Tag Archives: Blizzard

September 15, 2025 · 11:54

Cracks are showing

That is the setting of this day. In under 5 minutes three articles passed by my eyes and it is a clear sign that cracks are showing. I will give you an article first. The article (at https://www.cbr.com/xbox-game-pass-end-of-era/) gives us ‘It’s Officially the End of an Era for Xbox Game Pass’, I am in the meddle of that settings. I cannot disagree and I cannot completely agree. We are given “Game Pass might be a great deal for players, but unfortunately, it comes at the cost of devaluing developers and their work. If the system keeps running the way it does now, it’ll only get less sustainable over time, and if Game Pass crashes, a lot of people are going down with it.” Yes I agree with that statement, however “it comes at the cost of devaluing developers and their work” is a little validating what a fool hands for their games. Consider Hogwarts Legacy, the devoted Harry Potter fan goes ‘Take my money…now!’ whilst plenty of other gamers go ‘Not in 999,999 years, 11 months, 30 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 50 seconds’, as I see it ‘Not in a million years’ sounds so crass (big smiley). So the statement is out there and lets be clear Game Pass was a great idea. But it comes at a cost. You see, Microsoft needs the game pass to give validation of the Blizzard/Activision deal, together with Bethesda they spend a little over  $100,000,000,000 and as it stands and as I see it, to cross that deal they have to make over $6.5 billion dollars a year just to make the interest go away and last year it merely banked 5 billion an change. This is a loss of well over a billion a year just for the interest of this caper. I thought it was a bad deal the moment it was announced and I wrote about it in 2022/2023. So with the end of game pass this deal gets to be the sour apple that gives Microsoft indigestion. But like the infomercials say “There is more” and there is. 

You see we are also given ‘Microsoft Is Axing This Android App. You Have 3 Weeks to Find a Replacement’ (at https://au.pcmag.com/hosted-email-providers/113075/microsoft-is-axing-this-android-app-you-have-3-weeks-to-find-a-replacement) and you know, there is and there has always been a replacer ent from the day that thing was called into service. It is called GMAIL. It has always worked well and it is not riddled with hidden Microsoft snags. So whilst we are given “A year ago, Microsoft celebrated 10 million Outlook Lite downloads. Effective Oct. 6, however, Redmond says it’s being retired ‘so we can focus our investments’ on the main Outlook app.” I will counter that that this setting was in play since 1998, so the investments should be there and in order. But when you see “so we can focus our investments” and consider the previous article, we see the beginning of cracks in the armor of Microsoft. Cracks in its spin settings and telling the world how great it is doing as a 3.79 trillion company. You see, there is a lot more bad news ahead  for them and none of it is great. Yet that is beyond the third article and it comes with speculations.

You see, the third article is one I have issues with (I’m on the side of Microsoft here). The article (at https://www.gamesradar.com/games/the-elder-scrolls/after-4-months-oblivion-remastered-falls-to-mixed-reviews-on-steam-after-reports-of-poor-and-unstable-performance-on-pc-it-is-still-well-and-truly-a-bethesda-game/) gives us ‘After 4 months, Oblivion Remastered falls to “Mixed” reviews on Steam after reports of “poor and unstable” performance on PC: “It is still well and truly a Bethesda game”’ There are a few issues here. I played it on the PS5 (as one should) and I believe it was a truly great remaster. I found one glitch (optional a bug) and I got around this. Whilst we see that Cyrodil is massively shown in the greatness that it deserves and better than the Xbox360 edition, I got the same feeling of amazement here as I did in the original. And I have a few issues with the “poor and unstable” side of the matter. Yes a steam system and most PC’s do not allow for a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (and neither does the wallet of these gamers), as such they are playing with the overclocking left, right and centre. And not every application allows for that and becomes ‘unstable’. But the term overclocking sells systems and as long as the warnings are there, they allow for it, but software tends to be tricky and I believe that this is shown here. I never did that and I found one glitch (optional bug) in my PS5 edition of Oblivion and I think that this is amazing quality. So there is a larger audience who will ‘convict’ Microsoft in falsehood. 

As I see it, these settings will optionally call for Google to bring back to life the Stadia and I have a setting that will nearly guarantee a starting setting of 6 billion a year and past that stage one an increase to $10-$15 billion annually. I merely don’t want Microsoft to get that part, they tinkered with the freedom of gamers, so they are out. Amazon had the inside track for over two year and they didn’t take me seriously (my speculation of them seeing my idea) and now as the Microsoft cracks are showing we see a larger workspace of gaining over 15 million gamers and a whole lot more in other places. That warrants a new look at the stadia. I thought it was a great idea for the Kingdom Holdings to gain the hand on the Stadia, but as I see it, they seemingly lacked vision there too. As such Google now has a new upper hand and as I accused them of leaving billions on the floor, it is their turn to pick this up, fair is fair.

So whilst the cracks are showing others can gain the leverage of Microsoft (and make it fall at least a third in total value and the would make buy words golden too (and I get to hand a wooden spoon with gold engravings to Phil Spencer) as such my ego is at present a little unbearable to me as well. 

A setting that was foreseen at least two years ago and now there is a new stage in that setting, or better stated a remastered setting of the same stage and that is a nice touch on silly old me.

So have a great Monday, which at present feels like a new Friday to me.

