I knew the Activision deal was going to cause ripples. I figured they would go third party publishing through Activision given the cost of the purchase. Like, it would take decades to make up the difference. According to Tweaktown, Xbox profits last quarter was only $790 million off $6.5 billion in revenue. That’s roughly 11 cents profits for every dollar earned. I think the cuts coming this week or next week will seek to push profits up to 15 cents for every dollar earned. If Xbox gets up to $3.2 billion in profits per year, it will take about 20 years to pay for the Activision purchase. Xbox as we know it is gone. The whole Xbox everywhere advertisement was done to soften the blow.
With that said, Xbox everywhere is a joke. Xbox Cloud painfully slow, blurry, and artifact heavy. I’ve tried it on my TV using the Xbox app, on my Xbox 1X, and my Xbox Series X. All suffers extreme lag, macro blocking artifacts, and they were all blurry. Like, try Ninja Gaiden 2 Black on X Cloud. Wow, it couldn’t keep up, and that game you need quick twitch response time. Indiana Jones was ok, slower game, but it was extremely blurry. I tried another random game I don’t recall, and the lag made it unplayable. It felt like dial up lag from the 1990s. Unless they improve performance, Xbox everywhere is going nowhere. Maybe non gamers are ok with that level of performance? I certainly did not find Xbox Cloud performance acceptable and don’t recommend it.
