Tag Archives: Sales

December 6, 2025 · 20:40

TBD CEO OpenAI 

That is the thought I had, yesterday, 5 hours after I wrote my piece, I still saw the news appear all over the media, some on it was getting a ridiculous amount of attention, so I decided to take another look at some of this. First there was the Business insider (at https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-code-red-chatgpt-advertising-google-search-gemini-2025-12) giving us ‘OpenAI’s Code Red: Protect the loop, delay the loot’ where we see “Focus on improving ChatGPT, and pause lower-priority initiatives. The most striking pause is advertising. Why delay such a lucrative opportunity at a moment when OpenAI’s finances face intense scrutiny? Because in tech, nothing matters more than users.” This was followed by “Every query and click fed a feedback loop: user behavior informed ranking systems, which improved results, which attracted more users. Over time, that loop became an impenetrable moat. Competing with it has proven nearly impossible.

ChatGPT occupies a similar position for AI assistants. Nearly a billion people now interact with it weekly, giving OpenAI an unmatched new window into human intent, curiosity, and decision-making. Each prompt and reply can be fed back into model training, evaluations, and reinforcement learning to strengthen what is arguably the world’s most powerful AI feedback loop.” All this makes sense, it comes with the nearly mandatory “Google’s Gemini 3 rollout has lured new users. If ChatGPT’s quality slips or feels cluttered, defecting to Google becomes easier. Introducing ads now risks exactly that. Even mildly irritated users could view ads as one annoyance too many.” Whilst in the background we are ‘sensitive’ to “OpenAI has already committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure to serve ChatGPT at a global scale. At some point, those bills will force the company to monetize more aggressively.

If OpenAI manages to build even half of Google’s Search ads business in an AI-native form, it could generate roughly $50 billion in annual profit. That’s one way to fund its colossal ambitions.” This gives OpenAI a two sided blade in the back. It was a good ploy, but that ploy is deemed to be counter productive and I get that, but dropping the ads might sting with the investors as It was the dimes that they were seeing coming their way and ChatGPT needs to make a smooth entry all the way to the next update, which will be near impossible to avoid in several ways. Google has the inside track now and whilst there are a few settings that are ‘malleable’ for the users, the smooth look is essential for ChatGPT to continue. And that is before other start looking at the low quality data it verifies against. Google has, as I see it, exactly the same problem, but as I see it, ChatGPT gets it now in advance. 

Newcomer (at https://www.newcomer.co/p/openais-code-red-shows-the-power) gives us “In truth, as Newcomer’s Tom Dotan wrote back in April, Google, with all of its formidable assets, was never very far behind. Nor is it currently very far ahead. Anthropic too has always been essentially neck-and-neck with OpenAI on the core technology. The capabilities of the big foundation models, and even some lighter ones like DeepSeek, are broadly similar. Marc Benioff, himself a skilled practitioner in the arts of attention, even claimed this week that the big models will be interchangeable commodities, like disk drives. Yet the perception of who’s on top matters quite a lot at a moment when consumers, enterprise technology buyers, and investors are all deciding where to place some highly consequential long-term bets. That brings us back to Altman’s “Code Red.”” Is a truth in itself, but the next part “while the alarm came in a company-wide memo that wasn’t officially announced publicly, we can stipulate that the “leak” of the memo, if not necessarily orchestrated, was almost certainly part of the plan. A media maestro like Altman surely knew that a memo going out to thousands of employees with charged language like “Code Red” was all but guaranteed to make its way to the press. Publicizing a panicked internal reaction to a competitor’s new product might seem like a counter-intuitive way to maintain your reputation as the industry leader.” As I see it, someone in Microsoft marketing earned his dollars in marketing that day, but this is a personal feeling, I have no data to back it up. It is now up to Sam Altman to deliver his ‘new’ version in the coming week and it better the a great new release, or as I see it, there will be heads rolling all over the floor and Sam Altman knows that the pressure is up. I don’t think he is scared as some media says, but he is definitely worried, because this setting will set the record of $13 billion straight, into or away from Microsoft and Sam Altman knows this, as such he is probably a little worried and in a software release any of a hundred things can go wrong and they all need to go right at present. 