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August 1, 2025 · 23:28

The Nintendo Charge

Nintendo makes another blitz record, it is not the first one, but this one is one for the record books. The story (at https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-has-sold-6-million-switch-2-consoles-and-almost-the-same-number-of-mario-kart-world/) gives us ‘Nintendo has sold 6 million Switch 2 consoles and almost the same number of Mario Kart World’ as for my excuse not being part of that cluster is simple. I just don’t have the money at present. Nintendo played a near perfect awareness game. They went global with the teaser, they followed up with YouTube video’s and gave online presence. When Zero-hour was here. The streets were aligned around shops who sold it with people. We all wanted one, even the ones that couldn’t afford one. And there was a lot of interest. The expanded memory, larger screen, higher resolution, snap click controllers with magnets and the controller was also used as a mouse. 256GB against the 32GB of the original Switch. Basically everything was stronger. One exception, the battery life seemingly is not. I run my Switch on the TV, so I won’t ever see this one issue. And on the TV, you now get 4K. Cheaper than either Xbox or PS5 (not by that much) Nintendo made the record books yet again. In the first 7 weeks the Nintendo sold 6 million Switch 2 consoles and the real screamer is that nearly all of them got Mario Kart World, it sold 5.63 million copies. That is huge. I saw the videos and I would get that as my first game too. 

So when we se all this we tend to think, what is next? But that is it, this setting will hurt Sony as well as Microsoft to some degree. People can no longer afford it all and when they get a Switch 2, their coffers are nearly empty as such, no direct sales for either Sony or Microsoft. Microsoft with its Game Pass will have an advantage over Sony (for the first time) and it will not be as hindered by Nintendo as Sony is, but they too will feel the pain. I reckon that this will continue straight through Christmas 2025. Because those who can not afford it at present, will work harder to get one before or at this Christmas (hopefully me too). 

So whilst we get the quote “Despite being a launch title and being constrained by its user base, Mario Kart World is the series’ second biggest launch behind Mario Kart Wii.” And that makes sense. I see the improvements and the plusses that Mario Kart World is bringing and I reckon that this game alone is the largest push to get the Nintendo Camera as well. It goes further, As of June 30, 2025, the Nintendo Switch has sold a total of 153.10 million units worldwide. This makes it the third best-selling video game console of all time and now add the 6 million Switch 2 systems and we see that Nintendo is overtaking Microsoft by storm. Consider that at present Xbox Series X/S (2020): Estimated over 28 million units as of June 2024. This implies that Switch 2 is already at 21% of Xbox Series X/S lifetime sales. And the Switch already surpassed that. This sets the  Microsoft systems in third position and should Amazon agree to my terms Microsoft becomes the 4th player. Not bad after spending Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. That was money well spend wasn’t it? And should Amazon agree to surpass Microsoft too, that 68 billion dollar anchor will weigh harshly on their actions. The funny part is that neither Sony or Nintendo had to pay that much for anything they bought (as far as I know). And there is more (there always is) Nintendo is should of breaking its own record of the Nintendo DS which sold 154 million consoles. The Switch is now less then a million away from that record. It is anyones guess how far the Switch 2 will make it, but as I see it the numbers are in favor of Switch replacing a lot of systems within the next year. Nintendo said there were no changes to its financial forecast for this fiscal year, which is to sell 15 million consoles by March 2026. I tend to think that this number will be broken in several ways by Christmas 2024. That is before we consider the pleasing notions of all the Harry Potter fans who will be driven to this game on the Switch 2 as well. Yes, Nintendo is about to break record and this is the first time that I am saying this, but Nintendo is now approaching the pole position that Sony holds, as such they will have to up their game considerably if they do not want to be taken over by Nintendo, because that is no longer impossible. I don’t think Sony was ready to see the Switch family as a threat to their number one position, but that is the setting that they face in 2026, as such I wonder what Sony will come up with next. 

The armistice race on consoles tends to be a fulfilling one and there is the second step. When Nintendo get that done, it will find more gamers switching to their side. Although I have always stated that the Nintendo is the system you get next to your usual console, I still believe that and as such Nintendo tends to have great options. I merely wonder when Hogwarts Legacy 2 is released will it be released on day one for Switch 2 too? You might think that this doesn’t matter, but it does. It will be the first moment when Nintendo will have surpassed Sony and that is the kind of news that is massive in its own right. Sony released its PlayStation on December 3, 1994, it went straight to the top from the start and it will have taken Nintendo 32 years to overtake Sony and that is not something to think lightly of. I certainly am not. 

So, I merely have this to say “Well done Nintendo”

