Microsoft has a history of buying new studios, but how long do they last?
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
Today, Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the full fiscal year 2025, related to the period between April 2025 and March 2026.
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".
“Of the 10 studios we profiled that Microsoft has acquired over the past 20 years, five have been closed, two are still around but separated, and three are still active members of the Microsoft family.”
I don’t like those odds. Having a 3/10 chance of thriving under Microsoft doesn’t sound comforting.
In fact of those three remaining devs that didn’t try to separate from Microsoft or got shut down.
- Rare turned into a shadow of its former self
- BigPark works more on Microsoft apps than games
- Mojang still has yet to show it isn’t a one trick pony
Lord only knows how this will affect Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Compulsion, or Undead Labs in the long term. I wish them the best though.
Sony has shut down just as many studios, with Zipper Interactive and Evolution Studios being the two most recent.
Here we go trying to make ms into the devil again like Sony havnt ever done the same.
I mean it has taken a very long time for Sony to gather the remarkable studios they have but do not forget about the fodder that was put into the pit of doom also and there have been alot along the way.
remember this is business as much as it our enjoyable gaming industry and if these studios are not pulling there weight they are dispatched as if it were head first on the chopping block like medieval days.
These studios have to work hard to keep the attention of the console developers they are under and it's a pretty poor survival rate now days but everyone goes off surprised.
These dev teams do take special kind of nurturing as if they are a baby that needs feeding all the way till they are grown to adult where they can stand on there two feet, it just so happens Sony managed to do this more successful than ms. MS can learn this as well and like many of you said it does requires X amount of money thrown at them, patience and creative freedom as well as risk but it can pay off but not always.
Remember exclusives are a risky business and only one out of a good amount get serious sales numbers, Sony have had a good few games sell well but there have been alot of games which havnt too. You also have alot more thirds being made than firsts and it would take all the console developers to change that state of play for first to over come thirds.
I do love how the Sony side or the haters gave ms stick constantly now they did what the fanboys and haters thought they wouldn't do, the new lame crap thing coming out of there mouths is these studios will be dead soon or they won't make anything decent. I mean seriously get off your high horses and stop being a bunch of arrogant idiots before making yet more assumption you will most likely get wrong for the millionth time. You bunch of Muppets do know no one is interested in the negativity, the hate or your fanboy crap, all were interested in is what these studios will be getting on with and what they are doing just the same as what every other devs out there are developing, same as sony and as nintendo.
Personally I think we will see some great games, there maybe one or two that make there first game and it will be on par but that's just it isn't it these studios could take a while to shine or they could be instant hits either way good job MS and welcome aboard to the new talented dev teams..