Spencer revealed the figure during an interview with Windows Central and stated that Xbox Game Pass is “financially viable, meaning it makes money,” despite that outlay.
There’s a difference between “profitable” and “how much money Microsoft wants to make after investing billions in something” and I’d wager it’s a big one
I get what you’re saying and I’m sure all the MBAs at Microsoft are shitting bricks, but I never fully understand why a company would be disappointed with a service like this one even doing only slightly better than breaking even.
Not everything needs to have infinite growth and gigantic margins as long as $-in > $-out.
I get what you saying, but I think (when it comes to video games) MS is in not position (and hasn’t been for a while) to spend in something that doesn’t gives them a solid profit. I like Game Pass, but since 2021 I subscribe only any other month or so, the novelty wore off and I have a big enough backlog to keep me occupied. MS needs (hear me out lol) some strong first party AA line up to make GP attractive.
Last year they reported 25 million subscribers. Even if every single one of those was the $10 plan, that equates to $3 Billion. Seems like they are doing okay.
My favorite example of this is Tribes 1, players found if you tap jump fast while going down a hill, they could “ski” down and gain a lot of momentum. The dev’s hadn’t intended this to be the case, but players loved it, and the dev’s thought it was cool so they left it in. Now skiing is just considered a primary trait of Tribes games.
What about it is misinformation? It's practically just Steam's own announcement worded differently. Everything in it is verifiable and supported by the Steam blog post.
First off it’s confusing as hell where they try to paraphrase or summarize for what Valve already said plainly if you bypass this blogspam article and just go to their support page where they spell everything out neatly that any 32-bit games will remain in your library and accessible, albeit that your OS may not place nice. This article almost makes it as if they’re removing stuff from your library, which Valve clearly says they’re not doing. The summary AI bot would do a better job sourcing the Valve blog update than this writer did.
Is it possible you might be looking at this old support page from when MacOS first dropped support for 32 bit apps but Valve was still supporting the 32-bit client for older MacOS versions? The current page is this one. I doubt they'll be removing games from your libraries at any point, but the new article makes it clear that they aren't supporting the 32-bit Mojave Steam client or 32-bit games on Mac anymore and make no guarantees that they'll continue to work when the client stops getting updates.
After February 15th, 2024, we will no longer support macOS 10.14 or earlier and we are unable to guarantee continued functionality of 32-bit macOS games after that date.
This article almost makes it as if they’re removing stuff from your library
But it doesn’t remotely imply that? Here are the words/phrases it uses to describe what will happen:
Steam will halt support for macOS 10.13 and 10.14
existing Steam Client installations on those operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind, including security updates
some games will effectively stop functioning on macOS
The Steam store will stop considering games that offer only 32-bit macOS binaries to be Mac compatible at the end of 2023.
At no point does it say or imply that anything will be removed from your library. In fact, it explicitly says how you can ensure that those games you own will remain playable:
In order to ensure continued operation of Steam and new 64-bit games purchased through Steam, users on these older versions should update to a more recent version of macOS.
Why would they include that if they’re trying to tell people the games will be removed from their library?
Those of us that already have Steam games installed on Mojave will no longer be able to update? Or will Gaben reach into my computer and forbid me access to content I paid for?
Edit: All this anger for asking a relevant question. I learned my lesson.
The article is very unclear. It keeps waffling between “it’ll keep working.” and “it might stop working.”
I’m just wondering if it stops working because of an unforeseen problem or because Steam says “I cannot update, so I won’t run.”
It’s not Steam’s fault, but I have to hang on to this old battleship for a few more years before I can replace it with hardware current enough to run current software.
That’s not waffling… both of those things can be true. It currently works and will continue to but it may stop working in the future depending on what updates happen.
Sounds like the client will keep working until something breaks compatibility, which could happen whenever. Backend updates, chrome functionality, lots of things could happen. Or nothing. They’re not supporting it, they can’t guarantee anything.
32 bit game support is a bit more unclear; I’d probably recommend downloading games you like to play a lot, I’m not sure they’ll be distributing 32 bit macos versions long-term.
Yeah, this article is fucking shit. The support page at Steam literally clears the air on this.
Yes. You will still have access to your 32-bit Mac games in your Steam Library. We are not removing these games from your library and they will continue to work on macOS 10.14 Mojave and earlier, Windows and in many cases Linux as well.
I fucking hate people who write articles to stoke fear for clicks.
The blog doesn't link to that support page because that support page isn't related to this. It's out of date and was written when MacOS originally dropped support for 32-bit apps starting with Catalina. Valve was letting people know that even though they wouldn't be able to play their 32-bit games if they update to Catalina, they would still be in their library and available to install on Mojave and earlier. Valve was still supporting the 32-bit Steam client back then.
That's an old support page from back when Apple originally dropped support for 32-bit apps, it wasn't written with the discontinuation of the 32-bit Mojave Steam Client in mind because at that point they were still supporting it. They won't be removing 32-bit games from your libraries, but the 32-bit Mojave Steam client will eventually stop working, and without any warning, when a future update inevitably breaks compatibility. They may still be in your library, but you wont have any way to install those 32-bit games anymore.
This article isn't stoking fear imo, it's very straightforward about what's happening here. At some indeterminate point in the future, there will be no more installing 32-bit MacOS games from Steam and anything you already have installed will presumably need to be run in offline mode because the client will stop working.
