Gaming has a digital distribution problem that can be traced to the access to the games we love to play, and it's not getting better anytime soon.
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.
This is making it plain that when you buy a game, you aren’t actually buying the game. You are buying a right to use a copy of the game. This is actually true for discs and digital downloads. The only real discrepancy is that with a digital download, it has to check in with a server for licensing - but - a studio can easily put the same restrictions in place with a disc based game too unfortunately. The only way one could ever eliminate this problem truly is to buy a game on disc and never put your console online and never do any updates. Literally.
There is nothing new here. This is reality.
This is why I always go physical first and digital if I have to and that's the only choice.
"many seemed surprised the Ubisoft would remove access to the game..."
That'd be because they aren't. You'll still be able to download and play the game. They're stopping support for online servers, which happens eventually for all games.
Ubisoft has a digital distribution problem.
yea, no sh*t