AAA

KweenieQ

Bonds, investment-grade (AAA-B) or government-issued. The bond market operates differently than the stock market, but it's worth deciphering. You say you're risk-adverse, but you've got significant positions in equity funds and individual stocks. Consider whether that's the right allocation for you.

longinuslucas

Seriously, the only AAA asset I will buy is government debt. Can’t trust these rating companies no more

CoolBeansChemist

Listen we take a bunch of BB and BBB rated dogshit data centers package them together and get a AAA rating and sell that to people. Definitely sustainable and will not cause major economic issues.

Initial_Ad_9250

Triple AAA rating ,A stands for Ass

NewOil7911

We should pull together multiple data centers debts, to "diversify risk", and get a AAA rating. And then sell it to all investors worldwide. Let's call it a CDO.

Emotional_Goal9525

People consider them AAA bonds. WMT is less likely to go tits up than US is to default on bonds.

d33p7r0ubl3

K shaped economies can't last forever. Something has to give. If you're able to use AI to take weeks of work down to a single day, I'd argue you're doing trivial work. Do you mind sharing an example? I haven't found chat bots to be of any help on problems encountered in AAA games as every problem is novel.

Raskuja46

Yeah, but the AAA market is coming apart at the seams while indie games are beating them up and taking their lunch money. Players are just as happy to play games that run on a potato as they are ones that require big beefy hardware. Even if AAA moves all their stuff to cloud based, the fact that they're struggling to put out *good* games means it won't create the market shift you're imagining.

SavingsDimensions74

Thanks for your input, none of which is based remotely on fact. Literally, every point you make is totally wrong. Impressively so. I won’t waste my time on every point you make but Greece didn’t almost collapse due to fake AAA packages. It neared collapse because: Structural fiscal deficits Corrupt accounting/shitty tax regs Eurozone design flaws Inability to devalue its currency Mortgage-backed securities were minor by comparison I won’t go into the rest because you obviously serve your own narrative but in Canada during ‘08: No Canadian major bank failed No taxpayer bailouts Credit kept flowing Canada exited emergency policy earlier than the US/Europe But sure, you do you. I prefer facts

ChanThe4th

The funny part is Carney being awful for England and doing nothing for Canada is agreed upon in an almost unheard of bipartisan fashion. The only group supporting him is China because any damage to Western Alliance they feel is good. He got Canada through 08? Canada didn't have any exposure to the fake AAA packages, which were primarily held in Europe, which is why Greece almost collapsed. Him and Harper made trade agreements with China illegally hiding them from public view that are still intact today. To top it off he went to England after they sorted out most of their issues post 08' and he came in and absolutely demolished their gains. You could easily argue both Trump and Xi support Carney because he is going to destroy all Canadian prosperity and allow both super powers to do whatever they want. It blows me away people are ignoring this, but then again most of this app are clankers pushing propaganda.

MtGloomy0420

I remember that other guy saying a buyer was in the room last April. Must be like a AAA scout where they are just going stadium to stadium looking for that special magic.

hexcraft-nikk

Productivity isn't up, prices are. Quality control has gone down across every sector. From the AAA gaming market to mainstream software giants, to food conglomerates. They have cut corners everywhere and fired everyone. Many sectors are running on skeleton crews in order to make profits look better than they are.

Vlisa

True! Why give the AAA guy a top when he could give me a tip instead. 😍😍😍

Vlisa

Not to blog, but I locked my keys in the car and AAA is two hours away. I hope my misfortune brings y’all joy and you are having a good Valentine’s day.

Anon58715

Thanks. Because of the AAA ratings, I think both these companies share could be used as collateral in the repo market.

