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[Guilty_AI]

I'm still trying to find my sexual identity

 

[Bernd Lauert]

There’s a reason Microsoft doesn’t disclose the numbers. Read between the tea leaves

Damn, Azure must be losing money like crazy.

 

[kirby007]

what does one thing get to do with the other?

u serious?

 

[SLB1904]

Because revenue doesn’t mean you can spend that money.

That's exactly what it is lol

u serious?

entertain me.

oh god you are serious

oh boy. lets see if u can elaborate

 

[kirby007]

thats exactly what it is lol

oh god you are serious

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Damn, Azure must be losing money like crazy.

Azure is in a similar boat, they only disclose revenue growth. Their competitors (Google. Amazon) disclose profitability for cloud services

While they may not be losing money like crazy, it’s probably not as profitable (due to chasing growth)

This isn’t to say that either GP or Azure are bad long term strategies, it can make sense to chase growth at the expense of short term profits.

But as it relates to gaming specifically, if we use video streaming as an analog, the growth at all cost narrative has proven to be a bad business model due to competition and cost of generating content

 

[lefty1117]

Looking forward to Sony releasing their exclusive games to xbox, in the game of protecting the gamers

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Azure is in a similar boat, they only disclose revenue growth. Their competitors (Google. Amazon) disclose profitability for cloud services

While they may not be losing money like crazy, it’s probably not as profitable (due to chasing growth)

This isn’t to say that either GP or Azure are bad long term strategies, it can make sense to chase growth at the expense of short term profits.

But as it relates to gaming specifically, if we use video streaming as an analog, the growth at all cost narrative has proven to be a bad business model due to competition and cost of generating content

The joke is that Microsoft doesn't disclose profitability for any of its subdivisions. So according to your logic, Microsoft is losing money like crazy, right?

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The joke is that Microsoft doesn't disclose profitability for any of its subdivisions. So according to your logic, Microsoft is losing money like crazy, right?

I never made the claim that not revealing profitability for any of its sub divisions means it’s unprofitable as a whole.

But we have seen Microsoft do this tactic specifically in gaming where they intentionally hide numbers that do not look good, only to reintroduce numbers when they can claim some sort of victory.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Sony's arrogance has exceeded ps3-era levels these last couple years. I worry a little how much this might hurt Sony but then again Sony needs a brisk SLAP across their fuckin face.

 

[Hendrick's]

So we are agreed all 3 companies can bid for exclusives timed or not. So you should blame the companies who accept these deals and screw over their fans on other platforms.
It's funny how it's always Sony forced/made/took away but not the actual company who makes or owns the IP. It's never their fault.

It's not that simple. Being the market leader with the significantly larger user base, Sony can purchase exclusivity at amuch lower cost. It's like this, if a game is predicted to sell 70% on PlayStation and 30% on Xbox, Microsoft would have to pay enough to cover that 70% loss, while PlayStation would only need to account for the 30% loss.

This is what a true unfair advantage looks like, one that actually does harm gamers. This is what Sony is afraid to lose and they are sad hypocrites who are actively harming gamers with their price gouging and strong arm keep away contracts.

 

[kirby007]

I kinda wanna live in your world where if i made products and sold them for a million dollars but it to make that money i had to get a loan to pay my employees/R&D/PR costing me 500k dollar, that obviously means i can use that million dollar without having to pay back these incurred costs

 

[Pelta88]

I never made the claim that not revealing profitability for any of its sub divisions means it’s unprofitable as a whole.

But we have seen Microsoft do this tactic specifically in gaming where they intentionally hide numbers that do not look good, only to reintroduce numbers when they can claim some sort of victory.

Microsoft cares deeply about PR. And in relation to financials, the XBOX division was PR heavy during the 360 generation. They manoeuvred the XBOX financials several times into subdivisions to hide/not disclose what the financials looked like after 2013.

This is a financially documented fact.

 

[Corndog]

I'd disagree on the basis of PSVR2 and their expansion into the PC market being major initiatives designed to access a wider userbase and grow the industry.

Lets face it, MS is only investing because of GamePass. They want to gatekeep across console, pc, and mobile. The bigger they get, the more air they are aiming to suck out of the room on all those platforms. Their pitch is based on commodity facilitating better value proposition, making everyone outside of it look like a worse deal.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, its a sweet deal for consumers in the short term, while still in the growth phase, but long-term... you need to ask yourself how have similar offerings in movies and music evolved over time and have they overall been beneficial.

As long as you can still buy the games it doesn’t change anything. Plus they will always have competition.

