Digitally Downloaded's Christopher Ingram writes:
"I’ve been carefully watching events unfold, enjoying the criticism as I always do, yet with this system there’s been something different – something just doesn’t ‘feel’ right this time around. I’ve been hard at work, searching though countless articles both recent and past and I think I just might have picked a few truths from the mounds of articles that amass each day in the world of gaming journalism, and I think I might have just found the needle hidden within the haystack."
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" -
On Amazon, you can't get an RTX 4090 for less than this one from Gigabyte, which now offers great value after an eye-catching April deal.
Well, third party games like Batman Arkham City and Assassin's Creed 3 looks and plays better on PS3 and even Xbox than their "next gen" version on the WiiU. What does that tell you?
Games on PS2 looked and played better than games on PS1. Games on Xbox 360 looked and played better than games on Xbox 1. Games on Sega Dream cast looked and played better than games on Sega Saturn. Games on PS Vita looks and plays better than games on the PSP. So why don't the games on the "next gen" WiiU look and play better than current generation?
The Wii was similar in power to PS2 and Xbox as well (give or take) so this is nothing new for the Nintendo crowd.
I'm sure it'll be poweful enough for them.
Personally I'd like to see a more in-depth breakdown of the parts. We know it's DDR3L 1600...but we don't know about the timings. These are important to know, because tight versus loose might make 100 percent difference or more.
You can have DDR3 1333 have larger bandwidth than DDR3 running at 2133 mhz. It's all about the timings.
We also don't know the latency between the processor and the ram, as it's going to be less than a PC guaranteed.
So the 17.7 gb/s could be off quite a bit from the actual number. We don't even know how many channels there are. Is it dual channel memory? Quad? While this one is less likely, we still don't know.
We don't know how much eDRAM there is or what it's bandwidth is.
So all in all the 'bottleneck' might not be nearly as severe as we've all seen.
This fits AND what the article points out fits. Because even if what I say is right, it's not a technical marvel, but would fall in line with what Reggie said about 'new generation' and new experiences.
But we still haven't had a proper gauge of the system yet, it's still mostly guesses. All we have confirmed really is that it runs DDR3 1600 mhz and has 2gb with four 512mb chips.
That's really it (in terms of core specs).
We know it isn't Power7, but we haven't got confirmation of what chip it is, just a guess that it's a higher clocked Broadway that now a triple core (or quad by some people's guesses).
We don't know what the ATI specs are except for around 500 shaders and that it's from the 7XXX series.
So no, we really don't have much to go on still.
Probably won't be for awhile either.
good read, i enjoyed the article
The problem at the moment is simply that the games being showcased - Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City - are just ports. They are beginner ports from developers who spent max 6 months time to get their title finally onto a Nintendo console.
If you look back, you'll see that launch titles for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were atrocious and downright muddy. Just like how recently Rockstar said only now at the end of the line are good games being made, and that's because developers actually have the proper toolset to make a good, solid game. Games take time to develop, they can't be rushed.
Though in saying all this, the ability that Ubisoft, BioWare and Rocksteady have shown in being able to quickly port over their current-gen games spells great relief for the Wii U in terms of third-party games. Being able to already understand the base mechanics of the tools and to be able to easily use the gamepad is a great thing, and people really need to stop being so negative on it.
Reminds me of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 launches (which everyone conveniently forgets when they bash another console), in that the consoles were laughed at while people enjoyed their PlayStation 2 and Xbox because the games were terrible.