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[Xbox] Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset

Topher said:
I'm more shocked that she signed "Asha and Matt" as much as anything. No true leader does shit like that.
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Yep this is loser mentality. You put someone else's name on your work when you want them to take all or part of the fall.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't M&As like ABK the reason Xbox found itself in such a bad state that they "had" to start going fully multiplatform? I don't think more M&As are going to work, at least of major 3P devs and pubs, considering almost all of them seem to enjoy their independence and given all the rampant layoffs over the years due to M&As, can't blame 'em.

Now OTOH, if this means what I first thought of when reading, that MS are going to pull an Apple and start designing their own silicon, now that's a different story. I mean, Nvidia are already doing that right? Architectures like RISCV are free to utilize, proven, and you can make your extensions proprietary if you wish. You get ARM-like thermals and battery life with at least as good of performance if not better, depending on how you engineer your silicon implementing the ISA.

Companies like MS would still be beholden to TSMC for fabbing, but they could have more control over the silicon design process itself and that directly benefits costs. It'd be a return to what companies like Sony did during PS1 & PS2 days; if you design good enough silicon you can probably get away with cheaper nodes and spin up your own fabs easier or have more options for fabbing besides just TSMC & maybe Samsung.

Also this part...
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I'd guess the M&A of ABK was a "careful what you wish" for situation. I'm sure the idea for the ABK acquisition was very similar to what Xbox did with ZeniMax and that was quickly tamped down by both regulators and Microsoft book keepers (you're spending how much?). Those intentions were as naive as thinking they added Donkey Kong to their catalogue when they purchased Rare.

Custom silicon like you described probably isn't the right move for anyone either and especially not the company with the smallest install base. Development is already expensive enough, multiplatform is a necessity for most games, and often cross generation compatibility as well. Going that route with Microsoft's other decisions would have led to even more games skipping the platform. It also doesn't solve the storage/memory problem everyone is facing today.
 
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jshackles said:
Yep this is loser mentality. You put someone else's name on your work when you want them to take all or part of the fall.
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Yikes! 😬

I bet she would take Matt's name off the memo if things were Great.
They only want the credit, but none of the responsibility. 😆
 
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I appreciate that she came in and acknowledged that things were completely effed up. Acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it.

I hope she does, having real competition would cause Sony to actually try rather than fart out Concord 2.
 
"a reliable pipeline of ..third-party exclusives"

I wonder what the crowd who spent years complaining about "slimy platform things" and how "xbox doesn't do that" think about this?
 
Cool more PR talk

tina fey eye roll GIF
 
There seems to be a broad assumption that Asha has been tasked with making the Xbox business a success.

Have you considered that maybe that's not what she's there for?

If Redmond set her the task of winding up the unprofitable console arm of Microsoft's business, this is pretty much what it would look like. To manage public sentiment, they need to be seen as trying to make a go of it in very tough market conditions. Messaging like this is designed to be leaked to the public.

100 days until 'we did our best but hard realities have to be faced'. The Xbox console business is already over.
 
Three said:
I wonder what the crowd who spent years complaining about "slimy platform things" and how "xbox doesn't do that" think about this?
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We knew all along it was just cope. This same crowd will just shift their narrative and tell us it's good business.
 
Loomy said:
You're going to have to expand on that.
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When you start off a statement saying

"Team,

Over the first 100 days together, we have started to revive XBOX."


You make your statement sound childish and cult like. And also wtf would any consumer give two shits about a trillion dollar corporations profitability margin. It's absolutely pathetic bringing that up in their statement as well.
 
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Three said:
"a reliable pipeline of ..third-party exclusives"

I wonder what the crowd who spent years complaining about "slimy platform things" and how "xbox doesn't do that" think about this?
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They'll remember that the GTA IV DLC exclusivity was pretty neat.
 
consoul said:
Messaging like this is designed to be leaked to the public.
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They skipped the middle man in this case and just posted it straight to news.xbox.com
 
DarkShadowXI said:
I thought this was a leaked memo to employees!

Jesus. What are they doing?
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Link was posted in the OP

I don't know what the fuck they're doing... and I suspect they don't either.
 
I don't expect a revolution from them until Helix.

That will be their big chance to truly revive the brand if done right. If they make ES6 and a new halo exclusive launch titles I know I would consider it if it isn't on PC at all.
 
German Shocks said:
At this point, MS needs to abandon Xbox and buy up Sega.
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They talk about M&A in this too but I'm not sure what they plan to buy. They ambiguously mention 'hardware', PC, mobile and 'vendors'. Could they be trying to buy up AMD? Is it vendors for gamepass as in studios? Or is it that rumour that they were trying to buy steam?