The move means existing Steam Client installations on those operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind, including security updates.
We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time.
The company is encouraging all High Sierra and Mojave users to update "sooner rather than later" and noted that Apple ended security updates and technical support for both operating systems in December 2020 and October 2021, respectively.
From what I can gather, it sounds like things will keep working until something changes on the back-end that leaves the old Steam client unable to connect anymore. I don't think they can't say when that will be exactly though because it depends on future updates.
The problem is when those “older builds” rely on a connection to a back-end. If this was just a standalone piece of software that is one thing, but you can’t just let out-of-date clients that connect over the internet to run indefinitely.
You could likely set it up to work “offline” so you can still play your steam games. If you were to set the steam client to offline (Assumedly through the Mac top bar ‘Steam > Offline Mode’) it should never need an update or contact with servers to keep working. That said, I don’t know if there is a limit on how long you can have a computer connected to a specific account while never connecting to Valve’s servers.
they would have done these layoffs regardless for what it’s worth. Apples privacy stance for advertising companies (what unity wanted to be) and the lack of easy access to additional investment this past year meant that it’s not been a sustainable business for a while
While Epic has been pouring money from Fortnite into Unreal Engine and making significant progress in updating the engine.
Unity has been sitting on its ass for years doing absolutely nothing in the way of R&D.
As a result, Unity is now left behind.
Valve has given up on being an Engine developer.
Epic with the Unreal Engine will have a monopoly soon if it doesn't already.
Anyone attempting to make their own modern game engine these days are way behind the ball. All the big players are switching to Unreal.
And it's not only Game Engine, but movie making engine as well.
The only company I could see that would have the $$$ and talent to compete against Epic for a Graphics Engine would be nVidia.
AMD doesn't have the R&D and Scientists specializing in Graphics/Physics/Rendering/Simulation/InformationLoading like nVidia does.
Valve has the $$$ and talent, but they are focused on hardware now, and are even farther behind than Unity.
Having a single Game Engine monopoly will be bad for all of us in the end.
The only Video Game engine that I could see someone develop that could compete against Unreal, is if the engine was built from the ground up 100% focused on anti-cheat. Libraries that are designed from the start to be multiplayer focused with un-necessary data scrubbed properly from the clients so they can't sniff out data. Something designed to be hack proof.
That game engine, even if not graphically intense would be highly sought after in a wide genre range of games.
…which is why Godot now is quickly slipping into the niche that Unity largely used to be for.
And since Godot is FOSS, there is no going back for Unity once Indie game devs have shifted, since - like with Blender being free to use - it destroys the competition by becoming the defacto king when it comes to things like video tutorials on places like YouTube.
Popular tutorial channels on YouTube know their viewer audience is less likely to be large enough to be profitable via ad revenue, premium subscriptions, etc. if they are limited niche of people only willing to pay thousands for a license to an application they don’t yet have any professional reason to pay for.
Being open source in any way also usually then leads to a snowball effect of an application gaining popularity and then people extending its functionality.
This is also what I think will soon happen to Plex with Jellyfin since the Plex bigwigs have decided they want to be Netflix more than people’s personal media server frontend.
All it will take is one big mistake and the ground will fall beneath their feet just like with Unity.
All fascinating and frustrating to watch as I used to work with Unity a ton since its early days.
Never really thought about the popularity of FOSS starting with youtube-tutorials. But completely reasonable that when everybody starts with Godot (or other FOSS like Blender), even bigger Studios might just use that one since there are just more guys already proficient with it.
Students and amateurs want to learn how to do something. Their choices are either - (sometimes) get an EDU address, fill out a form, apply for a discount or free version, see the watermark or lose a ton of functionality, and only see tutorials via classes or other a-la-carte method (how many folks are doing Houdini lessons online out there - probably not many if I had to guess considering Houdini’s price), or start paying $20/month for a program that they someday hope will allow them to earn money - knowing that if they stop paying, they lose access to files… OR…
They can download a program for free, that anyone can add stuff to, with thousands of really well done tutorials online on free places like YouTube, that studios will love because there’s no licensing fee or if there is - it’s only when they are really profitable or whatever.
The more that people use it, the more there are people doing tutorials, expanding functionality, etc.
Blender used to be garbage in like 2010, but now - you’d be an idiot not to grab a copy and teach yourself if you used to regular in apps like 3DS Max, Maya, or other premium closed application now requiring a bunch of DRM installers, license tiers, and subscriptions…
Same goes for Adobe’s stuff. I imagine there are more and more people sick of Creative Cloud’s garbage and are ready to find and learn and contribute to FOSS services… All that needs to happen is critical stupid event by bigwig, and suddenly a mass exodus begins.
This is also why languages like R and Python are supplanting SPSS and Matlab. Open source is just better in some ways, particularly once it gets over the initial usability barrier, which Jellyfin seems to now be achieving.
Hello I work for Unity (for now lol, we’ll see)! I’d like to just say from my end of things we do actually do a solid amount of R&D. Just that a depressing amount of it either never sees the light of day, takes so long to release it has already been done better by someone else, or is unannounced with little to no documentation on release so it never gets visibility. The other thing to note is that Unity does a lot of non-game things that might not be that noticeable if you’re just looking at it from a game making perspective, like our publicly known contracts we have to help train the military to “totally not kill people you guys”!
gamedeveloper.com
Aktywne