Microsoft's certification process for digital games has come under public scrutiny once again following Fez developer, Phil Fish's, claims that the red tape surrounding title updates has made it impossible for him to fix a broken patch. Indie developers have been complaining about the hassle involved in getting a digital title onto consoles for years.
Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's plans to increase every department's margins.
"The plan to move Xbox games to other platforms is codenamed "Latitude" internally, and I know there's debate and unease at Microsoft about whether or not this is a good idea. More upcoming Microsoft-owned games slated for PlayStation are already being developed. At least for now, they're potentially obvious games you'd most likely expect. And yes, while it's true Microsoft is a prolific publisher on PlayStation already, it has typically revolved around specific franchises like Minecraft. From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins. "
Yeah, they are going to kill Xbox hardware.
"Yeah, they are going to kill Xbox hardware."
It's for the best.
Quit stringing along xbox fans and screwing over PlayStation owners.
An Xbox game on a Playstation. Never in my years of gaming did i ever thought this was gonna happen.
No way can they get rid of the hardware as probably 90% of game pass subscribers are hardware users.
Highly doubtful those users will move to PC or Cloud to subscribe there and the competition (Sony and Nin) will never have gamepass on their system.
If they want to keep the current subscribers, they need to keep releasing new hardware.
I'm not convinced, why then announce that they're actually working on the next-generation Xbox with “the largest technical leap”, and also looking into handhelds now?
Not like MS don’t drop things a hot potato if it is not performing. Look at MS history to see products or platforms discontinued. Xbox is not a charity for MS, it needs to make money and the ABK was the last roll of the dice for Xbox.
Xbox hardware team members have been incorporated into surface team
This perhaps shows they are not expecting big things from Xbox as a separate entity
Seems like they are planning to win next gen. All the acquisitions were this generation and nobody except Xbox fans expect games from the acquisitions any time soon.
I’m sure Microsoft can afford to lose money on the short term, pretty sure they do risk assessment when acquiring many companies and spending billions, they’ll be fine lol.
i think it will kill off the xbox brand. windows will be fine.
but there is and would be a chance that xbox might be killed off in the future. if they fail to make the money they put in. imo.
They wont kill it, but they will go fully PC while keeping xbox as a brand, and go multiplatform for the most part. They will also work tirelessly to diminish console gaming’s importance.
It would be best if Xbox goes the way of Sega, just make and publish games. I know I myself will not support them at all with buying games from them, you all can. 🙃
The Xbox brand will live for the games. I don’t expect Microsoft to entirely drop out of gaming hardware. They make Surface tablets and laptops. They’ll make Xbox branded hardware for those that want it.
"Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation"
Forza and Starfield next?
Starfield would be no surprise and there's the rumor that it will come to Playstation after the Shattered Space DLC, Forza (along with Halo and Gears of War) I find less likely but I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually end up on PlayStation too, especially if Xbox give up on hardware and go the Sega route.
Not to worried about forza. I'd rather see others like what inxile and obsidian are working on. Starfield sounds like it needs more time in the oven so let it cook first imo. If starfield and it's a small if does release on ps it'll be in the fall around the time for dlc or right at the dlc and come packaged with it.
In the words of Phil Spencer when he was talking about Nintendo last year
“It's just taking a long time for Microsoft to see that their future exists off of their own hardware"
100%!!
I wonder what happened to that dude that was always here posting those court articles with cartoons about MS spending all those billions in studios. He suddenly disappeared, I guess he doesn't like bad news when the green brand is in trouble. No new articles from him as of late...
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With Arkane Austin no more and Lyon living for who knows how long, the superb Dishonored is in serious danger; Microsoft cannot be trusted.
I love the Dishonored series so much and really want Dishonored 3. Microsoft better not screw this up.
I mean, I think the fans will probably kill Arkane Lyon by cooking up reasons to hate whatever they do next without playing it. I've never seen a game so artificially disliked as Deathloop.
Lol, why don't we just say, we are worried about all studios owned by MS now. They will keep closing studios until they have none left ...🙄
Just merge them all into a single studio, have it churn out a single Call of Duty every year and call it a day, lol.
I think it's becoming clear based on matt bootys comments there's no future for any IP that can't sell above 10 million within the launch window. But is also a small game that gives them prestige
/S it's beyond a joke right now
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
Xbox is a division that they discussed shutting down but doubled down on after Gamepass was pitched.
