Said Zune, said Surface, said W8.

There most successful division is their office packages, they are making a absolute killing from office products.

I didnt say anything about MS not making profit.
MS have of late been to slow to the party, Zune was a response to Ipod, Surface was in response to Android/Ipad tablets, W8 was a failure due to arrogance, they never listened to the people that made them that profit.

Just like Apple, MS has lost their innovation, Since the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple have failed to innovate thier products, the same goes for Bill Gates. the guy was a true pioneer.

@snipercontrol
You do realize the Zune happened before Gates stepped aside right? Just like you do know they attempted a tablet in the early 2000s correct? Same with the pocket PC. Microsoft at times have shown not necessarily being too late to the party, but sometimes to early or not marketing it correctly.

Apple products have stagnated over the last few years. I can't believe the sales they still rake in. Teenage girls seem to be driving the cell phone market.

Yeah, although they're great products they seem to be more of a supposed status symbol than anything. With the passing of Steve Jobs they seem to have lost that pioneering, innovative spirit. Boy oh boy do they rake in the money, though. I can't believe that they're the highest valued company in the world. That spaceship campus that they're building is insane.

You really think MS is going to stop after the holidays or ten months from now?

why do you even care what MS has in store later down the line? You have already made it clear that you have no interest in the Xbox One.

"I know Microsoft has already said they really only care about the holidays..."

Have you also read where Phil said they have a lot more games lined up for the future, how about all those indie games that you guys all of a sudden care about that have not been released yet that were shown off at E3, like Ori, Below or Cuphead, how about Scalebound, Fable Legends.

I love this false sense of concern you have with the Xbox and their fans.

I had 3 Xbox 360 in my house.. And like 60 games... That I would never ever go back and play now that I have an XB1. It is what it is...

To get $100 for your old 360 is a good deal. Best you'll find. I know I jumped on it.

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

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

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

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".