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[StreetsofBeige]

Give Parsons credit for selling at the high.

He timed it perfectly selling in early 2022 when interest rates hadnt shot up yet, and he knew Sony would be desperate for a shooter studio since MS bought Activision. Around that time, Sony was also buying up other GAAS studios so he knew Sony had bottomless pockets.

It's been 3.5 years since the buyout and all that Bungie has done is a couple Destiny 2 DLC packs and stolen asset Marathon. Which got delayed to probably sometime in Q1 2026. So by the time it comes out, it'll be 4 years of D2 DLC.

$3.6B for that. And $1.2B was for employee retention fees that arent getting back. What you got left is $2.4B of asset value, which by now is worth pennies on the dollar. Everything has zoomed down the toilet and they dont even have their leader anymore to boot.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Marathon, Concord, and The Last of Us factions. Jim Ryan and Hulst are left looking like what they are: stupid idiots. XD

The karma of Japan Studio.

More GAAS than that. But LOU Factions 2 I think could had been a hit. Ok, if it's true ND claimed they couldnt support it as they are doing Intergalactic, thats fine. It seemed they had something up and running. Just get more people or another studio to work on it. So what if it's not a ND project.

Factions 1 was supposed to be good from what I heard and people love gritty shooters. Seems like a good match. But I guess Sony brass thought it'd bomb or maybe ND had a firm grip on it and didnt want anyone else working on it. Who knows.

The money has always been there. Sony had $3.6B for Bungie + all the other GAAS studios they bought up and games worked on.

So they spread themselves with a wide net, but made the decision Factions 2 wasnt worth pursuing. But some reason Concord, Fairgames, and any other shooter they have/had in development were green lit.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

Pete Parsons was the CEO of Bungie.

Justin Truman was the Chief Development Officer of Destiny 2.

 

[LordCBH]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

They can be happy at the mountains pulling in while also being unhappy about the reception to the new dlc and the plummeting daily play counts.

It won't stay as a top earner if they keep releasing updates that cause player counts to drop.

 

[Timberwolf25]

Pete Parsons was the CEO of Bungie.

Justin Truman was the Chief Development Officer of Destiny 2.

Sony letting go of the CEO, doesn't give me the vibe they were happy with a product under that CEO.
Rather, they're promoting someone within the company that they think will give them the control they want. If they were to bring someone from completely outside of Bungie, there would be even more backlash than they are already getting.

Good to have you back as noone can spin the GAAS push like you can.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

By now, Bungie should be integrated into PS Studios, and with a good cleanup of the studio's executives, it's a start.

This should've happened straight-away.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Sony letting go of the CEO, doesn't give me the vibe they were happy with a product under that CEO.
Rather, they're promoting someone within the company that they think will give them the control they want. If they were to bring someone from completely outside of Bungie, there would be even more backlash than they are already getting.

Good to have you back as noone can spin the GAAS push like you can.

Gamers need to stop thinking any of these companies care about "gamer backlash".

It's not real.

If Sony wanted to hire from outside of Bungie, they could have with no issues whatsoever. Instead, they hired a prominent developer inside the Destiny 2 team.

 

[Timberwolf25]

Gamers need to stop thinking any of these companies care about "gamer backlash".

It's not real.

If Sony wanted to hire from outside of Bungie, they could have with no issues whatsoever. Instead, they hired a prominent developer inside the Destiny 2 team.

Gamer backlash not real....that's some next level spin even from you.

Concord cancelled and refunded and Marathon delayed are just some recent examples of gamer backlash being very much real.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Sony doesnt need Pete Parsons anymore. Marathon is going to be either cancelled, or ship in the next 6 months with last minute tweaks and art changes. Are there more D2 DLC coming? Not sure. Maybe.

Either way, no need for Pete to be around anymore given the amount of work remaining and how things how tanked since acquisition.

Bungie will be disbanded when either D2 DLC or Marathon fizzles out as their last content worked on.

