Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "When you take a look at the three major hardware manufacturers currently competing in the game’s industry, the one most likely to begin releasing their titles on other platforms has suddenly become, the house that Gates built – Microsoft. They have already committed to releasing all of their titles on PC, they are open to having one of their biggest franchises, Minecraft available for cross-platform on nearly every system that its available for and just last week Phil Spencer, the head of the Xbox Division said that a streaming service of Xbox games could be available within the next three years on a number of platforms, including rivals’ Sony and Nintendo’s systems. All of this begs the question – should Microsoft go third-party?"
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
TG writes: If you’ve ever wanted that chaotic, large-scale modern warfare feeling from Battlefield but in full VR immersion, Forefront delivers it better than anything else currently available on Quest.
I do think they will head in that direction and honestly I love it. The idea of exclusives is kind of silly to me in today's programming world where architectures are almost identical. The more people who can buy your games the merrier and more profitable. And if they want to keep making hardware that is also fine, just make sure it is compelling enough that users will choose that hardware over others to play the game.
It’d be ridiculous for Microsoft to invest billions into the Xbox brand only to later abandon it to become exclusively a third party publisher again
Why would they?? They are making a ton of money and that's all they care about.
I don’t see Microsoft putting their games on PlayStation when the reason they entered the hardware market in the first place was because they felt PlayStation’s growing influence was a threat to PC.
It’s as ridiculous an idea as Sony putting their first party titles on Nintendo consoles. When these corporations invest billions into cultivating a brand that spreads their company’s influence in consumers lives, they don’t simply turn back into a third party publisher.