Gaming - Page 315

Advertisements may become a larger part of the Xbox gaming business in the long-term future.

Over the past few months, we've talked a lot about how the Xbox business could evolve. At $16 billion dollar in annual revenue, Microsoft's video games unit is clearly able to make strong earnings...but what about profits? Recent testimony from Microsoft CFO Amy Hood discussed Xbox's profit margins but these values were predictably redacted.

How can Xbox continue to grow when it is 3rd place in the console market, spending big on Game Pass, and also invested in costly and unsuccessful attempts like Project xCloud? The games unit will need to find new ways to monetize its platform of 120 million monthly active users, and advertising revenue could be the next big step.

Sony legal counsel and/or the FTC have accidentally uploaded a poorly-redacted document that reveals key insights on PlayStation's business practices.

Sony and Microsoft are known for their third-party exclusivity deals. Sony's agreements in particular have led to big-budget games like Final Fantasy XVI outright skipping Xbox. These deals offer commercial and operational incentives like upfront payments, direct access to console engineers, and the opportunity to release a game more quickly.

What about subscriptions like Game Pass and PlayStation Plus? Microsoft has already revealed the dynamics of its Game Pass deals, with developers receiving things like an initial payout and earnings based on engagement within the title. Sony, on the other hand, has mostly kept quiet on how it handles its PlayStation plus deals.

The FTC v Microsoft federal case gives more insight into how Microsoft eventually got NVIDIA to get on board with the $68.7 billion Activision merger proposal.

When Microsoft announced it was planning to buy Activision for nearly $70 billion, NVIDIA had originally opposed the deal. In today's evidentiary hearing of the FTC v Microsoft case, NVIDIA's SVP of gaming Jeff Fisher gave insight on how Microsoft allayed NVIDIA's concerns about the merger affecting cloud gaming.

In his testimony, Fisher said that a secondary attachment to the main Microsoft-NVIDIA agreement had solved NVIDIA's worries on the merger. The add-on is called the Windows Addendum, and it seems to have significantly lowered the licensing fees that NVIDIA has to pay Microsoft to secure Windows OS licenses (possibly among other things).

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella strongly dislikes video game exclusivity and wants all of Microsoft's software everywhere it can possibly be.

Today Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave testimony in the federal FTC v Microsoft court case, and shared his views on one of the most powerful and lucrative business tactics in the interactive entertainment industry: Exclusives.

"If it was up to me I would like to get rid of exclusivity on consoles," Nadella said. "The dominant player has defined market competition using exclusives. I have no love for that world."

During his testimony at the FTC v Microsoft federal hearing, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says that Activision titles could be made available on content library subscriptions and cloud streaming services if the commercial incentive is large enough.

While Activision currently has no strategy in its long-term plan (which is a 3-year period) to include Activision-Blizzard games like Call of Duty, Diablo, and others on a multi-game content library subscription service like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium, the executive today indicated that it's not an impossibility.

Microsoft or Sony would just have to make it worth Activision's while and offer up a substantial monetary incentive. In other words, Activision games could show up on subscription services...but the price would be very high.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might be set for a cage fight - or at least some of the gossip from the rumor mill claims - but if you're keen on getting some big-tech-CEO brawling action right now, well, you can simulate the bout in a freshly released browser game.

The freebie Zuck vs Musk 'techbro beatdown' is the brainchild of the designer of Bejeweled, and founder of Blue Wizard, Jason Kapalka (as PC Gamer reports). It's actually a modified spin of an existing Blue Wizard game, WrestleBros, but with Musk and Zuckerberg starring as the wrestlers.

You can partake in a match against the computer, or versus a human opponent (playing against a local player on the same PC, or online), with wins facilitating upgrades.

Rockstar's original Red Dead Redemption has suspiciously been re-rated by Korea's Game Rating and Administrative Committee, hinting at a possible remaster.

It looks like Red Dead Redemption could be getting a remaster. Korea's GRAC ratings board has just published a final decision for Red Dead Redemption, giving it a mature rating. GRAC received the application earlier this month on June 5, 2023, and made a decision on June 16, 2023.

This new rating is separate from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. The new rating does not list a platform so it's hard to be sure.

Despite opinions of the contrary, data shows that Activision-Blizzard is a unique video games company. The publisher routinely generates multiple billions of dollars every year principally from three major franchises--Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush. In my coverage on the Microsoft-Activision merger, there's been one point that I've reiterated over and over: Activision is an absolutely massive force in the video games industry.

