Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[iroboto]

One gripe: Halo didn’t ‘lose forever’ when CoD came on the scene, and Xbox certainly didn’t. CoD4 came out in 2007 alongside Halo 3 and both did extremely well. Halo Reach came out in 2010 and also did very well. The own goals started with 4, but that had nothing to do with CoD, it was Bungie going off and doing their own thing. Similarly, CoD entered into a pretty long period of stagnation shortly after, as most of the Xbone/PS4 era CoDs were not well received (starting with Ghosts and continuing throughout the ‘jet pack era’). They didn’t really come back into vogue until MW2019 at the tail end of the generation. Warzone would come out at this point, and that’s when they went battle royal (although obviously there’s still the traditional multiplayer too). This wasn’t their first BR mode btw, that would be Blackout in BO4, but the fact we all forgot about that is a testimony to how forgettable that era is (with a notable exception in BO3, which many consider to have the best zombies, and is one of the most popular entries on PC to this day partially due to zombies workshop map support).

In my mind, the issue isn't so much that CoD was this insanely better product. But at it's core, CoD has parallels with sports games, but instead of players, it's guns. Mil-Sim as a category is something that I think Halo lost to, not necessarily CoD if that makes sense. At one point in time it was going to be Battlefield, which is also another mil-sim. And I think the idea of what Halo is, the setting and style began to alienate it from success, not propel it forward.

Nearly all of our biggest GaaS fps titles are mil-sim. There are some exceptions, but none that operates in the 'arena' space like Halo does. I've noticed that every single time CoD or BF move away from modern mil-sim, the response is significantly worse. People love their guns, I guess it's not really all that different than playing racing games where your favourite cars are in it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

4. Everything costs a hell of a lot more to make and produce, and that's for all industries and especially now for AAA titles.

Quoting myself from a generic observation in the Ubi thread:

I dont think $70 pricetags help, either.

Ironically, after that price increase in 2020 afters years of no price increase, world-wide inflation has dropped the value of that. So $60 in 2005 was worth about $80 in 2020, when the price was increased to $70; that $70 being worth ~$53 2005 dollars. Now, that inflation drops $70 now to worth $60 in 2020, nullifying the price increase, and $70 now is worth less than $45 2005 dollars! Games are far cheaper than they used to be and a direct inflation-matching price to 2005's $60 would see games need to be ~$100!!

I guess that shows the increasing need for sheer volume of sales, plus collectors editions to drive up average unit price. Not only have costs ballooned, by revenue per unit has plummeted. Gamers were paying the equivalent of up to $200 a game for SNES.

Games are at their lowest selling price since at least PS1 days in real terms. Devs mare making 25% less per unit sale in 2024 than they were in 2005.

 

[Cappuccino]

In my mind, the issue isn't so much that CoD was this insanely better product. But at it's core, CoD has parallels with sports games, but instead of players, it's guns. Mil-Sim as a category is something that I think Halo lost to, not necessarily CoD if that makes sense. At one point in time it was going to be Battlefield, which is also another mil-sim. And I think the idea of what Halo is, the setting and style began to alienate it from success, not propel it forward.

Nearly all of our biggest GaaS fps titles are mil-sim. There are some exceptions, but none that operates in the 'arena' space like Halo does. I've noticed that every single time CoD or BF move away from modern mil-sim, the response is significantly worse. People love their guns, I guess it's not really all that different than playing racing games where your favourite cars are in it.

I mean, this is mostly incorrect. Cod is nowhere near ‘milsim’, it’s closer to an arena shooter than a mil sim. Arma is a milsim. You mean modern military shooter.

Halo lost because they were bad at creating new entries. Good entries like Reach competed fine against contemporaries (in this case Cod4, MW2/3 and Blops 1). They lost their way around H4, ironically trying to copy Cod with sprint and kill streaks.

Also, two of the most popular BRs are in fact an arena shooters: Apex Legends and Fortnite. In fact, I can only think of two popular modern military BRs, Pubg and Warzone.

 

[see colon]

Games are at their lowest selling price since at least PS1 days in real terms. Devs mare making 25% less per unit sale in 2024 than they were in 2005.