Then we get “Altman and OpenAI are so good at making news that it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s real.” So, isn’t that the setting all the time? I have always seen Sam Altman as a bad second hands car salesman, That is my take, but I have had a healthy disgust for salespeople for over 30 years. I am a service person, Technical support, customer support. That was always my field. I am not against sales, merely against cleaning up their messes. At times this comes with the territory, shit happens, but those salespeople overselling something just so that they can fill their pipeline and make their numbers are not acceptable to me. To illustrate this, A little setting (devoid of names and brands) “A salesperson came to me with what he needed. We could not do that and I told him, so off he goes calling every technical support person on the planet until he found one that agreed with him and then he sold the solution to the customer and hung that persona name on this. I had to clean up the mess and set up a credit invoice, but after I went through the whole 9 yards making it over 30 days ensuring him that he kept his commission” that is the type I am disgusted with because the brands as a whole suffers, all for the need of greed. It is short sighted thinking. I goes nowhere, but his monthly revenue was guaranteed. And I feel that Sam Altman is not completely like that, but it is the ‘offset’ of salespeople that I carry within me. For me protecting the product and the customer are first and foremost on my mind. 

Then we get Futurism (at https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-is-suddenly-in-major-trouble) where we see ‘OpenAI Is Suddenly in Major Trouble’ OK, is this true? We are given “The financial stakes are almost comical in their magnitude: The company is lighting billions of dollars on fire, with no end in sight; it’s committed to spending well over $1 trillion over the next several years while simultaneously losing a staggering sum each quarter. And revenues are lagging far behind, with the vast majority of ChatGPT users balking at the idea of paying for a subscription.” I don’t agree with this setting. You either pay, or you see advertisement that is the setting. There are no free rides and the sooner you realise this, the easier this gets. Then we are given “Meanwhile, Google has made major strides, quickly catching up with OpenAI’s claimed 800 million or so weekly active ChatGPT users as of September. Worse yet, Google is far better positioned to turn generative AI into a viable business — all while minting a comfortable $30 billion in profit each quarter, as the Washington Post points out.” I agree with the setting the Washington Post sets out with and Google does have an advantage, but that is still relying on the fact that Sam Altman does not get his new version seen as stellar in the coming week. He still has a much larger issue, but that is for later. All this comes at the price of being in the frontrunner team. Easy does it, there is no other way and the stakes are set rather high. So then we are given “In a Thursday note, Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid estimated staggering losses for OpenAI amounting to $140 billion between 2024 and 2029.” This is probably true, but where are the numbers. $140 billion over 5 years is one, but what revenue is set against it? Because if this is still set against a revenue number that OpenAI keeps making they are going decently sweet, the numbers were never in debate, the return on investment was and these stakes are high and there is no debating that, these numbers are either given or they are not. 

Then we are given something that makes sense ““OpenAI may continue to attract significant funding and could ultimately develop products that generate substantial profits and revolutionize the world,” he wrote, as quoted by WaPo. “But at present, no start-up in history has operated with expected losses on anything approaching this scale.” “We are firmly in uncharted territory,” Reid added.” I agree, in several ways, but the revenue is not given as such the real deal is absent. Consider YouTube, did anyone see the upside of a $1.65 billion acquisition 20 years ago? It now generates $36.1 billion in annual revenue (2024), Microsoft and OpenAI are banking on that same setting and Microsoft needs it to get a quality replacement for Clippy and they are banking on ChatGPT, this will only happen if they win over Google and I have my doubts on this. There is no real evidence because the new version isn’t ready yet, but it really needs one hitch to make it all burn down and Altman knows this. The numbers or better, the statistics are not on his side. And as I haven’t see a decent software price fight for a while, so I am keeping my thumbs up for Altman (I am however a through and through Google guy). This is a worthy fight watching and I am wondering how this might evolves over the next week.

The stakes are high, the challenge is high, lets see if Sam Altman rises to the occasion. It’s almost Sunday for me so have a great day you all, I reckon that Ryan Reynolds is about 6 hours from breakfast in Vancouver now.

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December 7, 2023 · 22:15

DM for losers

It all started with an image on LinkedIn this morning. We see here (see photo below) that Google has instigated a 5000 email limit per day and that three ‘objected’. 

