Reuters, New York: Sales of next-generation DVD players are not seen as likely to take off for another 18 months as consumers are still waiting for prices to fall and for the battle over two competing technologies to be resolved.
Referring to the high-definition DVD format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, Forrester Research said in a report on Monday that while the two camps have "been fighting what seems to be a war of attrition for consumers' hearts and minds", few consumers are warming to either type of device.
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series , will debut never-before-seen games & content updates across more than 100 titles on May 25th.
"another 18 months": Thanks to Paramount's stupid move. God I hate this war. At first it was helpfull with prices falling so fast but now I actually want Casino Royale, Transformers, Bourne Ultimatum and Pirates of Caribbean 3 on HD and they are divided between two expensive formats.
Blu FTW.
That's the jist of it..
everytime I see an article about this I'm reminded of what an employee at a local Suncoast said. The war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD will be decided by the side the porn industry sides with. From what he said this is how the previous formats of VHS and DVD have been decided over their competing formats.
Whether this is true or not hasn't been confirmed by myself.
Both formats look good and I think will be good for people who want high-definition movies when a winner is declared, if one is at all. In the end though, my money is on Blu-ray.
This should teach Sony a lesson or two about forcing new formats on people. Sony really though that blu-ray adoption was going to be smooth when they added it into the PS3 and is turning to be a 3-4 war if not a never ending war. If sony wouldn't add blu-ray into the PS3 then they wouldnt have so many enemies such as Microsoft which by the way have pretty big pockets. This reminds me of Hitler... Why did he lose the war? simply becase he declared the war against the world. Why not fight one battle at a time? Why risk everything by trying to fight the console war and the format war at the same time?
By the look of it, Sony's plan back fired... Blu-ray is hurting the PS3 and the PS3 is hurting blu-ray... good job Sony... let's see how long it takes for digital distribution to pick up and all the money and resources you are spending goes down on history as the what not to do in business 101.