Everwild being canned is not remotely the most shocking thing about these layoffs. That game was never coming out.

They haven't announced all the layoffs and game cancellations yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's beautiful

>>1523091 XBOX GO HOME

All these studios should already have several games under their belt. That it's been 10 years and they got nothing to show just screams incompetence, or that they've been scamming Microsoft all this time. Either way, the Xbox brand is dead. They release nothing but slop anyway.

>>1523101 Clearly you don't understand the brilliance of the MBA supreme

>>1523101 Terrible management as expected This is why I wanted them to buy COD and Bethesda, now they're barely a blip in the industry.

>>1523101 One of the former PlayStation heads talked about this at length recently. Two answers: dumb money and COVID. The coof massively boosted all forms of media and for some reason various industries believed this was a permanent trend, and VCs came in flooding the industry with money without any knowledge of vidya. Once the COVID entertainment bubble popped, YoY profits went down and investors pulled back. Now you're seeing this ruthless costcutting and downsizing from the massive overspending during the COVID years.

>>1523118 All these modern corps can't think beyond 1-2 years

>>1523122 Yeah that would explain a lot of things actually.

>>1523041 And nothing of value was lost. They have been pumping out nothing but mediocre shit for far too long. >I'd like for the entire Xbox executive team to be replaced by people who actually care about games Not going to happen. Those types don't get offered these positions anymore.

Let this POS get canned.

>>1523289 Pretty much, it's all filled up by nepobabies with connections and in need of a cushy job they don't know how do. Look at BonnieRoss, after a decade and a half of mismanaging 343 shes now in Duolingos Board of Directors.

>>1523295 Already confirmed to be cancelled

>>1523295 >>1523297 And there you go! Whole studio is dead as well https://archive.is/tpmJy

>>1523295 >>1523297 It's a fucking blood bath. My guess is that State of Decay 3 is next, then Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games for both releasing a single flop in 10 years.

>>1523331 It's so great to see AAA contraction, we need to see more of it, these studios barely scrape by nowadays just trying to survive when they had nothing but growth during 7th Gen.

>>1523295 You got your wish

>>1523369 Plus tax

>>1523372 You can say that again, Jesus.

>>1523326 >Whole studio is dead as well wew

Apparently Bethesda's MMO is dead too. Seven years of dev time with nothing to show. Good fucking riddance. >>1523122 It's not that they can't, it's that public companies are driven by ever increasing quarterly requirements to please investors. Can't do long term planning when your neck is on the line in 3 months because of the investor's call. This in turn leads companies to hire for and based on quarterly growth instead of long term health and planning.

>>1523295 Imperfect Jaw.

>Gregg Mayles, Rare’s most experienced and influential game designer, will leave the company after more than 35 years, https://archive.ph/6kHYl AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND AND IT DOESN'T STOP COMING AND

>>1523755 And the day isn't even over yet!

>>1523755 For context: Microsoft shutdown Tango Gameworks when Mikami left despite Hi-Fi Rush being a heavily successful game. I suspect the end of Rare is coming soon.

Expecting Obsidian to get gutted after The Outer Worlds 2. Avowed was already flop no matter what they try and pretend. TOW2 is 80 fucking dollars. It's gonna flop too.

When are these white piggu companies going to rearize the Japanese make the superior video games and copy what they do?

>>1523769 Doubt it, maybe the division that was working on Everwild, Sea of Thieves is Xboxs highest selling game and GAAS trash.

>>1523939 Even more so than Cawwaduty?

>>1523972 Sea of Thieves was created by them, not a buyout, plus a completely different genre.