There is no fighting another day. When you need to send over 5000 emails a day, you are a loser. You are what the 90’s regards the worst case of sales. Direct Marketing for losers. There is no setting of email more, get more revenue. If you cannot set that stage at 250 mails per day, you will not know your customers, you are nothing more then a Cialis pusher (as some say). Real sales is knowing your customers and you have ascertained that YOU have something they need. Proper customer care requires you to know your customer, have a system in place to service your customers. If you are a small business 250 customers a day is even  stretch, but OK, I could go along with that. You are not Nike, SAS, Adidas, Gucci, Volkswagen or Volvo. These have systems and people in place to service that much customers and that limit will not affect professional corporations. 

If you want to be a loser, that is on you, but as more and more people block your personal domain for email harassment, the string will go quickly. One, Two, Four, Eight then people will alert friends and after that it goes 32, 128, 512, 2048. In a week 50% of your daily target is gone and soon the algorithm takes over and less people will get your message, your options decreases even more. Making you start your setup from zero, all lost because you took the path of a loser.

In this world you (as a small business) could address at best 250 people a day. If you have the system to register it all, and you read it all you can retain at best 250 deals a day. Yes it is a speculative number, but the larger setting is not merely selling, it is also the need of manufacturing (if applies),stock, sales service, it is a track and one person cannot properly deal with more than 250 people. Considering 10 hours a day, you have 25 seconds per customer. You can listen to all the BS given to you as they want to sell their system to you, but consider, can you serve your customer completely in 25 seconds? No you can’t, no one can, not even McDonalds who needs 120 seconds. Direct Marketing for losers is not a solution, it is a delusion with no destination. It reminds me of a joke I told someone with a subway map on his T-shirt. “The pink line is the woke subway, it goes everywhere and gets you nowhere ever, no destination will ever be reached” perhaps not entirely accurate, but that is how I feel. 

The largest of all jokes is the one telling you can do it all, it makes you believe that you are stronger then Popeye, faster than roadrunner and wealthier than Scrooge McDuck. None of them real, none of them have any basis of reality. A setting you walked into driven by greed. Like a civil servant with dollar shaped pupils all he does is chase revenue which he hands over to his government leaving him with $882 per week (at best), optionally working yourself to death. As I stated, Direct Marketing for losers has no solution, it never ever will be a solution to anyone but the people selling you that system, serving their income. So how will you get reliable data on 5000 emails a day? Who else has it? Can you see the vicious self defeating circle you are in there? 

Google is right and it is time you figure it out too.

Enjoy your day, Friday is now 2 hours away for me. 

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May 1, 2022 · 18:34

The IP many desired

There is a side I contemplated in the last week. The thoughts started almost 38 years ago. I didn’t think of it to any degree at that time. In the early years (when I actually was young and innocent) I started my career in technical support I got spoiled. I didn’t know it at the time but that application was close to perfect and designed by technical support people for technical support people. I had the option to enter a phone number, the number of the person I was talking to and digit by digit the list got smaller. And 9 out of 10 times it ended with the person. Consider a system where you have to look up Rosan Perkasa Roeslani? How many typo’s does it take for people to see that when you are a number, service goes up, because you are often instantly found.

The others (Scopus, Siebel), and whatever other sales system there was (and pretended to include technical support). They were for the most a sales concept of a system to drive more sales, at most times merely lacking service and support. Yet recently I got to be on the other side, I needed a larger station of pre-sales support, perhaps it should be called pre-sales determination. They too need a decent tool and it is lacking to a a setting that is almost too much to do the job right. Of course it is MY view on the matter. You see if one tries to represent a company, one must set the larger station to THEIR representation and a little less to the need of their sales department. The object does need to be determination of sales and to propagate the company as best as possible. In this we might need to call everyone, but we should be clever about it, don’t we? 

