Nik Wood writes about the rumour of Microsoft moving to "one consumer games" and the widespread effect it would have,
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 $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
@romulus23
That is not why MS buys studios. They might continue to buy because it's about taking that sweet sweet IP out of the corporate husks of their acquisitions.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
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Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ 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.
The Xbox brand is expanding, as an Xbox mobile game store is opening this coming July where Microsoft will brings its "first-party portfolio."
“Bond adds that they will start on the web”
This will go nowhere.
Nice knowing you Xbox. This is what happens when the house never gets cleaned.
The only this MS is expanding is the amount of feculence it sprays on everyone who just want to enjoy gaming and make games.
The best thing MS can do for the gaming industry is leave and never return.
This guy doesn't seem to realize that the reason console hardware is so cheap, is because its sold at a loss, or nearly break-even, after the retail cut is factored in.
I'm not supporter of MS'es One Consumer strategy, but I can say that selling hardware is NOT one of the ways they make money. Nintendo is the ONLY company to manage such a feat in the past 8 years, because they sell aging tech for relatively high prices. The DS, Wii, 3DS, and likely the Wii U, all follow this model.
The X360, OTOH, is a bargain at $199.99, as is the PS3 at $249.99. The Wii is probably not worth more than about $99, but Nintendo retails it for $149.99 -- heck, they don't even pay DVD royalties, like the PS2 does.
Nintendo aside, NO hardware manufacturer makes money on selling hardware. They get *everything* from software and accessories. Hence, MS's business plan.
I still don't like it, but that's the truth of the matter.
This article uses the same, tired arguments, trying to compare the games industry to film and cars, without respecting the details of not having to, for example, by replacement parts for you game, or paying to get it serviced from another company who pays service licensing fees, and sometimes needs to buy OEM parts. It also doesn't consider that films come out, and make a huge portion of their income, 6+ months before they are allowed to be sold as used titles at all, or that hardcover books (which are out a good year before paperback) are incredibly difficult to pawn off as used items at reasonable prices, relative to paperbacks.
There are NO parallels to the bad-for-publishers-and-devs financial model of the games industry. I don't like MS'es brute force approach, but there DO need to be some regulations on used RETAILERs. If they can't return some % of the used sale to the publisher, then there should at least be an embargo on used sales for 6 months after a games release... or something. The %-cut wouldn't hurt consumers AT ALL. I don't know why people even complain about such a concept.
Ugh. More of this nonsense about used games making gaming affordable and comparisons between games and cars.
First of all, unless you're buying the dirt cheap under-$30 used games from GameStop, you have absolutely no business crying about used games making gaming affordable. Practically every game NEW aside from Call of Duty drops to $30 or less within eight to twelve months.
Second, vehicles deteriorate. Games don't. If I walk into GameStop and buy Call of Duty 2 for 360, it's guaranteed to work just as well in 2012 as it did in 2005. Unless someone can just as easily find me a car that's been used since 2005 that a dealer guarantees is in the exact same condition as it was when it was driven off the lot, the comparison between games and vehicles is nonsense. The condition of used cars helps drive new vehicle purchases. A dented DVD case and missing manual doesn't do the same to encourage new game sales in the same way a used vehicle's condition and life expectancy does for new car sales.
And third, MS isn't going to block used games flat out. They would be insane to do so. I'm sure GameStop would gladly sell a next-gen Xbox with the "feature", but selling customers a console that can play used games will be their priority to ensure their used business stays as big as possible. If Sony or Nintendo consoles could play used games, which console do you think GameStop would push harder?
At worst, it will be some kind of $10 activation fee to play a used game on a console that isn't already registered to an account with the rights to play it.
I think Microsoft might piss off the customer more than anything if they adopted the one game feature. That would be the worse feature on the next gen console Microsoft already has the history with the RROD this one time game feature. Would go down in Microsoft history as the worse thing ever making the RROD a thing of the past. They want people to buy the next gen console and with the rumor of the one time game feature floating around people are getting angry or scarred. Personally unless Microsoft announces the one time game feature I am not going to believe this rumor. I can see an online pass that Sony is doing and EA are doing it as well. But right now rumors about the next gen consoles are just rumors. Sony and Microsoft are keeping tight lips about their next projects because nothing ruins a secret more then when your competitors know your secrets.
Microsoft would have no problem with this considering they shove ads onto the consoles of people who actually pay for P2P multiplayer.
I hardly buy used games but if any console maker takes this rout, I will not buy the console until that feature is removed...
Don't like used game sales cause you don't get a cut? Then open your own damn stores and sell them to compete against g-stop and others.
I don't feel bad at all when I check games on demand and I see games like blood on the sand for 50 bucks and a bunch of other games that have no business being over $20.