Microsoft CEO Nadella Says Gaming Needs Good Margins To Innovate, Compares Strategy To Office (pcgamer.com)
- Reference: 0179906204
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/29/1543218/microsoft-ceo-nadella-says-gaming-needs-good-margins-to-innovate-compares-strategy-to-office
- Source link: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-best-way-to-innovate-in-gaming-is-to-have-good-margins-says-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-so-i-guess-hell-be-reinvesting-his-usd96-5-million-payday-back-into-xbox-any-second-now/
Nadella used the word "innovation" at least five times during the interview but never offered specifics about what he meant by it. He said Microsoft needs to "invent, maybe, some new interactive media" because gaming's competition is short-form video rather than other games. The CEO described Microsoft's new gaming strategy as being "everywhere, on every platform" after comparing the company's game publishing business to Microsoft Office. He said "the biggest gaming business is the Windows business" and added that he is looking forward to "the next console, the next PC gaming."
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-best-way-to-innovate-in-gaming-is-to-have-good-margins-says-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-so-i-guess-hell-be-reinvesting-his-usd96-5-million-payday-back-into-xbox-any-second-now/
[2] https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/23/122257/microsoft-demands-30-profit-margins-from-struggling-xbox-division
Is he aware of the innovator's dilemma? (Score:5, Interesting)
"the very practices that lead to success, such as listening to customers and focusing on high-margin products, can prevent companies from adapting to new, lower-margin innovations that eventually overtake the market. "
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not. He joined several decades after the innovation phase of Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2)
He's gotta leave us guessing because like other competitors MS has bought and killed countless studios and the games they produced.
He has it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovation is necessary to have good profit margins. Having more money to hire more people to work on bloated development teams won't make better games. That's led to Microsoft's gaming division being stagnant and unable to produce the kind of games that consumers want to spend their money on. The last two games I've purchased were made by a single developer or a very small team. I've more than gotten my money's worth out of both of them and would still feel that way even at double the price. I struggle to think of the last game out of a Microsoft studio that was appealing to me at all. Much of the industry suffers from the same problem.
Find and fund some smaller development teams that are talented and have a unique idea for a game. It doesn't need to be a AAA game to have mass appeal and be a financial success. It will also cost a lot less if their game doesn't pan out.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to understand if you are producing a commodity or not and manage the business according. If you are in tech or entertainment; new novel products are where you bread is buttered.
To make new novel products, yes you need your current activities to be 'high-margin' but that does not mean the overall business is going to be high margin. If you plan to be long term; well you better re-invest those profits into trying new things; many of which will fail.
The other two options are - extraction. You reap
Re:He has it backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Take that a step farther. I'd argue innovation in video games isn't all that important either. Fun gameplay, and decent story telling is all you need.
Sure, Nintendo has made their bread and butter on putting out "unique" blockbuster games, like each new Zelda iteration.
But frankly, most successful games are simply games that are fun to play. These deveopers lose sight of that.
Re: (Score:2)
I tell you what, I avoid pretty much all big budget games these days. They're basically two of the same type: Either multiplayer points scoring where speed is everything or long winded story books where there's very little game play at all.
Innovation? (Score:2)
II, too, do not know what he means by "innovation." It sounds like standard CEO conference-speak blather to me. How do you "innovate" in gaming when your staff's top priority is clinging desperately to their jobs?
Re: (Score:3)
Many breakout successes in gaming happened due to a platform change. Think AJAX from 2005, then social networks from 2008, then mobile from 2010.
Anything tried since -- VR, blockchain, smartwatch -- failed to gain traction so far. So yes he is looking for a new platform, in part because his company is losing ground on the PC and consoles. And he's also right about the tiktoks of the world eating games' breakfast, especially in the mobile part.
Personally I have high hopes about AR gaming, but the hardware is
Nadella (Score:2)
You have done more to screw the computing world than even Gates himself. Quite the accomplishment you fucktard.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious. I just went through your posting history. In every single one, you are spewing conspiracy theory laden "white male" crap.
So.... I'm curious if you have difficulty tying your shoes because of the "woke DEI brainwashed masses".
Does "Everywhere on Every Platform" include Linux? (Score:2)
Or are they still too scared of the penguin?
Good margins (Score:2)
> Microsoft CEO Nadella Says Gaming Needs Good Margins To Innovate, ...
Okay... Like 1" all around or just [1]letterboxing [wikipedia.org]? :-)
> ... Compares Strategy To Office
On no, not the [2]ribbon [wikipedia.org]! :-O
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterboxing_(filming)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)
"In order to get good games" (Score:2)
"You have to give me lots of money. Really."
Failed at the start (Score:3)
The moment you start talking about margins as a game studio is the same moment when you've failed. Your goal should be creating games that are immersive, complete, engaging and simply fun to play. Earning money should just be a consequence of you writing good games.