Lets take a look at the setting of ‘the list’. In this we have two parts. The list we need to call and how we can go about it. I have a method. As we see the list, we can call Peter Rabbit, yet the people of the Animal Farm we need to call one at a time until we connect. You see, the Switchboard operator is ignored, but its role evolved from a mere connector to a high value yielding gatekeeper. So when we get one connection, we need to leave the rest alone until the next day (two days later is better). And the next company who holds the cast of Flipper has the same approach. It is the IMF team that is the most interesting one. We can call them all, they all have their own numbers. It is when we get a list where generic and direct numbers intertwine, that is when we need to become clever about how we call. You see people talk too and when we call them all in one burst we get the label of ‘sales pusher’ and that is one of the most dangerous labels to get, when we have that label we will get stopped too often and we cannot do our job. So as you see the images, these callers need some kind of overlay filter, one that overlays the call list and can set fill colours like a spreadsheet. Yet these programs are not ready for such a leap, the ‘sales people’ behind it are at present not educated enough to see this need, so any third solution will do. Consider that spreadsheet fill on any solution Scopus, Oracle, Hubspot, SAP, Siebel and clever enough when a row is added or removed to that all list and one that has a multitude of colour selections that can be personalised by any person using it, so that the person will have the personal use and strengths working FOR THEM. 

In all these years no one considered the specific needs that some people have, they are merely pushed to some solution that their sales director seem to fathom. And consider that in over 35 years none of them got clever enough to figure this out? (As far as I can tell) Boggles the mind, does it not?

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November 26, 2018 · 11:10

Dark Friday

There was an article last Friday. I knew it was bogus from my point of view, so I waited until the end of that event (actually this is the last day). It starts with the sub line, which gives us ‘Brands, activists and charities are questioning the annual consumer feeding frenzy‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/23/has-the-backlash-to-black-friday-already-started), it was the undertone that made me wonder and even as I knew it was from my point of view a bogus article, I waited to see how it unfurled. And behold, hallelujah, someone states the stupid part and my case is won. It is seen with: ““The whole Black Friday thing is fake and customers are getting wise to it,” said FatFace boss Anthony Thompson. “Bigger brands and retailers should look very hard at what they are doing. They are damaging the high streets and local independent traders who can’t compete with these fake promotions and customers are getting ripped off.”” I am certain that Anthony is a driven ideologist towards his own brand and we cannot fault him for that. You see clothing, shoes and other temporary items dread these sales moments as it undermines their bottom dollar, they need their margins and for them Black Friday is a problem, yet it is not something fake. It has become something real, it always was real, yet now it impacts people to a much larger degree. I remember last year, I got Assassins Creed Origin with statue for well over 55% off. What was $199 was offered at that point for a mere $85, so that was a real saving. There was more at that point, and I got one or two additional things. I believe it was Nioh, with season pass and all extra’s for $24, a bargain if ever there was one. this year my budget is strapped, so I have to forego Black Sunday this year around, which is a shame, because getting yourself a nice Christmas present 4 weeks early with 50% or more off is a huge deal. That is also the impact of Black Friday; it is close to Christmas for all those people doing their Christmas shopping early. A Xbox One S for $299 (+ games) is a real deal and those who have the old Xbox, it is also a nice step up and that is beside the point that the slimline Colgate white One S is actually really pretty to see, there is no denying that. Loads of places give 20% of TV’s, Camera’s and laptops, so at that point getting the device that is on its last legs a quick replacement is a good option to have.

Nothing fake about this moment and we all need it, even as some people are in denial (especially Anthony Thompson), most of us have too small a budget, we cannot afford to get the nice things as the cost of living all over the world keeps on going up and there is less cash to go around for other things. At that point the Black Friday is a blessing. Especially for parents, most kids desire a console, or perhaps a new mobile. At that point 20% makes a dent in that bill and even as some parents give the present early stating no bog presents at Christmas, for these kids Christmas came early and they are all so happy. It also applies to adults, especially when we take a look at Applewear and Fitbit deals, there were plenty.

Yet there is nothing fake about other venues either. When I see: “The Charities Aid Foundation is backing the UK’s efforts for global charity event Giving Tuesday on 27 November, which encourages people to do something for – or give something to – a charity they care about. Celebrities including blogger and Strictly Come Dancing participant Joe Sugg, Ricky Gervais and Martin Lewis are supporting the day which last year raised £213m online alone around the world” I see that there is reason to look in other directions too. I am a little amazed that there was no union. How would it be if a store on the Black Friday announces that any sale under $109 adds 50 cents to that charity and over $109 the send $1 that way. It could effectively add millions to such causes and that would be a reason to embrace Black Friday even more. Knowing that I was looking forward to this black Friday hoping that there was some cash left, I would not have whinged at the extra $1, even with a purchase of $85, the saving was already awesome and the extra dollar would not have dented it. So when I see this article, is it really about a missed opportunity for charities, or were some of the people at Charities Aid Foundation negligent to see if a deal could have been made with the thousands of retailers for those few extra coins for every visitor? There was even the chance that some of them would have been willing to add it that little extra to every deal they had, even more money lost out on.

