[_verandaguy]

    > 150M at 5B revenue is not great

Considered as a raw percentage in a vacuum, sure, I guess, but we're talking about...

- A company which has undertaken a concerted, long-term effort to consolidate the industry under its umbrella (something they themselves call out as a problem in this post), reducing consumer choice

- A company which has captured a significant chunk of the console market. They're one of the big three (alongside Sony and Nintendo), and have been since the early 2000s, arguably, for crying out loud.

At a certain size (typically as measured by market capture) the expectation for growth needs to be reality checked. This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year. Sure, this is going to a corporation, but that's more money than most people could possibly dream of earning in ten lifetimes.

Every year. For a company that's already putting money towards opex in the form of developing new games and new content for existing ones, for a ridiculously broad portfolio.

To be clear: it is Microsoft's and Xbox's prerogative to pursue more profit, but I reserve the right to call this out as absurd under the circumstances.

If you want to make the argument that Xbox has suffered from a lack of focus in the past decade (... or even longer), or that there's been mismanagement (I would say since around the time 343 got created), then those are fair arguments, though I don't think those are justifications, on their own, for cutting thousands in headcount.

Allowing this org to balloon to fourteen levels of management on any vertical is a joke. Allowing the absorption of so much of the game dev industry and still being unhappy with $150M in annual profit after being such an active participant in the oligolpolization of console gaming is just a bit unserious.

[chrisfosterelli]

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year. Sure, this is going to a corporation, but that's more money than most people could possibly dream of earning in ten lifetimes.

That actually seems... tiny? Xbox is nearly 17,000 employees. That's like $8k in profit per employee. That's worse than big box retailers and like 1/100th of what is common in big tech and (to the letter's point) far worse than their biggest competitor.

Like sure at least you can say they aren't losing money, but Nadella can't be looking at that after just spending 75 billion on Activision Blizzard and be happy with it as the status quo.

EDIT: BTW these numbers you quoted from OP are quarterly, not annual

[_verandaguy]

At some point you end up hitting the law of diminishing returns. I think this is a case of that.

[chrisfosterelli]

I agree that at some point you do, but again I think the fact that Sony Playstation is doing this with larger annual revenue, less studios, AND better margins is an indicator that it isn't the problem here.

[spenczar5]

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year.

The issue is rate of return. They are evidently spending $4.85bn on Xbox per year. The US federal interest rate is 3.5% so if you just put that money in US bonds you would get about $175M per year of much purer simpler gravy.

[skeeter2020]

Russ: "Anyway, next thing you know, we IPO, stock triples in a day and AOL gobbles us up. All of a sudden, I'm 22 years young and I'm worth 1.2 billion. Now a couple decades later, I'm worth 1.4. You do the math."

Richard: "Okay. Well, that's a gain of $200 million over 20 years. Um, 16.66 repeating. That's less than 1% return. Inflation is, like, 1.7. I think CDs are 2%. So that's less than a CD."

[_carbyau_]

I know this is a TV show reference and a point about investment strategy but...

If I had 1.2 billion dollars I wouldn't care what investment strategy I had. I've got enough to spend $30k a day for 100 years. At any age, that'll do.

[bluGill]

In generally spending increases to cover income. 30k per day sounds like a lot, but it isn't hard to spend that once you get used to having that much to spend. Your mansion with the heated indoor pool is expensive to maintain. Plus you probably have a vacation mansion someplace. Then you see a nice yacht and think "why not" - more costs. You aren't flying coach to get to all those things - and one day you realize your bills are more than the 30k/day you have to spend and you are broke despite being objectively rich.

It sounds like a nice problem to have, but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell. (I'd still like to have it, and like most I think that I personally wouldn't get that far over my head)

[_carbyau_]

You are correct that we really don't know how we'd act unless we were in that situation. And like you, I hope I'd be vaguely sensible.

Two things, stand out to me though.

1. how you frame it might help with how you spend it. Which is to say that when shopping for a mansion "I've got 1.2 billion" likely leads to a different outcome than "I have 30k per day. I'll have to save up for it."

2. once chasing money is not a major thing in your life, what do you do for meaning?

[tommit]

> but it appears to be very stressful from what I can tell.

sounds like there is a win-win in there somewhere. I wonder what that would look like.

for real though, what are we talking about here? 30k a day is not enough because ... habits? plus, it's incredibly hard to spend that much. that's exactly why, after a certain point, it's basically impossible to get rid of wealth.

[bluGill]

What does enough mean? That's why I didn't use that word. Beans and rice is enough, but I'm glad I can afford nicer food. I don't need as large a house as I have and yet my house is modest by modern standards, and I would like larger.

