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It's been a torturous week for Microsoft, but we aren't quite at the weekend yet. New reporting suggests that longtime employees and even some of the brand's founders agree that things have shifted so dramatically at Xbox since the bad old days that, effectively: "It's no longer Xbox, but Microsoft Gaming."
That's according to a report from IGN's Ryan McCaffrey, who penned a piece on Microsoft's recent mishaps. McCaffrey spoke to two former longtime Xbox employees on the condition of anonymity, who separately lamented the current state of the business. Before news of this week's closures broke, the first alleged that: "I had lengthy conversations with a bunch of Xbox founders, and we all came to the same conclusion: 'It's no longer Xbox, but Microsoft Gaming.'"
The second described a situation not unlike an anaconda attempting to ingest an elephant, alleging that Xbox got too big and fast: "There is just too much surface area. You have, effectively, three huge companies at play and Microsoft never really finished [the] integration with Bethesda. [And] Activision is like three times the size Xbox was. [The] 360 launched with a few hundred people. Last I heard, Xbox now has almost 30,000 people."
The second Xbox veteran points to meddling coming from higher up the Microsoft corporate food chain, explaining why decisions made by current executives seem so wildly inconsistent: "These decisions probably aren't being made by Phil. This is all getting dictated by [Microsoft CEO] Satya [Nadella] and [Microsoft CFO] Amy Hood, and it all stems from the Activision acquisition."
How hopeful are you that gaming will return to normal in the coming weeks? Batten down the hatches and weather the storm in the comments section below.
[source ign.com]
Comments 86
Xbox is not a confident brand anymore. It's just a clueless corporate entity where your job isn't safe and management is a joke. The fact that Microsoft has to step in and reorganize things just shows that they have no idea what they're doing anymore.
Makes me angry, because I also have a Series X and wonder how useful that box is gonna be down the line.
I think the main problem is that Microsoft have a different concept of profitability and success. They could easily have made Xbox a profitable and healthy part of the gaming space, but instead they were chasing their 3 billion players metric. That was never going to be in the traditional gaming space, so we will see a shift to mobile and GaaS. It’s been happening for years. Closing down lionheart after forcing them to scrap a single player fable and chase online success was the first thing I remember. Also remember them saying that, historically, lionheart had not been as successful as the people thought because they weren’t making first person shooters and online games, so the market was small for them.
Take note Sony, take note.
Looking back, the Xbox 360 was Microsoft's only real success. The rest of the time they were being handily beaten by Sony and Nintendo.
Kind of reminds me of Sega with the post MegaDrive/Genesis years. They never recaptured the glory days either.
Don’t be surprised if Phil “ I’m everyone’s buddy” Spencer is gone by the end of the year.
The the Xbox brand will be officially dead.
Forever.
WOW! Who woulda thunk that the moment you spent 70 billion and got the eyes of the entire world on your obscure gaming division the higher ups would actually start taking a more direct role and see that growth is non-existent and they've over-invested. How Xbox even got Microsoft to buy ABK is a enigma to me unless they thought they would get away with COD Xbox and PC exclusivity.
Xbox are so god damn dumb.
Phil Spencer is the Elon Twitter Musk of gaming.
This could be bad for us PlayStation gamers as no competition will lead to a complacent Sony. Xbox needs to get their s**t together
This is exactly why, during the Bethesda merger, I said I was afraid of MS shutting studios down.
Because MS isn't primarily a gaming company, they have constant shifts in the direction and targets of their executive. When the wind blows a different way, studios get closed.
It's been that way right from the start. Ensemble studios made great PC games, but the executive direction shifted to console and they were shuttered
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk as if playstation gamers care since they only play playstation, lol. theres so many "playstation only" gamers that are excited about xbox games coming to playstation, thats very telling in itself. i dont think people that play on all, or multiple platforms would be affected by xbox demise or a potential playstation monopoly either way. just release some games already
I just want to congratulate whoever is doing the header images for these articles lately.
