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robmccoll 2 days ago [-]
I fundamentally do not understand the direction of Xbox. Microsoft seems to lack the commitment to any strategy and seems unwilling to wait for investments to pay off before trying to cut perceived losses.
guidedlight 2 days ago [-]
There are rumours that Microsoft is internally demanding 30% margin from Xbox, and the gaming industry simply doesn't operate with those types of margins long term and it's not even in a position to dictate industry pricing.
It's like the entire company is only satisfied with being #1.
The whole thing is very confused and lacks consistency. The latest rumours are they are going to break up its Game Pass subscription offering so there are different subscriptions for multiplayer, cloud, games, etc. Isn't that the opposite of an effective subscription strategy?
rao-v 2 days ago [-]
GPUs that were planned for cloud streaming are much more valuable now. It (unfortunately) makes sense for the only real cloud streaming player to significantly revisit pricing.
devin 2 days ago [-]
Sure, but it's also feels like incredibly short-term thinking. Embarrassingly so.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
Success in business is all about short-term thinking. If they destroy the Xbox brand today they can still pick it back up next year. Who else will you go with - Sony?
devin 2 days ago [-]
Did you forget to put an /s on this?
TiredOfLife 1 days ago [-]
Microsoft uses Xbox series X for streaming.
1 days ago [-]
bathtub365 2 days ago [-]
This type of internal financial management is a sign that the people running Microsoft aren’t interested in how any of the divisions actually work or making strategic decisions about their portfolio. They’re accountants pushing the difficult decisions down
scruple 1 days ago [-]
And the actual margins are about 3%. No one in gaming makes the sorts of margins that Satya is demanding Xbox makes. It's pretty clear to see where this goes. I'm also not sure that the unionization pushes in their studios isn't the real story.
RajT88 1 days ago [-]
I am guessing it is aspirational. I have worked with execs that demand the impossible to get more than they would have otherwise out of teams.
asanineassasin 2 days ago [-]
Everything but the bubble is lossy, abandon all industry but the bubble industry symptom?
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
Doesn’t Steam also take a 30% cut?
scott_w 2 days ago [-]
You’re confusing 2 different things. Microsoft isn’t demanding a “cut,” it’s demanding its business units achieve a 30% profit margin on its investment. I think industry standard is closer to 10% once you factor in games that don’t make a return on their investment.
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
oh I see. I misunderstood OP
MBCook 2 days ago [-]
Valve isn’t trying to make a bunch of games with AND pay for/off all the studios they bought, all while trying to advertise and compete with Sony and Nintendo in hardware.
Steam just sits back and takes money, for the most part. The hardware/software/advertising spend is probably a drop in the bucket compared to MS.
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
I initially misunderstood OP. However the more I think about it, the more it seems similar though. If Steam is charging game developers a 30-20% cut, that must mean those game developers margins are higher than 30-20% or there will be no point selling on Steam. It seems that Xbox would be expecting their Studios to operate at the same efficiency as others in the market then, no?
scott_w 2 days ago [-]
No, they’re not even remotely the same. The retailer keeps 30% of the retail price and, out of that, they pay for the upkeep of the store. It’s not 30% pure profit, it’s not even gross profit given they need to pay the card processing fees out of that 30%.
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
I’m not following how that is a response to what I said. I’m not talking about Valve’s profits. I’m talking about the profit of the game developers selling their games on Steam.
I think I understand why Microsoft costs are higher than others due to their a spending spree, so the break even is much higher.
scott_w 2 days ago [-]
You said “they’re similar” and I’m refuting that by pointing out that they operate very differently. One is a retailer and one is a developer/publisher. Their operating models are different, so you can’t point at two percentages and say “they’re similar” in any way.
imtringued 2 days ago [-]
If you're talking about the margins of a video game sale, the gross margins on that are like 99.9% in absolute terms.
You don't seem to understand the difference between the margins on a sale and the averaged margins once the studio development costs are included.
If the store takes 30% you are still left with 70% gross margins but if you have development costs, you maybe only have enough sales to break even or just barely be profitable. A 30% margin on the entire studio means the studio must produce guaranteed successes consistently.
It might also not be obvious but if Microsoft imposed 30% margins, those are a floor, whereas a fee reduces the ceiling. They are not the same even if we assume the target is met.
reactordev 2 days ago [-]
30% on $10M and under.
25% on $10M to $50M.
20% on $50M+.
tancop 1 days ago [-]
I love Steam but this is just backwards. If it was about recouping fixed costs the threshold would be 10k not 10M with the rate dropping down to 15 or 20% after that.
Game revenues follow a power law type distribution so they're hurting indies and leaving money on the table.
navane 20 hours ago [-]
It's about how hard they can squeeze before it pops. The big players can afford to open up their own shops and steam throws them a bone.
ScoobleDoodle 1 days ago [-]
I agree it seems backwards.
Valve targeted the big releases / industry players specifically because the context in which Valve added that was where all the big players were making their own store fronts: EA Original/App Ubisoft launcher, Blizzard Battle.net. And Epic Game Store, where Ubisoft (or another big player I forget) was talking about abandoning their launcher for Epic which has a lower revenue cut like ~12%. So it seemed Valve made that change to shore up keeping the big industry players releasing on Steam.
I was really hoping Sing would have a more Producers sort of vibe. Failing theater and director. It was there for the taking, but apparently Disney doesn't think Springtime for Hitler is a good look?
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
While I agree, a confusing part for non gamers, is to differentiate Xbox, the games console, from Xbox, the business unit, from Xbox, the Microsoft games publishing business.
Only Xbox, the games console, is having a bad time, the publishing part is doing great with movie licenses, and all the studios that belong to Microsoft, regardless where they sell their games.
mrandish 22 hours ago [-]
> lack the commitment to any strategy
In the XBox One gen they bet big on an ill-advised (but then-trendy) strategy to 'own the living room', devoting hardware CoGS to add TV / DVR features. It was a great strategy - for MSFT - but not so much for gamers. By 2018-19 it was clear they'd lost the hardware platform battle. The only bright spot was Game Pass which was working pretty well thanks to PC / XBox + web synergy. So, they went for a BIG strategic bet. An all-or-nothing, high-risk, high-reward gamble to move 'up the stack' from hardware by turning Game Pass into the "Netflix of Games". Forever being Pepsi to Sony's Coke wouldn't matter because content was where all the margin and sweet recurring revenue was anyway.
So MSFT spent over $100B acquiring game studios and... it didn't work. While it seemed like a reasonable bet in 2018-19, it's now clear no one can be the Netflix of games. The unit economics don't work because people watch a lot more new movies and shows in a year than they buy new games (the top ten console games capture over half the revenue). MSFT bet that a large number of gamers would keep paying >$20 - $30 / mo but after the COVID shutdowns ended, ASP growth stalled below $20 and the higher the ASP got, the more the churn went vertical. Oops!
Without that context, nothing makes much sense. But when you understand they're now dealing with the aftermath of that all-or-nothing gamble, it does. XBox isn't going away but MSFT is also done "investing big to win" in gaming. Now Sharma's job is to recoup as much of that $100B as possible by 1) Selling the shit out of all the evergreen hits they own like CoD, and 2) Milking their large library of non-hit titles to harvest as much revenue as she can while spending as little as possible.
