Capital game lists some of the industry's best and worst, including purchases made by Microsoft, EA and Sony.
A new patent recently published by Sony wants to gather biometric data of gamers to track whether one is being harassed using AI tools.
I hope this is one of those patents that never comes to fruition.
I already dislike the fact you can pay a significant amount for a online service buy associated games and content on said service and get banned from that service over potentially a misunderstanding the bans are already handed out for flimsy reasons
I'd rather see money invested in a ban that simply removes the offensive players ability to communicate with unknown players allow them to continue party chats with friends but not with Joe blow on cod.
Agreed. Blizzard recently banned a college Overwatch 2 player who's dependent for saying "shit." Pretty harsh.
After laying off almost 2,000 people, Xbox finds itself in a position at odds with the community-first image it has cultivated for itself.
lol I’m not a big MS gamer but Sony and a number of others have laid off ton of people as well. Where are the ridiculous articles about them not being your friend? Gaming news is such a joke and these sites wonder why they have to beg for money/patreons or flood with 5x more ads.
I think the sentiment is corporations are there to make money they are not out friends that are harsh and cutthroat when lt comes to the bottom line so why do we proclaim our love for any gaming company from the rooftops when they wouldn't care about us unless we are buying the next thing.
We need to beore objective with how we view these "teams"
This is the absolute truth. The only part of you these companies, ALL companies, want to be friends with is your bank account. They don't care what they have to say, who's job they have to cut, or what shady underhandedness they must engage in. Bottom line is all that matters.
Because people unfortunately make these companies and products part of their own persona, so when they are scrutinized, they see it as an attack on themselves. There is some neuropsychological research around this phenomenon, but it basically has the same effect as religion. It helps foster a sense of community that humans need to feel comfortable. So that is not happening unless we have a sudden surge of people actually understanding how they work and taking control of themselves.
While it's true Sony isn't a friend either, let's not pretend that they're even in the same ballpark as MS's anti consumer practices. Sony is not a friend but atleast they're not an enemy like MS.
@twopickles, were you not paying attention? Sony was heavily criticized when they laid off people weeks ago, more than Microsoft did with their massive abk layoffs.
That’s Whataboutism. Sony and other game companies didn’t pay more than $80B to buy up publishers. Microsoft said in court that it wasn’t going to have redundancies and fire people. Microsoft told Xbox owners that they would have a AAA on GamePass each quarter. But here we are with Microsoft Game Studios shrinking. Consolidation doesn’t benefit the consumer, and no company has consolidated more than Microsoft.
Exactly. They love their SonyToo instead of looking at everything in its totality. You spend $80B to buy up so many pubs/devs, you damn well should have something to show for it.
That said, this article is old and someone is clearly looking for clicks!
ok here is a reality check. Tech companies have been firing thousands of employees the last couple of years.
I find it odd that the percentage of employees sacked from MS
QUOTE
"Microsoft announced approximately 1,900 job cuts across its gaming division, including Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox. 8.6% of its colossal 22,000-strong global workforce. "
is worth writing an article condemning the company, when Sony Interactive fired 8% of its workforce (900 people approximately).
https://news.crunchbase.com...
Is the writer concerned about the percentage of the workforce fired or the number of employees?
Lets not forget that Unity laid off 25 percent of its workforce (1800 people) and Discord laid off 17 percent of its employees.
You also have to take into account the AI issue reported in the article. MS is heavily invested in A.I. They have invested in Open A.I (chatgpt 4+Dalle 3), in Abu Dhabi’s G42 and in French AI company Mistral.
These LLMs have already replaced thousands of jobs as A.I usage becomes more common
https://www.cbsnews.com/new...
https://www.theverge.com/20...
https://tech.co/news/compan...
This is the new reality. Even nvidia CEO said that games will fully A.I generated.
https://www.pcgamer.com/sof...
Nevertheless, no company should be ever viewed as "your friend". MS had numerous anti consumer practices in place and the same is true for Sony (not only in video game space) and Nintendo (60$ dollar games without permanent discounts, remasters of 10 year old game with full price, no console price cuts, expensive joy cons which are prone to drift, to name but a few).
As part of its plans to cut 1,900 jobs, Microsoft has reportedly shut down operations at Bethesda France, letting go roughly 15 people
They can form a company if they want, they are just as jobless as if "Microsoft had left them as 3rd party".
"MIcrosoft leaves Bethesda do what they know how to do best" ... close! Oh the irony ....
(Citation from a week old article)
I think Microsoft and other game publishers are letting people go because they think ai will replace them. Doesn’t matter how much profit they make. They were always going to be let go.
Bethesda France was made up of roughly 15 people... they couldn't of being doing much
Bethesda France mainly did publishing and marketing within the region
that's a shame for you to say that, i'm sure Elite loves hearing what you just said.
Bethesda France focused on publishing and marketing in the region. And 15 people lost their jobs as part of the closure.
I wonder if this is part of Microsoft's strategy to abandoned physical media or possibly gamepass advertising makes their roles redundant you don't need to market a game as hard when the majority of players get the game as part of a sub which already promoted upcoming games
It's France too, there's a high likelihood only 1-2 people on the team even had an Xbox.
Tbh Microsoft I think Bethesda being 3rd party same with Activision would probably more competitive than thus scenario imo
I think it would have been better for all parties really especially gamers
The recently purchased Activision French offices might take over all the licensing and marketing for Microsoft in France from now on.
Ensemble was not a bad acquisition. No acquisition has to be a bad acquisition. You take a studio of talented developers or at the very least competent developers, and you give them some funding and some time, and let their creative energy ferment a little and see what they can come up with.
I have a belief that most of these developers, whether you consider them good or bad, at least know how to make a game, so all that needs to be done is they need to be disciplined.
Case in point, Guerrilla Games. GG doesn't have a very good track record if you go far enough into their history. They used to be called "Lost Boys," and they made games for Gameboy, PS2, and Xbox. And their games were pretty bad, very bad, actually.
But Sony gave them funding and let them work on a grand, exclusive game, and they came up with Killzone, which was a pretty good shooter from a developer who was known for Shellshock: Nam 67, one of the crappiest shooters ever.
And now, GG has spearheaded the Killzone franchise into greateness.
Where there's talent, there's potential.
I don't think that RARE is a bad studio. I think that some good guys left the studio and people lost confidence in RARE, but worst of all, Microsoft chooses not to utilize RARE for anything special. MS orders RARE to make Avatars and Avatar accessories and now Kinect games.
I think if Microsoft gave RARE a bigger budget and more time, RARE could come up with a very great game.
Also, Ensemble made Age of Empires, so they were not a bad acquisition by Microsoft and therefore should not be in the honorable mention for worst acquisition.
Microsoft doesn't utilize its studios well.
didnt know about some of these. Like the GTA guys originally doing lemmings? thats so old school!
Seems like everything Microsoft touches turns to shit.
Zune, Kin, HD-DVD, numerous development studios, windows vista, windows phone 7, Encarta, Ms dewey, Bing (probably), DOS 4.0, IE 5, bob, active x, clippy, winME
and just because a lot of people have been dumb enough to buy (and re-buy and re-buy...) their broken xbox even though it has numerous hardware faults and general bad design choices it's deemed successful?
add it to the list I say.
didn't make the list? Football Manager and Total War franchise are some of the biggest selling games in Europe.