Thread 714614071

What the fuck kind of operation are they running at MS?

Phil Spencers entire persona is a giant grift, its literally le hecking wholesome big chungus game ceo but in reality he doesn't care, has no real power, or both

I guarantee you they "ripped" the controller from his hands because he was reaching the limit of the fake demo they cobbled together for him to play and they couldn't have him realize that it was all smoke and mirrors.

line go up

>>714614071 (OP)
All lies

>>714614191
Sara seems no better

>>714614071 (OP)
It’s obvious Phil isn’t calling the shots.

Microsoft kills everything they touch. I'm more surprised they were able to last even this long in vidya.
I guess now they are probably thinking they can produce AI slop and hire 3rd worlders for 1/3th of the salary, and concentrate on Call of Duty and Candy Crush instead...
It's still funny because they were already heavily outsourcing anyway.

>our studios are trash what do we do
>let's buy 20 studios and give them as much freedom as they need
>announce 20 games and everybody is hyped
>5 years later
>those 20 studios have spent those 5 years doing jack shit
>microsoft breathing down phils neck
>quick lay off all the idiots and hope it's good enough

Xbox doesn't realize that there is no sure fire formula that produces great games. They thought that if they give their devs blank cheques they would use that time to make amazing games but instead they were just bumbling around day dreaming, cooking up design documents and prototypes that never went anywhere.

>>714614942
What did the devs do for 5 years? Like did they just fuck off?

>>714614604
A lot can change in 5 months. I bet they have been missing milestones for a long time and been giving a lot of second chances. Sucks about all the money and time that was flushed down the drain but better cut the losses now than in another 5 years.

>>714614071 (OP)
If you genuinely believe zenimax online can produce anything of value after playing eso, in the nicest terms, I would call you a super unrealistic optimist.

>>714614071 (OP)
Sounds like the team fell for fake corporate praise.
Blackbird was killed simply because the team unionized and was using a proprietary engine. MS wants all their games on UE5 so AI and their Indian transplants can code for them in the future. They don't want to get into a situation where they're in a labor dispute with the only people who can maintain their always online game.

>>714614071 (OP)
>cashing most console gaming chips on the gamble that a) more people buy xboxes and b) literally all xbox owners regularly cough up for game pass
>trying to monopolize gaming by snatching up as many 3rd parties as possible, while at the same time almost becoming one themselves?
>windows 11
idk, but I bailed on microsoft a long ass time ago, and at this point scratches my "watch the world burn" itch, as a series of "what if" scenarios gone wrong. But modern gaming has pretty much jaded me out of the whole ecosystem as it is, so I honestly have no preference in who "wins or loses", because I believe consumers lost years ago, and corpo shareholders will continue to be the only "winners"

>>714615114
>ship a game that sells poorly, studio gets shut down or there's layoffs
>ship a game that sells well, studio stays in business
So as long as the studio was confident in their game, everything was good and games were being shipped. But then
>every first party game is on Game Pass
>because of this it is literally impossible for games to sell well
>never ship anything because your game can not sell good no matter its quality
So nobody wants to ship anything unless absolutely necessary, regardless of how good the game could be.
Even more so since Tango got shut down, showing to everyone publicly that shipping quality means nothing to Xbox.
None of this is helped by the fact that Phil is lazy as fuck so he rarely checks up on the studios or enforces any sort of deadlines.

>>714615114
Game designers, and that goes for all pay grades, can't ever agree on anything and need a strong father figure that doesn't think he knows best but actually does. Without that you have designers playing trial and error, cooking up systems and content ideas for years and 90% of them get scrapped. Pic related is Mark Darrah, ex-bioware upper level producer.

>>714615446
Isn’t the game popular and has ton of longevity 4hvaj

>>714614071 (OP)
i've had plenty of bosses like this...they'll act like one of the guys and smile in your face, then say the nastiest most vicious stuff behind closed doors and snake you at the first opportunity. never trust a ceo

>>714615114
If they're allowed to then they will. They need a Kotick threatening to kill them to get anything done.

