Math Time: Diablo IV Edition

As reported by GamePressure:

Blizzard has earned a significant amount of revenue from Diablo IV in the over a year since its release. Harrison Froeschke, the Senior Product Manager for the discussed title, provided an estimated amount generated by the fourth installment of the popular hack and slash.

Surprisingly, this information was not made public on the developer's official website, but on Froeschke's LinkedIn profile, specifically in his job description. Diablo IV has generated more than a billion dollars in revenue since its release, including approximately 150 million dollars from in-game microtransactions.

Wow, that sure sounds like a lot of moolah, don't it? But how's about we apply a little persepective to this figure?

No, I will (probably) not be playing Diablo IV, either

We're now two weeks past the launch of Diablo Immortal (D:I). The white hot outrage which was sparked by that game's monetization is starting to burn itself out; meanwhile, general sentiment about D:I itself, and about the Diablo franchise as a whole, has begun reverting to the mean.

That mean average level of sentiment seems a lot less positive towards the Diablo franchise as a whole than I expected, though, and while D:I has made a pile of cash in its first two weeks, that pile is also smaller than I thought it might be.

What in the Burning Hells is happening?

Microsoft plans to win back consumers but doesn't want to admit what lost them in the first place

I've seen a couple of different versions of this story, but PC World's coverage was just about the best:

Consumers, rejoice: Microsoft cares about you again. Maybe. It depends on whether the head of Microsoft's new Modern Life & Devices group has substantive plans behind his statements.

For the past few years, Microsoft’s attention has been fixated upon the enterprise. While the company has built products like Azure and related services into thriving businesses, consumer-focused products like the Groove Music service, Microsoft Band, and Windows Phone have fallen by the wayside. 

Microsoft essentially acknowledged its neglect of the consumer market at the company's Inspire partner conference this week. Yusuf Mehdi, now the corporate vice president in charge of the Modern Life & Devices group within Microsoft, led a closed session on "Modern Life Services," according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. A tweet that Mehdi posted from the event includes the words, "we begin the journey to win back consumers with our vision," presumably this year.

That "vision" seems to revolve heavily around enterprise customers, basically convincing people who use Microsoft products at work to also use them on the week-end. "Xbox aside [...] most of Microsoft’s “consumer business” relies heavily on the blurring line between the business professional and the consumer, and the ease with which individuals can move between both worlds."

Here's the thing about Microsoft's relationship to consumers: they don't have one anymore, thanks to GWX. The problem goes much deeper than a couple of cancelled product lines, especially when those products' killing were more like euthanasia than murder.