 

[SLB1904]

I kinda wanna live in your world where if i made products and sold them for a million dollars but it to make that money i had to get a loan to pay my employees/R&D/PR costing me 500k dollar, that obviously means i can use that million dollar without having to pay back these incurred costs

You could have quoted mate. yeah I'm pretty sure sony spends 80b on cartridges for printers and janitors' salaries. the revenue increase means more investments.
first, you need to know what revenue is and what expenses are. the same way any company cut costs in some of the divisions to boost others and so forth (look at square getting rid of most of its western studios). sony has investments in so many areas. cash in the bank loses value. companies and rich people tend to invest most of their capital to avoid depreciation. but go off lol

 

[Naked Lunch]

If Sony cared about 'protecting gamers' they would have implemented backwards compatibility on the PS4/5.
Nah you just have to buy everything again - and like it.

 

[Fake]

Imagine increasing your prices and talk about gamers.

 

[Stuart360]

Azure is in a similar boat, they only disclose revenue growth. Their competitors (Google. Amazon) disclose profitability for cloud services

While they may not be losing money like crazy, it’s probably not as profitable (due to chasing growth)

This isn’t to say that either GP or Azure are bad long term strategies, it can make sense to chase growth at the expense of short term profits.

But as it relates to gaming specifically, if we use video streaming as an analog, the growth at all cost narrative has proven to be a bad business model due to competition and cost of generating content

Dude you always bring up this 'they must be losing money because they dont give out numbers' nonsense. They stopped giving individual numbers for everything back in 2014, and gave the reasons why.
Honestly to keep taking this stance near 10 years later makes you just look dumb, or have an ulterior motive (which we all know you do).

 

[Yoboman]

The easy solution for MS is they make a contractual commitment that Activision Blizzard are run independently and decide what platforms their games go on. Same as Sony has done with Bungie

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I hope Jimbo is reading this thread in order to gather the best arguments from our fellow "Videogame forum experts analysts" and present them in front of the regulators.

Because crying and saying "is bad for the gamers" ain't gonna be enough.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Dude you always bring up this 'they must be losing money because they dont give out numbers' nonsense. They stopped giving individual numbers for everything back in 2014, and gave the reasons why.
Honestly to keep taking this stance near 10 years later makes you just look dumb, or have an ulterior motive (which we all know you do).

They do this so that they can obfuscate the truth, there is no other answer

If you think the amount of revenue they generate by GP isn’t easily offset by dev payroll you are being quite naive to reality

 

[Stuart360]

They do this so that they can obfuscate the truth, there is no other answer

If you think the amount of revenue they generate by GP isn’t easily offset by dev payroll you are being quite naive to reality

It doesnt matter though what the 'real' reason was back then, its nearly 10 years ago. Are you still going to be saying the same thing 20 years from now?.
I mean the fact that even most other Sony fanboys have stopped using this meme should tell you everything.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It doesnt matter though what the 'real' reason was back then, its nearly 10 years ago. Are you still going to be saying the same thing 20 years from now?.
I mean the fact that even most other Sony fanboys have stopped using this meme should tell you everything.

20 years from now they’ll be disclosing the numbers if the business has transitioned from being “sustainable” to “profitable”

 

[Menzies]

They do this so that they can obfuscate the truth, there is no other answer

If you think the amount of revenue they generate by GP isn’t easily offset by dev payroll you are being quite naive to reality

Not sure why so many want to make the argument that GamePass is a business model siloed.

Here's your olive branch. You're right. It most likely isn't a service with high margins.

Good thing then that it's supplemented with outright game sales, online multiplayer subscriptions, MTX, DLC etc.

So far the claim that the quality will drop off and the investments dry up, and the price will go up is counter to what we've currently seen.

Did you have similar concerns about a potential future GamePass CPI increase, as what we've actually witnessed with $70 games and console price hikes?

 

[Clear]

As long as you can still buy the games it doesn’t change anything. Plus they will always have competition.

That's the wrong way to look at it. How and from where you buy the games is the whole point.

Its like arguing that buying from Amazon is the same as getting stuff from an independent local game retailer. You need to factor in network effects, which is the underpinning of all these engagement metrics. The idea being that if you hold people's attention long enough with one product category, it makes it easy to expand out into adjacent/related ones.

In digital commerce its not just about inventory, its about the storefront and how that can spotlight products selectively.

 

[Kagey K]

I appreciate Sony for keeping me entertained during this entire process.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Not sure why so many want to make the argument that GamePass is a business model siloed.

Here's your olive branch. You're right. It most likely isn't a service with high margins.

Good thing then that it's supplemented with outright game sales, online multiplayer subscriptions, MTX, DLC etc.

So far the claim that the quality will drop off and the investments dry up, and the price will go up is counter to what we've currently seen.

Did you have similar concerns about a potential future GamePass CPI increase, as what we've actually witnessed with $70 games and console price hikes?