I'm not arguing your idea that there is a point where you no longer can find anything to spend money on. However that point is different for different wealthy people and I don't know and you don't likely don't know either where your limit is or my limit would be. It would not surprise me if I personally had the money and decided to buy a yacht and then later sold it when I realized that while it sounds good I wasn't actually using it. But I don't know. Maybe if I had the money to afford a nice yacht I would use it all the time. Similar for those mansions. Would I live in a mansion or would I buy one first test symbol and then realize I didn't actually care and downgrade? I know someone who has made a lot of money remodeling the mansions of rich people who have decided downsize. For them downsize includes a master bedroom that is bigger than my entire house. And there were other bedrooms in that mansion, but it is still a down size.

[kridsdale1]

I liked your reference.

And if Russ is blowing $100M a year on lifestyle and still has those numbers then he’s winning at life.

[tommit]

> winning at life

What a take. Of a character that is, albeit incredibly entertaining to watch, not displayed in a good light at all.

Alternatively, he's everything that's wrong with the system. He's certainly not generating any value to society.

But yeah, in a purely individualistic take, he's certainly winning at life. While making everyone else's a bit worse.

[hx8]

Exactly. The inflation rate is about 3%, so the people at Xbox worked very hard all year to have about the same value they put into it.

[londons_explore]

All the people were paid a salary for the work they did. And there was still money leftover .

[azertify]

That is an ideal way of seeing this. As a for-profit company their priority is shareholder value, so the focus isn't "people paid and games were made", it's the money left-over, and even more importantly that the number must grow.

[evan_]

Only if you count the value of the games produced as $0

[senkora]

It's a question of "value created" vs "value captured". They captured about as much value as the risk-free rate of return.

Value that is created but not captured (e.g. the value of consumers enjoying games and consoles above and beyond the price that those consumers paid) is typically not considered when making business decisions.

[hx8]

Wouldn't a fair way to count the value be all of the money selling them produced minus all of the money you spent producing them?

[slg]

No, because the customers bought the games. That means the customers valued the games at some value higher than the purchase price. There's a ton of surplus value for society produced as part of this process that doesn't end up on a company's balance sheet.

[Kirby64]

So, even worse than 0, if we’re saying the value of games is not measurable but substantial?

[mvdtnz]

That's pretty accurate when you consider the unfiltered slop produced by studios like Bethesda, Blizzard, Activision, King and most other Microsoft XBox studios.

[delecti]

But the revenue is coming out of the same org. That $5bn revenue only exists because of the $4.85bn expense. That money doesn't exist to put into bonds unless it's coming out of the games org. They can only make their margin percent look better by making their absolute margin $150mm worse.

[gopher_space]

Another point of view is that your people are so good that their division turns a profit under mismanagement. It costs MS negative hundred mil to keep the whole thing spun up on a bad day.

[peyton]

You’re saying that they should take the money people pay to buy Xboxes and put it in T-bills instead of delivering Xboxes? What happens when people ask where the Xbox they ordered is?

[WheatMillington]

Remind me never to come to HN for business advice, this is dire reasoning.

[madeofpalk]

It seems like you're agreeing with the article then? Seems new Xbox boss is cutting a lot of this fat and trying to undo these strategic missteps.

[blks]

I thought it was 150M per quarter?

[xienze]

> This is still $150M of pure gravy every single year

You're neglecting to consider that any time they acquire a studio or have a flop or two -- poof goes that $150M and probably more. It's not a risk-free venture. Entertainment is all about hits, and misses hurt.

Would you put up $5K to win $150 on a hypothetical roulette wheel that hits 90% of the time? The math's not perfect obviously but Xbox is a somewhat similar situation. Microsoft is putting up nearly $5B a year to make $150M. They'd be better off stuffing the $5B into bonds or something. There is a point where the returns aren't high enough to justify the expenses when risk is taken into consideration.

[nicolas_17]

If they shut down their gaming operation and instead decide to stuff money into bonds, where would that $5B even come from?

As said elsewhere in the thread:

> You’re saying that they should take the money people pay to buy Xboxes and put it in T-bills instead of delivering Xboxes?

[mike_hearn]

ROI lags. If they laid off 90% of the Xbox division and left only enough to keep the lights on (they don't run their own factories I guess), then they'd still get nearly the same amount of income the next year with far lower costs. Of course revenue would start to sharply decline as the number of games produced was much lower, as the tech became obsolete. But it's not like revenue would evaporate instantly.

So they could do that and invest the income they still get into bonds, and then that would be where the returns come from.

They don't want to do that obviously, hence why Xbox needs reform.

[xienze]

> If they shut down their gaming operation and instead decide to stuff money into bonds, where would that $5B even come from?

Wherever it comes from now! They're spending about $4.85B to bring in $5B.

[twoodfin]

The money they’re not spending on the Xbox every year!