Ryan Graves, an unhappy customer, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. claiming that the company is double-billing subscribers to its Xbox Live Gold service. The class action is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
In December 2005, Ryan Graves purchased an Xbox 360 console, which led him to purchase an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
The customer is now filing a lawsuit against Microsoft for allegedly automatically renewing users’ subscriptions without receiving permission from the Xbox users, according to Consumer Affairs. Furthermore, the lead plaintiff, Graves, alleges that they have refused to reimburse the duplicate charges.
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.
I had a similar problem. In Canada, the price of XBL gold was $8.99 a month or about $108 a year. I had a free month of XBL and then they started charging my credit card automatically on a monthly basis. As they defaulted to $8.99 a month, I just assumed that was the price.
After two years I finally started to question what I was actually getting for my $108 a year. It was then that someone pointed out to me on game forums "Um? What the hell are you talking about? It's only $60(cdn)" I had no idea as it never occurred to me that MS would charge more per month and the fact that they started doing it automatically also didn't compel me to look into it further.
Now, is that MS's fault for defaulting to the higher price or my fault for not being more informed? Personally, I take responsibility for trusting that if Microsoft was charging me for XBL, that was the price of XBL. I shouldn't have taken it for granted and I was overcharged $96 dollars over two years because of it. I currently don't have gold as I decided to put my money towards games and get my multiplayer fix elsewhere.
Now, as for this lawsuit - I think it's frivolous. You're telling me that this couldn't have been worked out by speaking to a manager or something, that it had to go to court? Plenty of places automatically renew subscriptions, and mistakes will always happen - but to lawyer up like this just seems to me a waste of the court's time.
Edit below: Totally agree. I just assumed American when I saw the title. I just don't understand the "Sue em!" mentality. To me, the hassle of going through the courts just isn't worth the $50 - and MS even gave him the extra year, he just didn't want it. Personally, my time is too valuable to waste on frivolous lawsuits. I don't know. Maybe in the US, suing is just a hobby now. Cue the Weird Al video, "Sue Ya"?
Can't say this has ever happened to me or anyone I know that has one or has their card info linked to their account. MS sent me a email to renew my gold subcription which I declined and brought a cheaper gold card from amazon.
Solution is simple. I had the same problem. Credit card details on the XBL account were old. I had put years of prepaid cards before on my XBL account, but forgot this to do before a certain date again. I just did 3 days after the renewal date, I didn't even notice it had suspended really.
So MS tried to bill the card that didn't exist anymore. They started to mail that they couldn't and I should update my credit card details. Then I thought, lets phone them up and tell that I put in the prepaid card 1 year subscription and that I didn't understand why I was charged on my cc for a year, a cc that didn't exist anymore.
It took me a 45 minute phone call, and I just said I didn't own a cc anymore (while I did but hehe this worked). So as they couldn't use any new cc info from me, they decided to stop the charging all together and they put the cc option on off for me. I got a year XBL for free from MS this way.
So. Stay on the line, don't give up on the phone when they say this isn't possible, it IS possible as long as you don't supply new cc info!
*Sigh*
How low are you going to sink, Microsoft?