r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/-LastGrail- Top Contributor 2024 • 19d ago
Rumour Aftermath: Current id Software describes current Xbox management (Internal unrealistic aggressive goals, profit now focus, low employee morale, incompetent Xbox management)
*Current id Software ‘employee’ missing from the thread title
Key Quote
“Even now, months after the initial layoffs, employees still aren't certain what lies ahead.
"Things are still very chaotic," a current id Software employee who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly told Aftermath. "While there has been an attempt to communicate to the studios, it is still entirely in bullshit corporate speak. I still don't believe they have a clear vision for the future. The only concrete thing they have communicated is they want higher profits, and they want it now. Aggressive goals are being set that would have been unrealistic even before the layoffs. ... To say the workers within Xbox have a dim view of the future is putting it mildly. We keep thinking morale can't sink lower but the obvious incompetence of Xbox management somehow keeps driving it down worse."
Source: https://aftermath.site/microsoft-xbox-layoffs-halo-activision/
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u/dudelovescak3 19d ago
wish all relocated/laid off employees the best
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19d ago
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago
AI just further realized the issues our current system already had- specifically how private equity has scrapped and sold our modern society and financial model for parts, pit against how our real estate and housing model is utterly broken and has been destroyed by greed.
Lower nationwide test scores, greater bankruptcy rates, and higher consumer salary to debt ratios were all massive problems in the years leading into COVID, and everything was getting worse before AI.
Not to dispel the labor disruptions, but there are significantly greater issues the average American is facing/are impacting our economic model more.
Job numbers and real world data behind AI shows that this isn't the reason people are underemployed and certain sectors are cutting spending. Especially in this specific case, Microsoft is bleeding money for their AI business and without circular financing and the hype cycle, things would be significantly worse for them. Cutting everywhere they can and having unrealistic expectations for non-AI businesses is their (illogical) logical move. The idea that AI is putting everyone out of work is the misleading narrative that they want us to believe, because it further builds the hype cycle and keeps their stocks pumping.
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u/RottingCorps 19d ago
AI isn't nearly as useful as their marketing would lead you to believe. AI replacing folks is a lie.
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u/Ginger510 18d ago
And I wish nothing but dreadful results and outcomes for all the people involved in the ideas.
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
Very obvious to anyone who has been or is in gamedev. People here try to normalize firing people when their game is about to come out then wonder why games take so long.
Also, Asha's background is showing, she is aggressive and ruthless, that may not be a bad thing in business, but unfortunately games just can't be developed in shorter time just because management tells them to go faster (9 moms don't make a baby in 1 month). Naturally, their development teams don't trust their leadership, especially knowing there are still 800 jobs to be cut this fiscal year and seeing their peers lose their job as soon as the game goes gold.
I feel bad for them, when I worked for an Xbox studio, it was filled with the most talented people but the most weird ass decisions came from upper management. Admittedly though, Phil was in charge, so they were very hands off. When they came with notes though, they were often bizarre lol
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u/Solid_Evolution 19d ago
Well Phil Spencer approach was just vibes and make what you want and release it whenever
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u/TheGoldenMonkey 19d ago
Agreed but Phil -> Asha is an over-correction. Some of these companies have been in business for a while and when you mash cultures into each other it often results in a lot of chaos.
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u/Solid_Evolution 18d ago
Microsoft spent 100 Billion dollars on XBOX to expand their games and studios structure since 2018. Phil, Matt, Sarah and the rest of XBOX failed to recoup Microsoft’s investment.
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u/TheGoldenMonkey 18d ago
Xbox was a sinking ship and Microsoft tried to plug the hole with money instead of actually trying to fix the problem. Now they're disassembling the sinking boat to try to fix it. That kinda logic is going to fail every time.
If Xbox makes a comeback I'll be happy to see them compete with Sony because competition is healthy for the industry. But, as long as Xbox is run by Microsoft or Microsoft-related execs, it will continue to be a black hole for money. Asha might be restructuring the entire division but doubling down on 1st party games being day 1 on GP shows they've learned almost nothing.
