Comments 633

Re: Xbox Gaming Revenue Down 4% YoY In Latest Earnings Report

Sakai

@themightyant alot of people don't buy bundles and wait for the console to become available on it own. The same with ps5 last year, if you wanted to buy a bundle with tshirts, controllers and games you could get one. But alot of people waited until this year when normal stock was available and you could buy the console by itself without a mark up.

In other news:

ABK deal Blocked by the CMA due to Cloud Concerns. Seems like it's all over

Re: Xbox Gaming Revenue Down 4% YoY In Latest Earnings Report

Sakai

@themightyant the standard Xbox Series X is currently out of stock at Smyths, Amazon and Argos when I just checked. Some do have stock of the Forza Bundle, so they obviously are having some supply issues and have been for a few months. Our resident sales fanatic Dezzy has mentioned it a few times recently, of low or no stock on Series X. All the sites have plenty series s and ps5. This time last year it wasn't even possible to buy a ps5 at all, so having huge increases this year is to be expected

Re: Xbox Gaming Revenue Down 4% YoY In Latest Earnings Report

Sakai

When I purchased God of War Ragnarok last weekend, I noticed Smyths Toys had stock of ps5 and series s, but the Series X was out of stock. And on Amazon they only have the Forza bundle in stock, no standard series x. Thats here in the UK. I was kind of surprised tbh as I thought stock problems had ended

Re: Xbox Exec Responds To Hi-Fi RUSH Rumour, Says The Game Was A 'Break Out Hit'

Sakai

@mousieone I was just pointing out the UK is far from PS v Switch, and in the UK the xbox is far from a Non-factor. Even during the ps4 dominating generation, it was very close. It always is.
I am from Newcastle (same as Jim Ryan) and its awesome our games market is so close. Competition is great for consumers like me and you.
I have 2 kids, a boy and girl, and they are more interested in mobile and pc, and hardly ever play on my PS5, Switch or Xbox. Roblox and Minecraft are the go to games. I'm not sure consoles are that interesting to their generation

Re: Xbox Exec Responds To Hi-Fi RUSH Rumour, Says The Game Was A 'Break Out Hit'

Sakai

@mousieone
The UK games industry is the most competitive console market in the world. Over the last 10 years, Xbox, PS and Nintendo have all led the market at one point.

Last year, Xbox Series, PS5 and Switch all had over 30% market share each (GfK data)

In terms of PS4 vs Xbox One, 57% of sales were for PS4 and 43% for Xbox One. On PS5 vs Xbox Series it's pretty much the same (56% vs 44%). It's close"

Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/Chris_Dring/status/1636394786235064321

Re: Rumour: Xbox Exclusive Hi-Fi RUSH 'Didn't Make The Money It Needed To Make'

Sakai

@UltimateOtaku91 i am prerty sure Forspoken sold more than Hi Fi Rush (I would be seriously concerned if a heavily marketed ps exclusive could not beat a shadow dropped gamepass release) but i must say that reddit thread is awful, full of assumptions and guesswork based on loose steam data and is torn to shreds by every commenter. Not really proof of anything lol

Re: Rumour: Xbox Exclusive Hi-Fi RUSH 'Didn't Make The Money It Needed To Make'

Sakai

"I was just trying to say that I heard Hi-Fi Rush didn't make the money it was expected to make. But to be clear, I don't really know how Microsoft measures success. This was just a small, passing statement in a larger conversation. It wasn't meant to make people worry about HFR"

Already walking back his statement because its so easy to poke holes in it. This is why "insiders" are not even worth the time to report what they say, im not sure why you do it.