The other subtext here is that if you manage to build a dominant multi-platform subscription business with a tens of millions of gamers paying $25-$30/mo and low churn. That's a high-margin business with flywheel effects that smell like Office365 and throw off enough cash to easily service that $100B in debt. But without that high, sticky ARR, gaming is a much lower margin business than any of MSFT's stable of winners like Azure. It's not that XBox is a bad business, it's that it's competing against much higher margin business units for each incremental dollar of investment.
wvenable 2 days ago [-]
XBox was fine up to the Xbox One -- that's when the XBox was co-oped for some broader push for the living room computing and broadcast television integration right at the time this was on the out.
The next failure was Xbox Live. The video game market is a hit-based market with big tent-pole franchises doing large launches. For a modern example, look at the hype around GTA6. Launches sold games and exclusives sold consoles. Microsoft put huge game launches on Xbox Live for their relatively low monthly cost and lost millions on those launches.
They also bought a bunch of game studios which is a terrible strategy for a console maker. Meta made the same mistake with the Quest.
It's was never the lack of commitment to a strategy -- it was just having the wrong strategy to begin with.
girvo 2 days ago [-]
As someone who was a die hard Xbox fan since the original all the way up to the One X… Microsoft are just terrible. Getting rid of exclusives, constantly focusing on the wrong things, it’s just a mess. Terrible leadership.
pixelatedindex 2 days ago [-]
My “hot take”: they’re going the direction of Disney/Marvel hybrid. Have a few handful of IPs that are extremely successful, milk it out with licensing deals in every vertical (toys, games, merch, cross-dlcs, books, etc). They’re just missing theme parks. The actual game development portion would probably be very small.
njovin 2 days ago [-]
What exclusive IP does Xbox even have anymore? They tanked all the studios that were doing good work for them and AFAIK Halo’s done.
kettlecorn 2 days ago [-]
Minecraft, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Elder Scrolls.
njovin 4 hours ago [-]
None of those are exclusive to xbox.
prmoustache 1 days ago [-]
What kind of exclusivity do they have on Elder Scrolls if all their games were releases on at least 3 platforms?
Do you meam potential upcomimg game that may be vaporware for a decade or two?
philistine 2 days ago [-]
All those franchises are on a managed downward trajectory. Their Halcyon days are behind them.
derektank 2 days ago [-]
Would not complain if Microsoft wanted to drop a few billion on a new US theme park. The Pacific Northwest is pretty light on amusement parks and I could imagine a park with Halo, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft "Lands" doing gangbusters. Supposedly they're already working with a UK amusement park operator on a Minecraft experience
georgel 2 days ago [-]
I would totally go to a Halo theme park, that sounds cool.
numpad0 2 days ago [-]
I think they genuinely don't know what to do other than to keep the lights on. The original goal for the Xbox program was to take back American presence in gaming, which they achieved, but shutting down Xbox will undo that with Nintendo still around and Chinese phone games making banks.
NegativeLatency 2 days ago [-]
Saw an xbox/ikea ad at ikea the other day and was just very confused. (master chief with a ikea wrench)
doctorpangloss 2 days ago [-]
it's easy. imagine a bunch of execs with kids. the execs don't play any video games. their kids aren't allowed any screentime. okay, now they're trying to make a product whose primary audience is Bart Simpson. do you see how that leadership is completely disconnected from their audience?
tonyhart7 2 days ago [-]
they already heading towards that direction but unfortunately AI happen
so they switch course midway to focus at AI
mrandish 2 days ago [-]
Based on the headline my first thought was "Dumb MSFT!" but after reading TFA, the list of major properties is long and we don't know the proposed terms or counter on critical elements like ancillary rights, cross-media, sub-licensing, theatrical, international and, most-importantly, back-end participation. Just one of these terms can double or halve a deal's value, so we have no way to tell if $500M is crazy high or crazy low.
For example, the deal Sony Pictures made which gave Netflix all global film and sequel rights to KPop Demon Hunters with zero back-end participation on the billions of dollars Netflix is now certain to earn from KPop is widely considered by experts the single worst streaming deal ever made. And that was just one unproven animated kids musical. XBox has proven mega-IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Halo, Diablo and Elder Scrolls as well as lots of unproven properties - any one of which might become the next KPop Demon Hunters.
intothemild 2 days ago [-]
> so we have no way to tell if $500M is crazy high or crazy low.
Well, lets take just one of those examples, Minecraft.
Cost apparently $150mil to make, and so far, has earned around $960mil. So if we use the usual doubling of the cost to get to the real cost with marketing and everything, it cost ~$300mil, so that is about $660mil profit.
Now of course that gets split, Xbox wouldn't get 100% of that, but still, even if it got 50%, thats still most of the way to the $500mil they turned down, on just ONE film, and only factoring in the theatrical release profit, not including any money it would have made on merch, or streaming, or anything else.
mrandish 1 days ago [-]
> even if it got 50%
Good analysis but a 50/50 split after costs would be unusually high. That level of back-end usually requires investing significant capital in a film. It's a high-risk business like VC where most releases lose money which is (hopefully) offset by a few outsized hits.
The shape of a pure IP license deal is typically more like ~10% share after costs. But that's generally for a property like Fallout with at least some known value. Beyond their hits, MSFT has a back catalog of game titles with unknown cross-media potential large enough to make the likelihood of a break-out like KPop fairly high. I suspect the deal stalled at $500M offer / $800M ask over theatrical back-end with a minimum production guarantee.
But this isn't a normal IP license deal nor just a streaming rights or even a global distribution deal, it's an exclusive IP library production deal which has different dynamics. MSFT spent over $100B acquiring game studios in an ill-advised strategy to turn Game Pass into the "Netflix of Games". While that seemed like a reasonable high-risk, high-reward bet in 2018-19, it's now clear no one can be the Netflix of games. The unit economics don't work because people watch a lot more movies and shows in a year than they buy games. MSFT bet $100B that a large number of gamers would pay >$20/mo but after the COVID shutdowns ended, ASP growth stalled below $20 and the higher the ASP got, the more the churn went vertical. Oops.
Now Sharma's job is to recoup as much of that $100B as possible by 1) Selling the shit out of all the evergreen hits they own like CoD, and 2) Milking that huge library of non-hit titles to harvest as much revenue as she can while spending as little as possible. Netflix sees this and thinks "Let's toss in a low-ball offer and see how hungry they are for quick cash." But Sharma has already modeled out a revenue projection for her evergreen titles and knows what they'll make over the next 5-6 years (to within +/- ~10%). CoD gonna keep CoD-ing, she just needs to turn the crank competently and not fuck it up. Her only upside here is to find a way to harvest more than the 'expected value' from the pool of unknown-value IPs, which are essentially lotto tickets. In terms of cross-media value, most of the unknowns will be losers and the tricky part is it costs money to audience test each IP to get an educated guess on if it has cross-media potential and then a lot more money to produce any that look good.
My guess is the deal fell apart over minimum production guarantees (MPG). Netflix says "We'll give you $500M and cover all the development, production and distribution costs but we also keep ALL the upside." Sharma says "Do I look as dumb as Sony Pictures? :-) You'd be tying up exclusive rights to all my IP and you can control your downside costs by simply not testing or producing any but the safest-bets. If any of those become the next KPop, I'd like a little back-end upside and I want some guarantee you're going test at least half the back catalog and actually produce a couple of the unknowns so I at least have a chance one becomes the next KPop." Netflix does the math and says "You want us to guarantee spending ~$20M in development testing plus ~$100M in production on unknowns on top of $500M for rights? Hmmm, what's the price to just test, develop and produce as much or little as we want and still own all the upside?" MSFT comes back with "If promising to spend $620M feels 'too rich' then a full buyout to tie up our library, develop all or none, and keep all the upside is $800M. Alternatively, let's explore actually partnering. If you want a lower front-end price, cut us in on some back-end upside or put some more skin in the game with MPG. Or lets split the known and unknown IPs into two pools with different back-end/MPGs, or maybe a sliding scale, like you pay no back-end on anything until after you've earned 3X its prod cost?" Netflix: "Yeah, nah. $500M, take it or leave it."
