upvote

points

by slg1 days ago |
comments
upvoteby LtdJorge1 days ago|
next
[-]
Of course it is a problem for consumers if it bankrupts the company. Healthy company is better than no company. And I mean healthy, not greedy.
reply
upvoteby slg1 days ago|
parent|
next
[-]
It's pretty difficult to go bankrupt turning a profit.
reply
upvoteby refurb1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
Making a thin 3% profit that can go negative when the wind blows
reply
upvoteby tommit1 days ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Making crazy changes like squeezing out every last dollar out of your existing, loyal customers (looking at any PE firm ever) certainly affects the wind I'd wager.
reply
upvoteby refurb1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
Absolutely, and plenty of companies have made that mistake.

But the point is locking up money in a 3% margin business doesn’t impress investors.

So you either need to improve the margin with lower costs or higher price (or both). Or bail from the market entirely and put your money in something that makes more money.

reply
upvoteby inigyou1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
What makes more money? The investment is all in AI because TINA - There Is No Alternative. There's too much money in the system to cover all reasonable investments, so it fills up all reasonable investments and many unreasonable ones too.
reply
upvoteby refurb8 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
While AI may seem like it’s sucking up all investment, the retail trade industry was 2x the entire IT industry investment according to the BEA
reply
upvoteby lomase1 days ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
[dead]
reply
upvoteby Krasnol1 days ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
Making less doesn't equal to going bankrupt.
reply
upvoteby dd8601fn1 days ago|
prev|
next
[-]
It absolutely became a problem for consumers.
reply
upvoteby slg1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
Is a low profit margin a problem for consumers or is it the company's "money grubbery" of not being satisfied with that profit margin that is causing the problem?
reply
upvoteby Gareth3211 days ago|
parent|
[-]
When XBOX fires a bunch of people and shutters studios leading to fewer games with worse support, that's a problem for consumers.

I think people often forget that in a society we rely on companies making and serving things. They make our food and our medicine and build our homes and make our games. It's a good thing when their finances are healthy. It's a bad thing when they form monopolies and rent-seek.

reply
upvoteby slg1 days ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Once again, what is the actual problem here? The company was making a profit at their current employment level. They are laying people off and shuttering studios because that profit isn't enough for them. This entire argument keeps coming back to "money grubbery".
reply
upvoteby iosjunkie1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
Would you accept 3% return on your money, especially if the investment was risky?
reply
upvoteby Krasnol1 days ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
How is making more and more every fiscal year "healthy"?

This is madness and it doesn't make any sense besides the one case where you pursue a monopoly.

All of this has nothing to do with the consumer of the product besides the fact that he'll get a worse and worse product while simultaneously being forced to pay more and more. Enshitification is aresult of this "healthy" business culture.

reply
upvoteby average_r_user1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
I agree. The numbers need to go up every year without thinking about the health of the economy, and the Average Joe is delusional.
reply
upvoteby dannyw1 days ago|
prev|
next
[-]
I think a lot of people in the gaming community would agree that Microsoft has ruined, or hindered (instead of helping) many studios they bought.
reply
upvoteby pfdietz1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
The mistake isn't shutting stuff down, it was overpaying for the stuff in the first place. This most recent action is unwinding the earlier mistake.
reply
upvoteby hollerith1 days ago|
prev|
[-]
Our society has a finite capacity to do projects and to run industrial processes. We want that finite capacity to provide as much quality of life as possible (and as much expansion of our capacity to do projects and run processes as possible), and achieving that is a thorny intellectual problem, which for many centuries in our society has been solved mostly by lawyers and judges knowledgeable about corporate law, stock markets, corporate managers, accountants and investors. This entire ecosystem is predicated on the assumption that investor will try to maximize their return of investment, which is strongly correlated with profit margin.
reply