Anon58715

AAA rating, which is the other company besides MSFT?

opo113

I hold some software stock so I decided to check their credit ratings. Might be true in general that software companies in general have lower credit ratings, but it seems like the reputable ones are investment grade. *Disclaimer: I know basically nothing about credit ratings and this comment is probably categorically incorrect* ADBE has investment grade bonds: https://public.com/bonds/corporate/adobe-inc/adbe-5.3-01-17-2035-00724pak5 NOW is investment grade: https://public.com/bonds/corporate/servicenow-inc/now-1.4-09-01-2030-81762pae2?wpsrc=Organic+Search&wpsn=www.google.com MSFT is rated AAA, the highest possible rating, one of only two companies in the entire US with this high of rating: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/faq

nobertan

Broad Incompetence is why. Gaming arm blew all that money acquiring multiple AAA studios with next to no plan executed, and watched the value of them vanish. Xbox console has basically just given up even trying at this point, just turned up the gamepass price to absurd levels and removing games from said bought studios (which was a key reason in acquiring them in the first place); turning a market dominating product into a ‘questionable at best’ one. Windows 11 update is actually regressing because of the bloat and damage they’re actively doing to it, users have had enough. Their quantum hobby project is going nowhere, IVAS went nowhere (somehow they managed to get some money back on that, which was honestly surprising). Complete fumbling of co-pilot after pulling off a crystal ball deal with openAI, only to let all the first mover advantage pour all over the floor. MSFT had a broad profile of meandering and directionless products with its only shining light being Azure, but it remains to be seen how well it’s performing if it’s almost entirely due to OpenAI partnership or not. Then there’s Satya trying desperately (and it LOOKS desperate) trying to drum up support for Ai data centers. “*i solemnly swear to pay taxes*” was a good bit, making people ask “were they not already?”… MSFT is a real odd ball, as they have all the tools and market position to push on from here but somehow each division has no idea what they’re doing other than just jacking up prices to pad the books. There’s definitely a leadership culture crisis there if this continues. They’ll still be very profitable, but won’t be growing like everyone will be.

daytraderrr

Say what you will about MSFT, but it’s the only stock I truly feel comfortable loading up on at every dip. Wanna stack now for the inevitable split one day, long term hold for sure. Great company, great financials, many revenue streams, triple AAA credit, beat earnings, what’s not to like?

miseducation

Netflix has traded at Meta, Amazon multiples like 30x forever. Disney is probably the closest competitor and they're at 15x at best. Tech giants are maturing as businesses and Netflix is starting to be repriced more accurately in the same way that we've seen across non AI tech the last year. A more realistic multiple is pretty good for the core business considering that in the last 5 years: \- Market share dropped as Disney+, Paramount, HBO Max, Apple TV+ spent hundreds of billions to compete. \- Prices of subscriptions increased 40-60% depending on the plan. \- Number of global subscribers still doubled from 158-325m. \- Competitors have lost money funding their competing services and still have quite a bit to invest if they hope to catch up. I can't think of a good reason for them to lose significant revenue in the next five years. Their costs per asset are only going to shrink considering that they're consolidating the competition in WB, vertically integrating more studios, crews, production lots in huge build outs across the world, facing much weaker resistance from unions who have been annihilated post writer's strike. No promises whatsoever of explosive growth unless you think the ad platform and live sports have a lot to grow but no reason to doubt the core business will get anything but cheaper to produce and more profitable. WB acquisition brings some ugly debt but outside of IP it also brings the kind of prestige in AAA movies they have tried and failed to reproduce on their end. Content licensing outside of Netflix is also a new revenue channel since they would inherit those. Folks outside of the film business always: \- Overrate the potential of AI as disruptive to studios and distributors when they stand the most to gain from cheaper costs. \- Underrate how much Covid killed what was left of the legacy film industry in favor of streamers. \- Underrate how the writer's strike cemented their market position as the leader. Before the strike the major streamers were in a Mexican standoff to see who could fund more content. After the strike they never brought production costs back up to the old spend levels, and since they killed legacy film during covid, something like 50% of the writers/actors/directors who were striking would never get another gig again.

skeuser

Finally someone said it. Tax free AAA/AA munies when rates were high were very attractive.