>>714614071 (OP)
Fortunately nobody actually plays Xbox anymore. Xbox dying will only affect a few thousand spics and American white trash still playing dead games with no support. Everyone is on PC or PlayStation. With SF6 added to switch there's more switch players than deadbox players overnight. Xbox threads shouldn't be allowed on /v/

SAVE ME KOJIMA (watch OD be the one Xbox game that people will rave about)

>>714615841
Bobby should have came in as a consultant or some shit after ms bought Activision

>>714616010
At the very least they should have kept him around as a looming threat to be unleashed upon any studio fucking around.

>>714615945
Kojima owns OD, he's currently shopping it to a new publisher. MS canceled all involvement with publishing third party games except Ninja Gaiden since it comes out in 3 months.
John Romero's game and a couple others outright canceled their games

>>714615791
The ex-founder and CEO of the company I work for acts all nice and genial but is clearly faking it. He gives that strange air of insincerity like all MBAs

He also makes jokes about eating my dog which I don't really appreciate. The only funny thing about it is he's Asian and I can't tell if he's playing into it or unaware of the stereotype

>>714615627
>ship a game that sells well, studio stays in business
this didn't even work for the hi-fi rush guys
that game sold extremely well considering all none of the marketing it had before launch day and within a few months of release the studio was dead

>>714616164
Was Bobby unironically based?

>>714614191
He absolutely has power, he's blown hundreds of billions of Microsoft's dollars on tanking Xbox

>>714615627
>Even more so since Tango got shut down, showing to everyone publicly that shipping quality means nothing to Xbox.
Dude, come on. Evil Within was supposed to be Resident Evil 1 with 4s combat but instead we got Silent Hill with bad action/stealth combat. But it kinda sold so they got to make a sequel that completely bombed(both in terms of quality and popularity). And as a last chance they got to make their ghost game that bombed so hard it made EW2 look good by comparison.

>every first party game is on Game Pass
GP, at first, was just something to tide them over until the Xbox Series' gen really kicked off but that never happened. So they started buying every semi-successful studio they could find, gave them a blank cheque but 5 years later those studios produced jack and shit. They gave them more second chances than the average beaten wife her addict cheater husband. But one day even Phils bosses weren't happy anymore so he started trimming the fat. And this is where we are now.

>>714616229
All news site say the opposite

>>714616575
Yes that ghost wire game sucked dick

>>714615114
>did they just fuck off?
No. All three posts talking to you are completely irrelevant in their responses to what goes on at Microsoft.

Microsoft boots you out after a year and a half. You aren't allowed to come back for six months. You are only ever considered a contractor. This is to keep you from ever accruing seniority and any relevant benefits. Part of your acquisition agreement must mandate that Microsoft can't do this to you if you don't want it to happen in your company, similarly to how anything owned by Zenimax isn't subject to this treatment.

Microsoft's employee approach is completely antithetical to any kind of software development capabilities. There is a reason they've never been able to push out a worthwhile video game after acquiring a company whose games they valued. They've only ever been able to publish games that were outsourced or developed by an unrelated third party, ie. Cuphead.

>>714614071 (OP)
Looks like they're trying to start everything over from scratch instead of wasting time and money making risky projects. All these projects being cancelled were chasing trends that are obsolete. Hopefully, this means better games in the future. Could also just be downsizing to keep line go up for a bigger golden parachute for Phill before he leaves. I want to be a little optimistic though.

>>714614071 (OP)
Why are there so few Destiny clones anyway? You'd think in the decade since it launched there would have been more attempts to ape it than just Anthem.

>>714614604
maybe thats the problem. They just give these lazy millenials infinite money, no deadline and just let them do whatever. If I was there it wouldnt be like this, believe me

>>714614191
>Phil Spencers entire persona is a giant grift
Xbox itself has always been a giant grift.
It hasn't been profitable but they keep promising profits.