>>1523041 >Personally, I'd like for the entire Xbox executive team to be replaced by people who actually care about games Microsoft never cared about games or consoles. It was all only ever a means to keep Sony from putting a PC in people's livingrooms. This is why Microsoft has been completely phoning it in ever since Sony dropped Linux/OtherOS - and since the rise of the smartphone/mobile market has made the fight over the living room completely moot. They tried to turn the Xbox One into a general-purpose multimedia box rather than a game console, and Phil's entire tenure has been about using the Xbox brand to build out other Microsoft initiatives like streaming services and merging Xbox and PC gaming together into a singular "Xbox Ecosystem" which is now completely untethered from game consoles. That's why they're more concerned with selling game controllers than they are with game consoles or games. Sony has been completely irrelevant to them since the 8th generation on, and now they're burning the entire idea of consoles in favor of pushing a "streamlined" windows gaming experience under the Xbox banner as a means to compete with Valve and SteamOS. There is zero reason to buy an Xbox console after the Xbox 360, aside from maybe backwards compatibility with the 360 - and even then, you'd be better off emulating.

>>1523755 God bless him for sticking around this long. Lord knows he tried.

https://archive.is/hmlsF Well this explains a lot.

Genuinely, truly, why can't Microsoft do anything right?

>>1523939 >Developer says Microsoft is trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents. https://archive.ph/8ck0h

>>1524376 Fuckhuge company filled with awful managers hired out of nepotism.

>>1523041 And nothing of value was lost. These studios haven't made anything good in the last 10 years and Xbox is fucking dead. I genuinely don't see a reason to care about this.

>all these layoffs and closed studios Did M$ forget that you need games for your videogame brand and system?

>>1524566 >your videogame brand and system? Abandonware at this point

>>1524566 >Did M$ forget that you need games for your videogame brand and system? there was no system from the start, they began with a glorified locked down pc

Ecksbaucks will fire everybody but the guy making all the mistakes

>>1524719 There have been some rumours of Phil retiring slightly after the next Xbox, who will proceed to be replaced with Sarah Bond. They've been denied by Microsoft representatives, but hey, I wouldn't trust a lying manipulative monolithic megacorp to tell anyone the truth, much less the truth behind their inner workings. Regardless if he leaves or not, Xbox is dead and it's nice seeing all these pozzed studios getting culled.

>>1524468 Holy shit, I was being facetious… >>1524059

I have a question I cannot find a good answer to. If Micropenis wasn't planning on doing anything with this studios - why did they buy them?? The Initiative never released a single game.

>>1524797 They started buying smaller companies to reinforce some exclusives in a pathetic attempt to compete with Sony, unfortunately their managers are all shit and they never gave these smaller devs a proper budget. Bethesda and Activision was likely money they got from Covid era retarded investment and the just as retarded executives at Xbox decided to just buy out Bethesda and Activison in an attempt to save their floundering brand. That was until Sony started lawyering up, and pushed/paid off (and I'm stating that with full confidence because usually neither body gives a fuck about anything unless it shafts another big corp and even the usually anal EU, approved the buyout. Fucking over consumers is mighty fine though.) FTC and CMA (USA and UK anti trust regulation bodies) to ruin their (to be fair) monopolistic plan. So shit didn't go like Microsoft expected as they wanted COD as an Xbox/PC exclusive and thus they jumped boat as Covid investment is also gone due to people actually being able to go outside. Microsoft only bought Activision for COD, WoW and Candy Crush and Bethesda for Fallout/The Elder Scrolls and maybe Doom, the rest they couldn't give less of a shit about.

>>1524879 >>1524797 TL;DR -FTC spanked their bottom -Covid money is gone -Remove studio to save costs -Make everything multiplatform to maximize profit at the detriment of the dying brand

>>1524797 COVID spending spree, I honestly don't think Xbox had much of a plan beyond "let's buy up as much of the industry as possible!". Because that turned out so well for Nortel. None of this should have been allowed to happen, but regulatory bodies have been toothless for decades. To fair, the FTC did try to stop this, but again, toothless.

>>1524917 I mean, the caveats of not being able to make COD exclusive literally killed their plan. They're clearly just trying to be a multiplat developer now. I'm also glad it happened, Activision and Bethesda get to die even quicker deaths now under Microsofts awful management. I mean, it's already starting!