Unless Sony is suddenly Santa Claus, there is no way Bungie is getting green lit for any more big projects. Sony even transitioned some Bungie people into a new SIE studio to work on a new game instead of leaving it as a Bungie badged game. So you can see Sony brass has no confidence in giving Bungie more new projects. Just work on what you got in the hopper and that's it.

It's like a car plant. As soon as the current car models are done being made in 3 years, the plant shuts down. Any new car projects go to other plants.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Gamer backlash not real....that's some next level spin even from you.

Concord cancelled and refunded and Marathon delayed are just some recent examples of gamer backlash being very much real.

Concord would have flopped without the gamer backlash.

Marathon would have been delayed without the gamer backlash.

These companies look at real metrics to inform them, not what gamers say online.

I can assure you, nobody would care if PlayStation promoted somebody outside of Bungie to take Pete Parsons place. That's only something. 0000001 percent of gamers even knows about, much less cares about.

 

[diffusionx]

Give Parsons credit for selling at the high.

He timed it perfectly selling in early 2022 when interest rates hadnt shot up yet, and he knew Sony would be desperate for a shooter studio since MS bought Activision. Around that time, Sony was also buying up other GAAS studios so he knew Sony had bottomless pockets.

It's been 3.5 years since the buyout and all that Bungie has done is a couple Destiny 2 DLC packs and stolen asset Marathon. Which got delayed to probably sometime in Q1 2026. So by the time it comes out, it'll be 4 years of D2 DLC.

$3.6B for that. And $1.2B was for employee retention fees that arent getting back. What you got left is $2.4B of asset value, which by now is worth pennies on the dollar. Everything has zoomed down the toilet and they dont even have their leader anymore to boot.

Parsons took advantage of a desperate idiot (Jim Ryan) flailing about looking for anything to bolster their live service credentials and cash flow. Yea give him credit for that. I wonder if he knew that they were about to shit the bed with Destiny 2 (I forget what the expansion was) and Marathon was rudderless.

 

[diffusionx]

Concord would have flopped without the gamer backlash.

Marathon would have been delayed without the gamer backlash.

These companies look at real metrics to inform them, not what gamers say online.

I can assure you, nobody would care if PlayStation promoted somebody outside of Bungie to take Pete Parsons place. That's only something. 0000001 percent of gamers even knows about, much less cares about.

what "real metrics" did these experts miss that led to them thinking releasing Concord was a good idea. The game literally had no audience. I've never seen anything like it. Even gaas flops that have come out at least have some inkling of interest right away.

It's not like there weren't warning signs. The open beta was a dud.

Sometimes the people running these companies actually are that dumb.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Parsons took advantage of a desperate idiot (Jim Ryan) flailing about looking for anything to bolster their live service credentials and cash flow. Yea give him credit for that. I wonder if he knew that they were about to shit the bed with Destiny 2 (I forget what the expansion was) and Marathon was rudderless.

I dont think anyone saw it coming, that D2 would fall off a cliff and Marathon had stolen art. So I'll give him benefit of the doubt he didnt see those failing so hard.

 

[diffusionx]

I dont think anyone saw it coming, that D2 would fall off a cliff and Marathon had stolen art. So I'll give him benefit of the doubt he didnt see those failing so hard.

Well obviously Jimbo didn't, I am saying did Parsons see the storm clouds brewing.

 

[hemo memo]

Dude has been Bungie CEO for almost a decade and with Bungie for over two decades. What the hell is happening!

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

what "real metrics" did these experts miss that led to them thinking releasing Concord was a good idea.

Not sure, but their entire system is set up to course correct and learn from mistakes.

The "gamer outrage" people don't have the burden of learning.

 

[yurinka]

If they're happy with Destiny 2, why get rid of the studio head?

Maybe they didn't get rid of the studio head: maybe the studio lead wanted to sell the company and leave once his personal retention deal allowed him to do so. Something that is pretty common.

