DF Direct Weekly #221: Disastrous Xbox Cuts, AMD/Sony PS6 Hints, Helldivers 2 Coming To Xbox

HeisenbergFX4

HeisenbergFX4

Member


0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:00 News 1: Huge Microsoft Gaming cuts
0:30:07 News 2: Is Xbox hardware "dead"?
0:47:56 News 3: AMD, Mark Cerny hint future PlayStation plans
0:54:05 News 4: Donkey Kong Bananza developed by Super Mario Odyssey studio
1:00:52 News 5: Nvidia dropping gaming driver support for Maxwell, Volta, Pascal
1:08:38 News 6: 5070 Super, 5070 Ti Super, 5080 Super reportedly leaked
1:18:18 News 7: Helldivers 2 is coming to Xbox Series
1:24:04 Supporter Q1: Are people unfair to multi frame gen?
1:37:09 Supporter Q2: Could the Switch 2's authentication chip be an issue for VRR?
1:41:22 Supporter Q3: Why haven't more Switch 2 games used 40fps modes?
1:44:57 Supporter Q4: Could Nvidia launch a competitive game console?
1:50:39 Supporter Q5: Does John own the 1997 PS1 game Ray Tracers?
 
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PeteBull said:
They try to pretend they arent biased af towards MS and that this diseaster wasnt seen from years ago, hence last sheriff in town "look" :P
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I dont know that Oliver guy is not some MS fan. He always seems to take shots at them and clearly has no belief in that company being able to do anything. When he heard about their windows machine he was just like "Yea I don't think MS can pull this off".
 
mayham2199 said:
I dont know that Oliver guy is not some MS fan. He always seems to take shots at them and clearly has no belief in that company being able to do anything. When he heard about their windows machine he was just like "Yea I don't think MS can pull this off".
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I can't even recall the last time they even said anything overly positive about Xbox. They (Alex) glazed the PT mode of Doom a bit, but that is PC/Nvidia, nothing to do with Xbox really.
 
I feel like john kinda lost the plot in this video. He keeps going back to 'microsoft are making a boatload of money and didn't need to do this'. The problem is that microsoft aren't going to keep bleeding money with the xbox brand year after year after year and with gamepass falling wayyyyy short of expectations in terms of subscriber count, their were always going to be massive cuts. Xbox as a brand flatout can't sustain itself at the current rate with gamepass failing, and they can't rely on activision/blizzard revenue as a source of success when the brand itself is sinking outside of them.
 
OmegaSupreme said:
"Everybody who supported the Activision buyout was wrong" strong words from John.
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John can kiss my behind quite frankly because he's a hypocrite. He supported the deal at the time and was championing it.

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I think Sony and AMD is on to something. Amd caught on to cpus with the x3d chips and by far superior to intels and as for the GPU it won't be long before amd catches up to nvidias transformer model despite the gpu not being as powerful as nvidias
 
PeteBull said:
They try to pretend they arent biased af towards MS and that this diseaster wasnt seen from years ago, hence last sheriff in town "look" :P
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I like John, but he was spewing how Xbox and Gamepass are profitable when there is literally no evidence that they pull a profit.

It pulls in a ton of revenue, but actual profit from Gamepass and Xbox has never been disclosed.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
I feel like john kinda lost the plot in this video. He keeps going back to 'microsoft are making a boatload of money and didn't need to do this'. The problem is that microsoft aren't going to keep bleeding money with the xbox brand year after year after year and with gamepass falling wayyyyy short of expectations in terms of subscriber count, their were always going to be massive cuts. Xbox as a brand flatout can't sustain itself at the current rate with gamepass failing, and they can't rely on activision/blizzard revenue as a source of success when the brand itself is sinking outside of them.
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John has his strengths but being a financial analyst isn't one of them.
 
JohnnyFootball said:
I like John, but he was spewing how Xbox and Gamepass are profitable when there is literally no evidence that they pull a profit.

It pulls in a ton of revenue, but actual profit from Gamepass and Xbox has never been disclosed.
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Not saying Spencer isn't lying, but I think most journalists just go by what he said

www.vgchartz.com

Phil Spencer: Game Pass is Profitable, Spends Over $1 Billion to Add 3rd-Party Content to Game Pass

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview Windows Central revealed Xbox spends over $1 billion a year on [...]
www.vgchartz.com www.vgchartz.com

"Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview Windows Central revealed Xbox spends over $1 billion a year on third-party content for Xbox Game Pass and the service itself is profitable."
 
Elios83 said:
He didn't falsely claim that he didn't support it though, he's just saying people who supported it were wrong, including himself?
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Why support it to begin with? How is a mega corporation buying the biggest gaming publisher in the industry good for the industry. No one at the time the deal happened should've supported it and especially after the leaked documents in court came out that microsoft wanted to spend sony/playstation out of business.
 
Do they mention anything about how much of a joke the whole initiative / Perfect Dark scenario was?

Hiring some of the most talented people in the industry to fail so hard is a special kind of move, only Microsofts current management could make.
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
A lot of things can happen over the course of 3 years to change ones mind
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It made 0 sense to support the deal at the time it happened. Microsoft had just bought bethesda and now they were buying the biggest publisher in the industry. They were going on a massive spending spree and wanted to buy more and more until the CMA essentially played hardball with them and they realized that they should tone down the spending for awhile after buying activision/blizzard.
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
A lot of things can happen over the course of 3 years to change ones mind
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What was about to happen was pretty clear.

Xbox couldn't grow their own stable of studios despite having very strong IPs and good financial backing.

