NowGamer: It might be hardcore gamers that care most about which hardware manufacturer wins each console generation, but ultimately it’s the casual market that will decide it. The PS2 has continued to sell since the PS3 launch, shifting a cool 25 million units in that time, whereas Xbox sales effectively halted at just under 25 million with the release of the 360...
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
For Southeast Asia, new price changes.
Prices effective starting May 1st, 2026.
Replies(1)Looks like PlayStation took a hit with Marathon and is now quietly adjusting prices worldwide to recover the losses
Lets be honest raising prices doesn't do that when no one's buying it. I imagine the profit it greater selling 10 times more at a lower price
LMFAO Your comment alone says a lot more about you than anything else. When has one game not selling 10 million copies made a company raise the prices of their console? Then Xbox would be costing $5000 by now lol. You remind of the crazy drug addicts on the street rambling on about conspiracies. xD You sure you don't need a hug, buddy?
One game that Sony payed $200 million for. lol
Also, you sure were quick to get triggered. Maybe your the one who needs a hug?
If nothing else, we should be united against the real issue here. AI and unnecessary tariffs that are effecting all gamers.
The price increases are due to the RAM demand associated with AI and the US-Iran war. You can look to any business news website and local news to see that. Heck, even the 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo I've been eyeing has faced delays and has had a price increase of $400; that laptop has two specs. Asus is doing a staggered release with per-orders for the lower spec now and shipping in May and pre-orders for the higher spec that I'm eyeing starting in June. Basically, all computer manufactures are affected. It'll most likely start affecting smart phones too if it hasn't already. I can't remember the last time any major console maker (Nintendo, Sony, Sega, etc) increased the price of their console mid cycle outside of Microsoft just to make more profit.
War is causing gas prices to rise. Transport of everything requires gas so the prices of those items go up as well. So it does have an impact
The blockage of the Straight of Hormuz due to the US-Iran war has affected raw components used in semi-conductor manufacturing such as bromine, aluminum, and helium. Iran had attacked the liquified natural gas (LNG) plant in Qatar which is a large producer (1/3 globally) of helium which is used in semiconductor etching. So it's the both the war and the RAM crises.
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".
oh dear..
Nintendo Wii has clearly won the 7th generation war, already. Wii's lifetime sales nearly double that of PS3's.
Also, PS3 shows no sign of outselling the Wii on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis worldwide. Heck, it hasn't even been able to catch up with Xbox 360!
And stop disagreeing butthurt fanboys! These are facts!
Sony should cleverly design and market PS4 if they want to win the next war.
How is Move cheaper for a causal/any new owner than Kinect?
Move bundle = $400
Kinect bundle = $300
If you guys seriously believe Move can cause a sales spike for the PS3 you need to open your eyes. It will sell to the hardcore but the casuals won't touch it when they can get the same experiences on the Wii for half the price.
With less than a month to go Move has literally no hype and is topping no charts. N4G opinions mean nothing in the real world.
@Fishy Fingers
Well I wouldn't have to keep repeating it if the same articles stating the same thing weren't posted over and over. Obviously I will have bragging rights in due course, but I'm trying to make it less painful for the PS3 fanboys on this site by telling them how unlikely it is Move will succeed to move consoles.
@jack_burt0n
1. Its £34.99
2. If they don't own a PS3 thats not all they will see. They will see £34 + £250.
I'm really interested to see how many people actually adopt this. I'm sure it destroys the Wii mote but I'm still not certain it's going to be as popular as everyone thinks.
We can undoubtebly agree that Sony’s conference was the most impressive one at gamescom yesterday. After seeing more of the Playstation move it got me thinking. But before I start, let me point out that this is NOT meant to be seen as a fanboy piece. This is simply a piece about the potential in Sonys ps3 with the move and the Playstation 4. When I hear nice stuff from MS I will post something similar about the Xbox and its future.
A few months ago I read about Sony filing a patent for stereoscopic splitscreen. Clarification: Stereoscopic 3D requires glasses. You may argue that the 3D technology that require glasses is not here to stay but that is not what I see. Stereoscopic splitscreen makes it possible to play multiplayer for 2 people on the same TV without dividing the screen in two and get a window with half the size of your TV. Just that alone is impressive. I don’t see this coming to ps3 but I thinks its very possible that this will be a part of the ps4 at launch. You may think that’s all this technology can do, but if u think about it that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
This technology will also make it possible to watch two DIFFERENT movies at the same time on the same TV. It will also be possible to play two different games at once, for example if you feel like playing an RPG and your friend/lover/husband/wife/what ever wants to play a racing game, this will be possible without the need of another TV+console.
And this is truly awesome. The technology is amazing and Sony will make it work very well.
But it doesn’t end there. I’m very sure that the Playstation Move will be perfected even more over the years and be released together in some sort of bundle with the ps4. What will all this do for gaming?
It will take the co-op two a whole new level. You will no longer need to be in the same area as the other player, but it doesn’t end there.
Imagine a game much like Age of Empires or whatever. One of the players plays in an age that is, let’s say, a 1000 years before the age that the other player is playing in. What the first player does will affect the second player in real time. For example, imagine the first player digging out a cave in his age. The cave will then appear in the second player’s age perhaps filled with computer-generated items and monsters or whatever. Imagine how it will be working together in a game like that. It would be truly awesome. Or imagine the competition it could bring. The two players will not see each other’s screen, but may still compete and affect each other. For example, the second player builds a castle on a hill. The first player destroys that hill in his age making the castle in the second player’s age collapse. The first player will not see that the second player has built a castle there of course. This is pretty much like a very, very advanced version of “Sink the battleship” or whatever it’s called.
Thinking about the potential in this makes me very excited. The only bad thing is that it has made me horny, and now I want sex :(
Bubs up if u agree and enjoyed the reading :)