I started out at the bottom of the totem pole. Over the last 20 years, I've climbed up the ladder enough to be the guy who has to deliver the news that the company is laying people off. It's really hard.
One thing I've learned along the way is that the C-Suite positions select for people who can put the value of the company over the livelihood of the employees. You have to be able to ignore and override your personal feelings and do whatever is needed to maximize company value.
Before retiring, I was in a senior leadership position in the military and I can relate to the difficulty of having to be the person to make tough, often unpopular choices. There were also many times where they weren’t even my decisions yet I nonetheless had to deliver the news due to my position. It fucking sucked looking people directly in the eyes while you’re telling them the last thing they want to hear.
But there’s a huge difference between telling hard truths, and being duplicitous. Spencer is carved from a culture that will spew bullshit to your face, bask in adulation from sycophants who praise him for his words, and relies on said sycophants to play defense when it comes to his actual deeds which have been what I would argue to be a net negative for gaming. Especially when compared to say, what J. Allard, Peter Moore, and Robbie Bach did during the Xbox and early Xbox 360 era. Even the red ring of death and being the only ones charging money for online multiplayer couldn’t stop the train back then because the games were that good!
When you are in a leadership position, it is important to be honest with the folks you lead. Trust is paramount. Never make promises you can’t keep. You can be simultaneously unpopular and yet still command respect. Phil Spencer doesn’t command respect because no one trusts him, as he keeps spewing empty platitudes and making broken promises year after year. He accepts lifetime achievement awards on the backs of others while whining and blaming external factors when he gets called out on failing to deliver tangible results. He is a walking, talking used-car-salesman stereotype, telling people what they want to hear in order to make a sale and not much beyond. The consequence is the entire Xbox division has remained in free-fall.
Shutting down Tango after basking in the achievements that development team earned is mind-boggling, and is a decision that can only be reached in a slimy, soulless, out-of-touch corporation led by wet farts for human beings equipped with jello in place of spines. The ultimate message from Microsoft is, even sales success followed by numerous awards and prestige most teams can only dream of will still get you shut down. Morale is undoubtedly worsened across all development studios under their umbrella. Absolutely dumb, but hey. Phil Spencer gets to keep his job! But people on Twitter are being mean, so his buddy Mike Ybarra is here to reassure us that Phil cares. lmao
, you can see how painfull it is for them, I can only imagine the type of pain there going through with the recent news. There real good people and know what there doing, I realy back them abd thank them for the monster console and Xbox showcase each yr showing me games that never release.
