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Forums - Gaming - Do you predict any company to cover Microsoft's place on console market ?

Pemalite said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

One of the biggest problems for modern corporations is that they push profits one quarter at the cost of long term sustainability. Anti-consumer business practices to drive short-term profit often result in company collapse years down the road. Saying that profit is everything to a for-profit company reeks of laissez-faire capitalism. Long-term sustainability, customer respect, and competitiveness are all just as important as profit. Hell, there's even a line on most PnL sheets for "Public Goodwill". You can't just jack up the price of water during a drought, reap millions, and then watch as your sales drop off a cliff and never recover after the first rain. That's a recipe for corporate failure. 

MS will only ever provide incomplete data. So anything you extrapolate will be erroneous. 

If you think a company like Microsoft; that has been chasing a $5~ trillion dollar market cap cares about long term sustainability, customer respect and competitiveness... Then you haven't been paying attention to what Microsoft has been doing for the last 30 years... 
Or the fact that Microsoft has thrown sustainability out the window and started rolling out A.I/Data Centers everywhere, driving up the cost of electricity in those localities, consuming significant amounts of water, gobbling up all the DRAM and NAND which has forced all consumer-facing products (Phones, Consoles, Tablets, TV's, Cars and more) to increase in cost.

They are a for-profit company, they put profit above all else.

Why else do you think they aren't willing to be price-competitive with Sony and Nintendo?
Why else do you think they mandated a 30% profit margin?
Why else do you think they have pivoted towards selling profitable software and services and not loss-leading hardware?

It's because Profit matters above all else.

And why does profit matter above all else? Shareholders.

It's shareholders that push that drive for short term profit signalling, it's literally Microsoft's legal obligation to provide a return to shareholders and chase that next profit-ceiling.

If you think these companies actually give a shit about you, me or anyone else on this forum... Then I have some Kangaroo feathers to sell you... Because they don't.
They care about the cash in your wallet, that is literally the entire purpose of their existence.

Where a companies priorities change is when they are a privately held company like Valve, profit isn't the main goal as they don't have shareholders to constantly appease... But they still need to have profit as a primary goal to continue to exist as a viable entity.

Any other answer in this capitalistic world is simply wrong.

The problem with that type of opinion on capitalism is that corporations that operate in that manner usually don't last forever. Eventually, they lose all the customers they ripped off, or are broken up by government action. Or they cause society to collapse in such a way that their precious profits implode along with it. 

It's funny to me that Nintendo and Sony are just as beholden to shareholders yet mysteriously haven't taken such drastic anti-consumer, anti-sustainable actions. Almost as if your claim that every corporation is legally required to be an unscrupulous bastard is hollow. For Example, Nintendo isn't shoving Microtransactions into every game possible. Shouldn't Nintendo's shareholders sue? 



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Noone cares for Microsoft gaming division , their game hits were military shooters Gears And Halo and racing Forza.
We have dozens of releases of shooters and racing every year.
They can stick to publishing software, noone will miss their consoles.



Davy said:

Noone cares for Microsoft gaming division , their game hits were military shooters Gears And Halo and racing Forza.
We have dozens of releases of shooters and racing every year.
They can stick to publishing software, noone will miss their consoles.

Gears and Halo had good styling. At least at first. At this point they are a lot like the current Poke'mon Games. Pretty good, but only if you haven't played the first games in the series. Forza on the other hand is fire. 



Steam, if they finally get their shit together and cross-finance their machines with their game earnings.

GOG could try and make a console instead. Although, since they don't have the backing of CD Projekt anymore, I don't think they'd be able to do so now.



Bofferbrauer2 said:

Steam, if they finally get their shit together and cross-finance their machines with their game earnings.

GOG could try and make a console instead. Although, since they don't have the backing of CD Projekt anymore, I don't think they'd be able to do so now.

Don't expect Valve to sell windows or SteamOS consoles with a loss. They are already sitting on a hunderds millions pc userbase.



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Davy said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

Steam, if they finally get their shit together and cross-finance their machines with their game earnings.

GOG could try and make a console instead. Although, since they don't have the backing of CD Projekt anymore, I don't think they'd be able to do so now.

Don't expect Valve to sell windows or SteamOS consoles with a loss. They are already sitting on a hunderds millions pc userbase.

I'm not holding my breath either. Just saying that if they'd do that, they could become a serious competitor on the console market, too, but I very much doubt they're gonna go that route anytime soon.