Or maybe got rid of him because despite Destiny 2 performing great and seeing good potential in Marathon, Destiny Rising, gummy bears or the WIP off-gaming adaptations of Bungie IPs weren't happy of parts related to his management:

• Destiny:
  • Maybe Lightfall wasn't as good as desired
  • The Final Shape got an important delay causing them a big miss on estimates
  • Maybe they expected some Destiny 3 or Destiny spinoffs progress they aren't achieving
  • Maybe they expected some Destiny off-gaming adaptations progress they aren't achieving
• Marathon:
  • Maybe had more delays they considered ok
  • The first closed alpha feedback wasn't as good feedback as desired even if they are confident that will improve it enough
• Incubation projects:
  • Maybe gummy bears looks promising but was having some management issues and wasn't originally considered to move it away from Bungie
  • Maybe expected good progress in additional incubation projects that didn't happen, and the other incubation projects weren't promising enough
• General management:
  • Maybe the Bungie results are great but not as good as in the goals that Bungie and Sony agreed in the acquisition, mostly caused due to delays
  • Maybe the amount of key staff that Sony was aiming to retain after the retention bonus period was higher than what they achieved when completed
  • Art plagiarism happened again, showing they didn't have enough control
  • Maybe his personal vision about Bungie's future doesn't agrees enough with the one SIE has for them, which pretty likely is the one they agreed in the acquisition
  • Despite SIE making a great progress in their GaaS push (4 big hits in 5 years, making 40% of their first party revenue) maybe mostly Bungie delays caused them to be a bit behind schedule/targets
  • Maybe management of projects and staff in Bungie was too messy compared to SIE standards even if got fixed/are fixing it
  • Maybe as part of the SIE cost reduction, streamlining and profitability optimization Hermen thought it's better to put Bungie just as another PlayStation Studios team to further reduce costs and Pete doesn't agree

There are tons of possible 'maybes' and 'ifs', none of them confirmed, but likely.

But well, having worked several years in big AAA game corportate I think most of these potential issues are relatively minor and common ones, not the ones that make them fire the CEO of a studio, and even less their most successful studio.

I think the most likely scenario is that he simply wanted to sell the company and leave after his retention period was complete to enjoy the money.

The karma of Japan Studio.

The restructuring of Japan Studio has been super successful:

• Their internal development team, leaded by who was the Japan Studio head before the restructuring, released their most successful internally developed game ever (greenlighted by Hermen Hulst and Jim Ryan), got super high reviews and won a ton of awards
• Their XDEV team has been very successful expanding to handle also non-Japanese Asian games, and did a great job releasing since the restructuring Death Stranding Director's Cut, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding 2, signed Physint and Marvel Tokon, and soon will release Lost Soul Aside and Convallaria
• Both halfs of Japan Studio got with the restructuring a new and bigger office in the same building where they were with the idea of helping them to grow in manpower, but Team Asobi decided to reduce or delay their growth plans and be more conservative

 

[MayauMiao]

Marty O'Donnell on Pete Parsons.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

I dont think anyone saw it coming, that D2 would fall off a cliff and Marathon had stolen art. So I'll give him benefit of the doubt he didnt see those failing so hard.

I did even before Sony bought this trainwreck. ANYONE should see it. Bungie was a dying company, there were lot of public reports on it and even without them, you could tell just by their trajectory and where they were heading.

What SIE did should be investigated by headquarters, because I'm not believing for a second that purchase was made on good faith.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Not sure, but their entire system is set up to course correct and learn from mistakes.

The "gamer outrage" people don't have the burden of learning.

There's a difference between learning from honest mistakes, or trying to fix things out of a company's control vs a corporation going ape shit blowing the budget on a million new GAAS studios and games all at once. And it's not like these are modest budgets dabbling to get their feet wet. It's diving into the deep end at massive budgets.

Absolutely no different than a guy with money playing stocks and puts all his newfound wad of cash on all volatile tech and no name penny stocks hoping one becomes an NVDA 50-bagger.

Do that strategy and you're likely going to lose big.

That's not learning. That's being stupid. Even most beginner stock players aren't so reckless. And Sony is a big company that does well with SP games and partnering up with studios at the beginning. They've done well with a certain strategy knowing what games or stock sectors to play. Not going hog wild buying up endless studios with high budget projects in a 2 year span hoping for the next Fortnite. That's not honest learning. That's greed and stupidity.