Have a great day today 

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September 13, 2024 · 05:31

As the walls start to crumble

Yes, this is a little speculative, but the story is not. I just learned of the BBC story that they released 4 hours ago, 17 hours after I wrote the previous story. The BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq82852kkz8o) is giving us ‘Microsoft lays off more gaming staff in new cuts’ with the subtext “It laid off 1,900 staff in January and, in May, closed four studios bought before its purchase of Call of Duty maker Activision-Blizzard”, as well as “He said the decision to cut more jobs – about 3% of its gaming staff – was made “as part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure” and organising the business “for long-term success””. The ‘he’ in this story is Phil Spencer, and that long-term success? As I personally see it Microsoft will implode within the next 30 month, so that long term is relatively short (as I see it). And as for the layoffs being towards post-acquisition team structure. That might be the intention, yet the issue remains that the interest alone on a $69,000,000,000 purchase should be no less then 4.5 billion dollars and the gaming stage brought Microsoft (according to several sources) no more than 2 billion dollars. As such Microsoft is coming up short around 50% of the interest alone and that is before we factor in what more is needed to take care of the principle. And as Microsoft is dealing with all kind of fines and several angry people suing for what they think they are due, the numbers will not come up nice, more like tainted and covered in blood covered red. We then get “Xbox boss Mr Spencer told gaming website IGN he was expected to run a “sustainable” gaming business and show growth during a June interview”, so what does this Spencer person think what ‘sustainable’ means? In my book it means able to be maintained at a certain level, and how does that work when you lay off over 2000 people? Support? Managers? One gives relief to hardship and buggy environment to the customers (something that Microsoft is intimate familiar with) and the managers are often the creative part of the company and they have had the ears of their staff. Now these fired people could optionally use my freebees and create these games on NON-Microsoft systems. Giving Microsoft even more hardship. A game that makes perfect sense in the business mind of Microsoft, but gaming is mostly art and that is a setting that they seem to misunderstand. I like it when the unworthy give me resources and tools that can be used against them. Karma tends to be a bitch. The quote we see is “In its latest finance report Microsoft said its gaming revenues had increased, mostly due to its ownership of Activision-Blizzard, which also produces World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch” what we do not see are the issues that Diablo 4 still has (on whatever system). It might have been the big cash cow (over $666M in the first 5 days) but what did it cost to develop Diablo 4? It took 6 years, that is nearly all we know about it and Microsoft is really happy to hide a lot of numbers and merely focus on the good stories which is to be expected, but as we now see that thousands have been cast out, there is every chance that these people could become their worst competitor and not in a good way. Another setting is seen (at https://www.inverse.com/gaming/xbox-enotria-delay-microsoft-ps5) where inverse tells us ‘Enotria Is Just the Latest Game to Hit A Mysterious Snag With Its Xbox Launch’ with the byline “Something’s amiss at Microsoft”, I think that it is a lot more. How is it possible that Phil Spencer can smilingly visit the board of directors as we are given things like “it was canceling the Xbox release of HAAK. According to the developer, it spent over 14 months attempting to register the game for release on Xbox, when it estimated it needed only about two weeks of porting work. However, bugs in Microsoft’s Partner Center and Support site prevented it from applying”, as such I wonder, when a we see registration issues and bugs. What is Microsoft doing, or better asked, not doing? 14 months? There seems to be an increasing issue with transparency and in gaming it is damaging, as such what is Microsoft doing? I see it as a setting where the walls come crumbling, but what if I am wrong? What if Microsoft has a more insidious plan? I have no idea what it is and I have no clue what they are doing but there is a setting where Microsoft is all about all games online and in the cloud. So what happens when gamers are all controlled from a singular place? I have no idea what is going on, it was a mere speculation, but the increasing amount of issues (including bugs all over the place) does not fill me with comfort. Consider this and wonder why they were willing to pay 69 billion, all whilst there is a lack of revenue. There is more going on and I think it is becoming more and more imperative to create games on OTHER systems and bleed Microsoft dry. The other part is that the (speculated) intentional lack of clarity in regards to the numbers we see reports of 160% year on year growth, but with gaming it is merely based on the next game and so far quality has been lacking. The failures that Redfall brought, the lack of issues in Starfield is one side, the lacking sales of the Xbox is the other part. When you see the list of issues we must understand that there are plenty of intelligent people at Microsoft, so what is this about? We can wait to find out, or we can create a wave of excellent games and give the gamers an option to select the Amazon Luna, the Sony PS5 (PS4 too), the Nintendo Switch or the Tencent Handheld as their new home. At this point China becomes a contender in the gaming industry. That should be a hard sell to the US government, would it not be? As such I set the gaming IP I designed as Freebee to non-Microsoft systems. I might not know what Microsoft is up to, but I do know that they are greed/revenue driven, and as such I know what would hurt them and should Kingdom Holding accept my offer the hardship of Microsoft merely increases. A nice way to end my career, by partially saving the gaming world (a bit presumptuous perhaps). Microsoft should never have done what they did, they wanted to become absolute ruler and that didn’t sit well with me, a such I created IP and stories for game developers. The one rule was, ‘not for Microsoft systems’. Making the ideas public domain made the most sense to me. Or as Frank Herbert wrote in 1965 ‘He who destroys a thing, controls a thing’ as such I went to work. Now I believe that the BBC is merely handing me a partial confirmation (as I see it) that I was right all along. When the staff leaves it becomes a problem. 

Oh and as this becomes a new reality, China gets a real chance to pick up hundreds of people with a good grasp of gaming. That is merely my point of view and I could be wrong. 

Have a great day, the day before the weekend. 

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August 15, 2023 · 19:04

When the marketshare is murder

That is the setting and at first I would not really believe it. It sounded correct, but to be honest. I did not think that a place like Microsoft would intentionally target victims, but then there was a second source, the Guardian no less and that’s hen the disgust set in.

You see we know advertisements, we know advertisers, but for a system like Xandr to intentionally target people with gambling problems is a new low, even for Microsoft. This is what the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/15/tab-gamblers-betting-australia-targeted-microsoft-xandr-advertising-database) gives us. The article heads the accusation with ‘‘Heavy TAB gamblers’ among groups targeted by online advertising database’, there we are told “The dataset of 650,000 international “audience segments” was discovered on the website of Microsoft’s advertising technology platform Xandr by Wolfie Christl, a privacy researcher at Cracked Labs. It listed dozens of data providers looking to offer advertisers the ability to reach certain types of people online”, so not only does the law seem unable to deal with drug pushers, now they are enabling a place like Microsoft to hit the internet by ‘gamble pushing’ victims of this event. As such we get “Of the more than 40 categories identified as related to Australian gamblers, the majority were split into subsets related to gambling interest, sport interest or a particular venue: “Gambling at Pub / Club”, “Spring Carnival Punters” and “Online Gaming – NRL”, for example”. I think it gives a new meaning to the slogan “Long may we play”, perhaps it should be “long may we exploit the gamer”, even though gamer is a stretch, the fact that I have seen scores of these advertising on on Apple, my thought might not be too far away from the reality that people face. Then we go into the unknown with “Everything from our location to our purchase history are data points that can be packaged and used to serve advertising, often through the creation of profiles based on assumptions about our demographics or potential interests. But we know remarkably little about how the ecosystem works.” So not only were we served all kinds of BS against Facebook and Google Ads. These same BS servers have no idea what Microsoft with its Xandr is up to? How is that for slow minded investigations? 

