Because predictions are for babies, Michael Pachter lets us in on his Xbox 2014 assumptions.
Pach-Attack!
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Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Xbox boss Asha Sharma has discussed how component shortages will impact the company's plans for Project Helix.
When does this end? Its killing everyone. Consoles and PC. And for what? AI? The benefits of AI are completely outweighed by the negatives. And the government should have never allowed one company to buy up all the RAM.
This kind of proves this is an after thought product, most products like this are in r&d 5 years before they start mass producing. So they typically have the cost of components and things worked out long before assembly starts.
This is an assumption still, but I wouldn’t be surprised if project helix is similar to Scalebound,perfect dark and sod3. They had an idea but no actual execution other than concept stage. Being impacted by the ram shortage likely would also put this device 3-4 years out.
I’m not even sure MS has that endurance with Xbox yet
I mean.... what?
We're at a point that Samsung wont even provide their own phone department ram because they can sell it at higher prices to 3rd parties (AI). Its more profitable to sell the ram than make their own devices with it.
You think because R&D starts 5 years ago the 3rd party component manufacturers will honour that price? They'll sell it to whomever is paying the most today, not some gentlemens agreement they made years ago. AI farms will buy more volume at higher prices than any console manufacturer will. It'll be the same for Playstation.
Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.
They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.
If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.
It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie
Helix is going to be stupidly expensive
Instead of leaning into smarter upscaling techniques they're brute forcing hardware that will cost them dearly and it remains to be seen if it's genuinely going to provide a meaningful differential
I know in the oc.doace people like to brag about not using frame gen or dlss to get to high on a game but for the majority of players they happily use those technologies without a second thought
That's going to be ps6 vs Helix
While this does seem to be the case, I am encouraged by the statement from Microsoft about wanting to provide affordable options. If this means a Series S style Helix, at least there will be something affordable being offered.
It's called systematic inflationary. Yes we get it Microsoft, keep raising in the name ofall kinds of stuffs
Honestly if there was thing I learned from this generation is that new consoles arnt day one anymore.
I can wait 1-3 years.
Another important lesson from this generation: while Nintendo showed us that prices don't necessarily need to ever drop, we've now learned that waiting 1-3 years does carry some risk that prices increase. This generation is just bizarre in all the wrong ways.
The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.
Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.
Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.
LucasRuinedChildhood,
For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:
1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.
2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".
In an exclusive interview with Game File, new(ish) Xbox boss Asha Sharma and Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty explain their vision for Microsoft’s gaming division
A good start would be to release games to go with the console. My Xbox Series X has gathered dust virtually from launch. My advice would be to ditch a next console and release games on PC, PlayStation and Switch. Another idea would be a hybrid console based on Xbox Series X tech and go the same route as Nintendo. Another idea would be to pull out of gaming altogether. Plenty of options there.
Why would they pull out? They have the momentum. Sony has been getting nothing but bad news lately.
After Pachter's unprofessional attack on people who use AdBlock, I really have no interest in his (usually incorrect) predictions.
His attack was completely unprofessional and immature, and there can be no defense of that. He called the user who asked the question an idiot, a scumbag, low bottom-sucking scum, not smart, a moron, and a bastard. He undermined the validity of his opinion just by lacing his explanation with inappropriate insults. He "may" be a good financial analyst but he should absolutely not be a media figure.
Compare his handling of the issue to that of Jim Sterling and you will see the difference between Pachter's immature name calling and Sterling's measured response.
http://www.escapistmagazine...
Past prejudices aside, he may be closer to being right this time around than I would like.
MS has just announced Forza Horizons 2, shown a little of Sunset Overdrive already, Quantum Break is now skipping e3 after recent tease, have announced Kinectless X1 and price drop, and I doubt they are done quite yet with pre-e3 news. Nearly all of that would had waited for e3 traditionally.
Now we are a approaching a year in and they should show the exclusive tv content they only talked about last time and probably announce new App partners at about the same time (I admit I use them some--watch Arrow and Supernatural on CW App instead of on cable nowadays).
360 price cut seems reasonable especially since in the past year we still got PvZ, TF, and soon enough Horizons 2 for it. I doubt third party is done with last gen and wouldn't put it past first yet either (such as separate Forza version).
Game wise I still expect a strong showing though but most will probably be what we have already seen or heard about.
For example I'm looking forward to Fable, Sunset Overdrive, Halo (possible 2 or rumored collection as well as 5), but want to see new games too. Gears seems early but could make a cgi teaser trailer this soon if they rushed it (rather they took their time though so maybe just mention it and move on). I want to see a new Rare adventure-platformer though but hoping for Kameo 2 has got me nowhere so far. Perfect Dark still has potential IMO but would need a serious reboot (FPS/TPS/action/stealth approach looking in part at Deux Ex for inspiration) but think the basic premise and setting is still great just needs an overhaul in many areas.
I'm sure there will be some surprises but since, like Pachter said, E3 is the "big" game conference they want to show off other sides of the console as well (although could do it a CES just fine but in many ways wouldn't have as big of an impression as it is ruled by more standard electronics (tv/phone) and oddities which are awesome but not exactly mainstream.
I wish for the best though as watching conferences come Monday and want to see more about games we know about and new games they actually kept secret somehow.
Phill Spence said more games, games, games than executives at this years e3. So I really don't think Mr. Pachter has been seeing or reading what Microsoft has been doing the last month. Everything her mentioned has already been announced.
Oh noes I stumbled into a Patcher article.