>>1525031 Add 8th to that

I'm surprised they didn't nuke Undead Labs today

>>1525031 There are plenty of great smaller-to-medium games but AAA has been a fucking wasteland, hasn't it? Even Bethesda has fallen out of favor. The best game Sony released in years was a mascot platformer throwback.

>>1524905 You're leaving out the most important bit: the ActiBlizz deal was so expensive that suddenly main Microsoft asked what the fuck they were doing and suddenly started looking at how MUCH the gaming division was costing them. Turns out a fucking lot.

Turns out that everyone fired was simply replaced with street shitters solely it's cheaper to fire all your white people.

>>1526248 Some countries have laws requiring companies to employee at least X% of native workers, imagine if the US tried to implement that? It would probably be the GOP to fight it the hardest lmao

>>1526332 The USA is a country of immigrants you fucking Nazi!

>>1526248 >10M workers being trained in AI I think they are really overestimating large language model's ability to code. Sure, it can spit out small snippets and things that have hundreds of tutorials in its training data, like twitter clones. But and working on an actual big project linke windows or ms office is a whole other beast. The enshittification will continue. Also, if they want to hire Indians so much, why don't they set up offices in India instead of shipping literally thousands to the US? It can't be more expensive than shipping them to the US. Or are the labor laws there somehow worse than in India allowing greater exploitation?

>>1527265 Because destroying the US and displacing whites is part of the point, and while outsourcing does that, importing street shitters straight to the US does it even better.

>>1526332 There's nothing "grand" about the GOP.

>>1527923 Gay Old Party lemonparty.org

>>1523041 Would old man Bezos want Microsoft sloppy seconds or its all in for Tencent to save the day?

>>1528630 Neither, the gaming division is simply going to get smaller and smaller until all that remains is Candy Crush, Fallout/TES and COD.

>>1523041 >Personally, I'd like for the entire Xbox executive team to be replaced by people who actually care about games AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh man you got me laffin OP, that was was funny lmao

>>1528135 whoa that takes me back. why not also link the Pain Series while you are at it?

How is Goblina not cancelled?

Helldivers 2 on Xbox Xbros, we are so back!!!

>>1528991 I still remember cringing it a it before I was completely desensitized by the internet. Good times https://edramatica.com/Pain_Series

>>1530659 Not to console war but I wonder if Americans know Xbox has sold basically nowhere outside the US. People acting like there's any kind of serious race between Xbox and.. well, anybody, need to go look at the stats. They're in dead last and it's not even close. That guy is right that re-releasing remasters and ports has been a dud on the part of PlayStation, but Xbox has been coasting on 360 nostalgia for over a decade at this point. You can not have a console line built solely upon "I enjoyed playing Halo 2 in school :)".

>>1524580 >>1524585 Whatever the case, I hope we get Rare Replay on PC before the brand gets fucked >dude just emulate them I'm sure some of the RR games have improvements over their original releases.

>>1531142 Why do you put line breaks in such random spots?

>>1531187 >I'm sure some of the RR games have improvements over their original releases. Perfect dark with mouse controls would be nice. I know you can do it with emulators but that is a hassle to set up.

>>1531516 The FTC bears absolutely no blame here, they fought Microshit tooth and nail. It was the courts that ruled in favor of the merger.

>>1531689 The courts have been fucking up a lot recently.

>>1531611 It makes the game trivially easy. Same with Goldeneye. It wasn't made with that in mind.

>>1531142 >if Americans know Xbox has sold basically nowhere outside the US. Fuck no, most have never left the country and the American media machine almost insulates Europe, do you realize just how suffocating it is in it's own country? To this day Americans still think Xbox had worldwide adoption and was culturally relevant worlwide when the truth is that it was niche everywhere else besides the USA and that "cultural relevancy" was nothing more than Microsoft advertising like crazy during the 360 days. They poured a shitton of money into advertising just to break into the console market during the 360 days.

>>1531932 Sure, but it also should be noted that many multiplat games from the early 2000s are best on Xbox. That gives it some relevance. And if we're gonna get obsessed over Europe, then we might as well pretend the NES was niche and the Master System was a big success. But we all know that's silly.