In reality, straight buyouts are very rare even on single-title, distribution-only deals. They were probably already deep in negotiating pool splits, back-end rates and sliding MPG scales with Netflix hoping MSFT would make a Sony-sized IP mistake and MSFT trying not to become the industry's next cautionary tale. Even the infamous Sony/Netflix KPop deal was something like $125M to buy a 'first-look' right on just a sub-pool of unknown IPs in development with a buyout option on any that they liked for exclusive worldwide distribution (theatrical & streaming) with no back-end - and not just on the first release but all derivatives, forever. IIRC, exercising the distribution buyout on a movie required an additional upfront payment based on a percentage of the production cost Sony had spent, which was around $20M for KPop. In the midst of COVID shutdowns, Sony thought they were turning long-shot option rights on a pool of unknown, low-budget probable 'dogs' into a little guaranteed cash. I mean a niche animated musical targeted at teen girls in Asian markets? Some (now-former) junior Sony exec is like, "Sure, Netflix. If you can sell that to your boss and get a check here by the end of the quarter, we'll let you own ALL that upside (muffled giggling)." For over a century now, the lesson to never give up ALL the back-end keeps being re-learned in Hollywood.
I think Sony cutting that deal with NetFlix was a special brand of dumb because Netflix has compiled more and better viewing habit data for longer than anyone ever. Giving NetFlix a 'first look' deal that lets them test your pre-release movies in their secret 'Magic Analytics Black Box' is a great idea, IF you keep some back-end on the first release AND all the sequels and ancillary. You share a little in Netflix's upside on a mega-hit but, most important, NetFlix activating their option is an invaluable signal that lets you double down early on any property the NetFlix 'Magic Box' thinks is a winner. So... all we really know here is MSFT is dumb enough to make a huge $100B strategic mistake but that's STILL not quite as dumb as Sony Pictures. :-)
RajT88 1 days ago [-]
In the rules of haggling, you never accept the first offer. You also need to walk away twice.
This may yet come to pass.
sublinear 2 days ago [-]
> In a statement to Puck, Xbox said, “We have received record-breaking interest in our I.P.; Netflix is a valued partner and we are excited for the forthcoming release of our Minecraft and Diablo animated series together, among other adaptations.”
My eyes are about to roll out of my head. Stale intellectual property can make unexpectedly good money for a little while, but this ain't exactly Mickey Mouse. Even Mickey Mouse is out of steam by now.
Microsoft is rejecting the deal simply because they can afford the loss even if they let everything under "Xbox" rot. They will only accept someone willing to overpay.
rightbyte 1 days ago [-]
> but this ain't exactly Mickey Mouse. Even Mickey Mouse is out of steam by now.
Hasn't Mickey Mouse been out of steam since the 50s? He is a normal guy and you need to base any short about someone else to make it interesting. Like the squirrels or Donald Duck...
bathtub365 2 days ago [-]
Xbox spent $70B for Activision-Blizzard not that long ago, going through a protracted anti-trust process so a $500m buyout would be acknowledging that they made a severe financial error
Idiot211 2 days ago [-]
Buyout?
Oh dear, someone forgot to read the article.
demibabs 2 days ago [-]
At first I thought that meant “Netflix wanted to buy Xbox for 500m” and I was like “damn I can’t believe the brand is worth so little now”
wewewedxfgdf 2 days ago [-]
I thought it was an offer to buy Xbox for $500M - that's what its worth under Microsoft's current generation of leadership.
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
I know the theories about Microsoft selling Xbox or spinning it off are common on the internet these days. They might even make sense from a high level business prospective. However, I don’t understand how they could do it from a technical standpoint without still having huge leverage on the company buying it. Xbox runs a customized version of NT, DirectX and HyperV as far as I know. Any company buying it would have to get some licensing deal from Microsoft to further develop and maintain NT and HyperV or rely on Microsoft doing the development which both seem unrealistic for any company to wanna pick up, or for Microsoft to give away. I know they don’t really care about Windows these days, but still.
I’m sure if they are forced to (legally or otherwise) they can find a solution, but it would be a thorny thing to split.
prmoustache 1 days ago [-]
In this case it is none of the above and it is about deals on selected ip characters for movie/shows production but there are many ways to "buy" stuff. In theory Microsoft could just shutdown the xbox divisions and just sell the XBox brand + some selected IP rights. The buyer would be free to use whatever tech they decide on next iteration of console/OS.
eddythompson80 1 days ago [-]
Yes, I know that this article is about IP rights for Netflix shows and movies. OP said they initially thought it was for all of Xbox, which is a theory that's been gaining traction online in gaming and tech spaces that Microsoft is trying to sell the Xbox business maybe to Tencent, a Saudi fund or private equity[0]. There were a bunch of threads about it on various gaming subreddits.
you know they paid some 70 billion for activision blizzard?
TiredOfLife 1 days ago [-]
Microsoft was offered 150 Billion for xbox
donbox 2 days ago [-]
Could you drill down? Please.
hakfoo 2 days ago [-]
Consoles are a struggling market right now.
The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone. (Nintendo is a bit of an exception here, but they were always playing a different market than Sony and MS anyway)
This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
The price advantage is going away fast, especially with talk that next-gen consoles will top USD 1000.
All they have left is their prestige first-party products, which they don't seem to really know how to use effectively. Some of them have solid cultural penetration, and could spawn broader media franchises with the right handling.
devin 2 days ago [-]
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
No, the main driver is still there. People do not want to build and maintain PCs. Your 14-year-old nephew doesn't want to do it, either. People want to turn on a box and play a game. I am technical and I want absolutely nothing to do with maintaining a PC. I'll take the console experience every single time.
prmoustache 1 days ago [-]
People can buy a prebuilt pc running steamOS automagically updating itself with immutable images.
The advantage of consoles are:
- No minimum/recomended config to check and insurance that a game or an accesorry bought for a console gen will work well for that console gen. In term of game compat this is something Steam tried to with the steam deck but has no way to enforce really and the biggest one imho. When you buy a brand new "budget" computer in the price range of a console you usually knownyou won't be able to play some of the upcoming AAA titles at least woth decent graphic quality.
- availability in retail stores
- ability to sell games in the second hand market but I don't think this is something that is here to stay with the disappearance of physical medias
scott_w 2 days ago [-]
You’re mostly correct but there’s truth to the original statement. Back in the PlayStation/N64 through to PS3/Xbox 360, consoles were so different to each other and PCs that porting games was a major task that resulted in very different outcomes.
Since the PS4/Xbox One, they’ve been similar enough in underlying architecture that engines like Unreal have been able to smooth over the differences enough to make multiplatform technically viable. It’s meant companies like Capcom with RE Engine have made a huge success out of selling across all platforms, including PC. That freedom for publishers is a problem for console manufacturers who have fewer 3rd party exclusives as a result.
gucci-on-fleek 2 days ago [-]
> Back in the PlayStation/N64 through to PS3/Xbox 360, consoles were so different to each other and PCs
With the notable exception of the original Xbox, which used mostly standard PC hardware [0] and ran mostly standard Windows [1].
True though I suspect it being, essentially, the first instance of it happening meant developers were playing catchup until it became the norm.
addaon 1 days ago [-]
> People want to turn on a box and play a game.
