Imo the team got slightly better, which is better than getting worse, but feels like they still need to get MUCH better to really become a "for sure" playoff calibre team.

Imo this is "acceptable" asset management, but not really moving the needle much.

Its hard saying "could have utilized the capspace better" without knowing what he's competing against (other teams w/ space) + what else was being offered.

I know it doesn't work this way with how long this all took, but if you combine this and the Fowler/Dumo deals I think you get:

Ducks out:
- Fowler
- Dumo
- Terrance
- 3rd rounder

Ducks in:
- Trouba
- Krieder
- 2nd rounder (x2)
- Traff
- Biakabutuka
- retained ~40% of Fowler's salary

Emma please take me with you if you get in

Haha I should have known! These are awesome btw, doing an amazing service distilling some really dense info into something anyone can digest! Ty so much for making these

4) this leads to a strategy of “low barrier of entry, for maximum number of sales”. This is basically F2P in a nutschell, but also explains Xbox approach.

Remove the cost of buying an Xbox/needing hardware, hopefully get more users playing and spending on software (or subs) where you get a %.

3) much larger competition across games due to lower barriers to dev + publishing. Pressure to “race to the bottom”, esp w/ F2P options, hence lower price points and constant sales.

Even with the increase from $60-$70 couple years ago, games are making less per copy than when they were $60.

2) very exciting seeing amazing single player titles coming out of Asia & Europe. One reason we don’t see that in the US is much higher employee salaries leading to higher cost, and post-COVID that gap got bigger.

So some investment has moved from the US to those markets, leading to US layoffs.

Couple things I slightly disagree with or would add:

1) the data does show that the vast majority of players actually want live service games (its just that they want the ones they’re already playing mostly or the occasional break out success). This is double true if you include Mobile.