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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#101

Post by wincy »

manytimesaway wrote: post #19
speak_plainly wrote: post #11

At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five. They're making actual games. Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat, like Xbox, has also put them in a slow-motion death spiral that's going to become painfull…

Things are not that black and white. Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans. Same thing goes for Star Fox, a remake of a remake of a remake, with poor visual and dialogue choices. And meanwhile, the same silent push for digital-only, forced upgrades and the like...

I’ll concede that Metroid Prime 4 has been sitting on my shelf.

But Star Fox? Phenomenal. Such a fun game. Luckily I have the pro controller so I could map A to the back paddle or else my poor old tendons couldn’t handle the rapid fire shooting required at the high levels, but I’ve had an absolute BLAST playing the remake.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#102

Post by wincy »

speak_plainly wrote: post #11

At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five. They're making actual games. Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat, like Xbox, has also put them in a slow-motion death spiral that's going to become painfull…

My kids begged for me to buy Tomodachi Life and Pokemon Pokopia and they’ve been absolute smash hits in the house. Pokemon got me hooked for a month or two until I mostly beat it, and the kids play Tomodachi Life every day and have funny little stories to tell. So many modern games just aren’t fun, it doesn’t matter what the graphics look like if the game is boring.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#103

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

Different eras of Xbox, and tech as a whole.

Spencer's strategy for Xbox was very 2010 coded: rely on the billion/trillion dollar company to undercut the competition and gather market share and leverage. Classic embrace, extend, extinguish. That's why they bought a bunch of arthouse studios who don't immediately make money, invested hard in a subscription service that was wildly unprofitable (a strategy that even TV services couldn't make profitable, mind you), and focus on moving software more than hardware.

That strategy shifted dramatically between rising interest rates, a cooling consumer market, business uncertainties, and companies simply wanted to throw any excess fat into the AI rat race. So those art house studios were removed, Gamepass needs to enshittify pre-maturely,production needs to slow from a variety of offerings to the usual safe and sure releases. And of course, the biggest expense needs to be trimmed down on: because no one is stopping them from doing it in the US.

The number will still go up, but in different ways. They aren't doing this because they are in the red, they are doing it because they want all the money instead of a lot of it.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#104

Post by 0x457 »

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…

Don't forget gifting of translucent Xbox.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#105

Post by egypturnash »

mjr00 wrote: post #50
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…

> - 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). How is that profit margin distributed though? King (Candy Crush etc) and Moja…

Keeper needs an optimization pass so badly. Once I finished the first zone the framerate dropped to the floor on my Steam Deck. Presumably it runs okay on the current XBox, but it sure feels like Double Fine's attention has moved on and will never return.

Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous but I don't think I am going to ever finish it until I get a Deck 3/4 in like 5-7 years.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#106

Post by summarybot »

babelfish wrote: post #99
12_throw_away wrote: post #59

I want XBOX to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day "more than a billion"? What are we doing here? Do you have any idea what your target market is? Surely someone in your organization can provide you with a good stretch goal ... >10% of all humans using an XBox daily is not that. Seriously, I cannot fathom why you would say this. Innumeracy? Narcissistic delusion? Stealth la…

There are approx ~3 billion "gamers" worldwide, why shouldn't Xbox set a goal of 1/3 of them using their platform?

"Let's go from 1 in 15 gamers to 1 in 3 gamers" sounds nice, probably gonna need employees for that!

Re: Resetting Xbox

#107

Post by etchalon »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #8
WorldMaker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people played South of Midnight even if sales didn't reflect it. Xbox Game Pass has done a lot to make Xbox sales figures hard to compare.

How many people would have played if it wasn't on Game Pass though? I doubt many. Expedition 33 was on game pass and still sold 8 million copies.

Expedition 33 was released across multiple platforms simultaneously.

SoM was an Xbox/PC/Game Pass exclusive for a year.

It's not a perfect comparison.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#108

Post by 0x457 »

It’s wild that we’re still unraveling the effects of COVID-19. It really feels like every video game exec convinced themselves the pandemic boom was permanent, and that we were all going to be stuck at home forever playing games.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#109

Post by kevinh »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #4

I think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell. South of Midnight took 7 years to make and cost $100 million to make... yet sold hardly any copies and I'm not even sure who they were trying to make it for. Meanwhile you have studios like Sandfall and Warhorse pumping out games on a fraction of the budget that ship millions (an…

There's no sourcing for that South of Midnight number. You should treat it as fictional.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#110

Post by swiftcoder »

joe_mamba wrote: post #22
thomastjeffery wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...more like > We can't afford it, and it's a bad investment anyway

>> We can't afford it But they've already spent the money. They spent about 70 billion on activision blizzard. That was and still is an outrageous amount of money that will take fever to break even let alone turn a profit.

> They spent about 70 billion on activision blizzard

A cynic might say they spent most of that for King, which continues to be profitable. The rest of Activision Blizzard just came along for the ride

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