Not only that, but we've reached a point where indie developers have access to many of the same tools that AAA studios have. This allows a small studio like The Astronauts to make visually impressive games like Witchfire and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Those games launched at $39.99 and $19.99 respectively, but I think looking at the production value of those games most people would be convinced they were on the same level as most AAA titles. And while they may be lacking in content compared to the infinite playtimes a FarCry or AC game could provide, there were plenty of games like that back in the PS1/2 days as well. Ico on PS2, for example, was a full priced release with a 6 hour playtime (according to google), so it''s cost was the same as FFX's 45 hour playtime.

It isn't just that $70 is the new entry point for a new game, there are expectations of content for that $70 that exceed what a $50 PS2 game provided. And there is a slew of cheaper games available coming from indie studios that have near AAA production values. Games have become a cheaper hobby over time, while the cost of AAA development has increased.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ico on PS2, for example, was a full priced release with a 6 hour playtime (according to google), so it''s cost was the same as FFX's 45 hour playtime.

Probably a bad example as it sold poorly. But yes, games were shorter and proportionally much more expensive. Going back to the cart days, they were shorter still and yet more expensive. Perhaps there's too much competition in the software space which always leads to a bottoming-out of the market?

 

[iroboto]

I mean, this is mostly incorrect. Cod is nowhere near ‘milsim’, it’s closer to an arena shooter than a mil sim. Arma is a milsim. You mean modern military shooter.

Halo lost because they were bad at creating new entries. Good entries like Reach competed fine against contemporaries (in this case Cod4, MW2/3 and Blops 1). They lost their way around H4, ironically trying to copy Cod with sprint and kill streaks.

Also, two of the most popular BRs are in fact an arena shooters: Apex Legends and Fortnite. In fact, I can only think of two popular modern military BRs, Pubg and Warzone.

You are correct, I shouldn’t be crossing the terms like that, but yes, modern military shooter is a better description. I just call them all mil-sim, but you’re right, it’s nowhere close. Is that what the official category name for it is ? seems long, lol. Is there a cut down version of what we call Battlefield and COD ?

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Halo actually being able to make a significant comeback. Infinite is
A well tuned game, it’s the best I’ve played from Halo in a long time and it’s F2P; excellent latency, excellent mechanical feel, good hit registration, consistently smooth gameplay; it is a highly polished shooter and in the grand scheme of things it’s not really made much of a dent.

Reminds me a bit like Titanfall 2 in that regard.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I think Halo is limited by it being only on Xbox. It's hard to become an indispensable part of the culture when PS players don't have access to it. It didn't help that MS treated PC players as second class citizens until Phil came along.

While MS was dicking around, CoD was becoming part of the culture.

 

[Cappuccino]

You are correct, I shouldn’t be crossing the terms like that, but yes, modern military shooter is a better description. I just call them all mil-sim, but you’re right, it’s nowhere close. Is that what the official category name for it is ? seems long, lol. Is there a cut down version of what we call Battlefield and COD ?

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Halo actually being able to make a significant comeback. Infinite is
A well tuned game, it’s the best I’ve played from Halo in a long time and it’s F2P; excellent latency, excellent mechanical feel, good hit registration, consistently smooth gameplay; it is a highly polished shooter and in the grand scheme of things it’s not really made much of a dent.

Reminds me a bit like Titanfall 2 in that regard.

It’s funny because the biggest complaints against Infinite are the lag and desync. Most of the enthusiasts still on the game complain about these issues all the time.

My issue is the game felt soulless, horrible campaign coupled with a multiplayer with completely forgettable maps.

Frankly at this point Halo has been a failure for longer than it was a success, it was thriving in the early 2000s up until 2010 when MS was dominating the online console landscape. Halo was the first to bring that online community feeling to console, and that era of Bungie knew how to harness this. Now there’s way more competition on console (they basically share the space with PC shooters) and 343i is a tribute band at best to that era of Bungie. Not to get overly sentimental but even when I play the old games on MCC it doesn’t feel the same, Halo was at its best when everyone was on mics in game voice chat and people were setting up custom games to play with strangers and friends. I’m not sure if the modern multiplayer gaming landscape would even support such a phenomenon.

 

[Nisaaru]

My issue is the game felt soulless, horrible campaign coupled with a multiplayer with completely forgettable maps.

Aimless campaign, horrible boss fights in CQC and the game just lacks the usual short dramaturgic fights which made its gameplay so magical back in 200x. IMHO 343 never truly understood Halo's gameplay formulae/loop. They just place enemies at some areas without any thought/polishing.

