Hellraiser
Arcane
Lol, hyping revenue without cost context. So anyway I decided to look for the context, because the game journo or whatever retards you linked to sure as hell are too dumb to rely on them for actual meaningful figures.
That earnings call presentation was posted here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2024-Q2/press-release-webcast
This is the presentation, slide 13/page 12 (screenshot below) is what interests us, screenshot below.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op...ocument/DownloadDocument/40/SlidesFY24Q2.pptx
That business lost them almost half a billion on it so far. And this is operating income (well loss technically), so the cost (interest) of whatever leverage/debt they used to buy Kotick's circus is not included in this (it's somewhere higher in the consolidated income statement of microsoft most likely, unless they paid fully in own cash). The business lost them money so far by merely existings and operating as "kind of" normal. I say kind of, because the "integration" part (that is restructuring cost, getting everyone on common IT infrastructure, who knows what other adaptation changes imposing the Microsoft way of doing shit) is mentioned in the related parts, bundled with regular operational crap(I guess? honestly the descriptions are so vague you can't tell if transaction cost means the acquisition transaction or regular product/service sales related transaction cost, but it would make little sense to have the acquisition transaction cost be that much higher than regular cost of development, payroll for developers/the manhours, development should be the bulk of cost of revenue IMO. Also while I can imagine spending tens of millions on integration crap while assimilating something the size of acti-blizz, hundreds of millions is way too fucking much in my experience, especially in cost of revenue and in such a short period of time at that, you can build massive fucking factories with that kind of money).
But look at these two positions:
#1 while it *might* have some very specific one time integration things related to making the products (I would expect one-offs in the "other" position just below it, but honestly this is quite cryptic as fuck probably deliberately, normally the cost of revenue is a rather obvious and straightforward section "we paid X to manufacture shit or buy shit we sell further to end customers"), usually should be the actual cost of the developer department without all the HR ballast and other overheads not directly tied to actual development (those are most likely in #2).
My guess for what the 550 million just above #2 are is direct selling expenses, that is whatever the distribution channels cost, physical shipping of game copies, marketing and of course the various commissions, bonuses, salaries, travel expenses and other cost generated by the sales department would also be here. Plus some actual integration cost here (say a common customer support platform roll out to activision's CS - new licenses for "new" microsoft employees). Stuff that you kind of expect to be high and unlikely to be cut immediately (AAA budgets are half, if not mostly, marketing cost), yet somehow the admin part is double this.
#2, under the assumption that "transaction" means related to regular operations and not the acquisition cost, is most likely all the admin bloat, your diversity officers, bean counters, HR hags, facility manager, executives, company jet or chopper, receptionist, office rental cost, useless trainings on microaggressions etc. Consultancy fees and general project costs related to the post-merger integration would also be here. Still, 1 fucking billion of ADMIN and GENERAL bloat, which is almost as much as the development department and marketing+selling related shit together (1,13 billion). The fuck are these guys doing, wiping asses with golden toilet paper? Replenishing coke dispensers in the boardrooms with the finest stuff bought from the best colombian vendors?
What the fuck and no wonder microsoft is axing, axing, axing jobs, and this apart from the obvious post merger stuff like "we don't need two legal/finance/hr departments, we have one in Redmond".
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How the fuck is this kind of mental illness, leading one to say such insane things, even called?