 

[amigastar]

I call it the pete parsons project

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I did even before Sony bought this trainwreck. ANYONE should see it. Bungie was a dying company, there were lot of public reports on it and even without them, you could tell just by their trajectory and where they were heading.

What SIE did should be investigated by headquarters, because I'm not believing for a second that purchase was made on good faith.

Fair point.

I wasn't close to bungie info. So when I heard D2 sales dropped like a rock, they were in the red, and supposedly if Sony didn't buy them out they might belly up I was surprised.

I thought D2 was a giant money maker, and with success from Halo and Destiny they would had built big corporate coffers by now. Who knew their financial footing was actually that crappy after over 20 years of Halo and Destiny.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There's a difference between learning from honest mistakes, or trying to fix things out of a company's control vs a corporation going ape shit blowing the budget on a million new GAAS studios and games all at once. And it's not like these are modest budgets dabbling to get their feet wet. It's diving into the deep end at massive budgets.

You don't have access to PlayStations budget for their GAAS initiative, so you assume the number is (way) higher than it actually is.

Absolutely no different than a guy with money playing stocks and puts all his newfound wad of cash on all volatile tech and no name penny stocks hoping one becomes an NVDA 50-bagger.

I can assure you PlayStation runs business far differently than your straw man here.

Do that strategy and you're likely going to lose big.

But their 2023 and 2024 financials show they did the opposite. They didn't lose big, they won big.

That's not learning. That's being stupid. Even most beginner stock players aren't so reckless. And Sony is a big company that does well with SP games and partnering up with studios at the beginning. They've done well with a certain strategy knowing what games or stock sectors to play. Not going hog wild buying up endless studios with high budget projects in a 2 year span hoping for the next Fortnite. That's not honest learning. That's greed and stupidity.

No, they're learning.



What's stupid is not understanding the gaming market in 2025 looks vastly different than the gaming market of 2010. Players have significantly different preferences today.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

You don't have access to PlayStations budget for their GAAS initiative, so you assume the number is (way) higher than it actually is.


I can assure you PlayStation runs business far differently than your straw man here.


But their 2023 and 2024 financials show they did the opposite. They didn't lose big, they won big.



No, they're learning.



What's stupid is not understanding the gaming market in 2025 looks vastly different than the gaming market of 2010. Players have significantly different preferences today.

Lol.

As for your final paragraph at the bottom, that's how life always is.

That's why you don't gamble everything into one stock or sector because things change.

Sonys gaas push was so crazy, not only did they go ape shit buying bungie fir $3.6B, concord and a ton of other projects and studios, but it seems like almost all their gaas people know about or seem are shooters too. There's other kinds of gaas types of games. But again, Sony all eggs into the shooter basket too.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Lol.

As for your final paragraph at the bottom, that's how life always is.

That's why you don't gamble everything into one stock or sector because things change.

They didn't. All of their successful single player studios started development on new SP games. People just don't like to admit that most of them released projects from 2017 - 2021 and games now take 5+ years to make, so a drought was always expected.

Sonys gaas push was so crazy, not only did they go ape shit buying bungie fir $3.6B, concord and a ton of other projects and studios, but it seems like almost all their gaas people know about or seem are shooters too. There's other kinds of gaas types of games. But again, Sony all eggs into the shooter basket too.

And yet, when you look at the top played games on Steam and XBL, most of them are shooters.

Also worth noting that Gummy Bears and Media Molecules next game will likely not be shooters. So 25% of their future GAAS won't be shooters.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

It was Hermen and Jim Ryan who pushed hard for the acquisition. What happened to organic growth?

What was objectively wrong with the acquisition at the time?

D2 was booming and it's even on record that Bungie execs intentionally misled Sony:

Bungie leadership reportedly 'overstated studio's financial prospects' to Sony, leading to need for layoffs

Following yesterday's mass layoffs at Destiny 2 developer Bungie - in which 220 employees lost their jobs - a new repor…

www.eurogamer.net

Jim and Herman had no idea LightFall was going to be such a shit show. Up until Lightfall, Destiny 2 had the highest engagement, player numbers and financials that the studio had seen since the launch of the game.