This is why I've never gotten any of the more recent consoles (since the N64 or so)... many of my friends have them, and every time we try to turn them on to play a game they start updating and rebooting and updating... I can play games on my computer, which I have other incentives to keep up to date, so the maintenance time is amortized; just double click and it works.
Dylan16807 2 days ago [-]
I'm trying to understand your view here. Do you have a computer? Are you advocating console plus phone plus streaming stick and nothing else?
And you don't need to build a PC to have a PC.
MBCook 2 days ago [-]
Plus developers get simplicity in having one (well two these days) configurations per console brand to deal with. Not 12 billion.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
That's the Steam Machine.
dyauspitr 2 days ago [-]
The performance cap on a console makes a big difference to me which is why I only play on the PC. It’s also not rocket science, you can just buy a good gaming PC. Games look an order of magnitude better on the PC in some cases.
afavour 2 days ago [-]
Wouldn’t the price increases on consoles also affect PCs? GPUs aren’t exactly cheap right now.
> This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
That’s also been the case for a very long time. That’s why they sign deals for exclusives.
conductr 2 days ago [-]
The idea is that the hardware overlaps enough that consumers would rather only buy the generic version which is the PC. It works for gaming and everything else. There was a time consoles thought they could steal share from the PC market by including browsers and whatnot but I think that never panned out as expected
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
The exclusives business model worked for Sony for the ps4 generation for sure. But it seems that the cost of developing ever larger and more ambitious games has ballooned in recent years. Intentionally limiting your distribution seems misguided. Even Sony has been releasing their exclusives on PC too after some exclusivity time.
On the other hand it seems to work for Nintendo which keeps their consoles intentionally underpowered and don’t try to compete with the AAA game expectations with the majority of their titles.
MBCook 2 days ago [-]
It’s their choice to continue to develop ever bigger super-tent-pole septuple-A games.
Look at all the amazing stuff in the indie space. Let your developers go wild and make neat games that don’t cost $200 billion each.
You could have so many test exclusives like the more fun and experimental stuff we had in the PS1/2 era.
You don’t have to give up the big games. Just don’t focus entirely on them.
Same problem movie studios have. They chase the “sure things” and just pump more money in to be “more sure”. It’s all more fragile than ever.
philistine 2 days ago [-]
The thing is the whole set of companies making games at Sony and Microsoft are completely built for what we call AAA games. Tons of middle managers, large teams of artists and visual effect specialists, a whole human pipeline built to sand off every single pain point in every moment of their game to make a good content tube. Those studios are incapable of just making a bunch of indie games. They would need to be completely reorganized to an insane degree.
eddythompson80 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, that's the Nintendo model I mentioned.
numpad0 2 days ago [-]
Consoles also had performance advantages up to PS2. The lightweight execution environment and exotic accelerators used in consoles allowed better gaming experience than CPU/GPU at that time. Cycle-perfect consistency of consoles also allowed games to be better "optimized", such as data aligned to boudaries and arranged on game discs to be streamed and such.
Consoles slowly started losing that plot after the launch of Xbox and GPU development mess of PS3(the PS3 CPU was supposed to be the world's first APU but Kutaragi dropped the ball big time) and now consoles are just a Nespresso experience, with just marginally cheaper hardware tied to proprietary full-priced game discs, which is not worth much.
OS argument is practically valid but... Frankly IMO that's more of a disadvantage of PCs coming from horrible near nonexistent engineering discipline of software engineering than an advantage of consoles.
frez1 2 days ago [-]
consoles are only getting much more expensive to produce as well, with PC parts prices going through the roof
exhilaration 2 days ago [-]
> standalone PC
My take is that almost nobody has a standalone PC anymore, especially kids. Kids these days all start with iPads, them maybe they move up to Macbooks once they get to high school or college. Other than the local LLM fanatics I see here on HN, I have no idea who's buying those PC towers anymore, they seem like fringe relics from the past century.
simonra 1 days ago [-]
People who want their games to look prettier and run smoother than what you can get out of the thermal and power budgets of laptops would be the ones still buying the desktops. If you additionally value a not too noisy environment home, then water cooling is way better and more accessible in the desktop form factor (though this is still niche at least for the gpus where all-in-one units are basically non-existent). Laptops are by all means nice toys as well, but on the go phones are better entertainment while in transit, and once you're somewhere you left the comfort of your home to experience it's rarely for your gaming hobby (however it might be a setting where you're reminded that computers are still relatively cheap compared to certain music instruments or sports equipment).
Razengan 2 days ago [-]
> Consoles are a struggling market right now.
You're out of touch.
Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC. They ask for a PlayStation or an Xbox or a "Nintendo" (yep that's what people still call the Switch)
In conbinis, there are Xbox and PlayStation gift cards hanging from the shelves, in the local currency.
There are accessories for PS/Xbox/Switch everywhere, more than PC gaming accessories.
And it's not because the PC stuff gets sold out while the consy stuff gathers cobwebs: If that was the case the consoles would stop getting restocked after a few months, but they keep stocking newer stuff. Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
If you go hang out at someone's home, nobody says "Let's go to my bedroom desk and play something on the PC", no they crash on the couch and turn on the TV and fire up FIFA or some other normie shit.
Macha 1 days ago [-]
> Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
Since you mention conbinis, I'm guessing you're in Japan. Having just been there, game software is receding from the smaller hobby stores, and then in the tech stores like Bic Camera, the PC gaming stuff is one floor down.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
> Since you mention conbinis, I'm guessing you're in Japan
I use that word for any similar convenience stores in all East Asian countries now ^^
BobbyTables2 2 days ago [-]
I feel like gaming controllers for PCs never gained popular acceptance.
Sure, there are advantages to using a keyboard+mouse in a FPS game but it’s a much different gaming experience than a handheld controller.
Macha 1 days ago [-]
It feels like the problem was the market ended up in a race to the bottom and so most of the made-for-PC controllers just sucked. The best option was to buy your preferred console controller and use that with PC.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
Xbox controllers work pretty seamlessly on Microsoft platforms.
But I don't get why HN is randomly shadowbanning half my comments and not the other half! This one wasn't shadowbanned.
what 2 days ago [-]
Usually means your comments are getting flagged by other users. I’m not going to dig through your comments to speculate on why, but I don’t think there are any automated filters that will kill only some of your comments.
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
They're instantly pre-flagged upon posting and some others aren't.
This one came pre-flagged.
Macha 1 days ago [-]
Probably your account is shadowbanned but people with showdead on are individually vouching for some comments which unbans those comments only.
Vaushite 1 days ago [-]
Instantly when posting them?
Vaushite 16 hours ago [-]
The game has changed. Now I can only post a few times per hour and they're automatically flagged. No moderator has given me any contact to explain what I'm being punished for, so I guess I'll be making a new account and hope the same glitch doesn't occur again.
Razengan 2 days ago [-]
> I feel like gaming controllers for PCs never gained popular acceptance.
I will never forgive Microsoft for killing SideWinder.
throwaway314155 2 days ago [-]
> Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC.
This is still the case in the U.S. for the most part. The point is moreso that barrier to entry is lowering. The SteamDeck is a PC/console and a good example of a possible trend in that direction.
Razengan 2 days ago [-]
Just a couple weeks ago in Bali someone said "Oh you have a Nintendo too?" and pulled out their Switch. Meanwhile I haven't made a Steam friend in the wild in years
Hell I saw PlayStations in barbershops in Vietnam! There's no way you'd see a PC in those environments.
