Xbox

[Vyn]

Just saw that XBox laid off 3000 people yesterday. I never realized that many people even worked there! Hrm, I wonder what that says about the console gaming industry overall? That seems like a huge number of people!

[Zzzptm]

Reading on that story now - they had that big acquisition of Activision Blizzard back in 2023... in tech, acquisitions are a direct path to layoffs if the acquisition was just to buy something and not seen as integral - or *made* integral - to the line of business. Now they're slashing and burning and releasing buggy games. Not the path to subscriber growth...

[Charger]

That is a lot of people being laid off that's for sure..

As far as consoles go I think Sony has taken the lead with Playstation 5 and Xbox is struggling a lot which probably explains a lot of this.

Although I believe PS isn't quite doing as well as they used to either...mainly probably because they've over priced their consoles....I mean basic models cost 599€...which is INSANE.

[Thelemech]

Xbox are in some deep shit and it's not looking good for Sony either
Both of their consoles are more expensive than they were when they were released
I have invested considerable money in both ecosystems but I have been regularly disappointed by both these consoles
Gaming is quickly becoming increasingly a rich persons environment
I am pretty sure that this generation of consoles is my last as there is no way I can afford a new iteration machine for 1000 plus dollars
Screw both Sony and Microsoft

[Vyn]

Those prices are very much on the steep side. And it seems like they have less features than previous iterations. I have a Sony PS4, had it for a long time. I have one game that I played on it: Horizon: Zero Dawn. Fricking excellent game. But, it also has a hard drive, a DVD/CD drive, I can actually add more drives to it should I want to...the new consoles seem to be moving away from the internal HDD, and the DVD drives. I read that they are going all digital with their games, I think starting in 2027. So, right around the corner.

Fewer features, and not small features, and prices that keep going up and up and up, combined with an entirely streaming gaming paradigm...I just can't see where the heck the people that run those places think it's all going. A lot of short term profit, no doubt. But what are they going to do when that dries up and everyone has moved on? I've also read where much of what is being rolled out as new games simply suck, with a certain percentage even going so far as to include socialogical propoganda in them.

Does SOny & Microsoft hate gamers so much they are willing to destroy the industry? Looks like it.

[Zzzptm]

And if you want a PC instead of a console, as long as you don't want RAM, you can get some good buys.

What's that? You want RAM? OK, then, we'll need to do a hard credit check first...