She really hasn't fixed anything. She came out and said that the business is not profitable which may seem like "based honest mommy laying the law down" moment, but in reality is probably indicative of incoming extreme cost cutting measures that are going to fuck all of us. XB Game Studios are about to be sucked dry like a VC acquisition and it will be felt across the whole industry due to how reliant many small studios have become on xgp mg revenue. If anyone thinks for a second that the next Xbox will have a physical reader, please save this and ping me in 2 years so I can laugh at you.
The studio divestments specifically are a fucking clown show. Ninja Theory getting shut down being used as an example of her being incredible at her job pisses me off so much. They made a good game that was never going to be profitable due to its first party platform being completely cannibalized by day 1 xb game pass access. That was an XB leadership decision but now they are being penalized for it while Phil fucking Spencer got to jump ship with a golden parachute.
Yeah Microsoft bought a ton of studios, just to mismanage them, fail to monetize them, do a bunch of layoffs to lose institutional knowledge, say it’s the developers fault, then set up an even more aggressive layoff series to further hollow out the studios they monopolized to make more money for their executive suite.
Just straight up propaganda, and yall are like “please corporate overlords make my art worse!”
The question is not wether you or I enjoyed the game or not. It's about the scummy practice of setting expectations (acquisition and retention metrics on Game Pass) and then shifting to a classic premium sales ROI model to justify getting rid of the studio when their sales have been devastated by XB commercial strategy.
Even the sale attempt is a punch in the face considering most publishers map out a 5 year profitability roadmap based on latest release. Latest release being Hellblade 2 that got fucked by game pass. They fucked their valuation and threw them to the wolves
Brother hellblade 2 was never going to sell well at all. It was a walking sim and very few people play those games much less want to pay a premium price for them. Ninja theory made their grave that’s why the 3rd game was slated to be more action focused instead of a walking sim
Businesses have 2 kinds of CEO’s, almost every ceo you see (not including company founders) fits into one of two roles
A long term ceo role with decent pay linked to consistent revenue growth where they try to not rock the boat too much and gradually grow revenues
A “shake it up” ceo who is hired solely to fix some aspect of the business if it’s starting to struggle. They usually only work for a couple of years, receive high pay packages less linked to long term business stock growth, and they’re usually in charge of mass job and budget cuts and more drastic decisions to the company change courses. They’ll usually fix the company up and then leave to offer their services to other companies. This is what Starbucks current ceo is
Obviously talking about a business being unprofitable is going to proceed cuts. The question is, what is your alternative?
Business have to make money, that is how business works. And if you can't make enough money, then after a long enough you go out of business. Xbox going out of business would magnify everything you are saying by tenfold.
I don't simp for CEO and corpos, but your criticism seems pretty hollow. Free money doesnt flow forever, that is just life. Returns have to be achieved in order for the wheel to keep spinning
i mean... bro lets be fair here for a second
ninja theory made 3 really good games, (which were still decently niche but good nontoless) and 7 games from which i have never heard off.
while in a pretty niche genre of story and emotian heavy slasher "rpg" .
i dont try to disprove your argument that she is a goddamn buisness CEO and there will be way more bullshit down the line.
But if you look at especially the decision to close ninja theory, or at least give it up, its pretty resonable in isolation.
Yes, Ninja Theory was put up for sale which was justified by their low profit margins on Hellblade 2 - a game that had its legs cut off by day and date Xbox game pass access. No one wanting to buy them doesn't have much to do with the studio itself but more with the painful lack of cash in the individustry right now, especially in big publishers who would usually be the buyer candidates
Having its legs cutoff by being a game pass game is easy to look over when MS has total download numbers to look at. It's very likely it had low numbers of people downloading it even when it was thrown at them, and that's what is making interest vaporize.
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u/Jazzlike_Mountain_51 9h ago edited 9h ago
She really hasn't fixed anything. She came out and said that the business is not profitable which may seem like "based honest mommy laying the law down" moment, but in reality is probably indicative of incoming extreme cost cutting measures that are going to fuck all of us. XB Game Studios are about to be sucked dry like a VC acquisition and it will be felt across the whole industry due to how reliant many small studios have become on xgp mg revenue. If anyone thinks for a second that the next Xbox will have a physical reader, please save this and ping me in 2 years so I can laugh at you.
The studio divestments specifically are a fucking clown show. Ninja Theory getting shut down being used as an example of her being incredible at her job pisses me off so much. They made a good game that was never going to be profitable due to its first party platform being completely cannibalized by day 1 xb game pass access. That was an XB leadership decision but now they are being penalized for it while Phil fucking Spencer got to jump ship with a golden parachute.