Even the excuse was ‘outdated’ and moronic. What we get is “Microsoft said in a statement to Guardian Australia that the document was inadvertently published on its website and was outdated. The spokesperson said Xandr’s data privacy practices were regularly evaluated “to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws”.” The words inadvertently and outdated are stop words into nothing. The fact that this data existed was wrong to begin with, they were going after a marketshare, the desperate (as I see Microsoft) are so hungry for revenue that they are willing to look the other way in too many cases. I believe it was 10 years ago when I wrote an article with data that Microsoft was uploading xbox data in excess of 20GB in a month. So, why was that? It was also on dates when I never touched a multiplayer game, I checked the data and the amounts and they did not add up. Was that to feed Xandr? Was that to feed other needs? So what would have happened when Microsoft got to complete the Activision Blizzard deal? How much data would Microsoft get access to? I wonder how many people took a hard look at that, because in March that was 368 million gamers and all that data would be going somewhere, would it not? It might be nice for Activision, but I have some hardcore reservations when Microsoft gets involved. And now that we see the accusations by the Guardian, the show changes. The fact that Microsoft would allow to hammer the people with a weakness to gambling makes me wonder how they are getting the other $198.3 billion in 2022 with 6.8% more in 2023. So how many victims did Microsoft approach? All questions, but there is a downside there, the questions should not even exist and that it the disgusting part of this setting. Until today I never thought Microsoft could sink that low, but there is space to think they could do worse and that is an unsettling stage. So where are these high and mighty senators now? They were all willing to grill Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Where are they now? Does Satya Nadella have too many friends in the senate? Is that why they think they could avoid this? Inadvertently is not an excuse, outdated is no excuse, that dataset should never have existed in the first place and that is now the larger question. Why was that dataset created in the first place. One source gives us “Xandr is used by 0.8% of all the websites whose advertising network we know”, yet what we need to realise that there are (according to some) 1,986,154,062 websites, even at 0.4% that amounts to 7944616 websites and if even one of them is Yahoo or any media site, the damage gets to be astronomical. But I reckon those senators will gladly pass over those numbers, won’t they?

We get it, advertisements are part of our daily life, but what happens when victims are intentionally targeted on their soft spots? Did you think that through?

Enjoy the week and remember the next gambling advertisement could be a mere click away if you are being targeted by Xandr.

 

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July 18, 2023 · 00:33

A partial view

We are at times given a partial view. We aren’t always aware, which is no ones fault, except the media. In this I saw things not add up when the BBC gave us ‘Xbox v PlayStation: The battle for control’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65669480) where several things stood out. Before we begin, I am massively for Sony with a side order of Nintendo. Be aware, but Sony is not without faults. So lets begin. 

“Sony’s getting ready to announce the PlayStation 2 (PS2) – the powerful update to its game-changing PlayStation. Rivals Sega and Nintendo, who’ve struggled to fend off the new competitor, watch nervously.” This is not entirely correct. Sony played hardball, some ‘traders’ basically gave the shops the message. If you were showing a dreamcast, you would not be allowed to get the PS2. This scared a whole range of shops and Sony gained the upper hand. This was essential for Sony because SEGA had launched Soul Caliber on Dreamcast, which is until this day one of the most perfect games EVER created. It was so close to the arcade game that people went out of their way to get game and system. I know of the ‘persuasion techniques’ as I was a witness to them in Rotterdam (Netherlands). OK, we can accept that the BBC might never have been aware. 

In 2012 the battle was almost even, the Xbox 360 was phenomenal, no one denies that (and those who do are actual idiots). I had my Xbox360 next to the PS3 and I loved both systems. The 360 had a few release titles that made it a massive contender for Sony. Then the ground fell away with some Microsoft person stating that the next one (Xbox One) was always online, there would be no 2nd hand gaming and those who wanted to play offline could remain with the Xbox 360. The BBC article gives us “The 22-second clip, now widely seen as a legendary slap down, shows PlayStation CEO Shuhei Yoshida simply handing Sony exec Adam Boyes a copy of Killzone Shadow Fall.” Yet that was not it. For that we need to take a sidestep to an article named ‘No Press, No Facebook!’ Which I wrote on August 12th 2014 (at lawlordtobe.com/2014/08/12/no-press-no-facebook/) there I wrote “It is 7.1 that is the big issue, by agreeing to this (if you do not you lose your PSN account and online abilities) you confirm that you will not resell your games or buy second hand games. This was the big killer for Microsoft in the beginning in addition to the fact that this issue hits 80 million consumers. How is this not in EVERY newspaper? Perhaps their bosses where in the act of ‘hustle for advertisement coin’ (whoring seems like such a harsh word here).” The presentation by Sony was clever but they were on the same horse as Microsoft was. I gave the screenshots and evidence to several stations but they all ignored it, most probably too busy playing Geisha for Japanese industrials. Because Microsoft had the first presentation and they scuttled themselves Sony did a 180 before the presentation and as certain trade agreements never went through (Trans-Pacific Partnership) as such things went well for Sony. 

These elements were all missing. As such Microsoft lost more and more.

Then there was the storage issue. Sony set the rules on what was passible, Microsoft did not. As such for a mere $100 more you could double your storage by changing the hard drive, and for gamers that was a big deal. Microsoft did not allow for that and it went from bad to worse. There was hardware, but it was clumsy and expensive. Sony had the stronger setting here and these upgrades were possible from the PS3, as such Microsoft could have redesigned their Xbox One, but they were greedy and they left that part out in the open. As such the Sony was winning well over 2:1 and with the Nintendo Switch matters went from bad to worse. Microsoft kept on claiming that it was the strongest hardware of all and within a year they were surpassed by the weakest of all (Nintendo Switch). By that time the Xbox Series X had nothing to offer for gamers and they were in third position, what we are not shown that the Switch sold 125 million, the PS4 sold 117 million (in less than 10 years) and PS5 sold 38 million. Microsoft sold 22 million over 2 systems (series S and series X). They are in third position but lagging by a massive amount. And now for something that the BBC does not have. I am adding gaming IP to Amazon Luna and Tencent Technologies for free (to make Microsoft hurt more). You see there is a downside to owning Blizzard and Activision. You need to sell a lot to make up to that $69 billion and making it more appealing to create for the other two systems (Sony and Nintendo have a good arsenal and they do not need help) as such these streamers will have additional options and it slows down Microsoft more and more (but that is for another day and I wrote about that before). 

