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Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella says the company is ‘very, very much focused on gaming’

GymWolf

Member
If they weren’t woke before M$ bought them they sure as heck will be after HR and the diversity and inclusion committee and trust and safety council have taken them behind the bike sheds and given them a good kicking.

And if you look up Corporate Wokeness there is a picture of Halo and Bonnie Ross smiling back at you. Everything they make is going to be *exactly like that*.
We can only wait and see, i'm usually the pessimistic guy in the room, but they really have a tons of studios now, the chance of ALL their work being woke is very low even just for a matter of statistic and probability.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Oh shut up you moron. Do you not see the difference between some underling saying they take it seriously and the fucking CEO of Microsoft? Nadella was lukewarm on everything Xbox at the start but now he greenlights a 7.5B acquisition. That's really all that needs to be said.


You cant tell me what to do, your not my mom. So I'm guessing you bought a Windows phone then after Microsoft spent billions on Nokia over its promise of a superior mobile experience before they released any of the apps on the Windows store?

Didn't think so... moving on "moron"
 
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Ricky_Bee

Banned
We can only wait and see, i'm usually the pessimistic guy in the room, but they really have a tons of studios now, the chance of ALL their work being woke is very low even just for a matter of statistic and probability.

It’s not a matter of probability. They genuinely have compliance departments to make sure all their output is Anita approved.

If they make something that isn’t woke then someone literally isn’t doing their job.
 
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Wizz-Art

Member
Q05SDAX.gif
 

Jokerevo

Banned
Yeah they're so focused on games they forgot to ensure the XsX had a kick ass launch game or in fact any flagship game, literally anything. You're supposed to plan ahead but instead we're what, 2 or 3 years away from anything meaningful? The planning should have started 5 years ago but MS has no clue even though they could look at the 360 era....
 

Ricky_Bee

Banned
Yeah they're so focused on games they forgot to ensure the XsX had a kick ass launch game or in fact any flagship game, literally anything. You're supposed to plan ahead but instead we're what, 2 or 3 years away from anything meaningful? The planning should have started 5 years ago but MS has no clue even though they could look at the 360 era....

I find it really hard not to assume that Microsoft’s corporate culture has systematically weeded out toxically masculine traits like shipping product and making cool shit and replaced then with diversity focus groups and consensual ostracisation.

There is no product differentiation there. If you think Sony are too competent and their institutional bigotry against men and white people isn’t sufficiently soulless and codified then maybe Microsoft will have some edutainment software for you in fall 2025! If the decolonialisation working group has finished cat fighting by then!
 
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MS is so clueless sometimes.

They keep parroting this "3 billion gamers worldwide" dribble, but it's pure horseshit from the perspective of a company who exists only in a tiny fractional subset of the wider gaming market.

There aren't 3b people playing games on consoles. Nor are there 3b people being served games by the major gaming publishers and developers making games for consoles and PC.

A prevailing majority of those "3 Billion Gamers" are purely mobile device and shitty web browser game players; totally inaccessible for a company like MS.

This is like saying there are 5 billion cinema moviegoers in the world, so we're going to serve them with a movie streaming service that's only available in the US.
 

Andodalf

Banned
MS is so clueless sometimes.

They keep parroting this "3 billion gamers worldwide" dribble, but it's pure horseshit from the perspective of a company who exists only in a tiny fractional subset of the wider gaming market.

There aren't 3b people playing games on consoles. Nor are there 3b people being served games by the major gaming publishers and developers making games for consoles and PC.

A prevailing majority of those "3 Billion Gamers" are purely mobile device and shitty web browser game players; totally inaccessible for a company like MS.

This is like saying there are 5 billion cinema moviegoers in the world, so we're going to serve them with a movie streaming service that's only available in the US.

Gee, if only MS had thought to try and expand their gaming platform to mobile!
 
They need time to show something from all the new studios.

People forget that stuff like horizon, gow, days gone etc was in the oven for 5-6 years before release.