Comprehensive-Law293

God & the universe are 2 grade AAA scumbags that love to fuck with me.

lOo_ol

BBB+ is not rated "quite high". It's 2 notches about junk bonds (BB+). Greece is rated BBB. In the same BBB+ category, you'll find the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia. Germany, Switzerland, Australia are rated AAA. *"Just be aware that things are as simple as "the healthy treshold is 60% because 30 years they decided so"* You read what you wanted to read, because I'm pretty sure I said the opposite. The point is that there's no threshold in a form of a number. 60% was arbitrary back then, like saying $100T is the limit today. We'll only know how far the US can push it in hindsight, when this whole house of cards collapses.

zdravkov321

Can we get some AAA level regards to put a ton of money on spy puts so our calls can pop off? Thank you for your attention to this matter.

cupofchupachups

"You're absolutely right. That is too low of a credit rating for the USA. I apologize for error and have updated the credit rating to AAA." 

lordnikkon

i mean that is what the credit rating on bonds are. Except they are letter grades like AAA instead of numbers

Ok_Fly6165

Of course not buddy. Central banks only buy AAA bonds or so

Over-Computer-6464

VUSB. Avg maturity 1.3 years, duration 1.0 years. Corporate investment grade bonds, now about 4.1% yield. 0.1% expenses ratio. 2/3rd of portfolio are A or BBB, 22% AAA. ————————- VCSH. Maturity and duration 2.8/2.6 years, 90% A and BBB, 4.2 to 4.3 yield. 0.03% expense ratio.

Hwangoutpltr

5'4" and hung like a AAA battery

whateverisok

Look up bond rating scale for investment grade. WSB is AAA - Moody’s, S&P, Fitch

the_Q_spice

Yup, this is a good example of how AAA video game stocks work. They get priced in early, then inevitably tank when the game doesn’t live up to expectations due to crunch and bad optimization. Not an expert, but have some close friends who work for AAA game developers.

ShittyUsernane1222

Lord help us all when AAA international bond ETFs begin trading like wsb regards bank account.

swampassOG

Call AAA

setec404

talk about AAA grade copium

WPrepod

Same as corporate tax reductions. Decreased costs mean increased profits and they're not gonna let that go to waste on reducing costs for the consumer. Specifically games, that shit is priced in and AAA titles will sell for 70/80$.

ShittyUsernane1222

give or take a few weeks, international AAA bond ETFs will be trading like a shitcoin.

Ok_Complaint_3589

Hahahahahhahahhahahahahaha AAA told u so

ShittyUsernane1222

AAA international Bond ETFs will soon trade like shitcoins with the way things are going.

TIC321

Problem is innovation and AI. Most AAA titles are becoming repetitive and redundant with no new innovative ideas.. which is why we usually see remakes, remasters of the old games coming to fruition.

gaflar

> gaming in the future could look more like... Or it could fucking not, because nobody actually wants that and gamers will keep playing what they want instead of buying whatever AAA slop the industry tries to force down their throats. Have you ever actually played a video game? Can you read, my son?

LocodoloDev

After the runtime fee PR disaster there was a lot of noise on social media regarding developers leaving Unity for Godot but from what I could see the vast majority were vocal hobbyists and students who Unity does not make much money off. Unity excels in the mobile gaming market which is over 50% of the gaming industry. The big companies in that space don't make knee jerk reactions. Unreal is the defacto for big budget AAA titles but on the whole is not as suited for mobile games.

WheelerDan

Because this is how the housing market collapsed in 08. they took something with a AAA rating (spacex) and starting saying what if we sold packages of shit (twitter and his robot bullshit) mixed in with the AAA and everyone will buy it. Theres a reason twitter is shit and worth almost nothing. Mixing it with good shit is just a scam. He's trying to hide his losses and pay off his debts.

greygray

My counterpoint: - gaming as a segment is moving downmarket. The juice is not worth the squeeze for AAA titles and they make way more money with mobile games. - apply a moore’s law curve to this tech and it does start to compete pretty strongly with incumbents. - gaming in the future could look more like world AR / seamless than sitting at home with a PC or oculus (imagine solo leveling with a HUD or Pokémon Go). My bull case for unity would be to be acquired by Meta, Google, or Apple and used as part of a platform play. I could see it being more useful to Meta to help build a more robust content library ahead of their broader push into AR glasses.

