Responding to yesterday's news of Don Mattrick's departure as Microsoft entertainment head to become CEO of Zynga, equity research firm Cowen remains cautious about Zynga (ZNGA)'s outlook.
"As [Mattrick] is a console veteran, we are not sure how much Mattrick's experience will benefit Zynga," says Cowen analyst Doug Creutz in a company update. "Zynga [is] a business in desperate need of a radical turnaround, while competitors such as King, Kabam, Supercell, and even EA (where we would have been much less surprised to see Mattrick land) are busy pushing ahead rapidly on mobile platforms."
Doom level designer Sandy Petersen has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the closure of Ensemble Studios, where he worked in the 2000s. According to Petersen, Ensemble and its in-development Halo MMO were scuttled by Xbox boss Don Mattrick to protect a short-term, profit-based bonus he was elligible to receive.
@dveio Why, is the reddit official and run by Microsoft? I would've thought a developer from the team is a legit source. Or is it fanboy-run?
While I can't stand Don Mattrick and how he ran the Xbox business into the ground with incredibly anti-consumer decision-making, I can't help but feel like this post is suspicious. Why would this level designer have any clue about Mattrick's compensation package? Mattrick was not C-suite and probably didn't make enough to exceed the SEC reporting threshold. It doesn't seem likely that Mattrick would share that kind of information, either.
Bare with me this is long.
Tbh the anti consumer choices imo isn't necessarily what hurt xbox immensely. Part of it? Yes definitely of course but I think it's simply not investing in AAA games back then. Specifically in 2011 the year they went dry. short term fads like Kinect and casual games is what really hurt them and got them to where they're at now.
If they bought those same studios in 2011 instead of 2018, 2020 and 2021 (excluding ABK because they wouldn't need them) they would release the games the traditional way selling the console being competive with exclusives and content. Of course the first 3 to 5 years MS will have their usual stumbles like canceled projects delays etc. Around 2017 and beyond they would finally have the rhythm and start releasing games.
GP probably won't be a thing just GWG. Releasing games on PC I think would still be thing but it probably won't be day and date they'll take Sony's approach and release a year or so later on PC. The best thing about all this is that Ms wouldn't have to fully absorb the Xbox because they're finally profitable thanks to those games being released, selling hardware. Theyll still sell less than PS. I'll say they'll be around just shy of 70 or so million, not bad. The other big thing is if MS were to make changes, it would be slower not as aggressive and hardly any double talk or goal post moving. It would be clear and concise messaging because they have their gameplay and sticking with while slowly looking into other things.
Again the anti consumer stuff definitely hurt them but the topic of constant discussion at the end of it was no investment in AAA Studios. That's what got xbox where it's at now. Being dog walked every which way, the double minded Console killing MS we have now.
Theory: Microsoft buys some of the best studios and editors. Fact: Microsoft pays too much for them. Effect: Staff is fired and the best of them go to other studios and editors. Postmortem: Microsoft buys empty franchises and kills them.
You're right that the years-long games drought prior to and around the launch of the Xbox One also substantially contributed to the demise of the Xbox division. But, I have to disagree that there was a path to success for them, simply because the culture of MS (which bled into Xbox) is so anti-consumer.
Where they wanted to take console gaming clashed harshly with what gamers wanted. Consoles must check-in every 24 hours; game discs are locked to the first console in which they are played (no second-hand market); unnecessary TV integration for advertisement revenue. What was Kinect about? Fun? Games? MS doesn't give a flying fuck about those; at heart, they are not an entertainment company. No---it was about selling your information.
Moreover, MS doesn't win at anything because of the quality of its products; they win by all sorts of media, sales channel, and market manipulation. MS only entered the home-console market to redirect the growing PlayStation userbase back to Windows, enact DRM, and monetize this userbase in new ways. Office 365 was put online in the 2010-2011 timeframe. Full digital games were already available on the Xbox 360. The foundation to move console gaming to an all-digital (and anti-consumer) future had already been laid. Nobody asked for this shit. They can't even respect their own physical products now by putting playable builds of games on their physical media. It's called false advertising; that's grounds for class-action.
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TNS: From Robbie Bach to Phil Spencer, here's how every Xbox boss helped shape, and sometimes break, the brand since 2001.
"Every Xbox Boss Ranked by how much they screwed up the brand" - Fixed that title for you. It's been a trainwreck since day 1. They just got lucky that Sony dropped the ball with the PS3 one time... and still managed to lose that generation, again in third place, in the end.
