Farida from Digitally Downloaded writes: "One of the main evolutions that came with the current-gen was the introduction of HD entertainment to gaming back. While in retrospect it has served to be one of the most significant advances in gaming, it also served to perhaps be a premature push in big technology that heavily impacted both consumers and, most importantly, developers. It is a dreadfully costly endeavour, complex to disseminate during development and it was initially a difficult task to utilise efficiently."
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.
RAM will go way up from the current level on consoles, that will bring much more changes to games than graphics
Except the cost for "better graphics" isn't as prohibitive these days as technology (core clocks, GPUs) has been relatively less explosive and has hit a bit of a ceiling when compared to previous gens.
So to make a 1080p, 60 FPS box next gen requires minimal financial effort. A few devs have gone on record saying that next gen could be "cheaper" than previous ones, so I'm not sure where the author is getting his information from. If MS and Sony go with off the shelf components and a PC friendly developer environment, costs will be minimal.
And next gen better graphics are ALL that I need. I don't care about motion controls or ridiculous features I never asked for. Video games are a visual medium, so give me cinematic, over the top visuals and games I can't find anywhere else and a standard controller and I'll be just fine.
Course graphics is needed how many would go out buy a console example ps4 found out same graphics chip just added memory differnt cpu.
Graphics is what pushes next level of gaming The point is individuals what matters more story or gameplay, visuals or Both? For me mix of all 3.
I know I'm an advocate for gameplay over graphics, but if next gen doesn't bring better graphics as well as better gameplay then I'll be disappointed.