>>714616941
Isn't First Descendant basically a Destiny+Warframe clone?

>>714616804
>muh 18 month rule

>>714616941
Agreed

>>714614610
No, I'm sure putting a woman in charge of video games will go great!

>>714616393
remember when people were trying to push him as "Uncle Phil"?

>>714617256
what the fuck does "muh 18 month rule" mean here
how would 18 months' employment with a hard cutoff not be detrimental to game dev

I think this fucker enjoys games and gaming as a whole, but it seems that he forgot that the corpos at Microsoft need the big bucks, and doing niche games or innovative shit i just not profitable. Sports, Cod and so on are.
Satya Nadella and the corpo suits need money and fast and he is just powerless on this struggle.

Of course this doesn't free him of all the lies that he has told. The best course of action is just going full software and that's it. It's even on the name of the fucking company.

>>714614942
>>714614071 (OP)
At least what Microsoft did is living, eternal proof that the meme'd formula of "take both well-established and new studios, both large and small, throw money at them, give them creative freedom, and watch the good games flow" was always a fever dream.

Publishers and people who actually control and limit studios are necessary.

>>714617468
Are you really trying to tell me that their studios, not xbox/ms itself, can't hire and fire individual employees independently? That would be literal self sabotage. You'd have non stop turn over and spend most of the time training new hires.

>>714614071 (OP)
>whad dhe fugg obberaschion dey runnin ad ms

shut the fuck up you troglodyte
no one cares about execs opions

>>714617742
Bobby would verbally assault you

>>714614071 (OP)
Enough with this shit. They made the right decisions here and the only issue is they likely didn't go far enough with the cancellations and layoffs.

>>714617628


>>714615642
>>714615642
>>714615642
;)

>>714615886
Nintendo is the only big gaming behemoth that has come out of this with record sales, record profit, expanding their staff and studios instead of firing and shutting them down. To pretend like PC and Sony hold all of the market share is laughable. The Switch 1 is outselling the Ps5 every week for fuck’s sake. Steam Is big no doubt, but not everyone is gaming on PC. As far as consoles and developers go, Nintendo is the only winner here asides from a handful of indie solodevs making a killing. Sony and Microsoft just have no games, it’s not even a meme. It’s just the truth.

>>714616804
I spoke to someone at 343 and she told me how they'd get contractors finally working properly with the Slipspace engine for Halo Infinite only to have them fired a month later because they're contract workers

>>714617708
>that their studios, not xbox/ms itself,
their studios aren't independent entities from microsoft unless they're a AAA acquisition like zenimax or activision-blizzard-king which do retain most or all of their independence as a stipulation of being bought out

additionally yes the obvious intention of the 18 month rule is to produce a constant worker turnover regardless of the finished product because the whole idea is to keep them from becoming seniors or management

microsoft shills AI as hard as it does for two reasons, one of which isn't really relevant to this
>they actually are chasing the "replace humans" goal and it's already paying dividends in windows 11 being an unstable hunk of shit
>being israel's digital fortune teller is extremely profitable

>>714614071 (OP)
Microsoft sees Sony committing suicide and rushes to join them.

>>714618015
>Nintendo is the only big gaming behemoth that has come out of this with record sales, record profit, expanding their staff and studios instead of firing and shutting them down.

Two reasons, Tendies are an extremely forgiving playerbase. Give them an updated version of their same 4 franchises(Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Animal Crossing) and they will buy it. Second reason is that Nintendo knows exactly what their audience wants and doesn't even attempt steering them in a different direction in any form. They tried with motion controls and it did work but dropped the idea with the switch and went back to the handheld path the wii u started.

>>714618430
>Give them an updated version of their same 4 franchises(Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Animal Crossing) and they will buy it.
Yeah no shit iterative franchises are smart and profitable. Guess what Sony hasn't done in nearly a couple of decades and what Microsoft hasn't ever done outside of Halo. That's not being forgiving of slop, that's Nintendo actually having output.