IMHO Halo is a 25 year old game design which just feels stale today.

 

[iroboto]

It’s funny because the biggest complaints against Infinite are the lag and desync. Most of the enthusiasts still on the game complain about these issues all the time.

My issue is the game felt soulless, horrible campaign coupled with a multiplayer with completely forgettable maps.

Frankly at this point Halo has been a failure for longer than it was a success, it was thriving in the early 2000s up until 2010 when MS was dominating the online console landscape. Halo was the first to bring that online community feeling to console, and that era of Bungie knew how to harness this. Now there’s way more competition on console (they basically share the space with PC shooters) and 343i is a tribute band at best to that era of Bungie. Not to get overly sentimental but even when I play the old games on MCC it doesn’t feel the same, Halo was at its best when everyone was on mics in game voice chat and people were setting up custom games to play with strangers and friends. I’m not sure if the modern multiplayer gaming landscape would even support such a phenomenon.

Yea Desync is still an issue.

I would agree with your assessment. Though I actually grew up playing quake and counterstrike. halo was this open world sort of game that offered a different experience. I was never part of the halo online community until 5.

And in it; I just found other fps games to be more engaging. Even oddly enough, found Destiny to be more fun PvP, despite glaring issues with fairness.

I’m not sure if Halo went too deep into the esports theme that made it stale. It’s hard to tell. For the next outing, I hope they don’t bother pandering to that crowd.

 

[Seanspeed]

I don't think anyone is blindly swallowing a narrative.
The games industry has had a ton of change starting with last generation.

1. Firstly, the market dynamics have rapidly changed and preferences have evolved dramatically towards Nintendo and Sony. No longer are people interested in Xbox properties, as they directly competed with the market of forever titles. And forever titles won out. When Call of Duty arrived, Halo was forever finished. Then it became battle royale, and it's just been an on-going change of games in that forever game space, that is where all the players are, that is where the industry is growing in terms of revenue, but at the same time, all the other titles aren't really getting a piece of that revenue. The big titles are just getting richer over time. All GaaS titles must be multiplatform to drive populations to stay forever, and that runs contradictory to why platforms make games exclusive to their own hardware.

2. Technological advancements have slowed dramatically and the cost point has risen exponentially. The rate of change from graphics generation to generation is less, and the cost point higher. Once again, see point 1 as to why a developer won't target the highest end spec, the largest population of gamers are playing games that are 10 years or older. I don't want to get into the fact that the latest generation of gamers are completely happy playing with block based characters.

3. MS lost the war against Sony in the XBO era. In particular they lost during a time in which digital lock in became a thing for consoles. Digital lock-in is so powerful that steam will likely be the undisputed digital platform for games, forever on PC, look at the billions spent by Epic to try to penetrate into that market. No luck. So once the winners are declared what should the losers do, I'm sure if the answer was so simple, they would love to hear from you.

4. Everything costs a hell of a lot more to make and produce, and that's for all industries and especially now for AAA titles. If you make AAA titles, you expect AAA returns, but what game developers are finding repeatedly is that these forever titles cost significantly less to make, and drive significantly more revenue and worse of all, they have a gravity that draws all new players as well. We lack a proper discovery mechanism in which to drive players away from forever titles to new titles as the cost point is too high versus the _free_ price point of these forever titles. The platform holders, including Sony are all struggling to reposition themselves with these changes, otherwise why would Sony fight so hard to stop Xbox from owning CoD and WoW and Overwatch? In a pair of acquisitions they are now owners of some of the largest forever franchises.

5. Referring back to point 4, what is the point of spending all this money making niche games if they can't find new gamers to play them? You cannot forever target 40 to 50 year old gamers, eventually they will stop gaming, what will you do then. The games of the today's youth are not the same games we liked to play as children. And businesses do not have the same lifespan as people. Businesses must continually adapt to changing preferences as the 'first major gaming generation' will be exiting the market, while the next generation of gamers who grew up playing on mobile devices and f2p titles are moving in. They aren't used to paying $80 per title. They are used to subscription services. They are used to playing games with user generated content. They are used to multiplatform experiences and in-game purchases. All the things that the oldest generation of gamers loathe.

