Next year’s console line-ups appear to have the Xbox360 on the back foot, with the PlayStation 3 mustering a greater and more impressive array of exclusives. With Kinect games dominating Microsoft’s stable and a worrying lack of unique ‘hardcore’ titles on the way, Mark Butler asks whether the company is putting too much faith in its motion-gaming technology.
Even as the company sets out to overhaul the very definition of Xbox, cuts at its studios risk creating a negative image reminiscent of EA's worst era
I appreciate the article but this guy must be living in a delayed universe, The reputation was ruined 10+ years ago and hasn't recovered since. As such people have voted with their wallets and stopped buying Xbox products in large amounts.
Their reputation was lost way before that. From the moment Microsoft said they entering the console business, we all knew it would be a downgrade.
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Rumors of Turn 10 being either shut down or hit with massive lay offs is on the horizon.
The issue is MS will do something right only to do something very, very wrong. And they do this what seems calculative at this point. Doesn't matter what they do the Investors and leadership want more and more money an endless bottomless pit of purr insatiable greed. A company that acts like it's broke or hurting is what really, really infuriates me. They've surpassed apple again well over 3 trillion who acts like they're a million dollar company is fk stupid. Pivots and changes for no reason and can't do things for more than a year with out a pivot or changing their metrics.
That would be really bad since Phil just hyped up next year as a big Forza year at Summer Game Fest.
Isn't the point that it's irrelevant how profitable MS is, the suits have decided it's time that the Xbox division started making them money. Hence the layoffs, the pivots.
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The cuts are expected to be announced next week.
Microsoft is also planning thousands of job cuts that will impact other parts of it businesses
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MFs has been beating their chests over great quarterly results and big profits to shareholders while firing people by the thousands just like Sony.
I wonder if at the top of those rumored layoffs they´ll also cancel upcoming or unannounced games while shutting down more studios as well.
Always got to throw shade at Sony smh.
Yes we get it,
MS good Sony bad
MS bad Sony is also bad lmao
F* them both!
Just for the record, I don´t care about your victim complex crap either. Find someone else who cares.
@Blacktiger
Im not offended , that’s just his formula lol
He can’t help help himself, he needs to bring Sony down when the topic involves MS.
Whether is good news for MS or bad, it some how leads to Sony doing bad lmao.
It’s actually hilarious.
He's not wrong but im tracking what youre saying. In this case is should just be MS bad. Thats a lot of people fired
"just like Sony"
Gosh you're insufferable, not everything needs to be both-sides'd. Sony's had layoffs, but nothing like what Microsoft has been doing and is continuing to do.
I mean, no offense, but this is why you’re not some corporate business person running a major corporation. Big profits don’t mean jobs are safe. Do you understand why things like this happen:
Cutting jobs to maintain or increase profitability, especially in underperforming divisions like parts of Xbox like other gaming divisions.
Corporate restructuring and relocating resources for strategic stability in ever changing markets and consumer behaviors.
Investor expectations and optimizing operations to maintain investor confidence. Whatever boosts stock prices and improves future margins.
And there’s many other factors at play. It’s never as simple as business doing well, everyone’s safe. That’s just you not understanding at all how corporations work and have been working since the beginning. This isn’t something that’s specific to Xbox, you can bet your ass Sony and Nintendo do this and if it’s not clear by now, game development is not a stable job nor has it ever been for many. A lot of developers are contractors and guess what happens when a project is done?
Nintendo said they have no plans for layoffs, and you can't seriously claim that the scale of Sony's layoffs most of which involved Bungie which is self managed as even close to the same scale as what Microsoft has done since they purchased Zenimax. And that significantly less layoffs would have happened if those publishers had stayed independent. Keep in mind that much of these layoffs have been due to redundancies specifically related to these buyouts.
@Ganif
Nintendo:
https://gamerant.com/ninten...
Sony:
https://gamerant.com/playst...
https://techxplore.com/news...
I don’t think it’s realistic to treat Sony’s layoffs as somehow outside the norm for the industry right now. Even if Bungie is self-managed, Sony’s cuts went far beyond that like Naughty Dog, Insomniac, London Studio being shut down completely, and multiple teams across the globe took hits. These weren’t just minor adjustments.
Nintendo, I had to look up and you’re right. They seem to be an outlier, but rest assured at some point it happens. And even then there’s been layoffs, albeit a smaller amount and contractors.
Would fewer layoffs have happened if studios from acquisitions stayed independent? Maybe. But even independents have been hit hard and look at what’s happened with Embracer’s fallout, or smaller devs like Digic, Roll7, or Volition. This isn’t just a “Microsoft problem” or strictly tied to acquisitions; it’s a broader correction happening across the whole industry, and unfortunately, layoffs are a big part of that process right now.
