rinks wrote:Everyone saying this is bad for the industry: it’s nowhere near as bad as Activision buying numerous devs and just putting them to work on the CoD production line. Hopefully that will now end.
Indeed.
Now they could be on the Halo or Gears of War or even Forza production lines
If this is the case wouldn't Spencer's public comments on Activision Blizzard's scandals be one of those things that needs to be investigated by those that scrutinise acquisitions of this magnitude?
I understand that if COD went exclusive it would shift a lot of casuals, and that the amount of money involved is huge, but I dont think this effects me that much personally.... as long as eventually some exclusives are actually released on ps5
Photek wrote:Phil didn’t mention any names just that the reports are bad, they have entire law firms who look over all this before acquisitions, it’s fine.
Well no he said his company would be taking some internal action over its relationship with an external, scandal ridden company. If that ultimately saved Microsoft a few billion dollars when making this acquisition by driving down the market value then it starts to look a little dodgy!
What I misremembered is that this was in an email to staff that got out to the press rather than a public comment so that probably keeps him and this deal nice and safe.
Herdanos wrote:Do MS actually make any money from the games business yet?
They've made a profit on Xbox for many years.
Do you have a link? From what I can see, the reporting Xbox is wrapped up in the Personal Computing division numbers and Microsoft don't seem to state Xbox specific numbers other than revenue which tells you nothing about the profitability.
Given how last generation went, the cost of building Game Pass and the fact new hardware is always sold at a loss at least at the beginning, I'm sceptical of how much genuine profit they've made over the last few years.
Herdanos wrote:Do MS actually make any money from the games business yet?
They've made a profit on Xbox for many years.
Do you have a link? From what I can see, the reporting Xbox is wrapped up in the Personal Computing division numbers and Microsoft don't seem to state Xbox specific numbers other than revenue which tells you nothing about the profitability.
Given how last generation went, the cost of building Game Pass and the fact new hardware is always sold at a loss at least at the beginning, I'm sceptical of how much genuine profit they've made over the last few years.
This was back in 2017 -
Microsoft’s Amy Hood said that Xbox was a multi-billion dollar business that is profitable and is growing in profitability every year.
Herdanos wrote:Do MS actually make any money from the games business yet?
They've made a profit on Xbox for many years.
Do you have a link? From what I can see, the reporting Xbox is wrapped up in the Personal Computing division numbers and Microsoft don't seem to state Xbox specific numbers other than revenue which tells you nothing about the profitability.
Given how last generation went, the cost of building Game Pass and the fact new hardware is always sold at a loss at least at the beginning, I'm sceptical of how much genuine profit they've made over the last few years.
This was back in 2017 -
Microsoft’s Amy Hood said that Xbox was a multi-billion dollar business that is profitable and is growing in profitability every year.
This doesn't include Hardware (which makes up 20% of their revenue) which I assume was profitable at the time but will have small losses ATM.
Yeah, the first point, they seem to quite often say "Yeah Xbox is profitable, honest!" without actually backing it up with cold, hard facts, so I'm sceptical. The second part isn't the whole Xbox division so doesn't really mean much, especially considering the huge R&D levels in console manufacture.
I can't help but feel if it was making consistently good profits they'd be singing it from the rooftops a lot more.
I think they're absorbing losses now and playing the long game.
They are losing on GamePass but they have priced it low to entice more subs. No doubt it will go up in price in a year or two once they start having the fruits of these acquisitions releasing on a quarterly basis