It needs to make money at some point. Big money.
According to Statista the net income of Microsoft is about $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
@romulus23
That is not why MS buys studios. They might continue to buy because it's about taking that sweet sweet IP out of the corporate husks of their acquisitions.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
Replies(2)Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ the villain.
This was bound to happen, a bigger slice of pie and cut costs, when the games come they stand to make more and that’s their agenda—it was the writing on the wall when the sales went through and legally all those who approved the sale and mergers knew this would happen.
Snowflakes need to realize business is ugly and you can cry all you want but this is how capitalism works. And it works.
That said, M$ needs to steer the narrative and grab hold of all this, make their plans known, hype the hell out of all those dead IP’s they plan to revive, and be honest about the timeline. This is likely to involve mobile and IP on other consoles, and most people realize that.
The problem is this company is incapable of being transparent and seems to often want to dissuade and confuse is customer base. The lack of E3 has hurt Microsoft and I don’t think they know how to properly or effectively market their brand anymore.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
You do realize this happens in ALL industries? Or are you just saying this because it is Microsoft? In any case I feel for those that are being let go but the trch industry is suffering right now.
This absolutely does NOT happen all the time. Let me know the last time 1 company with a terrible product track record spent 100 billion onto acquire MULTIPLE successful companies in under a year only to shut them down and stop making their products regardless of how successful they were. Not merge them, completely shut them down.
And you can’t use Microsoft in your example.
Class action lawsuit? The law is on their side and protects them at all costs. There are no rules to protect the people at the bottom.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
ID software, the makers of Doom and Wolfenstein that have been with us since 1991 could be gone and MS will keep the IPs.
I hope some of these studios can buy their freedom from MS otherwise this is going to be even more devastating for the industry and gamers.
That's exactly what I'm worried about. I've been a fan of id since Wolfenstein 3D and I'm honestly afraid.
Toys for Bob saw the writing on the wall and bought themselves out.
Wouldn't be the first time a company did that under MS either. Bungie and Twisted Pixel did the same. Considering what just happened, I can see some other devs trying to buy themselves out too.
Won't make a difference.
The whole structure needs to be overhauled. Anyone that replaces Phil will be no different than him, Mattrick, or anyone else.
Until the company changes how they go about business, nothing will change
I just don't have any idea what they would do , they have done sooo much damage on their xbox brand, they have a show at July or June I think, but will it even matter even they show amazing games, idkn
True,
But they may as well get it over with. Whether it happens now or later, the burning is going to hit the same.
Reality is the ONE move that can alleviate a lot of this is the one move they can't make. Remove day 1 from gamepass.
consoles are handicapped by their own hardware, they were decent, low-mid-range specs at launch but underpowered in many areas including ram, gpu and cpu.
that was 2005
now, 7-8 years later, they are fossils
the fact that better looking games exist on cellphones than 95% of console games is proof enough
the only solution is new consoles which should have come out in 2010
It's because anyone can sue whomever they want for whatever reason.
"Hey, I patented this shade of red two years ago, now you must pay me 50 million dollars or remove it from your game. I don't care that it sold to 10million people. REMOVE IT OR ELSE!!!"
This is why you have this certification BS.
Also, I think Nokia sued MS over the 360 not long ago for some stupid reason as well.
People here in the USA just LOVE to sue each other to get free money over idiotic things. The result is that we have to wait a long time for anything to release because of the "certification" processes or it's even held back or not released.
"There is almost no certification process for iOS, so by the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo theory, the apps should be crashing all the time, everyone should think of iOS as sucky, etc," he told Ars Technica. "But in fact this is not what is happening. There is no public outcry for more testing and robustness of iOS software."
Ummm no. Having a certification process ensures better Quality Control. Not having a certification process pretty much guarantees buggy releases that are solely so that the developer can make money first and then fix a problem later. No one expects high quality of iOS games, people do expect more of console games. That's just a fact. iOS devices let anyone put anything on them. While this does have some advantages (patches are released easily and frequently), it does have disadvantages (shovelware, repetitive games) that of course indie devs won't talk about. And the guy that made Braid should just shut his mouth, if you ever read about the guy you'd see he's an arrogant person who thinks too highly of himself.
That said, consoles are still handicapped by corporate culture. Ads for paid services, online passes, on-disc DLC, etc. It's all about and from big business.
Guess they don't remember why gaming crashed before.This process is here to prevent it from happening again.