From your article:
"According to reports, Nintendo of America restructured its testing operations, leading to layoffs of about 120 contractors, part of a strategy for global integration.
Nintendo of America, publisher of iconic franchises like Mario and Zelda, is shifting some contractors to full-time roles for better development integration."
Contractors are not employees, and even if you want to count them as that, it's 120 people vs around 7500 since Microsoft purchased Zenimax.
In an era of game industry layoffs, Nintendo is hiring more people
https://automaton-media.com...
Nintendo Announces 10 Percent Pay Raise For Devs Despite Lower Profits
https://kotaku.com/nintendo...
Nintendo CEO’s refusal to layoff staff goes viral following industry-wide cuts
"Satoru Iwata took pay cuts to ensure staff didn’t have to be let go"
https://www.nme.com/news/ga...
And as for Sony you're comparing less than 1000 total jobs to an estimated7500
Has the industry faced layoffs, yes, but that still doesn't account for the mass layoffs due to redundancies that was easily predictable, or that fact that at least 1/3 of Microsoft's layoffs and studio closures happened before the industry downturn.
Take the L, Crimson.
People hate Nintendo, but Ganif proved why they deserve support.
It's like banging your head off a wall, he just can't help himself.
Microsoft can do no wrong, Sony sucks at everything and Nintendo is bigged up because it's less hassle than trying to defend Microsoft all the time
What's going to happen when Microsoft finally turn completely third party, then what?
Did you know that the first n4g was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.
I wouldn't be surprised at this point if anast and osbcure were both alts for the Admin.
We know how Obscure especially drums up additional comments and clicks with his spam-worthy remarks that somehow never get moderated
Thats business present a strong front to your shareholders while your company burns around you.
Keep shareholders happy at all costs andnif not happy keep them numb to the reality of you organisation
" Just for the record, I don´t care about your victim complex crap either. Find someone else who cares. "
Just for the record, you clearly you do if you have to vent this hard.
Basically you think like kids when it come to choose between candy or chocolate.
AMD CEO Lisa Su talks about the Xbox AMD partnership, next-gen Ryzen + Radeon chips, and AI rendering tech coming to all Xbox devices.
AMD is really building hype around their unique partnership with Microsoft to help and build an advanced and seamless Xbox ecosystem across all Xbox consoles and devices.
I wonder what she meant by "full roadmap of gaming optimized chips" though? Seems ambitious.
Next year´s Xbox Showcase already looks promising and exciting. Here´s hoping they deliver.
Obscure_Observer said “I wonder what she meant by "full roadmap of gaming optimised chips" though? Seems ambitious.” To me, I interpret this to mean rather than having a couple of X/S products for launch and a handheld there is a longer term plan to release new products with higher specs at timed intervals. I’m speculating of course, but this could mean a spec bump every year or two, so that even if the PS6 or Steam Deck Home is released a year after ‘Xbox’ Microsoft can release an updated model that has a higher spec.
It's X3D chips for console. Everyone knows this. And it's been rumored in the PS6 forever.
Correct.
"Sony's PlayStation 6 reportedly will feature an AMD semi-custom APU with a Zen 5 CPU and UDNA GPU, capable of 4K 120FPS and 8K 60FPS gaming. The console will include X3D cache and advanced AI upscaling technology."
https://www.tweaktown.com/n...
"It's X3D chips for console. Everyone knows this. And it's been rumored in the PS6 forever."
I doubt that AMD´s CEO would waste her time making this huge and important partnership announcement over a tech that will be 7 years old by the those next gen consoles will be released.
You should have just lead this comment with the fact that you have zero understanding of technology in the consoles and instead have a Toms Hardware online forum level of education.
"It's X3D chips for console. Everyone knows this. And it's been rumored in the PS6 forever"
I´d told you were on some bs
https://www.pcgamesn.com/wp...
@VenomUK
"I’m speculating of course, but this could mean a spec bump every year or two, so that even if the PS6 or Steam Deck Home is released a year after ‘Xbox’ Microsoft can release an updated model that has a higher spec."
Very interesting theory. Still not sure how MS would actually make it work.
"I doubt that AMD´s CEO would waste her time making this huge and important partnership announcement over a tech that will be 7 years old by the those next gen consoles will be released."
How old is the tech in consoles? It's not a huge announcement. It's marketing and you know it is.
"How old is the tech in consoles? It's not a huge announcement. It's marketing and you know it is."
Dude, what I know for certain is that a tech as old as X3D chips which is actually *older* than both PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, is hardly the reason behind this new partnership between AMD and MS to build new *custom silicon* for next generation of consoles.
