Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[Seanspeed]

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.

No, those employees are largely not motivated to deflect blame because they're not the decision makers. Why on earth would they lay blame on themselves for something they are literally not to blame for? :/

A revenue chart also says little when we know Xbox is floundering. If they were in a good situation, they would not be making all the moves they're doing and falling so far behind Playstation. Are we really gonna play dumb about this for the sake of arguing?

 

[Cappuccino]

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 much does this chart actually mean when they just buy out entire publishers? Showing the revenue without showing how much they’re blowing on buying out the competition isn’t very useful.

 

[iroboto]

No, those employees are largely not motivated to deflect blame because they're not the decision makers. Why on earth would they lay blame on themselves for something they are literally not to blame for? :/

Employees within operations often do have some very different opinion of how things should be run. And often that's because they aren't given the full of the information that is available when decision making happens. Front line workers often cite their concerns to leadership, and they take that information and make decisions from that. Sometimes that information is useful, and sometimes, despite the fact that the front line workers are right, they still have to make a bad decision about it, because they don't see the other factors in play.

That is what see colon is referring to. If it's an obvious win win across the board, by not taking the front line workers advice, that would be a complete blunder. But if you don't have all the information, then from the perspective of the workers, the leadership is incompetent. This is a common narrative, except most people tend to forget that if you're promoting from within, how did the people who think leadership is incompetent, are making incompetent moves themselves.

A revenue chart also says little when we know Xbox is floundering. If they were in a good situation, they would not be making all the moves they're doing and falling so far behind Playstation. Are we really gonna play dumb about this for the sake of arguing?

Even without the ABK purchase, revenues show Xbox is still making more money than ever before. With ABK they are now comparable to Sony's revenues but positioned significantly differently. It's not about playing dumb, if the market is moving towards cloud and subscription services, MS is in a much better position with MS actually having significant investments in cloud infrastructure. Whereas both Sony and Nintendo specialize in hardware logistics, as a result they are currently the dominant leader in console hardware among other things, their entire strategy is situated around selling hardware units to grow their base. Warehousing logistics and retail channels are things they have built for decades that MS refuses to step into.

MS isn't that type of company, and yet regulators are doing their best to slow and stop MS from moving the industry towards cloud gaming which is their particular strength. I'm okay with that, but there should be a matter of perspective here. Most definitely Sony and Nintendo will be doing everything to keep as many players stuck on hardware as much as possible and pushing regulators to slow the advance of games moving to streaming. And MS will do the opposite, unfortunately ceding control to Ubisoft for ABK properties likely set them back significantly more than expected.

 

[see colon]

How much does this chart actually mean when they just buy out entire publishers? Showing the revenue without showing how much they’re blowing on buying out the competition isn’t very useful.

That chart shows an upward trend in revenue, even before the acquisition of Activision. Even before Zenimax. This was in response to the question of how Phil Spencer is still employed at Xbox. It's pretty easy to understand that growth, in terms of revenue, is a factor in that.

Also, when you make an investment, or in the case of Zenimax and Activision, a total investment in the form of an acquisition, you aren't burning that money. It's being exchanged for a thing of value, and in the business world, there is an expectation that the investments you make will have a return. Xbox/Microsoft now owns a diverse portfolio of video game IP, and the development studios to produce games based on that IP. And yes, the revenue chart includes sales based on some of that IP and from those studios. But, of course that is why they made those investments. They didn't buy those companies so that they could not make money from them. The money they spent on those investments isn't blown. It's already returning value.

Xbox is poised to match or exceed Playstation revenue wile having been outsold 2:1 in the hardware space. As long as they can keep their margins in check - And that's why we are seeing the layoffs at Xbox - they will be doing just fine. Playstations success is predicated mostly on them succeeding in hardware, Xbox has taken more of a forked approach with services, cloud, and multiplatform releases. So Xbox's losses in hardware have been offset by software and services, which gives them more options for success if their hardware eventually fails to gain any meaningful install base in the future.

 

[Seanspeed]

Employees within operations often do have some very different opinion of how things should be run. And often that's because they aren't given the full of the information that is available when decision making happens. Front line workers often cite their concerns to leadership, and they take that information and make decisions from that. Sometimes that information is useful, and sometimes, despite the fact that the front line workers are right, they still have to make a bad decision about it, because they don't see the other factors in play.

That is what see colon is referring to. If it's an obvious win win across the board, by not taking the front line workers advice, that would be a complete blunder. But if you don't have all the information, then from the perspective of the workers, the leadership is incompetent. This is a common narrative, except most people tend to forget that if you're promoting from within, how did the people who think leadership is incompetent, are making incompetent moves themselves.

Even without the ABK purchase, revenues show Xbox is still making more money than ever before. With ABK they are now comparable to Sony's revenues but positioned significantly differently. It's not about playing dumb, if the market is moving towards cloud and subscription services, MS is in a much better position with MS actually having significant investments in cloud infrastructure. Whereas both Sony and Nintendo specialize in hardware logistics, as a result they are currently the dominant leader in console hardware among other things, their entire strategy is situated around selling hardware units to grow their base. Warehousing logistics and retail channels are things they have built for decades that MS refuses to step into.

MS isn't that type of company, and yet regulators are doing their best to slow and stop MS from moving the industry towards cloud gaming which is their particular strength. I'm okay with that, but there should be a matter of perspective here. Most definitely Sony and Nintendo will be doing everything to keep as many players stuck on hardware as much as possible and pushing regulators to slow the advance of games moving to streaming. And MS will do the opposite, unfortunately ceding control to Ubisoft for ABK properties likely set them back significantly more than expected.