Sony is also currently dropping the ball. All they have coming is the ghost sequel and I’m hearing it’s not nearly as good as the first game. Things have been trending down since Layton left. Not as bad as Xbox but not great.
Don for me is the greatest boss they got. 360 era was the greatest for them and most aggressive no other had ever done. It had games that myself as a PS3 only owner was very jealous over, and they had tons of them… until the last 2 years of 360 where tides started to seriously turn things upside down
Mattrick set the bar (very low), and today Spencer is trying to dig underneath it.
I don't care about any opinion from Xbox nerds.
Phil Spencer took your hopes and continues to burry them for 14.99/year.
Plot twist:
At the end, you won't even own your hopes anymore, just like GP.
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I find it amusing people poking fun at subscription services lie Gamepass.
Do you actually think you own the games you purchase on PSN or Steam accounts? Think again.
Best to ignore it. Way to many fanboys on this site. Just look at the Posters history comments.
Won't speak for PSN, but aside from the occasional AAA DRM exception(unless otherwise removed post-launch), Steam makes it easy thanks to being on an open platform. You download the game, bypass Steam’s deliberately thin DRM, move the game folder wherever you want, done. License be damned.
I like when Don Mattrick said if you are deployed on a nuclear submarine or have poor/no internet don't worry we have a product for you too, Xbox 360.
My favorite thing he's ever said lol
He gets a lot of grief, but that was refreshing candor. He communicated very early on that the Xbox was taking a more controlled approach to content delivery. He choreographed (unintentionally) how Microsoft was going to move.
What people don't seem to realize is that they never changed their vision. They've only changed the approach to arrive at the same future: digitalization, restrictions/elimination of game sharing, monitoring consumer activities, and needing internet to download the physical copies you just "bought".
The same message was repackaged, and the Xbox community is walking right into the thing they railed against.
But a proportion of the community sees it, and it's why the user base has contracted this generation, despite having Game Pass.
Are we forgetting that in this original vision you couldn’t share physical copies once they’d been “redeemed”? Sure the game is still a download now, and the data isn’t on the disc. But I can still give the disc to someone else and they can play the game as if they own it. So no, they definitely backtracked due to the backlash.
Nah, we can trade games just by handing them over, kinect no longer a thing and you can play offline. Had they stuck to those original plans. Xbox would struggle to sell 20 million consoles. Case in point. Maniac. Most XO buyers wouldve kept their 360 and got a Playstation
Samonuske,
Let me ask you a question, mate:
Do you think I'm referring to a complete vision? Or, perhaps, is Xbox still moving towards their original vision?
It's the latter. It is very clearly still in motion. They sprinted toward this future when they announced Xbox One and got scraped up. Now, they're taking their time, easing you into the original strategy because Microsoft knows people have short memories.
No, they're not done. Physical copies aren't really physical copies, as you've mentioned.
They're also taking advantage of the opening created by Nintendo by raising game prices after Nintendo came out with Switch 2 game prices. They want you to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. It's as simple as that. Their physical game operations have already been massively downscaled.
Why do it this way? So when they end physical media altogether, you won't be upset because it'll look like your idea when you sub to game pass and stop buying games physically.
I haven't forgotten anything. Fact is, plan is still in motion, but moving slower. If you don't notice the movement, Microsoft is glad you're not noticing.
He was right. I still use my Xbox 360s because I don't need Internet with them and catalog is near to infinite.
That was beginning of the end. Some even called him a Sony spy 😂😂. Man those were entertaining times.
Looking back it seems like they were all competing for who’s going to be remembered as the worst.
I think Phil is dealing with what happened when a brand is under a bigger umbrella company that doesn’t care about creativity or consumers just money. He saved it and had it in a good place and then was forced to go third party and then upper brass made all these layoffs. Not saying Phil has no blood on his hands but I don’t think its his vision.
MS and xbox are the same thing. It won’t matter who is the mouthpiece. The board makes all decisions, executives, they execute the board’s decisions.
They are not the same thing at all. Xbox is only a small portion of what Microsoft is.
You know what I mean, and yes everyone knows xbox is a subsidiary jeez talk about saying the obvious.
Layoffs are expected at NaturalMotion, the studio behind Star Wars: Hunters, as Zynga reviews operations and focuses on optimizing its mobile game portfolio.