DaStompa

Its accessibility. You needed a guy like carmack who is an absolute programing psycho to push a AAA title and there's not a ton of them out there in the world, you'd have little groups surrounding wizards outputting the best games and bigger players really couldn't compete. Now its all MBA's pushing addiction and gambling mechanics as hard as they can and the actual game is secondary.

DoTheMario

I agree - any evaporation of discretionary spending probably hits this form of entertainment first. This is not to say that I believe people stop playing games but I do think their consumption habits will change in economic hardship. Free to play games, gaming backlogs, steam deals, etc. allow people to access gaming for very little up front cost. As people tighten their belts I'm sure theyll turn to replaying old games or tapping secondary markets to purchase discounted and used games. AAA should be worried because I don't think it has a very good model if people are not frivolous. Microtransactions, skins/cosmetics, and similar monetization is going to be rough if people are looking at tight budgets. Full price $80 gaming and consoles I can only imagine hit a wall as well.

yourwebg

I have faith in gaming, but any investment in a western AAA developer is a huge risk. 

Acolyte_of_Swole

Betting on the overall market is always safe since society is getting more dystopian and people need an escape/stress release. But the AAA industries are producing some real trash which imo is causing stagnation, especially along with rising prices and predatory monetization practices. In combination with an attitude of "you do not own anything you buy from us" and aggressive DRM, I have a feeling the future of spending will be a lot of indies and emerging AA titles. There will always be those people who just buy madden every year and only play madden and nothing else. I'm not talking about those. For the people who play a lot of different game genres using pc or consoles, AAA has been highly disappointing in the last decade and I think most are moving away from it. Also it bears mentioning that indie games cost less and if people have less money, saving money buying indie games or old games on sales is only natural.

Brick-Throw

Can't wait to have to buy a 10090 RTX to play a game that is nearly as buggy and unpolished as a game released 20 years ago by a AAA company.

Chemical-Narwhal3965

Gaming is not invest in any gaming Company rn. AAA games have not been good or have had allot of pushback from the big companies over the last couple years. And with AI being controversial in games, i dont trust any of the publicly traded companies to get it right. Very volatile rn.

bb1180

I'm in the group that has absolutely zero confidence in western AAA game development. Seems like they're prioritizing everything except their internal talent level and their customers.

GLGarou

Hate to say it as gaming is my biggest pasttime. Video game sector is easily one of the worst sectors right now. They have been losing a ton of investment money over the last few years. Not just AAA, but even more the AA and indie companies.

Honest_Bee_9549

Western AAA companies have worsened a ton over time and are now at an all-time low in reputation. Not a good investment for me

InvisibleEar

I have no faith in the management of AAA developers. I expect more of them to Ubisoft themselves than soar.

SB_90s

That's like saying the rise of Netflix was the best time to be a video rental company, because of the chance to specialise and differentiate. I did point out the likes of CDPR and R* will keep having devs that thrive. And I agree with you that on the other end of the spectrum certain indies will also thrive. But that doesn't negate the fact we're going to see massive layoffs on this sector over the next decade (and it's already been hit hard in recent years as it is) and most developers will use AI more and more in their games. On your persistent world point, as I said this is all contingent on Genie 3 just being the start/proof of concept, with it continuing to mature and eventually start outputting games on par with AA and even AAA games at some point. Everyone and Google understands the importance of persistent and saved worlds to actually compete. I don't see why that won't eventually come. Much like how existing LLM agents can remember and recall previous information that's been input and outputted. To be clear, I don't support any of this especially the idea of layoffs and AI replacing everything. But if we all just take the easy road of ignoring the threat and not choosing to see what this could, and likely will, become, then we'll all just be more unprepared for when it happens.

