It was the first gen ones that could do it, they dropped support pretty quickly though since I'm pretty sure most models lack the ability even with mods to save a few bucks.
It's also a tried and true strategy that brought Microsoft to the spot it is now. Evil and corrupt, but very effective. Only eee (embrace, extend, extinguish) is even more insidious because it requires companies to play the long con.
Then again in 2024, I automatically assume "con" first until I see evidence to the contrary.
If this is the name of the game, it's dumb. It's not like they lined the Devs up along a wall. They'll still be able to serve other companies with their talent since Microsoft just cut their leads.
It's called "monopolize gaming without paying for developers". The beauty of it is, if you ruin all of modern gaming and buy out all the existing hits, you can shove in monetization and project insane profits
At least until indie gaming takes over, your stock price will go to the moon
Played Horizon Forbidden West on PC and it's such a grind fest. What's even the point. Not sure why it gets such good reviews, except for how pretty it is. High hopes for God of War Ragnarok, though.
It gets good reviews because it's fun to play. The game is good at its core: you have to scan machines, aim at weak spots, move a lot in the battle to avoid damage, choose right weapons, or you can override a machine and enjoy the show, there are so many options and challenges. Besides, let's not underestimate the value of good graphics. They make the world nicer, more enjoyable, make you want to come back and play again. I understand that this game is not for everyone though.
Yeah, but I get tired of this like halfway through the game. I don't want to lower the difficulty, I just want fewer enemies and more frequent drops so I don't have to grind so fucking hard. There should be a percent slider for filler content so players like me could set it to 10% or so. I'm currently short on small machine cores to upgrade armor. Come on! What's that bullshit? Considering how many watchers I've killed I should never ever be short on that.
I don't underestimate "good graphics" (usually used to refer to realism) in selling games, but it's heavily overrated. For example, Elden Ring was not the game with the best graphics technically, but damn does it not look gorgeous. A good art style trumps realism any day. Realism sells more copies, because people are told to compare to realism, but it usually sucks. It has its uses, but it's mostly a resource hog to make something that looks generic.
I wouldn't say that Horizon aims to be super realistic. I mean, it's not far away, especially if we compare it to Elden Ring. But in Horizon colors are saturated, the game looks too beautiful and vibrant to be realistic in my books. I would say Hogwarts Legacy is a better example of a too realistic game: colors are bleak, objects and textures are much closer to what we can find in real life, it does look generic as you say (at least IMO).
The building models in Hogwarts are amazing, though. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are both gorgeous. It heavily leans on the work done for the movies, of course, but it's still amazing looking.
Microsoft made $158b gross profit year, which was a 14% increase over the previous year.
As a comparison, General Motors’ revenue was $170b. Microsoft made almost as much in profit as GM took in totality.
Closing the studios maybe will save Microsoft $0.1b, so potentially increase their profit line by 0.05%.
So hard to think of it as anything other than a middle finger to the devs. Even if it were a mistake, they could afford to let it cook longer like with Rare and redeem the “mistake”.
It's stripping out the copper wiring for cash. Buy a game studio, fire all the employees. Now their paychecks can be served up as profit to shareholders. Move all the files to your servers, it's your "Intellectual Property". Sell off the computers and the desks and anything else not nailed down. Do they own the building? Great, sell that too! Or, better yet, rent it out!
The liquidated assets are just a cherry on top, what they're going for is getting rid of the competition and hoarding IP for usual capitalist hoarder mentality reasons.
Gamepass is great. It's nice to sit down on the couch and boot up a random game via streaming. Reminds me of Blockbuster in a sense.
You can do the same thing on PC, but Xbox is idiot-proof and at the end of the day I just don't have the energy to deal with anything more difficult than that.
I’m agree, but game pass has been offering meh value in the long run for me. Sure there are a few new titles, but once your run through your backlog it’s just ok. Problem is that Xbox lacks the blockbusters that appeal to the masses this generation, coupled with an utterly confusing naming scheme that I still don’t understand. What Xbox should I buy? No idea, because the names mean nothing.
Casual gamers see it differently, and I imagine that's a huge chunk of their player base. My boyfriend rarely games but gets so stoked to boot up a random no-name game and play it for a few hours at night on cloud streaming.
Its called being a fucking dumb cunt. These executives and shareholders don't understand what brought people to the Xbox. So there's no way in hell they can ever keep people there. If they wanted to keep the Xbox in the spotlight you should have kept Lionhead alive and not let 343 fuck Halo (which is now on PC anyway so why would I get an Xbox?). There's simply no reason to have one unless you're scared of PCs and want to play some games with your PC friends.
