Microsoft today announced it has now shipped 10 million Kinect units worldwide to retailers - not sold to consumers - since launch in November.
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
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".
In an exclusive interview with Game File, new(ish) Xbox boss Asha Sharma and Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty explain their vision for Microsoft’s gaming division
A good start would be to release games to go with the console. My Xbox Series X has gathered dust virtually from launch. My advice would be to ditch a next console and release games on PC, PlayStation and Switch. Another idea would be a hybrid console based on Xbox Series X tech and go the same route as Nintendo. Another idea would be to pull out of gaming altogether. Plenty of options there.
Why would they pull out? They have the momentum. Sony has been getting nothing but bad news lately.
This is why i hate number/sales war. We always end up hearing that they are actually shipped a few weeks later.
Either way to me, shipped essentially means that they will be sold eventually, it may not be 10 million right now but in 2-4 months it might be.
That being said i'm curious at what are the real numbers, we keep hearing MS gloat about Kinect numbers and yet they havn't gave new numbers for it other then shipped. Which gets me thinking can companies really track how many have actually been sold to consumers? I mean we keep hearing sold and then weeks later it turns to shipped.
@ below
idk i prob. will end up getting disagrees but i think all companies report ship to retailers, or if that's not the case then why is MS always reporting shipped and stating them as sold? They really like to inflate numbers then.
either way like i said these shipped will all be sold eventually as we will hear it again prob around E3 or something after saying Kinect is at 15 million now since launch. I bet real sales are around 7-8 million. Because i really don't think there is 5million Kinect sitting at retailers, 2-3 sound more realistic.
@Pixelated Army
Reading is your pal. They didn't claim Kinect was the fastest selling device out of their asses, it was confirmed by Guiness World Records and it was for a period of 60 days, not till 10 million. You can even check their official page:
http://community.guinnesswo...
As for MS being 'notorious' for sold/shipped numbers, get real, they all report shipped numbers.
As for the news, well fu*kin done. They try to downplay shipping 10 million units in 90 days as something bad, when at first they all thought it was going to flop beyond belief. Now they have to spin successful news.
@Pixelated Army
What part of 'No company says 'shipped' you don't understand? Not even Sony says shipped when they report Move shipped numbers, so why is is Microsoft the only one that need to specify "shipped' when No One Else Does? They ALL say sold, or something along those lines.
Well done ms.
Yes N4G....I am trolling by posting FACTS about MS and their channel stuffing of product to inflate sales goals....and I did it using YOUR ARTICLE....so you know what N4G? That means YOU ARE TROLLING TOO.
Hypocrites you are.
http://n4g.com/news/34743/m...
We will know soon enough when MS has to eventually STOP stuffing the channel. Can even ONE PERSON tell me they saw Kinect sold out...stand alone? Ever wonder WHY that is the case?
Live in your world of make beLIEve if you want...it still does not change the FACTS that I brought up.
It was reported that when MS shipped 8 million Kinects that actually about 5 million were sold to customers...STILL an impressive number but you can see why it is shady at best on MS's part.
So IMO if they have now shipped 10 million Kinects the sell thru must be around 6 million which is again a very impressive number.
I am not saying MS is the only company to channel stuff...however they seem to do it more and BIGGER than most other companies.
Again, we will know next quarter how much MS stuffed the channel with Kinects when the shipped numbers drop like a rock because retailers REFUSE to take anymore simply for no other reason other than they will run out of space to store them all.
@DK286...if the link is just to an anti MS site...how does that explain the numerous links to OTHER articles saying the SAME thing including actual MS SOLD numbers and reduced SHIPMENT numbers? Or this part of the story....
The Fall-Out
I’m sure Chris Liddell was just thrilled at having to stand up in front of the investor community and do a little tap dance around the Xbox 360 channel-stuffing issue. But, of course, he wouldn’t come out and say that, but use some appropriate Alan Greenspan-like euphemisms to convey the point in more oblique terms.
From Reuters 01/25/2007:
LOS ANGELES, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile ,Research) on Thursday cut its fiscal 2007 forecast for Xbox 360 video game console shipments, citing unsold inventories in stores, and said it is trying to make sure its gaming division turns a profit in the upcoming fiscal year.
Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Microsoft aims to ship a total of 12 million Xbox 360s by the end of its fiscal year on June 30, down from a previous target of 13 million to 15 million.
“We are just being cautious about the second half. It was always going to be a slow half. We’ve done very well in the first half. There is a reasonable amount of inventory in the channel,” Liddell said in an interview with Reuters.
So what is a “reasonable” amount of inventory in the channel, Chris? Does it have anything to do with shipping (not selling, mind you) 4.4 million units in Q4 2006, with a projected 1.6 million units through the first half of 2007? I guess you guys just had to make that magic 10 million number by the end of 2006, didn’t you? But what did it really mean? Not much, in retrospect.
@BeAGamer
Please do not confuse my ridicule for anger...why would I be angry at MS's shady business practices? They have done this for decades...to get mad about it would be illogical.
I think it is funny that so many of you will IGNORE facts just to suit your opinions...kinda like a Fox News viewer.
as much as i congratulate ms on the 10 milll.. i want more hardcore titles..