Microsoft’s Xbox chief discussed the state of the Xbox business.
Strauss Zelnick says price of GTA 6 is being carefully considered and that Rockstar is focused on "making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth."
If GTA 6 abandons everything that made GTA 5 great, it will crash and burn right out of the gate. GTA 5 was funny and not at all PC. My worry is that they will cave to the PC crowd and ruin the vibes.
They got freaking BBLs twerking on the top of trucks for the gram, the freaking Flordia joker, and dude running down the stree in their undies and you are worried about it being 'too PC'? The internet has runied gamers. It doesn't matter how non-PC they make the game, you will all listen to the grifters telling you not to believe your lying eyes lol.
"Rockstar Games’ co-founder and former VP of Development Jamie King said he envisions GTA 6 as a game that’s “maybe not quite as edgy or quite as funny” as its satirical predecessors."
oh yeah, totally internet grifters spreading rumors...
That's part of the plan, they destroyed you but they need to destroy the shareholders? Only 1 shre holder is the true elite that don't care
Meh.., if it’s above £55 I ain’t buying it.
Rockstar are genuinely not half the company they used to be. I was a die hard GTA fan I’ve purchased every game and expansion and spin off day 1.
My opinion of GTA6 is that I can take it or leave it. Not bothered. They burnt too many bridges.
So they're actually leaving the door open for an L.A. Noire sequel? Nice!
He should just come out and say it already it's getting stupid it's going to be a 100 bucks $200 for the special edition🤡🤡; 29315;🤣♿
I won't be getting this game until I can get it for $70. SHoot, I could wait for it to be even lower. I don't need the game that badly as my backlog is still huge and I am enjoying playing other things.
Skewed and Reviewed have posted an interview with Author Mike Diver about his pending book on Aliens video games.
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".
I think the meat and potatoes of this whole thing are whether you agree with him on this or not. Do you think his talks about Starfield being the first in their big plans to grow their platform (GamePass) which is console-specific and requires hardware for the mass majority of people that utilize it, or is it solely a long-term plan for subscription models and streaming, which then CMA would be absolutely right about in how they saw it.
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FTC: If Microsoft is going to grow, particularly in a business like console, it can grow by taking share from its competitors
Spencer: There’s no console growth in our [Activision] deal model.
FTC: Do you have any intention of this deal helping you climb out of the number three spot?
Spencer: In console, we do not.
FTC: So that’s just a write off?
Spencer: I don’t understand how that’s a write off?
***
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FTC: Can you swear under oath that without looking at any future terms that need to be hashed out, you’ll ship all the versions of Call of Duty that may exist on all the versions of PlayStation that make exist in the next 10 years?
Spencer: That’s my goal, yes.
...
Spencer: That’s my goal, yes. If what you’re trying to propose is that Sony might change the terms of how we ship games on our platform then that would prohibit us from shipping on their platforms.
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The skeptic in me sees this as 'If PlayStation doesn't align with our GamePass plans, then it would prohibit us from shipping on their platforms.' I can't see any other way that PlayStation would change the terms of how they ship games otherwise. It's a pretty-established concept and hasn't seen any change.
If we are talking about numbers, it had a pretty decent start with the original Xbox, a honorable defeat in the 360 days, a horrible death in the Xbox One days and is walking a path that will probably lead to a less terrifying loss with the Series X and S, but one that maybe won't be as bad as last gen. If we are talking about games, then I would say that it did a great job in the first half of the 360 life and that was it, it was average at best in every single other generation that it took part of
They lost by their own hands because of a lack of effort. They have the money, they have the resources, they are a software giant. Yet put out less content than their competitors every time. Why would that be deserving of a generation win? And in later years, almost purposely tried to lead the market into digital territory and online which is where they are strong in. Even lobbied against physical media like Blu-ray as a dead end until they needed it to store games on. They lobby now about cloud over consoles and reaching billions of casuals who are fine with their games on cellphones.
Jim probably saw that it would be against Microsoft interest to pull COD because of the money it generates on PlayStation. But seeing the final offer of hosting the game but getting zero revenue was the straw that broke the camel's back. Buying publishers knowing it would systematically strip Sony of revenue each time they bought a publisher. Even said they weren't done making acquisitions. Who else would be next and large enough for Microsoft to take more money out of Sony's pockets?
They keep saying they were scared of not getting games like Star Field which we know would have been timed just like Ghost Wire and Death Loop. But have money hatted many times to keep games away from PlayStation. Timed or exclusive. They also made it seem that they needed to protect gamers from Apple, Amazon and Google by buying these publishers. How was that supposed to protect us? Just more lies and misleading statements they make.
Stadia failed because Google didn't put in the effort like many of their creations. Dismantled their development teams and made no games. Of course it was going to fail. Offering games to buy that you don't actually own. Physically or digitally.
No matter what Microsoft says, it doesn't stop Microsoft from creating games and studios to compete. It doesn't stop them from entering the mobile market. They can do these things at any time. Activision could have offered their own cloud service using Microsoft servers. They don't need Microsoft owning them to do it. This is all a ploy to choke Sony of revenue and force gamers to a platform they don't want to use or they would be using Xbox worldwide at the same level as Nintendo and Sony right now. It's bad enough with all these mega corporations owning everything no matter what you buy or use. To allow a mega corporation like Microsoft to buy up the industry and dictate terms is so bad for the industry, that it makes their DRM 2013 attempt seem tame in comparison.
He’s so full of it
Who would’ve ever guessed in the 51 years of videogame console industry that a company would legally say they lost ‘the console war?’
Whereas former titans like Atari and Sega bowed out because they couldn’t financially compete anymore, Microsoft who has all the funds they can manage still act like they’re the underdog here.
Yet we’ve seen would happen if they did ‘win’ with the always online DRM and locking so many console features behind a paywall. Hard to root for a company that’s so willing to screw over its own consumers. Never forget that Xbox Live price hike they had to go back on because of backlash