TGC writes: The Console climate today seems more divided than ever. On one side Triple-A big budget games get bigger and bigger, and on the other end, Steam, PSN and Xbox Arcade, has allowed more indie developers to flourish. They specialize in simple quirky games to contrast with the bombast and complexity of the big budget games. In many ways this is a good thing, as it allows games like Braid and Journey to find an audience at a more reasonable price tag.
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:
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.
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
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
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" -
Discover our top video game adaptations of popular board games, from Bloodbowl to Wingspan & get your board game friends into video games!
It really all depends on what you class as indie really. If indie is 2 guys in a bedroom for a couple fo years. then there never have been any big budget indie games.
If you're talking about unique games made by studios which are independant as in they aren't owned by activison and the like. then we've had plenty this year and more to follow. Dishonored, spec ops, Lollipop chainsaw spring to mind.
Ahh Killer 7, one of Sudas finest if you ask me.
What's the definition of an Indie game though? I would call Journey and Unfinished Swan Indie games, and whilst they may not have the budget of The Last Of Us, they certainly have bigger budgets that Angry Birds.
This argument is fundamentally flawed in that, once a game DOES get a bigger budget, it could be argued that it's no longer an Indie game. This makes the whole argument of budget a none starter because budget would be the defining criteria.
Is this an oxymoron? Indie games are generally made with small budgets and low production values.
And since when did developer sensibility = indie? Anything can be popular if given a sufficient amount of marketing and it catches on with a decent amount of people. The whole "developer sensibility" argument is just a cop-out for being unable to make a game that more than a few thousand people might care about and being too lazy to market the game. I hate to break it to the author but creativity =/= quality or sales potential.
<But people with the reputation and clout Tim Schafer has are a bit of a rarity.>
The same Tim Schafer whose game Psychonauts sold so badly that it damn near put its publisher Majesco out of business.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...