@nomither6 I remember the PS3 and what big headed Sony was like. Healthy competition means everyone wins
Not a huge Xbox fan but a console market being dominated by Sony would be bad as well. SEGA needs to make a come back.
@DonkeyFantasy yup. Competition is always good, apparently.
@TheAmbienWalrus lmao, hahaha!
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk what was wrong with the ps3 exactly? also THAT big headed sony was different compared to the big headed sony now. the past big headed sony was over ambitious, the big headed sony of now is just overly complacent
A complacent Sony is bad for the industry.
@TheAmbienWalrus i would too, id buy the day 1 edition ! 😂
@nomither6 what was wrong with the PS3 🤔
Cell architecture, launched a year late and probably the worst $599
Time will tell, Xbox have done this to themselves they should never of put first party games day 1 on gamepass and should of stuck to buying developers and not publishers
Well, this is what happens when they just wanted to kill Playstation with their never-to-work plan with the Game pass. Well deserved.
P.S. - Oh, and Call of Duty might not come to Game Pass
More deflection & excuses from one of the bigger Microsoft cheerleading "reporter" in Ryan McCaffrey.
Xbox has ALWAYS been a Microsoft entity,since day one,they're literally the parent company & just why "Gamer" Phil Spencer pushed & convinced them to fork out near $88 billion to buy their way back in dominance & cut Sony out not only from potential timed exclusive deals but shut them out period from some of the biggest 3rd party IP's out there like COD.
But between the deals needed to get the sales over the line,(& legals,& associated costs,& losses of third party games going exclusive & subscription based),little surprise the upper management are suddenly asking where their investment has gone not seeing a Windows like market domination of either Xbox or Gamepass.
The silly thing is there was always going to be a price paid for buying two of the biggest third party AAA Publishers,(& their slew of IP's & studios), & releasing solely onto a subscription service day one release with optional purchase.
Its surprising they were prepared to gamble the obvious costs of so many studios short term vs hits to software sales & didn't consider Phil's sales pitch optimistic!🙄
If Bungie's purchase & cancellation of several Sony live service titles are attributed to Jim Ryan, then its laughable the currently in hiding Phil Spencer isn't responsible for Xbox Studios failings.
@Sequel But the last year during FTC hearing, it was already reported that Dishonored 3 was in development? So how did we go from development to pitching?
Aka take these rumors with a pinch of salt.
@nomither6 there’s a reason Sony is becoming big headed again and that’s because Xbox have been terrible competition since the Xbox one
@LifeGirl xbox never once had success. They have never turned a profit on any of their consoles and when you look at the facts, even the 360 era was beaten by ps3. Xbox has always been a third place brand, a shame when they have great studios, just no clue how to operate them.
theres more news about xbox on push square than pure xbox
Well I remember a time not very long ago when many a commenter were relieved that MS was buying up all those studios, with the added security that good boy Phil and his team brought with them.
FYI Phil has been CEO of Microsoft Gaming, not Xbox, since Jan 2022 this is nothing new, y'all just catching up.
@BeerIsAwesome Exactly. Post Bethesda and with the announcement of the ABK deal everything changed and they are less autonomous than they used to be.
"This is all getting dictated by [Microsoft CEO] Satya [Nadella] and [Microsoft CFO] Amy Hood, and it all stems from the Activision acquisition."
Well Phil asked Papa Nadella for a $70 billion cheque to buy a new toy, once that happened the future of Xbox went into the accounts departments pocket.
To put into context, the US government only recently decided to give Ukraine $60 billion dollars to help with the war with Russia.
So it's not small potatoes and leaves a huge mark on the ledger (especially after the $7.5 billion for Bethesda) so Xbox was always going to be controlled from the top afterwards, for better or for worse. Hence why we're seeing all the MS exclusives coming to Playstation.
(In case you missed it, we're talking about BILLIONS of Dollars).
Xbox is no longer about creativity, it's solely about balancing the books, and that is why their games have no soul anymore.
