By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Ryuu96 on 08 January 2024
Edit Thread
G2ThaUNiT said:

I've played on PC my entire gaming life. Or at least it's been the most consistent gaming platform my entire gaming life. So this has never affected me much, but I got rid of my Xbox as soon as MS announced all their first party games would be on PC at launch.

So PC/Nintendo console will always be my main gaming combo. I got my PS5 recently out of pure luck, but once Sony does PC day in date, that console is being tossed too lol. I don't mind hardware consolidation.

It's unfortunate, but MS's goal for the Xbox platform to be making $30 billion in revenue by 2030 isn't going to happen if they keep everything just on Xbox and PC. I view it as AA and their big live service games as being multiplatform going forward. Maybe not at launch, but at least a year after launch.

The goal is actually $32bn.

I've said it before, I don't think it happens without another big acquisition.

They'll be low $20s with ABK included, so how will they make the rest of it between now and then? Well they have the planned Mobile Store but that would need to really take of, I think some Mobile investment could maybe bring them in a few billion? Idk. XGS/Zenimax firing on all cylinders possibly brings us to high 20s, some would suggest fully abandoning hardware would help them achieve their goal but I have my doubts and here's why.

ABK, a fully multiplatform company, brought in around $8bn in revenue at its peak, I believe it would be safe to assume that XGS/Zenimax as a fully third party entity would not be bigger than ABK but even if I were generous and said they'd match ABK, 8 + 8 is still only $16bn which is quite a bit off what they'll be today with ABK which is low $20s, the hardware sales bring in billions in revenue, as does the 30% cut.

So to abandon hardware completely I believe would bring their revenue down, not up, even if they went fully third party, or the other scenario is abandoning hardware completely, the loss in revenue would simply match the addition in revenue via going fully third party and we'd be back where we started in terms of revenue.

So I fully expect Microsoft is going to make another large acquisition.

I know when I say that ABK is the biggest third party publisher in the world in terms of revenue, someone may mention NetEase and Tencent but I feel those are unfair comparisons because of the way that China works, due to China's draconian laws those two companies basically have a monopoly over the entire (massive) Chinese market so of course they pull a lot more than ABK.

And also Tencent has investments in practically everything, which just backs my point up even further, Microsoft will need to make more, Lol. Keep feeding that Game Pass machine and I'll be happy though, none of their recent business decisions change anything about how excited I am about their future line-up.