"It seems that these days not a single game can be announced by its developer/publisher without it blowing up in our faces, clawing for our attention and more importantly, our money.
I'm all for a good bit of marketing, it's fair game to get your product noticed. I prefer the 'guerrilla' marketing techniques myself, like when a publisher will scatter items that are relevant to a game's release around a few cities, leading to a crazed man hunt for a piece of gaming memorabilia.
However, I'm not too fond of games being hyped-up beyond what they are. Obviously we can't speak of hype without mentioning Bungie's sci-fi shooter Destiny. It had a polarizing effect among critics and players, due to high expectations born from irresponsible reporting from gaming's biggest publications after attending preview events, throwing around claims that it'll be the next Halo or bigger and better than Call of Duty and that it'll be the game of the decade - you get the picture.
But I don't really want to talk about Destiny, I enjoyed it and thought it was money well spent, end of." - TGC
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.