The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Henroid]

Bad news if anyone likes Eidos games.

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/14q2slides.pdf

 

Square's master plan to turn things around for them financially is to make Eidos produce online games. So potential RIP to Deus Ex and Tomb Raider.

[Roderick]

Dang. Livingstone leaves and immediately Eidos becomes a mere satellite of the Squeenix empire.

[elmuerte]

I hope Avalanche owns Just Cause. Then again, I don't really care about the name or "story", it's just the gameplay I like.

 

Eidos does own the rights to Anachronox. So we can forget about ever seeing a sequel to that. (Unless its going to be a MMOG, but chances are higher it will be a DXMMORPGHD).

[JonCole]

Well, let's not lose the thread on Eidos - Square-Enix has already announced that a Tomb Raider sequel is actively in development for next-gen, so that's very likely still going to happen. They've also announced Deus Ex Universe, which is taking some of the headspace that birthed the iOS Deus Ex game and expanding the next round of Deus Ex games into a multi-platform effort from the start. Their investment in Deus Ex only seems more active when you consider the Director's Cut release this year.

 

So, while focus may shift to online games, it seems that the biggest of the AAA titles are still intact unless everything changed on a dime after seeing these financials. In all likelihood, I'd imagine there'd instead be more doubling down on iOS versions of these franchises and potentially some kind of online adaptation of Deus Ex (at least seems more likely than Tomb Raider).

[Henroid]

In other news, someone at Microsoft got weirdly honest about problems they're having. With no fluff.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/06/xbox-one-cloud-updates-may-force-mid-game-reboot

 

The gist of it is that the updates to 'the cloud' force games to reboot. And the updates are frequent. And they haven't solved the problem yet.

[Justin Leego]

edit - quoting for new page

 

In other news, someone at Microsoft got weirdly honest about problems they're having. With no fluff.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/06/xbox-one-cloud-updates-may-force-mid-game-reboot

 

The gist of it is that the updates to 'the cloud' force games to reboot. And the updates are frequent. And they haven't solved the problem yet.

 

 

Update!

 

CORRECTION: Our original story suggested that players' Xbox One consoles may reboot without warning due to cloud updates. This has been corrected to note that it's the host servers that may reboot during multiplayer games. We regret the error.

 

Still...

[Jake]

Oh, I didn't notice that when I skimmed over the FAQ. That's actually terrible (to me, at least) and a little baffling. I mean, I'm not an engineer or anything, but I wouldn't think adding capabilities like that would be too difficult, right? ...eh, I'm just talking out my ass. They probably had a reason, even if its a reason I dont like.

It's not an engineering issue. The system can already play all of those audio formats because developers use them in their game. The limitation is artificial, in the OS. They just don't want end users to be able to put content on the system that they didn't purchase through the system.

[Henroid]

It's not an engineering issue. The system can already play all of those audio formats because developers use them in their game. The limitation is artificial, in the OS. They just don't want end users to be able to put content on the system that they didn't purchase through the system.

In place of this forum not having any up-vote system built into this I'll have to quote and say this is the best way the problem has been stated.

 

Quick aside on the Square thing I linked earlier today; Eidos isn't specifically named in their plans, but it falls under the grouping of "overseas studios." So I still think it's bad news.

[Zeusthecat]

Random aside: I still read this thread as "The Business Side of Video (Space) Games". It's permanently been burned into my brain Henroid, change it back!!!

[SecretAsianMan]

Random aside: I still read this thread as "The Business Side of Video (Space) Games". It's permanently been burned into my brain Henroid, change it back!!!

 

I didn't even notice it wasn't (Space) Games until you said that.

[Henroid]

I didn't even notice it wasn't (Space) Games until you said that.

What are you talking about? It's still there!

[SecretAsianMan]

What are you talking about? It's still there!

 

I don't know what's real anymore!

[Zeusthecat]

What are you talking about? It's still there!

 

Best optical illusion ever.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's probably counterproductive to their goal of making it as cheap as possible. Or at least Gamecube support is. Online support was probably dropped because online support for the Wii itself is fading away.

The biggest problem is it locks you out of access to some good games plus everything Virtual Console. Not sure why they did that. Although, one thing I don't know is if the WiiU Virtual Console carries over all of the same titles or not? Also does the WiiU store carry all of the same WiiWare titles?

[shammack]

The biggest problem is it locks you out of access to some good games plus everything Virtual Console. Not sure why they did that. Although, one thing I don't know is if the WiiU Virtual Console carries over all of the same titles or not? Also does the WiiU store carry all of the same WiiWare titles?

