Discussion summary
Discussions about Xbox's challenges highlight industry issues, retailer margins, and company decisions impacting Microsoft's gaming division.
What the discussion says
- Some believe industry crash is overdue and gaming isn't economically viable.
- Critics point to retailer margins and strategic missteps.
- Others express disappointment with Microsoft's handling of Windows and Xbox.
- A few mention the potential future of inExile and Clockwork Revolution.
“Microsoft has blown Windows and Xbox.”
“The industry crash has been long overdue.”
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- Hacker News
- > We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes.
This does sound quite reasonable actually.
Also, I think I didn't read "AI" anywhere, which is refreshing.
by steve1977 - The great thing about not making any money in a department is that all the money-hungry people flee the org, and people who are more invested in "doing things right" stick around. The bad news, of course, is that you're not making any money, which is bad for your long-term survival.by ambicapter
- “Resetting Xbox”
Gross and classless title. There was a time where people at least had the sense of shame to not do this kind of thing when firing people
by hbcdbff - Agreed, this is vile
- Yeah, it feels like a terribly inappropriate moment for a pun.by idk1
- Impacted non-studio dev here. It's a bloodbath like some of the leaks in the past few weeks have said. Many important platform/infra teams getting gutted, even in areas where there's supposedly a ton of future investment.by zzixp
- Thanks for sharing. I heard that ID also got gutted, from Scott Miller on X: https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/2074198967550685268
Is it true?
by markus_zhang - > We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes.
xbox-specific issues aside, this proposes an interesting view of the future of work.
by kristjansson - This is how well structured teams have worked for a long time.
It sounds pretty similar, for example, to team structure ideas proposed by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month from 1975.
by asveikau - Isn't this basically the same structure they currently use i.e. individual contributors, managers, and producers?by badprose
- I also notice the growing trend to have EM carry individual contributor duties, I thought it was mostly a consequence of using coding agents but perhaps it's not: the EM figure as we know might just be a consequence of the golden zirp times (do you remember the endless technical EM vs non-technical EM debates?)by gbrindisi
- I think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell.
South of Midnight took 7 years to make and cost $100 million to make... yet sold hardly any copies and I'm not even sure who they were trying to make it for.
Meanwhile you have studios like Sandfall and Warhorse pumping out games on a fraction of the budget that ship millions (and imho, make better games).
by ChocolateGod - > I think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell.
I mean, if you're assuming that Microsoft had a fully hands-off approach to managing these companies after buying them, then sure. It's not clear to me that you can make a compelling claim about whether the issues were from the bottom or the top just by looking at the final outputs.
by saghm - There's no sourcing for that South of Midnight number. You should treat it as fictional.by kevinh
- Millions of people played South of Midnight even if sales didn't reflect it. Xbox Game Pass has done a lot to make Xbox sales figures hard to compare.by WorldMaker
- Compulsion Games was also a strange acquisition / team to decide to put $100M + 7 years of trust into. They had two games by that point, neither with amazing reviews.by c-hendricks
- > We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes.
This is the new trendy management style - a few executive owners and then everyone else are expendable ICs, with almost no movement opportunity upwards. Only those on the Peter Thiel list or the equivilent among your private equity owners will be considered for key executive positions.
by taurath - What does Peter Thiel have to do with Xbox? Are we just saying things we don’t like?
- Give me a break. How many times has an IC complained about all the management layers to get something done? You can't have it both ways -- plenty of upward mobility, but no layers to the org.by mrcwinn
- Paying people less and replacing them with AI is the literal explicit strategy; I get that this was supposed to be a cynical comment but it's basically just factual.by catigula
- Sounds like an awful model for making a game if I understand the model correctly . Forget tight-knit, multidisplinary teams. Everyone's just a special cog to switch in and out from project to project, and laid off when we need a little bit better of an earnings call. Add in micromanagers and directors who need to have their fingers and every project (instead of focusing on the individual needs of a team and game), and you truly embrace the Microslop.by johnnyanmac
- Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates. I never played it very frequently so I disabled the sleep mode so it wouldn’t just stay on in my media cabinet heating my house. But of course that meant any time I spontaneously felt like using it there were 10 minutes of updates to download, so I would get annoyed and just do something else. Oh it can also play movies? Sorry movie night is ruined thanks to 30 minutes of downloading and installing updates. Eventually I just never turned it on again because all it did was download and install updates.