SB_90s

Game devs are also absolutely cooked, unfortunately. It's clear the suits and bean counters run all the mid to large sized studios these days. They don't respect the devs as it is now, so that'll only get worse as AI games improve and radically cuts the need for a big (human) dev team. Top tier studios like CDPR and R* will survive just fine (TTWO was absolutely a buying opportunity when it dropped 10% on this news) because they truly earn their rep and put out unmatched games. People will keep coming out to pay big for their games even when this AI tech is capable of putting out AAA game. So those studios can keep affording to pay for a big dev team and it'll be their massive moat among the sea of AI game studios. Everyone else is fried eventually tbh. Other big studios like EA and others who have franchises that will likely remain popular (sports, CoD, etc) but aren't really known for quality, care, or uniqueness will also have their dev team gutted for AI and the casuals who eat up those games every year won't care about a drop in quality, etc. I would say the slop studios like EA (if it stayed listed) and Ubisoft could be massive buying opportunities because they can massively cut costs/headcount once this tech is mature, and their sales probably won't change if they can maintain quality. But honestly, knowing those studios, they'll cut way too early and use the tech wrongly first, tanking sales for a bit. Until the tech is actually ready to replace devs, then sales will probably recover and their margins will skyrocket. If you're training to be a gaming dev currently, don't. If you're in the industry, particularly if you're still young, pivot to a different industry now.

Dragon_yum

You need to look where the puck is going no where it is now. Just two years ago it would have been science fiction to see something like this. The gameplay is Roblox isn’t crazy complex and there’s no reason that within a rather reasonable timeframe ai wouldn’t be able to do something semi decent when compared to the quality of Roblox. We aren’t talking replicating CoD or some other AAA title, just some shitty games that are just good enough to get young kids hooked on them.

zaepoo

Hey now, those were AAA grade mortgage backed securities thank you very much.

FishHammer

Video game companies going public is a lot of what's wrong with the current state of "AAA" gaming. Valve still crushes it because their profits stay on Gabe's yacht next to the nacho cheese waterfall/lazy river

thrawnisahero

AAA Rated

qbjc392

Anyone who knows what a game engine does will laugh at you. AA and AAA Game engines are one of the most complicated piece of software to make, and current LLMs still make dumb mistakes on relatively simple tasks. The neural simulators just generate a real-time video feed based on inputs, it's far from being a game. Plus, you lose don't have control over anything like physics, art, rules of the game, etc. It's a cool tech for sure but not a case against game engines.

ficoplati

How is this supposed to speed up release cycles of games? It's literally not a game it's just predicted/generated 2d renders of 3d frames at a staggering costs. The only reason I could ever see this being useful for actual game dev is generation of 3d assets/3d animations. That is already being done today anyways. Maybe some cut scenes that have 0 overlap with actual game assets/worlds could use this. This is not a game or anything close to a game, it cannot be used to speed up game dev because game dev does not work like this. You cannot use this to make a game level faster because it does not produce the code and assets required to make a game level in the first place. This is equivalent to saying that a 3d artistic animation of two particles colliding could be used to speed up CERN physics research. You realize how idiotic that sounds. Even if we somehow assume that in some years the tech advances so much that it can reliably "generate" an actual AAA game scenario with correct physics, lighting etc. and perfect object permanence. The cost would be insane. Every time you sat down to play the "game" it would probably cost you 100dollar+/hr. The only realistic speedups to game dev have already been achieved with 3d asset generation and code generation. This stock reaction is literally just markets being commanded by people that are completely clueless about how gamedev actually works and think that games are just magically made from wizards at the computer typing away what they want to see at the screen.

Kryslor

>no more indie games and more AAA slop! Oh God please no

Funny_Story2759

The whole point is lower barrier to entry to a business that is roughly controlled by select talent. Ai can bring more people into creation using less people which would result in AAA quality games from indie studios ultimately.

Automatic-Unit-8307

Yes, mobile games are garbage, but they make more money than triple AAA titles. People love garbage, so gaming stocks are dead. People buy mobile crap and they will by AI game crap

HorriblyGood

The tech has not been plateauing. I’m not saying the current transformer architecture will take us to AGI, but it’s far from being fully explored and will get us to very good specialized model. There are a lot of research on improving LLMs by reinforcement learning, faster model via masked diffusion LLM, improving reasoning by latent chain of thought. Research papers are being published at an insane rate. Just because you don’t see it in the news doesn’t mean it’s plateauing. It takes time for services like ChatGPT and Gemini time to adopt new advancements because they are training models at large scale and need to test and validate before shipping new models. I know that we are far from being able to generate AAA games like this with AI right now. But I don’t think you understand how long 2 decades is in the AI field. We got to where we are in a little over a decade from almost nothing. AI in 2010 is a joke and now it’s everywhere. The things we have now is unthinkable for anyone who worked in this field back then. And I don’t think anyone can predict what will come in 2 decades. If they say they can, they’re lying. Similarly, people who are so confident in what AI can do in the future is also wrong. No one knows.

