It's been a strange week or so for the folks at Xbox. Their best known spokesman just left for Electronic Arts, that whole disc scratching thing is moving into legal territory (again), and, to top it all off, on Friday your division posted a 1.9 billion dollar loss on its final year-end numbers.
Overall sales of the Xbox 360 were down across the board in the last quarter -- from 1.8 million units in fiscal 2005 to only 700,000 units in fiscal '06. Additionally, the division has been forced to absorb $1.2 billion worth of punishment for their recent upgrades to the 360s warranty and maintenance program.
Total revenues for the Xbox division in the fourth quarter stood at $1.16 billion -- a 10% drop, compared to last year.
In addition, Microsoft's software sales (Xbox and PC) fell 28 percent last year to hit USD 265 million -- which obviously doesn't help matters any. When all the unexpected costs are factored in the numbers represent losses 47% larger than last year's deficit for the entertainment and devices division (which also includes things like the Zune along with the 360).
"Back in the innocent days of 2010, A World of Keflings was a fairly popular successor to A Kingdom for Keflings. I even wrote about it a few times in 2012! But the world of humans moved on, and NinjaBee's city-building/adventure game was last seen on the ill-fated Wii U in 2014. Fast-forward to the dark year of 2025, and not only is A World of Keflings coming to Steam, but there's already a playable demo! Perhaps the cheerful, no pressure gameplay that the Keflings bring is just what we need nowadays," says Co-Optimus.
From Horse Armor to Mass Layoffs: The Price of Greed in Gaming. Inside the decades-long war on game workers and the players who defend them.
maybe a real enemy is people who use terms like "the real enemy"
there can be more than 1 bad thing, t's not like a kids show with 1 big bad
This is very much a “dummy who volunteers themselves to the middle” comment.
The real enemy is a common phrase, people use it all the time.
Calm down.
You don't seem calm at all. Don't take this so seriously, you seem desperate responding to others defending your opinion that lacks any value or critical thought.
stop projecting
i'm not desperately dong anything, i'm tapping at keys on my keyboard bud
DEI was never the problem and it was an ignorant take to begin with.
DEI is why games like Kena Bridge of Spirits, South of Midnight, and Ghost of Tsushima exist.
DEI is why we have a huge resurgence in Japanese, Chineses, and Korean developers producing games like Stellar Blade, Black Myth, and why Nintendo & Sony exist.
DEI is why more and more games have HUGE accessibility options with both Sony and MS fully behind this.
DEI was never a bad thing, the entire purpose of DEI is representation of all people, genders, disabilities, etc…
The problem was people used DEI as a default derogatory term to describe what they believed was forced representation, which allowed colorist, racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, and xenophobic fools to run away with the negative DEI narrative.
Executives seem to often have an obsession with perpetual revenue growth. There is always a finite amount of consumers for a product regardless of growth. Additionally, over investment is another serious issue in gaming.
The fact that they also rarely have any real expertise in game development compounds things. They'll look at what's been successful elsewhere, lack the knowledge to properly understand why they have been successful and then force a team to 'reproduce' their badly interpreted idea of that success.
We see it so often with sequels to games that were successful too. The team are left well alone, they have a break through hit and all of sudden the money men descend on the IP and completely railroad the dev team's ideas. Usually winds up being 'make the same game but MORE'
This is true throughout all of the corporate and public sector organisations to be honest. CEO's generally move amongst the corporate world without any need to have experience of a particular industry, they simply need to rely on their senior leadership credentials. A CEO of a retail giant will just as easily transition to a CEO role in the energy sector for example.
Not defending CEOs here to be clear, I think it's a huge part of the reason the western world is so fucked up. CEOs don't need to care about the sector they work in, in fact it's better if they don't care if they want to screw everyone to make profits.
Companies don’t hire executives to break even. If the goal is breaking even then why start the company in the first place.
That's understood; it's getting record profits and expecting to always beat those record profits, and seeing anything less as a total failure. Then they lay people off and raise prices to reach those record profit levels again, just to sate shareholders. It's setting expectations way too high just to spike share prices, then inevitably falling short. It's feeling entitled to being more successful than everyone else. It's the CEOs doing all this to boost their own bonuses.
