MS bought ABK for its ability to make profits. ABK can't do that if MS "cleans house". It was very effective marketing that made people think MS would shape things up once they get their hands on shitty companies (while also effectively marketing "they would let devs be"). ABK may end up having more influence on Xbox than the other way around.
1st day availability on Gamepass for all AAA games simply isn't a sustainable strategy. They can't give away multiple games with a 9-figure budget along with everything else for the price of the sub.
Microsoft made $158b gross profit year, which was a 14% increase over the previous year.
As a comparison, General Motors’ revenue was $170b. Microsoft made almost as much in profit as GM took in totality.
Closing the studios maybe will save Microsoft $0.1b, so potentially increase their profit line by 0.05%.
So hard to think of it as anything other than a middle finger to the devs. Even if it were a mistake, they could afford to let it cook longer like with Rare and redeem the “mistake”.
It's called "monopolize gaming without paying for developers". The beauty of it is, if you ruin all of modern gaming and buy out all the existing hits, you can shove in monetization and project insane profits
At least until indie gaming takes over, your stock price will go to the moon
And there's thankfully usually a popular indie darling of the season to do that. Valheim, Vampire Survivors, Lethal Company, Among Us, Dave the Diver, etc. etc.
Something unique that can be easily streamed in most cases.
Played Horizon Forbidden West on PC and it's such a grind fest. What's even the point. Not sure why it gets such good reviews, except for how pretty it is. High hopes for God of War Ragnarok, though.
It gets good reviews because it's fun to play. The game is good at its core: you have to scan machines, aim at weak spots, move a lot in the battle to avoid damage, choose right weapons, or you can override them and enjoy the show, there are so many options and challenges. Besides, let's not underestimate the value of good graphics. They make the world nicer, more enjoyable, make you want to come back and play again. I understand that this game is not for everyone though.
I don't underestimate "good graphics" (usually used to refer to realism) in selling games, but it's heavily overrated. For example, Elden Ring was not the game with the best graphics technically, but damn does it not look gorgeous. A good art style trumps realism any day. Realism sells more copies, because people are told to compare to realism, but it usually sucks. It has its uses, but it's mostly a resource hog to make something that looks generic.
I wouldn't say that Horizon aims to be super realistic. I mean, it's not far away, especially if we compare it to Elden Ring. But in Horizon colors are saturated, the game looks too beautiful and vibrant to be realistic in my books. I would say Hogwarts Legacy is a better example of a too realistic game: colors are bleak, objects and textures are much closer to what we can find in real life, it does look generic as you say (at least IMO).
The building models in Hogwarts are amazing, though. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are both gorgeous. It heavily leans on the work done for the movies, of course, but it's still amazing looking.
Yeah, but I get tired of this like halfway through the game. I don't want to lower the difficulty, I just want fewer enemies and more frequent drops so I don't have to grind so fucking hard. There should be a percent slider for filler content so players like me could set it to 10% or so. I'm currently short on small machine cores to upgrade armor. Come on! What's that bullshit? Considering how many watchers I've killed I should never ever be short on that.
It's stripping out the copper wiring for cash. Buy a game studio, fire all the employees. Now their paychecks can be served up as profit to shareholders. Move all the files to your servers, it's your "Intellectual Property". Sell off the computers and the desks and anything else not nailed down. Do they own the building? Great, sell that too! Or, better yet, rent it out!
The liquidated assets are just a cherry on top, what they're going for is getting rid of the competition and hoarding IP for usual capitalist hoarder mentality reasons.
