It seems that Microsoft has stopped running the Xbox Monthly Bonus Round Microsoft Rewards punch card, as September's card has failed to appear.
A trailblazer for online gaming, some players are still holding a candle for Dreamcast.
such a shame, its my fav console by far. it was way better than ps1, problem was ps2 was due to come out, a year or so later, and many just waited for that, especially after the flop that was the Saturn,. (even though it way okay, it didn't sell well,).
ps1 did sell well, a lot of those fans waited for ps2. thus, the downfall of Dreamcast,,
Every console is responsible for its own destiny, You don't go around pointing fingers at him or her or anybody, cowards do that and that ain't you! you're better than that!
Not true,
The Dreamcast falling apart was because Sega couldn't make up the pay for the increasing debt from the Sega Master System, Game Gear, 32x, Sega CD, and Sega Saturn. The Dreamcast and Genesis were profitable. But the profits weren't outpacing the debt plus interest.
It had nothing to do with anyone waiting for the PS2
You're forgetting the most important part of the story. Sega was losing so much money so fast due to their past failures, they couldn't sustain the business. Even if the PS2 did help the demise of the system, the true blame is Sega themselves
Exactly
Even Bernie Stolar R.I.P (former Sega exect) admitted in an interview past debt was what hurt the Dreamcast.
Everyone says "Sony killed Sega" when that's not even remotely true. Not just that, but most of their debt came from fighting Nintendo, not Sony
This. The only truly successful home platform Sega made was the Genesis. Every thing else flopped to varying degrees. The real culprits were Sega of Japan and Sega of America which went to war against each other for some odd reason.
I bought a DreamPi to play both Dreamcast and Saturn online! So far I'm only played with two people online with Saturn, and I need to spend more time with the Dreamcast community in order to play with them. I miss ChuChu Rocket online, good times!
P2P there's even Sega genisis games that still connect online based on this.
Hosted servers wasn't really something I saw regularly on non oc platforms until the 360 era.
The Dreamcast was easily my favorite console of all time, home of many good fighting games
EA senior staff has been investigated for sexual misconduct involving female coworkers, and these said people have been named publicly.
Aye just call Phil, i mean he somehow made Bobby Kotick's scandal disappear and gave him a few million dollar high five on the way out.
EA about to go down like Activision and then Phil saves the day saying.this is good for the industry and consolidation will help create competition. /s.
What's up with all these horny creeps. You gon be horny, fine. Just not at work take care of that shit before you go in. Rub one out if you have to. Don't be a creep at all. ESPECIALLY at work. But don't be one AT ALL.
You think deviants care where they are? Work sometimes makes it an even better situation for them because they can abuse their power.
"it seems that according to EA, given the events transpired outside of work between two adults, and the fact that once investigation has started that the alleged perpetrators didn’t do it again, the investigation is considered closed. [...] The victim still has to work with the people that harassed her."
Yep, EA is disgusting.
I mean the fact stuff happened outside of work puts EA in quite a difficult position legally. These women don't seem to have reported the matter to the police which kinda ties EA's hands on what they can do. If they don't file reports of the crimes then yeah from EA's perspective it is stuff that happened outside of work. The only exception is the guy that apparently referenced things in the slack channel for work, spending on what he said proving it may be very hard and he may well be able to get away with plausible deniability. I don't like EA and I think these people need to be dismissed but without any legal action being taken, EA can't really do much without risk of being sued themselves for unfair dismissal etc.
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
Xbox is a division that they discussed shutting down but doubled down on after Gamepass was pitched.
It needs to make money at some point. Big money.
According to Statista the net income of Microsoft is about $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
@romulus23
That is not why MS buys studios. They might continue to buy because it's about taking that sweet sweet IP out of the corporate husks of their acquisitions.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
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Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ the villain.
This was bound to happen, a bigger slice of pie and cut costs, when the games come they stand to make more and that’s their agenda—it was the writing on the wall when the sales went through and legally all those who approved the sale and mergers knew this would happen.
Snowflakes need to realize business is ugly and you can cry all you want but this is how capitalism works. And it works.
That said, M$ needs to steer the narrative and grab hold of all this, make their plans known, hype the hell out of all those dead IP’s they plan to revive, and be honest about the timeline. This is likely to involve mobile and IP on other consoles, and most people realize that.
The problem is this company is incapable of being transparent and seems to often want to dissuade and confuse is customer base. The lack of E3 has hurt Microsoft and I don’t think they know how to properly or effectively market their brand anymore.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
You do realize this happens in ALL industries? Or are you just saying this because it is Microsoft? In any case I feel for those that are being let go but the trch industry is suffering right now.
This absolutely does NOT happen all the time. Let me know the last time 1 company with a terrible product track record spent 100 billion onto acquire MULTIPLE successful companies in under a year only to shut them down and stop making their products regardless of how successful they were. Not merge them, completely shut them down.
And you can’t use Microsoft in your example.
Class action lawsuit? The law is on their side and protects them at all costs. There are no rules to protect the people at the bottom.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
ID software, the makers of Doom and Wolfenstein that have been with us since 1991 could be gone and MS will keep the IPs.
I hope some of these studios can buy their freedom from MS otherwise this is going to be even more devastating for the industry and gamers.
That's exactly what I'm worried about. I've been a fan of id since Wolfenstein 3D and I'm honestly afraid.
Toys for Bob saw the writing on the wall and bought themselves out.
Wouldn't be the first time a company did that under MS either. Bungie and Twisted Pixel did the same. Considering what just happened, I can see some other devs trying to buy themselves out too.
Won't make a difference.
The whole structure needs to be overhauled. Anyone that replaces Phil will be no different than him, Mattrick, or anyone else.
Until the company changes how they go about business, nothing will change
I just don't have any idea what they would do , they have done sooo much damage on their xbox brand, they have a show at July or June I think, but will it even matter even they show amazing games, idkn
True,
But they may as well get it over with. Whether it happens now or later, the burning is going to hit the same.
Reality is the ONE move that can alleviate a lot of this is the one move they can't make. Remove day 1 from gamepass.
It seems they want to know their 'real' subscriber count for themselves.
After stopping the $1 upgrade conversion
Upping the price
And finally stopping the rewards points... They will know their true remaining subscriber count that actually wants to pay. Then they will see if it's viable in true terms.
Like duh. Those were promotions to get you okay Xbox. But now that you’ll play for Starfield and other upcoming exclusives (that I’ll believe when I see them), they don’t need promotional prices and discounts.
People obviously have never used the punch card before. While there were a few free challenges for a measly 5-10 points the ones worth the most points rewarded you for buying certain items in the Microsoft store. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Microsoft didn’t see the value of keeping it up if everyone saw through the scam.