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.