Enough with the rumors of constrained supply of the Wii during this holiday season! Many otherwise rational people believe that Nintendo is purposely causing a shortage of its still highly-demanded home console. Hopefully you can understand not just why that's economically preposterous and bad business, but also patently false.
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:
What he said was facts. How he plays games is no concern of you. Don't get too mad about it.
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
@shin
Well keep it simple Sony 's operating income is down 26% and Microsoft's is up 32%. No MS spin there, just facts. 😉
Cheers
Odd that a company that touts you dont need the hardware to play is already touting another console in the works.
They are not reliant on the HW but still want to maintain a presence (no matter how small) is a good thing. It shows commitment to the craft. It reminds me of SNK and how they made games for their own hardware (Neo Geo) while also making them for others because they knew there was a market to do so. They knew they would sell more to others but also sell to their own niche fan base.
In the last two years they've started exiting the consumer market altogether. All of the newest Surface products are business models only. They can't seem to work out what they want to do with it.
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
The only growth MS will get out of the console industry is if it supports it's rivals platforms. Xbox is a pointless machine now. I can see them on a big push for live next, and they won't give up on trying to buy Steam.
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" -
While the mainstream media always sees things turning in favor of the hero, here are 6 games that own being a bad guy.
Pretty much all of these games listed are based around a morality system you don't have to be bad and you don't have to be good.
It seems to have left out some real amazing games like red dead redemption 1/2,ass effect and true crime la/ny
Armored Core VI?
Ok, I'm really missing something here. Just beat chapter 3 earlier this evening, unlocked A-rank Arena fights. I'm not seeing or sensing any branching paths or morality system and I've done every side mission and arena fight available to me up to that fight.
Is something big coming soon to branch the story?
No mention of Grand Theft Auto? Saints Row (original trilogy), Manhunt? Also The Suffering (depending on the ending you get).
Trevor in GTA 6 is a sadist and psychopath who dabbles in cannibalism. Should be top of the list. These game “news” sites should hire people that know games.
nice to get another perspective on the much debated topic. while good points are made, and I certainly don't buy into the assertion that there's a mountain of wii's in a Nintendo holding tank, I remain skeptical of the situation. I have witnessed first hand wii's being stockpiled on the retail end (much to my personal frustration) and marvel at a business model that has such inelastic supply for an overwhelmingly successful product -- even considering the overwhelming demand.
Producing 1.8 million Wiis a month is quite an amazing feat, shortage or not. But Nintendo managed to sell 650,000 Wiis in the two weeks prior to this one, which is more than the entire month of October. If that trend continues, then I suppose we can conclude that Nintendo has indeed been stockpiling Wiis for the holiday season.
There was an excellent Slashdot post about this topic, seems worth repeating:
"The Wii is the fastest selling console in history, and is currently selling at about four times the rate of the Xbox 360. Is it that hard to believe that sales are genuinely exceeding expectations? Certainly at launch time, very few of the pundits or fanboys were seriously predicting sales of this magnitude. Also, Nintendo has been increasing production significantly - from 1M to 1.8M per month. That doesn't exactly lend credibility to your theory that the shortage is completely artificial.
Besides, do you really think Nintendo was equipped to predict the Wii's popularity in new markets, such as retirement homes? I simply don't see any way that demand hasn't far exceeded Nintendo's expectations.
An artificial shortage would only help Nintendo if it enabled them to sell more consoles in the long run or if it enabled them to jack up prices. They obviously aren't going to increase the price, so how might an artificial shortage still lead to increased sales in the long run? Earlier in the year, it would have been reasonable to say that they wanted to wait until there were some solid games out, but with the hype about Super Mario Galaxy, it seems pretty clear that that time is over. So, if Nintendo is capable of making significant production increases, why wait?"
by 644bd346996 (1012333) on Thursday November 29, @11:55AM
Yes very nice indeed. I just don't get the whole argument though. Nintendo for the past while hasn't had this kind of limelight and only have so many places making their product. As the article states they are producing at the max. Without really knowing if this consistant buying will go on for another year they have no intentions of getting another factory up and running for more consoles. It doesn't matter that the most of the components are "easy" to make as some haters would suggest. It's a matter that they don't have enough people to put it all together and still have it work.
Notice the silence among the fanboys. This is a really well written analysis compared to articles that are against it, which don't try to justify their claims.