After stumbling with its showcases and livestreams over the past few years. It appears Xbox has struck gold with its Developer Direct.
"The Warsaw-based (Poland) indie games publisher Untold Tales and indie games developer Exit Plan Games, are today very happy and excited to announce that they have just released the free "Wild West" update for their open-world sandbox/adventure “Bang-On Balls: Chronicles“ (the said update is available right now for PC and consoles worldwide)." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
Uncover the reasons why hitting reset on Xbox Game Pass is necessary. Learn about the potential consequences if changes aren't made.
Game pass hasn't even hit the enshittification stage.
Xbox has proven they have no direction, they aren't looking after the developers they've acquired.
Competition is good & very much needed but Xbox has been a joke since Don Mattrick left, the only thing I've heard from Xbox since 2014 is words, empty words.
You hit the nail on the head when saying "no direction". It really does feel like this with Xbox lately.
I can tell you now, there will be A SEPARATE cod tier of gamepass
they will separate the two tiers, added onto of their existing 3 tiers, so now more tiers.... so Gamepass:ultamite:cod
EITHER THS:
or they keep same price, get everyone playing cod, then raise price 2-3 months after, sneaky little ****'s
Stopped reading after this.
"Xbox says Game Pass is profitable and I’m sure it probably is."
Just pure delusion.
You live in an alternate fanboy reality if you think game pass is profitable while in reality Microsoft is firing people, closing down studios, raising prices and making their games third party.
Some people just want to be lied too I guess...
They have investors and a board they are required to report to. They can lie about a lot of things and do, but profits ain’t one of them, especially in court lol
You don't understand, when we see the investor reports on this site they are reporting revenue not profit.
Microsoft has lost multiple legal cases for misleading investors.
It's well know that they manipulate and hide costs and losses in other reports in order to be able to present positive reports to their investors and the public on products they are trying to drive..
Why do you think they are closing down studios making major cuts to staff increasing prices and lowers rewards? It might actually be worse if game pass was profitable and they were doing this.
No Xbox needs to be sold to a company that wants to grow gaming instead of what we have, a company that wants to own gaming... and get you to rent games.
All these articles speculating and guessing when what you need to do is look at MS and how they conduct business, they buyup, take the IP's, tech, etc they want, consolidate then shut down.
Smaller studios are chaff to MS, they have control of some of gaming's biggest IP's to use as leverage and are moving on.
I think that may be a good solution. Simply spinning off Xbox into its own company as right now it’s simply “Microsoft Games.”
They obviously will still have a good relationship with Microsoft as they can provide the OS and network infrastructure for Xbox. But would manage their studios better.
How does a non-profitable, self-cannabilizing and non-growing sub service need a reset? It needs a bullet to the head.
While on stage with Dina Bass at The Bloomberg Technology Summit the President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, was asked about the Xbox studio closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios
Of course she did. She's part of the problem and will just tow the company line.
Bloomberg’s Dina Bass could barely read her scripted question without looking at her notes, whilst Sarah Bond who WAS expecting the question spoke without saying anything of substance or answering the question in any meaningful way. Clearly she’s had the same expert PR training as Phil, but this avoidance was disrespectful. In time the short-sighted decision to shut down Tango Gameworks will be seen as of the most notorious examples why Phil Spencer messed up his tenure in charge of Xbox. That’s a fully built out talented team that could’ve been put to work on any project.
Additionally, Phil Spencer should not be using Sarah Bond as a patsy for his mistakes- he should be answering that question.
I think you are all really overselling Tangos value. Hi-Fi rush was a lot of fun. Ghostwire was incredibly dull. Evil within 1 and 2 were just okay.
Evil within 2 was incredibly under rated. I thought that game was surprisingly good
Someone else said it best. I don't think it was a Phil decision. It was most likely a Satya decision. I think Microsoft is done giving out free money to Xbox.
people please boycott Activision Bethesda next release and support Hellblade.
these people mus understand that they cannot treat their fans and employees that way.
scumbags.
She's playing her role. There's absolutely nothing any of them can say other than the truth, this is about profit margins and not quality, so they just don't answer anything and wait for gamers to forget.
I think news is coming of more ps5 release but they gotta be careful cause Xbox is still sitting on store shelves. They can't get left holding all that stock
Come next month they'll flash nice looking games in our faces and expecting us to forget.
The only thing that'll be going through my mind at their showcase is how many of those studios will get shut down after release.
I'm not joking around either. MS probably expects every game to be like COD and do COD numbers. What a way to destroy gaming for the entire industry because they're dumb af at being realistic in what success means for each game.
Always feels she was brought in / promoted for this. Happened just before things started to be out in motion.
Phil and co have someone to throw under the bus and share the blame with
I always wondered why xbox had multiple leaders with similar titles like Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and Sarah Bond, like, how many heads do you actually need?
Seems to me it would be more cost efficient to cut 2 of them instead of all those studios.
Frankly, I suspect she is the most competent of them. I don't mean that I like her more, I mean that she's the best at articulating herself and giving the talking points MS wants to give. The others are starting to sound more like her than her sounding like any of them.
Are any of these people "responsible" for what's happening? No. This reeks of Nadella. But that being said, I don't see any of the Xbox heads stepping down in protest.
"Don't shoot the messenger", sure, but at the same time, the messengers don't seem to take umbrage with the message. Not enough to remove themselves from it, anyway.
I disagree. Nadella is looking for profit as a CEO should in my opinion.
The problem is Dr. Phil & Co. had 10 years to bring Xbox back on track and have been failing woefully.
Phil needs to sell to Nadella that if we are to make a profit, we need to make great games. And to do that we need employees here for the long haul and the freedom to work on creative projects.
But as Phil said himself he doesn’t believe great games sell consoles.
Dude, 100%, forgot Major Nelson and Aaron Greenberg, like what is the point for all these suits? They have more C-level executives than games released in a generation.
This is just so they can all pass along the hot potato one at a time and in between all of them can say a lot without actually saying anything, misinformation at its finest.
I thought it was their best one yet.
It was a nice approach. I look forward to more.
If they did this once every month or two with a surprise launch then it would be perfect.
But I agree, we don’t need the random zoomer commentary to extend the showcase an hour and a half. I hate when MS does that.