@trev666 purexbox don’t like to post anything negative about their favourite plastic box
I've been an xbox guy since the original came out. This generation I'm lucky enough to have a PS5 and Switch also. But in future I'll be skipping Xbox. There's pretty much no need anymore for their console. There's only 2 games I'd miss on it's platform if I left it behind but it's not worth buying a new console for just 2 games.
Can definitely see Xbox going Software only in the next few years.
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk
When you say "big-headed" what exactly are you referring to? Just curious about which actions, behaviors, or decisions are you talking about. Japanese culture is generally very humble and so are their business executives who constantly bow down and act reserved in public.
@MrGilly69 What success the 360 had was always overstated. At the time I was reliably informed that if your 360 died from a RROD and you sent it in to be fixed, MS counted that as a new console shipped.
It's not Microsoft 'stepping in to reorganise things', @Balie3000. It's Microsoft overriding those in charge at Xbox and demanding an instant return on their $68 billion ABK investment. Microsoft do not have the best intentions for Xbox and its gamers, they are just seeking a fast profit, and if that harms Xbox, or flies in the face of what those in charge at Xbox think is best, so be it. Don't be fooled into thinking that Microsoft have taken the reigns because Xbox has been mismanaged, this is all about wanting a fast return on their buck. If Phil Spencer had been given the time to absorb ABK, then Xbox would have been fine. However, as it is, the lurching from bad decision to even worse one, is all being dictated from above. Phil Spencer is no longer in control of Xbox. He is just the face of it. There to impart the bad news and to absorb the flack.
Go take a look at Pure, @Artois2. You could not be further from the truth. Indeed, if you review the comments on these negative articles, you will see many complaining about the sheer number of negative articles...
@Balie3000 Yup correct just like Steve Jobs said.....
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products,”
They're a company that borrows/extracts and seeks ideas from others by either stealing the source and then they happily go to court every time over it or they just buy the competition, absorb the market to stay on top making them the dominant leader whilst making their investors happy but deep down they're just a company that sustains growth via software and mainly subscriptions now leading those at the top to not have to think of new critical industrial game changing ideas like Nintendo, Apple or even IBM so that leads it all back to square one to what I stated, Steve Jobs said and what you stated, they are a clueless corporate entity.
I'm not surprised. That sort of spending raises eye brows and the top honchos will want to steal the credit.
@OneWingedAngel I refer it as seeing themselves as a monopoly so they can do what they want and charge what they want seeing as they have the overwhelming market share. Good competition like the 360 was to the PS3 resulted in us getting arguably Sonys best console in the PS4. Their near total silence just says to me they don’t have to do anything special to keep us as gamers and it worries me that’s what they’ll do
I’ve been saying this for a couple years now. Phil Spencer is destroying the XBOX brand! Seems I was absolutely correct in my assessment.
Something I've noticed recently just from checking this site is that these Xbox posts by far have way more engagement from the PS players than literally any other form of article.
Even as a PS player...i honestly do question the intention of a lot of you flocking straight to this and not reading anything about new games, smaller studios, other things...
But Xbox? Let me get in on that. Like... Huh..
X box is a clown show now.all that money and you shut down some publishers.especially tango.😀.a lot of people are moving away from x box.word up son
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk Sony going full hubris would actually push me to deal with the hassle of PC gaming.
What's a shame is that Microsoft owns a lot of technology, like GitHub, ChatGPT, Teams, etc .. They could revolutionize the gaming industry if the people behind the tech stack could work together under a good management. I guess right now it's just a caricature of a huge corporation who is just trying to get track on who is doing what with the cash flow.
@breakneck nah , cod was never going to be exclusive to xbox , and pc. it makes way to much money on playstation , i think that was a big part of the deal , that they were going to get that part of the pie too.
They put all their eggs in big Phil's basket, but now it's time to make some CoD omelettes 🤢🤮
In the end you always reap what you sow.
I mean no offense to Xbox fans (play wherever it makes you happy!) but can we do some black magic and swap Xbox with SEGA back again? 🥲 They are working on reviving so many dormant IPs and I would buy a console just for Sega/Atlus stuff, let alone third party support.