>>1531945 >That gives it some relevance No, it doesn't, only to you >Europe Yeah, Japan loves the Xbox!

>>1531960 I never even owned an Xbox of any kind. But I am waiting for it to get easy enough to emulate that I can play a couple of the slightly better versions of some games I liked from the era. Some have extra levels and stuff. Also I am interested in those Dreamcast games that ended up on Xbox after the Dreamcast failed. But I wasn't gonna buy an Xbox at the time just for ToeJam and Earl, as much as I love the original. >Yeah, Japan loves the Xbox! Yeah but Europe was the market specifically mentioned in the post I was replying to.

>>1531973 >I wonder if Americans know Xbox has sold basically nowhere outside the US. >>1531142

I've literally never heard of Everwild so oh well Judging by the character mix nothing was lost

>>1524905 >>1524938 If they had pushed the diversity shit less hard maybe people would have bought more of their product, oh well Also they can't be like "It's racist to have all whites!!!" when making everyone cover up with armor to remove race from the game has always been a option.

>>1524376 Too many managers who don't have the spine to say "no" to shitty ideas, and everyone is so pussywhipped that they just go along with it, ruining everything

>>1523296 These trash managers keep getting shuffled around to different positions of power like that because companies would rather hire based on how high of a role you've gotten rather than were you any good at it. It's truly pathetic

>>1531142 >I wonder if Americans know Xbox has sold basically nowhere outside the US. Not really, during the 360 vs PS3 era, PS3 had sold 25.9 million units, while the 360 had sold 20.8 million so about 5 million units more or 5 : 4. Clear victory for the Sony, but I wouldn't say that the 360 was this niche console in Europe either. the kikepedia source from this, comes from a forum post in which a user posted an image from a GfK Entertainment report, without linking to the report itself. While I have no reason to believe that it's fake, I wish I could have seen the article myself. Here is the pic in question. Though you are right, that most of it's sales came from the United Sales, with 42.7 million 360 sold versus 26.7 million PS3 sold almost 3 : 2. the kikepedia source for this, is even worse. Some tweets that don't even work anymore, and nobody bothered to archive them.

>>1532060 The Xbox 360 in Europe felt like the N64

>>1532083 I guess it depends on where you lived and who your friends were. As in if your friends all had PS3 or PC, then yes, to you the 360 probably felt like a niche console. Full disclosure, as a teenager I got a 360, after gaming on a PC up until that point. It was.... a hard time for me, and in uni I came back to PC laptop gaming. And no, I haven't bought a xbox or a playstation since.

>>1532106 >I guess it depends on where you lived Fair enough, but I didn't know a single person who owned a 360. Everyone had a PS2, a PS3 or a Wii. I know more people with an original Xbox than a 360.

>>1532122 Well I knew 2 other people who had a 360, and only one with a PS3, the rest were on PC, so checkmate I guess :^)

>>1532130 Everybody was on PC, if only to play older games.

>>1531611 Perfect dark decomp has native mouse support, and feels very good

>>1532149 Why is the same not been done with Goldeneye?

>>1531611 >Perfect dark with mouse controls would be nice. Didn't someone at Github figure out how to fairly easily reverse engineer any Xbox 360 game and convert them into native PC ports?

>>1532393 No, the Sonic Unleashed team who decompiled the game provided tools and documentation that makes it easier for decomp enthusiasts with an interest to build something like that. There's no fairly easy way to do it, not yet anyway.

>>1532060 It sold well right there in the UK and, I know not Europe, but in Canada as well. It's the anglo console.

>>1532467 Canada is just Europe but gayer, browner and with less freedom.

>>1532060 Sony's quarterlies list their console sales per quarter and you can still pull those up. No idea about MS and Xbox though. Comparing 360 vs. PS3 sales has one very important caveat just looking at the final sales won't tell you: The 360 had a very strong lead initially, and the PS3 only pulled ahead after hardware revisions/price drop, and software library "caught up" enough to make PS3 worth buying, while 360's sales cratered due to RROD and MS no longer buying exclusivity.