***

I think I'm just touching on some major changes in the industry, but I think it's quite reductive to just say companies are causing their own troubles here. They are trying to adapt to a changing market. I think the difference between Sony and MS is that MS gave up on the older generation of gamers somewhere during the XBO era while Sony doubled down on them. Sony owns the majority of the older gamer console market today, and the 5Pro and all that is just more pandering for that audience, but I think Sony now has its sights on trying to capture the younger generation of gamers and failing just as spectacularly as everyone else is.

No platform holder today, has a strategy to dethrone F2P forever titles. Certainly Nintendo is the closest here, but they literally moved into the mobile space to do it. And among all large AAA studios who aren't in ownership of a forever title, many are failing to find the revenue to keep their business afloat. See Ubisoft for instance, their only saving grace is R6 Siege, and all their other titles are barely profitable if profitable at all.

From my POV, I don't see how you can just say these companies are causing their own mistakes, they were there back in the day making the games that people loved and riding a huge wave of success and profits. They knew how to accomplish that, and I don't think saying that they need to go back to those days will suddenly make it work for them. Because clearly that's false, as only a handful of franchises can rinse and repeat annually, while keeping their audiences satisfied. For everyone else that cannot, they are struggling to create the innovation or find the audiences to play their games.

To get the main strawman argument out the way - I never said all the problems today are from companies making their own mistakes. There's certainly some market changes making things harder. But it's nowhere near as bad as we're being fooled into believing because some of the bigger issues are 100% self-inflicted.

#1 - no, the 'market dynamics' did not go away from Xbox. lol This is one of the most hilarious claims I've ever seen to suggest why Xbox has declined. Xbox simply executed poorly on games. They weren't making some drastically different types of games from Playstation on the whole. Plus Call of Duty was one of the franchises that remained very popular on Xbox, so that did not hurt them. Either way, this does not go against my argument at all. Quite the opposite.

#2 - technological advancements aren't slowing that dramatically. We can still see very healthy improvements in performance for CPU's and GPU's every generation. Maybe AMD fumbled with RDNA3 big-time, but that wasn't because the industry, that was self-inflicted. Lovelace was an immense leap forward, by contrast.

#3 - another point that's only supporting my argument. Xbox has screwed up over and over and over, which has led them to lose the XB1 generation, but it's worse in that they continue to make mistakes and have a lack of direction, hurting them ever more. The 'console model' isn't outdated, Xbox is just criminally mismanaged. Also, them losing so badly is only hurting things more cuz it lets Arrogant Sony™ return.

#4 - costs are certainly a valid argument, but that's also not *as* bad as people are being led to believe, either. These companies are just becoming margins-obsessed and many seem to be happier selling less at a higher price. If anybody can look around honestly tell you that the all the price increases we've seen have been 100% justified and reasonable, they are a naive fool.

#5 - this generation has sucked man. It's honestly a miracle the new gen consoles have sold as well as they have(a lot was in thanks to the pandemic boost). And most of the reason this generation has sucked is because of terrible trend chasing, and just outright lackluster execution. Again, things would look better if Xbox had gotten their stuff in order, and Playstation didn't go all-in on live service tat, and weren't spending incredibly irresponsible all over(including billions in paid exclusivity deals). Nintendo is looking very healthy. PC gaming is still doing really well overall. The gaming industry is largely fine(though not without issues), but the people running the industry have been screwing up non-stop and are trying to blame everybody but themselves for it. And naive gamers eat it up for some bizarre reason.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

#4 - costs are certainly a valid argument, but that's also not *as* bad as people are being led to believe, either. These companies are just becoming margins-obsessed and many seem to be happier selling less at a higher price. If anybody can look around honestly tell you that the all the price increases we've seen have been 100% justified and reasonable, they are a naive fool.

Naive fool presents naive argument:

...$70 now is worth less than $45 2005 dollars! Games are far cheaper than they used to be and a direct inflation-matching price to 2005's $60 would see games need to be ~$100!!

Games are at their lowest selling price since at least PS1 days in real terms. Devs are making 25% less per unit sale in 2024 than they were in 2005.

 

[iroboto]

To get the main strawman argument out the way - I never said all the problems today are from companies making their own mistakes. There's certainly some market changes making things harder. But it's nowhere near as bad as we're being fooled into believing because some of the bigger issues are 100% self-inflicted.

