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Phil Spencer is Retiring and Sara Bond is Out bot there's something really worst than that

Miss You Goodbye GIF by MOODMAN
 
StereoVsn said:
This does not sound like an improvement.

"The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft's CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma."

Shit got bad but MS is hell bent on making them even worse.
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Leave it to Microslop to hire CoreSharma. I know Xbox struggled, but this ain't it, Chief.

sgU2az61Nbwn48HY.jpeg
 
Phil the Xbox slayer finally retires. What a wild ride the last 12 years have been. Plenty of fud, almost no good games and a strategy that would make a brain damaged chimpanzee proud.

Gamepass was the dumbest idea in the history of video games.
 
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Magic-DEI-Hire said:
Or there won't be any new hardware.
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That's where my money was at over 6 months ago.

At some point someone is gonna have to put their name and signature on a purchase order for those chips, and until then they can say anything they want, I won't believe it's coming out until I see it.
 
It only took them 10 years, but they finally did it.

I think first thing would be to cut gamepass out, or change it to a virtual console type thing. I can't see them putting games on it day 1 anymore.

I also doubt they'll do legacy hardware, prob tie-ins.
 
Gonzito said:
So he leaves and then someone worse comes to take his place

Fucking hell
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He didn't leave. No one "retires" on a Friday with a three day effective date. Dude was fired and they replaced him with people who will push AI. We're going to get some juicy stories from him and Bond in the future about what went down this week. I'm thinking the AI overloads at Microsoft and the two of them bumped heads about the way they are moving into the future.

ADiTAR said:
It only took them 10 years, but they finally did it.

I think first thing would be to cut gamepass out, or change it to a virtual console type thing. I can't see them putting games on it day 1 anymore.

I also doubt they'll do legacy hardware, prob tie-ins.
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Be careful what you wish for. I can always get worse and from how this played out it's definitely going to get worse.
 
RafterXL said:
Be careful what you wish for. I can always get worse and from how this played out it's definitely going to get worse.
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I didn't say it'll get better just what I expect to happen.

Xbox is dead. There's no reviving it without a gaming presence at the top. If they made Todd Harvard CEO I could see it changing.
 
T-0800 said:
Him wearing a Halo Infinite jacket makes it even funnier.
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So much Halo, like his jacket or on the screens behind booty and the new ceo. I used to be a die hard halo fan but it just comes off with a "hello fellow kids" vibe. Halo has barely felt relevant in years.
 
All depends if they follow thru with Magnus or not. Seems 50/50.


As far as Phil is corcernd ....... welp....ahhhh......
Could have been worse i guess....kind sorta....
 
ADiTAR said:
I didn't say it'll get better just what I expect to happen.

Xbox is dead. There's no reviving it without a gaming presence at the top. If they made Todd Harvard CEO I could see it changing.
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I expected Spencer to leave, sooner or later, but I thought Sarah Bond was going to be the next one in, her resigning and him giving the three day notice doesn't bode well for Xbox, that's for sure.
 
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Represent. said:
It's impossible to be worse than Phil SpendSir

Microsoft quite literally turned into a 3rd party publisher due to his immense, historical failures

They bought fucking Activision and still didn't move the needle at all. Just a completely irrelevant brand under SpendSirs watch.

She can't fail that bad. It's impossible. She will be better than him.
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Its a matter of optics.

I think Phil Spencer did a great job, helped them make plenty of good games, created market on diverse platforms (mobile is still a challenge, but he is more of a core gamer so can't expect everything).

I imagine nothing Xbox will do that can please some people. Which is a sad situation.

Personally I think xbox is going from strength to strength, their next gen system is going to be awesome piece of kit.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
You'll always get more respect for bosses who are both good with people and also know the product or system etc... So you might want to train people who at least have some direct experience with the role.

The best boss I ever was the one who wasnt just a good person (almost all my bosses are good people), but he also did my job in the past so he knew exactly what's involved to do it.

He was also the only boss I ever had who offered to just do something himself when all of us were bogged down because he knows how to do it too.... (Edit. Not true. I forgot another guy was similar. So two bosses ever)

You'll never get a boss getting the most respect from people who is inexperienced with the product or department no matter how good and chill they are. Worst boss I ever had was way back around 15 or so years ago. He became our finance director. He came from another dept. One of those cherry picked tapped on the shoulder guys. He's our direct finance boss and he didnt even know basic PL stuff like cost of goods (COGS). We all looked at each other in the room and was like WTF?
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She will have to prove herself like any manager would. But she's management with management experience, the rest she learn on the fly if shes isnt a dummy.
 
RafterXL said:
He didn't leave. No one "retires" on a Friday with a three day effective date. Dude was fired and they replaced him with people who will push AI. We're going to get some juicy stories from him and Bond in the future about what went down this week. I'm thinking the AI overloads at Microsoft and the two of them bumped heads about the way they are moving into the future.