>>1523041 The original Xbox was probably the most underrated console of all time. The Xbox 360 despite having that retarded issue that should not have been so awful was fun especially Xbox Live Arcade. On a side note and this is not to brag: My Xbox 360 never broke down but that was cause it was from 2009. I sold it to Gamestop for $50 7 or 8 years later. The Xbox One, while heavily overshadowed by PC gaming and the PS4 sales, was decent and had the best controller IMO. I liked mine but that was back I was still using laptops. Then it got bricked cause of an installation and power off issue concerning an update but Gamestop still accepted it. The only thing that appeals to me with Xbox Series X was backwards compatibility with all other Xbox console game discs. Anything else could be done better on PC. This is sad news since even if I were never interested in the Xbox brand, it means one less competitor not to mention the missed opportunities such as an Xbox handheld that could get system linked to other units similar to the original Xbox and Xbox 360. Console LAN get togethers at college were always fun that way.

>>1532163 Not a decomp, but M+K 60FPS Goldeneye has been around for YEARS, anon.

>>1533148 >My Xbox 360 never broke down but that was cause it was from 2009. You probably got a Jasper revision of the original 360 model which has mostly fixed those RROD problems. Most of the affected 360s were Falcon & earlier.

>>1532706 Very true. It's grim here, I would welcome annexation at this point. >>1533148 I bought Series X solely for the backwards compatibility program. A genuinely great move that was gutted. Still got a decent chunk of games from it. It remains the only way to play Deadly Premonition and Fable 2 in good quality. >>1533170 I got a Jasper as well, after my first 360 red ringed. Jasper still goes strong now, though I don't play it as much nowadays.

Xbox executive producer tells fired employees to use AI to make themselves feel better. No, I'm not fucking making this up; this is actually the title of the article already. https://www.gamesradar.com/games/xbox-executive-producer-offers-best-advice-i-can-to-those-caught-up-in-microsofts-latest-lay-off-spree-ai-prompts-to-help-reduce-the-emotional-and-cognitive-load-that-comes-with-job-loss/ https://archive.ph/ugbPd >Earlier this week, a massive new wave of Microsoft layoffs – which impacted many employees across the company's gaming division and led to a number of cancelled games – was announced. It's grim news across the board, especially for anyone directly affected, but one executive producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing suggests that those struggling should turn to AI for emotional support and career advice. >In a LinkedIn post first flagged by game dev Brandon Sheffield on Bluesky (also shared by Aftermath), executive producer Matt Turnbull acknowledges that "these are really challenging times," and wants to "offer the best advice I can under the circumstances." He then explains that "I've been experimenting with ways to use LLM Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss." >Turnbull goes on to share a number of "prompt ideas and use cases that might help if you're feeling overwhelmed," from asking AI to "act as a career coach," to suggesting new jobs individuals could pivot to, and rewriting parts of resumes and drafting fresh LinkedIn "about me" sections. One suggestion even includes drafting "a friendly message" to send to former co-workers "letting them know I'm exploring new opportunities," and writing "a warm intro message" to send to pursue job listings. >The section that perhaps stands out the most, however, is the section on "emotional clarity and confidence." Turnbull suggests turning to an emotionless AI program and saying something along the lines of "I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?" >We can no longer see what the responses to this on LinkedIn were like, because the post has now been deleted. However, on Bluesky, many are having the reaction you'd expect: "Yikes." Another user says: "It's like a total disconnection from reality. I'm sure he thinks he's helping those people laid off, but what the heck." >Turnbull had noted that "these types of tools engender strong feelings in people," which is a bit of an understatement. Amid rising concerns about jobs being replaced by AI (not to mention the surrounding issues, such as environmental impact and what the growing use of generative AI might mean for human creativity), its use is controversial at the best of times. But right on the back of a huge number of people actually losing their jobs? You can understand why so many people are angry. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAAHAHHA YOU FUCKING VOTED FOR THIS, WEST COAST DIPSHITS. YOU VOTED FOR WHITE GENOCIDE. NOW REAP YOUR FUCKING REWARDS.