Do you want big single player quality games? You need to wait, development time for big stuff it's not gonna get shorter any time soon.

That's true but let's also be fair here; Sony purchased Insomniac in 2018 and yet that studio managed to get a new DLC of Miles Morales and a full remaster of the PS4 Spiderman done in two years, and they have
a really impressive Ratchet & Clank game coming early next year on top of all of that.

It's not just about time, it's also about studio efficiency. And seeing that 343i, MS's studio behind their marquee IP, had over five years and still dropped the ball for being on time for their new console launch, it's a really bad look by comparison. Realistically we should have multiple 1P games from MS in 2021 to count on, not just Halo Infinite. Some of those studios were purchased in 2018, too, and had projects in stages of development.

If those games were at some point meant to be multiplat then I think MS should or should've figured a way of waiving those contracts because the Xbox ecosystem needs as many compelling exclusives for 2021 as it can get.

If they weren’t woke before M$ bought them they sure as heck will be after HR and the diversity and inclusion committee and trust and safety council have taken them behind the bike sheds and given them a good kicking.

And if you look up Corporate Wokeness on Dictionary.com a bluehaired land whale has just edited it so there is a picture of Halo and Bonnie Ross smiling back at you. Everything they make is going to be *exactly like that*.

Okay, you're wasting your time complaining about this crap as Sony are doing the same thing, arguably even moreso. Just look at studios like Naughty Dog or just the way they handle censorship of video games now, especially some of the Japanese ones. Even Nintendo's doing it now.

I also think people need to distinguish between what's "woke" and "not woke" because a lot of times it feels to me the Overton window has shifted so much that anything with even a single POC, gay person or female who's not just background dressing or some NPC equivalent (either in entertainment or actual corporate structures) is now criticized as being "woke" and if people are taking it that far then, no, they can go kick rocks. You can be any of those things and still get by on your qualifications and talents (partly why the catchphrase "just hire the best people for the job" almost sounds like a dogwhistle at times).

Basically a lot of people complaining about wokeness today just remind me of the SJWs who complain about it, only on the complete opposite side of the aisle. I wish they'd both shut up or just give in and make out on some deserted island or whatever 😆
 

GymWolf

Member
It’s not a matter of probability. They genuinely have compliance departments to make sure all their output is Anita approved.

If they make something that isn’t woke then someone literally isn’t doing their job.
I think you are being a little bit catastrophic and like i said, some people don't care about a game being woke if it's good.
 
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GymWolf

Member
That's true but let's also be fair here; Sony purchased Insomniac in 2018 and yet that studio managed to get a new DLC of Miles Morales and a full remaster of the PS4 Spiderman done in two years, and they have
a really impressive Ratchet & Clank game coming early next year on top of all of that.

It's not just about time, it's also about studio efficiency. And seeing that 343i, MS's studio behind their marquee IP, had over five years and still dropped the ball for being on time for their new console launch, it's a really bad look by comparison. Realistically we should have multiple 1P games from MS in 2021 to count on, not just Halo Infinite. Some of those studios were purchased in 2018, too, and had projects in stages of development.

If those games were at some point meant to be multiplat then I think MS should or should've figured a way of waiving those contracts because the Xbox ecosystem needs as many compelling exclusives for 2021 as it can get.



Okay, you're wasting your time complaining about this crap as Sony are doing the same thing, arguably even moreso. Just look at studios like Naughty Dog or just the way they handle censorship of video games now, especially some of the Japanese ones. Even Nintendo's doing it now.

I also think people need to distinguish between what's "woke" and "not woke" because a lot of times it feels to me the Overton window has shifted so much that anything with even a single POC, gay person or female who's not just background dressing or some NPC equivalent (either in entertainment or actual corporate structures) is now criticized as being "woke" and if people are taking it that far then, no, they can go kick rocks. You can be any of those things and still get by on your qualifications and talents (partly why the catchphrase "just hire the best people for the job" almost sounds like a dogwhistle at times).