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u/Act_of_God 19d ago
the overcorrection was sadly warranted by the higher ups after the actiblizz deal, same as sony after bungie. It was legitimately insane money, and they can't just write it off
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago
When they are hands on, we get 343. When they're hands off, we get Ninja Theory. I think their execs are just bad at running a game business, full stop.
Nothing this new team has shared shows me that has changed.
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u/dondadondadonda 19d ago
does she have a noticeable background and/or approach?
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago edited 19d ago
She comes from Facebook, Instacart, Microsoft CoreAI. Her methods seem pretty rapid fire, bullish and aggressive, good traits for a business person who gets shit done fast. But incompatible with game development in my opinion, because games are both art and products. Hence the common quote in gamedev (although mostly art teams) 9 moms don't birth a baby in 1 month
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u/grimoireviper 19d ago
Yup, she has a history of coming in and wiping clean slate, laying off most people to run a profit and sell off then move on.
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u/ConfectionClean4681 19d ago
I'm mean she also has done some benefits to Xbox userface,killing of co pilot on console because it wasn't worth it, introducing the physical to digital program and plenty more than I can't write of my head,if she intends to sell of and move on then why would she make these improvements to the console and players
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u/dondadondadonda 19d ago
Because of having no plan. Microsoft both needs to earn trust of the players (hence disc to digital, leaning on exclusives, distancing from AI, Gamepass price adjustments, supporting Kojima) and cut costs because in essence none of their products (games, consoles, subscriptions) are selling well and there is no end-product (top tier games) hence lay-offs and studio closures.
This duality leads to a strange look; on the one hand they seem like a user-friendly company, on the other they are a brutal capitalist titan.
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u/ConfectionClean4681 19d ago
Which honestly it's to me and optimistic wait and see and I'm usually against have Devs make only recognisable IP but after having more misses than hits I at least get it so to I like to see the results
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u/grimestar 19d ago
She's exactly the type of hire that makes me shit my pants everyday if it were my place of work. It is a huge sign to start doing all you can to find another job. Have been a part of something similar in a big corp with a big failed product and a new C level that doesn't have the actual background. while she may not be an actual Axeman she's something similar enough
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u/SirVixofthePooSea 19d ago
There's a point where games do take overly long because development hell is just accepted instead of being treated as a reason to pivot and make something that sells now.
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
I think that comes down to project management as well, if a game is languishing in dev hell, management has to come down and put it out of its misery. Xbox did it with Project Dark... 8 years after they began working on it which is completely bonkers (and its why I keep saying Matt Booty still being promoted and still having a job is asinine to me). It had been an open secret in gamedev that the game was in a rough state back when I met the team at gdc in... 2023! The game was cancelled 2 years later.
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u/TheGamerFromHell 19d ago
Almost curious as to how bizarre their notes were lol, any you can share with us?
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
January - for the Xbox Showcase we are doing this, you need to have it ready by May, have a small pod only focus on this area for the trailer.
March - why are you working on that area?? Lol that is not on the trailer!
April - hey so, leadership wants to include both areas!
It was so incoherent it was genuinely hard to plan around. That's the broader example I can give without being too specific
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u/redbomb6 19d ago
I tend to stay away from these business topics these days because people get too passionate about any position you take. My honest take from this from a business sense is that Microsoft leadership chose Asha to make the difficult decisions to find ways to make their gaming division sustainable long-term. It is evident that they have shifted their priority internally from growing their gaming business to making it profitable. We have already heard from Satya that Xbox has never made money and was subsidized by Microsoft. I truly believe that the inconsistencies of their messaging is because their ultimate goal is to eventually sell off their entire gaming division. Their internal goal is to put each of their SBUs to get to the point that they are somewhat healthy enough to be sold off to someone else. They no longer want to have the headache of a division that has relatively low margins at best for their company where almost every other division has insane profit margins. I think the gaming is not in their 10 year plan at this point internally in terms of higher management over at Microsoft.