Growth benefits the company’s profits and therefore the company’s stock if publicly traded, which pleases the shareholders making them more and more rich, which is why Growth is always at the forefront of the vast majority of any publicly traded company.
More growth = More Money and the people at the top want all the money they can get. I can’t really blame them anyone would love to see their profits go from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, to multi-millions it’s almost like a gambling addiction.
But it also goes to show someone how morals can go out the window for a lot of these people, and how amazing some CEOs are when they catch this early and provide a balance solution that takes complete care of their employees across the board while keeping the business sustainable IE: Insomniac Games ALWAYS on the best places to work list. The rest of the industry could learn.
honestly, the "real" enemy of gaming, is ourselves
if nobody bought horse armor, shitty dlc would have died almost overnight
if we stood firm and nobody bought games from companies that were bad with layoffs, it would be solved
we're the idiots supporting awful business practices, we are the ones enouraging it
I think the reality that we don't want to convince ourselves of is that without the rise of "horse armor" and DLC, game budgets would have essentially stagnated (smaller teams/smaller games), or game prices would have risen much more dramatically than they have. There was an incessant drive for bigger worlds, infinite detail, and hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the last two decades, that while perhaps a natural evolution of things, needed a suitable funding stream to accomplish.
What...CEOs make tens of millions and that doesnt include SLT etc etc...we now have multiple editions of games, in game currency, MT's, battle passes.....and what do we get..worse game than what was coming out 20 years ago....dont drink the cool aid, its this nickel and dime crap that is absolutely leading us to gaming destruction.
This is the worst possible answer to this conundrum. Blaming the masses is blaming the only people who are constantly “told” to buy.
Consumers are the only ones not to blame here. People make their own choices all the time. Disney movies are bombing and DEInis being blamed. Has that been enough to put Disney out of business? No and it never will.
Disagree. Businesses are able to do what they do because people are bad consumers and don't think critically about purchases. Disney got away with doing shit stuff for years and it's just the last year where people got tired of it. It's not like it didn't work for 5 years or so for Disney to do the things they've done. They'll just move onto another way to get people to see movies and it will be just as bad but more profitable until people wake up and realize it.
Consumerism drives business behavior. It's not so much "blaming" as it is observing behavior. The point I'm making is that the direction that games have gone are driven by the spending. Consumers are spending on DLC and they are driving the expectation of more glitz and padded out (lengthier) games. If they continue to pay, they will continue to drive that direction until a threshold is reached that forces a change in behavior.
Corporate advertising is the most powerful force on the planet.
This is N4G for god sake, every day there are arguments between people who are Team Xbox and Team PlayStation because they’ve been convinced that having an identity built on paying money to Sony and Microsoft matters more than having one as individual gamers who can play whatever they want.
And THEN we get to the corporate advertising part: to play whatever you want is to sink MORE into the advertising pits, making it so that you can more than one specific product.
ah you're right
they were told to buy it, it's clearly impossible to avoid that
if enough people stopped supporting, it would stop
disney not stopping would only be because enough people didn't stop
Agreed. I’ve been saying for years, announce you won’t be buying the upcoming game because of the practices of the previous game, then you only have to stick to your guns once, see how quickly things change for the better.
We have to unite in what we shouldn’t purchase.
just imagine a world, fifa came out worse, nobody buys the next one until they see proof it's better and stick to it
or games being forced online for single player and nobody buys it
things would change so fast
Greed and greedy people have and always will be the main issue for everything wrong in the world. Everything is a product to be exploited for monetary gain. Even when there are things that could help progress us along for the sake of making our lives easier that thing must be exploited for monetary gains. Anything that tells you otherwise is propaganda to make you complicit.
I've never thought "DEI" (although the way most people use it doesn't match it's real definition) is the problem with games. Good games have continued to be good when they have a diverse cast, and likewise, bad games have continued to be bad. There isn't a credible example I've seen where a diverse cast has been the direct cause of a game being bad.
It's been officially over 2,500 days since The Elder Scrolls 6 was revealed, and fans are still waiting for more than a logo and a mountain range.