"We've become too reliant on vendors to operate our systems and must become more self-reliant as an engineering culture to build for the future. We must increase the value we ship to players while decreasing the time it takes to do so. Going forward, we'll evolve and rebuild our stack and look at capabilities across all of XBOX and potential M&A to help us win in hardware, PC, mobile, and streaming."
 
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Three said:
They talk about M&A in this too but I'm not sure what they plan to buy. They ambiguously mention 'hardware', PC, mobile and 'vendors'. Could they be trying to buy up AMD? Is it vendors for gamepass as in studios? Or is it that rumour that they were trying to buy steam?
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Or at least a deal?
No Helix means Valve/Steam lose a source of hardware. No hardware and the entire Store might as well crumble.
Maybe Valve made a phone call to MS? Psssst hey MS, you want to increase your userbase? Well we here at Valve need some hardware. Maybe we can come to some sort of deal.

At least that's how it goes in my dream scenario. Win win for me.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
When you start off a statement saying

"Team,

Over the first 100 days together, we have started to revive XBOX."


You make your statement sound childish and cult like. And also wtf would any consumer give two shits about a trillion dollar corporations profitability margin. It's absolutely pathetic bringing that up in their statement as well.
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So you see the part where it says "Team"?

That tells you that this was a memo emailed or sent through Teams, addressed to the Xbox Team. It's also why it was signed Asha & Matt, and not "Sincerely, Asha".

You shouldn't care about a trillion dollar company's financials. This memo wasn't for you.

But if you're the new CEO of a division within that company, and you just finished what I assume is an audit of that division, it's not outrageous to tell the team exactly what you found that was wrong with the division.

And Xbox is/was walking dead. If she thinks they've started to revive it, why not say it? The rest of this memo is bleak as fuck, why not open with some positivity?
 
Maybe they'll get rid of the folks responsible for the DEI stuff that is so massively hated here? Lol.

Or that shit that they shy away from curvy characters (which is an odd thing overall, because they do allow plenty games with that ).
 
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bender said:
I'd guess the M&A of ABK was a "careful what you wish" for situation. I'm sure the idea for the ABK acquisition was very similar to what Xbox did with ZeniMax and that was quickly tamped down by both regulators and Microsoft book keepers (you're spending how much?). Those intentions were as naive as thinking they added Donkey Kong to their catalogue when they purchased Rare.

Custom silicon like you described probably isn't the right move for anyone either and especially not the company with the smallest install base. Development is already expensive enough, multiplatform is a necessity for most games, and often cross generation compatibility as well. Going that route with Microsoft's other decisions would have led to even more games skipping the platform. It also doesn't solve the storage/memory problem everyone is facing today.
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What's interesting though is that MS already has a pretty big custom silicon division on the hyperscaler side working on ARM servers and AI (mostly inference) hardware.

It doesn't take a giant leap to tap that department for their expertise. Now, I don't think that will happen but if you think outside the box it's within a realm of possibility.

Also, damn at the scope of the hardware cost jump:

"When I joined as CEO in February, the price we paid for console storage components was over 2x as high as we paid last fall. These costs have since doubled again. And as we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase, taking us over 5x the prices we paid only two years earlier. Memory costs have followed a broadly similar trajectory."
 
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Hold on your butts devs your days are numbered. I can see a lot of studios closing or becoming smaller like a Beenox, High Moon and Raven. Sledgehammer may even get the hammer.
 
Elginer said:
Hold on your butts devs your days are numbered. I can see a lot of studios closing or becoming smaller like a Beenox, High Moon and Raven. Sledgehammer may even get the hammer.
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I don't see the problem with this. Jobs should be cut and studios should close. This is a money making business.
 
Reading this I'm once again reminded why I have all the corporate bullshit talkers including my whole leaderboard, and of course anything HR, on ignore in my company.
 
SEGAvangelist said:
I don't see the problem with this. Jobs should be cut and studios should close. This is a money making business.
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I agree. This is gonna sound cold and heartless but it's these people's jobs to not run a charity but a profitable business that makes money and pleases customers. For years it feels like Phil and company were just like meh do whatever the fuck you want with zero accountability until management from up above got on their ass and they'd hire a fire a few thousand button but never fix the actual issues. There are too many studios just blowing money not producing shit or just crap games. Time to clean house and make it a publisher that publishes top games.
 
When they see Halo knock it out of the park on a rival console and sell nothing on Xbox, they're going to either abandon their Xbox fanatics or dump GamePass.
 
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