The Steam Deck certainly reduces the gap, but I've yet to see it penetrate "normie" social circles, and it's still rare in random gaming shops compared to console stuff. Have Valve released their OS for other handheld manufacturers to use? That's probably the only way to end Windows' dominance and improve the coolness factor of "PC" gaming.
throwaway314155 2 days ago [-]
Yeah I think we're mostly in agreement. Consoles will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future.
2 days ago [-]
WhiteDawn 2 days ago [-]
Another attraction for publishers was (historically) a much lower adoption of piracy.
Part of the sales pitch is you need more than just a torrent client to pirate.
Now in the world of AI I think this moat is evaporating. Hypervisor exploits are dropping like rain and determined individuals can vibe code a reasonably performant emulator in a couple of weeks.
In that world the only reasonable edge you have left is high prestige exclusives and merchandising/physical sales.
Nintendo has this cornered, one of the few companies who can pull off a rabid fan base buying a console they already own because this time there’s a triforce on it.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are diluting their own IP and going full digital. Writing is on the wall if you ask me.
MBCook 2 days ago [-]
Consoles won’t go anywhere. They have advantages but more than anything so so SO SO many consumers want them and don’t want to mess with computers.
They’re gaming appliances and that will still be a huge draw.
PS: Sony gave up PC publishing, so that argument no longer holds. It was a dumb move as you said.
donbox 2 days ago [-]
Not trusting in Netflix at the moment to deliver (though I own some stock). Fallout, which Amazon exexuted, was on par with Andor ( a Disney series) in my book. Case by case deals make sense to me.
Cyph0n 2 days ago [-]
Andor is in a league of its own imo. Once in a generation kind of show.
But it is similar to Fallout in that it was able to break out of its universe. Andor is enjoyable even if one hates Star Wars; Fallout is enjoyable even if you dislike gaming.
zug_zug 2 days ago [-]
Fallout on par with Andor??? Wild take. The only thing Netflix has ever done that comes close to Andor imo is Bojack. I felt Fallout had one good season then quickly became rudderless and at this point is half a notch above all those shows that I can't even remember how many seasons I've watched because it all blends together.
ailun 2 days ago [-]
Beef, Dark, Mindhunters, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and Narcos are also in the same tier as Andor for me. Black Mirror also although it didn’t start with Netflix.
TheAtomic 2 days ago [-]
100%
AstralSerenity 2 days ago [-]
No, not at all. Arcane was on par with Andor, if you want a gaming example. Fallout is a fine watch, but it is a cut below.
ocd 2 days ago [-]
For the amount of risk in creating film or television adaptations of video games, doesn't seem like an amazing deal for Netflix, but I guess I also wouldn't offer exclusivity on something of mine at that scale for that much time in a quickly developing time like the present.
Regardless, I think the cracks are showing in all entertainment industry. I don't understand why anyone has been buying an XBOX after the 360 given home computing accessibility only got better around the time that generation ended. The line between a console like an XBOX and PC was already extremely blurred back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me to buy a gaming device where your software is tied to a specific generation's hardware. I just wanted to say that since while I don't think this licensing would be a good deal for either party, I resent Microsoft's arrogance about how they think their place in this industry is permanent.
desolate_muffin 21 hours ago [-]
> I don't understand why anyone has been buying an XBOX after the 360
There are many valid reasons people still buy consoles. It's cheaper than a gaming PC, easier to use, has optimization for games, and consoles usually have many exclusives. I have both and I still prefer my PS5 over my PC.
xnx 2 days ago [-]
Title is kind of incomplete.
"[Netflix] recently made an offer to exclusively license Xbox titles from Microsoft for film and TV adaptations: $500 million for seven years."
This needs to be the top comment because the current title is horribly misleading.
Ekaros 1 days ago [-]
500 million sounds actually pretty cheap for amount of IP they must hold at this point. Some it very big some of it future potential. Even 800 million would have been cheap. They simply do have big catalog of things.
2 days ago [-]
2 days ago [-]
bobbyblackstone 2 days ago [-]
I have referred this back to the exec team and encouraged them to sign the $800 million dollar offer.
For 12 years of rights.
2 days ago [-]
jdw64 2 days ago [-]
But I feel sorry that Xbox gets so much criticism. Xbox itself may have weak game sales because of Windows integration and Game Pass, but separate from that, the first-party games got poor reviews. Microsoft’s wrong strategy (sales shrinking because of Game Pass) is part of it, but Microsoft also failed at quality control for its first-party titles.(like redfall,starfiled etc...)
steele 2 days ago [-]
Netflix saturating the landscape with poorly executed adaptations of Microsoft owned media properties is almost certainly not worth the short term dollars for long-term erosion of their perceived value, especially without some certainty of securing complementary title launches. Given the shuttering of studios to right-size for the cambrian explosion of slop for COVID era hardware, Xbox probably wouldn't be able to make that capital work for them any better than sitting on licences until they accrue nostalgia.
unsupp0rted 2 days ago [-]
Halo could be (peak) Game of Thrones level in the right hands, which means the right execs, producers and investors just as much as it does creatives.
Unfortunately, the right hands potentially no longer exist. The current generation seems largely unable to produce good things, with few exceptions (notably Andor)
a34729t 2 days ago [-]
GOT is hot naked sexy people and swords. I feel like Halo isnt that, at all.
unsupp0rted 2 days ago [-]
The majority of GOT isn't hot naked sexy people or swords: it's conversations in rooms. Most good shows are conversations in rooms, which is why it's so surprising we've lost the ability to produce and write them.
Babylon 5 demonstrated that you can keep absolutely everything else crappy (effects, costumes, heck acting and even cinematography), so long as you're good at conversations in rooms.
philistine 2 days ago [-]
I don't think you understand the appeal of Halo if you think it can be about people talking in rooms. Halo would have to be something far more complex, like Band of Brothers.
unsupp0rted 1 days ago [-]
Exactly: it would have to be like Band of Brothers, or like Space: Above and Beyond from the 90s, but with a 2027 budget and effects. Or screw the effects: just good 2027 talking-in-rooms writing is nearly enough.
The Halo universe offers a lot to mine from, just like the Star Wars Universe did for Andor. It's just waiting for the chosen one writer to be allowed to do the job. Who's the J. Michael Straczynski or Tony Gilroy for the Halo universe?
caconym_ 2 days ago [-]
I think Halo could successfully get the Andor treatment (intentional departure from the tone and scope of mainline entries) in the right hands, but so could pretty much anything, and such hands are hard to find.
hattmall 2 days ago [-]
Anything could be game of thrones (early seasons) if it well written. You don't really need any Halo rights if you have good writers and can make a good show. The point of having Halo rights is they let you produce a mid show but have an automatic audience.
unsupp0rted 2 days ago [-]
It seems that way, but it's not that easy. Starcraft competitions are still on tv in South Korea 28 years later because they got the balance just right, and all the dirty little details of that universe.
In theory you can make any sci fi show about future humans and a couple other species going to war. Should be straightforward.
But getting the balance of that universe right in terms of little details is tricky: Halo has done the heavy lifting already.
Macha 1 days ago [-]
> Starcraft competitions are still on tv in South Korea 28 years later because they got the balance just right, and all the dirty little details of that universe.
Are they? I thought after the pro league failed it's transition to SC2 and the GSL ended that it mostly went to streaming platforms.
steele 1 days ago [-]
Can you explain the comparison of sports with fictional narrative?
unsupp0rted 6 hours ago [-]
Halo and Starcraft are both about the Terrans going to war with alien species.
Same old story, right?
