Corporations are bigger than a single person. Thousan♊ds of people are often working behind the scenes on the games, filmsꦦ, television shows, and similar productions we consume each and every day. But every operation needs a face, someone for the public to put their trust in and come to recognise as the single individual to place all their hopes and dreams.

In the end, all of them exist to make as much money as possible, and they will likely say and do anything to make sure that goal is met. Even if it means obscuring the truth and laying off thousands of workers again and again to stay afloat. It is a heartless existence, and I do not envy the position that people like Xbox head Phil Spencer find themselves in. Now, glancing back at a week that saw 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:countless people laid off, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:studios shuttered, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:projects cancelled, what is next fo𒁃r Xbox, and how did it get to this point in the first place?

Xbox One Was The Beginning Of The End

following the , whose reputation crashed and burned after the launch of Xbox One, in which it failed to attract an audience and the messaging surrounding this always-online machine sure didn’t help. Mattrick might have had a savvy bu🧸siness mind, but he lacked chemistry, sai♕d the wrong things, and wanted no part in the sinking ship he had to captain.

I do not envy the position Spencer found himself in. He had to act as the public figure for a platform with a peripheral nobody wanted, a notable lack of exclusive titles, and was tasked with clawing back decades of player trust that had been scuppered in a matter of days. PlayStation was already eating its lunch, and all Microsoft had to show for it was a weaker console, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Forza Motorsport, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gears of War. Despite eventually having some excellent games that you couldn’t find anywhere ༒else and an enjoyable user experience at its core, Xbox couldn’t do much else during this console generation except try and catch up. And it ne🍬ver did.

Xbox has framed releasing major titles on rival plat💃forms as not wanting to restrict its games from players, but in reality, it’s a way to claw back investment however possible.

Spencer was the figurehead of exciting new initiatives like native backwards compatibility, the debut of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Game Pass, and a relentless streak of studio acquisitions that, at the time♈, felt like an exciting glimpse at the future. If things went well, Xbox would be unstoppable. I soon began to predict that he would waltz out on the E3 stage each year to say that Xbox’s slate of titles and studios was stronger than ever, and that there were more and more things worth looking forward to. In the context of those moments, I wanted to believe them, but years and years later, it feels like a hollow piece of marketing that has led to nothing but misfortune.

While the intention of building great teams and creating amazing games was always there, you can tell that Xbox never had a long-term vision for any of this. No amount of passion for the medium in a corporate environment can trump the desire for infinite profits, and Spencer is an executive who worked his way up from the bottom only to be met with an impossible task. He was calling the shots to an extent, only for his operation to come crashing down when ⛄Microsoft began giving unrealistic expectations that were never going to be met.

There was also no way for Xbox to predict how the industry was going to evolve. At first, you could assume it was getting in on the ground floor of service-based ecosystems, offering up a new way to release and fund triple-A titles without having to rely on blockbuster hits to stay afloat. But that strategy only works if Game Pass subscriptions continue to grow with time. As we quickly learned, they would begin to plat✅eau and leave triple-A titles with fewer and fewer means to break even.

Their value has been recontextualised through Game Pass, while millions of consumers would rather play Fortnite and Roblox than spend $60 on a huge RPG like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield. Cue multi-platform releases and a gradual abandonment of the exclusive strategy that used to be its bread-and-butter. Xbox slowly but surely dug its own grave, and Phil Spencer was at the centre of it, trying to tell us that everything was going to be okay and that all of t🀅hese games, which have now been cancelled, were going to turn out great.

Xbox Has Been Digging Its Own Grave For A Long, Long Time

Now, after investing literal billions on studio acquisitions it is now realising are likely never set to recoup investment, Xbox is left with devastatingly hard choices to make. Layoffs are being made across the board at Microsoft, but in my line of work, it’s hard not to notice the deluge of cuts at Xbox more than any other. Developers and titles we were once told had both the freedom and time to create to reach their full potential are being shutdown without remorse, and it’s heartbreaking to watch thousands of people looking for jobs while having to leave years of har༒d work behind because somebody above them lacked fundamental foresight.

Phil Spencer is a businessman first and a gamer second, and no matter how many studios he publicly visits and shows support for, if Microsoft demands that cuts be made and major projects be cancelled, he has no choice but to play ball and make those decisions. It frames moments of past honesty as outright lies that people have already begun to pick up on and share on social media, painting him as being a liar who has been leading us along this whole time. But the bigger picture is more complicated, and it’s partially our fault for believing that one person singing a poꦍsitive tune about an ailing platform wa🍒s enough to turn the tide.

Back in February,. That project has now been cancelled. It speaks to how quickly and dras🍃tically some of these choices were actually made.

No matter the corporation, treating a single executive who has been preached and pruned to deliver a positive message is something we should all have the willingness to overlook. It’s a business, and capitalism is always going to trump the interests of con🍌sumers, even if it means closing studios, cancelling projects, and laying off thousands who once believed in you.

That’s who I feel the most sympathy for here. Xbox has gathered more and more developers under its umbrella in recent years, promising them that they would have everything they ever needed to make their dream projects a reality. Imagine being someone who felt secure and had so much trust in their employer, only for things to fall apart like this. You can’t control the way an entire industry is go🍌ing to evolve or easily catch up to competitors de▨stined to eclipse you, but it feels like so many short-sighted choices were made to lead us to this point.

We shouldn’t put our faith in video game exﷺecutives, and Phil Spencer is no exception. No matter how many times Xbox decided to put him on stage and promise a bright future, such a reality was always going to depend on circumstances far beyond his control. Now, as we have to reckon with an uncertain road ahead, we need to change how such figures should be perceive🍎d. If we don’t, this could happen all over again.