The article also gives us the deceptive “Meanwhile, the PlayStation 5 continues to dominate the next-gen console scene. But, two and a half years since launch, it still lacks the depth of truly exclusive games that have been seen as system-sellers for previous generations.” Which is utter BS. The PS5 has it range of exclusives and it has been breaking records God of War, Horizons, Ratchet and Clank, Spiderman, all previously released and the new versions broke records and made gamers gasp at the view of what was being released. Microsoft isn’t out of the race yet, but it needs to throw billions at this equation and that is still part of the discussion. Microsoft has a large advantage too. Game Pass is drawing in gamers, there is no denying it, yet after the $69 billion blood bank there will be consequences. Overly hyped games like Starfield need to deliver, if not the exodus from Microsoft will become stronger and the nice part of a $69 billion courtesan without gamers is a trophy no one looks at. There is of course more to the purchase, but it will show Microsoft in a state of defeat yet again and if I get my way it will end up behind Amazon and Tencent technologies too.

The final statement is the funniest one “But after a well-received showcase and Starfield, its biggest release of 2023, still to come, Xbox isn’t out of the game yet.” You see, after Redfall (its demise and joke) the pressure is not entirely validly on Starfield, in addition Bethesda games are implied to be a Microsoft exclusive, but without the millions of Sony fans they will not be making the numbers, the trust towards Microsoft is gone and people are shying away from Diablo 4, merely because Microsoft could endanger gaming fun, as such there is a lot more to fear, but those selling the $69 billion deal will be aware of that, not? 

In the mean time, the article was short several parts and not all pro Sony. Still there is also no battle for control, Microsoft lost by a fair bit, lagging in several ways and it will get worse, because the moment they get their deal and system errors prop up things will go south fast (and not in a good way). You see that is the part Microsoft never considered, games will look for EVERY fault they can find and hit Microsoft over the head with it and they have pissed off way too many gamers. They never considered a gaming population with an actively hostile setting. They forgot what it took to make the Xbox360 a real contender, something they threw away with pretty much one presentation and that matters, because it will show the lack of control too.

Enjoy the new week.

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July 14, 2023 · 22:47

About last night

Yup, I am going to go there. Yesterday I started writing about a new IP, a new game. It is incomplete. It is new and as far as I can tell, it has never been done before. As such I leave this IP for free exclusively to developers for the Amazon Luna and the Tencent technologies. You see, Microsoft is out. They are so driven to keep gaming IP out of the hands of Sony, making all non-Microsoft gamers suffer. It is my duty to make them burn. For instance they are trying to buy Blizzard/Activision for $69,000,000,000. This means that they need (over 3 years without accounting for interest) $2,000,000,000 a month just to clear this. Microsoft will have a whole battery of accountants making some bad loan corporation (where they push in all the bad loans into) or some other creative solution. You see, they can try to make the revenue, or I can hand solutions to their competitors and if I create enough options, Microsoft will end up being cornered more and more and it will implode. Especially when you cannot pay for a $69 billion dollar solution. Amazon and Tencent created a viable solution. Apple, Google and Sony are pushing on other corners as well. As such pushing more and more against Microsoft will show the dents in their armour until it cracks and no longer protects their board (or is that bored) of directors. The creative mind gets to win and the fakers at Microsoft trying to rely on spin will end up with less and less. That is my simple motivation to teach Microsoft a lesson. When they validly took over Bethesda they woke up an angry gamer. To everything there is a consequence, Microsoft is about to learn what a world with 

The stage
The stage was set in a dream. In that dream I was climbing a building. I was not alone and the building was a ruin, no idea where or what caused it. The ruin was parts of floors, walls and it had paths with boxes, crates made out of metal, plastic and wood. I needed to get somewhere, but what it was faded the moment I woke up. And that reminded me of Mirror’s edge. All clean, crisp and futuristic. Now consider a new game, doing free running, or free running plus to get to a price, part of a story or something we need to achieve. But this is not set as ‘set to a path’. An open world building, but the design and the programming is not set to a graphic, but set to engineering principles. The building could collapse, but to gravity and engineering, not to cool looking premisses. As such there are no ‘set courses’ there is no one sides solution. And as we scale more and more (and higher places) we get an entirely new game. This is not some game that would work on consoles, this has streaming (GaaS) written all over it and as you see it now, it might not be an actual solution, merely the start to one. Yet as far as I can tell no one has this and now it is free for the Amazon and Tencent technologies. I reckon I need to come up with half a dozen ideas more and the fate of Microsoft will be sealed. It already is, but getting there sooner works for me. Consider that Microsoft seemingly had a quarter revenue of $52.857B, a mere 7% more. They will (with future purchases) require well over $59 billion a quarter just to stand still, but with the added purchase they will require to get well over $65 billion a quarter just to appease their shareholders and that is where I come in If I can divert enough people to Amazon and Tencent Technologies whilst Apple, Google and Sony keep the pressure building on the other side there is every chance that Microsoft will see the down side of pissing off gamers in their pursuit of greed at their expense. 

It is my personal view and I admit if someone tells me I am wrong, they might have a case, but we all react in out own ways and this was mine. At least I am creative and handing it to hands of non-Microsoft making. 

Enjoy the day before the weekend.