It really just killed all my interest in it because I couldn’t just turn it on and play a game unless I let it stay on all the time wasting energy and downloading constant updates in the background.
by nkrisc - While there are plenty of online updates on the switch, I never remember not being able to play a game without first running an update.by wodenokoto
- I've had the same experience with my PS5. It wouldn't even let me play 007 First Light a few weeks ago because it needed to update the system. Starting to wonder if I should/could just keep it offline to stop it from updating incessantly.by dom96
- It surprises me that there isn't simply an option to postpone the update for up to 12 hours until shutdown. I'd much rather let my system take 10 minutes to shutdown when I'm done than have to wait 10 minutes on startup before I can use it.
How often could they realistically have updates that seriously need to be installed ASAP? Especially if you're not even doing anything that requires going online.
by CivBase - This is what drove me to get a PS5. My xbox one would have 30 minute updates nearly every single night, and it doesn't allow you to access anything on the internet unless you let it do the updates. It was always inevitably at 7 or 8pm, when I'm trying to wind down after a day of work and just watch a show or a movie or something. It was a constant interruption to my daily routine - I like my shows before bed.
And then sometime in the last year and a half or so it became nearly unusable, constant crashes, poor performance, it was just such a constant pain in my ass. Feels like Microsoft just don't give a shit.
by Hugsbox - Same boat as you. It's wild that I can turn on the xbox, wait 20-30min for mandatory updates, then need to re-sign in or occasionally reset my wireless mac address due to some bug, then re-sign into my Xbox account even if I am fine playing offline but of course I forgot my password so now I'm on my phone doing 2FA to remember which email I used to reset the password.
Then I will need to update the game I want to play (somehow FIFA 23 still requires updates?), then re-sign in to EA whose password of course I also forgot so now I'm on my phone resetting my password for EA.
Now it's been 45minutes and I'm frustrated and realize I could have loaded up Steam or Switch and been playing this whole time. Not to mention that once the Xbox itself is working it will be running slower than the Nintendo Switch I own which is only about 2yr newer than it. just a bad system!
I legit got my old PlayStation 2 back up and running so I wouldn't deal with this. (sorry been needing to vent all this lmao)
by botanrice - What are the updates for, I wonder?
Video games, like all forms of art, are about stirring emotions. I don't own, nor have never owned an Xbox. But when I think of the device the first thing that comes to mind is "Microsoft" and "Windows". So I consider all the little beancounters and MBAs at Microsoft who are always optimizing for profit and that have made Windows nightmarish, and I imagine them with access to an "emotions machine" they can manipulate to make number go up, and can't help but think that the device is a pocket dimension of hell but more or less useless otherwise.
All said, in order for Microsoft to fix XBox, they will also need to fix the Windows desktop experience. Otherwise people will think "ouch, I don't want to buy a cousin of that creature. Better go for a Nintendo or Steam Deck or something..."
by dsign - > Reading this made me remember why I stopped playing my Xbox One: never-ending updates.
My experience with Steam is very similar (I don't have it run on startup because I like my PC to do other things from playing games).
Online updates really have ruined gaming for a lot of people.
Just like vinyl, humans seem to prefer a physical "thing" they pick up - put in the machine - and instantly have access to the "thing". It's simple, predictable, fixable (generally) and swapable. The digital revolution is not what we had hoped for...
by Flere-Imsaho
This is shockingly self-aware for microsoftIt is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studioby athorax