They are buying studios and their IP so no one else can use it, even if they don't use it themselves. It's a strategy to remove competition, they don't care about the industry and the players, they care about money. All these big companies are the same, Microsoft just have the wallet to act on it, avoid them all and buy indie games.
This strategy eventually transforms a company into an ouroboros. Consuming itself until the shareholders and c suites have all claimed their parachutes. Its total self destruction in the long term.
Ding-ding. It so long as the shareholders of today get their gains, they could care less. The Ford lawsuit absolutely destroyed free enterprise in this country.
1st day availability on Gamepass for all AAA games simply isn't a sustainable strategy. They can't give away multiple games with a 9-figure budget along with everything else for the price of the sub.
MS bought ABK for its ability to make profits. ABK can't do that if MS "cleans house". It was very effective marketing that made people think MS would shape things up once they get their hands on shitty companies (while also effectively marketing "they would let devs be"). ABK may end up having more influence on Xbox than the other way around.
This was a ps3 meme iirc
Correct
Yea but PS3 can Linux, the ultimate game.
Didn't they drop support for that almost immediately? Do any modern kernels support PS3 hardware?
It was the first gen ones that could do it, they dropped support pretty quickly though since I'm pretty sure most models lack the ability even with mods to save a few bucks.
IP hoarding.
Buy studio that already made successful game
Delete studio
People still buy game
Profit
Eliminating the competition
When there are no other games at all, the company with one shitty live service game will be king!
It's also a tried and true strategy that brought Microsoft to the spot it is now. Evil and corrupt, but very effective. Only eee (embrace, extend, extinguish) is even more insidious because it requires companies to play the long con.
Then again in 2024, I automatically assume "con" first until I see evidence to the contrary.
If this is the name of the game, it's dumb. It's not like they lined the Devs up along a wall. They'll still be able to serve other companies with their talent since Microsoft just cut their leads.
Even game devs have mortgages to pay and many in the industry are struggling
I didn't mean to imply the strategy was smart, just that is the end goal of the MBA parasite hive mind
Embrace, Expend, Extinguish.
It's Extend. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
I mean, technically, "expend" is exactly what Microsoft is doing in this situation
Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate.
Learn the terminology, Nate.
I don't think MS doing any expand related with games
That's why I said "expend" rather than "expand".
Fucking the video game industry is what it's called
It's called "monopolize gaming without paying for developers". The beauty of it is, if you ruin all of modern gaming and buy out all the existing hits, you can shove in monetization and project insane profits
At least until indie gaming takes over, your stock price will go to the moon
People want to play what's popular, to feel part of a group.
Its okay because the PS5 also has no games
This is why the Switch is superior.
It has bad games 😎
steam deck is the supperior, plays every xbox game, emulate Switch and play PS games
Steam Deck wins on everything except performance. I'm considering building a dedicated 'console' PC running bazzite.
Odyssey, Zelda, portable Dark Souls.
Equally bad
Strong disagree but I respect your opinion
What about Snipperclips? (I'm not sure if that's what it's called)
You have it right
What not playing ARMS does to a mf
Played Horizon Forbidden West on PC and it's such a grind fest. What's even the point. Not sure why it gets such good reviews, except for how pretty it is. High hopes for God of War Ragnarok, though.
It gets good reviews because it's fun to play. The game is good at its core: you have to scan machines, aim at weak spots, move a lot in the battle to avoid damage, choose right weapons, or you can override a machine and enjoy the show, there are so many options and challenges. Besides, let's not underestimate the value of good graphics. They make the world nicer, more enjoyable, make you want to come back and play again. I understand that this game is not for everyone though.
Yeah, but I get tired of this like halfway through the game. I don't want to lower the difficulty, I just want fewer enemies and more frequent drops so I don't have to grind so fucking hard. There should be a percent slider for filler content so players like me could set it to 10% or so. I'm currently short on small machine cores to upgrade armor. Come on! What's that bullshit? Considering how many watchers I've killed I should never ever be short on that.
I don't underestimate "good graphics" (usually used to refer to realism) in selling games, but it's heavily overrated. For example, Elden Ring was not the game with the best graphics technically, but damn does it not look gorgeous. A good art style trumps realism any day. Realism sells more copies, because people are told to compare to realism, but it usually sucks. It has its uses, but it's mostly a resource hog to make something that looks generic.