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March 31, 2023 · 20:09

Those cordially invited

That is a setting that is not merely an evolving one, it sort of fits several stages and it all revolves around the choices that some make. As such when the Gaming Bafta’s were on, there were two considerations. The first one was how well did Sony do, the second one is how bad Microsoft is doing. I will get to the logic a little later. Sony sort of won a few times. There was God of War who was a winner, of course the music by Bear McCreary won and Christopher Judge as the voice of Kratos won. It won 6 awards in the Gaming Bafta’s and had 15 nominations, including EE game of the year, best game went to Vampire Survivors by Luca Galante. Horizon Forbidden West by Guerrilla games, a Sony exclusive won best technical achievement. One out of 5 nominations. This maters as these two games are gaming achievements of the highest order. God of War is given a 94% score, HFW an 88% score (I personally believe it should have been a 92%). Microsoft and their acquired houses had 4 nominations and zero wins. OK, I will grant that Bethesda had bad luck having to go up against one of the Final Fantasy kids, but still as I see it, no bang for seven and a half billion spend on purchases? Perhaps next year. The big titles were not here and I was missing Hogwarts Legacy, but they might have missed the cut off point. As such Microsoft has additional issues next year and that is before the storm hits. You see, the E3 was cancelled. It does not matter what the reason is, they cancelled it for some of the players having their own spin presentation, where they can intentionally not invite those critical of them. It makes sense and it is a valid and acceptable choice to make (even as I am spinning this in personal ways too). You see, I do not know the individual reasons and that means I merely do not know. But the hardships that Bethesda presently has, the lack of releases by Microsoft houses and whatever Ubisoft has to remain absent, they might all be perfectly valid in Business Intelligence, but gamers will spin this. One source gave us in January “Ubisoft’s Project Q has now been reportedly cancelled. The PvP battle arena game was announced less than a year ago in April 2022. They’ve already delayed Skull and Bones six times now and the recent comments by CEO Yves Guillemot haven’t helped.” Another source gave us that Assassin’s Creed Mirage and The Crew: Project Orlando will not come before Q1 2024, implying that they miss the summer haul and the Christmas revenue haul (including thanksgiving), two massive revenue moment. As such it makes sense to give E3 a miss, yet I personally would have spun this into ‘We will get a better result when we take more time’ even though one game has had 6 setbacks. They basically face a lose lose proposition. In all this I set the groundworks for new IP and that actually matters this time. You see there is an element missing at present. That element is Tencent. They are giving a miss for now, but they are pouring buckets of gold into their Unreal engine 5 design teams, this implies that they could grow big next year, they could pull the carpet from under Microsoft legs. 

I did not give Tencent the consideration I could have, mainly because Amazon is a better fit, but in the setting that they are in. I am sitting on a totally new form of gaming on one hand (a small exaggeration), on the other hand the other IP in phase one could represent five billion and a lot more after that. Tencent could be the direction to grow my setting and even as I prefer Amazon as a first choice, one needs to go where the gold is (a small personal greedy direction). And as long as Microsoft is rejected as a contender, I am happy, even if Tencent ends with the IP. It still is important for me to assist in sending Microsoft to some revenue graveyard by December 2026. You think I am serious, and I am, but there is a hidden egg in the graveyard part. 

If Microsoft had focused on quality instead of spin (which they in part might be) there could have ben a little hope, yet at present when we see the Xbox Series X and after two years we still see review (source: Tom’s guide) “Few next-gen launch games” a setting you can accept in year one, but not after two years, you see how Microsoft is desperate and now I add Project: Graveyard against that setting, without Microsoft being able to attend that game? It is nice to hand Microsoft the wooden spoon in 2024, especially when they could have spend a little over $100 billion by then (Mojang, Bethesda and Blizzard) and that is before the other IP is launched (if it is sold) and before the list of Sony releases get to be even larger. Ubisoft is important for Microsoft and their consoles as they were their biggest drive, no matter how we think of some games, Ubisoft has had moment of true greatness and one additional title could safe Microsoft. So when we set the larger stage and we see the gaming Bafta’s and the E3 cancellation, the larger stage of Microsoft is as I personally see it diminishing. And the stage is worsening in other ways too, but I will write about that should Microsoft acquire Blizzard, because that is expected, but not set in stone at present.

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March 29, 2023 · 23:46

By Jove, I did it

This is not how it started. It started with me being mad at Microsoft. The question is whether I had reason to be mad at them. They bought Bethesda (and stopped Redfall for PS5), now they are out to buy Blizzard and I am seeing the most BS issues get to the front of the line. OK, I can do something about that. You see, my imagination is a good one and I am going to make sure that this $65B investment is the one they choke on. There is also another part. Here we are sitting and we get the line ‘Microsoft says 10 years is ‘sufficient for Sony to develop Call of Duty alternatives’’ Wrong! I finished it today and it is a nice challenge, one no one never saw before. It will be exclusive to Amazon Luna and optionally Sony as well. A game where Microsoft is not welcome. The fun part, they do not have to pay 65 Billion for it. If Amazon buys the other IP (which bags them well over 50 million subscriptions) they get this one for FREE! It becomes their IP and I hope they share it with Sony. I know it is their call at that point, but to see Microsoft fall and implode by 2026 will matter to me (loud evil laughter to follow). 

I had part of the idea and then today, the other parts started to connect. The challenge, the levelling, the area, the environment and a few other parts. The price? Well the other IP is set to $50 million post taxation and a few extra’s, and that is one hell of a long way away from $65,000,000,000. For the non calculus people among us, it is less than a mere 0.1% of the amount, that is how you drown a corporation, by making them drown on their own futility and that is what I set in motion, a new way of gaming, a new challenge that no game streamer has ever seen and there is no cheating here. Any cheater will become a pig faced player (quite literally) and its pig appendages cannot hold a weapon any longer. It can merely run and oink a lot. So the CoD cheat people will run into the light and wonder what is happening. This game will be different and it is no easy reward either. It becomes you against 880,000 others (not all at once mind you). It felt good, to suddenly connect the pieces of the puzzle and let Microsoft eat crow. Yes, I knew I had it in me, yet in all honesty I expected it to take a little longer, optionally a few weeks longer. But there I was, it was a little past 16:00 and the puzzle was ready for presentation to Andy Jassy. The question becomes ‘Is he ready to take Microsoft down a few pegs?’ He might not be, and when that happens, it will be up to Sony, but to be honest. I prefer Amazon as the other IP can be qualified with a dollar value much faster and they would get this solution for free. A win-win I would say. 