When all else starts to fail, rebrand.
@nomither6 Launching a year late at a price point at least $100 more than the 360 would be a good place to start.
Whoever I spent a few days arguing with that MS was buying Activision Blizzard, not Xbox and Phil Spencer, I hope you're reading this article. 👍
I feel like we've been reading, writing and discussing the demise of the Xbox brand since that time 11 years ago when they announced no rentals and always online for X1 but here they still are. 🤷♂️
https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/22/4354796/xbox-one-always-online-requirement-used-games-confusion
I get it that the people who thought they had autonomy at Xbox are mad they finally realized they work for MS, but it's up to MS whether the Xbox brand goes away or not, it's not up the employees who just had reality dawn on them. So is Xbox going away after MS just spent all those $Billions? I doubt it, but MS's gaming division is too big now, and too focused on PC, cloud gaming and going 3rd party, to think Xbox can just do what it wants.
Xbox has no soul. IGN should know that by now. In any case, on the Sacred Symbols podcast, they mentioned ABK being a poison pill. Before that acquisition, shareholders gave zero craps about Xbox, but after that massive amount of investment in Xbox, they want a return on that investment. Phil may have gotten his victory, but now Xbox is under the microscope. The thing he thought might save Xbox as we know it certainly seems to be hastening its demise instead.
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk
I see. I think the change in leadership to Jim Ryan disrupted Sony's game development pipeline. Ryan wanted his own liveservice money printing machine like Fortnite so he bought Bungie and put Naughty Dog on development of a live service Factions game for years. He also acquired and ordered several other studios to develop live-service games. However, most of Sony's first-party studios are single-player game developers and have little experience with live-service monetization, multiplayer balancing, or networking. They wasted years without producing anything until finally Jim Ryan's departure. Factions and several other live-service projects were canceled. Naughty Dog was freed and they immediately went back to developing their traditional single-player games. I believe that is why Naughty Dog hasn't been able to release anything this gen yet. I think they will be back on track soon now that Jim Ryan is gone.
@Fiendish-Beaver It's not just to do with the ABK acquisition. There have been a few big fails before that - Halo Infinite not launching alongside the Series X (as was planned), Gamepass losing steam and actually not being a profitable business model, Phil Spencer saying great games won't shift console sales, Xbox just leaving studios to mismanage themselves and either release trash games or just sit on an IP for ages (Gears of War)... just to name a few. I'm not saying Sony is perfect but Xbox has really stumbled a lot more.
@tangyzesty it was well worth the price, and there were 2 different prices for it depending on the model. it was better than the high failure rate , early model POS xbox360 . The PS5 isn’t worth $500 and yet nobody has a problem with that; i’ll never understand how people say the PS3 was bad because of the price as if they weren’t getting what they were paying for instead of being ripped off. Sony made a console ahead of its time and people weren’t ready for it
not to mention it gave playstation some of its best exclusives - TLOU, Uncharted, Infamous, LBP, etc
xbox will just implode soon.
Remember last year when we thought Microsoft acquiring Activision was going to destroy the video game market...turns out we were right...lol...
Why is it have to be MS Gaming when they have PC?
@Balie3000 I think they’ll still have a console , their console will mostly focus on game pass , and they’ll sell their games also on PlayStation.
Wow, so buying them all out was a giant mistake and they don't know what to do. Wow. Sell both of those companies and go back to normal, that'll fix your problem.
I said this would happen during the ABK saga. It's why Xbox games are now going multiplatform. Phil Spencer created this mess by convincing MS to spend over $80 billion on acquisitions.
Here's hoping Indiana Jones game will now come to Playstation,..
@twitchtvpat Their console will be pointless to own if they give away all their exclusives. Playstation isn't doing that, so the future PS console will have more games than an Xbox.