There is a similar issue with the opinion piece by Stuart Jeffries where we see: ‘I’ve discovered the Joy of Missing Out. Black Friday isn’t for me‘. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/23/black-friday-joy-of-missing-out) an be seen in more than one way. Apart from the sensation of ‘Missing Out’ which tends to be a negative one. Like many other men, I do not really warm up to 50% fashion sales, unless I am in dire need of Jeans, Cargo Pants, Polo shirts or something like that. He takes us to an advertisement with: “Take the ad starring Martin Freeman for a mobile phone company. His train carriage is filled with boneheads staring into their handsets; even in the loo he finds the guard furtively watching something on his phone when he should be checking tickets. “What is wrong with you!” Freeman yells. And then a beat, before he realises that what’s wrong is him. He doesn’t have a two-year data deal to get unmissable TV, music, movies and sport promised in the voiceover. Freeman winces – and there it is, Fomo in the face“. I personally believe that contracts are for the most not a spur of the moment thing. They are long lasting and even as I had a great deal 2 years ago where I got an additional 200GB for $50 (considering that any gig over quota gets rewarded with $10 to the bill, $50 is a steal any given day. We need to think long term when we sign up to those deals. It will impact long term, yet getting a console, a game, movies or perhaps even a TV is a short term impact and 30% of a 65” 4K TV is actual money for savings. These are things you do not normally buy, so getting them in January or February when all the sales are on is the time to get them, now Black Friday changed that by offering a similar deal just before Christmas and people are getting in line a year ahead to see what else is getting the large write-off. We have to as it is almost the only moment when we have the option to spend cash on something we normally cannot afford. It is at that point that we see that the article was stupid, hollow and misguided, especially when we realise the ‘customers are getting ripped off‘, how is 20%-30% discount ripping of customers?

As for the entire Charities Aid Foundation, we see another path, perhaps it was taken; I do not know that part. Yet the entire setting where I give the option of $1 (or £1) per sale and 50% of that if the amount was small would have made an extra mountain of cash for Charities Aid Foundation. Was that path taken? I guess not, but that would be speculation. From my point of view, even cash strapped when you gain (in my personal example) 114 coins of profit, handing one over to charity seems perfectly normal and it would be given when the savings were really nice, the impact would have been marginalised to zero. Not everyone can do this, but the bulk can and in that I do not see a ‘backlash to Black Friday‘, I merely see a ‘missed opportunity for the Charities Aid Foundation‘ and of course all other charities trying to get a few extra coins on November 27th. As I see it, giving Tuesday could have started early, optionally giving the premise for people to give one more coin on Tuesday too, so how much will be missed out on as we whinge in one direction whilst we all know that there are more and more people depending on this point in time to get something essential, something the budget does not allow for?

It is in that trend that I always look forward to Christmas dinner on December 27th when all the supermarkets are pricing their Turkeys and hams down by 60% or more, December 25th is merely 0.273% of a year. When you can do that (most atheists and agnostics can) does it really matter when you have an abundance of food as a meal? whether I do or do not does not matter, when our lives are set to strapping for a budget we look towards what the opportunities give us and it seems to me that for several players Black Friday ended up being a missed opportunity. I wonder if that book ‘The Joy of Missing Out: The Art of Self-Restraint in an Age of Excess‘ by professor Svend Brinkmann takes into consideration the timing of maximising one’s budget, and as it goes on sale in March 2019, at a time when there might still be book sales going on, so we can find out then.

I am curious, merely because the list of people getting to live a life of excess is actually dwindling down. Even as incomes are not the worst, some groceries (especially meat) went up by 12% last month, and when you consider that budgets are tight, 12% has an actual impact on people, especially in places like meat & milk, items most of us need on a daily basis.