What a lovely way to start Thursday!

Have a great day, dream big. Especially if it is about kicking Microsoft in the testies.

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March 25, 2023 · 21:50

Another promise in the works

It was a mere 15 hours ago when we were given ‘UK regulator no longer thinks Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard to make Call of Duty exclusive’, which might be true, but Microsoft created waves when we were told that Redfall was made an exclusive the moment Microsoft bought Bethesda. Now this does not mean that Call of Duty is becoming an exclusive, but there are other things that Microsoft could do and over time we have seen them do similar actions and they have made a $68 billion wager on ‘their’ success. As such I feel that I need to counter the setting by creating a new IP, never seen before and it will be an Exclusive for Sony and Amazon (well optionally whomever buys it will have it all to themselves. Yet the idea of slamming Microsoft in a few ways is oddly satisfying. The IP is at present set to counter whatever Bethesda and Blizzard have in the works. Of course there will be a time of growth and there is a timeline. Only stupid people think that they have a solution ready of the bat. I already created IP to counter Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls with IP that was actually meant for Bethesda, but when they became part of Microsoft, that went into the drawer. Now it serves my need to drown Microsoft in their own arrogance. So in the net IP instance, I focussed on an First Person game, the reason that CoD is First person, but there is a rather large need to go in another direction and I think I achieved that. I looked at combat, I looked at healing parameters and I looked at some of the weapon settings. Two elements I solved and even as you can collect some things, the aim of collection is set to a more redundant stage. A world with 800K opponents does not need to rely on weapons, it needs to rely on favours and I think I set that in a new limelight. The idea of blending favours and favoured weapons is something not done before (as far as I could tell) and in this world we all adhere to one master, well two if you are a proclaimed master of self. Then I considered the world of income and I discarded it in this case to a much larger extent. There will be options for barter, but bartering will be set to other needs (not missions). Then in light of my everlasting need for replayability I set mana to a different score, to the enhancement of passive abilities. There will be melee, ranged and weapons of reach. And your first choice matters, there will be no real switching in the initial game if you want to stay alive. You see in the old days people could hardly afford one weapon, let alone several. So I decided to set the combat to knife, dagger, gladius, sword, axe, club, mace, pitchfork, spear, bident, trident and a few more. But the game needs to be a challenge and there we have the larger stage (which will be revealed to some extent at a later date). As my mind sifts through challenges and opportunities it is important to keep this an open sandbox game, to give the people choice to go in any direction and to consider the realm they are in. I wanted more than a simple game with trigger points and that is where I found myself. There will always be people that prefer CoD, but when you consider what they achieved in NEW innovations, I feel I have a chance to make Microsoft regret their choices. If this game gets its own following and merely persuade 10% of the gamers to try something else than CoD, my job is done and when Microsoft has to do a Ubisoft and sell the game at 50% less (or more), that additional $68B anchor (in addition to Bethesda) it becomes a $100B chokehold and as I wrote 2 days ago in ‘One thought counters another’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/23/one-thought-counters-another/) the simplified quote “To merely break even Microsoft will have to exceed 72.8 million of PROFIT every day between now and 31/12/2026 and that is merely to cover the last three spendings, not all their waste.” As such I ignored a few items, but the short and sweet became that they need $72.8M a day to break even, so when my IP allows Amazon Luna and Sony to diminish that to a mere $32M a day with the added thought that in gaming they have no chance of getting anywhere near that $72.8M a day, especially with GamePass in play, they stand to lose more and more money. The added benefit of IP that is there not for Microsoft products, Amazon will grow (still hoping they buy the other IP which would land them well over 50,000,000 subscriptions)and Sony will grow a little more too Sony might not grow too much due to me, merely because they have an amazing lineup of games already. But I am adding them to make sure Microsoft gamers will see that there is more out there and the CoD fans will stick with Microsoft, I get that and they are ‘devoted’ fans, but when they merely get more of the same and they seek out other shores, Microsoft will truly be done for and at that point the Exclusive needs of Microsoft are merely nails in their expensive coffin. 

This is seemingly becoming such a nice weekend. I will have a cheese sandwich and consider to meditate on an old expression of adding the angel’s share to the game. I could not find anyone who did the same ever.  A game with over a dozen unique parts never seen in FPS games before. It sucks to be Microsoft soon enough, for now lets see how arrogant they remain.

Enjoy the weekend!

