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best they can do is lay off 10-30% and call record profits.
Let me share my Xbox experience? I’m mid-40s. Owned Xboxes since literally the OG Xbox 1.
I originally bought this thing to play with my brother split screen. Nowadays I want to play split screen with my son.
Yet somehow there’s no fucking split screen games anymore. The last two or three AAA games I purchased I played for a few hours and then never loaded again.
And the other day when I loaded up call of duty Black ops 3 to play zombies (this is like a 10 year old game now) I found that because I let my Xbox Gold live whatever the fuck subscription expire, I can’t play “online” and use my unlocked items even though I’m doing local play.
So from this guy what in the fucking fuck xbox. This is some kind of device designed to clean out my wallet for eternity and not deliver what I actually want.
I pretty much exclusively use my Xbox as a YouTube player now.
That really sucks. Consoles these days are just pcs with expensive libraries. If you can muster playing on pc with your son, the games are cheaper and I highly recommend it. On steam, you can filter by local coop and hook up two controllers to get a similar experience. You can even try emulating older games like on the ps2.
I’m having a similar experience with the PS5. Been playing since Gran Turismo on the PS1 and have it in the living room with multiple controllers. Thing is…like you said there’s no couch coop anymore, if 3 of us want to shoot zombies on the same map it just can’t but 2 player is there…with giant black bars on the sides to make it 4:3 on my 65” tv.
We’ve spent more time playing Balatro than COD the last few weeks, smaller cheaper games are simply a better deal right now with the price tag and all the mtx
Borderlands, sports, indie titles are still good options
You might be right, probably worth looking into. I just have so little time to invest in new titles or any learning curve or really any game that takes a ton of grinding before it’s fun
You can but don’t need to grind any of the Borderlands games until super late finished the game 3 times with the same character already end game, and by that time it’s fun to just start a new character of a different class. Handsome collection, playing 2 in particular is the best. And that collection works for up to 4 player locally
So going on a shopping spree and buying all those game studios wasn’t a good idea huh. Who would have thought.
That was just leveling the field of potential competitors.
Microsoft SOP tbf
I feel like this is all driven by MS diving full force into AI stuff. Their capex is going to be insane so they’re cutting shit left and right to keep Wall Street happy while they set cash on fire trying to make AI something more than anime profile pic generators.
Maybe they’re just buying these studios to acquire their IPs, code and artwork to train new AI’s on. Then close the studio, as you’ve acquired all its data and it serves no further purpose to them. Probably hoping to release full AAA-AI slop in the future. Don’t think it’ll work and they’ll waste enormous amounts of energy and resources before the AI bubble bursts and everyone realizes that current ‘AI’ (LLMs) will never become AGI.
I wish companies couldn’t buy other companies. That’s how all the best things die
Companies used to need approval to do such things
They did?
Buying studios wasn’t stupid.
Doing it and putting all their products on a subscription service is.
As much as the higher tiers of PSN aren’t as good value as GamePass, it’s certainly lead to higher quality games for Sony’s platform as they can still get sales revenue from shorter or niche games, rather than just looking at a single figure and laying off whole studios.
I’d much rather pay money for a full game now (and I’ll be honest, my day one purchases this gen are limited to games I’m really interested in), or wait and play on sub later (and it’s about 18 months I think for games to go “free”), than have half a game on sub now and get nickle and dimed for the rest of it.
Why? they have the most players AND money than they ever did in their existence. Stupid would be suggesting it was a bad idea
Eh? They’ve been chasing the one-off Xbox 360 high for two generations now, and are nowhere near it. Sony have near full dominance in the console space. Valve have so much dominance in the PC space that they’ve got people to try Linux.
The aim of GamePass was that people would stream games and not need a console at all, and that just hasn’t happened for them. Their entire gamble was on cloud gaming, and it’s not paid off at all.
Again, making more money than ever before is the definition of paying off
I don’t think it would change anything because all management there is the same. They don’t play games.
Xbox was the only Microsoft product that I liked, paid for and used. I don’t use Windows or Office -except when mandated at work-, but I’ve had the Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Xbox Series S. I have over 300 owned digital games on Xbox. I decided to move away from Xbox a year ago, I never used Steam before Autumn last year, and now I game on the Steam Deck more than anything else. The writing has been on the wall for a few years now though, so this news isn’t surprising. I still wanted to get an Xbox Series X to keep playing the digital games I collected over the years and was waiting for a price cut but they went and raised the prices instead.
I only had a 360 back in the day, and I feel like I got in and out at the absolute peak. So many great couch coop with roommates memories.
Lmao are you me? Exact same models. My series S started collecting dust about a year and a half ago. All PC and Steam now.
It feels like companies like this eventually become vehicles for like 5 people to make lots of money. You can’t let go the guy making these mistakes - lining his pocket is the purpose of the company! It’d be ridiculous to fire him! Unless some of the other 4 people making money decide he’s keeping them from lining their pockets.
You just described the US stock market.
Which is why stock trading should be abolished and outlawed.
or at least heavily taxed, which almost never happens because everyone in congress commiting insider trading wouldnt want that.
The housing market is basically an inverse wealth tax.
If you banned investing, the rich people who already have money would be the only ones who could afford to open businesses.
No common folk is getting rich thanks to the stock market. Maybe richer if they’re lucky, but let’s not pretend it’s a tool for social mobility. It’s the opposite.
Not necessarily, no. Other people with common aims would still be able to band together via nonprofits, credit unions, labor unions and the like.