>>714616398
No but the man knows how to make games that people want to play and how to monetize them in ways that people will pay. He’s a soulless lizard who worships money, but he nonetheless knows what gamers want.

>>714614191
The reality is that he's just really, really bad at his job. He killed Xbox. He and he alone.

>>714616398
no not in the slightest he's a soulless corporate goon and everybody focuses on him "making activision profitable" while simultaneously ignoring the majority of activision's money went straight into his fat fucking ass

>>714618797
>Yeah no shit iterative franchises are smart and profitable.
But i do think the Tendies are unique in that regard. All the other fan bases will eventually develop a genre fatigue and that is why AAA companies are trying to chase trends. Which is really difficult when their games take on average 5-7 years to make. Becoming a trend setter is literally lightning in a bottle that nobody can predict or force.

Maybe he's just the public face, no real power.

>>714619526
>All the other fan bases will eventually develop a genre fatigue and that is why AAA companies are trying to chase trends.
None of them developed genre fatigue they developed Why Hasn't There Been A Good Halo Game Since 3 fatigue, or Why Does Naughty Dog Only Make Movie Shit By Neil Druckmann Now fatigue. The publishers fucked off to start demanding AAA mega-games and they don't care what anybody wants because they're larping as Hollywood execs, it wasn't a customer reaction that made them do that.

>>714618015
>Nintendo is the only big gaming behemoth that has come out of this with record sales, record profit, expanding their staff and studios instead of firing and shutting them down.
Sony ticks all of those boxes too, just change that last bit “instead…” to “and firing and shutting down the terrible games that were shaping up to be Concord 2 and the horrible developers who made them.” It’s a good thing they are cancelling bad games because they are investing elsewhere, that is markedly different from MS just axing everything to cut costs to make line go up.

>>714618015
PlayStation makes more money. Switch is hot shit in dead market Japan but a non entity in Europe. PlayStation sells more games, more DLC, more accessories, more controllers all at a higher average price point than Nintendo.

>>714614071 (OP)
>Zenimax
>Destiny Style
>MMO
Who cares?

>>714619878
somehow they make nowhere near as much operating profit as nintendo despite hundreds of millions of dollars' higher revenue

>>714619875
They aren't actually investing elsewhere, Herman Hulst is making sure they're STILL trying to find their own Fortnite to keep themselves afloat for infinity. He's just canceling Jim Ryan's own specific pets.

>>714620234
Herman is also convinced Horizon is Playstation's flagship property so we have two live service Horizon games still coming. One a western live service and the other an NCSoft MMO

>>714617114
Why? Who the fuck are you?

>>714620153
>Nintendo refusing to invest in R&D or employee salaries or anything else except their cash cows is now a good thing

>>714614071 (OP)
>Xbox executive(s) loved it so much
>controller had to ripped from one person's hands
as if the reportedly isn't enough at this point.

>>714617114
Fuck off, zoomzoom.

>>714620357
Nintendo's the one that actually had Iwata on record as slashing his salary by half to make sure Nintendo stayed fully staffed in the Wii U years thoughbeit

>>714615642
This is what happens when devs came out of videogame college or whatever the fuck, instead of actually playing videogames

>>714620536
you tell him. it used to be normal for devs to take 5-10 years to make a single game that's just copying another game, but now that's all frowned upon.

>>714619735
>Why Does Naughty Dog Only Make Movie Shit By Neil Druckmann Now fatigue
But those games still sell because, just like Bethesda and Rockstar games(quality aside), they are once in a hardware gen events that usually shake up the industry. Sure, Starfield was a disaster, but the next big game(from either company) is guaranteed to make waves. And other studios will at least attempt to chase that same trend. Uncharted, as much as i despise that type of game, was the chip Cyberdyne systems found at the end of T1. The industry couldn't replicate it but it showed them a new direction that nobody thought was possible.