I’m not concerned with a cost increase in GP as much as I am in a quality decrease for the software

I am not a cheap gamer, I’d gladly buy any AAA game that’s worth $70 or even more

I am finding that the problem is there’s just not enough of the really high quality experiences that are worth the time

 

[Stuart360]

Not sure why so many want to make the argument that GamePass is a business model siloed.

Here's your olive branch. You're right. It most likely isn't a service with high margins.

Good thing then that it's supplemented with outright game sales, online multiplayer subscriptions, MTX, DLC etc.

So far the claim that the quality will drop off and the investments dry up, and the price will go up is counter to what we've currently seen.

Did you have similar concerns about a potential future GamePass CPI increase, as what we've actually witnessed with $70 games and console price hikes?

I mean EA couldnt wait to get on Gamepass, Ubiosft are bringing more and more games over weekly, while they both have their own Sub services.
That should tell you everything. I wouldnt be surprised if MTX/DLC sales are through the roof on Gamepass when gamers are not having to fork out $60+ for the base game.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

20 years from now they’ll be disclosing the numbers if the business has transitioned from being “sustainable” to “profitable”

When will they be disclosing Azure numbers? What about Office numbers? Windows numbers?

 

[The_Mike]

Sony absolutely positively has something up their sleeve. A major purchase is coming, but you will not hear about it until after the Activision deal is completed.

Why not? They acquired Bungie and no one bats an eye.

How many bin devs do they need to buy before some regulators raise their eyebrows and look at poor clima friendly organic Sony.

 

[Menzies]

I’m not concerned with a cost increase in GP as much as I am in a quality decrease for the software

I am not a cheap gamer, I’d gladly buy any AAA game that’s worth $70 or even more

I am finding that the problem is there’s just not enough of the really high quality experiences that are worth the time

Based on 2021 publisher of the year Microsoft?

Maybe they're just not making the kinds of games you enjoy.

 

[CrashNBurn_281]

This just reeks of desperation. Like confident Sony much better.

 

[pqueue]

Bitter Sony is a bad look.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Imagine increasing your prices and talk about gamers.

Everyone is going to increase their prices. You do know there's a thing called inflation and rising development costs right?

Did you really expect video games to remain at $60 price point

 

[FalsettoVibe]

I’m not concerned with a cost increase in GP as much as I am in a quality decrease for the software

I am not a cheap gamer, I’d gladly buy any AAA game that’s worth $70 or even more

I am finding that the problem is there’s just not enough of the really high quality experiences that are worth the time

This soooo much.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

I’m not concerned with a cost increase in GP as much as I am in a quality decrease for the software

I am not a cheap gamer, I’d gladly buy any AAA game that’s worth $70 or even more

I am finding that the problem is there’s just not enough of the really high quality experiences that are worth the time

Fair call here and one that I agree with.

Remains to be seen if it's a sustainable model going forward but one can't argue that right now GamePass is fantastic value if Xbox continues to release AAA titles on it day1.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Based on 2021 publisher of the year Microsoft?

Maybe they're just not making the kinds of games you enjoy.

Based on some unofficial award for one year over the past two decades? I find it comical how often that is brought up around here

I enjoyed their lineup last year just fine, one of the few good ones they’ve had in a while, but it’s not exactly amazing either.

Your comment also doesn’t even address the fear I have which is focus on quantity over quality as it relates to sub services

 

[yamaci17]

Based on some unofficial award for one year over the past two decades? I find it comical how often that is brought up around here

I enjoyed their lineup last year just fine, one of the few good ones they’ve had in a while, but it’s not exactly amazing either.

Your comment also doesn’t even address the fear I have which is focus on quantity over quality as it relates to sub services

i have the same fear sadly

 

[Fake]

Did you really expect video games to remain at $60 price point

No, I expected a old man not whining about a game and neither fanboys picking sides, but here we are.

 

[DarkMage619]

The easy solution for MS is they make a contractual commitment that Activision Blizzard are run independently and decide what platforms their games go on. Same as Sony has done with Bungie

I think MS should handle ABK like they handled Bethesda. Honor contracts, support titles that have already been released on other platforms and treat future titles on a case by case basis. There is no reason for them not to be able to fully control the studios they purchased.

 

[Stuart360]

Fair call here and one that I agree with.

Remains to be seen if it's a sustainable model going forward but one can't argue that right now GamePass is fantastic value if Xbox continues to release AAA titles on it day1.

We will have to see if game budgets decrease, as they havent happened yet. Like i said in my post above, MTX sales may be ridicuously high with gamers not having to fork out $60+ for the base game. Last year something like 70% of all gaming revenue was MTX, i wouldnt be surprised if that percentage is even higher on Gamepass.

