TapTechNews May 12th News, recently, former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra posted a long article on his X (Twitter) account, urging Xbox to refocus on making excellent games.
TapTechNews summarized some of the key points as follows:
Today, I see some anonymous former Xbox players talking about the board in the article ... The function of the board is not to give orders to the business department and teams. Of course, pressure and risks are always great, and will only increase as the company grows. I have never seen Satya Nadella give orders from top to bottom—he asks questions, drives work, and empowers teams. He is an excellent leader.
The market is not growing is just a PR excuse. As a team, even if the entire market is not growing at the expected rate, it is your responsibility to drive your own growth. I think this is more like the strategy is not achieving the expected results, it's okay. In a rapidly evolving market like gaming, strategies must constantly evolve.
It all comes down to making excellent games. If you can make excellent games, consumer demand will follow, even in years of sluggish market growth, your business can still do well. A great game can generate profits of over 500 million to 1 billion US dollars (cross-platform) for a company. Considering the size of the studio, you need a few teams to complete tasks at a suitable pace (not all studios should make large games...nor should they, as the risk is too great).
After all, considering the gaming generation we are in now (of course the same on PC), you have a large install base, so there are opportunities for success. ...If you don't make great games, hardware won't sell, and subscriptions will decline.
...Xbox's team is 100% capable of making great games. It's just not consistently persistent.
I think there are two paths to take: if your North Star is the GamePass subscription, then you must go all-in on the big growth plan, betting (exclusive) games, hardware and services. Including games rated above 90, will enhance consumer affinity and satisfaction. In other words, this is a high-risk/high-reward plan that requires a strong desire to win.
If you are unwilling to do so, then you will go down another path: as a publisher across all devices, you need to fully accept this and make it clear (it likely means breaking away from hardware, I fundamentally believe that without great exclusive content, hardware is doomed to fail, because people won't understand why they need it).
As the world's largest game publisher, as long as you can make great games, there will be good prospects for development. If you don't do well, you will start over. To succeed, you must choose your direction and communicate clearly with players. If you hesitate between these two paths, in my opinion, it will only hurt your team and continue to lead to confusion.
TapTechNews adds a background reminder: Earlier this month, Microsoft closed multiple game studios under Bethesda/ZeniMax, affecting operations of games like Red Island.
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Microsoft shuts down B's Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks and other game studios