He has absolutely no idea if MS regard it as a success or not. He has absolutely no idea how much money it was supposed to make, or how much it did make. He knows absolutely nothing about it. Zero. He just wanted the clicks and attention, and you gave him it. Insiders just throw as much stuff at the wall and see what sticks, same with the psvr2 "reports"

This should never have been a story to begin with

Re: Rumour: Xbox Exclusive Hi-Fi RUSH 'Didn't Make The Money It Needed To Make'

Sakai

I really dislike like these so called "insiders" trying to make news with absolutely zero facts or figures to back up their assumptions. Their source is always "trust me bro" . Same with the recent PSVR2 articles saying it flopped, without any evidence to prove that. Its just white noise designed for clicks. Anything you can find to shoehorn into a predetermined narrative, even if it doesn't really fit, like this.

For the record I am one of the few people who didn't like HiFi Rush as much as I thought I would. I respect it, technically it was great, but I didn't find it all that amazing on a personal level.

It seems people still want to judge Microsoft via game sales, despite targeting completely different metrics of success for several years.
They didn't even release a physical copy of the game, and shadow dropped it, doesn't scream that they were expecting huge sales to begin with.
Isn't their whole ethos now about increasing gamepass subscribers. Its all getting a bit weird recently and this article is really scraping the bottom of the barrel

Re: 'No Xbox' Begins Trending On Twitter As Another Game Skips The Platform At Launch

Sakai

Correct me if i am wrong, but Netflix purchased the Oxenfree developer and IP

Xcloud is their direct competitor, as Netflix is a subscription cloud service. It makes some sense not to support Xbox but support places which are not directly competing.

There seems to be a weird amount of fearmongering and hyperbole around xbox at the minute, I cant help but think the ABK deal has a few people shook/panicking and are creating mountains out of mole hills

Re: Ghostwire: Tokyo's Xbox Version Described As 'Big Disappointment' In Digital Foundry Tech Review

Sakai

@FatalBubbles I watched that video and its littered with mistakes and doesnt provide any technical data as evidence. Just one example:

Control is one of the games they list but Digital Foundry write:
"All three systems follow a very similar performance profile: the action is fast and smooth, marred only by screen-filling effects work that can cause drops to the mid-50fps region as the chaos plays out on-screen. Owing to the dynamic nature of play, 'ranking' the consoles here is not easy - it seems that in some scenarios, Series X can outperform PlayStation 5, while in others the opposite is true"
Gamerant write:
"Digital Foundry video does make note that the visuals overall on PS5 appear a bit brighter compared to the Xbox Series X, but other than that, the game runs similarly between the two consoles"

I really wouldn't watch a video from PlayStation Portal for an objective, unbiased opinion

Re: Ghostwire: Tokyo's Xbox Version Described As 'Big Disappointment' In Digital Foundry Tech Review

Sakai

@GamingFan4Lyf one of the issues for xbox is how easy they made it to run pc code on an xbox. When porting games things like RT "work" without any changes, but not very well or optimised. It gives lazy developers an excuse to cut corners with the xbox version.

Whereas for PS5, the code has to be written from scratch, this means more effort, but quite often better results as the code is more "tailor made" for the console. There is no "it works but poorly" version for PS5. They could do this for the xbox version aswell, but some are not for some reason (budget costs would be my bet)

It something DF themselves have mentioned, and they believe we will see less of it as the generation progresses with more demanding games

Re: Ghostwire: Tokyo's Xbox Version Described As 'Big Disappointment' In Digital Foundry Tech Review

Sakai

@Dezzy70 @Trmn8r @GamingFan4Lyf John Linneman from DF actually addressed this last year on Twitter:

"So over the past 28 months or so, I've done 15 platform comparisons. For console warriors, Xbox took the top spot 8 times, 5 were a draw or broken everywhere and 2 went to PS5."

Source: https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1542546724476133377?lang=en

People on either side of the stupid/pointless console war only selectively remember which games "win" on their platform. (I'm not calling any of you console warriors just to be clear)

Just trying to add some context to the discussion, from a professional who most of us trust

Re: Halo's Longtime Franchise Director Has Left Microsoft

Sakai

I never liked Frank's direction of 343. I remember him saying a while ago that he hired alot of people who didn't like Halo and hated aspects of Halo, instead of you know, hiring people who love the franchise and are super passionate. Always seems like a really wierd decision, especially bragging about it.