It would actually be MUCH more effective once the most effective tool for exploding and concentrating wealth is out of the way.
also loans still exist regardless of investment like stocks, which is the way most small businesses start anyway
If you banned
investinggambling
There should be a rule on how many people or how many times layoffs can happen before leadership gets let go instead.
over COVID, the company i worked for did the best possible thing: they called an all hands and said they didn’t want to let anyone go, but would likely need to unless everyone took a voluntary 20% pay cut for a bit… they expressed that not everyone is in the position to do that, and if you can’t you shouldn’t feel bad… executives and leadership making the decision took a 40% pay cut for the same period, and any profit that the company made went to reimburse people’s salaries in proportion to the amount they lost. because they were honest, and sacrificed more themselves the buy in was something like 95%, they didn’t have to fire anyone, and we ended up getting about half of it back…
That’s great. It’s like you were temporarily a worker’s co-op.
I remember my company at the time also admitted that COVID was threatening the bottom line and many in the all hands and public chats suggested just what your company did.
Instead we got multiple rounds of gutting layoffs mid-pandemic, a mass exodus of core talent, and the founders selling out to some B tier silicon valley fucks who fly in every now and then to complain about morale.
Japan has laws that say executives must take a pay cut before they can lay anyone off
The place I work for is having an executive pay cut… but with tons of threats of other layoffs and chafing benefits for the worse. It’s really cool. I bet the top execs have pay cuts equal or less than one regular worker’s pay.
But the billionaires are for us in the US! Herp derp
So many places seem to be run by idiots, if your metrics are other than “personal enrichment”.
Like, one of my old jobs, the CEO laid off almost everyone and is now banging hard on the “return to office” drum. Like, my guy, how is making people do a 2 hour commute going to help? It’s a small company, he knows most of the people live that far away. And then they go into the office, and they end up doing these like hour+ long lunches. Or they leave early for drinks.
It’s fucking stupid. It’s the CEO driving with his emotions. He wants to feel like a big business man with an office, and he wants to have fun socializing. Idiot. Fun guy to hang out with, but he’s making pants on head stupid business decisions. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.
Same thing with open concept offices. To extraverts it feels more productive and collaborative, but it’s actually the oppo to anyone engaged in any kind of focus work.
It’s almost comical how incompetent the Xbox BU’s executive management has been for 10+ years.
Yeah. Xbox should be running a division that looks very similar to Steam. Hell, I have an alt history in my head where Microsoft pushes streaming forward by years using the Xbox for leverage.
I may be in the minority here, but I still like Phil Spencer… I feel like he’s a good dude who has been hamstrung by Microsoft from a larger overall management angle.
He’s certainly better than Don Mattrick, but admittedly Xbox has continued to suffer even after Don left.
Every time I saw an interview with Phil, he was amicable, seemed to actually understand game dev and the challenges, and he pushed to do things like Game Pass which have largely been successful.
Meanwhile Don was the guy who tried to copy off Nintendo’s motion gaming, pushed for making the Xbox do TV shit moreso than be a fun gaming console, and essentially said “get a 360” when people complained about lack of reliable internet access potentially preventing their ability to play any XB1 game.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is bigger than 1 good dude. Remember when this one executive threatened to pull MS out of an entire nation because the CMA had an objection regarding the ABK merger? For every one Phil, there are probably 9 of these rich pricks.
Just because Don was bad, doesn’t make Phil good. He did a lot right at the start, but in the last few years he has basically driven Xbox as a brand into the ground. He’s the one that has pushed “everything is an Xbox” which basically means they have no product. Even the Xbox handheld is just a product from a different company with an Xbox logo slapped on.
He also pushed the primary focus of the company into a subscription service, rather than being a platform to play games. Not to mention, Microsoft has spent the last couple of years buying up a ton of competitors, only to shut down a ton of them and lay off the devs. Ultimately, I think he puts on this persona of being a “gamer” like you. But it’s clear by the actions of the company that he’s just another suit destroying the industry for profit.
True that no matter what - Phil IS a CEO, which means he’s not a good dude… but I guess I just look at it as shades of gray.
I think Microsoft decided it doesn’t want to do ANY kind of hardware, because of how poorly they did both in the X era, and in international markets like Japan…
And like you said - if Xbox becomes a brand rather than an actual piece of hardware, then there’s no reason to buy an Xbox. I had a 360 starting right before Halo 3 came out in 2007, but with every single one of their games being fully multi-platform with ZERO exclusives I never had a reason to get any of their systems after my original Elite.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all. Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all.
Xbox’s brand was one that gained all of its clout basically as a result of Halo for the original console, and then pretty much almost the entirety of the 360 era. Damaging a brand is easy to do, and the consequences are long-standing. True that plenty of time has passed… but I still think that the main issue is that Microsoft is still pulling the strings that damage the Xbox brand.
Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
Because Nintendo is completely independent, and is controlled wholly by their own CEO… they are not a division of a larger shitty company interested in Copilot and Window 11 subscriptions.
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
I’m not blaming Mattrick DIRECTLY for anything that’s happened in the last 10 years… but I AM blaming Microsoft as a whole probably forcing Phil’s hands, based on the interviews I watched with both Mattrick and Phil back in the day.
I really do think Phil likes games and is basically having to fly a plane that Microsoft keeps taking away parts from. I don’t think someone who actually worked on games like Phil did early in his career wanted to close the studio that made HiFi Rush.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d love to see some evidence showing Phil coming across as even half as bad as ANY interview or stage presentation with Mattrick.
Bring back Peter Moore.
