Games

Good quote. Here is more of it for context:

Fable was profitable - "highly profitable", Lionhead's Simon Carter told Eurogamer - but in a now too-familiar story, it and its genre was seen by Microsoft as just not profitable enough. "That category is not the biggest category on the planet," said Robbie Bach, who was the President of Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft before Don Mattrick assumed the role. "It's not soccer. It's not American Football. It's not a first-person shooter sized category. So at a commercial level, I would say it was successful, but not wildly so."

Wildly successful was what Microsoft was after. A pitch for Fable 4 was rejected. "It was like, you've reached your cap of players for RPG on Xbox and you need to find a way to double that, and you're not going to do it with RPG," Fable's art director John McCormack told Eurogamer at the time. "I thought, yes we can. I said, look, just give us four years, proper finance, give us the chance Mass Effect has, Skyrim has, the games at the time. They're getting four years and a lot of budget. Give us that, and we'll give you something that'll get you your players. Nah, you've had three shots and you've only tripled the money. It's not good enough. Fuck off. That's what I was annoyed about." (Worth noting: Skyrim went on to sell 63m copies, as of June 2023, The Witcher 3 over 50m.)

I think the studio closures was just the last straw. Like they spent almost $100 billion and they’ve made NOTHING. Like not one goddamn thing.

Say what you will about Sony and Nintendo but they have output and they care about gaming because they have to, it’s the only way they make money.

Microsoft could shutter their gaming division tomorrow and they would save money, not lose it. Whatever exec championed the buyouts for Game Pass is clearly gone or asleep at the wheel. So the end result is they own WoW, Candy Crush and CoD that print money and a bunch of franchises that haven’t seen a good release in 10+ years.

The fact that they bought inExile, Obsidian and Bethesda and didn’t immediately start work on a Fallout 1/2 remake or an FNV sequel is evidence enough they they have no fucking clue what they’re doing. How does a company own so many studios and make no games!?

To be honest, as a huge Halo fan, I was surprised when seeing those studios closed that 343 wasn't one of them. The studio is just cursed, even a leadership change isn't going to save them.

Either make Halo games from all the studios under Microsoft or start a new one with people who are actual fans of the franchise

Microsoft’s not teasing Halo on Playstation out of desperation. They’ve nearly ended consoles.

Which is kind of a good thing. The console wars have been large irrelevant for the past 20 years, because PC already won.

Really, Steam won. And if Microsoft isn't careful, all of that planning to shift gamers towards PCs will have them land squarely into the Steam/Linux ecosystem. It really depends on how hard Microsoft wants to abuse their near-monopoly with Windows 11.

Lol it's funny cause after this week I've been thinking of dropping p PlayStation for Xbox. Ships passing each other in the night

Buying the competition and then closing them is technically achieving it.

Yeah, but my PC will last much longer.

Yes they are. A PS5 costs £389.99.

What gaming PC can you build for that?

I got a series s for £150 when my PC couldn't run Elden Ring properly. It seemed cost effective vs a PC upgrade for playing the latest games.