I think it's a bit grand to call all of us naive and blindly swallowing narrative, yet when I respond to your words that I'm attacking a straw man, or that I took your words out of context. You use the words nowhere near as bad, but that's nothing more than a perspective, you've not actually done any analysis into how badly the game industry is getting pummelled. We have significantly more flops than ever before, despite the fact that revenues keep growing. That's not 100% self inflicted, they are using a model of developing games that they've always used, they are just no longer getting a pay out for it anymore.

#1 - no, the 'market dynamics' did not go away from Xbox. lol This is one of the most hilarious claims I've ever seen to suggest why Xbox has declined. Xbox simply executed poorly on games. They weren't making some drastically different types of games from Playstation on the whole. Plus Call of Duty was one of the franchises that remained very popular on Xbox, so that did not hurt them. Either way, this does not go against my argument at all. Quite the opposite.

Market dynamics have _never_ been in favour of Xbox. Xbox OG did not succeed, and 360 at best managed to equal PS3 as a result of a massive fumbling by Sony. What happened with Xbox One and Series X is more in line with Xbox always being in third place, and their attempts to try to move upwards. Xbox hasn't declined, from a revenue perspective they are making more than ever today, Xbox is pivoting away from consoles.

#2 - technological advancements aren't slowing that dramatically. We can still see very healthy improvements in performance for CPU's and GPU's every generation. Maybe AMD fumbled with RDNA3 big-time, but that wasn't because the industry, that was self-inflicted. Lovelace was an immense leap forward, by contrast.

Technological advancements have slowed immensely when it comes to silicon enhancements in comparison to prior leaps that were following Moore's Law. The majority of advancement are in spaces where games do not exist! All that hardware in Lovelace is being used, barely in games but in significantly more profitable industries like AI. Outside of resolution, anti-aliasing, and frame generation, AI has done very little for the games industry. While AI has significant impacts outside of the games industry. We've not see anything special since PS3-PS4 where there were massive introductions to PBR. RT and Higher density models, are all welcome. But they haven't had the transformative change that most people are used to seeing generation to generation.

#3 - another point that's only supporting my argument. Xbox has screwed up over and over and over, which has led them to lose the XB1 generation, but it's worse in that they continue to make mistakes and have a lack of direction, hurting them ever more. The 'console model' isn't outdated, Xbox is just criminally mismanaged. Also, them losing so badly is only hurting things more cuz it lets Arrogant Sony™ return.

They were never going to win the XB1 generation, I just don't see how this was ever a reasonable perspective of the landscape. Once again, Xbox is making the most revenue it's ever made today, despite being a country mile behind the leaders. I don't see how that is criminally mismanaged. Sony doing Sony things, is entirely on Sony. It's an absolute travesty whenever I read a comment like Xbox doing poorly is hurting the industry even more. It showcases a deep rooted bias that clearly most people are unaware that they have - no matter what Sony does, poeple will give them a pass a find a way to point the blame over to Xbox.

The fact that you blame Xbox failing for arrogant Sony returning is an indication that MS was never a contender in anyones eyes, they're just there to keep Sony in check ... See point #1 again.

If players actually gave a damn, they would not reward Sony for this behaviour. Yet they continue to do so, so whatever, its the gamers fault Sony behaves this way.

#4 - costs are certainly a valid argument, but that's also not *as* bad as people are being led to believe, either. These companies are just becoming margins-obsessed and many seem to be happier selling less at a higher price. If anybody can look around honestly tell you that the all the price increases we've seen have been 100% justified and reasonable, they are a naive fool.

Once again, real numbers show the opposite. It's only your perspective that things are 'not as bad' as people make it out to be, that's an easy stance to take if you aren't diving into numbers. You see the amount of inflation there is, games need to sell nearly double to triple what they used to sell as long as this 89.99 price point holds. Is that reasonable for the entire industry to do? Or does it make more sense to increase prices because you know you're not going to get the numbers regardless?

At the end of the day, games are a business, they cost many multi-millions of dollars to make, someone is funding this, its not out of the good heart of people. It feels like your perspective is largely skewed against this idea, and that if you just build it correctly, gamers will naturally reward companies for it; That's never been a recipe to staying alive for any business.

#5 - this generation has sucked man. It's honestly a miracle the new gen consoles have sold as well as they have(a lot was in thanks to the pandemic boost). And most of the reason this generation has sucked is because of terrible trend chasing, and just outright lackluster execution. Again, things would look better if Xbox had gotten their stuff in order, and Playstation didn't go all-in on live service tat, and weren't spending incredibly irresponsible all over(including billions in paid exclusivity deals). Nintendo is looking very healthy. PC gaming is still doing really well overall. The gaming industry is largely fine(though not without issues), but the people running the industry have been screwing up non-stop and are trying to blame everybody but themselves for it. And naive gamers eat it up for some bizarre reason.