People like to use Netflix as an example of this kind of thing, without realizing that the budgets for Netflix tv and films are huge. They have dropped multiple $100mil+ movies onto Netflix without even giving a cinema run. Whether those films and tv shows are great, well thats another matter, but its certainly not budget related.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

No, I expected a old man not whining about a game and neither fanboys picking sides, but here we are.

That's a fair call. I've said it before as well. Sony can and should develop their own FPS stable. They have the talent of Bungie to tap into for that. Sure it may not be as successful as COD but it will give PS gamers an alternative.

Also Jim can come across as an egg at times and needs to be reigned in a bit.

 

[Menzies]

Based on some unofficial award for one year over the past two decades? I find it comical how often that is brought up around here

I enjoyed their lineup last year just fine, one of the few good ones they’ve had in a while, but it’s not exactly amazing either.

Your comment also doesn’t even address the fear I have which is focus on quantity over quality as it relates to sub services

Maybe it gets brought up commensurate to the amount of claims that everything Microsoft releases pales in comparison? Just maybe

 

[CeeJay]

Based on what? Sony seem pretty ok with the status quo where neither they nor MS owns ABK.

I'm sorry but its not just about the money, its about how the money is used. MS could have used that huge cash-pile on building stuff of their own. Like where are there new IP's?

It strikes me that MS are mainly investing to control, not build the industry. Is that what you want from a potential market-leader?

It strikes me that Sony are mainly investing to control, not build the industry. Is that what you want from a potential market-leader?

Clear i didn't want to respond to your last response because those goalposts were well and truly on the move so I thought I'd take it back to the original point.

Everything you said there can be flipped at Sony and also be true. I wasn't saying you were incorrect in accusing MS of those things just that Sony is just as bad. Both have done things to grow the industry and both have spent a lot of money to try and stifle the competition. Maybe you are just too invested to the point where you think that if someone says something negative about your favourite brand that it automatically means they are saying the opposite for the competing brand. Its OK to be critical of all these big companies.

And PSVR, yes I think that is one of the good things that Sony are doing to grow the industry. Its brought vr to console and lowered the barrier to entry. Getting this tech into the hands and onto the heads of people who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity is great and Sony are investing and putting time into not only the hardware but the software too.

Personally I see Gamepass and Xcloud like that too. It lowers the barrier of entry and allows people play a lot of games they possibly wouldn't otherwise have access to and even takes away the need completely for expensive specialised hardware. Surely even you can see that this is growing the industry when it's making gaming more accessible to a wider demographic than traditional console or PCs?

 

[DarkMage619]

Based on some unofficial award for one year over the past two decades? I find it comical how often that is brought up around here

I enjoyed their lineup last year just fine, one of the few good ones they’ve had in a while, but it’s not exactly amazing either.

Your comment also doesn’t even address the fear I have which is focus on quantity over quality as it relates to sub services

Can you provide any proof of this decline in game quality simply because its on a sub service that you are concerned about? The 2021 accolades MS received last year that gets hand waved certainly doesn't support a fear of poor game quality. Are you aware the all the games on the sub service are also available for purchase? I don't think MS or anyone has any sub exclusive software. MS has always had a pretty wide variety of titles and those titles may simply not appeal to you. The benefit of MS owning so many studios is that it will allow them to make more and different type of games for more people. That variety is a perfect way to support a game sub service that focuses on new releases.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Apparently, we don't need protection from price rises though. Keep on Sony-ing.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Can you provide any proof of this decline in game quality simply because its on a sub service that you are concerned about? The 2021 accolades MS received last year that gets hand waved certainly doesn't support a fear of poor game quality. Are you aware the all the games on the sub service are also available for purchase? I don't think MS or anyone has any sub exclusive software. MS has always had a pretty wide variety of titles and those titles may simply not appeal to you. The benefit of MS owning so many studios is that it will allow them to make more and different type of games for more people. That variety is a perfect way to support a game sub service that focuses on new releases.

How can I provide proof for something that I theorize could happen in the future?

It’s just speculating. I am not claiming it has happened yet. But in the drive to pump up subscription numbers the amount of content seems more important than the quality. Just look at Netflix for instance.

What incentive is there to invest a few hundred million into a 20 hour single player game if it’s day 1 on GamePass?

 

[DeepEnigma]

Hey can we keep Returnal out of these wars. It still gives me a hard on playing it.

 

[Markio128]

Reading these comments, it is abundantly clear that a lot of you don’t understand that Sony and Nintendo are trying to run a profitable business model. They can’t rely on other sources of income to balance the accounts.

 

[Menzies]

What incentive is there to invest a few hundred million into a 20 hour single player game if it’s day 1 on GamePass?

Reputation and value consensus grow the brand. You say it like it isn't happening, when Starfield, Avowed, Fable, Perfect Dark and others likely fit the criteria(?)