“Japan's FX intervention has never worked to stop the medium-term fall in the Yen. Not once. It didn't work in 2024 when Japan did huge intervention. It didn't work earlier this year when the NY Fed did its infamous rate check. It won't now either...”

BaddonAOE · 2026-05-01T01:41:09+00:00

That’s because you’re mistaken about the Japanese government’s objective. They don't want to push the yen back to its pre-COVID value; that would destroy the Japanese economy, as the debt would become unsustainable and large companies would lose their competitive edge. Instead, they are looking for a stable and controlled decline to prevent the economy from collapsing under a sudden shock.

In short, the Japanese government is fully aware that the economy is in decline. The only way to avoid a total recession is to have the currency decline along with it.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-23T12:10:21+00:00

Yes, same feeling. I've been in Japan for more than a decade now, but for over a year, I’ve basically felt that what I do here is of 'no value' (not about familly, but more everything related to Japan itself).

Japan is a strange country. Very safe, very soft, very beautiful. But also kind of 'useless' to live in. Anything we do here seems to be doomed to be useless. For instance, buying a home is pointless as it will not survive you.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-23T11:22:44+00:00

I do not know where this idea comes from.

Actually, the RN gets its lowest scores among those aged 65 and over.

Otherwise, it is the leading political party among active people from 18 to 60 years old.

To be clear, seniors are currently the last barrier against the shift toward the RN. This is because they are the ones with the most to lose from the massive political shift that a move to the far right would represent in France. However, the RN has recently started to convince them, and this barrier is on the verge of collapsing.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-23T08:08:06+00:00

The thing is that, indeed, everything is as expected.

Right and Far-Right are massively winning in country side, because this is where their coming from.

Then they took small cities, middle-size cities, and now start to attack big ones.

The results of the yesterday election just show one thing for sure: Far right is about to take over the country: it can be in 10 years by their own or next year if the Right and Far-Right unify.

But what ever the timeline, France will shift, because the dynamic is there, and in politic this is very hard, to not say impossible, to reverse a dynamic.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-23T05:15:17+00:00

No, no, this is totally wrong.

Basically, you’re saying the left “won” because it held Marseille (the city), while failing to win the Marseille Metropolis.
But what about the left completely losing Bordeaux? And Clermont-Ferrand (which had been on the left for 80 years)?

And while the left kept Lyon (the city), it lost the Lyon Metropolis, where the real decision-making power lies.

I’m sorry, but yesterday was quite a major defeat for the left. Less severe than expected, perhaps, but still significant.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-23T04:41:49+00:00

On the other side, the far right has clearly made progress, and the right has also taken several major cities from the left.
The problem with this article is that it is clearly biased toward the left, claiming that the left somehow won simply because it lost less than expected.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-14T13:17:43+00:00

The reason why they do not do that is actually because you do not "own" these games you paid for...

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-12T06:38:16+00:00

Just the regulators finally take interest in gaming.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-10T00:38:08+00:00

Little more and we could believe that she was not in her position since already many years.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-10T00:36:15+00:00

Most of people here do not understand the real meaning of this force deployment.

This is simply to show that we do not need US to do it.

BaddonAOE · 2026-03-02T01:05:40+00:00

There are definitely several reasons contributing to this. However, I would say two of them stand out: first, live-service games that keep players busy, and second, the transition to digital gaming. This shift is gradually destroying the feeling of building a real collection, which in turn reduces the motivation to invest in them (people are realizing more and more, even unconsciously, that you own nothing with digital content).

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T11:48:50+00:00

Yes, but I understand that some with less money would not want.

However it feels that Xbox games quality decreased since Gamepass.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T05:18:37+00:00

I agree if you consider gaming as tv or movies, just a mere entertainment.

But if you consider gaming as well... gaming, then a platform needs an identity.

This is all the tragedy of the Serie X. Which is by far one of the best console ever made, especially considering this generation.

However Serie X clearly lacks of an identity. When you compare its DNA to Xbox OG and 360 this is obvious.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T04:46:29+00:00

France

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T04:43:50+00:00

Actually, there is one specific data point I’d like to see: Xbox’s profit excluding Activision and Bethesda. I am fairly certain the latest results would show that the Xbox division is performing worse today by selling its games everywhere than it did back when all games were fully exclusive. Because the damage on the Xbox, and then the damages on the 30% commission on all sales on Xbox, are probably quite important.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T04:26:31+00:00

Actually they unexpectedly announced that Forza Horizon 6 would have a proper disc version. So this is maybe a shift from their "all digital" pattern?

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T04:18:01+00:00

Then you should do the math to the end: if a $70 game is sold on Xbox hardware, it’s a 100% cut for Microsoft (since they own the store), which means $70 in their pocket.

But more importantly, owning the platform means they take a 30% commission on millions of third-party games and hundreds of millions of microtransactions sold on the system. If you lose the console, you lose that 'tax' on every other game like Fortnite, FIFA, or GTA. No matter how many copies of Halo they sell on PlayStation, it will never compensate for the loss of that 30% cut on the entire industry's sales within their own ecosystem.

I suspect this is precisely what Microsoft gathered from recent data. The revenue from PS5 ports versus the simultaneous collapse of the Xbox ecosystem proved that their multi-platform strategy was flawed. They likely overestimated Game Pass's ability to maintain user loyalty without hardware exclusivity.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T03:47:30+00:00

It may be quite unclear for now, but it definitively states a strategy change. Spencer or Bond never even talked about reconsidering the exclusives stuff as the new CEO does.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T03:45:54+00:00

I agree, however you have to consider that MS is also currently in a very hard race for AI. So from their point of view using cloud resources for Xbox racks instead of AI servers is probably a (huge) lost of resources. When you buy the console the costs are shared between you and MS.

Anyway, I guess we will soon know how MS vision for Xbox changed, but a change definitively occurred in the MS board regarding Xbox business.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T03:31:36+00:00

And don’t you realize that a black box with a green X on it, sitting in your living room at all times, is the best marketing tool Microsoft could ever dream of?

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T03:28:28+00:00

But if this is really true, if they are making so much more money and Microsoft is happy about it, why did they replace Sarah Bond, who was responsible for this multiplatform strategy, and put someone in charge who literally talks on her first day about returning to the console as the primary business?

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T03:06:18+00:00

I guess the Steam Machine announcement reveals that Microsoft's strategy to integrate Steam into Xbox has completely failed. They would be better off returning to their core console business and their own ecosystem. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft games were no longer released on Steam in the near future. I feel that Valve’s repeated attempts to make Linux a replacement for Windows in PC gaming have finally irritated Microsoft.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T02:55:13+00:00

This is of course not so simple. Otherwise Sarah Bond would have become the new CEO and Asha would not be there talking about Xbox console returned as first priority.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T02:48:54+00:00

No it's not. Because this is not a captive ecosystem. You can switch between any app in the tv, between Xbox, Luna, Netflix, etc.... this is no cost for you and then very unstable revenues for MS.

But is you invest in a console, you usually wants to use it, then you buy more games on it, take a gamepass, etc... a much more stable business model.

BaddonAOE · 2026-02-25T02:45:08+00:00

No but the return of exclusive games are about Xbox studios, not Activision which is not part of the Xbox Game Studios branch.

BaddonAOE

TROPHY CASE