CaptainDouchington

Or...it's cause a lot of AAA studios have been churning turds for a while now.

TripTryad

>Very soon you'll be able to completely personally design AAA quality games to your liking using nothing but generative AI. No.... you won't. You will still need actual creatives to use these tools to create those meaningful experiences. This may in some instances however, shorten the development time so you can get 3 Final Fantasy games in a single Generation like we did with the PS1 🤷🏾‍♂️

Raise_A_Thoth

Think of how much time, expertise, and optimization go into AAA gaming titles. AI will not be able to make games that rival good indy or top studio games anytime soon. It can probably make crappy mobile games somewhat soon, but quality comes from art and story and thoughtful design of UI, feel, tone, music, etc. AI can upend the market by continuing enshittification and generating volume, maybe making some studios suffer from the competition of volume, but to the extent that becomes a viable business model, quality of games will suck ass.

FantasticMacaron9341

It cant code alone but saying it sucks at coding is stupid. Same here, you wouldn't be able to generate a game with a prompt any time soon, but imagine a 10 person team could build an AAA like game, crazy

CarlosAlvarados

Man like yeah. People that think we are anywhere close of ai games replacing AAA games are insane lmao

Tristezza

Gaming companies will be fine as you will not be able to "personally design AAA quality games to your liking using nothing but generative AI" for a very, very, very long time.

Rich_Housing971

They actually have a point. They won't be on par, but any time playing AI-made games will be time people don't have for GTA. For each game made with the budget of GTA 6, there's probably tens of thousands of games that can be made with AI. And the studios won't be entirely making games from AI with a single prompt. It will be used to create art assets, 3d models, etc. Think about this like fashion. Someone into fashion will always know which brands are quality and which brands they never heard of. but someone not into fashion or just see fashion as clothes to keep you warm and prevent people from seeing your genitalia will just buy whatever is cheap. They can recognize that Prada is giving them a better product, but they don't care about spending the $500 on a Prada product vs $50 on something they see at Target. A gamer will never buy an AI-made game. But some people who are non-gamers looking for something cheap to do on the weekend will buy the $5 AI-made game instead of the $70+ AAA game made by a studio. It happened for mobile games already. mobile games are known for being lower quality than PC and console games, but most people who are gamers play on mobile.

16semesters

> No matter how great the generative AI become, it would probably be easier, cheaper, less time consuming and less frustrating to buy a game from a professional developer than trying to create an AAA games yourself Some people might DIY through prompts, some may play premade games that are made with AI. But the application of AI will make pretty much all traditional gaming companies lose their moat unless they have some protectable IP.

Bulky_Wind_4356

People are kinda sick of AAA games tho. At least that's what it looks like

holylight17

No matter how great the generative AI become, it would probably be easier, cheaper, less time consuming or frustrating to buy a game from a professional developer than try to create an AAA games yourself.

ihopethisworksfornow

Google genie doesn’t impress me. Sure, it’ll save AAA studios dev time and $$ because they can fire artists now. Your news will be AI slop Your movies will be AI slop Your games will be AI slop The products you consume will be AI slop Everything will become generic garbage and you will pay a monthly subscription for it that goes up in price every month even though the product gets worse.

Savage_Amusement

Something soemthing AAA tranche

16semesters

For gaming applications, this seems rather insanely bullish. Very soon you'll be able to completely personally design AAA quality games to your liking using nothing but generative AI. What does this mean for conventional game companies? Do they evolve into more of IP houses and less of actually making games?

Admirable-Listen5180

New AAA games can easily be $90 CAD nowadays

orsomeshitidk

I really need to get a good rechargeable AA an AAA battery setup going. Any of you fine retards have good product recs?