It was abundantly clear that despite the desire to have Infinite as a launch title was not something that could be achieved, @Balie3000, as was evidenced by the quality of the multiplayer aspect of the game when it did actually release. Again, the game should have been delayed by a year to give it more content. However, we simply don't know whether Spencer wanted to release it when it did, or whether he was told to from on high.
Game Pass has lost steam, but I think that has as much to do with the market share that Xbox holds (as compared to the PlayStation) and the reluctance that we now see for developers to support the service. That is why we see so few decent third-party games hitting the service now as compared to previous years. You could argue that other than throwing (and wasting) a boatload of cash at developers, there is little that Xbox can do about this situation. As for profitability, it has been stated on a number of occasions that Game Pass is profitable.
Spencer did not say that great games won't shift consoles, what he said was that Starfield could score an 11 and still it would not alter the market position that Xbox holds, and he is right. Not just about Starfield, but any game. The position that Xbox holds is now entrenched, and nothing will change it. PlayStation is [i]the[i/] console to have, and there is now nothing that Xbox can do to alter that situation. Xbox is currently in a long, slow, downward spiral to oblivion, and no game will change that.
I'm not so sure that The Coalition 'sat' on the Gears of War IP. First off they had two games in development, one of which has now been cancelled. Secondly, they have apparently also been busy with the much, and long rumoured Marcus Fenix Trilogy remaster, and also developing Gears 6, which is being built on a new Unreal Engine, which in itself apparently takes much longer to create games on.
As a huge Gears of War fan, I do find the wait very frustrating, and agree that it has taken way too long to get the next game out. My guess is that we will see it this June, and that it will be out in Fall 2025. Much too long between instalments, but Xbox simply has to get the game right on release. It cannot be a buggy mess that is met with a great deal of criticism, so I suppose that is why it is taking even longer. Gears 5 was supported for about 3 years following its release, so in terms of ending support on one, and moving on to the next, the timeline makes sense. Whether The Coalition should have started development of Gears 6 earlier, is another question, but it was probably a case of one team working on support for Gears 5, and another developing a new (now canned) IP. That is likely where the delay is to be found...
Was Phil Spencer not appointed the as the CEO of Microsoft Gaming? Seems weird for the source to suggest he's not responsible for any of the recent decisions.
@LifeGirl I think the 360's success was extremely lucky too. Remember the red ring of death. That console had a 70% failure rate for a few years, it would've been the death knell of any other product imo. That's how desirable the 360 was to people, how good those games were, and they fumbled that so hard.
@nomither6 It's interesting. Did the PS3 really launch a year late, or was the 360 a year too early? The hardware was clearly rushed, not ready for end of 2005. Early units did not even have an HDMI port, HD gaming was limited to component at 720p or 1080i, no 1080p. Speaking of which... the Xbox 360 was cheaper to buy, but was missing key features you had to buy separately - wifi, rechargeable controllers, sometimes even a hard drive. PS3 had that stuff by default, plus Blu-Ray support and also included full PS2 hardware compatibility (360 had very spotty emulation of OG Xbox games) which added a lot to the cost so it's understandable that was the first thing cut.
Microsoft is going the way of SEGA but it's not like anyone has to feel pity for Microsoft. Still a beast of a company with so much going on that the (almost assuredly) demise of their current console isn't surprising. If they can pull off a comeback, that will be more surprising.
@Fuzzymonkeyfunk agreed!
@Sifi fyi sony in 2024 already published two of the most successful games this year(helldivers 2, stellar blade) and also has an exclusive of a goty contender, like ffvii rebirth. Also published MLB going good as always. Rise of the ronin, having a decent reception. Sony is having a fine year until now.
What Microsoft has?
Makes me sad thinking how poorly and badly mismanaged Xbox has been for so long.
Imagine if they put out quality titles the same level as Sony and Nintendo this and last gen....it would have been incredible!
Sadly though it's been downhill once the last half of the 360 gen and they never seemed to figure out WHY great games matter for your brand nor how to make them.
Any chance Phil was simply a mole sent by Sony to sabotage Xbox from within?
