But not necessarily that new.
Regardless of whether or not the sales figures for the last financial quarter are of consoles sold or shipped, regardless of the extent to which the PlayStation and Xbox numbers were muddied by last-gen console statistics, one thing is clear: Microsoft are lagging behind. By an alarming factor of three-to-one.
It's early days, of course, in terms of Phil Spencer's tenure at the top. For much of 2014, he's been dealing in damage control, and trying to turn the omnishambles that Mattrick left behind into something identifiable, something relatable, something to do with games rather than every other facet of entertainment.
With Arkane Austin no more and Lyon living for who knows how long, the superb Dishonored is in serious danger; Microsoft cannot be trusted.
I love the Dishonored series so much and really want Dishonored 3. Microsoft better not screw this up.
I mean, I think the fans will probably kill Arkane Lyon by cooking up reasons to hate whatever they do next without playing it. I've never seen a game so artificially disliked as Deathloop.
Lol, why don't we just say, we are worried about all studios owned by MS now. They will keep closing studios until they have none left ...🙄
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
Xbox is a division that they discussed shutting down but doubled down on after Gamepass was pitched.
It needs to make money at some point. Big money.
According to Statista the net income of Microsoft is about $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
@romulus23
That is not why MS buys studios. They might continue to buy because it's about taking that sweet sweet IP out of the corporate husks of their acquisitions.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
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Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ the villain.
This was bound to happen, a bigger slice of pie and cut costs, when the games come they stand to make more and that’s their agenda—it was the writing on the wall when the sales went through and legally all those who approved the sale and mergers knew this would happen.
Snowflakes need to realize business is ugly and you can cry all you want but this is how capitalism works. And it works.
That said, M$ needs to steer the narrative and grab hold of all this, make their plans known, hype the hell out of all those dead IP’s they plan to revive, and be honest about the timeline. This is likely to involve mobile and IP on other consoles, and most people realize that.
The problem is this company is incapable of being transparent and seems to often want to dissuade and confuse is customer base. The lack of E3 has hurt Microsoft and I don’t think they know how to properly or effectively market their brand anymore.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
You do realize this happens in ALL industries? Or are you just saying this because it is Microsoft? In any case I feel for those that are being let go but the trch industry is suffering right now.
This absolutely does NOT happen all the time. Let me know the last time 1 company with a terrible product track record spent 100 billion onto acquire MULTIPLE successful companies in under a year only to shut them down and stop making their products regardless of how successful they were. Not merge them, completely shut them down.
And you can’t use Microsoft in your example.
Class action lawsuit? The law is on their side and protects them at all costs. There are no rules to protect the people at the bottom.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
ID software, the makers of Doom and Wolfenstein that have been with us since 1991 could be gone and MS will keep the IPs.
I hope some of these studios can buy their freedom from MS otherwise this is going to be even more devastating for the industry and gamers.
That's exactly what I'm worried about. I've been a fan of id since Wolfenstein 3D and I'm honestly afraid.
Toys for Bob saw the writing on the wall and bought themselves out.
Wouldn't be the first time a company did that under MS either. Bungie and Twisted Pixel did the same. Considering what just happened, I can see some other devs trying to buy themselves out too.
Won't make a difference.
The whole structure needs to be overhauled. Anyone that replaces Phil will be no different than him, Mattrick, or anyone else.
Until the company changes how they go about business, nothing will change
I just don't have any idea what they would do , they have done sooo much damage on their xbox brand, they have a show at July or June I think, but will it even matter even they show amazing games, idkn
True,
But they may as well get it over with. Whether it happens now or later, the burning is going to hit the same.
Reality is the ONE move that can alleviate a lot of this is the one move they can't make. Remove day 1 from gamepass.
The Xbox brand is expanding, as an Xbox mobile game store is opening this coming July where Microsoft will brings its "first-party portfolio."
“Bond adds that they will start on the web”
This will go nowhere.
Nice knowing you Xbox. This is what happens when the house never gets cleaned.
The only this MS is expanding is the amount of feculence it sprays on everyone who just want to enjoy gaming and make games.
The best thing MS can do for the gaming industry is leave and never return.
"Put simply, if Spencer is to perform a proper reset of the Xbox One brand and realign the console's focus on gaming, he's going to need a new console to do it. Not a generational console, but an Xbox One trimmed of all the fat. One that gets rid of everything apart from the core system hardware and a big fat hard-drive."
I see your point but these extras aren't, apart from the kinect, really costing Microsoft anything. Getting rid of them seems more anti productive than productive. The best thing to do is to change the focus and not release another completely different SKU. Another completely different SKU increases confusion amongst consumers (which I feel is one of the problems with the Kinectless SKU). This would be taking it a step too far.
Microsoft needs to find a way of making the Xbox even cheaper to start making ground on the PS4 but removing stuff isn't going to help. Remember Microsoft spent a fortune on the new kinect (rumored to be as much as the console). It is something you can't just write off. The damage was already done then (so removing more stuff isn't going to help them that much; we talking about taking very little off the manufacturing price here with these things gone)
Good article, really enjoyed the read.
I think we all know that the 'slim' version of consoles will come out, not sure if it will be next year or in 2016. But even if we assume Microsoft release the xboxone-slim in 2015, trimmed of any excess fat, and at a further reduced price; we know that Sony are in a position to do the same, and potentially still have the cheaper, but still more powerful console.
Microsoft needed a killer app that demonstrated the integration of Kinect, media and gaming, to really show their vision for the xboxone. I was really keeping an eye on Quantum Break, because it promised to bring all three components together for a true next-gen experience. But now that kinect has been unbundled, and xbox entertainment studios has closed, I'm not actually sure Microsoft can still fulfill that vision in the same way.
First party exclusive games are what can bring Microsoft upto par, but even that is not necessarily going to bring new converts to the console, but will help migrate the last-gen adopters to the new gen. It seems Sony on the other hand have been able to bring in new converts into the playstation ecosystem, if the 3-1 statistic is true.
Bottom line - Microsoft have tried a re-launch by unbundling Kinect from xboxone, now they need to show up strong on the games front going forward. That's really the only way they can get back up to par.
That would be crazy , but if they do so am ready to buy me a new one when released.
Ms is not releasing any new console atleast for the next 5 years
And, the solution is to release a new console within about 10 months of releasing the ONE, knowing there a many projects in development for it. There are 26 countries that have yet to receive the ONE.
I understand that it's you're job to blow sh!t out of proportion to get hits but, damn.