With recent events, Microsoft needs to stick to focusing on modest budgeted AAAs, I don't care if Avowed doesn't have the best graphics ever, I don't care if Hellblade II isn't 20+ hours long. Industry needs to bring back smaller, shorter experiences, most non-RPGs don't need to be over 30 hours long, or sometimes even 20, not every game needs the absolute best graphics, art-style is more important.

I hope Microsoft keeps the smaller experiences too, the unique titles, the Double Fine's of the world, the Pentiment and Grounded-like experiences, allowing developers to work on multiple projects, the reason why Obsidian and InXile aren't huge AAA studios is likely cause of them both being based in California which is insanely expensive.

We need to think about the health of the studios, I expect more layoffs from Sony and Microsoft this year alongside everyone else, I think Ubisoft will be hit soon. Thus far I don't believe any of the XGS acquired after 2018 were hit, Zenimax was minorly hit, it has largely been 343i and ABK, I think we'll see more layoffs to ABK before the year is over.

Just hope they realise the smaller games are important too, important to filling gaps, while the AAAs take years and they can become hits out of nowhere like Grounded for a relatively low investment or something crazy like Palworld. It'd be a mistake Imo to focus largely on the bigger projects and not allow some smaller experiences to flourish and try to breakout.

All the events of the past year have just made me even more convinced that Microsoft is better positioning themselves for the future, I think in fact that maybe even for once Microsoft isn't moving too early, their console market is already tiny. Everything Microsoft has been saying for the past few years is coming to pass and I don't think it's a matter of budget restrictions why most of their AAAs aren't massive budgets as well. There's two problems here, the lack of growth for console hardware and the exploding budgets in AAA.

There's going to be anger from single console only users, but the old ways are failing, they're not showing growth and growth is required for investors to invest. Things are bad right now, the models are outdated and they need changing, it's going to come down to change or die, things aren't going to miraculously improve for consoles in the future, if anything, they'll decline even further as newer generations care less and less about consoles and are more about mobile/ease of access, consoles will be seen as outdated by kids playing Fortnite or whatever on their mobile devices.

I'm betting in the next 5-10 years that Sony goes fully day one on PC as well, I don't get why they haven't already, I don't agree that there's a significant amount of PC users with PCs capable of playing Sony's big AAA blockbusters, having already spent about $1k on them, who will buy a PS5 because they can't wait for a Sony title to come to PC. The dam has been broken, PC users already know now that it isn't a matter of if a Sony title comes to PC, it's a matter of when and they've shown themselves more than capable of waiting. We're talking about a userbase who largely can't even be bothered to spend 5 minutes to download another launcher and happily wait for EGS exclusivity to expire, Lol.

Now Sony might not put stuff on Xbox consoles because Xbox consoles will be too small of a number but if roles were reversed I think they'd eventually do exactly what Microsoft is doing. If even Sony as the market leader of the high-end console market is struggling, showing stagnate growth, weak profit margins, exploding production costs and resulting in them having to change business approach, can sure as shit bet that the console with half the sales has to make even more drastic steps.

A lot of people don't like change but change is coming, adapt or die.

505 looks like it’s gonna be hit hard.