Yeah thats fair. Slop is more appropriate.

Gaming is in a great place. AAA gaming is not, because of-fucking-course corpos don't understand art.

"with foresight"

My brother in christ, they put an "AI" shithead in charge. They practically by definition cannot have foresight.

They really fucked up on their marketing by saying everything is an Xbox. Confusing non-gamers, annoying real gamers, and disappointing aspiring gamers.

I quit Xbox after 3 Xbox 360s got the red ring of death just after the warranty expired. I'll never go back even though I want clockwork revolution and a couple other exclusives.

COD hasn't been worth playing in ~12 years.

Come on man, don't be that guy. You're better than that.

Literal definition of Monkey's Paw:

All the Phil Spencer haters get to rejoice that he is gone. But now he is replaced by a woman who has only ever had AI related positions at Microsoft, and previously worked at Meta.

Even her letter to employees sounds AI generated.

maybe the woman is actually AI as well

Xbox is just going to be a brand/publisher I reckon.

There’ll be ‘Xbox verified’ console PCs or somesuch that aren’t necessarily made by Microsoft, and there’ll be the Xbox app for games and streaming, and Xbox published games.

And then another 5-10 years later they’ll phase that out and just be ‘Microsoft Gaming’ or somesuch branded, and the last traces of Xbox will be gone.

Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, 3DO, Atari Jaguar just to name a few. Soon will be adding Microsoft’s XBOX to the list.

This is deffo bait.

The CEO gets a bonus if he increases the stocks value. They dont care if its actually profitable, as long as they get paid before it fails.

I don't doubt Sarah was being brought up as Phils replacement, but Satya wanted an AI puppet at the helm, so Asha got inserted. Being passed over for her ascent, Sarah had no real choice than to leave.

Depends, who's asking and what AI model are you based on? Pics.

Haha, yes. But they could. They just won't.

I wonder if the incoherent Xbox names hurt them too. I'm not into Xbox, but I couldn't tell you what is the latest model, or which model follows which. This is a barrier for entry to the ecosystem.

They're gonna fuck up Forza Horizon 6 and Fable, aren't they? I was cautiosly optimistic about those two under Phil, but I'm pretty sure they're doomed now

Damn I was really banking on a "no" for the argument

Phil actually made games

He did???

Like, seriously. The guy was in charge for 10 years. He did jack shit, and none of his first party studios managed to create something worth under his leadership.

A few years after shutting down Lionhead, he and Bond talked about "learning from past mistakes" so that it wouldn't happen again. Years later, he shuts down Tango (the day before Matt Booty praised their game as something Xbox needs more of), Toys for Bob (and then, when they buy back their independence, contracts them for an Xbox game, because what is consistency?), Turn 10 (now a support studio), Arcane Austin. Rare spent half a decade working on a game that never got past its pre-production phase. He hyped Coalition as the "world's first AAAA studio", then unceremoniously shut it down with nothing to show for it despite working for 7 years and with outside help on one game.

343 was mismanaged for years and he never did anything to fix that, either. Of course that bit him in the ass when he bet everything on Halo Infinite, the only first party game to launch alongside the Series X, which was eventually delayed a year later. An entire year without first party games for their console. (Yes, Covid was bad for everyone in the industry, but their competition was able to release games in that timeframe). He then hoped for Starfield to save the day, which obviously didn't happen, and by then everyone's patience was over. 80 billion dollars down the drain for what? If I was anyone in a position of power at Microsoft, I would be pissed too.

He spent a decade pushing for GamePass and Xcloud, but never marketed it outside of niche audiences. I live in Italy and I've never, ever seen an Xbox ad in the past ten years. I can assure you none of my "normie" friends and family know what the current Xbox is called, let alone what the fuck GamePass is. The shit is so bad, my brother thought Cyberpunk 2077, a game that premiered on an Xbox E3 and that Microsoft had exclusive marketing rights for, was a PS exclusive. Could you believe that? Heck, everyone I talk to is surprised to hear that the Xbox One and Series offer retrocompatibility for OG Xbox and X360 games because, guess what, they never ran ads for that, either.

So many things went wrong with Xbox under his leadership, you could probably convince me he was working undercover for the competition to tank the brand. I honestly fail to think of one thing he did that worked. Like, I could go on for days. Heck, I'll do one more: he spent the last few years attempting to merge the Xbox, PC and mobile audiences, yet using the Xbox store on PC is still a miserable experience that makes you wish you were using any other storefront. Ten years! He couldn't find the time to fix that? Did he forget? Did he even care in the first place?

Spencer did jack shit for Xbox. The guy made promises every year, every year delivered nothing but lies, corporate bullshit and "how do you do, fellow gamers?" moments.

Phil if you somehow read this then please make a new company!!! Many will follow you from Microsoft and Xbox to whatever you decide to do. It is time for a new company similar to Valve to rise up!

If you don't want to then that makes sense. You have enough at Xbox and with Microsoft over the years

Thanks for doing your best under the slop that Microslop has dumped on Xbox over all these years. Salute!

Who replaced him?

If anything Phil deserves his own company. If he made the call I'm sure many he got to know at Xbox and Microsoft would answer the call and make a new company with him

Hoping he would especially one like Valve. But it all depends on if he would be up for that and if everyone asked him to to show he would have huge support from day one

Phil sucks. Gamepass was a failure. He should have focused on getting their studios to make actual good games.

It’s in a dark place because it is going to eventually become unaffordable to those who haven’t purchased a console or pc or handheld yet due to the ram shortage. I guess mobile gaming will become the main focus like it is in China.

Also keep in mind, all those Blizzard people are now under Microsoft.

We need a global boycott of:
WoW, Overwatch, CoD, Candy Crush, Elder Scrolls, Halo, Fable, Forza, Gears of war, etc.

