I’ve been Gaming on Xbox since Day One on the OG I’ve seen Xbox have its ups & downs. You know how times I’ve seen “it’s being sold off, it’s deadJim” ? Over 20… & it’s still here. There’s a huge double standard to the coverage of Xbox, & they’re held to a higher standard

Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire. Microsoft considering to spin off XBOX division. @elonmusk are you thinking what I’m thinking? 😂

Turns out concerns on #Xbox business model sustainability had validity, contrary to fanboy challenges and PR, as Satya Nadella himself admits: "We've invested a lot. No one can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years. And now we have to turn this into a sustainable business, that delivers what is fundamentally one of the best sources of entertainment. The challenge we have is, we've not been monetizing that entertainment. In fact, if anything we've been subsidizing that entertainment. In-fact there's more monetisation of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft." So Satya confirms they've been subsidising things, that they have to turn it into a sustainable business, and that he believes they need far greater monetisation. Asha Sharma admitted a few days ago that Xbox's accountability margin is just 3% now, but keep in mind that does not include hardware losses and other costs, so in reality the actual operating income is either lower, or Xbox is operating at a LOSS. So we can say with confidence now, the strategies Xbox pushed over the last decade or more, that countless fanboys glazed, ultimately failed and were not enough to compensate for a lack of more compelling exclusives relative to the competition. Everything from Kinect, entertainment focus, PC day and date and play anywhere, Game Pass, XCloud, exclusivity de-emphasing, specific acquisitions, console split SKU etc. One major thing the "Game Pass is profitable" crowd consistently failed to understand, is that the true cost of GP wasn't just the licensing costs for games on the service, or even development costs as well, instead it was always the immense sales cannibalisation it causes too, which directly offsets revenue gained. That's why Call of Duty had to be removed, because the massive cannibalisation of its traditional sales was not offset by subscription revenue growth, hence a net negative. It's also why despite releasing games on PC day and date AND making ~$5bn per annum on Game Pass, over the course of the first 4 years of the new gen, Xbox revenue growth was STILL near flat sans ABK, while competitors saw huge revenue growth in the same timeframe with more traditional business models. Deduct Zenimax revenue, and Xbox likely saw revenue DECLINE. FY2021 - $15.37bn FY2022 - $16.23bn FY2023 - $15.47bn Y2024 - $15.75bn And now Asha has admitted they've seen a further ~$500m revenue decline with ABK included. It's a similar thing with "Game Pass helps game sales" PR. That was only ever true when GP was in its infancy. As I'd always said, it would inevitably lead to greater cannibalisation of sales the more popular the service got, and that's exactly what happened and what MS themselves admitted. In any case, as a general rule I think Xbox and PC/Xbox fans should just stop debating others with a much keener grasp of the industry, data and business, on matters of gaming business strategy. Because no fandom has a worse track record. Y'all have continually misread and been wrong on practically everything on matters related to business strategy (esp console side), many for the better part of a decade or more. All because your views are guided by platform preference tribalism and PR, not astute analysis, data, facts, financials or critical thinking.

ÚLTIMA HORA 🚨 Satya Nadella hablo sobre el "Reset" de Xbox afirmando que: "Nadie puede acusar a Microsoft de no haber invertido en videojuegos durante los últimos 25 años", dijo Nadella sobre el negocio de Xbox y los videojuegos. "Y ahora tenemos que convertir esto en un negocio sostenible." A pesar de todo el valor de entretenimiento que ofrece Xbox, dijo, Microsoft no ha estado monetizando ese entretenimiento, y de hecho lo ha estado subvencionando. Añadió entre risas: "De hecho, hay más monetización de juegos de Xbox en YouTube que en Microsoft."

$814M invested into The Initiative and Perfect Dark wasn’t just a dev budget, it was capital allocation across talent, outsourcing, infrastructure, payroll and years of operating expenditure. A textbook example of sunk cost, impaired investment and shareholder value destruction.

Today is graduation party day. Wish me luck once again y'all!

Criticize all you want, but I don’t think Tomb Raider Lara Croft has ever looked better!