Re: Xbox's Activision Blizzard Deal Adds South Africa To 'Approved' List

Sakai

@Tharsman I believe Microsoft have said that once they gain approval from the cma and eu, they will close the deal without the FTC. I believe they said this in administrative court with the FTC.
But if there was any common sence in the world, if the cma and eu approve, the ftc would accept the concessions so we can all move on to a new topic lol.

@Kaloudz and the EU are currently market testing the concessions and will final report in May. So really not too long now

Re: Sony Has 'Sufficient' Time To Develop Call Of Duty Alternatives, Says Microsoft

Sakai

In the document it says an alternative to COD. From a technical and legal standpoint, an alternative to COD does not have to be as popular or as big in scope. Nowhere does it say an equal. By an alternative to COD, they mean a (probably) military style FPS game that PS gamers could play, if they wanted to play one. It would be up to the developer and publisher to determine the investment or scope of the game, and what platforms it releases on. Pepsi is an alternative to coca cola, it doesn't have to be as popular or a carbon copy to be an alternative, that is not what is meant in this instance.

Re: Sony Has 'Sufficient' Time To Develop Call Of Duty Alternatives, Says Microsoft

Sakai

@Banjo- @Kaloudz they are not suggesting they will make it exclusive after 10years, they are saying that Sony could in theory if they wanted to, regarding the console SLC.
This question specifically was asking if the 10year agreement is long enough. They are all answers to questions/concerns from the CMA in this document, regarding the acess remedies offered by Microsoft. The next part of the document reads:

"CoD is an entertainment franchise which is already nearly 20 years old," [Redacted], Microsoft will need to secure the broadest distribution of the franchise and will be heavily incentivised to keep it on the PlayStation platform [Redacted]. Microsoft considers that having maintained CoD on PlayStation and grown its player base on Nintendo, GeForce Now and other cloud gaming platforms for a decade, it will have no incentive, or indeed ability, to take CoD exclusive."

It all gets pretty confusing I must admit

Re: Microsoft Offers ActiBlizz Remedies To EU, Deadline Pushed Back Yet Again

Sakai

From what I am reading the concessions offered to the EU only includes access to Activision content, including cod, on rival cloud platforms.

"More striking is the absence of any formal commitment to address key concerns raised by rival Sony about the deal's impact on its PlayStation, and Google about the deal's impact on its ChromeOS cloud-first operating system."

According to reports, Sonys complaints of removal or degrading of cod on PlayStation "appears to have fallen on deaf ears at the EU competition enforcer"

The support of Nvidia was a key factor apparently

The EU have until 22 May to rule on the deal, however a draft decision will be circulated internally and to national authorities soon.

This is all just from reports I have read this afternoon after work. All eyes on the CMA it seems, who are still the final boss in all of this

Re: UK CMA Documents Reveal Six Companies In Favour Of Xbox ActiBlizz Acquisition

Sakai

Here's an interesting update among all of this i have not seen widely reported yet:

"MLex reports that the lawsuit from gamers has been dismissed and they’ll need to redraft their complaint.

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley raised concerns about a lack of evidence/numbers, precise argument about the harm arising from the deal and the definition of the relevant markets."

This is in relation to the lawsuit "gamers against ms/abk acquisition" that was filed

Re: UK CMA Documents Reveal Six Companies In Favour Of Xbox ActiBlizz Acquisition

Sakai

@Dezzy70 not selling many consoles at all in the UK?

"The UK games industry is the most competitive console market in the world. Over the last 10 years, Xbox, PS and Nintendo have all led the market at one point.

Last year, Xbox Series, PS5 and Switch all had over 30% market share each (GfK data)

In terms of PS4 vs Xbox One, 57% of sales were for PS4 and 43% for Xbox One. On PS5 vs Xbox Series it's pretty much the same (56% vs 44%). It's close"

Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/Chris_Dring/status/1636394786235064321