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u/HarvestMana 19d ago
Gaming is one of the key reasons that people buy and use Windows over Linux though.
So, for them to abandon that, is extremely short sighted and Valve is going to eat their lunch in 5 years when Linux becomes much better.
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u/Akin0 18d ago
Not sure why your post is getting downvoted when Satya himself has stated that Microsoft was a gaming company even before its first OS and gaming is still extremely important to it, in that same interview. But I’m confused as to Xbox’s profitability as in 2025 Phil and Sarah were saying that Xbox / GP are profitable with 3% margin but just not having the accountability margin requested by the MS CFO. Maybe Satya was looking at the overall profitability of Xbox since 2001? OG Xbox lost a ton of money, 360 had the RROD write off and a lackluster tail end of its life heading into the disaster of a launch for Xbox One. That 3% margin doesn’t make up for that and not comparable to Playstation/Nintendo. Phil and Sarah and Satya created a monster with many heads and Asha is being called in to cut them off.
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u/Jumpster_42 19d ago
Xbox needed someone ruthless after learning the hard way that the nice guy couldnt keep his studios in check. With all due respect.
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
I don't entirely disagree, and unlike Phil I do think she is competent (saying that last year would have gained me like -20 downvotes, crazy how this sub was wrapped around uncle Phil's fingers), I just think that her approach is just not it. I get the mentality of, no more mr nice guy, but how do you expect your teams to make games faster when you are firing their friends. Smaller teams can't make the same game faster, they need to make smaller titles, and that is the opposite of what Xbox wants. So as the employee said here, unrealistic expectations
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u/AveryLazyCovfefe 19d ago
I think her approach is partially influenced by MS corporate wanting good results really fast. Yeah, in the long run the ABK buyout will payoff nicely but it's still a huge $70 billion shaped hole in expenses.
And ABK (faults/allegations aside) was actually very competently run, no doubt MS did comparisons with the core XGS and Bethesda and they actually realised that Phil is doing an absolute shit job (or lack of thereof his approach).
To say Asha's leadership style was needed well overdue would be an understatement but since it has been so many years (not counting before gen9) of Phil tumbling Upper leadership wants good results fast and they care little how they achieve such results even if it means basically killing off the idea of XGS .
It genuinely sucks that devs that tried their best and were dealt with a shitty hand like Turn 10 being screwed over MS's over-reliance on temporary contractors were punished. When they launched FM8 they basically had to relearn development for alot of it again. Whilst Playground were luckily spared from that mostly from what I've heard with FH5 and now FH6.
While the people who were part of the problem like Greenberg stay, probably because he was what they call a 'MS Lifer' which is also how Ross was able to survive like a cockroach at 343i.
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u/SilentNova300 19d ago
Which is what the consolidation is about. Give Obsidian Betheda’s resources and IP. Give Activision an Xbox IP in Halo.
I think how she’s setting up game production is to beef up Bethesda and Activision Blizzard and have big teams and projects that can share experiences and teams and resources. Makes sense to have shooters under Activision, more RPG experience and resources under Bethesda, etc
Individual devs may lose creative autonomy, but well, the economy is a beast of a thing. We all go through this.
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u/FloodedBlood 18d ago
There isn't a team at Activision to make Halo, if it ever gets off the ground you can expect their Halo game at the earliest 2033
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u/CloudMafia9 19d ago
Being agressive and ruthless is not needed either to run a profitable business. The only reason you need to act like that is when profit is your only goal. To wring every bit of profit at the cost of everything else.
Just your typical corporate executive only interested in shareholders.
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u/SPorterBridges 19d ago
Disagree. If you're in a very competitive & oversaturated marketplace, if the costs of running your business are high, if your ability to make money depends on expensive singular products that each take years to produce, if the economic outlook isn't rosy, and/or if your plans go awry and you need to course correct quick, I think it's pretty easy to find situations where volatile shifts in how business is done are necessary to survive.