Don't get me wrong, I know earning money is important to keep going, but the moment you worry more about margins than you worry about fun, you shift your focus to the wrong thing and you will ultimately fail at both.
Re:Failed at the start (Score:5, Insightful)
> The moment you start talking about margins as a game studio is the same moment when you've failed. Your goal should be creating games that are immersive, complete, engaging and simply fun to play. Earning money should just be a consequence of you writing good games.
> Don't get me wrong, I know earning money is important to keep going, but the moment you worry more about margins than you worry about fun, you shift your focus to the wrong thing and you will ultimately fail at both.
The problem with a huge portion of our decision makers is that the sole focus is on profit and gaining profit. And for some strange reason, they aren't bright enough to put together that sometimes creating things that people want leads to profit. And sometimes, creating things people don't want leads to loss of profit. They become so laser focused on profit that they lose sight of the things that could lead to profit.
It's like when driving, or riding a motorcycle or bicycle, you do not want to do what my old motorcycle teacher called, "Target lock," where you focus on one point and never let your eyes move off that target. That's how you miss obstacles that may be utterly obvious if you remember to scan around you and keep situational awareness. But these folks go full target lock on profit, and in focusing so tightly on it, they miss the opportunity to improve their chances of actually reaching it.
Is xbox.com still down? (Score:1)
[1]https://downdetector.com/ [downdetector.com]
[1] https://downdetector.com/
Office? (Score:3)
Microsoft Office is a terrible reference to pick, regardless as to my personal feelings, it's objectively, slow, bulky, lacks proper platform support, invasive with AI, and has a completely broken licensing system. If they want to innovate gaming, to make it like Office, just throw your game console in the trash, have someone kick you in the nuts, then demand payment for painkillers, and that might be a better overall experience.
Innovative Products, Not Financial Instruments (Score:3)
Others are accurately hammering this home and I feel compelled to pile on.
A company cannot be innovative if all of their innovative ideas require guarantees financial of success. If you lead with the demand of financial success, you're forcing people who are scared for their jobs to avoid risk and simply replicate the last big thing. And when the safe project brings in less revenue than originally estimated (because everyone is competing using the same safe items), they can point back at their market research and say, "We had all the reason and data to think that this would make us money."
Innovation is a gamble. If a company wants to be innovative, then they need to risk their own money on projects lacking the certainty of success and keep people employed despite the lack of extreme profit margins so that those people feel sufficiently comfortable to innovate.
People who are scared for their jobs will not innovate . "Firing people until innovation improves" is not a thing.
Bzzt (Score:2)
> The best way to innovate in gaming is to have..
.. more game-makers.
Kids, become a programmer. You can write games yourself, or you can join an existing project. There are many to choose from, but also, there's always room for one more.
Best game (Score:2)
I think that the best game ever is Minecraft. Not the vanilla one, and not entirely because of its creators, but because of those who write mods and modpacks for it. They get usually zero money from it, and I think this is why it works:
0. Some people write a framework, which makes writing mods easy.
1. A random person writes a good mod, e.g. Immersive Engineering that adds huge machines to the game.
2. Another person writes a mod that adds pollution. Similarly others write new simple mods.
3. Next person combi
Re: (Score:2)
It seems mods are nowadays not only fun for the gamers, but essential to make a game work. Cities Skylines is an example, first edition is only really fun thanks to a lot of mods which not only add features but also fix or work around bugs and incompetent parts of the game which won't be addressed by the studio. Even after more than 10 years since release, I feel that game is still early access in its vanilla state. If I knew someone who could snatch a copy of the source code, I could at least see what I co
Good game design (Score:1)
Have a well-designed single-player campaign with a compelling story.
As Yahtzee Croshaw said about hi-fi rush "when they [Bethesda] throw out something like this with zero hype, it yodels to me that they've known what we really wanted all along; they know damn well what a fucking good game looks like.
Do they fear Nintendo?.. (Score:2)
> The CEO described Microsoft's new gaming strategy as being "everywhere, on every platform"
The Switch 2 is perfectly capable of running the Master Chief Collection, Halo 5 and Halo Infinite, but they've gone radio silent on updating on all of those plans to "support the Switch."
So you have to ask the obvious question: do they fear Nintendo or something?
By current estimates, the Switch 2 has already globally sold about 10M units, and it's only been out since June. Therefore, there's no reason for them to act
What else (Score:2)
"Nadella used the word "innovation" at least five times during the interview but never offered specifics about what he meant by it."
He meant AI, Artificial Innovation.
Game innovation (Score:2)
Can anyone give me 5 innovations we can reasonably look forward to seeing in the next 5 years?
Actual innovations, not just improvements or incremental changes. Change the world innovation type stuff.
Clearly an idiot (Score:1, Offtopic)
Yes, he can generate short-term profits. But strategic thinking? None. An he does not understand creativity or solid engineering either.