There is dust covering the walls, floor, ceiling and everything in between. Small particles of it are illuminated by the dull glow of one hundred stuttering lamps. A door opens and two hooded acolytes enter, shuffling their feet in small cloth slippers. They pass between rows and rows of artefacts, all categorised and stored for safekeeping. Suddenly one stops, holding up a hand for the other to do so too.
“What is it?” whispers the younger of the two.
“The greatest achievement of our past,” the elder replies. ”A work of a true artist.”
Reverently he lifts a small rectangular item from its place amidst burning incense and candles. As its details come into view, the younger acolyte gasps.
“Who designed such beauty?”
The elder, tears wet in his eyes, sets the copy of Half-Life 3 back in its place.
“His name was Gabe Newell.”
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.
Nice, another crappy article about gaming and art. How many this year now? All these gaming sites do is talk about the same exact crap and click-bait every bit of news they can to get dat extra advertisement money.
Bring something original to the table, bitches.
Great titles are an art right from the characters the voices that fit the characters. The music the scenes the story behind the title. Are all forms of art right down to the picture on the package to the instruction booklet. Nobuo Uematsu is an artist with his music in the Final Fantasy franchise. Yasunori Mitsuda is an artist in Xenogears, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Surge. Akiko Shikatas music fits perfectly with the Ar Tonelico franchise.
Video games might not hang up next to some picture of color splotches or next to the Mona Lisa but in a form they are an art and it takes all these great talents to bring the game to the console.
They already are. End of argument.