If Trump administration denied MS's H1B visa applications for the obvious fraud after they fired their employees, it would be hilarious and fuck MS.

>>1533860 Is it fucked up that I told that Microsoft girl that I wanted to make video games for Xbox one day and she handed me a paper telling me the requirements to reach my goals as a kid? This was like career day for middle schoolers Holy shit I feel like I dodged a massive bullet on when I stopped being a Microsoft fan boy. This is just going beyond from spitting in people's faces, I don't even know what to say about it.

>>1533860 holy fuck

>>1533158 I know, thanks I'm just confused about why Goldeneye hasn't been decompiled yet. >>1533860 Corporate shitposting is something else

>ohh we fired you :((((( here talk to the robot We live in a bad, overly on-the-nose sci-fi novel.

>>1533860 God damn. I really do love how out of touch and or uncaring these faggots are.

>>1533860 These bommer fags think AI is magic hocus pocus shit kek

>>1533860 >lost your job? >talk to the bot From the same company that brought you >fortunately we have a product for people that don't have some form of internet connectivity, it's called Xbox 360

>>1534498 I hope ruining the whole of videogames was worth it to play Halo and Splinter Cell!

>>1534478 They think that AI is literal commander Data/Mega Man/Star Wars droid AI. They don't realize it basically just a more advanced form of morphing and madlibs. It's just a really fancy parser with a fuckhuge data set to train it.

>Microsoft Shuts Pakistan Operations After 25 Years, Cites Global Restructuring https://archive.ph/wip/gVbMc My fellow street shitters, life is good.

>>1535174 Israel made them do it.

>>1535369 Or it could have just been their indian CEO, Satya Nadella getting rid of undesirables. Only high-born Aryans(indians) will work at Microsoft under his watch.

>>1535572 I hear this guy has like a group of Ai viziers he's made for himself that make all his decisions for him. I swear to god he said this in an interview and these chatbots are like...what inform everything he does.

>>1535654 Terry Davis would approve :^) then would ramble about Hinduism being the Devil's religion.

>>1535572 Indians love Israel so it's likely both.

>>1535703 I talked to an Indian girl about this before because I was curious why Indians loved a random West Asian country. She told me they'll tell you a story about Indians finding Israel great or some shit, but they know almost knowing about Jewish history and it all comes down to a strong dislike of Muslims. A subset of Indians sympathize with Israelis because they see events like October 7th as rhyming their own history with jihadism. In fact India has it's own cultural 9/11 - 26/11, the Mumbai attacks. She called these people "chodeys" but I'm not sure what that meant in the context, I don't know if it's related to the English insult chode. Indian equivalent of MAGA boomers I'm assuming.

>>1535572 Indian rich guys from the upper castes using their connections back home to use lower castes slaves for labor.

>>1533860 They could have said nothing, but this is worse Guaranteed HR thought it was a great idea too

>>1535804 I've heard indian scammers call people things like "madachod," or however they would spell it if they didn't have ridiculous accents. I assume it means motherfucker.