Considering how many layoffs there are at gaming companies these last few years, I would disagree with that sentiment. The generation has sucked, I agree with that. But it would be a mistake to see a growing industry and declare it 'healthy'. PC Gaming is growing because PCs are being sold all the time for a lot of reasons other than gaming! WRT Steam, it is the only platform on PC, and it doesn't have to do anything to get you to use it. If people suddenly stop buying gaming hardware that doesn't negatively affect Steam! Steam does not need to make exclusives to force you to use their store, steam does not need to release hardware for you to use their ecosystem. There is nothing to screw up here! They are the ideal platform.

The console space is where things are getting heated, and they cannot just become Steam overnight, despite their best desires to do so. Buying hardware to get access to some video games will not be the model forever, especially when concerning the new generation of gamers. There's just not a lot of value in a console other than playing games.

It's the least valuable electronic entertainment device people will own after their smart phones and laptops.

 

[Seanspeed]

Naive fool presents naive argument:

I've already explained why using recent inflation figures for such arguments is quite ridiculous several times in these forums. smh

 

[Seanspeed]

you've not actually done any analysis into how badly the game industry is getting pummelled. We have significantly more flops than ever before, despite the fact that revenues keep growing.

While there's certainly occasional flops for actual good games(which has always been a thing, game industry has never been a total meritocracy), most of the flops are happening because of terrible management and direction. This is exactly my point. So much of the problems the current industry is facing is because publishers and studio management are being stupid and ran by greed or out of touch people who genuinely dont understand what gamers want, or simply dont care and think they can overlook the core audience in favor of attracting whales or whatever.

The current state of the industry management is in an unprecedently shocking state. I'm dead serious, the amount of blatantly obvious bad decisions are off-the-charts. Things that any half informed person could look at and say, "No that's a bad idea" are just being embraced all the time, and because of longer dev times and higher opportunity costs, the failures are hurting more than ever. But so many are quite avoidable failures. It's not 'the market' hurting them, it's their own internal management and decision making processes.

If we're talking the rampant layoffs happening - this isn't cuz the game industry is collapsing at all. It's again - all poor management and/or greed. Any reasonably intelligent person could have told them that the boom during Covid wouldn't last and that things would eventually drop back and normalize. But what did so many studios do? Decided that with all the growth happening, they could expand their studios, and thus produce more or better titles. Dumb. Similarly, within publicly traded companies, the drop in growth leads to a predictable slash and burn environment where they have to start cutting jobs not because they're doing poorly, but because they aren't doing as well as they were the previous year or two during a rare and obviously unique growth environment that wouldn't last. Dumb.

I mean, I could really write so so so much more about all this, but as is, most likely wont read this whole post to begin with. Things only seem quite as bad as they seem, because of terrible decision making and management. Things aren't fantastic otherwise, dont get me wrong, I've talked at length about plenty of real issues going on, but a company like MS/Xbox especially are massively to blame for their own position these days. It was not the market getting away from them, or external circumstances that simply happened to hurt them so much. They had so many opportunities to course correct and just didn't. Bad decision making and poor execution. You really dont need much more than that to explain their current situation.

 

[iroboto]

mean, I could really write so so so much more about all this, but as is, most likely wont read this whole post to begin with.

You're not wrong about you've said. But I think for many of us, you can look at one case and say, that's terrible management. And that would make sense to us.
When the whole industry is suffering from the same issues, that's a trend. And statistically speaking, there shouldn't be that many flops. And that's where I think we diverge in discussion.

When an entire population of studios are all failing to meet targets and are extending their development cycle well beyond 2-3 years. There are things happening between the lines, and I have some insight into Ubisoft in particular, that certain decisions had negative consequences, that I can't talk about, but its just not that simple. And honestly, not all of this is COVID's fault, but it certainly is making things harder, and things haven't gone back yet to the way they have been pre-COVID. I understand now that studios are making that jump now to revert, but at the risk of losing a lot of staff.