But getting the balance of technologies, motivations (e.g. jihad-dynamics), and nitty-gritty details (e.g. the splinter factions) right is the trick: it's much easier to do wrong than to do right.
steele 1 days ago [-]
Red vs Blue is pretty great
jayd16 2 days ago [-]
Their game adaptations are actually pretty good though.
zug_zug 2 days ago [-]
The only one I can think of is Arcane season 1. What are you thinking of?
jayd16 1 days ago [-]
Castlevania and Cyberpunk are great. Devil May Cry is fun.
roosterIllusi0n 2 days ago [-]
Microslop really must think they are irreplaceable.
LoganDark 2 days ago [-]
The live-action Halo series was so good. Anything else like it these days? I also liked Pantheon, Arcane, Atlas (2024), I Am Mother, Tau, and probably some others I'm forgetting. Total sucker for advanced tech/magic systems that are consistent.
(I even like some kids' shows too, like Tales of Arcadia and Miraculous Ladybug, just for having consistent tech/magic systems... also Daniel Spellbound)
I know of some much older shows with incredibly huge lore, like Star Trek and Stargate, and I do love reading about them, but I'm still struggling to get started with any of their shows/movies themselves, they feel a bit dry.
rapatel0 2 days ago [-]
The live action halo looked nice but was a story telling abomination completely unfaithful to the source material.
LoganDark 2 days ago [-]
I liked it
donbox 2 days ago [-]
Oh my gosh, someone reboot the Stargate please - in any form.
throwaway314155 2 days ago [-]
That was probably one of the worst video game adaptations I've ever seen. Especially in comparison to recent additions like The Last of Us and Fallout. No disrespect.
kyriakos 2 days ago [-]
To be fair last of us after season 1 was pretty bad too. Halo got better in season 2 but the awful first season killed it. Other then fallout and arcane there haven't been any good game adaptations (on TV). I'd go as far as say that twisted metal was more fun than any of them.
throwaway314155 1 days ago [-]
The Last of Us season 2 was fine. They didn't follow the chronology and structure from the second game and it suffered because of it. People who didn't play the games probably didn't notice this.
It wasn't anywhere near the (low) quality of Halo season 1. Did they continue to show Master Chief's face in season 2? Because that alone ruined it for me. And they didn't even get his appearance right!
roosterIllusi0n 2 days ago [-]
I recommend anyone to watch the two parter in season 2 for the fall of reach. The entire existence of this show is worth for those two episodes.
kleeklee 2 days ago [-]
The second season was actually really good. Unfortunately, I think the first season turned too many people away, and by the time the show got better, it was already too late. Cancelled. Such a shame.
kyriakos 2 days ago [-]
If it came out 15 years ago it would have been a big success. These days there isn't a lot of patience from srudios execs and audiences to allow for a TV series to get it's footing. I'm seeing this with a lot of older good TV shows that wouldn't be successful in today's environment (for example star trek TNG)
jackbeanstalk20 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Vaushite 2 days ago [-]
Just use different IP, or pirate it. Don't rely on permission from someone who is incentivized to deny permission.
Why's this comment shadowbanned? Is it because of the piracy?
samtheprogram 2 days ago [-]
This is so, so wrong, at least in the context that you're pitching it.
Fallout is great example of a subset of their IP making a huge turnaround. Halo is not.
To sell all the IP at once is grave mistake. They would easily make more on separate deals. Netflix not taking it all at 800m seems like a mistake.
It's like the entire company is only satisfied with being #1.
The whole thing is very confused and lacks consistency. The latest rumours are they are going to break up its Game Pass subscription offering so there are different subscriptions for multiplayer, cloud, games, etc. Isn't that the opposite of an effective subscription strategy?
Steam just sits back and takes money, for the most part. The hardware/software/advertising spend is probably a drop in the bucket compared to MS.
I think I understand why Microsoft costs are higher than others due to their a spending spree, so the break even is much higher.
You don't seem to understand the difference between the margins on a sale and the averaged margins once the studio development costs are included.
If the store takes 30% you are still left with 70% gross margins but if you have development costs, you maybe only have enough sales to break even or just barely be profitable. A 30% margin on the entire studio means the studio must produce guaranteed successes consistently.
It might also not be obvious but if Microsoft imposed 30% margins, those are a floor, whereas a fee reduces the ceiling. They are not the same even if we assume the target is met.
Game revenues follow a power law type distribution so they're hurting indies and leaving money on the table.
Valve targeted the big releases / industry players specifically because the context in which Valve added that was where all the big players were making their own store fronts: EA Original/App Ubisoft launcher, Blizzard Battle.net. And Epic Game Store, where Ubisoft (or another big player I forget) was talking about abandoning their launcher for Epic which has a lower revenue cut like ~12%. So it seemed Valve made that change to shore up keeping the big industry players releasing on Steam.
Only Xbox, the games console, is having a bad time, the publishing part is doing great with movie licenses, and all the studios that belong to Microsoft, regardless where they sell their games.
In the XBox One gen they bet big on an ill-advised (but then-trendy) strategy to 'own the living room', devoting hardware CoGS to add TV / DVR features. It was a great strategy - for MSFT - but not so much for gamers. By 2018-19 it was clear they'd lost the hardware platform battle. The only bright spot was Game Pass which was working pretty well thanks to PC / XBox + web synergy. So, they went for a BIG strategic bet. An all-or-nothing, high-risk, high-reward gamble to move 'up the stack' from hardware by turning Game Pass into the "Netflix of Games". Forever being Pepsi to Sony's Coke wouldn't matter because content was where all the margin and sweet recurring revenue was anyway.
So MSFT spent over $100B acquiring game studios and... it didn't work. While it seemed like a reasonable bet in 2018-19, it's now clear no one can be the Netflix of games. The unit economics don't work because people watch a lot more new movies and shows in a year than they buy new games (the top ten console games capture over half the revenue). MSFT bet that a large number of gamers would keep paying >$20 - $30 / mo but after the COVID shutdowns ended, ASP growth stalled below $20 and the higher the ASP got, the more the churn went vertical. Oops!
Without that context, nothing makes much sense. But when you understand they're now dealing with the aftermath of that all-or-nothing gamble, it does. XBox isn't going away but MSFT is also done "investing big to win" in gaming. Now Sharma's job is to recoup as much of that $100B as possible by 1) Selling the shit out of all the evergreen hits they own like CoD, and 2) Milking their large library of non-hit titles to harvest as much revenue as she can while spending as little as possible.
The other subtext here is that if you manage to build a dominant multi-platform subscription business with a tens of millions of gamers paying $25-$30/mo and low churn. That's a high-margin business with flywheel effects that smell like Office365 and throw off enough cash to easily service that $100B in debt. But without that high, sticky ARR, gaming is a much lower margin business than any of MSFT's stable of winners like Azure. It's not that XBox is a bad business, it's that it's competing against much higher margin business units for each incremental dollar of investment.
The next failure was Xbox Live. The video game market is a hit-based market with big tent-pole franchises doing large launches. For a modern example, look at the hype around GTA6. Launches sold games and exclusives sold consoles. Microsoft put huge game launches on Xbox Live for their relatively low monthly cost and lost millions on those launches.
They also bought a bunch of game studios which is a terrible strategy for a console maker. Meta made the same mistake with the Quest.
It's was never the lack of commitment to a strategy -- it was just having the wrong strategy to begin with.