Basically a lot of people complaining about wokeness today just remind me of the SJWs who complain about it, only on the complete opposite side of the aisle. I wish they'd both shut up or just give in and make out on some deserted island or whatever 😆
Well sure insomniac are fast but like you said, they recently made a remaster and a 8 hour spinoff of spidey, and a ratchet game, stuff that already has a well known main core and engine (and lets be honest, even original spidey was kinda of an arkham series copycat with a different coat of paint), hardly the same thing as creating a big ass new brand game from the ground, you can't do stuff like rdr2 or horizon in 2 years starting from nothing, no matter how fast you are.

At least half of microsoft studios are doing new stuff and even a new fable game is not gonna share a lot with the last fable game (fable 3 from 2 gens ago).

They acquired a lot of talented studios, they are not gonna slow down or become inepts just because they are under microsoft but people need to understand that making big ass games is not easy unless you do copy paste stuff with 1000+ devs available like ubisoft (and even in their case the quality of their output is hit and miss most of the times).
 
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Ricky_Bee

Banned
Okay, you're wasting your time complaining about this crap as Sony are doing the same thing, arguably even moreso.

Well, possibly but I will note that relentless complaining is basically how SJWs managed to install eradicating white people as the highest virtue of all western institutions. It worked for them 🤷‍♂️

And yeah. Sony is hella racist against white people as well. So... do we need more of the same from Microsoft?

All MS offer is less cool, less urban, more corporate and suburban anti-white bigotry. I don’t find it a compelling product.
 

AJUMP23

Member
When Satya first took over I read that he wanted to sell off or shutter the game division and Phil had to convince him that it was worthwhile to keep it.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Adding DVD players, features, browsers etc. made consoles PC like but you had 50+ years of gaming that was focused on gaming what did people expect when they put streaming, web browsers, disk drives together with gaming? Why do I need a YouTube app in my GAMING console? Yes, the YouTube, blue ray streaming etc. makes people happy but it makes people’s head hurt when gaming isn’t their main focus.
 

Jerm411

Member
I think a lot of people will be talking very differently in two years about MS game portfolio.
No way around saying it has been a shit launch, though.

I feel like this could be a quote from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, or 2020.....and probably 2021, 2022, etc etc...you get my point.

All they ever do is talk and then talk some more....stop talking and start showing.
 

longdi

Banned
Phil probably got naked photos of Satya's wife. 'But but Xbox is losing money..'[🤷‍♀️
Doubtors keep doubting that MS is digging in for the long haul.
It is pretty clear where they are aiming with GP and xCloud thing.
 

OrtizTwelve

Member

During the firm’s annual shareholder meeting, Satya Nadella was asked what efforts Microsoft is making to “win the console war” with PS5, and to provide an overview of its gaming strategy.

“First thing, we’re very excited about the new console launches in the market,” he said of Xbox Series X/S, which debuted in November and broke Microsoft’s 24-hour launch record of over one million sales, according to the company.

“We always have sort of focused on ensuring that our gamer community that counts on us to produce the best consoles has a new generation of consoles, which are powerful and really great for gameplay. And we are supporting it with the best content with the best community.

“But the broader vision we have is to ensure that the three billion gamers out there are able to play their games, anywhere they want with all the content they want and with whom they want to,” Nadella continued (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). “And that’s really what we are building our strategy around.

“You’ve seen us double our content portfolio with ZeniMax acquisition, you see us make advances in our community efforts and our subscription offers with Game Pass. And that’s what you can expect from us.

“We are absolutely very, very much focused on gaming, and ensuring that all the three billion gamers around the world get the best content, best community and the best cloud services to power their gaming experiences going forward,” Nadella said.

The amount of ignorance on here is shocking but judging by how people write in posts, I'm not surprised. Let's look at this from a business perspective, and if it were Sony, they'd be doing the same exact thing.

***

Microsoft wants to eventually have a position where "XBOX" is a platform that is accessible on any device, at any time, on any screen size. They will continue to make dedicated consoles, but they're just a means to an end.

