Jim Ryan has departed Sony Interactive Entertainment, after roughly 30 years at the company.
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 $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
Replies(2)
Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ 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.
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.
Microsoft & Xbox have shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks to lay off more workers, insinuating that they're not in the game anymore.
They're headless for a long time because closing tango isn't exactly a good move
Ever since that cringe Kinect reveal they've never been the same. They used to make some amazing games and do great deals with third parties Early on in the 360 era they had games like Chromehounds and Shadowrun, both well ahead of their time. Now instead of nurturing their studios, they'd rather gaslight gamers and throw billions on pre existing studios. Not sure how Spencer is still in a job, I wouldn't trust him to organise a piss-up in a brewery.
We've said all along Spencer needs to go. I wish xbox went back to xbox only with new gears fable forza halo releases lots of third party releases
Those early rainbow 6 Vegas days and phantasy star universe are gone forever
MS has its head in the game but the game they are playing is something different from what console gamers expect from a platform. MS’s end game has always been to use the xbox as a trojan horse.
“Acquisitions always come with cuts”
343 trillion points shield activated
343 trillion percent damage negate activated
All damage reduced to 1 for 343 trillion turns.
MICROSOFT DEFENSE FORCE IS A GO
Especially for Microsoft, when Booty pretty much said they didn't know how to handle that many studios.
Why even make the acquisition then.
Didn’t they make the swipe for Bethesda when Sony wanted like 6 months exclusiveness for Starfield
It’s like…chill, you got Rise of the Tomb Raider for a year.
Do they always come with senseless cuts becasue that's exactly what cutting Tango was, senseless.
Everyone's acting now that game companies care about games and Xbox is committing the Ultimate betrayal, they are all like this and you have just been quiet about it for far too long
I wonder if Microsoft do pull out of the console market that it might open the door for valve to relaunch the Steambox. Competition is good for the industry but Microsoft don't even seem to be trying anymore.
Steam / Valve are one of the few truly pro-consumer bright spots in gaming right now. Thankfully.
“Your game has won some pretty significant awards and is a show piece for where we want to go in the future.”
1 hour later.
“We’re gonna have to let you go. You can’t cover our 100 billion dollar acquisition. Oh and take your awards too 👍🏾”
Sega has released its financial statement for the 2023-24 fiscal year, and profits may be up, but it's mostly not down to video games.
Less live service nonsense, I hope. Maybe more than one or two first-party releases a year would be nice as well. It'd be nice if they fixed the PS+ price hike too, but that's less likely because the only reason they would have increased the price in the first place is if it wasn't making them enough money to satisfy shareholders.
We won't see the real effects of Jim leaving for another 2-3 years and it all depends on who is replacing him.
A return to the old Sony hopefully, way less focus on gaas, don't overly secretive about what games you have coming, keep providing AAA single player games.
Basically do what they have always done before Jim.
Clear messaging about what is coming up content wise. Can’t say it’s only possible on PS5 than have the same game run on PS4 or run without SSD on PC’s
I hope they really go back and get Shawn Layden who was starting to have a really good synergy with gamers
Shawn layden
Andrew house
Jack Trenton
Please get one of these
And please put some more focus on Japanese market. MS have been growing their business in Japan and TGS showed how much they are investing yet Sony seems to care less and less
Do 2 shows/presentations a year. One totally focused on 3rd party content and the other all about 1st-2nd party exclusive content
Less focus on GAAS because there are enough 3rd party big games doing GAAS and companies like PlayStation and Xbox get 30%. They have bungie who will keep doing GAAS so let the other studios do more traditional games
Acquire some more studios or even smaller publishers to grow the PlayStation strength. Like Sony themselves said PlayStation is very important to the core of their business. I believe owning square and capcom would do well for PlayStation (Sony has close to 20 billion in acquisition funds and they can get both square and capcom for less than 20)
Better.
His run as CEO is why I stopped mainly gaming on Playstation. No fun first party games, no actual exclusives everything just goes to PC, the censorship that started, and the straw that broke was the PS+ price hike. It all screams arrogance of a company in the lead that just doesn't care what it does it's all about money. I just want old Sony that made wild exclusives like Crash and Spyro got Japanese publishers on their side and was the friendliest place for any dev to put whatever they wanted on console.