Do you meam potential upcomimg game that may be vaporware for a decade or two?
so they switch course midway to focus at AI
For example, the deal Sony Pictures made which gave Netflix all global film and sequel rights to KPop Demon Hunters with zero back-end participation on the billions of dollars Netflix is now certain to earn from KPop is widely considered by experts the single worst streaming deal ever made. And that was just one unproven animated kids musical. XBox has proven mega-IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Halo, Diablo and Elder Scrolls as well as lots of unproven properties - any one of which might become the next KPop Demon Hunters.
Well, lets take just one of those examples, Minecraft.
Cost apparently $150mil to make, and so far, has earned around $960mil. So if we use the usual doubling of the cost to get to the real cost with marketing and everything, it cost ~$300mil, so that is about $660mil profit.
Now of course that gets split, Xbox wouldn't get 100% of that, but still, even if it got 50%, thats still most of the way to the $500mil they turned down, on just ONE film, and only factoring in the theatrical release profit, not including any money it would have made on merch, or streaming, or anything else.
Good analysis but a 50/50 split after costs would be unusually high. That level of back-end usually requires investing significant capital in a film. It's a high-risk business like VC where most releases lose money which is (hopefully) offset by a few outsized hits.
The shape of a pure IP license deal is typically more like ~10% share after costs. But that's generally for a property like Fallout with at least some known value. Beyond their hits, MSFT has a back catalog of game titles with unknown cross-media potential large enough to make the likelihood of a break-out like KPop fairly high. I suspect the deal stalled at $500M offer / $800M ask over theatrical back-end with a minimum production guarantee.
But this isn't a normal IP license deal nor just a streaming rights or even a global distribution deal, it's an exclusive IP library production deal which has different dynamics. MSFT spent over $100B acquiring game studios in an ill-advised strategy to turn Game Pass into the "Netflix of Games". While that seemed like a reasonable high-risk, high-reward bet in 2018-19, it's now clear no one can be the Netflix of games. The unit economics don't work because people watch a lot more movies and shows in a year than they buy games. MSFT bet $100B that a large number of gamers would pay >$20/mo but after the COVID shutdowns ended, ASP growth stalled below $20 and the higher the ASP got, the more the churn went vertical. Oops.
Now Sharma's job is to recoup as much of that $100B as possible by 1) Selling the shit out of all the evergreen hits they own like CoD, and 2) Milking that huge library of non-hit titles to harvest as much revenue as she can while spending as little as possible. Netflix sees this and thinks "Let's toss in a low-ball offer and see how hungry they are for quick cash." But Sharma has already modeled out a revenue projection for her evergreen titles and knows what they'll make over the next 5-6 years (to within +/- ~10%). CoD gonna keep CoD-ing, she just needs to turn the crank competently and not fuck it up. Her only upside here is to find a way to harvest more than the 'expected value' from the pool of unknown-value IPs, which are essentially lotto tickets. In terms of cross-media value, most of the unknowns will be losers and the tricky part is it costs money to audience test each IP to get an educated guess on if it has cross-media potential and then a lot more money to produce any that look good.
My guess is the deal fell apart over minimum production guarantees (MPG). Netflix says "We'll give you $500M and cover all the development, production and distribution costs but we also keep ALL the upside." Sharma says "Do I look as dumb as Sony Pictures? :-) You'd be tying up exclusive rights to all my IP and you can control your downside costs by simply not testing or producing any but the safest-bets. If any of those become the next KPop, I'd like a little back-end upside and I want some guarantee you're going test at least half the back catalog and actually produce a couple of the unknowns so I at least have a chance one becomes the next KPop." Netflix does the math and says "You want us to guarantee spending ~$20M in development testing plus ~$100M in production on unknowns on top of $500M for rights? Hmmm, what's the price to just test, develop and produce as much or little as we want and still own all the upside?" MSFT comes back with "If promising to spend $620M feels 'too rich' then a full buyout to tie up our library, develop all or none, and keep all the upside is $800M. Alternatively, let's explore actually partnering. If you want a lower front-end price, cut us in on some back-end upside or put some more skin in the game with MPG. Or lets split the known and unknown IPs into two pools with different back-end/MPGs, or maybe a sliding scale, like you pay no back-end on anything until after you've earned 3X its prod cost?" Netflix: "Yeah, nah. $500M, take it or leave it."
In reality, straight buyouts are very rare even on single-title, distribution-only deals. They were probably already deep in negotiating pool splits, back-end rates and sliding MPG scales with Netflix hoping MSFT would make a Sony-sized IP mistake and MSFT trying not to become the industry's next cautionary tale. Even the infamous Sony/Netflix KPop deal was something like $125M to buy a 'first-look' right on just a sub-pool of unknown IPs in development with a buyout option on any that they liked for exclusive worldwide distribution (theatrical & streaming) with no back-end - and not just on the first release but all derivatives, forever. IIRC, exercising the distribution buyout on a movie required an additional upfront payment based on a percentage of the production cost Sony had spent, which was around $20M for KPop. In the midst of COVID shutdowns, Sony thought they were turning long-shot option rights on a pool of unknown, low-budget probable 'dogs' into a little guaranteed cash. I mean a niche animated musical targeted at teen girls in Asian markets? Some (now-former) junior Sony exec is like, "Sure, Netflix. If you can sell that to your boss and get a check here by the end of the quarter, we'll let you own ALL that upside (muffled giggling)." For over a century now, the lesson to never give up ALL the back-end keeps being re-learned in Hollywood.
I think Sony cutting that deal with NetFlix was a special brand of dumb because Netflix has compiled more and better viewing habit data for longer than anyone ever. Giving NetFlix a 'first look' deal that lets them test your pre-release movies in their secret 'Magic Analytics Black Box' is a great idea, IF you keep some back-end on the first release AND all the sequels and ancillary. You share a little in Netflix's upside on a mega-hit but, most important, NetFlix activating their option is an invaluable signal that lets you double down early on any property the NetFlix 'Magic Box' thinks is a winner. So... all we really know here is MSFT is dumb enough to make a huge $100B strategic mistake but that's STILL not quite as dumb as Sony Pictures. :-)
This may yet come to pass.
My eyes are about to roll out of my head. Stale intellectual property can make unexpectedly good money for a little while, but this ain't exactly Mickey Mouse. Even Mickey Mouse is out of steam by now.
Microsoft is rejecting the deal simply because they can afford the loss even if they let everything under "Xbox" rot. They will only accept someone willing to overpay.
Hasn't Mickey Mouse been out of steam since the 50s? He is a normal guy and you need to base any short about someone else to make it interesting. Like the squirrels or Donald Duck...
Oh dear, someone forgot to read the article.
I’m sure if they are forced to (legally or otherwise) they can find a solution, but it would be a thorny thing to split.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/games/962837/microsoft-xbox-spin-of...
The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone. (Nintendo is a bit of an exception here, but they were always playing a different market than Sony and MS anyway)
This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
The price advantage is going away fast, especially with talk that next-gen consoles will top USD 1000.
All they have left is their prestige first-party products, which they don't seem to really know how to use effectively. Some of them have solid cultural penetration, and could spawn broader media franchises with the right handling.
No, the main driver is still there. People do not want to build and maintain PCs. Your 14-year-old nephew doesn't want to do it, either. People want to turn on a box and play a game. I am technical and I want absolutely nothing to do with maintaining a PC. I'll take the console experience every single time.
The advantage of consoles are:
- No minimum/recomended config to check and insurance that a game or an accesorry bought for a console gen will work well for that console gen. In term of game compat this is something Steam tried to with the steam deck but has no way to enforce really and the biggest one imho. When you buy a brand new "budget" computer in the price range of a console you usually knownyou won't be able to play some of the upcoming AAA titles at least woth decent graphic quality.
