Forum Overview :: I Can't Afford a XBL Gold Membership :: I think those studios served their purpose.

[quote name="Droz"]According to papers Microsoft filed during the Activision acquisition, they "planned" to have over 70 million Gamepass subs by this point. In reality, they have 30 million. But money isn't made in reality anymore, it's made in fantasy. Someone at Xbox had to put together a plan to show to the bigwigs at Microsoft to convince them they could DOUBLE THEIR MONEY, FAST. The bigwigs didn't believe a word of it but they thought they could sell it to the shareholders, so that's what they ran with. Every individual (institutional) investor knew it was bullshit, but they also knew it was just plausible enough as a get rich quick scheme that they could feel good about buying MSFT instead of BTC that month. And guess what? MSFT stock went up! Everybody made money, from the guy at Xbox who took his bonus and dipped to the bigwigs at Microsoft who took their bonuses and pivoted to AI to the investors who plan to ride this bubble until the last possible second and leave someone else holding the bag. When was the last time a company's market cap increased because they were good at manufacturing anything people wanted to buy in reality? Toyota in the '80s? Successful companies are dream makers. Their purpose is to produce appealing fantasies for investors, nothing more and nothing less.[/quote]