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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#971

Post by rawbot »

SllX wrote: post #859
rawbot wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would say pack-in title would refer to a bundle that was active for a substantial time, like Wii Sports on the Wii. The Metroid Prime bundle was just active during the release of the game, 3 years after it launched.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#972

Post by LtdJorge »

Krasnol wrote: post #674
LtdJorge wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is a problem for consumers if it bankrupts the company. Healthy company is better than no company. And I mean healthy, not greedy.

Making less doesn't equal to going bankrupt.

Yes, but making just 3% could mean tomorrow you’re in the red.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#973

Post by tracker1 »

ColdStream wrote: post #468
mvdtnz wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too much effort is going for dazzling graphics Could have fooled me. I haven't seen a meaningful improvement in game graphics for at least a decade.

We are well into the diminishing returns era now. It not done via better art designs, now you have to push significantly significantly harder to get improved results via brute forcing it. I am very cautiously optimistic about this. It seems there has been a lot of tooling change over to integrate ray/path tracing into systems. Once this becomes a little more ubiquitous we might start to see some decent stuff but so f…

I think there's a lot of room to grow in terms of ray/path tracing, etc... but I think it's studios and not real-time gaming that will really see the benefits near term. Bamers Nexus did an interview with a new Graphics MFG that's working more into that direction, but their near term focus is the professional space.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#974

Post by tracker1 »

breezybottom wrote: post #505
adithyareddy wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a grocery chain you know exactly how much an item costs and exactly how much you sell it for. You also simply order more or less stock of the item depending on how it's selling. If you're a video game company, you invest millions of dollars in a project up front, for years, and you don't know until after release whether you: - Make back all the money you spent plus a healthy profit on top. - Just break even…

Food prices can change significantly depending on natural disasters, diseases, supply chain issues. There's more uncertainty than you acknowledge.

The stores themselves aren't losing money if there's a natural disaster.. the farm does, the distributor likely does.. but not the store. The store just raises prices against future inventory pricing, often ahead of the inventory itself.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#975

Post by manytimesaway »

philistine wrote: post #838
manytimesaway wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Fox (SNES), Star Fox 2 (SNES mini), Star Fox 64, Star Fox 64 3D, Star Fox Zero and Star Fox (Switch 2), while having minor gameplay differences, are all retellings of the same in-game story (the eponymous Lylat Wars).

The previously unreleased Starfox 2 is not a retelling, it is a proper story sequel. That is the one game where you're wrong, every single other game is a remake, with Starfox Zero the most tenuous one, but still a reimagining. They've remade the same story five times.

I mean, it's still Andross vs Star Fox with the exact same map, so a very lazy sequel.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#976

Post by simoncion »

zeratax wrote: post #955
simoncion wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...on top of that it has very satisfying combat mechanics... Man, the sequel made the combat totally trivial. I'm at the sequel's "Episode 10", and I've the opinion that DS2 took nearly everything that anyone ever complained about in Death Stranding and made it effectively optional. I don't like the decision, but I'm still enjoying the game. > yeah the game has long cinematic cutscenes... It really wouldn't be a Ko…

i absolutely agree! my biggest issue is probably that they didnt expand at all on the walking mechanics and gave you vehicles so quickly while also make the terrain so much easier to drive on, that i almost never walked! in my walking simulator!! that said especially the ending is such a unique experience i cant say i didnt have a great time anyways

I got to the end of the story. I can see how some folks would really, really dislike that ending, but I enjoyed it.

In regards to vehicles: there was exactly one location that I couldn't drive the truck to... but I pretty quickly got the upgrade to the truck that let me drive it there. :/

In DS1, I regretted building the roads because of how they mostly eliminated the need to walk around. Going into DS2, I'd assumed that refusing to build the roads would have made me spend way more time on foot, but, nope! Should they ever make a third, I do hope that they put the walking back into the game.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#977

Post by port11 »

King-Aaron wrote: post #941
port11 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might work if you don’t: out-price your hardware, get rid of disc trays, make GamePass expensive, force Microsoft accounts and online mandates, buy up every studio and force them to out out crappy updates,… ahm, no it’s the users, they’re getting old and cranky. Yikes, I bought every Xbox console and plenty of day-1 releases, but skipped the last gen when it became clear that the platform isn’t about gamers anymore.…

Yeah, we had every playstation since the original, and a vast library of games. Admittedly I ended up with a digital PS5 (gift), so I ended up in the digital ecosystem. This will hurry me up into buying a disc drive for it I suppose. I tend to agree about the lackluster AAA industry, but I don't think that's the gamers 'fault' for wanting indie games, more private equity and the share market environment forcing devel…

I didn’t mean to go with the easy, default criticism of AAAs as slop and repetitive; it’s just that _lots_ of smaller devs/studios are putting out excellent gameplay and/or narratives.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#978

Post by ksec »

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 -…

It has been really really long since I read anything on HN with someone that has some basic understanding of business. May be all is not lost.

Yes. 3% margin is lower than inflation of US treasury rate. As some business would even call it borderline charity. It is also not a commodity market, which means it is not healthy. And any headwind is going to be damaging.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#979

Post by ksec »

Drupon wrote: post #966
Invictus0 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it somehow lost on you that you're commenting on a vc's website

HackerNews is where I find informed commentary on tech stuff because places like reddit are hollowed out and useless for it. I don't care one bit about cretins like VCs.

>HackerNews is where I find informed commentary on tech stuff b

Unfortunately that hasn't been the case for most subject in over 10 years. But I have yet to find a better place though.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#980

Post by muddi900 »

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.

What is MS board doing? How did Xbox spend 70 Billion without C-Suite approval?

There seems to be no consequences for top management.

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