Player Affinity writes: The gaming industry has faced more change in the last five years than it had the combined 20 years before that. We've seen the rise of downloadable games, indie games and DLC, which expands a game's longevity. We've seen components of games getting locked off for used buyers unless they spend an extra $10. DRM has become more intrusive than ever, and then it kinda-sorta went away. The cost of developing games has skyrocketed, and so too have the marketing budgets. After all, if a game costs millions of dollars to make, you want to be sure it sells millions of copies, right? These are the so-called Triple-A games: games coming out at $60 that the publisher has clearly put a lot of marketing and development muscle behind. In all these changing economic conditions though, one thing hasn't changed too much: most console games still cost $60 at retail, regardless of the amount of cash spent developing or marketing the title. Surely all games aren't created equal, so why the uniform approach to pricing in the retail space, especially compared to the changes the downloadable marketplace has brought with it?
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
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
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."
Game should be priced on how good they are. So the best games will be 60$ at launch and the bad games wont
tell me about it.
Takes a really good game to make me lay down the mega bucks.
I agree. Some games have no business being $60. $60 for a game like Skyrim which gives you 100s of hours of gameplay vs maybe a game with a single player game that takes less than 10 hours. How are they both worth the same?
Last time I checked, they weren't all $60. Some are $70, some are $5, $10, $15, $20, $30, $40, $50 and every denomination in between.