Budgeting is becoming an art for many families and for them Black Friday is becoming an opportunity to put a dent in what is needed versus available funds, nothing to miss out on. So if we see the Charities Aid Foundation using next Black Friday to give a ramp towards Giving Tuesday, I would happily hand over those extra coins if I am able to participate in the Black Friday deal, we will see what happens on Black Friday 2019.

This is merely my view on the matter, feel free to oppose it.

 

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March 4, 2018 · 14:00

The red lights of death

It has been one year, one year since the doors opened to the consumers to become the owner of the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo has been a true gaming company that has focussed on gaming since the beginning of time. Even as we loved their journey and whilst we globally disliked the WiiU; that what followed is a machine that has been embraced by pretty much every gamer young and old. The numbers are giving a picture, one that is not yet complete, yet Nintendo has had one year, Sony and Microsoft have both had 6 years and the numbers are actually quite scary. The analytical site Statistica (at https://www.statista.com/statistics/687059/nintendo-switch-unit-sales-worldwide/) gives us that after a year, the Switch has now surpassed 14 million consoles sold, in one year it is close to 45% of the Xbox One lifetime sales over 6 years, and the Nintendo is still rising its sales numbers. Another source (VGChartz, at http://www.vgchartz.com/article/272742/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-switch-global-lifetime-salesjanuary-2018/) gives us more, the monthly numbers are that Nintendo has close to 225% of what Microsoft is doing and it is getting close to nipping the Sony sales numbers at the heels. Even as the PlayStation 4 is now set to 75 million gamers, the achievement of Nintendo is noticed. It is noticed to the extent that in the market share, the PlayStation 4 managed to achieve 48 percent. The Nintendo Switch accounted for 37 percent of the consoles sold, and the Xbox One 15 percent. So even as the total numbers are not yet equalled, Nintendo has defeated the Microsoft market share by well over 2:1, I predicted that Nintendo would surpass the total sales numbers, but the fact that the Microsoft share numbers would be outdone 2:1 in just one year is a little more positive than even I imagined.

So if the Xbox360 users might remember the red lights of death, we can now say that for Microsoft as a gaming provider, they too are now facing the red lights of death, because at present Microsoft will be surpassed by Nintendo well before December 2019, even Sony who is still ahead by 400K systems per month is feeling some pressure growing. As I stated in the past, Microsoft can pretend whatever they want to in the business world, gamers demand results and excellence and in that regard, both the Xbox One and Xbox One X have faltered the gamer at large. Did they actually think that hiding behind ‘the most powerful console‘ would help them? That system can store no more than at most 50% of a Nintendo Switch? Who were they kidding?

Forbes had a go at Microsoft on more than one occasion and their views are not good, even as they ‘hide’ it with ‘rough’ time, with “Sony is coming out swinging next year with games like Spider-Man, God of War, The Last of Us Part 2, Death Stranding, Days Gone and more. Exclusives remain Sony’s most important advantage over Microsoft, and the company’s 2018 line-up is one of its strongest yet” we see the first part, the second part was given by Forbes a month later with “I can’t really get into specifics because Microsoft no longer shares sales information on Xbox One consoles, but common estimates put it at about half of what the PS4 has sold, maybe around 30-35 million units. The Xbox One is not a failure, I don’t think anyone but Sony die-hards would say that, as we are miles past something like the scant 13 million sales of the Wii U, but it is clear that if we had to pick an odd man out in this current climate, it’s Microsoft“. Forbes is partially right. I see it in two parts; the first one is that the Xbox offers merely 80% of what the Xbox360 offered, which is a really bad thing. What is more important is that Microsoft refused to listen to the gamers and when they pretend that they did, they still harassed gamers to do what Microsoft wanted against the express desire of the gamer, so how long was that EVER going to work? Some took the $150 loss and traded in for the PS4Pro, others (like me) left to old Xbox to gather dust and played and enjoyed their PS4 and some their Switch on the side too. One console they could not keep up with, the other has surpassed them in market share and will within the next year also surpass their total console sales.

