Not to excuse Phil for his mistakes but this analysis makes a lot of sense, there is pressure from Satya on the gaming division to drive growth. The thing the video misses out on are the actual blunders done by Phil by going into multiple directions executing haphazardly. But its clear there is some pressure on him from above especially now with a $70bn acquistion. When I was an Equity Analyst we didnt really care how much money you made a quarter or year on its own. We wanted to know how much are you going to be making quarter after quarter for the next 3-10 years. We wanted to project it out, see what your growth would be like and then model that back to today and that was your present day value. Its why we made EPS estimates regularly to see if the company was beating them i.e growing.
He's 100% right that its all about growth. Some people are going to be holding MS or Sony stock for decades, they want to to ensure their investment will be growing during this time.
Chris Ding is quite spot on here imho. To reconcile shareholder and consumer demands will require a focused executor who can deliver on both ends.
- Plan out Gaming Title roadmap before start of gen consulting devs on what hw/sw tools they need to ensure consistent release of quality AAA/AA titles.
- Deliver a single base hw system that will be the benchmark for designing titles for a gen, based on feedback from devs.
- Invest in improving software tools for this Xbox hw as well as multiple configs of PC(Microsoft GDK).
- Offer timed exclusivity to increase revenues(Release on Playstation 1-3 years later, PC day and date to 6 months depending on title).
- Consider midgen hw upgrade that is 100% architecturally compatible to the base system, since games take longer to make these days.
- Offer cloud gaming service + subscription service, but no absolutes like day and date for all new titles. Use ASICs developed for Single base hw system for the cloud streaming servers.
The issue with Phil is he tried doing everything. Launches multiple Xboxes at the same time, day and date PC and Xbox for all titles, Instituting Gaming subscription service, major acquisitions. The thing that ends up suffering the most or getting the least attention in all this is the actual management of the studios and the developer. The actual creative part. If MS can fix these they can deliver a lot of quality content. I think Phil expected Starfield and Redfall to be hits and start a cycle of consistent delivery. And they could have been but all the attention was on other things and now we dont know how viable the subscription model is anymore.
Then it also looks like the Activision acquisition was meant to grow mobile gaming which is quite lucrative and could propel Xbox gaming even further. But MS doesnt want to pay App store fees so its going to be interesting to see what happens with the web app store they'll be launching next month.