They want XBOX to be the console family, the main gaming platform on PC, and main gaming platform on mobile devices. Game Pass is really what ties all of this together. This is the reason why they're making so many investments recently, they realize the content is what will drive interest and adoption of the service over the years.

Microsoft has the right approach, they're looking at gaming down the road -- a decade from now, and acting accordingly. This is the reason why the new XBOX Series consoles are marketed as just "XBOX", and even the new box art packaging says just "XBOX". They're going away from the generational approach to consoles and basically turning the console market akin to PC gaming -- hardware refreshes every few years or so, and everything will always be backward compatible. This is a smart approach.

I am sure they will make larger investments down the road, who knows. But they're acting on their intentions. 7.5 billion for Zenimax / Bethesda isn't a small amount, and you can bet with time a lot of popular titles will soon be exclusive to XBOX.
 
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THEAP99

Banned

During the firm’s annual shareholder meeting, Satya Nadella was asked what efforts Microsoft is making to “win the console war” with PS5, and to provide an overview of its gaming strategy.

“First thing, we’re very excited about the new console launches in the market,” he said of Xbox Series X/S, which debuted in November and broke Microsoft’s 24-hour launch record of over one million sales, according to the company.

“We always have sort of focused on ensuring that our gamer community that counts on us to produce the best consoles has a new generation of consoles, which are powerful and really great for gameplay. And we are supporting it with the best content with the best community.

“But the broader vision we have is to ensure that the three billion gamers out there are able to play their games, anywhere they want with all the content they want and with whom they want to,” Nadella continued (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). “And that’s really what we are building our strategy around.

“You’ve seen us double our content portfolio with ZeniMax acquisition, you see us make advances in our community efforts and our subscription offers with Game Pass. And that’s what you can expect from us.

“We are absolutely very, very much focused on gaming, and ensuring that all the three billion gamers around the world get the best content, best community and the best cloud services to power their gaming experiences going forward,” Nadella said.
LMAO HE DIDN'T MENTION XBOX CONSOLE A SINGLE TIME. WOW!

I fully expect xbox hardware to be discontinued by the end of the generation and a streaming stick replacing it. Oh and also gamepass on Switch and ps5.
 

mejin

Member
Phil probably got naked photos of Satya's wife. 'But but Xbox is losing money..'[🤷‍♀️
Doubtors keep doubting that MS is digging in for the long haul.

It is pretty clear where they are aiming with GP and xCloud thing.

There is no contradiction in the logic.

MS is burning money thinking about getting all back in the future.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
When Satya first took over I read that he wanted to sell off or shutter the game division and Phil had to convince him that it was worthwhile to keep it.

Believe you are thinking of when people were being interviewed for CEO after Balmer left, it was the idea of many people interviewing to spin off/sell Xbox. Once Nadella got the job he wasn't sure if it made sense to stay in the market after the Xbox One was outsold vastly by Sony. Spencer wanted to bring the Xbox team back form being three separate teams into one and recommit to gaming. Nadella agreed.

"Spencer said that at the time, Nadella "didn't quite understand [the gaming division] yet, not from an intelligence standpoint, but he just hadn't been close to it." Still, Nadella decided to give the division his continuing support, letting Spencer head up a reunified Xbox team."
 

AJUMP23

Member
Interesting, tales from your ass perhaps?


Xbox head Phil Spencer told Microsoft to go 'all-in' on gaming when brand was threatened | Windows Central


Many developers who had worked on the Xbox One felt let down by Microsoft's big vision; it was, as some told Spencer, not in line with 'the soul' of what Xbox was. 'Satya was transparent that there could be a future where gaming isn't a business that Microsoft should be in,'


Just a quick search. Apology incoming I assume.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
More pie in the sky xCloud nonsense.

It's patently obvious all Satya cares about is that he was told they could sell product to billions of gamers.

Enjoy losing that blank check in 5 years when xCloud is mostly used by existing Xbox gamers occasionally.
 
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Wizz-Art

Member

It says absolutely nothing you claimed. Satya never wanted to exit gaming.

