I don’t want to drag things too much into P&R myself, but while I don’t consider myself part of the “fuck capitalism” gang the idea that a company can drop nearly $70 million in cash for an entertainment company while so many are homeless and aren’t getting enough to eat just feels, I don’t know, offensive. I don’t have any ideas for making things better, it just feels bizarre how lopsided the distribution of wealth has become, and seems to be getting more and more so all the time.
It’s so mind-boggling that we frequently use million when we mean to say billion. That’s not a “you made a typo!” comment on my part, it really is mind-boggling and I’ve seen many posts in this thread miss a few zeroes.
$70 million is a huge pile of money. $70 billion in cash just seems like something only nation states could pull off.
I am fairly certain this is not the case. I was at Acclaim in 1999 and Microsoft came in and pitched the idea of them making a new console and didn’t say anything about anyone else making boxes.
Do you have a citation for this?
Ever since 2008, its pretty much world is unfair don’t fight it, the world will move on. MS buying more game companies from a company that bought game companies? who cares really when in 2008 we bailed out the status quo and never fixed that problem. we’re still kicking the can til reset anyway.
Fyi im not a fan of the world bank.
So why is it Microsoft’s responsibility to help poor countries restructure debt and fight, I dunno, it cut off there and I’m not bothering to go to the site, I’m going to say food insecurity?
MS (and all companies) should be taxed and then those taxes used for the public good. We’ve actually done a great deal to stop multinationals evading taxes very recently.
No i am not criticizing MS, I am criticizing the critics hypocrisy. If anything theres other ‘monopolistic’ things they turn a blind eye to… My issue is its easy to target MS since its, “look at those rich bastards spending all that billions on games when theres starving children in china”, attitude… its the world we live in today.
Also… MS isn’t just anyone. They’re the world’s highest valued company, having been at the forefront of the social and industrial transformation of the last 40 years, from DOS through all the ups and downs to the Tech Boom of today. We all know this. It’s not a surprise they have a lot of money.
If you have 70 billiion dollars, and you give someone 70 million, you still basically have 70 billion dollars.
I can’t fathom either of those 2 sets of cash. Million or billion both would are incredible to me.
Looking at their history, they had around $130 billion in cash on hand when this was announced.
Fuckin Satya strollin’ up to the local ATM
beep beep beep
(sound of money despensing… for, like, six days)
- do you need a receipt? *
Satya “Fuck that shit, bitch” (hammers NO)
Interesting! Thanks for the history lesson.
Yeah, the video glosses over it quickly, but I remember reading in various places at the time that MS was hoping that electronics manufacturers would build Xbox capability into their set-top boxes and such so all MS had to do was sell software.
Dean Takahashi’s book probably has a lot more on it.
Yeah, I think Apple is up around there as well, aren’t they? It just floors me. That amount of money is just sitting there in the bank, basically.
All the tech giants have hoarded gawdawful amounts of cash to the point where it’s been questioned if it’s healthy. That cash would be better off circulating in the economy, not sitting in a bank account accumulating interest.
Apple had $200 billion back in May 2021, so that’s probably even higher right now. If they were making less profit I imagine shareholders would be more vocal about doing something with that money rather than letting it sit in a bank, but as it is it’s hard to complain.
15 Companies With The Most Cash Reserves In America.
Also keep in mind that for many of these companies a lot of their cash reserves are sitting outside of the US, and global tax policy disincentivizes repatriating that cash. It’s all very complicated and dumb.
It’s so silly that Apple would prefer to issue billions of dollars of bonds that pay interest so they can buy back their stock rather than just use cash on hand.
And unfortunately we have no dwarves or men of the Lake handy to kill their asses
MS is only able to spend that kind of money on gaming because we spend tons of money to buy those consoles and games. Perhaps we should turn the mirror on ourselves? How many of us have huge Steam backlogs? Why aren’t we taking more of our money and sending it to NGO’s helping the poor of the world rather than spending it on more entertainment? It’s easy to blame MS and ignore our role in this.
How do you mean? Because I don’t think MS has $70 billion in gaming profits sitting in the bank, that was built up from other parts of the business. Or do you mean they only think it’s worth it because of the potential money to be made in games?
Frankly, because that’s not fun. I mean, I could ask the same about everything. Why did I drink that coffee this morning when for just 25 cents a day I could…
I’d be all for taxing the dragon hoards that Microsoft and Apple have along with my own paycheck to fund improvements to society, though. :)