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News Xbox isn't done closing studios or cuts

When are the Xbox executives going to resign for being incompetent failures? How do you both lose so much money AND destroy your chances of making money in the future?!?

Just incompetent and ghoulish. The faster MS leaves video games, the better off the customers and other video game businesses will be.
 
Fucking terrible situation. I´m gutted by Tango , Hi-Fi Rush is my thing and i own it twice. MS Sucks.

I believe the very few "positives" in the situation is the that the GamePass fad is now over (or should be over) and Phil Spencer has his days numbered. Satya Nadella also needs to fucking go man.
 
I got an OG Xbox at the age of 7 in 2005 and it was my main console from them on (but I did always have a Nintendo side too, just never really PS). 360, yes, even Xbox One I mained (but did get a PS4 as I hit the "breaking point" with Scalebound's cancellation and was older with money by then), then I was "won" back in with the idea of Game Pass, the 2018 acquisitions, the promise of Halo Infinite and such, leading to the Xbox Series X and me fighting with MS's severely hampered store to be able to preorder one immediately... So I 100% have the authority to say:

Fuck Microsoft, Fuck Xbox, Fuck the entire Xbox leadership. You're a cancer on gaming at this point and keep your dirty fucking hands off anything else. I'm never bothering with your shit ever again. I should have left and never came back after Scalebound briefly put me on PS4.

I hate what Sony is these days too, I'm happy I have my Nintendo background and have been in Steam's ecosystem for a long time (but never particularly maining it till now), because these are the two platforms I trust going forward.
 
Fercho said:
Fucking terrible situation. I´m gutted by Tango , Hi-Fi Rush is my thing and i own it twice. MS Sucks.

I believe the very few "positives" in the situation is the that the GamePass fad is now over (or should be over) and Phil Spencer has his days numbered. Satya Nadella also needs to fucking go man.
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They all need to go. Matt Booty, Phil Spencer, Satya Nadella, and anyone else involved with upper management. I'm surprised it didn't happen months ago. All these acquisitions and promises and yet there's still no games. Halo can't decide what it wants to be, Starfield flopped, Forza Motorsport did even worse, Gears is MIA, Fable, Perfect Dark, Everwild, Contraband are in Neverland. Forza Horizon and Flight Sim are the only franchises actually staying active and thriving. What the hell are they doing?
 
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
 
HockeyBird said:
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
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Hmm, I wonder if instead of getting rid of Phil then, Microsoft might one day just divest the XBOX division and wipe their hands of the whole thing.
 
EvilChameleon said:
Well that would likely cause even more studios to close and more people to become unemployed. I'd much rather they return to the competence table and cut the horseshit.
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That's true. It's just obvious Xbox hardware is in a death spiral and their future is as a publisher aka Activision in a new shell.
 
HockeyBird said:
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
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Can't really blame him, Xbox has been a black hole for years now. Sucks that sticking with Phil, despite being a terrible CEO, might be the only thing keeping some of these studios alive at all.

What a disaster of a platform this has turned into.
 
HockeyBird said:
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
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If that's the case, if Xbox is unfixable under Phil, then it's dead. It's just a matter of when.
 
CannonBallBob said:
I wish they learned how to internally develop games before buying studios, and then proceeding to layoff a ton of employees from these acquired studios. The Microsoft model of game development is so broken.
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It has been a broken model since they entered the console market back in early 2000’s.

They were lucky with the success of the 360 otherwise nada
 
EvilChameleon said:
Hmm, I wonder if instead of getting rid of Phil then, Microsoft might one day just divest the XBOX division and wipe their hands of the whole thing.
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Some activist shareholders could probably start calling for it to be spun off as its own thing to not saddle the company stock with the debt service and future losses. Then you would probably see it sell off anything that isn’t a recurrent revenue stream (so basically anything not Minecraft, ABK).
 
Suswave said:
wait holy fuck Hellblade II is finally this month?

oh god

they haven't said shit about it

that does NOT bode well for the studio
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I have legit heard far more marketing about a Paper Mario remake than Hellbalde 2, that says it all
 
What a major disappointment. I feel bad for those studios affected, especially the teams working on projects other than a Call of Duty, Fallout, or other well established IP.

Makes me curious if Microsoft is starting to value the brand name pull of their recently acquired major IP more than "Xbox" itself, considering their new initiatives and recent actions.
 
reminder that in 2019 Matt Booty believed they could simply spend Sony out of buisness

GNGR5DcWUAAnMjJ


This is the result of that
 
The way these news come hard and fast, I am inclined to believe that Microsoft Xbox is likely not going to last longer, but at the same time, they're under a big corporation, and those have a higher chance of survival. In other words, while it's very, very unfortunate that this happened, I can see Xbox still coasting along regardless of it, even when they aren't as popular as they once were.

Thank you for reading.
 