You got things mixed up.

There was talk in the Balmer days, which was just talk, Terry Myerson who was head of the Windows & Devices divison back then was not so fond of Xbox the rumours say. When Satya took over Balmers position and restructured the company and appointed Spencer to the head of Xbox they had a talk where Spencer spoke his mind about what he wanted for gaming and wanted to see if Nadella had the same mind set. Ever since Nadella pointed to gaming as one of the big cornerstones for the company.

The Xbox One launch and the Mattrick debacle in 2013 fueled the talk inside MS to withdraw from gaming. This was not the case anymore in 2014 when Nadella took over as CEO and appointed Spencer as the head of the Xbox division and in 2017 as EVP of Gaming.

This is how it went and not at all what you said.
 
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KingT731

Member
Believe you are thinking of when people were being interviewed for CEO after Balmer left, it was the idea of many people interviewing to spin off/sell Xbox. Once Nadella got the job he wasn't sure if it made sense to stay in the market after the Xbox One was outsold vastly by Sony. Spencer wanted to bring the Xbox team back form being three separate teams into one and recommit to gaming. Nadella agreed.

"Spencer said that at the time, Nadella "didn't quite understand [the gaming division] yet, not from an intelligence standpoint, but he just hadn't been close to it." Still, Nadella decided to give the division his continuing support, letting Spencer head up a reunified Xbox team."
The real long and short of it is that MS transitioned to cloud services with their products and the way to keep the Xbox division around was to move on the same direction (see: GamePass/Xcloud)
 
Well, possibly but I will note that relentless complaining is basically how SJWs managed to install eradicating white people as the highest virtue of all western institutions. It worked for them 🤷‍♂️

And yeah. Sony is hella racist against white people as well. So... do we need more of the same from Microsoft?

All MS offer is less cool, less urban, more corporate and suburban anti-white bigotry. I don’t find it a compelling product.

You need help.

First off, these companies don't care about ANYBODY...that includes white people!! All they care about is money, plain and simple. If you want to argue things in terms of some sort of "rite of passage" nonsense, what you're saying these companies are doing to white people today, any other ethnic group could've claimed (or continue to claim in a lot of cases) in the past. Proliferation of social media and propaganda in the media just makes it more obvious today versus in the past, but it's always been a thing. They just found a new group to put at the center of it, and it'll probably swing around to yet another group in the future.

These companies are "racist" against people because they don't CARE about people of any color to begin with, they just care about the money in your pocket. This is part of what irritates me with anti-SJWs and their talking points, they don't realize how dumb they sound and how they can come off as annoying as SJWs with their own conspiracy theories, regardless what amount or bits of actual truth are in there, because their perspectives are so messed up they can't ascertain those bits of truth logically and just fall into a death spiral of victimhood and emotional arguments.

Maybe if some of you guys complaining about these companies being "anti-white" or "anti-POC" or "anti-LGBT" or whatever could learn some actual valid criticism to levy against the products they make that don't play into idpol talking points (you know, like critiquing narrative structures, bad writing/grammar/spelling, bad cinematography, poor logic in writing, poor programming, graphical defects, poor use of certain music not reflecting themes of segments the music is tied to etc.), you'd get somewhere in these companies needing to step their quality up again and drop their idpol nonsense.

But since both sides can't help but ironically fall back to idpol talking points all the time and dividing themselves, these companies can keep taking the lazy and cheap way out 🤷‍♂️
 

Dabaus

Banned
Sounds like spin and damage control to me. After a month of nothing but bad headlines in games performance compared to the supposedly weaker ps5, delayed first party titles, not a single first party at launch, and new consoles probably selling at a loss, investors probably had a few pointed questions. But what would i know.
 
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quest

Not Banned from OT
I feel like this could be a quote from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, or 2020.....and probably 2021, 2022, etc etc...you get my point.

All they ever do is talk and then talk some more....stop talking and start showing.
Yes because those previous years they had 23 studios and the backing of the CEO. I guess those 1000s of employees are getting high all day and will never produce a game lol.
 