Buying the biggest publisher could only mean one of two things:
1 - Xbox management is letting Activision take over and they strive
2 - Xbox management take control of everything and it all sinks.... That second opinion was 90% going to happen, and it did.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
It made 0 sense to support the deal at the time it happened. Microsoft had just bought bethesda and now they were buying the biggest publisher in the industry. They were going on a massive spending spree and wanted to buy more and more until the CMA essentially played hardball with them and they realized that they should tone down the spending for awhile after buying activision/blizzard.
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Years of mediocre to just plain bad games have hurt MS gaming way more than any acquisition imo
 
Glad John called out Phil Spencer and Matt Turnbull for their idiotic tone deaf responses to the layoffs. Just highlights the horrible culture at Microsoft.
 
Remind me again papitos

Why should I listen to these guys for two fucking hours? Do they think they are that special or something?
 
PSFore said:
Not saying Spencer isn't lying, but I think most journalists just go by what he said

www.vgchartz.com

Phil Spencer: Game Pass is Profitable, Spends Over $1 Billion to Add 3rd-Party Content to Game Pass

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview Windows Central revealed Xbox spends over $1 billion a year on [...]
www.vgchartz.com www.vgchartz.com

"Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview Windows Central revealed Xbox spends over $1 billion a year on third-party content for Xbox Game Pass and the service itself is profitable."
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Holy Jesus, Batman.

Nothing Phil Spencer or any MS executive says mean a damn thing to me. They have constantly lied over and over and over. Only now are even the most naive people finally seeing it.

Also, they don't share numbers. I don't believe any company...especially Microsoft...when they say things are profitable and don't disclose one damn actual number. It's very easy to say something is profitable when you don't have to back it up.

One thing that makes NO SENSE to me is how a publicly traded company doesn't have to disclose all their financials and breakdowns.

For the record, I am NOT implying that you aren't aware of all of this. I just love to state this so that people who believe anything MS says should be taken with major salt.
 
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HeisenbergFX4 said:
Years of mediocre to just plain bad games have hurt MS gaming way more than any acquisition imo
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The activision/blizzard deal screwed them just as badly because now xbox isn't a blip on the radar for microsoft anymore. When you spend over 70 billion dollars then microsoft suddenly turned their eye to the xbox division and took much more control over it then they had before. For example satya nadella seemed to appear out of nowhere much more frequently after the deal happened and everything was finalized.




He took more control over the xbox division and now we're seeing all these cuts and canceled projects out of no where. We also saw xbox go third party right after that deal happened and i don't find that to be a coincidence. He's running the show now and he dosen't give a crap about brand loyalty, xbox consumers, exclusive games etc. He just cares about making a profit as well as A.I and damn everyone and everything else.
 
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JohnnyFootball said:
Agreed. They had all the studios and IPs they needed to have a successful business. What Sony did in the PS3 era in terms of first party should have been the template they followed.
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That takes talent and actual good managerial skills. That is absolutely lacking completely in the entire Xbox as an organization.

Phil has been there for years as head of MS game studios during Mattrick years and then succeeded as head honcho. And the results are devastatingly terrible.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
Why support it to begin with? How is a mega corporation buying the biggest gaming publisher in the industry good for the industry. No one at the time the deal happened should've supported it and especially after the leaked documents in court came out that microsoft wanted to spend sony/playstation out of business.
Click to expand...

The gaming press has always been full of people cheering for Microsoft for different reasons (marketing shills paid to do PR for them, people who have clear business relationships with them acting neutral, crazy fanboys), in a way that is completely disproportionate of reality where they are a distant third.
These people just wanted the deal to go through because they thought that buying huge IPs and making them Xbox exclusive was the only way to change the status quo.
They were completely wrong because Nadella had no intention to waste 80+ billion dollars to let mediocre executives like Spencer, Bond co. try to ressurect a failed product that was not aligned with what the company considered their future (cloud, AI).
So in the end they all lost spectacularly, admitting it is better than nothing.
 
John was surprising unconvincing about Perfect Dark being fake.
Sounds from him more like "what I believe" than actually have and kind of solid proof of hint it isn't fake. Terrible take.

Topher said:
Glad John called out Phil Spencer and Matt Turnbull for their idiotic tone deaf responses to the layoffs. Just highlights the horrible culture at Microsoft.
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Honestly any stupid youtuber could say that. Going with the flow isn't actually something uncommon.
 
Saber said:
Honestly any stupid youtuber could say that. Going with the flow isn't actually something uncommon.
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Most youtubers don't have as loud a voice as DF. Not saying they deserve a medal or anything. Just glad it was said.
 
JohnnyFootball said:
I like John, but he was spewing how Xbox and Gamepass are profitable when there is literally no evidence that they pull a profit.

It pulls in a ton of revenue, but actual profit from Gamepass and Xbox has never been disclosed.
Click to expand...
Now count in conditioning gamers in ur ecoststem to never/barely buy any games and always wait for game to hit gamepass, then u will know right away whole gamepass is crazy loss xD
 
StereoVsn said:
That takes talent and actual good managerial skills. That is absolutely lacking completely in the entire Xbox as an organization.

Phil has been there for years as head of MS game studios during Mattrick years and then succeeded as head honcho. And the results are devastatingly terrible.
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Absolutely correct. Phil had some good ideas, just didn't have the willpower, mindset or talent to execute it.

Rodd Fergusson who headed the Coalition during Gears 4 and 5 was the best hire he made. Say what you want about the quality of those games, they were completed in an orderly fashion and felt like complete games, whether you liked the game they delivered is one thing, but they needed that guy in charge.
 
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