After Marvel's Avengers, Babylon's Fall, and Chocobo GP, Square Enix needs to stop making live-service games, and realize where they went wrong.
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.
Every dev in general should stop making this live service rubbish.
Here's the thing, though. They are going to see these as initial financial failures, but also as valuable feedback on what customers don't want. What NOT to do for a successful live service game.
There's too much money on the table for getting it right, and you have to assume, with enough time & money, they'll eventually make it work. Then they'll attach that to one of their massively popular IPs, and just make bank. I wish these kinds of games would go away, but companies & shareholders LOVE that recurrent, stable monthly income. They'll keep going at it, whether us core gamers want them to or not.
These publishers only make games for a single purpose: to make money off us. This wasn't a problem so much in the past, because games were of better quality, without all the mindless, endless grinding, filler, padding, micro-trash-actions, released incomplete, and so on.
But over the past 7 years gaming has seen a massive decline in game quality, and craftsmanship, all for the sake of money. Mobile gaming live service trash is partially to blame for this, publishers start bringing that garbage over to console / PC gaming, because they knew that nearly all gamers have no backbone and love to bend over for their masters, eating up whatever slop that they're being fed and ask for more.
If you want these types of trash games to go away, send a message, and stop supporting them, but also stop supporting the offending publishers entirely. Hit them where it hurts, and that's their bank accounts. There's a lot of publishers I no longer buy from because of all their egregious crap they've tried to pull numerous times in the past:
Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, Activison. I'm done with them. Support the publishers that respect you, including the incredible small independent studios that are making some of the most interesting games today.
It is not the Live Service Games business model itself. The problem is that: SE forced developers that have no experience in making GaaS games to make GaaS games. When you look at the revenue from Destiny 2, Apex Legend, (even Outriders), there IS a big demand of GaaS games outside of US market.
If you don't like it, don't buy it; Don't even play the free parts. Anything free is still making money but selling personal data. If it's an awful experience, educate others and offer recommendations for other games. Most companies with shareholders are going to end up beholden to them and no one else. When that company loses their way and stops making the games that older fans liked, someome else will eventually step up and fill that space, as long as the demand is there. Live service games are never going away though. Too much money in it, and not even through the MTX themselves. Data collection, selling, analysis, etc.