Unfortunately, this is something that the FTC's key witness, the economist Dr. Robin Lee, failed to adequately demonstrate to federal judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Lee was provided with a valuable opportunity to illustrate the full magnitude of Activision Blizzard King's presence in the industry.

Judge Corley had asked Lee specifically what other Activision games are important--much of the focus of today's hearing was on the $31 billion Call of Duty franchise, and rightfully so because that series is one of the consistently best-earning franchises ever created--but there's a lot more to Activision's billion-dollar portfolio.

"AMD is proud to announce that we are Bethesda's exclusive PC partner for the next-generation role-playing game, Starfield," reads the announcement. As one of the biggest PC releases of the year (or decade), the 25-years-in-the-making sci-fi RPG epic from the studio behind Skyrim is out in September.

AMD notes that it has worked closely with the team at Bethesda Game Studios on the release of Starfield across the PC and Xbox versions. This makes sense, as Xbox features AMD hardware for its CPU and GPU.

AMD highlights that optimizations have been made for multi-threaded processing for both PC and Xbox, with added support on PC for the new Ryzen 7000 series of processors and the new Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards. FSR 2 upscaling will be available in the game across PC and Xbox Series X|S hardware.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan tells federal courts that he believes Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wanted to make a separate side deal to ensure Activision games, including Call of Duty, would continue shipping on PlayStation if the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft fell through.

In 2022, the bosses of some of the most powerful forces in gaming came together in Brussels to share their opinions of the Microsoft-Activision merger with the European Commission. Among them was PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, two men that have enjoyed a prolonged business relationship that has spiraled upward into a multi-billion dollar arrangement.

In private, Ryan allegedly told Kotick:"I don't want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger." Now in today's recent evidentiary hearing in the FTC v Microsoft federal case, Ryan clarifies on what led up to that eye-opening statement.

BioWare is handing off development of its long-running Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG to another studio so it can narrow its focus on singleplayer RPGs.

After more than a decade of support, BioWare is moving on from its Star Wars MMO. BioWare general manager Gary McKay has confirmed future content development of Star Wars The Old Republic will be handled by Broadsword Online Games, a development team that's handling Ultima Online. This will free BioWare to focus on its core strengths: building singleplayer RPGs.

Sadly, McKay confirms that layoffs will occur as a result of the shift. BioWare's Austin, Texas and Edmonton, Canada-based studios will now be entirely devoted to the company's wholly-owned dual franchises, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. The next Dragon Age game, Dreadwolf, is currently set to launch sometime in 2024 at the earliest, whereas the next Mass Effect game is still in pre-production phases.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan gives a timeline of when he started to notice strong red flags in regards to the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Sony's Jim Ryan has had strong convictions about the Microsoft purchasing Activision, and believes that Microsoft will withhold access to specific games in an effort to cause anti-competitive harm against PlayStation. This wasn't always the case, though. Emails show that Ryan originally believed the merger "was not an Xbox exclusivity play," however his view changed after a very particular email exchange from August 2022.

During his testimony in the FTC v Microsoft federal hearing, the Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO said that he believes that Microsoft would use Call of Duty to damage PlayStation either with full foreclosure (withholding Call of Duty completely from PlayStation) or partial foreclosure (timed exclusivity on content and game releases).

Alan Wake 2 is due out on October 17, and we already know it's a digital-only game - there won't be a release on a physical disc, and the reason for that is Remedy wants to ensure the game is as good as it can be.

In other words, a disc release would have to be finalized (go gold) in time for manufacturing and packaging, and that'd be problematic in terms of the quality of the finished product.

Eurogamer spoke to Alan Wake 2's creative director, Sam Lake, and game director, Kyle Rowley, at the Summer Games Fest, getting their thoughts on the reasoning behind the digital-only decision.

New internal documents from Microsoft's business leadership shows that Xbox has missed revenue forecasts by over $700 million.

The Microsoft-Activision merger is being challenged in federal courts, (FTC v Microsoft, 3:23-cv-02880-JSC) and a lot of interesting information is being released to the public as a result. Court exhibits have uncovered the dynamics of the Xbox gaming business and the performance expectations from Microsoft's SLT, or Senior Leadership Team. One such metric is Xbox revenues.

The case file exhibit list includes one very illuminating 80-page internal Microsoft document that outlined where Xbox currently is and where it can grow. The slide deck, which was issued during Microsoft's Q3 FY22 (January - March 2023), has assigned an estimated revenue target of $17 billion for the Xbox games division. Actual results were quite different--Xbox made $16.22 billion in FY22, missing the internal target by some $780 million.