And yes it´s a huge announcement since AMD is working closely with MS to co-develop custom SoC which will allow backwards compatibility across all MS´s next gen devices allowing seamless integration between devices and full backwards compatibility across all generations of Xbox consoles.
I also know is that this announcement don´t have anything to do with Playstation and their strategy with AMD for the PS6, so stop comparing the two pretending that you know what´s going on, because you clearly don´t.
If Sony is working on something remotely similar, that´s remain to be seen.
Some odd, deliberate wording, no branding, not 'Xbox consoles, Xbox handhelds' specifically, feels and sounds like they're building towards hardware that anyone can be used or licensed to/by themselves and other manufacturers.
Multiplatform software and hardware 'Xbox/AMD APU'.
I guess you missed Sarah Bond´s next generation Xbox announcement this week, were she clearly states:
"I´m thrilled to share that we´ve established a strategic multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices, including, *our* next generation *Xbox consoles*."
But hey, I don´t think you´re entirely wrong, maybe MS will build their own Xbox consoles while licencing other manufactures to build and sell their own Xbox branded consoles. Who knows
I think you watched the wrong video. It's below the description, or you can watch it directly on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/kprpRvsOua...
Shares vision....we provide chips for money, this deal will sell many chips, we will make lots of money...good vision
The marketing behind this is so heavy that I worry about the actual outcome. Why are they just not showing us the product, why all this talking in market speak?
Probably because the next xbox isn't ready to release yet?
The marketing and rumors seem to be heavy out of no where. The rumor was a 27 release but it maybe it could be 26 new console launch instead.
Who knows.
There PR is alrways super heavy handed. No one is acutally buying an Xbox as is.
Also it is very early to be talking so much about a next gen console.
There´s a lot of people interested on Xbox Next and its ability to run games from major stores like Steam.
We know that the PS6 is just around the corner as well, but so far, no news on what it might improve over the PS5 or PS5 Pro.
However, Sony already made public that their priority and actual focus is the PS6. So its not "very early" to talk about next gen when the very console manufactures are talking about it.
No, Kinect isn't to blame. It's the Xbox supporters and fanboys who is to blame. They don't want core exclusives. They only want MS to post great financial numbers. They defend everything MS does. In 2006 and 2007 they praised MS for having a lot of exclusive games and blasted Sony for having little but now that the shoe is on the other foot they praise MS for adding Youtube and blast Sony for having lots of exclusives. Hypocrisy at it's finest. I have used Youtube for free on my PC, phone, and PS3 for years so why would I pay MS to use it?
Exclusives matter. Here's why they matter to me. My PS3 is my primary console which means all of the multi plats are played on my PS3 which leaves only the exclusives to play on Xbox. As of late I only turn on my Xbox once a year and since I'm not a Halo fan my Xbox won't be turned on at all next year.
Xbox fans, or should I say fanboys, don't demand anything so that's what MS gives them. It's funny to see "gamers" post a MS financial report as an excuse for the lack of games. Are we gamers or stock holders? I don't get it. When did gamers care about a companies financials? I play games not financials. I'll take Alan Wake over Halo any day of the week but because Alan Wake didn't sell as much that makes it less of a game?
And then there's the "but wait until E3" speech. Well, we waited until E3 last year and got nothing but Kinect shovelware. So now it's wait until E3 again but even if MS had something to announce at E3, E3 is in June so what do they have from September of this year until June of next year? That's 10 months away. The blind supporters will list a bunch of multi plats and I'll remind you that those will be played on my PS3 where I can play online for free.
Lastly, this will hurt MS in the long run.
Well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think Kinect had something to do about it. I think, in order to put more of their resources into Kinect, they went ahead and announced some tried and true exclusives that they believe will last long enough to hold off the hardcore (Halo 4, 5, 6)while they bask in the casual attention they've wanted.
So the article counting on The last of Us, The last Guardian and the not even announced God of War IV.
Ok... There is a decent chance that only one of those will actually see a 2012 release.
Tbh xbox only owners will wait for E3 they will get the first anouncements for the next gEn but heres the catch. It won't be for 2012 it will still be a few years away. In the mean time more kinect games. So hense if your stuck with just an xbox what do you do till then suck your toes?.
comparing some games people know very little to nothing about....to other games people know very little or nothing about. Not sure what the point is. If Grand Theft Auto V comes out next year, it and a bunch of other multi-platform games are going to steal these exclusives' thunder anyway. I am mostly looking forward to SSX, Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, Max Payne, Mass Effect 3 and the previously mentioned Grand Theft Auto--and all these games will be on both systems. Also, Halo 4, if it turns out to be a good game, is a megaton worth more than all of Sony's exclusives combined (except for God of War, but doubt we will see a new one in 2012)