How is that on Jim and Herman, and not on the Bungie leadership that lied to them?

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Maybe they're not incompetent if they're multibillion dollar companies?

Xbox is a multibillion dollar company and there is no objective argument that Spencer and co are not insufferably incompetent.

They shat their entire Xbox console platform business down the shitter. The only reason they still make multiple billions in revenue is because they bought Bethesda and Activision.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Concord was canceled early September so technically Marathon could be canceled in the same year. Don't give up hope yet!

To be clear, Concord wasn't canceled. It was released and was so awful it had to be shut off and refunded. You can't cancel something that already came out, you can just work to try and erase it out of existence. It would've been far easier to cancel after the beta. They certainly had all the internal data to suggest that would've been the wiser thing to do. But, hubris and arrogance.

I don't think you could describe the entire Concrod story as anything other than purely catastrophic as far as video game launches go. No other words fully illustrate how bad that really was. It was so awful that it wasn't redeemable.

 

[rkofan87]

Bring in Rod Ferguson to ship Marathon.

he is sadly messing up Bioshock 4.

Cloud Chamber Faces Layoffs as Rod Fergusson Takes Over BioShock 4 Development - Gaming Amigos

BioShock 4 faces layoffs at Cloud Chamber as Rod Fergusson takes over as studio head, aiming to steer the troubled project back on track.

www.gamingamigos.com

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Xbox is a multibillion dollar company and there is no objective argument that Spencer and co are not insufferably incompetent.

They shat their entire Xbox console platform business down the shitter. The only reason they still make multiple billions in revenue is because they bought Bethesda and Activision.

Why hasn't Satya Nadella fired Phil Spencer for "insufferable incompetence"?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

They didn't. All of their successful single player studios started development on new SP games. People just don't like to admit that most of them released projects from 2017 - 2021 and games now take 5+ years to make, so a drought was always expected.

And yet, when you look at the top played games on Steam and XBL, most of them are shooters.

Also worth noting that Gummy Bears and Media Molecules next game will likely not be shooters. So 25% of their future GAAS won't be shooters.

And if they funneled their bottomless pockets in 2019-2022 into more SP games instead of GAAS push buying up no-name studios and Bungie and even a mobile company Neon Koi, they'd be releasing more SP games around this time. Not Concord, Marathon, and Fairgames. They'd have more games released around now if these GAAS games/studios werent cancelled, shut down or delayed.

Absolutely not true most top played games are shooters. Top 20. Steam has 7, but their ranking doesn't include Roblox or Minecraft or Fortnite which are top played games (would be 8 if games 18/19/20 are bumped off). PS has 8 (1 is BF6 demo), so really it's 7. Xbox has 5.

If you look at the games, it's basically 1 shooter per company. Maybe 2. Sony shotgunning a ton of shooters around the same time hoping they stick is a recipe for disaster. Even H2 doesn't chart top 20 anymore.

Lots of other kinds of games on their lists. Not everything has to be a shooter.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Why hasn't Satya Nadella fired Phil Spencer for "insufferable incompetence"?

Because it would reflect badly on him too.

He'd rather obfuscate and pretend Phil is doing well then promote him.

 

[Melter]

Alright, I'm just gonna say it: fuck destiny, that game was mediocre at best.

And we should have expectations for game studios to make NEW games instead of rehashing existing IPs for decades on end.

 

[simpatico]

Dude has been Bungie CEO for almost a decade and with Bungie for over two decades. What the hell is happening!

He was a Microsoft advertising guy who basically did an internal hostile takeover coup of Bungie. Forcing out any senior creatives who were still there. If someone ever wanted to "fix" Bungie, getting rid of Parsons would be step 1.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

They'd have more games released around now if these GAAS games/studios werent cancelled, shut down or delayed.

This is short term thinking. The goal of a corporation isn't to release "more games". It's to set themselves up for more revenue & profit long term.