Diablo IV will eventually get DirectStorage support on PC, according to a report that cites a developer from the team.

PC Gamer delved into the issue - we already know that DirectStorage files are in the code for the action RPG, thanks to keen-eyed data miners - and came up trumps with a confirmation direct from the horse's mouth.

A member of the Diablo IV team told the gaming website: "MS DirectStorage is currently not enabled, but we are planning on enabling it in the future."

Microsoft plans to make Xbox the leader in the global games industry in terms of revenues by 2030, and Xbox has already beaten Nintendo revenues for the past two years running.

California District Courts today published a wealth of documents from the FTC v Microsoft federal case exhibit list, and included in packet is a lengthy internal presentation deck from Microsoft's SLT (Senior Leadership Team) that outlines its ambitious plans for Xbox gaming.

According to the document, which was published in June 2022, Microsoft aspires to have the Xbox ecosystem become the top inter-connected video games platform by revenue by the year 2030. "Our ambition is to reach industry leadership, as defined by global revenue, by 2030. This implies doubling our total revenue during that timeframe," reads the slide deck.

Microsoft was considering a massive slate of video games developers and publishers as potential acquisition targets, a new exhibit filing from the FTC v Microsoft federal court case reveals.

Before it settled on trying to buy Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion, Microsoft had over 100 gaming companies on its list for M&A consideration. The list is part of a confidential internal Xbox Game Studios M&A briefing from April 2021 that was published as a public exhibit in the FTC v Microsoft federal preliminary injunction case.

In the slide deck, which is woefully outdated by over 2 years, Microsoft outlines what it considers to be some of the top choices for potential mergers and acquisitions buyouts in April 2021, including Japanese games publisher SEGA, Destiny and Halo developer Bungie, Elden Ring and Dark Souls developer FromSoftware, Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED, No Man's Sky developer Hello Games, Hitman developer IO Interactive, Crysis developer Crytek, Warframe developer Digital Extremes, Divinity and Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, Control and Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment, Dying Light developer Techland, Borderlands developer Gearbox, and many more.

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer outlines the stark realities of Microsoft's games business, confirming that the Xbox games division is a seperate operating unit with its own budgets, profit and loss accounts, and expectations.

It's a common misconception that because Xbox is part of Microsoft, a tech giant with a $2.45 trillion market capitalization, that the Xbox games division has an unlimited budget and can constantly lose money. This isn't the case. The reality is that the Xbox business is under constant pressure to deliver profits and growth.

In day 2 of the federal FTC v Microsoft case's evidentiary hearing, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer offers an eye-opening look at Microsoft's gaming business. Typically, Microsoft does not divulge very much information on Xbox outside of a few earnings metrics--hardware, content and services revenue, and if we're lucky, an update on Game Pass subscribers. Spencer's testimony in the hearing sheds light on the stressors in running the Xbox business, and what ultimately led up to the $68.7 billion bid for Activision-Blizzard.

Minecraft is the best-earning Xbox game of all time and delivers considerable profits to Microsoft's games division.

At the recent FTC v Microsoft hearing in federal court, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that Minecraft earns more revenues than any other Xbox game and that it drives "significant profits" for Microsoft.

Considering the breadth of Minecraft's releases and widespread reach on practically every platform where games are made available, this small tidbit isn't exactly a surprise. The game is (and has been) everywhere, including the best-selling Nintendo Switch and the market-leading PlayStation. In a previous interview from March 2023 with Xbox On, Phil Spencer said that Minecraft had 'maybe 120 million MAUs.' Matching that up with previous statements that first-party Xbox games have a total of 150 million monthly active users (MAUs) on all platforms, we can see that Minecraft accounts for almost all of Xbox's current active players.

In a recent federal court hearing, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer says that he has no interest in using Sony's own exclusivity practices against PlayStation.

The recent FTC v Microsoft evidentiary hearing has unearthed lots of interesting details about Xbox, PlayStation, and the games industry in general. Based on key info and testimony presented in the case, we've surmised that Sony and Microsoft are very likely to sign a publishing agreement for Call of Duty on a post-merger basis.

Other revelations include Microsoft's view on Sony's exclusivity practices. According to the Xbox CEO, there's two sides to Microsoft's relationship with Sony. There's the cordial, lucrative, and mutually-beneficial side where big Xbox games like Minecraft see the two companies joining together in a strong symbiotic publishing agreement. Then there's the side that gets publicized the most, the one where Sony snaps up third-party exclusivity deals to further detrimentally impact Xbox. This behavior has made Microsoft see Sony as a "hostile and aggressive" competitor.