Tynan Muddle at Aussie-Gamer.com writes: "Those who profess to be true ‘video gamers’ are holding back the very innovation they crave by being deathly afraid of a digital future. This was made obvious by the recent Xbox One fiasco.
The spectacle of watching a relative newcomer to the video game industry — Microsoft — trying to give something back in the way of digital rights management (DRM), only to be publicly slammed by the very fans of said industry to a point where they hit the ‘abort’ button was nothing short of sickening."
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 part of its plans to cut 1,900 jobs, Microsoft has reportedly shut down operations at Bethesda France, letting go roughly 15 people
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
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
Tbh Microsoft I think Bethesda being 3rd party same with Activision would probably more competitive than thus scenario imo
The recently purchased Activision French offices might take over all the licensing and marketing for Microsoft in France from now on.
Hanzla from eXputer inquires: "If Xbox can care about preserving its games and legacy, what exactly is wrong with Nintendo, trying to kill game preservation single-handedly?"
Ahh yes the good old game preservation of saving all your games to a removable hhd on the Xbox 360, taking it round your mates house, setting up multiple tvs to
Be met with “save data corrupted, please re download”
Or how about removing 360 games
From the store
, download them now or else, and, better hope to god that save data doesn’t corrupt, or it’s lost for ever
Nice one ☝️
This is just a scammy PR move to distract from the fact they are going digital only and trying to push streaming and subscriptions only.
No gaming company has pushed harder to remove ownership than Microsoft.
Without discs there is no preservation, preservation can't be done by the rights holders it can only be done by the consumers, anything else is a lie.
Nobody wants this. Sales or the lack of it in the case of XBOX is very telling. I wonder how the adorably all digital series X will fare. Adorably dismal perhaps?
Only time will tell, but for from someone like me suspecting that Xbox is trying to gracefully exit the console market, that "forward compatibility" team is trying to get Xbox games playing on Windows PCs. I mean, it's nice that they're not planning on exiting with a "enjoy your games while the hardware still works" message, so that's nice. They still have a brand to protect via Microsoft so probably feel obligated to have a better exit strategy.
Psyche. Your wrong.
None of the reasons stated matter enough. And that crap about instant patch downloads was dumb, because we all know some patches cause more problems than they fix. They even ruin offline games (skyrim).
I'm perfectly content with choosing if I want a patch, thanks to the prompt that gives me the OPTION.
All the other reasons are dumb one's too because MS could simply just give that particular player the ability to turn on DRM themself if they want those "benefits".
Still dont see why mS needs drm to have most of those benefits. Seems like MS is withholding because they are mad. Don't blame gamers, blame MS for withholding.
"The spectacle of watching a relative newcomer to the video game industry — Microsoft — trying to give something back in the way of digital rights management"
How the hell is enforcing DRM "giving something back"?
I can't believe so many people were perfectly fine with Microsoft [I can't say that; i'll get banned]-ing them.
Wow I cannot believe that there are people actually defending this ridiculous policy...
Alright man put the crack pipe down.
And the key word here is "OPTIONS". MS didn't give people options and incentive.
They didn't need to take features such as family share away. They were just acting like an angry kid.
The existance of physical media shouldn't prevent MS from discounting games and having sales on regular basis. Existance of PC game discs don't affect steam sales.