PlayStation already had a slew of lukewarm commercial games from established SP studios (Rift Apart, Days Gone, Returnal, Demons Souls Remake, Sackboy, Knack).

Throwing more money at a capped market, just isn't logical. PlayStation correctly identified where the tide is going and knew they had to figure out GAAS. This GAAS machine they're creating is going to serve them for a long time.

Absolutely not true most top played games are shooters. Top 20. Steam has 7, but their ranking doesn't include Roblox or Minecraft or Fortnite which are top played games (would be 8 if games 18/19/20 are bumped off). PS has 8 (1 is BF6 demo), so really it's 7. Xbox has 5.

Lots of other kinds of games on their lists. Not everything has to be a shooter.

If you're not counting games like Rust and GTA Online as shooters, then we really have no idea what the composition of PlayStations future GAAS titles look like. Guerrillas Horizon co-op and NCSofts Horizon MMO would already bring PlayStations future GAAS output to ~50% shooters, which aligns with what the market already craves.

I don't think a lack a variety here is a valid complaint.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Because it would reflect badly on him too.

He'd rather obfuscate and pretend Phil is doing well then promote him.

So it reflects poorly on Satya Nadella for keeping Phil Spencer...and it would reflect poorly on Satya Nadella for firing Phil Spencer.

Seems like you set up the perfect system to always be right. Congratulations.

 

[phant0m]

Is Jones still around at all, or does he just sit at the top of the Bungie tower as "head of creative" and wax poetic?

 

[FeastYoEyes]

So is there any evidence that he was fired or did he just quit because he had enough?

 

[adamsapple]

Concord would have flopped without the gamer backlash.

This is you last year.

Here's what going to happen. Concord will struggle at $40 dollars. ThE iNtErNeT will do their predictable victory parade despite not understanding GAAS. It'll go F2P, then 3 years later they'll Tweet out about the new Freegunner and mode coming with their Season 11 update. It will generate more money than Stellar Blade and Astro Bot combined. It's just not going to happen right away.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This is you last year.

Do you think there are batters that hit 1,000?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Do you think there are batters that hit 1,000?

No batters bat 1.000.

But to be fair, that Concord prediction wasnt a close call.

We've all struck out before (I remember making a prediction on the old Yahoo Finance stock chats that iPods would sell lousy when Apple was tanking back then). But that Concord guess was a wild swing and a miss strikeout on that one.

(If I remember correctly I think I said Apple would be lucky to sell 1M iPods. I googled it and it says they sold.... 450M!)

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Xbox is a multibillion dollar company and there is no objective argument that Spencer and co are not insufferably incompetent.

They shat their entire Xbox console platform business down the shitter. The only reason they still make multiple billions in revenue is because they bought Bethesda and Activision.

There never was/ currently isn't room for three dominant hardware formats that all do the same thing. No matter what, one of the three will lose out. Nintendo held that spot in home consoles for a while (GameCube, Wii U), Sony had their turn (PS3), Xbox is the latest (One, Series). The unprecedented success of the PS4 and the Switch has only accelerated that. There's never been a reason for three dominant hardware formats, and everything's so expensive and competitive now, and Xbox costs so much money for Microsoft to maintain as a business pillar, they're just being put in this impossible position. I really don't see how they get out of this, other than just giving up.

At least on the hardware front.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Three
Point
Six
Billion
Dollars

We'll probably never know exactly how poor the ROI was on this acquisition for Sony, but it's hard to imagine anything else in the gaming industry coming close.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

So it reflects poorly on Satya Nadella for keeping Phil Spencer...and it would reflect poorly on Satya Nadella for firing Phil Spencer.

Seems like you set up the perfect system to always be right. Congratulations.

No... genius.

From out outsiders perspective looking in, it reflects poorly on him for not firing Phil, or for even hiring the twerp in the first place, given that Phil was Mattrick's right hand man during the Xbone days.

From the perspective of the MS board or investors that don't understand the gaming market and only understand financials, Satya can look good by obfuscating the rot through creative reporting. Whereas, if he fired Phil and the whole Xbox executive team, not only would it look bad to that group but it would reflect badly on him again for hiring them.