>>714620546
lol Wii U can’t believe I spent money on that bullshit

>>714614610
sara is just a corporate robot wearing a skin suit
I don't have any feelings about phil one way or the other but people who think they won't get something as bad or even worse than phil when he's gone are crazy
even if they don't end up with sara at the helm they're likely to end up with someone who spews as much corporate drivel as her

>>714620784
>But those games still sell
They don't!

TLOU2 sold horribly, as did the TLOU1 remake/remaster!

>>714620862
How do people become so soulless like those people? Does the industry do it to people

>>714620928
Really?

>>714621047
More like the only people who can make it to these positions are soulless suits.

>>714621047
it's probably kinda like how some kids end up being goths or emos or jocks, some people are just drawn to corporate assholery in their youth and they just continue down that path
corporate life seems to chew up and spit out anyone who has a soul too so that doesn't help

>>714621112
Yes, really. The fucking cost of that game and its advertising, mate. Why else would it be getting a remaster within the same console generation. Between Naughty Dog's complete talent bleed and the preposterous cost of the game's development, it didn't actually do well.

>>714615114
>release game
>get laid off
why would you release your game instead of just dragging it out for 7 years before getting laid off anyways
run shit business, get shit results
its that easy

>>714622102
>Why else would it be getting a remaster within the same console generation.
Double dipping? Sony knows that those games are a ridiculous investment of both time and money so why not re-release them with some graphical upgrades, especially on PC? Sure, both can be true that they didn't make "enough" and that they just want to press some more blood out of that stone.

>>714622102
The TLoU2 turnover rate was apparently so terrible they were having trouble replacing people. I gave up trying to find an industry job because nobody would give me the time of day (yeah maybe I'm shit whatever) so hearing that is just insane to me

>>714622358
I would say that's a good point, but the people who have enough authority to drag their feet like this aren't the people who are going to get shitcanned when the project ends. If your manager fails a milestone because you, a grunt programmer/artist, were fucking around, you're going to find out

>>714622467
Yeah TLOU2 ended up bleeding so much staff and leaving so many disgruntled employees they're actually having serious trouble replacing that staff. I would be very surprised if that shaved-head spacefaring game of theirs I already forgot the name after they showed it at TGA lol sees the light of day, let alone in any complete state.

>>714622451
>why not re-release them with some graphical upgrades,
It doesn't fucking look any different

>>714622568
Interstellar: The Heretic Prophet. I can't forget the title because it looks like a game titled "Interstellar" is going to take place on a single planet which is REALLY FUNNY to me.

Still, I can't fucking wait to see Druckmann take on religion. Especially after he decided his work was done on The Last of Us season 2 and left of his own volition. Naughty Dog hasn't made anything I care about in so long that them making another shitty game isn't a loss in my eyes.

>>714614942
>>714614071 (OP)
How many times are you gonna post this?
You aren't swaying anyone
I know what you are

>>714622869
That was the title, it got completely blown away in my mind because of the hype wave over Okami 2. It's really funny that this game is probably what'll determine Naughty Dog's survival.

>>714623093
Do you really think i'm going to type up an effort post every single time /v/ recycles the same topic? Especially with the high probability that the thread dies 5 posts later? Of course not. I have a list of effort posts that i copy/paste when the topic comes up again. Here. Have another one. Just for you.

>>714614191
True, but that can be said about almost every one of these clowns that they prop up as spokesperson.

>>714623094
I'm almost more hype to see the absolute nonsense Druckmann is going to commit in Interstellar, though

He said he's going to be tackling an actual real-life religion too. I hope it's 2000s Atheism-tier

>>714614071 (OP)
They bought Bethesda and Activision thinking the profits from them would cover the costs

>>714617128
>become successful the first time they start spending real money on exclusives.
>lose all that momentum the moment they focus on the Xbone and stop pretty much all AAA development.
what a bunch of idiots

What will be the consequences of big corporations more and less involved with gaming running for the hills with their money in the last few years?

>>714614610
fucking chud, putting a black woman in charge is actually going to fix everything!!
you chud!

