I mean Michael Pachter basically laid it out ... the console industry is not growing, it's selling less hardware than 15 years ago and home console users are becoming older. Younger kids aren't married to the game console, but a lot of the games that have exploding budgets are relying heavily on the old console model ... which means the hardware should be growing to account budgets tripling, quadrupling etc. etc. but that's just not happening.

It also doesn't help that the opposite is happening with mobile, but with the same sort of effect, in that kids are flocking to mobile games and quick dopamine hit based titles, but on mobile you're still also seeing super low effort designs and skinner boxes aplenty.

So while the industry heavily relies on the old console model and inflated budgets, you have mobile gaming just spamming low effort garbage, and just like with AAA's, MT's slapped on top. There's no balance for either side of the markets and it's glaringly obvious that neither want to stop doing what they're doing. 

I;m not joking when I say there are people that will sometimes go "is this a mobile game?", because mobile game design has definitely influenced some devs into going low effort/simplistic and stale with game design or sometimes even art styles reminiscent of a mobile game app. 

We would be back at square one the first serious financial crisis that hits our way. The US and Western Europe spent almost sixty years trying to reform capitalism and then Reagan and Thatcher showed up.

Something like this happened to the first company I ever worked for. Small, but large for a mom and pop business. The majority of the management were all fieldstaff who worked their way up the chain and eventually became office staff, etc, and most were good at their jobs because of it and the company did quite well and was growing. The company got bought up, along with a bunch of others, and were all brought into the larger company and things became corporatized relatively quickly. After the first year, most of the office staff got canned, were replaced with half as many people, and all of them were suits with some type of degree. Our pricing went way up for everything and the fieldstaff tools, equipment, and vehicle purchases and repairs were cut back on by a lot, to a detrimental degree. Some of the best fieldstaff left during this time, and the new fieldstaff who were brought in as replacements and to grow the company asap were not dependable or hard working. All it took was 3 years and the company was ran into the ground.

The company had been around for 40 years prior, and was relatively well known in the industry, even being a smaller company, for reliable quality reasonably priced work. The final year I worked there, the work became more and more scarce because the company had become seen as sloppy and incompetent, and fewer and fewer customers wanted to hire us again and potential customers weren't at all interested. They were right to think that. It ended up being broken into pieces and sold off. Since then another smaller company in the same sector was started in the same town as the one I worked for, and has found success. They cater to many of the same customers I used to work with, because they offer the same type of reliable quality service for a reasonable price.

I'd say you're right about Steve. The guy wasn't just a visionary, he knew his stuff.

If XB and PS were their own entity, no ties to MS or SNY, things would be much better off.

I'd say a better formula is needed to figure out when a company has gotten too big and needs to be capped or split. Once a company get's to a certain size, it's no longer about profits for living, it's simply about longevity and power. Buy up the competition so nobody can legitimately compete in your sector, and use your wealth and power to control as many other sectors as possible. Including politics.

This typically leads to a god complex where the leaders of these corporations decide to take it upon themselves to reshape things the way they see fit, good or bad, but most of the time it turns out bad. This is why it's better off to keep companies smaller than larger and to keep sectors as competitive as possible.

The problem starts with politics. Corps and Gov should be kept separate period, other than in the worst case scenario's like a pandemic where people are dropping like flies, or world war. As long as politicians can be bought off one way or another, this problem will continue and get worse. There also needs to be a cap where corporations can only grow so large. Either cap them or make them split so they can grow again if they wish.

Microsoft isn't losing money.

And if you have an award winning game that people love, that is a good indication of future success.

Imagine if Larian Studios, Fromsoft, Persona, Nier, Yakuza, etc, all gave up because their games didn't sell much.
It took them a long time to reach the level of success they have today.

If the closure of Tango was riding on how much money they brought in, why did Xbox shadowdrop Hi-Fi with 0 marketing + give it away for free on Gamepass?

And context matters. These things happened under leadership that said this just a year ago:

So how Hi-Fi Rush performed commercially shouldn't have anything to do with the closure. At least not from Xbox.
Microsoft probably had other ideas and decided to intervene.

The reason this is happening is likely a combination of a few things.

- Xbox used to barely be a rounding error on Microsoft's books, so they let them mostly handle themselves. But after spending ~80 Billion on acquisitions, this changed, and now MS is demanding a return on investment. 

- This graph.

See how it goes down instead of up?

That's why.
Even though it experienced an unprecedented jump in numbers during the height of the pandemic, the suits still demand it keeps going only up. Because, reasons. They just want that coveted 30% growth figure, even if it makes 0 sense.

They don't have to. They're making many times more money than they did before the spike, even when it's going down.

So Tango got folded because Phil can't pace himself? Now that's messed up!

Yeah, Reagan and Thatcher started this train wreck. It took time for their changes to fully take effect and more politicians following down that ideological path, but over time we got here. We have to change course, because that just isn't healthy.

Yeah, I agree. What you say basically leads to some form of reform. And yes, corporations and politics should be separate (like also religion and politics).

Don't get me wrong, we do, just pointing out that one misstep - and there always are - and the right comes back in full force, often more extreme than ever (look at the UK, US, Argentina, Brazil, now Germany, next year it will be Chile and Canada, etc.)

Not a lot of hope in the short to mid-term, TBH.