It will come out in another 1000-2000 days or so. I’d rather they remake Morrowind. After they added quest arrows, sprint button, making stats lesser and the big nerfs to spells Elder Scrolls has been too simplified. They could change that with ES6 but I don’t have much faith in modern Bethesda. I would love to be wrong
They should at least try and maintain a second place standing in the console race because its costing them a lot of money to pay for the exclusives and making faulty hardware. I know what your thing there rich but MS is not a company to take loses for years like that.
or they could keep doing what their doing, and keep Sony in last place which, frankly would cause far more damage to Sony then if MS was able to take first.
I don’t see how Microsoft could continue to conduct business with their Xbox 360 hardware. The rule of thumb in business is “if it’s not profitable, don’t do it”. The Xbox brand has not been profitable throughout its 6 years of business and, with current events such as the Extended Warranty taken into consideration, it most likely never will be. Microsoft knew that its new Xbox 360 hardware was inherently defective going into E3 2007, and it’s important to note that they laid out few, if any, plans for the future. They decided not to showcase game titles outside of 2007, which was quite strange considering that every other company did show plans for 2008.
Microsoft is at a definite crossroad right now. If things start to shape up for the console, they may continue to support it and may even continue development on its successor. If sales continue to decrease at their current rate though (and the brand continues to be unprofitable) don’t expect Microsoft to produce any more 360s after 2008. They’ll continue to support their userbase through software since that’s the only way they can help reduce their Entertainment Division's $6 Billion debt, but we have to face the possibility of only two companies coming out of this console war unscathed. I know a lot of people argue that since Microsoft as a whole is profitable that there's no reason for the entertainment division to be shut down, but Divisions are actually individual companies within a Corporation. They can't just throw billions of dollars around to help each other out. Most startup finances come from investors, and investors are very fickle.
http://www.n4g.com/industry...
Now it is 1UP's turn, instead of Gamepro.
The Zune, was a relatively new device entering the market, but I think it sold what MS wanted it to. The xbox 360, while having a high game attach rate, accessories bought, and Xbl content delivered have fared a lot better than what most people thought.
As far as PC gaming and sales, Right now there is a big shift from XP to Vista/DX10, while manufactures optimize their Drivers for DX10 games coming out. Were dead smack in the middle of this shift, so PC gaming has not gone anywhere the last few years.
For the Xbox 360, like I stated, MS has been doing just this down below, and continues to, even though sales did slowdown from the holiday last year, well were on the verge of ROUND 2.
1. New "falcon" chip due soon, to put RROD issue to rest Hopefully(check)
2. Accessory Sales(check)
3. Sales have been steady, while sluggish(check)
4. Attach rate pretty high(check)
5. Very good Fall/Winter lineup(check)
6. Secret Price-Cut, wishful thinking(check)
7. MS(the company) is very profitable(check)
8.Scrooge McDuck = Bill Gates(check)
Besides that Warranty issue, what else could they be doing better...Since all of these will work hand-in-hand this Holiday season going into 2008.
Of course, I'm talking about the console. Let's not forget most console are not profitable till like year 3, unless you have been Sony the past 10 years or Nintendo with the wii(a league of their own). MS has been loosing money on the franchise for like 5-7 years now but,I they will be profitable with the 360 in 2008. If it wasn't for the Warranty that put them in the RED.
okay, so if revenue for the fourth quarter was $1.16 Billion, a 10% decrease from last year, and this was AFTER taking a $1.2 Billion dollar hit in the fourth quarter for the warranty write-off, then the xbox division is actually NOT bad as everyone is making it out to be.
think about it, this years fourth quarter revenue was down 10% from last year......AFTER taking a $1.2 Billion dollar loss on the extended warranty policy THIS QUARTER...that means that the xbox gaming division actually made quite a bit MORE than they did last year if you don't figure in the $1.2 Billion dollar write-off....
but every single sony fanboy only reads what they want to read, instead of looking at the REAL NUMBERS.....let's compare numbers for next quarter and it will show the true numbers of what the gaming division is making and i guarantee you that they will have a BIG increase over the previous year