Be careful what you wish for. I can always get worse and from how this played out it's definitely going to get worse.
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This

Some of her quotes about Ai are wild tbh, that little pr quote about "Ai slop" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Xbox communities because she's clearly deeply committed to it.

Crazy people think they promoted one of the heads of an ai division into CEO of Microsoft gaming but somehow ai won't be a substantial part of why? Lol
 
gametimedecision said:
This

Some of her quotes about Ai are wild tbh, that little pr quote about "Ai slop" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Xbox communities because she's clearly deeply committed to it.

Crazy people think they promoted one of the heads of an ai division into CEO of Microsoft gaming but somehow ai won't be a substantial part of why? Lol
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The man governing the publisher for Grand Theft Auto 6 does not play video games.

At this level it's not really that important what your hobbies are, just that line goes up.
 
So now that I've read more about this Asha Sharma woman, I'm almost rooting for her just to piss off the usual suspects. All the worst people you can imagine are losing their shit over her being a "natalist" and spewing the dumbest shit about it. Imagine calling the promotion of human reproduction "anti-trans". These people are so insufferable it makes the AI apocalypse seems like the better option.

gametimedecision said:
This

Some of her quotes about Ai are wild tbh, that little pr quote about "Ai slop" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Xbox communities because she's clearly deeply committed to it.

Crazy people think they promoted one of the heads of an ai division into CEO of Microsoft gaming but somehow ai won't be a substantial part of why? Lol
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Yeah, she's deep in the AI stuff. That quote was 100% "don't believe your lying eyes" to sooth the sheeple who will believe it, but Microsoft, as a whole, is so entrenched in the AI push that I believe that's why she was promoted to lead Xbox.
 
bighugeguns said:
The man governing the publisher for Grand Theft Auto 6 does not play video games.

At this level it's not really that important what your hobbies are, just that line goes up.
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It's not about her not playing games…that being said she has zero experience and is being given the almost impossible task of turning the Xbox brand around.

I'm more commenting on the people that think it's just a coincidence that they promoted someone from ai into Microsoft gaming…clearly that's going to be a big factor as to why.
 
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Phil did a lot of good for Xbox in the XB1 days. I am thankful for his time there and I think without him we probably wouldn't have even made it to the Series X. We were really close to seeing fully realized first party exclusives on great hardware but that got pulled right after ABK. Mistakes were made for sure, you have to wonder what might be different had that ABK money gone to something else and MS's AI push hadn't upended everything.


Even so, I think new blood is needed in leadership. Too much time spent stepping on rakes the past few years, regardless of who is really at fault for that. I'm not terribly optimistic, the first thing she did was promote Matt Booty so she doesn't seem to have great judgment but I'd love to be wrong.
 
gametimedecision said:
It's not about her not playing games…that being said she has zero experience and is being tasked with the almost impossible task of turning the Xbox brand around.

I'm more commenting on the people that think it's just a coincidence that they promoted someone from ai into Microsoft gaming…clearly that's going to be a big factor as to why.
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Let's meet in the middle and realise that AI tooling is becoming a thing, look at the integration into Unity, etc. Kind of stuff that will become standard wherever.

Screaming clanker apocalypse is reddit shit (ironic).
 
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I heard cockroachs survive nuclear explosions. Seeing they didn't get rid of Aaron Greenberg too in this move kinda proves it.

Bridges said:
Even so, I think new blood is needed in leadership. Too much time spent stepping on rakes the past few years, regardless of who is really at fault for that. I'm not terribly optimistic, the first thing she did was promote Matt Booty so she doesn't seem to have great judgment but I'd love to be wrong.
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She doesn't know the gaming division, their different teams, the 3rd party publishers, the competition, etc. so needs to have an experienced second who knows everybody to help her with all this. I think Booty can be a good choice for this.
 
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People who believe that current nepo-hired CEO from general management with zero creative experiene will make something better than Spencer are delulu to say the least.

Her job is to simply directly execute Nadella's will and targets wihtout obstacles, that's why she was demoted from AI Slop Central to sinking Gaming ship in the first place. Fake corporate smiles aside, she is basically an undertaker.
 
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Somewhat expected after amy hood basically blaming Xbox for the bad results during their latest financial quarter reports.

To me, it seems like phil and Sarah were both fired.

Asha seems to have been bought to realign Xbox financial results to what satya and hood want. I think job cuts, studio closure etc are very likely. I would not be suprised if they close down any studio that isn't making a certain percentage of profit. Hood wants her 30% margin and Xbox will have to shed blood to get to it and asha has been bought in as a Yes man to fulfill that. I don't think Asha will be there for long either. She has been bought in to correct a division with probably a promise of an actual promotion if she does it according to expectations. A trial period for her, if you will.

In the future, I think we will see a more lean Xbox, focused only on the popular money making ips.
 
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