- availability in retail stores
- ability to sell games in the second hand market but I don't think this is something that is here to stay with the disappearance of physical medias
Since the PS4/Xbox One, they’ve been similar enough in underlying architecture that engines like Unreal have been able to smooth over the differences enough to make multiplatform technically viable. It’s meant companies like Capcom with RE Engine have made a huge success out of selling across all platforms, including PC. That freedom for publishers is a problem for console manufacturers who have fewer 3rd party exclusives as a result.
With the notable exception of the original Xbox, which used mostly standard PC hardware [0] and ran mostly standard Windows [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_technical_specifications
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software#Original_...
This is why I've never gotten any of the more recent consoles (since the N64 or so)... many of my friends have them, and every time we try to turn them on to play a game they start updating and rebooting and updating... I can play games on my computer, which I have other incentives to keep up to date, so the maintenance time is amortized; just double click and it works.
And you don't need to build a PC to have a PC.
> This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
That’s also been the case for a very long time. That’s why they sign deals for exclusives.
On the other hand it seems to work for Nintendo which keeps their consoles intentionally underpowered and don’t try to compete with the AAA game expectations with the majority of their titles.
Look at all the amazing stuff in the indie space. Let your developers go wild and make neat games that don’t cost $200 billion each.
You could have so many test exclusives like the more fun and experimental stuff we had in the PS1/2 era.
You don’t have to give up the big games. Just don’t focus entirely on them.
Same problem movie studios have. They chase the “sure things” and just pump more money in to be “more sure”. It’s all more fragile than ever.
Consoles slowly started losing that plot after the launch of Xbox and GPU development mess of PS3(the PS3 CPU was supposed to be the world's first APU but Kutaragi dropped the ball big time) and now consoles are just a Nespresso experience, with just marginally cheaper hardware tied to proprietary full-priced game discs, which is not worth much.
OS argument is practically valid but... Frankly IMO that's more of a disadvantage of PCs coming from horrible near nonexistent engineering discipline of software engineering than an advantage of consoles.
My take is that almost nobody has a standalone PC anymore, especially kids. Kids these days all start with iPads, them maybe they move up to Macbooks once they get to high school or college. Other than the local LLM fanatics I see here on HN, I have no idea who's buying those PC towers anymore, they seem like fringe relics from the past century.
You're out of touch.
Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC. They ask for a PlayStation or an Xbox or a "Nintendo" (yep that's what people still call the Switch)
In conbinis, there are Xbox and PlayStation gift cards hanging from the shelves, in the local currency.
There are accessories for PS/Xbox/Switch everywhere, more than PC gaming accessories.
And it's not because the PC stuff gets sold out while the consy stuff gathers cobwebs: If that was the case the consoles would stop getting restocked after a few months, but they keep stocking newer stuff. Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
If you go hang out at someone's home, nobody says "Let's go to my bedroom desk and play something on the PC", no they crash on the couch and turn on the TV and fire up FIFA or some other normie shit.
Since you mention conbinis, I'm guessing you're in Japan. Having just been there, game software is receding from the smaller hobby stores, and then in the tech stores like Bic Camera, the PC gaming stuff is one floor down.
I use that word for any similar convenience stores in all East Asian countries now ^^
Sure, there are advantages to using a keyboard+mouse in a FPS game but it’s a much different gaming experience than a handheld controller.
But I don't get why HN is randomly shadowbanning half my comments and not the other half! This one wasn't shadowbanned.
This one came pre-flagged.
I will never forgive Microsoft for killing SideWinder.
This is still the case in the U.S. for the most part. The point is moreso that barrier to entry is lowering. The SteamDeck is a PC/console and a good example of a possible trend in that direction.
Hell I saw PlayStations in barbershops in Vietnam! There's no way you'd see a PC in those environments.
The Steam Deck certainly reduces the gap, but I've yet to see it penetrate "normie" social circles, and it's still rare in random gaming shops compared to console stuff. Have Valve released their OS for other handheld manufacturers to use? That's probably the only way to end Windows' dominance and improve the coolness factor of "PC" gaming.
Part of the sales pitch is you need more than just a torrent client to pirate.
Now in the world of AI I think this moat is evaporating. Hypervisor exploits are dropping like rain and determined individuals can vibe code a reasonably performant emulator in a couple of weeks.
In that world the only reasonable edge you have left is high prestige exclusives and merchandising/physical sales.
Nintendo has this cornered, one of the few companies who can pull off a rabid fan base buying a console they already own because this time there’s a triforce on it.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are diluting their own IP and going full digital. Writing is on the wall if you ask me.
They’re gaming appliances and that will still be a huge draw.
PS: Sony gave up PC publishing, so that argument no longer holds. It was a dumb move as you said.
But it is similar to Fallout in that it was able to break out of its universe. Andor is enjoyable even if one hates Star Wars; Fallout is enjoyable even if you dislike gaming.
Regardless, I think the cracks are showing in all entertainment industry. I don't understand why anyone has been buying an XBOX after the 360 given home computing accessibility only got better around the time that generation ended. The line between a console like an XBOX and PC was already extremely blurred back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me to buy a gaming device where your software is tied to a specific generation's hardware. I just wanted to say that since while I don't think this licensing would be a good deal for either party, I resent Microsoft's arrogance about how they think their place in this industry is permanent.
There are many valid reasons people still buy consoles. It's cheaper than a gaming PC, easier to use, has optimization for games, and consoles usually have many exclusives. I have both and I still prefer my PS5 over my PC.
"[Netflix] recently made an offer to exclusively license Xbox titles from Microsoft for film and TV adaptations: $500 million for seven years."
Source: https://puck.news/newsletter_content/what-im-hearing-the-pet... (full text shows in reading mode)
For 12 years of rights.
Unfortunately, the right hands potentially no longer exist. The current generation seems largely unable to produce good things, with few exceptions (notably Andor)
Babylon 5 demonstrated that you can keep absolutely everything else crappy (effects, costumes, heck acting and even cinematography), so long as you're good at conversations in rooms.
The Halo universe offers a lot to mine from, just like the Star Wars Universe did for Andor. It's just waiting for the chosen one writer to be allowed to do the job. Who's the J. Michael Straczynski or Tony Gilroy for the Halo universe?
In theory you can make any sci fi show about future humans and a couple other species going to war. Should be straightforward.
But getting the balance of that universe right in terms of little details is tricky: Halo has done the heavy lifting already.
Are they? I thought after the pro league failed it's transition to SC2 and the GSL ended that it mostly went to streaming platforms.
Same old story, right?
But getting the balance of technologies, motivations (e.g. jihad-dynamics), and nitty-gritty details (e.g. the splinter factions) right is the trick: it's much easier to do wrong than to do right.
(I even like some kids' shows too, like Tales of Arcadia and Miraculous Ladybug, just for having consistent tech/magic systems... also Daniel Spellbound)
I know of some much older shows with incredibly huge lore, like Star Trek and Stargate, and I do love reading about them, but I'm still struggling to get started with any of their shows/movies themselves, they feel a bit dry.
It wasn't anywhere near the (low) quality of Halo season 1. Did they continue to show Master Chief's face in season 2? Because that alone ruined it for me. And they didn't even get his appearance right!
Why's this comment shadowbanned? Is it because of the piracy?
Fallout is great example of a subset of their IP making a huge turnaround. Halo is not.
To sell all the IP at once is grave mistake. They would easily make more on separate deals. Netflix not taking it all at 800m seems like a mistake.