It's easy to understand when you have at least some brain cells and aren't a rabbit xbot.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

There never was/ currently isn't room for three dominant hardware formats that all do the same thing. No matter what, one of the three will lose out. Nintendo held that spot in home consoles for a while (GameCube, Wii U), Sony had their turn (PS3), Xbox is the latest (One, Series). The unprecedented success of the PS4 and the Switch has only accelerated that. There's never been a reason for three dominant hardware formats, and everything's so expensive and competitive now, and Xbox costs so much money for Microsoft to maintain as a business pillar, they're just being put in this impossible position. I really don't see how they get out of this, other than just giving up.

At least on the hardware front.

Horseshit!

In the PS3 generation Sony and MS both sold over 80m units and could have done much more if PS3 had a stronger start and the 360's momentum wasn't allowed to stall leading up to the launch of Kinect. That same gen had Nintendo with the Wii.

It was the single largest console generation of all time in terms of console sales. That gen, Sony and MS's console offerings were the closest and the least differentiated that they've ever been.

Both Sony and Nintendo have continued their success since then. Only MS have floundered and not because they offered something too similar to Sony. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They flounderd because they stopped offering what Sony was, i.e. excellent first party games that differentiate and give consumers a reason to buy their platform.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

No... genius.

From out outsiders perspective looking in, it reflects poorly on him for not firing Phil, or for even hiring the twerp in the first place, given that Phil was Mattrick's right hand man during the Xbone days.

From the perspective of the MS board or investors that don't understand the gaming market and only understand financials, Satya can look good by obfuscating the rot through creative reporting. Whereas, if he fired Phil and the whole Xbox executive team, not only would it look bad to that group but it would reflect badly on him again for hiring them.

It's easy to understand when you have at least some brain cells and aren't a rabbit xbot.

So instead of firing Phil Spencer and finding a better CEO for MS Gaming (something that happens all the time at big corporations), Satya Nadella obfuscates the financials in order to keep Spencers "insufferable incompetence" hidden from the board of directors?

Why would you know more about this stuff than the people who are literally paid to sniff out inefficiencies from the CEO position? What metrics do you have access to that the board doesn't?

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

So instead of firing Phil Spencer and finding a better CEO for MS Gaming (something that happens all the time at big corporations), Satya Nadella obfuscates the financials in order to keep Spencers "insufferable incompetence" hidden from the board of directors?

Sure he does!!

When was the last time they gave console sales numbers or even fucking sell-in numbers?

When was the last time they reported on boxed game sales of first party titles? They don't because they know they're shit, because they've conditioned the userbase to not pay for anything and wait for its release on GamePass (a service that vast swathes of the userbase bought decades of subs in advance for $1 per year).

Why would you know more about this stuff than the people who are literally paid to sniff out inefficiencies from the CEO position?

Because I'm a gamer with eyes and ears and I can see clearly how they've shat the Xbox platform down the shitter. They literally have to launch all their FP games on their competitor's platform because otherwise they would not be able to earn enough on those projects to make a return on investment.

You don't need to be an expert to see gross incompetence. You just need to have common sense.

Heck, even insiders like SneakersSO here on Gaf has spilled the beans on much of the behind the scenes goings on at Xbox and how grossly incompetent Spencer is. So that represents second hand testimony of people who actually work at Xbox who are leaking that shit to folks like Sneakers.

What metrics do you have access to that the board doesn't?

Like MS own financials and third-party sales data.... you know... all the shit we discuss to death here on NeoGaf.

You literally have to be a raging fanboy loon to take the position that Xbox's leadership is not grossly incompetent at this point... don't die on that hill, fam. Even the most ardent Xbots on Twitter have long since abandoned that ship.

 

[L*][*N*K]

Soon everyone else will follow

 

[Timberwolf25]

WTH?!? Since when is Men_in_Boxes a Xbox fanboy?
If anything, the dude is a true believer in GAAS, but an Xbox fanboy? I never got that impression.

 

[joey Dubs]