"mom, I want the new Xbox for Christmas"
"Youve got a tablet and a TV, the commercials say you already have 2"

For sure it did. Dumb decisions, compounded.

Aside from Sega I was going to toss Atari on that list but TIL they are very much still making new hardware, except it's all targeted for retro gaming. Different focus and not a true competitor to Sony but technically still kicking.

Gaming is most definitely not in a dark place right now

Steamdeck, Gaming on Linux, indie games, Arc Raiders, skies are blue and the sun is shining my friend

Phil Spencer was a shit CEO. He absolutely cucked the hell out of Microsoft's gaming division by releasing all their exclusives on competing platforms and eliminating any reason to even buy an Xbox Series S or X console.

Newsflash: Exclusivity sells games consoles. It's why you don't see Sony pushing their IPs on other platforms other than in very exceptional circumstances, i.e. Helldivers 2 and MLB The Show. In the case of Helldivers 2 it was their biggest and only successful live-service release in recent memory, and The Show likely got ported elsewhere due to pressure from Major League Baseball themselves.

Exclusivity is still a shitty thing. How does it make the service better for consumers?

Spencer leaving Microsoft: Yay!

Spencer being replaced by a Marketing Exec who leads an AI division: FUUUUUUCK

3DO and Atari were never really competitors. They were minor players in the console market that were already considered unsuccessful by the time the PS1 was released.

Sega is one company. Sony has outlasted one competitor, which makes it odd to say "yet another" almost 30 years later.

Don't forget Fallout.

Please explain yourself. I'm not going to judge you, I'm genuinely curious where you got this perception of Phil Spencer from?

From my perspective, he was in charge during the fall of Xbox. There may have been a few good decisions he made, like backwards compat or whatever, but on the whole he destroyed Xbox. I don't understand how some people can simultaneously be pissed at all the terrible decisions that company has been making for over a decade while also glazing the guy in charge of making those decisions.

If Xbox wasn't part of the monopolist that is Microsoft, they would've gone out of business after the Xbox One. Instead, as is usually the case for orgs/people like this, they've been able to fail upwards all while dragging the entire gaming industry through the dirt (eg the horrible Activision acquisition, among many others). It's actually incredible how, despite not even needing to worry about competitive pressures, Xbox still failed so badly.

So again, what circumstances have lead you to see Phil Spencer as anything other than an incompetent moron?

Do you want a future where PlayStation is the only home console? Because that's how you get a future where PlayStation is the only home console.

And with Sony holding a monopoly (not counting Nintendo because they've pretty much been doing their own thing since the Wii), they're gonna jack up prices and force exclusivity deals to further consolidate their monopoly, as any company with such a dominant market position would.

That’s a nice opinion but Atari and 3DO were selling consoles at the same time PS1 was out. That makes them competitive, no matter how large the margin.

Valve has entered the chat and has summoned Proton (Linux compatibility layer) FEX (ARM architecture compatibility layer), and a Steam Machine. A future with these 4 could look a lot different than what we have now, though it would certainly take some time.

The thing about that press release is that it fairly cleverly doesn't say "no AI." It says no slop. She'll push AI, it'll create slop (as always), but she'll argue it isn't slop and is actually great.

I wouldn't really count Valve as a competitor because

1. Their pivot towards Linux came from a perceived threat that Microsoft could force users into using their app store exclusively, and effectively shutter Steam out of the market entirely. This is something Microsoft have already done with Windows 10 S.

2. The OG Steam Machines were a massive flop for various reasons, and the new one Valve is creating in-house is set to be priced more equivalently to a gaming PC than a home console. It'll give a nice accessible path towards PC gaming but because they're not selling it at a loss and recouping that money from software sales....

3. PC gaming has always been treated as its own separate thing since home computers became a thing.

4. While the Steam Deck has been incredibly successful, handheld gaming is also its own separate thing, and their main competitors in that regard are Nintendo, Asus, Lenovo and all the budget Chinese Android handhelds designed with emulation in mind.

Sure, Sony "outlived" two minor competitors that were already failing when the PS1 released.

Much like how I outlived actor Carey Grant, who was 80 years old when I was born. That's definitely how I'd phrase that.

But hey, those examples were "just to name a few", so there must be more, right?

But seriously, the way your original comment was phrased makes it sound like Sony is some kind of console war juggernaut, outlasting its many competitors over decades. The reality is that Sega folded to Sony and Nintendo back in the early aughts, and then it was 25 stable years of having three big console makers, and that's it.

That's all I'm saying.

I see it as a good thing, maybe another videogame market crash is exactly what we need so they'll understand that not every game needs to have an overblown budget, bloated content, micro transactions, massive player retention, sell a billion copies and win awards to be a good game, it's about time videogames are recognized as being pieces of art first and products second

Her name is in the 3rd sentence of the article posted by OP.

But, as a special treat for the lazy, her name is Asha Sharma.

Given all the fun I've had over the years with far less powerful systems, it's not exactly a deathknell to gaming if it turns out that way.

It just better be the deathknell for terrible mobile game microtransaction structures and p2w schemes if mobile devices become the new norm...

I mean the question got an answer, so either feeding the trolls, or popcorn moment.

... Either way I've got my popcorn.

My hope is the EU and China start to regulate mobile gaming for it to become less like casinos for children.

Fully agreed with that.

In fact, such regulations really need to go a lot further and make illegal straight up unnecessary subscriptions, too. If something doesn't need actively maintained things outside of the actual product for it to function, then it doesn't 'need' a subscription model.

It's already just a brand, Xbox is just their gaming brand. Xbox Game Pass isn't limited to Xbox hardware. The first Xbox branded computers not made by Microsoft are already available (Asus ROG Xbox Ally). The real question is how long will Microsoft make hardware under the Xbox brand.