Wild-Confidence-9803

Undertaker got a big money gig booking AAA in Mexico, wouldn't look good for them considering the current direction.

ShittyUsernane1222

there are no safe havens to port to. I doubt wsb regards are ready for when international AAA bond etf's start trading like shitcoins.

trader_dennis

Oracle is highly leveraged and is rated BBB. MSFT has a AAA balance sheet better than the US government.

TechTuna1200

The MBP16 is quite decent for gaming. I ran Cyberpunk 2077 on it and it ran smoothly. The main issue is the catalog is small. But it can definitely run some heavy AAA games

Medical-Shoulder-337

Some of their securities are AAA, ok how much? What’s the structure of these deals? If they’re offloading sub prime debt, they either found a bigger sucker or their margins will be crushed. It doesn’t sound like you know what you invested in

Nhruch

That was their initial approach, holding first loss tranches. They've since off loaded much of the debt directly to lenders via those forward flow agreements. So now they get to keep minimal risk on the books compared to a year ago, while collecting a referral fee for each loan approved on the lenders behalf. So derisked from the perspective of where they were a year ago yes, but they still carry risk for sure. Their constant forward flow agreements though show strong demand for their services now (all over the last year), and some of their securities they are producing are AAA rated. So it's not just subprime lenders.

iannht

This "market saturation" argument is a massive cope for a decade of catastrophic management. Ubisoft didn't crash because the market is too "selective" for big bets; they crashed because they stopped making good bets. They spent years copy-pasting the same tired open-world formula until even their most loyal fans got bored. Calling that "risk-averse" is just a nice way of saying they got lazy and relied on brand names instead of actually innovating. Look at the carnage today. The stock didn't drop 33% because of general "market trends." It cratered because management finally had to admit the wheels have fallen off. They’re looking at a €1 billion loss this year alone. They just nuked six games, including the Prince of Persia remake that’s been in development hell for half a decade, and they’re closing entire studios in Halifax and Stockholm because their overhead is so bloated they can’t even break even on "mediocre" sales anymore. The market isn't too crowded for big games—look at how many "big bets" from other studios are still printing money. The market is just finished with expensive mediocrity. Ubisoft's valuation is now lower than the cost of making two or three AAA games. That’s not a market problem; that’s a "we forgot how to run a company" problem.

harrison_wintergreen

> if the interest rate paid on US debt is insufficiently compensating you for the risk. If Pimco is saying that, I think we should be thinking that there have been rare periods in the past that AAA corporate debt paid lower rates than Treasuries, implying the bond market thought IBM or whoever was a safer bet that the US treasury. and a few years ago, late Biden admin, Dodge & Cox made large purchases of global debt, expecially Latin America.

harrison_wintergreen

> US Treasuries were pretty much the verbatim risk-free rate. there have been times in the past AAA corporates have paid lower rates than Treasuries of similar maturity, implying the bond market believed IBM or whatever was a safer bet. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/06/corporate-bonds-vs-u-s-treasuries/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

CarrierAreArrived

lol the very fact that you made that joke tells me you made no actual effort or did no research to use the right setup (because the type of person who would find that funny is someone who did no research). It's highly unlikely you used Opus 4.5 if professional devs are using it nearly across the board w/ great success for all sorts of apps. Either that or your "custom software" was a AAA quality computer game from scratch which yes no models can do yet.

Key-Boat-7519

Your main point is right: if Meta wants VR to be more than a weird hobby, it needs killer games, not another Horizon reskin. But “just port WoW/Halo/Skyrim/etc to Quest 4” is a lot messier than it sounds. You’re basically asking Meta to cut huge checks to Blizzard, Rockstar, Microsoft, Epic, 2K, Bethesda, then fund full VR reworks with proper locomotion, UI, comfort options, and netcode that doesn’t suck in 6DOF. That’s years of work per title. They’d need to treat it like a console launch: timed exclusives, cross‑buy with flat versions, and maybe even cover part of ongoing live‑ops so publishers aren’t carrying all the risk. If they’re serious, they should do what Apple did with Vision Pro devs: straight-up subsidies and rev‑share guarantees. Same way startups use stuff like Carta, Pulley, or Cake Equity to keep incentives aligned, Meta would need aligned upside for studios, not just “trust us, VR will be big.” So yeah, AAA blitz is the only real bull case for Meta VR from here.

