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The Era of the Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 will forever be the best in terms of consumer value and choice and commitment to quality, followed by the Xbox360 Ps3 gen....Its been boiling the frog since end of PS4 and on, but I got out of the water by the PS5...xbox was boiled long ago and were the first to turn up the temp

I really don't get what MS is doing here. They claim they care about Xbox, that they're going to turn the ship around, yet they cluelessly and carelessly laid off most of their best staff, all while raising prices multiple times and still not producing a coherent future roadmap.

Any consumer or customer would look at this behavior pattern and think they are far too unstable to put their trust into.

At this point it's time to call it for Xbox. I don't think they'll be around in six months time.

The deal was they took everything from you… but at least you could buy electronics for cheap!

Now they don’t even let you have that.

bizarrely self-destructive behavior from XBox. they've been shooting themselves in the foot for years; apparently they've decided to exchange the gun for a flamethrower in hopes of cauterizing the stump.

At this point, it’s the ExBox :(

With all the other Xbox layoffs, studio shutdowns, price increases, rumors of pulling titles from Steam, what do they still expect from this brand?

I don’t blame them because I don’t know all the variables involved. Neither does the media reporting and we don’t know what a company of their size is going through with prices going up and suppliers being unwilling to sell parts needed to manufacture these things.

I bought a used Xbox one a few years back. I’m not a heavy gamer anymore so I usually buy the previous generation or even two generations ago hardware, get the games I want from eBay and I’m good. And I was looking forward to getting a Series X, but at this point it looks unlikely unless the brand completely tanks and they’re selling them off to get rid of inventory. Otherwise, my Xbox one is going to be worth more in the future than what I paid, and I don’t want that situation for anyone.

I recently purchased an Xbox Series S for ~NZD$180 to re-play GTA4 (and Episodes) as I never got to finish it when it first came out, and to get through all the GTAs before GTA6 comes out.

512GB Series S consoles in NZ are now retailing for close to $1,000. Might have an appreciating asset on my hands!

Valve’s gain.

Xbox is in complete disarray and is imploding. I haven’t owned a PlayStation in decades. If my son’s Xbox Series X (the worst naming ever) suddenly dies, we’ll either switch to PlayStation or build a PC.

sideshow_bob_rakes.gif

For my entire life, I've seen the same cycle.

Microsoft buys something great, optimizes all the good out of it, and then pulls the plug.

Skype, Nokia, GitHub...

Now it's happening to video games.

The thing everyone needs to realize is that Microsoft fundamentally doesn't make anything, they never have.

All they can do is buy low and sell high. Or buy high and sell higher.

They certainly can't lovingly craft games, the way gamers expect.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that executives hate artists. Go out of their way to fire them.

Look at what's happening to Blizzard & Bethesda under Microsoft. Arguably Blizzard was ruined the moment Activision sunk their claws in. Quality went down, creativity went down, and all so Bobby could buy a new yacht and sail to Epstein's Island.

"Do you guys not have phones?" That's something a manager who was totally out of touch with his audience would say. Not of an artist creating experiences for gamers.

Microsoft wedge micro-transactions into everything, changes game play to emulate games like Candy Crush where gamers have to pay every 30 seconds. Really more slot machines than video games, but to the ghouls running the show they can't tell the difference.

Players like to be amazed, entertained, and it's not a formulaic process. A gamer will never say, "Oh good, I love feeling pressure and being rushed and all I wanted to do was put in more money all along!"

Microsoft has killed support for all these games. Which kills community.

They add things that nobody wants, because they saw someone else doing it. And they keep adding more of these pay to win and collection "buy a new skin" type mechanics.

Anyway this is a straight up rant at this point, but Microsoft buying something is always a sign doom will follow. Just a matter of time. Xbox held out pretty well. But in the last year or three Microsoft has set its sights on ruining every game it has, so it's just a matter of time now before gamers abandon it. I have zero faith Microsoft will find a way to bring an audience back, because they have no idea how to connect with said audience. It's always just going to be, "How much ARR does that game produce? Wow what a great game!"

I'm sure it applies to Xbox too, but I priced out today's PS to the PS1 and it closely follows the inflation rate that M2 has undergone.

M2 expansion is the prime driver of prices, after supply & demand. Normalize SPX, gold/silver, etc, to M2 and see that they all run in fairly horizontal channels. You can even see nominal GDP normalized to M2 having been flat initially and then transitioning into a downward sloped curve for the last few decades.

By normalizing, I mean [in TradingView] doing SYMBOL*23.16*10^12/M2SL (conceptually SYMBOL*M2SL[0]/M2SL). Most important items track close to M2's roughly 6.5%-7% annualized force of interest inflation rate (the quotient of the natural log of the ratio of price now to historical price, over the elapsed time between the prices).

7% inflation (FoI) -> wealth halflife of cash ≈ 10 years.