MS made their bed. Now they have to sleep in it.
I feel the only way to save Xbox is gamepass has to die and they don't kill it then both will die. It's the only way Xbox can even hope to live on.
What is the point of Xbox?
https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox
@thefourfoldroot1 they are taking notes. They're going to follow the same model profitability
Removed - trolling/baiting
Ign gives every game a 100 on metacritic, no game is 100 therefore their word means less than that of someone who uses mr White's crystal blue persuasion
@nomither6 I think having only Nintendo and Sony will be very bad for Sony. If the next Switch is around the power of the PS4, it's going to put the diminishing returns of graphical fidelity in really harsh light.
Personally, I miss PS1 and PS2 era Sony a lot. I miss them getting weird.
They bought all these studios with great IPs and it looks like nothing is being done with them. BGS and Nintendo will throw out announcements that a fan-favorite IP is being worked on years before the game releases. While I do like a short turn around from reveals, XBOX needs a better reputation and a more distinct brand. If they picked up all of these studios and showed us some teasers for new Quake, Crash, Spyro, Fallout, etc etc etc, they'd be talking about why every single one of us absolutely need their console. Instead we are all expecting a similar move to when SEGA went third-party...
@Orpheus79V im a little late with this but, yeah i agree. its a shame they had to cut the PS2 backwards compatibility out, but either way imo the PS3 is still the best playstation ever made. nothing beats a console having 3 generations in one plus some retro titles from the online store expanding even more generations, and blu-ray games in 2006 ?? and no need for 2 discs to play one game unlike the xbox360; the ps3 was a misunderstood beast, unlike the lazy ps5 thats similar in price to it but gets a pass for some reason when it does nothing for its time.
@LikelySatan in my opinion its already bad for sony, where 4 years into the ps5 generation already and its super underwhelming. with that said, nintendo will never give playstation a run for its money, they have their niche but thats about it. sony is the go-to platform for games, no one only owns a nintendo, otherwise they'd be missing out on the majority of the generation and what it has to offer.
@nomither6 I only had a Switch from 2018 until I got the PS5 near launch, to replace my kids' PS4. Unless we count handhelds, I was happy with just the Switch. I play PS4 games on my PS5. This current gen hasn't done much for me.
I think that if MS goes third-party, Sony will shoot themselves in the foot through hubris. Everything you've said makes sense though. I just think there's about to be a huge paradigm shift, and am positing one possible outcome.
@Nailz he started at MS as an intern in 1988.
So, no
@Chidoro Sony playing the long game
It seems obvious that Xbox as a hardware console is going to disappear, and the focus will be Microsoft Gaming as a publisher. Which is what Microsoft was doing in the 90ies by the way.
Microsoft became its own enemy after the success of Xbox original and it was in its own right. They immediately started off early with the 360 and it was it's best era ever pushing the RRoD aside it was very successful. But unfortunately the ones who started it all from OX to the 360 then moved on and it was taken over by corporate lackies aka Don Mattrick and co.
Their was rumours that he hated the Xbox brand of what it was and wanted a box that could be the streaming box in the household and a gaming system last. How wrong he was listening to the higher ups and with his team feeding them crap to push for that and the Xbox One was born.
A console that wasn't even upto scratch pushing games to the next level, a system that didn't even know what it was itself. So much so that Phil then took over and decided to clearly restart it all over with XSX a system the X1 should have been.
But the damage was done and they did it all themselves, poor game releases, hardly no games at all coming from the many Devs it owned before the A/B takeover.
Hardly doing anything with Bethesda to make exclusive games when it should have pushed for it, and now with the A/B takeover they shot themselves in the foot and as one of the people in the article says became far too big
I have said and will continue to say unless the prove me wrong, Microsoft will become what they started as a software company and will become the biggest publisher in the industry. They will pull out of the hardware business with one more cycle left and just release games all every platform they can. The hardware will be built by others and they will just make the software only
@Sifi you wanna trust what they have to say, it's on you.
More Xbox news on a Sony website
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