Alright. Soon I'm just going to stop posting him, Lol.

Interesting stat from Zhuge though, JFC, Lol.

Wonder what those games are, maybe COD and Fifa for starters.

Probably most 1st party as well considering Game Pass.

Xbox going the way of PC gaming lol. Sony isn't that far behind now selling PS5's with an optional disc drive even in the $500 model that just happens to come with a disc drive that you can still remove.

Idk if I even see myself gaming in 5 years at this point.

Well pushing digital makes sense at the moment.*

If you go any store you barely see Xbox games in Europe, if you can kill physical faster with not releasing physical versions of multiplatform first party games why would you not do it?   I am pretty sure that during holidays a lot of parents don't get an xbox because they don't see games for it.   It is nice to give a gift like a Switch or Playstation that comes with a physical game. We all remember when we got our consoles or physical games as kids.

Not surprised by the ABK layoffs. Those were very obvious.
I'm more worried about Xbox team and Zenimax.

They do often jump the gun on a few things but I feel like all digital would be one where people get angry in forums but ultimately Xbox's digital share is so big that it will likely be something they could "get away" with but they could wait for someone else to do it first and avoid the PR backlash, they are just sometimes too desperate to chase the cash.

I do think they're right though...Always online is a funny one, it feels like most the industry is "always online" nowadays and people have largely accepted it. Digital only is inevitable for both Microsoft and Sony, I do think Sony will have another generation of physical but the one after, I strongly doubt it. Margins are simply way better for digital and it's becoming a waste of money for publishers.

We'll see Xbox drop physical, maybe an optional disc drive, digital ratio will increase even further, digital ratio will increase even further for 3rd parties, then they will stop making physical games, at that point, it won't make sense for Sony to keep doing physical either, they won't be stocking stores with 1st party only.

Yeah, that is not going to be good when the leaked CoD roadmap through 2027 yesterday shows they are sticking with yearly releases. Less devs at the CoD studios and the same rigid yearly release schedule means more devs will be pulled from studios capable of independent devlopment like Beenox, Toys for Bob, and High Noon, when those studios could instead be working on other Activision IP like Spyro, Crash, Tony Hawk, or Prototype.

Starting to think we won't get any new ABK releases the next 6 years or so except for new CoD games, everything else will be GaaS updates and expansions.

Wait. Aren't you PC only already? Why would you quit gaming?

That's a damn depressing news, a foreseen one for sure but still.

My thoughts go to all impacted employees. This is one of my big stresses for 2024, my company recently did something likewise on a smaller scale (5% workforce impacted with some being hopefully only temporary), I was not part of the unlucky one fortunately but as interest rates remain high and activity in my sector is still in a slowdown the situation remains stressful.

The industry as a whole is reshaping itself, the cost of making titles has become so high and high budgets have never been as poor a predictor of success as it is now. Palworld is just an example of how silly a 200-300m budget can be and how an insane focus on graphics like that we've seen since the 2000s might not be the way to go forward anymore.

I do also have a Switch and most recently a PS5 lol. There's so much uncertainty right now as to how the games industry will even look in 5 years. At the very least, Western AAA gaming seems to be heading towards some sort of inevitable crash. To what extent and how gaming will look through the other side of that, who knows. 

I don't know the last time there was this much uncertainty in the industry.