Forward-Surprise1192

Why yes, yes I am. I’m ok with being pathetic if it means I get AAA studio developed porn. I’d prefer a new elder scrolls but I’ll take what I can get

RigTV

Meta’s massive investment—over $78 billion—into social-first VR experiences like Horizon Worlds has failed to deliver the deep, engaging content core gamers demand, resulting in low user retention and stalled ecosystem growth. Their focus on casual social experiments neglected proven AAA gaming franchises and squandered resources that could have fueled meaningful VR adoption. The right move now is a decisive pivot: launch a multi-IP AAA VR blitz on the upcoming Quest 4, featuring native versions of blockbuster titles like WoW Classic, Halo 3, GTA 5, NBA 2K, Fortnite, and Skyrim. This strategy leverages existing fanbases and the Quest 4’s hardware leap to drive hardware sales, software revenue, and developer confidence—restoring Meta’s credibility and positioning it as the true leader in VR gaming. It’s time for Meta to stop chasing gimmicks and start delivering the games that actually move the needle. If I was the director of Meta's VR department this is what I'd push over the next two years.

BIGSTANKDICKDADDY

It's a bit of a nuanced question because there isn't anything exactly like Alyx in terms of scope, polish, and genre so I don't want to imply any of these go toe-to-toe on those terms. That being said, here's a shortlist of games I think have a bit more novelty and why: Superhot VR: It's Superhot (time moves when you move) but redesigned for physical player movement. Although the game is available in and outside VR, the VR version has its own levels and design. Jet Island: Uses your hands as thrusters in a high-speed, high-intensity open world platformer. Feels like playing those old school CS surf maps in VR, definitely need strong VR legs for this one. Vertigo 2: It's a bit like Alyx if Valve weren't concerned with accessibility at all. Has a dozen different weapons but takes a more stylized approach, two-handed interactions, vehicles, boss fights, etc. Robo Recall: Arcade shooter with high physicality. Can dodge, deflect, or toss bullets back at enemies or get in close to grab and tear limbs. Lone Echo / Lone Echo 2: Adventure game set in space. Also a high degree of physicality, locomotion involves using thrusters and pushing off walls in zero-gravity. You play as a robot with a high degree of interactivity with a human NPC, lots of branching dialogue and fun interactions. Probably the closest games to Alyx in overall AAA-tier polish. Astro Bot Rescue Mission: PSVR exclusive unfortunately, but a super clever platformer that takes advantage of motion input on the dualshock and head control from the HMD. Sort of rewired my brain while playing as you realize there's a true 3D component to the design. I'm probably forgetting some since this is just off the dome, and I had a hard time trimming the list down to games that really utilize the medium rather than a general list of games I liked (e.g. Walkabout Mini Golf).

D00dleArmy

Yeah but our credit score has been lowered from AAA AA+ for years and OPEC is longer required to exclusively sell oil in USD (afaik).

zeradragon

That ETF will then be a AAA grade investment. Surely hasn't been done before...

rfstan

AAA baseball in volume

satansbutthole069

I would agree with you looking at fundamentals, and for sure they are sticky at the institutional level (our hospitals and governments are not going to stop using Microsoft next year), but personally using their increasingly unusable products…They arent going to be disrupted outright, but growth for those shitty products isn’t going to be maintained at the level it’s been the last few years, and their current dip is only down to their valuation from June 6, 2025. Unpopular opinion (s&p and moody AAA rating), but Bearish.  I sold my whole MSFT  position (but still have it through a lot of QQQ).  Thoughts?

Dazzling_Marzipan474

Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch rated junk mortgage debt as AAA during the financial crisis. The exact same companies that rate U.S. Treasury debt today. I wouldn't rate their ratings as triple A. 😐

Nike_J

AAA Gaming Industry: "Let me introduce myself."