Employees making some pretty common sense observations about bad decisions in management that clearly lead to bad results doesn't sound like they deserve any blame to me.

I've genuinely never seen a forum so dedicated to apologizing for the greed and failures of corporations and upper management.

And sure sure, Xbox is actually doing great, and in a super good position! lol Freaking Contrarian World around here, I swear.

 

[iroboto]

Employees making some pretty common sense observations about bad decisions in management that clearly lead to bad results doesn't sound like they deserve any blame to me.

I've genuinely never seen a forum so dedicated to apologizing for the greed and failures of corporations and upper management.

And sure sure, Xbox is actually doing great, and in a super good position! lol Freaking Contrarian World around here, I swear.

Once again, no one is pro corporation here. That’s not what anyone here is saying. But you’re trying so hard to make something true which you cannot possibly know is actually true.

This is not in defence of greed. Hindsight is always 20/20 and if everyone could make games without mistakes is straight up impossible. You cannot predict success. So the basis here of your argument falls on perhaps one or two things you know about and you’ve taken that as a generalization to every single company that is failing.

You don’t know why they are failing, nor can you prove it they made these common sense decisions that their game or platform would be successful either.

There is a ton of assumption on your side about it, and there is a ton of assumption that you know the goals and expectations of every project.

Those goals may not align with your values or the workers’ who work that project. But just because there isn’t alignment there, doesn’t mean they are criminally negligent in their decision making.

I'm trying to be nice to you about it. But honestly, your viewpoint comes from a place of naivety. You don't think these same studios don't have troubled headcount? You don't think they have workers who have been exploiting work from home policies where they are actually running a second job on the side? Do not be so quick hand out judgement. Loads of issues that can go wrong, from legal to HR, to WFH policies, to how much budget is available for FTE, to workers not doing their work, to workers no longer communicating issues, to their best workers being poached by other studios.

I happen to have empathy for your argument, but your opinion comes across so arrogant that you are so confident that if management somehow fixed the 'greed' problem all these issues would just magically go away. You are so wrong, because there are loads of indies who make games without a ounce of greed in their heart, and most of them make nothing, including many of us that have gone that route. I really don't know how you can be riding such a high horse about greed and making common sense decisions within an industry that you've never been in a leadership position or know people in a leadership position to speak about.

You make it seem like there are people literally looking at a bunch of possibilities, and saying, um yea that one, screw this game, we need to do more pandering, find a way to milk more gamers. All of these games, are born from the idea to make money off gamers. All of them. And somehow this only applies to MS executives, or the executives of failing studios, and on the other hand you imply successful studios making real positive decisions for the benefit of the gamer.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

The successful ones, you don't bitch about, you don't bitch about how they are making billions hand over fist over the FOMO Micro Ts etc, they literally design the game to keep gamers on a complete dopamine high like god damn casino, those games are necessarily any better, they're just better and constantly keeping the dopamine up and somehow we are praising games like this?

But the ones that aren't? suddenly it's about greed and politics and insert whatever people don't like. It's a convenient scape goat.

How well would your argument stand today, had the positions be reversed and Xbox is dominating the market and Sony being in 3rd, while doing the exact same things both are doing today? Your position is fluid, you don't actually have a position. Because you'd use the same argument as to why Sony is failing and that doesn't make any sense for anyone following along.

That's why, I'm pushing back against your argument. I've tried to be nice about it without attacking directly. But you're not bringing up facts, you're just making a failing industry all about yourself. All about why you think the industry is failing, and not actually contributing to any real discussion about it.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

Employees making some pretty common sense observations about bad decisions in management that clearly lead to bad results doesn't sound like they deserve any blame to me.

I've genuinely never seen a forum so dedicated to apologizing for the greed and failures of corporations and upper management.

And sure sure, Xbox is actually doing great, and in a super good position! lol Freaking Contrarian World around here, I swear.

Sort your attitude out.

 

[Seanspeed]

You don’t know why they are failing, nor can you prove it they made these common sense decisions that their game or platform would be successful either.

I've made countless posts on why I think many games/developers/publishers/platform owners are failing. Often detailing the sort of easily-sighted mistakes they make in the decision making process early on that leads to such mistakes. The developers working in these places are only corroborating my 'assumptions' and yes, make me feel fairly confident in asserting what I do.

This idea that the market is all some mystery or random and not predictable and that's why there's all these failures is utterly insane. Gamers can be a reactionary bunch for sure, but there's also tons of sources of very intelligent and rational gamers that have been calling out these issues for a good while now and detailing exactly the sort of short-sighted or greedy decision making that's ruining the industry.

It's not chaos, it's genuinely systemic. Designed, purposeful decision-making apparatuses that are failing not just gamers, but also the businesses themselves. And greed is only part of it, not the only thing.

But some of y'all are so so so insistent that this couldn't be the case, and yes, that means y'all are genuinely and bizarrely acting as apologists for these corporations and defending them. And it's even more disgusting when you're making an attempt to lay blame on the ground level workers for any of this.

I've tried to be nice about it without attacking directly. But you're not bringing up facts, you're just making a failing industry all about yourself.

Literally nothing about any of this has to do with 'myself'. This is yet another incredibly bizarre argument and attempt to deflect away and/or dismiss what I'm saying.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It's a mixed bag. You like to reduce it to something simple that fits with your worldview, but the reasons for failure are more complex than that. Sometimes it's short sighted suits and sometimes it's poor work on the ground and everything in between including external factors. Individual situations vary. The details matter and 90% of the time we don't know them all even though we have fun discussions.