Forbes: "Rather than pay $199 just for the unit, users can now get an Xbox for $99—as long as they also take a two-year contract to Xbox Live Gold.
This new low price looks even better when you consider you don’t need to buy a new TV, which is what Samsung and, soon, Apple want you to do. “If you want to start a phenomenon,” says Ballmer, “it doesn’t start with thousand-dollar-plus devices that sell at unreasonably low volume and need major room redesigns.”
For Xbox’s hugely expanded gaming division, anything that isn’t Call of Duty is now a failure, and that’s a problem
Honestly, If I worked presently for Microsoft's gaming division, I would update my CV and look for work elsewhere...
"Now"?
How about "ever"?
They closed so many of their dev teams during the second half of the Xbox 360 era. Have we forgotten history so quickly?
Dummy fake journalists acting so surprised over these recent closures, when this is something that's been going on for well over a decade now with MS.
"The sudden closure of several video-game studios at Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox division was the result of a widespread cost-cutting initiative that still isn’t finished.
This week, Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax, which it purchased in 2020 for $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Others across the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are on the way.
Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said.
Game Pass has not seen the massive growth that Xbox boss Phil Spencer may have been hoping for."
"Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said"
So what you're saying is...you bought all these studios and you guys can't run them.
Jesus.
Reports are suggesting that Game Pass will be getting a price hike soon and that Call of Duty may not be added to the day one offering. I honestly have a hard time believing this but it does beg the question why exactly did GP fail? I think the answer is that it just didn't get the growth that it anticipated. Jim was right but I wish he wasn't because at the end of the day, its gamers, devs and other front-line workers who have to absorb the blow for Spencer and team's miscalculations.
For all the armchair executives who were calling for Sony to release its big-budget AAA games on PS+, the same exact thing would have happened at PlayStation. Game Pass has killed Xbox. Congrats.
Twisted Voxel writes: "We've almost reached the end of the 1st half of 2024, and Xbox has had more studio closures than first party game releases in the year so far."
Hellblade 2, Indiana Jones, Avowed, Towerborne, and Call of Duty are still to be released this year. Marcus Fenix collection to be added to the list with the Xbox showcase, hopefully.
Sony doesn't have to bother fighting the next Microsoft acquisition. The massive layoff by themselves should be enough to get the next big buy blocked.
So if MS hadn't spent $80 billion consolidating the industry just think of all the games and jobs that would have saved.
MS is a drain on gaming and have been nothing but a negative.
"This spring, for the first time, subscribers to Xbox’s Live online service in the U.S. spent more time consuming video and music than multiplayer games."
MS: Mission Accomplished
Hey, remember when Sony was criticized for "just using the PS3 as a trojan horse for Blu-Ray" and people liked to say "lol, people don't even play games on PS3, its just a cheap Blu-Ray player for all the people I know haha"? How times change.
Fortunately, things do change quickly as we saw with the original Xbox/PS2 to the 360/PS3. If Sony manages to botch the PS4 launch like they did the PS3 one, and let MS beat them to market by over a year, then they will have deserved their fate. But if both companies release the console within the same time frame, with the same price, and similar specs, it will be very interesting.
World Wide weekly sales say NO...............
MS is winning full stop.
"Ballmer is working to persuade the big pay-TV players—Comcast and Verizon are already Xbox partners—to allow their customers the choice of an Xbox over a cable set-top."
LOL, this will never fly unless MS is willing to pay the difference in lost revenue.
Article is based on American market and Americans usually do not even know there is another way besides the good old US of A.
Europe and Asia and other parts of the world are seen by the average American as a bad evil Communist regime.