MCV - Games critics didn’t like Aliens: Colonial Marines.
The game’s Metacritic score was just 49. But despite the critical mauling it reached No.1 during its launch week and is the fastest selling game of the year so far.
Meanwhile, last year’s XCom: Enemy Unknown was loved by game reviewers. And although it didn’t sell badly, its sales paled in comparison to critical disappointments Medal of Honor: Warfighter and Resident Evil 6.
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.
I think the headline actually answers the question. 'Critiques'? Once upon a time it used to be 'reviewers'.
Not even slightly. What used to be at least a somewhat objective few has become a mass of subjective biased tools.
Aliens: Colonial Marines may have sold well, but it would have sold a lot better and for a lot longer if it didn't suck xeno-balls.
Fuck no, they just a fucking joke
While I can get into a long explanation on this issue, the simple fact is that they do matter. This isn't to say people care what reviewers say on every matter (trust me, they don't), but will generally look into "professional" opinions if they're unsure of the game. A great example of this would be Declassified, since many gamers reviewed it fondly for keeping true to the multiplayer, where as most "professionals" reviewed it poorly due to it being an overall weak package. Sometimes people want an opinion that is more rounded / thought out, than a someone on a forum making a claim.