COGconnected Writes: Crucible's untimely demise marks another Amazon Game Studios project consigned to the waste bin of gaming history! Are these guys cursed? Was there an angry witch involved? Because I know a good cursebreaker, Amazon. Hit me up.
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
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
Today, Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the full fiscal year 2025, related to the period between April 2025 and March 2026.
Amazon might need to be broken up as a monopoly. As having too many hats - shopping, music and video distribution, audio distribution, book distribution, credit and debt services, online and information services, now game publishing - under one roof.
Amazon has all the money in the world and they somehow cannot build a decent games studio.
And it would behoove them to have one standard game in their multi-game pipeline - a single-player game that they mold after something successful - to get a solid release under their belt and start building a modicum of cachet. The others can be experimental live-service genre-mashers, but those have high chances of failure. It seems shocking they didn't hedge their bets by putting at least one studio on something stable. Or by buying a studio with a good track record that could put out their new games under the Amazon banner.
The closest they came was buying Double Helix - decent buy - but then effectively destroying their value by taking their unique flavor & then merging it into the vat of vanilla pudding that is Amazon Gaming Studios. None of the games Amazon ended up pursuing were in DH's wheelhouse, so I'm not sure what the thought process was in that acquisition.
Not to mention that going for their own engine was also a questionable choice. Lumberyard, being based around CryEngine, limits the pool of developers/tools/documentation they have at their disposal. Not obviously the biggest stumbling block for them, but it certainly had to hinder (prototyping/iteration/buildin g tools from scratch/et al).
Lots of poor choices going around over there. They should give me a chance at management. After this many failures, what do they have to lose! With a more realistic and reasonable understanding of gaming trends, as well as a healthier appreciation for the value of money, I think I could do wonders for them :-p.
I see no reason why not, anyone is welcome to make a game as long as they make it right.