Some critics argue that video game narratives are poor, in comparison to books and movies; however, maybe video games simply offer a different kind of story experience?
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.
Interesting article, and I definitely agree. People need to get over the fact that narrative is more than just dialog-driven exposition.
I mean, Bioshock, for instance, delivers more narrative JUST THROUGH IT'S ENVIRONMENT than a standard novel probably could in it's entirety.
It's still pretty bad in most cases but I don't think that's anything to do with the limitations of the medium, I just think it's due to people accepting cheesy cliched characters and plots from games (but of course the movie industry is probably about the same right now).
There are many games that use the medium to tell an interesting and moving story in only the way they can (the Half-life and Portal series' are usually my go to examples) but there are still far too many cheeseball gruff voiced heroes and pant-teasing innuendo spewing heroines for my liking.
I just skip the story in most games i have finished heaps and not taken any notice of what was going on ,some are cool but not many.
How you view this topic depends on the person. Some people get nothing from reading a book, some find movies boring and so on. There are a lot of people who find playing through a story to be the best way for them to appreciate it. Gaming has its place.