 

It does neither. You can move your stuff from a Wii onto a Wii U, but once it's on there, you have to boot into "Wii mode" to play any of it, and you can't use the Wii U gamepad or anything; the system just turns into a Wii. There are a few select virtual console games that have Wii U versions, and if you already own them for Wii you get a discount on "upgrading" to the Wii U version, but that's it.

[tegan]

It does neither. You can move your stuff from a Wii onto a Wii U, but once it's on there, you have to boot into "Wii mode" to play any of it, and you can't use the Wii U gamepad or anything; the system just turns into a Wii. There are a few select virtual console games that have Wii U versions, and if you already own them for Wii you get a discount on "upgrading" to the Wii U version, but that's it.

 

You can use the gamepad as a separate screen while playing Wii games now. As in, you still have to use a Wii remote to actually play, but you can use the gamepad for the picture and sensor bar.

[Twig]

Wow I had no idea how terrible the Wii->Wu VC situation was.

[syntheticgerbil]

Can you purchase new Wiiware games from the WiiU to use in Wii mode?

[shammack]

I think so. When you boot into Wii mode, I believe it has its own shop channel and you can buy stuff through that if you want. It's just completely isolated from the main Wii U interface.

[Henroid]

I really wish Nintendo was better at doing things online. They're so hesitant to do things for the sake of "protecting the children" that it just puts a damper on everything. They need to outsource their online infrastructure. Or stop making hardware and just become a software developer. Whichever.

 

In other news I've been seeing some talk about how MS loses about $2 billion on the Xbox division, but they pad it out via patent trolling income. Not sure how substantiated it is though.

 

The only thing I do know for sure is that both Sony and MS are saying these consoles could last for more than a decade. Are you guys ready for 2024, year of the XB1 and PS4?

[JonCole]

Many of Microsoft's consumer-facing initiatives are either financial failures or financial break-evens, whether you're talking about Bing, Windows Phone 8, Surface, or Xbox. MS makes most of their money off of Microsoft Office, server technology, and Windows 8 (more or less in that order, if I'm not mistaken).

 

Xbox may run at a loss, but it's still relatively peanuts compared to their other businesses. Xbox was part of MS's Entertainment and Devices division, which pulled about $10 billion in revenue a year. They essentially make no significant profit (something less than $1 billion), so the break even there is Windows Phone (by a small margin) and Skype (by a bigger margin). Of course, Microsoft recently experienced a reorg that groups Xbox with all licensing and all hardware, meaning losses will be even less obvious when considered by division (due to huge OEM licensing of Windows and consumer licensing of Office).

 

All of that said, candidate for MS CEO and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop did say something about selling off the Xbox business if he was to become CEO, so it's clearly a topic and a piece on the table that can be moved or removed. I still think it's not likely for Microsoft to back away from Xbox, because they don't have a ton of consumer-facing initiatives and Xbox has the most mindshare of them all. Put another way, Microsoft is a factor in people's day to day life because of the Xbox, I just don't see them carrying over that cultural relevance to something like Surface or Windows Phone.

[feelthedarkness]

Does the idea of break even or losses include licensing? I think the evens and losses around hardware are supposed to be acceptable to maintain an environment where they make up the difference in licensing fees?

[JonCole]

Does the idea of break even or losses include licensing? I think the evens and losses around hardware are supposed to be acceptable to maintain an environment where they make up the difference in licensing fees?

 

Well, the categories where they are taking a bath don't have licensing inherent to them - with Surface, they don't license Windows to themselves; with Xbox, they don't license... Xbox OS to themselves; with Windows RT Tablets, Office is given away for free.

 

They make a ton of profit on OEM Licensing (Windows/Office licenses sold to manufacturers) and business licensing, but that's separate from consumer products. One of my points, however, is that these categories are more or less in the same bucket due to the restructure so while licensing isn't making up for losses on a per unit or per product level, the profits of OEM licensing division will be blended together with the losses of the Xbox division in their financial statements.

[feelthedarkness]

I thought they get some kind of licensing fees through the publishers/devs, as well as all the certification stuff, and access to XBL?

 

The Surface is obviously going to try and get the usual App store fee cut, assuming that other Win 8.1 tablets play the same game. ( Full disclosure (haha) I got a Surface Pro 2 256 gig, and I love it!)

[elmuerte]

MS' money comes from business software and trolling. They earn billions per year from Android alone. I also include OEM licenses in "trolling" due to the MS OS tax on new computers.