Lugia667 said:
reminder that in 2019 Matt Booty believed they could simply spend Sony out of buisness

GNGR5DcWUAAnMjJ


This is the result of that
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Lol. Lmao even.

Imagine thinking Sony and Nintendo can be bullied out of business. Especially when they've both outsold your consoles 2-1 or more each over the last eight years.
 
I think they’ll just end up running ABK studios as a third party publisher, but who knows how that works with Gamepass/XBL. I can’t imagine MS wants to keep writing off cash for Xbox forever.
 
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HockeyBird said:
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
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There is my question about this: If it is nessesary to be profitable again, why not negotiate with other publishers and sell some of the studios or licences? For example, you know that Nintendofans to this day love Rareware. Or Tango Gameworks, as Nintendo is japanese and they maintain a good relationship with Mikami and Platinum Games. I´d rather try to save the jobs and sell the studios to a new partner, while getting some of my investments back.
 
HockeyBird said:
Imran on Era thinks that without Phil Spencer, Nadella doesn't want anything to do with Xbox. If Phil goes, Xbox goes. He doesn't want to remove him and then have a new executive come in to figure it out. So Phil has to make the Xbox division more profitable no matter what.
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Well if true, that shatters any remaining vestige of confidence I had in Xbox. That kind of existential threat feels like it's going to drive a lot of 'tough' (read: bad) decisions that will tank the brand even if they manage to make a little more profit short-term.
 
I see a lot of people talking about incompetence, and I think it’s a little naive. 'Phil and Matt', who we must please stop calling like that because these assholes are not our friends, are only applying what Microsoft is forever, everywhere and all the time.

When you spend so much on acquisition, it’s always both to save money and to extract added value. Which always involves social breakage. It’s not a surprise, it’s not incompetence, it’s Microsoft being Microsoft from the beginning.

The same way as before that dear Phil who is so cool and so laid back and so kind when he jerks off on growth in podcasts, his predecessor was not an incompetent and the idea of a diabolical ecosystem full of DRM and forcing you to stay connected to the Internet is not a bad initiative on his part but Microsoft’s initial goal when they decide to come to the video game market to dump their shit on it.
 
Mr Swine said:
It has been a broken model since they entered the console market back in early 2000’s.

They were lucky with the success of the 360 otherwise nada
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In all fairness, this isn't too dissimilar to Sony's model, where they also brought in external studios - in fact, most of the teams under the "PlayStation Studios" umbrella used to be independent with the exception of Polyphony Digital, Team Asobi, San Diego Studio, Santa Monica Studio and San Mateo Studio - and would acquire them later. The difference being that Sony seems to have had an idea of what to do with these teams or let them develop their own ideas, letting them grow and giving them guidance - something MS never really seems to have done.

Where I see Xbox's fatal flaw is that its identity is just... not there beyond the vague concept of "being in the video game console business because others are", a strategy Microsoft has repeated at times and, for the most part, failed.
 
Kool Savis said:
There is my question about this: If it is nessesary to be profitable again, why not negotiate with other publishers and sell some of the studios or licences? For example, you know that Nintendofans to this day love Rareware. Or Tango Gameworks, as Nintendo is japanese and they maintain a good relationship with Mikami and Platinum Games. I´d rather try to save the jobs and sell the studios to a new partner, while getting some of my investments back.
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Would Nintendo even want to buy a studio? I think collaborations seem more likely as that is the direction Nintendo usually takes. (and better for everyone in the long run I believe)
 
Yavga said:
Would Nintendo even want to buy a studio? I think collaborations seem more likely as that is the direction Nintendo usually takes. (and better for everyone in the long run I believe)
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Maybe you are right, but from my viewpoint it seems they dindn't even consider to sell them. Its not only about Nintendo, there are many other posibilities. Let's hope these devs will get eventually new jobs, maybe at Nintendos teams.
 
If you're going to buy up a bunch of studios only to have them develop one game and then shutter them, wouldn't it be in literally everyone's best interests to just co-publish/buy exclusivity for a single game instead?
But then that would require Microsoft to think ahead at all, so of course it's not what happened.
 
Kool Savis said:
There is my question about this: If it is nessesary to be profitable again, why not negotiate with other publishers and sell some of the studios or licences? For example, you know that Nintendofans to this day love Rareware. Or Tango Gameworks, as Nintendo is japanese and they maintain a good relationship with Mikami and Platinum Games. I´d rather try to save the jobs and sell the studios to a new partner, while getting some of my investments back.
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Nintendo won't be willing to buy Rare just because Microsoft has a fire sale. And the modern Rare isn't anything like the studio from 25 years ago.
 
Reasons why companies by other companies

-The IPs
-The tech
-The business/clients
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-The people that make all of that stuff possible

Microsoft bought Zenimax for the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom IPs. Tango was just part of the package they had to purchase.