Cerebralbore101 said:

The problem with that type of opinion on capitalism is that corporations that operate in that manner usually don't last forever. Eventually, they lose all the customers they ripped off, or are broken up by government action. Or they cause society to collapse in such a way that their precious profits implode along with it. 

Companies like Microsoft don't get broken up.

Which is why Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and more have been able to operate they do with impunity... With the exception of lawsuits from the EU who are more consumer friendly and do not put up with bullshit from trillion dollar tech companies.

Breaking up companies is a 90s tactic, not something that happens anymore.

Cerebralbore101 said:

It's funny to me that Nintendo and Sony are just as beholden to shareholders yet mysteriously haven't taken such drastic anti-consumer, anti-sustainable actions. Almost as if your claim that every corporation is legally required to be an unscrupulous bastard is hollow. For Example, Nintendo isn't shoving Microtransactions into every game possible. Shouldn't Nintendo's shareholders sue? 

Serious question, have you been living under a rock or turning a blind eye to Nintendo and Sony?
They have historically always implemented anti-consumer, ant-sustainable actions.

Notice how Nintendo games never go down in price? That's not to the benefit of the consumer, that's to the benefit of shareholders.

Sony also raised the price of games to $70 USD, Sony also monopolized their digital store, removing third-party code sales.
Sony has also historically pushed propriety media formats for it's devices.

Also remember when Toyo from Sony said (In regards to PS3's high price): "I will work more hours to buy one".

These companies are very much not putting you or the consumer first. It's shareholders first. It's money first.

And I like I said prior... Any other answer is just wrong.




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Pemalite said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

The problem with that type of opinion on capitalism is that corporations that operate in that manner usually don't last forever. Eventually, they lose all the customers they ripped off, or are broken up by government action. Or they cause society to collapse in such a way that their precious profits implode along with it. 

Companies like Microsoft don't get broken up.

Which is why Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and more have been able to operate they do with impunity... With the exception of lawsuits from the EU who are more consumer friendly and do not put up with bullshit from trillion dollar tech companies.

Breaking up companies is a 90s tactic, not something that happens anymore.

Cerebralbore101 said:

It's funny to me that Nintendo and Sony are just as beholden to shareholders yet mysteriously haven't taken such drastic anti-consumer, anti-sustainable actions. Almost as if your claim that every corporation is legally required to be an unscrupulous bastard is hollow. For Example, Nintendo isn't shoving Microtransactions into every game possible. Shouldn't Nintendo's shareholders sue? 

Serious question, have you been living under a rock or turning a blind eye to Nintendo and Sony?
They have historically always implemented anti-consumer, ant-sustainable actions.

Notice how Nintendo games never go down in price? That's not to the benefit of the consumer, that's to the benefit of shareholders.

Sony also raised the price of games to $70 USD, Sony also monopolized their digital store, removing third-party code sales.
Sony has also historically pushed propriety media formats for it's devices.

Also remember when Toyo from Sony said (In regards to PS3's high price): "I will work more hours to buy one".

These companies are very much not putting you or the consumer first. It's shareholders first. It's money first.

And I like I said prior... Any other answer is just wrong.

Companies like MS and Google can still get broken up. We just need political change. Edit: That political change is usually brought on by economic failures. The USA broke companies up from the 1930's onward, for example. 

Here's what you don't seem to understand. Sane companies aim for 10% profit margins and hope for the best. You'll learn that in any business class. Sony for example has made anywhere from 0% profit to 13% profit per year from 2012 to now. Recently, Nintendo has had profit margins as high as 35%, but that's a result of the Switch being a revolutionary product that sold like hotcakes. During the Wii U era Iwata cut his own pay to keep from having to fire employees. Nintendo has had multiple times in which their company nearly went under. MS on the other hand mandates 30% profit margins for doing jack-all. And they will take whatever insanely anti-consumer, anti-environmental, anti-employee actions they need to, to get to that number. 

There's a difference between a company that hopes to make 10% profit and a company that demands to make 30% profit on everything

Acting as if all publicly traded companies are equally evil and insane is disengenious. No, United Healthcare, General Dynamics, and Microsoft are not the same thing as Nintendo, Costco, and C.D. Project Red. Not every company denies lifesaving medicine, sells bombs to Israel, or develops AI to put everyone out of a job. Not every company expects 30% profit margins for doing nothing. 

Edit: You are basically trying to argue that all capitalism is bad and that is a very politically/economically uninformed view. Read American Amnesia to get a better understanding of how capitalism is supposed to operate, when it is healthy. 

Last edited by Cerebralbore101 - 12 hours ago