CAB_Life

Member
I think a lot of people will be talking very differently in two years about MS game portfolio.
No way around saying it has been a shit launch, though.

Most generations don't really start till a couple of years in, yeah. I'm cautiously optimistic about their slate, as they have so much talent now that even going by statistical odds they should have a couple of real gems. For the next two years it's my Gamepass ESO box and MS own Zemimax now, so that worked out for the best.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
The real long and short of it is that MS transitioned to cloud services with their products and the way to keep the Xbox division around was to move on the same direction (see: GamePass/Xcloud)

For sure. Xbox Live Gold is likely one of the only reasons Xbox stuck around for as long as it has but even XLG wasnt going to be enough to keep Microsoft as a whole interseted as the long term return wouldnt of amounted to much of anything in its format during the Xbox One. Phil basically turned Xbox into something that makes sense in Microsofts portfolio with reoccurring revenue with GP.
 

12Dannu123

Member
I think Sony fans are simply not happy that a competitor has a lot more money to spend and is looking to acquire more publishers and studios and they know Sony doesn't have that luxury.

The reality is that Sony will be a leader in the traditional console market, but nothing else, they simply don't have much advantage to expand beyond consoles, be it from a tech, distribution and business model point of view.

MS no doubt fumbled last gen, but they finally seem to be investing in the gaming division with full support.
 
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Hudo

Member
As long as your efforts continue to include Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations, I'll be happy.

Speaking of which, what about some news regarding Age of Empires IV, Satya? Call Phil up and ask him, man.
 
They need time to show something from all the new studios.

People forget that stuff like horizon, gow, days gone etc was in the oven for 5-6 years before release.

Do you want big single player quality games? You need to wait, development time for big stuff it's not gonna get shorter any time soon.

You’re right however it begs the question what went on there beforehand. It says a lot it took a subscription service for them to truly strengthen their amount of studios.

Imo a studio like the Initiative should of been there before X1, like when Black Tusk became the Coalition
 
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rofif

Banned
Imo they should focus on win95 and 98 nostalgia somehow. These were great pc gaming years and they had great games then too. Tiles and windows nowadays are just off-putting. Safe forza games and sjw gears is crap.

I loved 360 in first years. Blades ui, exclusive amazing gears trilogy, dead rising 1, lost planet, great Halo games, many times exclusives like mad effect, oblivion or even dark souls.

At least bring back blades...
 
Gee, if only MS had thought to try and expand their gaming platform to mobile!

Yes, through a streaming service that's been banned by Apple, eats data like a motherf*%ker (so severely limits it's reach to rich countries where people can afford unlimited data plans), and serves exclusively console games.... the exact types of games people playing on mobile devices simply aren't interested in.... (If they were, they'd already own a console/PC).

You can't claim "we're reaching all sports fans" with a mobile app that only shows Spanish Basketball content. Mobile gamers spend dollars and time on mobile games. This has proven overwhelmingly true by simply looking at the most popular games running natively on those platforms. Console games, i.e. the types of games MS is able to both support and produce, aren't really relevant to most mobile gamers.
 

KAL2006

Banned
More promises

Can someone queue that timeline where Phil Spencer says this is going to be the best year for their lineup since 2013. Microsoft has been lacking decent exclusives since Kinect was happened way back on the 360. It's always wait until later, this is the year, we bough this developer. We need actual releases happening, we need games to win GotY, we need good critic reviews consistently for multiple years in a row. Cause that's what Sony has managed. I don't give a shit about things like PR, or what's coming, or what developer was bought, or how hype something will be. We just need the game releases do the talking. For all we know Bethesda's next game can be years away or even flop when it releases. Or whatever other developer they have they can cancel a project. Let's just let the games do the talking cause it's been too long where Microsoft has been promising over and over again. They promised the most powerful console and even now Series X is losing in some DigitalFoundry videos to PS5. Now shal we we wait for better tools for that promise to be a reality, what other things shall we wait for.
 
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