Microsoft isn't going to sell off these studios now because who wants to buy a game studio these days? Publishers are busy laying people off. They're not going to want to buy another studio with more upkeep costs.
 
Its not about Nintendo to buy Microsofts studios. Its a hypothetical scenario, where Microsoft desided to sell, instead of shutting down the whole studio, to whoever want them. Just playing devils advocate. That way, Microsoft could get some money back, after overspending all these years. Similar to what Embracer did with Saber and Gearbox.
 
Kool Savis said:
There is my question about this: If it is nessesary to be profitable again, why not negotiate with other publishers and sell some of the studios or licences? For example, you know that Nintendofans to this day love Rareware. Or Tango Gameworks, as Nintendo is japanese and they maintain a good relationship with Mikami and Platinum Games. I´d rather try to save the jobs and sell the studios to a new partner, while getting some of my investments back.
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Because the one thing that no [big company] wants to answer to shareholders is why, when they sold the rights from [stagnant property] to [new studio] and it became a smash hit, why they're missing out on the license kickbacks.

It's more valuable to sit on profitable IP and do nothing with it than sell it, no matter how strapped for cash you are. There's a reason we only see big IP transfers if a studio goes out of business entirely (that's for example how THQ was able to acquire a bunch of their old properties; a bunch of IP holding companies went bankrupt and they got the rights back on a dime.)
 
If Nintendo refused to acquire Rare at a time when losing Rare would take away like half of their exclusives, they're certainly not going to do it now when they don't have any particular reason to acquire Rare.

It would, however, be extremely funny.
 
Kool Savis said:
Its not about Nintendo to buy Microsofts studios. Its a hypothetical scenario, where Microsoft desided to sell, instead of shutting down the whole studio, to whoever want them. Just playing devils advocate. That way, Microsoft could get some money back, after overspending all these years. Similar to what Embracer did with Saber and Gearbox.
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Even if Microsoft were to sell any of their studios off, they would still keep the IP. They could sell Rare, but Microsoft would not give up Banjo Kazooie or Killer Instinct. Not unless Microsoft was in true financial distress.
 
Rare isn't going anywhere. Them and Playground Games are probably the safest studios at Microsoft right now (along with the COD devs).

 
www.ign.com

Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN

Has the rapid growth of Xbox made the ship too heavy? Following the closures of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse, we explore what the future of Xbox could look like.
www.ign.com www.ign.com

Kind of more of an opinion piece but it does include some quotes from people within Microsoft. They basically think Satya is mandating all of this and he doesn't want Xbox to drag Microsoft's stock down. Nothing we really didn't suspect already.
 
HockeyBird said:
www.ign.com

Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN

Has the rapid growth of Xbox made the ship too heavy? Following the closures of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse, we explore what the future of Xbox could look like.
www.ign.com www.ign.com

Kind of more of an opinion piece but it does include some quotes from people within Microsoft. They basically think Satya is mandating all of this and he doesn't want Xbox to drag Microsoft's stock down. Nothing we really didn't suspect already.
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I do kind of wonder what people like Peter Moore and J Allard, who were part of Xbox's most successful era, think of this mess.
 


Watching Sarah Bond give a meandering non-answer was painful to watch. Baffling that she didn't seem prepared to answer such a question at all.
 
Microsoft can supposedly delay a Nintendo Direct but can't delay an interview with Bloomberg so they're prepared to give better answers.
 
Paxie said:
Really cool how Spencer and Booty are MIA and letting a black woman be the face of their dogshit decisions, definitely does not imply poor things about their characters at all
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Booty was busy talking to devs yesterday and pissing them off. Phil has been conspicuously absent, though.
 
Ricimer said:
It's just obvious Xbox hardware is in a death spiral and their future is as a publisher aka Activision in a new shell.
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Makes me wonder how much of that one leaked email talking about Nintendo was subconscious projection lmao
 
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will I get banned on this website for wanting an executive to lose their job after horrid mismangement of their employee base
 
Lugia667 said:


I....don't see how Jason thinks this is any better. Approve something if you want them to stop pitching
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Honestly I believe the report. I imagine the higher-ups at Microsoft told the gaming division to reduce costs. Thus they used this method that in their heads sounded good at that time.
Executives do not really have the required info (often they do not even care that they do not have it) to make the best decision possible the majority of the time and they do not know what they are doing some of the time/they just follow orders.
Besides Xbox, I blame the general and absurd consolidation that is gonna left both Blizzard and Bethesda worse in the long run. Think about it: people cheering for these acquisitions were doing so a) allow to keep the studios to continue be creative (which is not happening, at least for some of them) and b) save the studios from being closed, which is occurring anyway. On top of that, the c) exclusivity and game pass factor is still TBD and I doubt game pass would continue this way for much longer.
Sadly, Ninja Theory is a given to me as well as the Initiative.
 
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