In this the only losers will be the independent game designers who will now have to see if Sony and Nintendo offer a better deal. Two of the most amazing ones have been Astroneer and Subnautica. Astroneer would be a great Switch addition and Subnautica might make it, If they can get this playable on Switch too, it is a long shot, but it would be a unique experience to say the least. And that also triggers another part. As independent designers are now looking if their game can be ported, Microsoft will be losing out in all three fields, meaning that the red lights of death for Microsoft in gaming would soon be heralded. That is the consequence of not listening to gamers and selling short what gamers need. You see, all that Microsoft Azure pep talk sounds nice, but there they have rough competition, to bank in that direction whilst short selling a $125 billion market was perhaps one of the most stupid acts that Microsoft could have tried, they tried and they are getting fried!

Even now, as we saw only a week ago (at https://www.windowscentral.com/new-xbox-one-preview-build-spring-update), on how there are improvements, we see “As with any pre-release update, expect bugs – a lot of them. Current known issues include black screens, update errors and various issues across the Xbox One experience. These will soon clear up in forthcoming builds, though caution should be taken, especially when installing on your daily driver“, so apart from non-stop updates, the fact that the largest console is 1TB, how much space will be wasted in that regard? In that side there is one issue that both Sony and Microsoft share, or is it? With ‘Fortnite’s new 60fps mode is the real deal‘ (at http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-fortnites-new-patch-really-does-deliver-60fps), where we see “Now, we’ve seen a range of ‘performance’ modes in the past that target 60fps on Sony and Microsoft’s enhanced consoles, but generally, they fail to deliver. The good news here is that Epic’s work is the real deal – and it’s by no means exclusive to the more powerful consoles, with owners of the standard models getting an equally impressive boost“, so both PS4pro and Xbox One X have issues and as the most powerful system cannot deliver at present as implied by multiple parties, the issue remains why that was not properly addressed before launch? That is still a dangerous subject as several games (example Forza: Horizon) do promise to deliver 60fps, so there is still an issue there. Still as the Switch is showing more and more games that get a much larger appreciation than other consoles tend to have for titles give even more rise to the Switch, which Nintendo will see as a handsome extra to the setting as given at present.

So in how much death danger is Microsoft?

That is the whole picture and until the 12th-14th June 2018, when the E3 will explode in our faces there will be no way to tell. The Microsoft marketing engine will continue to boast and boost what it can, but the E3 will be the first true test where Microsoft is and if they have any serious intentions to listen to the gamers and please their needs to the minimum, which is at present essential for their survival, Sony learned that lesson in 2017 and their adjusted views are back on the positive side for the most (they had less issues to deal with), in addition, the new exclusive game line-up that Sony has for this year is much stronger than before, so they are likely to rule the show. Although, there is no saying what Bethesda hits us with and they are on all systems, so Microsoft will have a benefit there. I also predict that they will be more and more dependent on Ubisoft stealing the show (whilst including the Xbox One X as much as possible) , more than ever before, so there will be information coming from several sides in all this and that should not be ignored.

The one thing that is at present almost a given, that is that the tickets to the Nintendo E3 show might be the hottest tickets in town because whatever they bat out of the park is also the size of the market share that Microsoft could lose to Nintendo, a side they never had to fear before. The game of gaming changed and Microsoft missed at least two exits from that road to nowhere. The E3 which is of course still rumours for the most as it is 12 weeks away is still an issue as it also rumoured to include a new Pokémon, Kirby, Yoshi and Metroid Prime 4 on Switch, whilst the Xbox One has 3 titles at present (no exclusives rumoured or announced) but does include the long awaited Cyberpunk 2077 by the makers that gave us Witcher 3, so there is that to desire. Bethesda had a teaser with references to Elder scrolls, Fallout and Doom, so there is more behind that whilst Sony might be stealing the show in regards to exclusives and it includes a conformed The Last of Us Part II, so there is enough to see that the Xbox might need to be placed in the ICU sooner than thought. Yet, in that last part, it will be at least another 5-7 weeks until there is a stronger confirmed list of games and gamers. The one part that is missing for now is the list of indie developers, because they can actually change the landscape by a lot, so I wonder what we will see. what is now clear and what is being shown by data, by the evidence out in the field is that Microsoft has lost the benefits they had and unless there is a massive overhaul and a large course adjustment by the Microsoft board of directors it is not impossible that the E3 2019 is one that will happen without Microsoft, or with them not getting noticed at all. I wonder which they think will be worse, but hey, they have ‘the most powerful console’, so this speculation might just be me with no chance of this becoming a reality, or will it?

 

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