I don't want to be like, yea you're wrong, but the problems in development today are significantly different than the ones we had before. And I think if you spent a lot of time with someone at a studio working there, they would tell you, yes there are a ton of management problems, but few of them are self inflicted. Like on top of everything I've written before, I get the idea that excuses shouldn't mean nothing, but that doesn't mean studios aren't trying to adapt to these new challenges.

Its not all bad decisions, it's the sometimes what they have to compromise to even get the title shipped. These are certainly realities that exist for game studios, they just need to ship or there is no money left to pay out the staff.

Very few companies can do what both Sony and Nintendo are doing. Even MS has its limits on how long it will incubate a game, and those limits aren't as long as the other two.

 

[Seanspeed]

You're not wrong about you've said. But I think for many of us, you can look at one case and say, that's terrible management. And that would make sense to us.
When the whole industry is suffering from the same issues, that's a trend. And statistically speaking, there shouldn't be that many flops. And that's where I think we diverge in discussion.

When an entire population of studios are all failing to meet targets and are extending their development cycle well beyond 2-3 years. There are things happening between the lines, and I have some insight into Ubisoft in particular, that certain decisions had negative consequences, that I can't talk about, but its just not that simple. And honestly, not all of this is COVID's fault, but it certainly is making things harder, and things haven't gone back yet to the way they have been pre-COVID. I understand now that studios are making that jump now to revert, but at the risk of losing a lot of staff.

I don't want to be like, yea you're wrong, but the problems in development today are significantly different than the ones we had before. And I think if you spent a lot of time with someone at a studio working there, they would tell you, yes there are a ton of management problems, but few of them are self inflicted. Like on top of everything I've written before, I get the idea that excuses shouldn't mean nothing, but that doesn't mean studios aren't trying to adapt to these new challenges.

Its not all bad decisions, it's the sometimes what they have to compromise to even get the title shipped. These are certainly realities that exist for game studios, they just need to ship or there is no money left to pay out the staff.

Very few companies can do what both Sony and Nintendo are doing. Even MS has its limits on how long it will incubate a game, and those limits aren't as long as the other two.

I have actually listened to a lot of ground floor developers. That's largely where I'm getting this from. What I dont accept at face value though, is the publisher/studio execs who have motivated reasons to deflect blame away from themselves.

And yes, the issues in the industry seem systemic, but that's also part of my point. We've never seen such widespread poor management. I dont think it's a coincidence no, not at all. I think it's a major problem affecting so many companies, especially when most of these companies are publicly traded and being led by failures who never get held accountable, but instead fire and blame those beneath them. How on earth does Phil Spencer still have a freaking job, for instance?

We're dealing with an epidemic of incompetence and/or greed at higher levels. And it's all the lower level folks that are getting punished for it. Which really just makes things worse in the end. This is horrible and I hate it so much.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Because that's just your opinion.

From my perspective I overall like Phil Spencer for reasons I've stated many times. It's simplistic to blame the state of the industry on bad management. Sometimes devs are bad, sometimes there are external challenges. Sometimes the management is to blame.

Life is complicated.

 

[see colon]

I have actually listened to a lot of ground floor developers. That's largely where I'm getting this from. What I dont accept at face value though, is the publisher/studio execs who have motivated reasons to deflect blame away from themselves.

Are the ground level employees not motivated to deflect blame? In my professional life, I have found those who actively, much less passively, choose to accept blame for failure to be far less than those who deflect blame. This includes myself.

How on earth does Phil Spencer still have a freaking job, for instance?

 

[iroboto]

quote from Tim Sweeney. Wasn’t sure where to put this, sort of applies to all the companies chasing GaaS.

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

The world of videogames is changing, and the Epic chief believes the future is social.

www.pcgamer.com

One of the manifestations [of that change] we're seeing right now is that a lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling nearly as well as expected," Sweeney said. "Whereas other games are going incredibly strong. What we're seeing is a real trend where players are gravitating toward the really big games where they can play with more of their friends."
The perceived value of a game, he continued, "grows in proportion to the number of your friends that you can connect to," for everything from playing games together to chatting by voice, watching virtual concerts, or "doing other kinds of cool, virtual things online.

How unfortunate what this means for reality and real interactions between people. If these large scale games are how kids are interacting, it’s no wonder they don’t have a clue to figure out how to be social in real life.

But this is how the games industry will
Chase this. All GaaS games have to come to mobile. That’s where the kids are addicted.