>>714623863
I mean I’d fuck her

>>714623360
Oh yeah no given Druckmann let it slip repeatedly he was basically a Zionist I'm really eager to see what fucking insanity he comes up with and tries to present as a damning cut on religion. I'm expecting something as equally hamfisted as Mass Effect trying to sell you on George W. Bush era politics

>>714614071 (OP)
I bet the game was extremely fun and good.
But was so full of DEI slop, terrible character design and boring lore that they realized it would never sell.

>>714622781
Different enough to re-release it. The hardcore fans are going to buy it again and those that were on the fence get another push towards a purchasing decision.

>>714624137
>Different enough
It doesn't fucking look any different

If the gameplay was so good why don't they repurpose it into something smaller instead of throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars?

>>714614071 (OP)
game devs really do need to be bossed around more
never give them lots of time and money.

>>714614071 (OP)
i have to say it's really brilliant maneuvering by the indian CEO to tie most of the layoffs to xbox so everyone blames Phil even though it's orders coming from the CEO so he can hire more of his smelly brethren and replace American workers

>>714614354
Another xbox exec pulled it away. Not a team member. Ponies and xdrones can make all the excuses they want. All the facts point to continued, sheer incompetence of the Xbox leadership.

>>714624298
It still floors me that Overwatch was a repurposed MMO

What the fuck were they making where they could do that and how much did they throw out

>>714614782
>I guess now they are probably thinking they can produce AI slop and hire 3rd worlders for 1/3th of the salary
This is the reason. There was an internal announcement made at Microsoft recently that ALL Microsoft employees are to start using AI to do their jobs even though nobody wants to because AI is useless garbage. Microsoft is firing everyone because they're expecting AI to pick up the slack while the remaining employees train the AI to get even better so they can fire more employees until Microsoft is run entirely by AI. This is what happens when you put an indian in charge of the largest company on the planet.

>>714624583
Windows is going to snap in half one day. Look forward to 100 gig operating systems that download the entire thing again every time it updates

>>714624208
>10 graphics guys working on the game for a couple months
>re-release it
Even if that only sells one million copies it's another step towards profitability.

>>714624673
More and more people are switching from Windows to literally anything else every day. Microsoft will lose its place at the top of the corporate world by the end of the decade.

>>714624953
I hope so. I need to switch off. If I wasn't so lazy I would have done so back when they changed the taskbar to search Bing instead of just your system. Supposedly you can regedit to fix it so the taskbar is blocked from doing that but for some reason it doesn't work for me.

>>714624953
>people are switching from Windows to literally anything
70% worldwide market share and rising?

>>714614071 (OP)
Microsoft doesn't give a shit about games anymore. Their OS runs on the majority of computers, their office suite is used by the majority of companies, and Azure occupies a massive chunk of the cloud computing space. Xbox was just a giant grift to shit on Sony and Nintendo and suck up their market share with their infinite monopoly money.

>>714625317
>and rising?

>>714616941
MMOs in general are very expensive to make. The GaaS trend can only be tackled by the biggest companies in the industry and they were all trying to chase other trends like BRs and extraction shooters. Warframe got lucky by having their founders program and early access long before the early access game fatigue set in, and got lucky again when their lead designer fucked off onto a new game, leaving WF in the hands of people that just want to make more WF content.

I'm confident that something like The Division + Warframe in a semi-grounded sci-fi setting would print millions.

>>714626119
I always felt like Warframe was the actual success whereas the industry just...assumed(?) Destiny was a moneyspinner beyond imagining

Actiblizz allowing Bungie to leave should have been a GIGANTIC red flag for future acquisition, not an invitation for Sony to dump 3.6 billion dollarydoos on them

>>714626119
>I'm confident that something like The Division + Warframe in a semi-grounded sci-fi setting would print millions.
It would but it's also a gigantic risk. At least 4 years to develop which is easily a $100m initial investment for a completely new team. When even a team of veterans, like Hudsons Human Head, couldn't get a game off the ground that he, in part, wrote the blueprint for and had to close down.