was going to put on my evil hat and kill off a gaming company/division I’d also put a woman in the hot seat. Not because I think women don’t understand gaming, they do; nor that I think women can’t run successful companies, they do; but because a large chunk of the gaming market is openly misogynistic and would root for the failure outcome I was o…
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'No Achievements'? even just on her Wikipedia she has a great run in her career. Also the population seems to like her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha_Sharma Bachelor of Science in Management from University of Minnesota Marketing role at Microsoft 2011-2013 out of college, standard average college grad role. --- There are thousands of more intelligent, harder working, better credentialed, better achieving college grads alone at this point. --- COO of Porch ~2013-2017 - how does one go from a standard marketing role to COO, ok wha…