Michael MacKelvie produces great content on YouTube. Heavy with analytics, but definitely approachable, he got his start with sports analysis. Lately, be started branching out into culture / lifestyle videos. I highly recommend his latest analysis of cities, urban flight, and the reality that convenience is driving us apart. youtu.be/rX0RuKswLAo?is=hzFJ…

I get the sense that they were trying to avoid the visual clutter of the previous modern warfare games. I don't know what the right decision is but the MP maps are filled with clean corners and sight lines. Just speculation on my part, but I believe that's why the maps are so industrial.

At least least link to me so a bunch of angry CoD players can call it a dead game on MY profile. 😄

Yep, and with their cost usually being low, people simply don't see the impact as they would with a $70 "AAA" commitment

Indies, and other smaller scope titles, are generally additive because people don't see them as taking time away from their mainstay games. They've broken through the market because they just happen to the exact type of game that people are willing to play "on the side." Instead, it's the "AA" and "AAA" games that are slamming into each other. They essentially force buyers to make decisions, often leaving many game behind. To be clear, indies / small scope titles are notably successful right now, but the market in ALL aspects is over-supplied (including "indies"). It just so happens that right now, market conditions are ripe for games seen as additive (not replacement). That doesn't change the fact that untold numbers of games will still fail in the market (indie or otherwise). gamesindustry.biz/indies-and…

I certainly don't expect people to 100% agree with whatever I throw up here, but at least read the damn thing.

Oh, trust me when I say I recognize that. It's something I write about, a lot. Due the absurd about of over-supply in the games market, even games that might have been moderate hits 10 years ago don't see attach rate expected (in a different environment). Costs must align to this new reality.

Gotta love that Play Anywhere. Just a great, consumer forward service, despite other challenges with Xbox.

I played two rounds of PvP and never went back. The Gnasher is a nightmare . I spent many hours in Gears 5 PvP. PvP is the weakest component of Gears, right, wrong, or indifferent.

As do I.

Yes. That's why I give the big warning that this is just a portion of the true volume.

It's possible. Personally, I play via BNET. It's the one piece of PC data I'd like to have since it would help fill in the gaps, so to speak.

It will be interesting to see what kind of drop we see. There are one phenomenons in gaming populations where an active market actually brings more people online, depending on the game.

I'm sure that project itself, when you sum up the labor, did not. The $500M is a total cost of operation for the studio over many years. The math checks out. However, one of the biggest problems in Western AAA gaming are these elevated yearly operating costs. I know Gears didn't cost $500M to make, but operating the studio over 7-8 years probably does. That's a problem.

Exactly, and I clearly put that warning in the summary. People just don't want to read. Nowhere do I claim that Steam is the complete method for measuring CoD. In fact, this is more about concurrency, and less about MAUs, etc.

There are certainly options. I don't know if there is a silver bullet for something like Gears. If they do extend into something like a TV series, it needs to be Fallout levels of acclaim and popularity, and I don't know if this IP is as easy to absorb as "bombed out post apocalypse."

The sudden exit of an executive, without a timeline, is usually one of a handful of possibilities: 1. Another offer that won't sit well with the current employer. 2. A fundamental disagreement that can't be resolved with other execs. 3. A black & white policy violation. For example, I once saw an executive removed when it was found out they were giving contracts directly to certain suppliers (violation of our contract policy). Obviously there are more possibilities, but those are some of the more common situations. It's very hard to say what truly happened to the XBOX COO.

Hard to tell at this phase. Concurrency definitely took a hit after BO6 and stayed lower. However, concurrency is a difficult measure to translate into something like DAU / MAU. I'd like to see where it sits 3 months after MW4. That will be a better measure of "are people consistently logging into MW4 / Warzone" again.

I don't know if its the gameplay, but there are likely several issues here. Demographics, alternate choices, ability to bring in friends, etc. The gameplay could be part of it, but I believe its a mix.

On one hand, I find Gears of War E-Day to be a visual masterpiece with excellent gameplay. Overall, it's great, and I mean that. On the other hand, it will almost certainly be the first thing I uninstall when I need to make room for other games. Our gaming group put significant hours into Gears 5, especially horde mode. I just don't see that happening again. They've all moved on and no one but me is interested in it. And I think that's the broader problem with Gears as a franchise. It's just not part of the "conversation" anymore. Those years are basically over. If this franchise continues past E-Day, it needs to be built at a much lower cost. No release on PlayStation "saves" this franchise. The core problem has very little to do with whether it's multiplatform or not. The challenge is the industry, the consumer, and the economics.