Freemium will become the dominant force throughout the global games industry, leading experts claim.
Digital specialists at EA and BBC have both told MCV that free is the price that consumers want to buy their games. And that the model – which is currently popular online and on mobile – could even come to the console space.
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.
you should apply in MS PR team buddy, I think you will do a great job in my humble opinion :)
MS: "Xbox services and content without AB up 1%, with AB up 62%. Hardware down 31%. In total a loss of 350 mill."
darthv72: "Seems about right."
MS: "Excuse m ..."
darthv72: "I don't hardly play on my consoles directly."
MS:
What he said was facts. How he plays games is no concern of you. Don't get too mad about it.
I can tell people like you are an absolute minority..
If service is up means their fans and fanboys accepted this model and subscribed to it. The near future you will see a big decline because the service is saturated.
to you it may seem like the minority... but your bubble is shrinking because more and more are following suit. convenience is a hell of a drug and its also why physical sales only amount to 30% of overall game sales. times are changing, you either get with them or you get left behind.
But that's been ms for years. When things aren't going their way they try to change the way things are said. For instance console sales are down, they stop telling how many sold instead telling us how many hours spent in halo or headshots. So it makes sense console sales down just say people are playing on more devices then previous. What they won't say is how many xbox players jumped ship to ps5.
Hardware sales are so bad that Sony and Nintendo are blowing the sales off the water with their hardware.
If Xbox are losers, others aren’t..
Xbox already tried everything with Xbox live then subscriptions went down so much that they had to find something else. Their fans subscribed then reached saturation rather quickly.
Hardware and exclusive games is where it’s at! Keep gamers excited, announce decent software and people will support you
@shin
Well keep it simple Sony 's operating income is down 26% and Microsoft's is up 32%. No MS spin there, just facts. 😉
Cheers
MS is after diminishing consoles as a medium. They want to destroy this market because they couldnt win. MS’s vision is to dissolve console gaming.
Odd that a company that touts you dont need the hardware to play is already touting another console in the works.
They are not reliant on the HW but still want to maintain a presence (no matter how small) is a good thing. It shows commitment to the craft. It reminds me of SNK and how they made games for their own hardware (Neo Geo) while also making them for others because they knew there was a market to do so. They knew they would sell more to others but also sell to their own niche fan base.
Perfectly reasonable post down voted by insecure corporation friendly folk.... But not gamers. Real gamer want accessibility and ease of acquisition for all.... Company shills are the only ones still telling us that hardware locking people from games is good for us.
In the last two years they've started exiting the consumer market altogether. All of the newest Surface products are business models only. They can't seem to work out what they want to do with it.
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.
Activision: "we gonna need a bigger rucksack/backpack please"
Microsoft: "why's that"
Activision: "to carry yo' weak ass'
Top brass have also wanted to start seeing returns on the 100 billion they have put into various Xbox related moves so seeing more multiplatform games is highly likely especially from abk
It's basically saying that PlayStation is the reason Xbox is afloat right now thinks to Ps5 versions of COD
The only growth MS will get out of the console industry is if it supports it's rivals platforms. Xbox is a pointless machine now. I can see them on a big push for live next, and they won't give up on trying to buy Steam.
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.
Eventually they’ll realize the value is with the employee not the company. Buying an IP means nothing if the people who contributed are let go. They’ll get it one day.
tech is different because they buy threats and then kill them. Twitter bought Vine and did nothing with it. Despite people seemingly liking it. Could've had tiktok a decade before bytedance. go figure.
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" -
GL compiles a list of some of the most mind-blowing video game narrative twists in recent memory, from The Last of Us to Outer Wilds
With articles like these cant you tag the games mentioned so that we can know ahead of time if there’s a spoiler to avoid?
Not clicking on your article otherwise.
... however, I want to play for COMPLETE games! Not games where half the content is sold 5 seconds after release through DLC-milking!
I absolutely don't want to get involved with any kind of micro-transaction kinda deal, where you play as you go along.
I love dellusional bias analysts. Online, mobile, casual game devs and analysts
real devs ignore you.
You make bad games. And I beg to differ that people dont want to pay for games
What we dont want is to be microtransactioned and monetized to death
F2P doesnt work if it isnt a shooter or has a story
Am I the only non tight-arse who doesnt mind paying for games and even thinks games are cheaper than they were 2 decades ago?
I want to pay for games and I want to support the industry.
I do, however think all games "journalist" should work for nothing.
There, see how you like them apples.
Nothing is FREE and that is a FACT.
I haven't played a free game that was't garbage. And freemium will not work for all types of games.