Completed Bond of the Skies, one of worst JRPG thanks to its ridiculous Random encounters rate...And the devs knew it was insane so they can sell an extra 2$ no random encounters DLC item.

Anyway expected the big spring sale today guess it may start thursday:

Meanwhile I just got:  Asdivine Cross and Infinite Links.

1 more month until sebille launches.

Hearing Open Roads is a pretty short game, sub 1hr completion. Will probably give it a go before my GPU runs out in 12 days. 

It's the final countdown!!!

Da na nah nah, da nah nah nah nah

I disagree, this has always been his focus and its interesting that most people have short memories. If you look at a lot of moves Phil has made, then you see the industry years later move towards those same moves, it shows that Phil has a much better understanding of the market and also where the market will be moving.  If anything, if Phil is talking about these things today is because he has analyzed the market and came to the conclusion its not going to be the same as people expect.  MS failed on the a traditional console model and to be honest it was never their goal in the beginning with the concept of the Xbox.  This is a convergence of MS taking what they do best and and trying again to bring Windows and their services into the living room.  MS goal has always been the same, they have just sucked at executing it.

We finally getting a release date soon???

Actually I havent been following Phil at all - just something that I picked up from a rumor about the MS execs wanting an extreme change to happen.

Either ways, I'm fine with the way things are going.

"I thought it (the article) was going to be about lack of funding in general to be honest" Yano said when asked.

"The money is just harder to get, the big platforms aren't being as speedy and the size of deals have come down. It's not that there is NO money, or that funding is an impossibility, but publishers and platform holders are being much more conservative."

"My gold rush comment was meant as an overall appraisal of the indie funding situation – as I said, deals are more difficult to line up, their average size has diminished, and many companies are facing layoffs." says Bourassa.

"There were some VERY good deals at the onset of Epic Games, which is what I was pointing to, not Game Pass" says Yano

"Yeah, those deals have dropped in value. Game Pass deals are a bit more nebulous as there's little data out there, a lot more hush hush. I know of two studios who locked great deals though (last year)."

While the industry is shifting, and opportunities for indies are dwindling, that is the real concern for both right now and is what they want the message to be.

"It's not meant to be a game pass specific comment. Investment in games is down by a lot in the last 12 months, if not clearly evidenced by the shuttering of several small studios. A lot of publishers have backed out of deals, gutting large teams. That's just facts". Says Yano

---

PCGamer really is just tabloid trash nowadays, might as well be Daily Mail's Gaming Column, UK Tabloids would be proud.

A newly released game industry report by market researcher Newzoo shows that while the PC and console market grew 2.6 percent in 2023, overall playtime decreased as gamers spent more and more time in a smaller list of old games like Fortnite and League of Legends.

On April 2, Newzoo released its second annual game industry report, including a ton of data and information on what people were playing and spending money on during 2023. According to Newzoo’s data, the PC and console game market grew and reached $93.5 billion in revenue in 2023. That might seem like good news, but drilling down into the data, it becomes clear that it’s only good news for a small number of publishers and developers.

Newzoo’s data shows that the top 10 games on each platform (ranked by their average number of monthly active users, or MAU) are filled with old, established titles. Fortnite took the crown on all platforms, including Switch and PC. The rest of the lists included titles that won’t surprise you, like Grand Theft Auto V, Counter-Strike 2, Roblox, Minecraft, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Fall Guys, Valorant, and Call of Duty. Across Xbox and Playstation consoles, only one dedicated single-player game cracked the top ten: Starfield. 

To further prove that gamers are primarily focused on older games, Newzoo’s data shows that just 66 titles accounted for 80 percent of all playtime in 2023. And 60 percent of that playtime was spent in games that are six years old or older. In fact, in 2023, five old games—Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Minecraft, and GTA V—accounted for 27% of all playtime in the year.

It gets worse. Of the 23 percent of playtime spent in 2023 on new games—defined as 2 years or younger—more than half was spent in big annual sequels like the latest Madden or NBA game. Only 8 percent of video game playtime was spent on new, non-annual titles like Diablo IV or Baldur’s Gate III.

While Newzoo’s report does point out that you can still be successful in this environment, the reality is that gamers are spending less and less time in new games and more and more time in already-established franchises and live-service titles, making it harder for publishers and developers to find an audience. That’s because unlike in the decades before, you aren’t just competing with whatever hot new game is on the shelves, but instead are fighting giants like Fortnite and Roblox, completely free games with endless amounts of content created by their users.

“It will be increasingly challenging to grow a game’s playerbase,” said Newzoo in the report, “particularly in our current landscape, where evergreen titles and robust content pipelines reign supreme.” In other words, good luck if you aren’t making a big sequel, remake, or annual entry in some popular series.

2023 Data Shows Most People Are Playing Older Games

Phil's acquisition of ABK is going to go down as one of Xbox's smartest acquisitions and one which secured Xbox's future.