Continue Play's Brian Kale gives his weekly ruminations on gaming, tech, and everything else.
This week: the advent of 4K as a TV standard; is gaming journalism broken?; the US navy wants to turn us into robots; and, of course, some company called Mojang might be about to be acquired by some no-name corporation in Redmond, Virginia. Apparently that's a "thing" this week.
PLUS! Net neutrality, slang that deserves to come back, kooky kids and their reaction to seeing a NES, and the shandification of Mass Effect.
All this, plus a Charlton Heston quote as the strapline. What better way to start your week? Grab your coffee and your danish, check the boss isn't looking at your monitor, and take a break.
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" -
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.
Seriously, after this week I think gaming journalism is either in trouble, or I'll equipped for next gen.
Destiny released to horrible reviews. If i had to guess, many got together on skype, determined a score and talking points and then like a gun, fired one cookie cutter review after the other.
Only today did I finally see a review that reflected the actual game, and it came almost a week after launch, after the author had hit the cap and spent a few days in the endgame (which is fine for launch w/ a bunch of planned content on the heels).
Quality alone garners this game an 8. Now if u like mmo's and fps games, it may b your favorite game this yr, as it's insanely addictive w/ an amazing PvP for an mmo.
I do understand that those who just wanted an sp or havnt played an mmo may be taken back (and I do blame bungie for not simply telling us it's an mmo and not just appeasing their halo fan base w/ like 20 minutes of cutscenes), but it doesn't in any realm make this game a 6.
And gaming journalists or enthusiasts like myself that woke up to a Nintendo and a gold Zelda many yrs ago or played mmo's before WoW, should know that.