Gameplay > Art direction > Graphics
I wouldn't say that Horizon aims to be super realistic. I mean, it's not far away, especially if we compare it to Elden Ring. But in Horizon colors are saturated, the game looks too beautiful and vibrant to be realistic in my books. I would say Hogwarts Legacy is a better example of a too realistic game: colors are bleak, objects and textures are much closer to what we can find in real life, it does look generic as you say (at least IMO).
The building models in Hogwarts are amazing, though. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are both gorgeous. It heavily leans on the work done for the movies, of course, but it's still amazing looking.
Everyone seems to think there is some master evil plan behind all this, but I think there's a simpler explanation. They fucked up.
Microsoft made $158b gross profit year, which was a 14% increase over the previous year.
As a comparison, General Motors’ revenue was $170b. Microsoft made almost as much in profit as GM took in totality.
Closing the studios maybe will save Microsoft $0.1b, so potentially increase their profit line by 0.05%.
So hard to think of it as anything other than a middle finger to the devs. Even if it were a mistake, they could afford to let it cook longer like with Rare and redeem the “mistake”.
It's stripping out the copper wiring for cash. Buy a game studio, fire all the employees. Now their paychecks can be served up as profit to shareholders. Move all the files to your servers, it's your "Intellectual Property". Sell off the computers and the desks and anything else not nailed down. Do they own the building? Great, sell that too! Or, better yet, rent it out!
Only works if the liquidated assets are worth more than the money spent acquiring them, which usually is not the case.
The liquidated assets are just a cherry on top, what they're going for is getting rid of the competition and hoarding IP for usual capitalist hoarder mentality reasons.
The reasons you'd ever want an Xbox used to be Halo and Fable. Now it's, uh, I dunno, does anyone care about Starfield?
Gamepass is great. It's nice to sit down on the couch and boot up a random game via streaming. Reminds me of Blockbuster in a sense.
You can do the same thing on PC, but Xbox is idiot-proof and at the end of the day I just don't have the energy to deal with anything more difficult than that.
I’m agree, but game pass has been offering meh value in the long run for me. Sure there are a few new titles, but once your run through your backlog it’s just ok. Problem is that Xbox lacks the blockbusters that appeal to the masses this generation, coupled with an utterly confusing naming scheme that I still don’t understand. What Xbox should I buy? No idea, because the names mean nothing.
Casual gamers see it differently, and I imagine that's a huge chunk of their player base. My boyfriend rarely games but gets so stoked to boot up a random no-name game and play it for a few hours at night on cloud streaming.
Now the reason is that you're too broke for a PC but still wanna play new games that are on PC, but not dirty Nintendo or Playstation games.
I absolutely love Starfield. I have something like 300 hours in it and keep finding new things to do and explore all the time.
Its called being a fucking dumb cunt. These executives and shareholders don't understand what brought people to the Xbox. So there's no way in hell they can ever keep people there. If they wanted to keep the Xbox in the spotlight you should have kept Lionhead alive and not let 343 fuck Halo (which is now on PC anyway so why would I get an Xbox?). There's simply no reason to have one unless you're scared of PCs and want to play some games with your PC friends.
They are buying studios and their IP so no one else can use it, even if they don't use it themselves. It's a strategy to remove competition, they don't care about the industry and the players, they care about money. All these big companies are the same, Microsoft just have the wallet to act on it, avoid them all and buy indie games.
This strategy eventually transforms a company into an ouroboros. Consuming itself until the shareholders and c suites have all claimed their parachutes. Its total self destruction in the long term.
Ding-ding. It so long as the shareholders of today get their gains, they could care less. The Ford lawsuit absolutely destroyed free enterprise in this country.
So they do care then!
Capitalism
Xbox is dead
Microsoft made 14% more profit than the year before. So... Is it really?
The only thing worse than this tactic, is that this tactic is working.
Microsoft or Xbox though?
Microsoft, fair point
Unlimited bacon
Or you can subscribe to gamepass for games, unlimited games
"You know what they should copy? They should copy how to get good games"
-Chad Warden
Enshittification
i think this might be called "no games"
truly fascinating, isn't it.
1st day availability on Gamepass for all AAA games simply isn't a sustainable strategy. They can't give away multiple games with a 9-figure budget along with everything else for the price of the sub.
Hype train gold rush
I think microsoft picked, "games (umlimited games), but no games"
MS bought ABK for its ability to make profits. ABK can't do that if MS "cleans house". It was very effective marketing that made people think MS would shape things up once they get their hands on shitty companies (while also effectively marketing "they would let devs be"). ABK may end up having more influence on Xbox than the other way around.
"they would let devs be" sorry that was a typo, should've said "they would let devs go" my bad
—Phil Spencer probably