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March 23, 2023 · 09:14

One thought counters another

This is a case we sometimes face. My thought counters theirs and their thought counters mine. There is nothing unnatural about it. In a setting where we applaud, respect or even merely accept the scales of balance, we see that one side counters another. Balance is natural and that is important here. You see, players like Microsoft have been fighting balance for their own selfish little needs for the longest of times. Now, this does not mean that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are not like that, but they tend to go with the flow for most of the time (Facebook perhaps a little less than the other three). Apple might be the most in tune with the scales of balance, but that is from where I sit and might be incorrect. And this all started with ‘Microsoft says ten years is “sufficient” for Sony to create Call of Duty rival’, yes, I can do you one better. They can do it in half that time. More important it will not be some Call of Duty rival, it will be better. As Microsoft is becoming more and more of a hollow egg, the $69 billion more in the near future is also the face of a failing company. You see, You can buy all you like, but when the creative people walk away because they see the failing of a company who fails against Apple with their Surface, who fails with their Azure against AWS, who fails with their Bing against Google search is a company that is doomed and as I personally see it, it is in its last 1,375 days before it crumbles into a joke, that firm will lost a lot more soon enough. And it is not that hard an equation. To merely break even Microsoft will have to exceed 72.8 million of PROFIT every day between now and 31/12/2026 and that is merely to cover the last three spendings, not all their waste. That is why I know that Microsoft will fail. So I created in the past blogs the foundations of more RPG that I made freely available to people designing for the Amazon Luna. It is the final blow of failures for Microsoft. I don’t need to do anything for Sony. They have their horses in a row and they are ready to race. Nintendo has its own niche and they are doing fine. All settings that two gaming giants had racked up correctly. Microsoft betrayed their own gamers, blew its audience who is now taking a distance from Microsoft, and as such their population is dwindling down. Still think I was delusional?

It goes from bad to worse after that. Their own cornerstone is having more and more issues and people are willing to push away from that too. Microsoft office is too bulky and there is a lot of power in Open office and Google’s solution which apart from their spreadsheet is doing above OK, not to mention the fact that it is a free product. And in the graphic settings Adobe surpassed them in several ways all at once and in the age of Meta and their metaverse Microsoft will merely lose more and the need for the daily profit of 72.8 million that marker will merely bite more and more. With the Luna set to overtake (with a little help) the Microsoft streaming service they will get another opponent. It is Chinese Tencent who is already taking serious time to create Unreal Engine 5 applications. Another soft spot Microsoft was ignoring. Yes we are given all the spin in the media, but too many is created by ‘Microsoft Friends’ and we see AI claims all over and when we think things trough, we will realise that ‘their’ AI is data driven and they lack data. There is no way that some AI claim can create scripts. You see (deeper) machine learning can only react to data, react to events they HAVE and that means that they can copy and edit, but they cannot create. That is the first larger flaw. And now as I had another idea for Streaming gaming, there will be a much larger case for people to connect to systems that will deliver, not are bought and then altered to fit another need. That is a sure way to fail. One source (a few, but seemingly all from the same source) gave us “Redfall PS5 version was in development, but cancelled after the Xbox buyout”, so how does that align with a Microsoft statement that they would be everywhere? Now, lets be clear Microsoft is allowed to do what they do, they bought Bethesda, they are trying to own Blizzard. But what happens when we design new versions, new IP exclusive for Amazon Luna and Sony? What is their win when they spend $100,000,000,000 for a console that as some sources gives us 

As of June 2022, lifetime unit sales of Xbox One consoles in North America reached 31.58 million, while in Europe, lifetime unit sales surpassed 12.8 million with some partial addition of what was estimated that Microsoft had shipped at least 18.5 million units of the two consoles (series S and X) worldwide by December 2022. Now look at the Sony equation. PS5 sales have now climbed to 32 million, with 7.1 million consoles sold in the last three months alone, a dramatic increase over the 3.9 million sold in the same quarter last year. This means that the PS5 is almost equal on the Microsoft last 3 consoles, all whilst the PS4 has surpassed 117,000,000 consoles. Now they want to go to the cloud whilst their consoles are already doomed. So I am willing to set aside some creative time to make sure that they fail there too. 6 directions (tablet, SAAS, office, search, gaming and GAAS) where Microsoft fell short and keeps on failing, no purchase will counter that and the message merely gets to be worse soon thereafter. Now, do not discount some options. Microsoft will get some parts right, Starfield looks for all accounts amazing, but when there is an alternative people will go for the one solution that does not betray them. And should Amazon (or Apple) select my IP, they stand to get more than 50,000,000 more accounts making the failure of Microsoft even more dismal, especially as I predicted this setting for the better part of 2 years. No spin will work when there is a published article countering that. They are all about making a spin towards the future, but what happens when the ‘future spin’ becomes past and does not hold up to the numbers? That is the part Microsoft seemingly forgets about (again and again) and that wheel is merely spinning faster and not for Microsoft. They will merely lose more and more control. At some point they will need more money to repair the potholes of their shoddy road. Consider the Solarwinds issue and the fact that Microsoft was going to buy a cyber powerhouse (which became part of Google) and after that the media went dark, the spin failed, so darkness is all they had and the media complied. There were no questions on how Microsoft was going to deal with it after that. Weird he?

The list merely grows and at some point the media needs to do a 180 or accept that they are a Microsoft tool. So how many failures until the media actually turns on Microsoft? Perhaps the larger advertisement deals come through, but not for all and that is the counter that vanishes, especially when you consider that the world has 18,000 registered with the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). Some will lose and that is the beginning of a lot more pain for Microsoft. 

So whilst all of that is in play. I considered a new RPG, free for Amazon Luna and Sony developers. Consider the absolute hit the first 4 God of War games were. Now consider an RPG where Tartarus is actually mapped out. As such it is no God of War and you have no special powers, but a battlefield the actual size of America named Tartarus, the underworld where you need to keep standing, where you need to survive and each death restores you, but with the millions of opponents you cannot run into battle all the time. You need to find the relic weapons that have additional powers and perhaps you will at some point find an Olympian piece of armour or. weapon that gives you an edge. And it will be first person. So 9.9999 years before Microsoft imagined I gave Amazon and Sony a rival. That is the power of creativity, something Microsoft lacks, they surely lack it, because if blizzard is bought, many creative souls will retire with their part of billions and Microsoft end up with another near empty shell, product but without driving creativity. So how long until the makers at Bethesda will have had enough? How long until they think that Ubisoft is a better deal than Bethesda under new management? That is how I know that Microsoft is ticking away towards implosion and when that happens (within the next 1380 days) I will merely sit, sip a little Ice water and tell you ‘I told you so!’ Because I get to do that at that moment. Yay me!

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