"My 'Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand' statement isn't aging well" - Doom studio co-founder speaks out after devastating Xbox layoffs
www.eurogamer.net
Following the news developer id Software has been significantly impacted by Asha Sharma's sweeping Xbox job cuts, John Carmack has shared his thoughts.
  • ConstableJelly@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    4 days ago

    "You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief. I don’t think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from id games.“Could they have gotten more with a different pricing strategy? Could they have created more things for fans to buy? Could they have cost-effectively marketed in a way that reached more players that would have loved and bought the games? Could they have changed the game designs and broadened the appeal to more players without alienating existing ones? Could they have produced the games at a lower cost, faster or cheaper? I really don’t know.”

    I’m no expert, but ya doy. Microsoft’s play to pursue low-cost, high-return recurring revenue by shoving their extraordinarily talented single-player studios (Rocksteady, Arkane) at OBVIOUSLY terrible live service titles is bad enough on its own but is also a telling reflection of the executive mindset (this goes for Sony too). Profit is king, data is infallible, and development talent is best directed at our behest and is easily expendable when needed.

    Let game devs do what they want. Some games will fail, but jesus, not at the scale and volume that they’re failing at right now.

    • FarceOfWill@infosec.pubEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Wait, the plan was to get recurring revenue out of single player games by tying them to gamepass.

      This failed, for entirely predictable reasons, and now MS is holding a load of very mature, stable game studios and needs them to make checks notes double the revenue (actually, profit). This simply isnt posssible.

      Theres a story out from early in the year about MS requiring a 30% profit margin across the firm which when applied to games is just nonsense. Not ambitious or unrealistic, nonsense.

      Games is a terrible fit for MS and the companies who allowed it to buy them for stability are realising that.