>Xbox’s $1200 Console Leak Just Made PS6 Look Like a Steal https://archive.ph/2XO9v <Xbox president Sarah Bond has confirmed that the next Xbox console will be a “very premium, very high-end” device. It would be the one that could reportedly cross the $1000 mark. The revelation sparked anxiety among PlayStation fans, worried that Sony might follow suit with an equally expensive PS6. But according to reliable insider KeplerL2, the opposite might be true. He predicts the PS6 could launch at $600, while the new Xbox might debut at nearly double the price, around $1200. >Exclusive Games Are "Antiquated," Xbox President Says https://archive.ph/uWM5R <The idea of exclusive games in 2025 is "antiquated," according to Xbox president Sarah Bond. She said in a new interview that people are beginning to "evolve way past" the idea that a game should be exclusive to one store or device. <"The biggest games in the world are available everywhere. You look at Call of Duty, you look at Minecraft, you look at Fortnite, you look at Roblox ... that's actually what's really driving community in gaming. That's where people gather. And the idea of locking it to one store or one device is antiquated for most people," she told Mashable. <"You want to be able to play with your friends anywhere, regardless of what they're on. And we're really leaning into that with this experience [Rog Ally X]. It just opens up another way for you to play, as does cloud, as does PC as do the consoles we all have in the living room," she added. >Xbox releases new marketing push “That was then, this is now” taking aim at “old ways” of gaming https://archive.ph/szn5L <Ads are attached and scary and angering as Hell >Microsoft Has Reportedly Pushed Xbox Studios to Deliver a 30% Profit Margin, Allegedly Leading to All Those Layoffs, Canceled Projects, Price Rises, and the End of Exclusives https://archive.ph/r6Lix <Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that Microsoft’s 30% profit margin goal had led to the gaming division’s huge layoffs, canceled projects, controversial price rises, and multiplatform push. <... <Bloomberg said the average profit margin in the video game industry is 17-22%. Over the past six years, Xbox has hit 10-20%. To put that 30% target into more context, Sony's PlayStation division achieved a 16% profit margin in Q1 FY25. Bloomberg said Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood enforced the new target in fall 2023 — amid Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard. <The upshot now is, according to Bloomberg, that games that are cheap to make or considered more likely to make lots of money may take priority over riskier projects. Xbox’s “floundering” hardware division, meanwhile, may face “a significant rethinking.” <IGN has reported on recent comments from Xbox president Sarah Bond, who said the next-gen Xbox console will be “a very premium, very high-end curated experience.” Bond has also called the idea of exclusive games “antiquated.” Nowadays, Xbox Game Studios is one of the most prolific and successful publishers on PlayStation. <Microsoft issued Bloomberg a statement that suggested its Xbox profit margin target isn’t the same across every project. <“We look at the business as a whole, balancing creativity, innovation, and sustainability across a diverse portfolio of offerings. As with any creative business, sometimes that means making hard decisions and stopping work on things that are no longer working for a variety of reasons, and shifting resources toward the projects that are more aligned with our direction and priorities.”

>>1891960 >$1,200 Xbox Magnus We'll have to see what the finalized specs are, especially in relation to other PC hardware on the market, but the next Xbox is just going to be a Windows 11 PC in a branded SFF case. It's not a terrible price for an upper-mid-range prebuilt Win 11 PC. If you just want an "Xbox Console", and I don't know why the fuck you would, but if you do - you're gonna be fucked for that price. But it could be a great affordable entry-point for PC gaming - especially if the price hikes on RAM/SSDs/GPUs due to increasing demand from AI companies ends up completely fucking the PC hardware market. Even more than it already is.

>>1892012 its most likely going to use pc hardware like the last 2 console generations but locked down with its own system and custom drivers specifically for it

>>1894164 If they're serious about merging Xbox and Windows into a singular platform, then it doesn't make any sense to lock down the branded Xbox hardware, because everything is an Xbox and nothing else is locked down. That decreases the value proposition for no real gain. Though they will have custom hardware that's non-upgradable, which could end up fucking them later on down the road. How are they going to keep charging $1,200 three years down the line when that mid-range hardware is now low-end and getting trounced by OEM partners who can sell much more powerful hardware for the same price or maybe even less. They're certainly not going to be able to raise prices as the hardware depreciates. I mean the platforms are already merged, but there's not quite 1:1 parity just yet - so Xbox can still be considered by the market as holding the monopoly "on Xbox hardware" - but they're now going to open up that market and inviting competition in going into next gen. To a point, Microsoft doesn't care. Just more copies of Windows to spy on people and gather telemetry for ads and feeding their AI. Still, they have contracts with AMD and other suppliers to provide Xbox hardware and it'd be a huge loss for them to have them all sit around in warehouses because they've been shut out of their own market. Maybe they just expect the stupids to pay out extra for the no-hassle hardware and security of the official Xbox standard hardware - but if they want the brand to carry them, then they should really be doing a hell of a lot more to build confidence in that brand, rather than burning it to the ground.