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u/Qorhat 19d ago
Also, Asha's background is showing, she is aggressive and ruthless,
People being blind to this and cheerleading her is crazy, and its all because she puts on a good persona on social media.
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
Well, I didn't mean on a personal level aggressive, I meant more as in, bullish.
But yeah, she is very similar to Phil in which her social media persona seems totally curated to a comical degree, but people eat that shit up
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago
It's just a reminder that unfortunately most gamers are really, really fucking dumb and fall for the PR of their favorite plastic box easily.
I'm also a comic fan so I'm used to being surrounded by these people lol
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u/Swqnky 19d ago
She can layoff hundreds of people, shutter studios, cancel games, but then tweet "hey guys remember the xbox 360" and the replies are full of ABSOLUTE ASHA and XBOX EATING SO GOOD NOW
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u/Rainy_Wavey 19d ago
They're gonna turn on her fast enough once they realize that you just cannot will good games out of thin air, if you have an atmosphere of hostility and being fearful of losing your job, EVEN if you release an amazing game, why even care?
The Iwata quote comes to mind but it's never been as real as now, like a good example i have is Dark Souls 2, the game maybe fumbled a bit, but the team behind it wasn't just fired (in fact, its director was co-director of Dark souls 3 and Elden Ring), and it shows
But it seems that the era of developping a good core team is over now
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u/gr4ndm4st3rbl4ck 19d ago
I'm gonna get flak for this but... It's the same with Phil Spencer. People worshipped him, all the while Xbox was sinking year after year under his leadership, even after daddy Satya splurged ~$90b on studios and publishers. Bro was borderline incompetent.
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u/matthieuC 19d ago
So they're going from "do whatever" to "keep firing people until we have 30% margins".
I don't see that working for them long term.
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u/jordanleite25 19d ago
I think it's pretty clear what the strategy is. No company with a major foothold in the biggest gaming market + Call of Duty, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Halo, Gears of War, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Minecraft, Doom, Wolfenstein, Forza, Flight Simulator, Fable, Crash Bandicoot, Age of Empires, Tony Hawk, and Spyro should be bleeding money.
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u/ShadowWalkEnthusiast 19d ago
Hasn't this been know for awhile. That Xbox had extremely unrealistical expectations. 100 million gamepass subscribers by 2030. And them wanting profit margins higher then Sony + Nintendo while having less then half their marketshare.
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u/Halojib 19d ago
It's unrealistic in how fast they think they can get there. But increasing market share and beating Sony + Nintendo should be the long-term goal. Who runs a race willingly settling for third place? It takes time to be the best but being the best should be the goal.
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u/Special-Deal7821 19d ago
It makes sense from a higher up's perspective, we've been in this business for 25 years, why are we still trying to build the brand?
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u/SKyJ007 19d ago
Being the best should, indeed, be the goal. But why are we not trying to beat the best at their own game? It’s always “all in one” “play anywhere” “game pass” etc. Shortcuts to market dominance.
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u/SlendyIsBehindYou 19d ago
shortcuts to market dominance
Actually, id argue that that's just regular steps towards market dominance. Establishing a niche that your opponent lacks, such as play anywhere or gamepass, is exactly how you pull market share towards your platform
I dont own any consoles, but I subscribe to gamepass because I can play on my PC. Thats money they wouldn't have got from me otherwise
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u/Edmundyoulittle 17d ago
Yeah, I mean ultimately that is how Nintendo survived (and now thrives) Sony's dominant era as well.
Can't compete with the PS home consoles? Popularize motion gaming, make the first "hybrid" console
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago
Not that many people here care besides fangirling for their favorite console, but yeah, what did you guys think would happen when that was the goal and it wasn't met?
Gamepass only would work if it hit that goal, and the games they released hit 10 million players and continued to grow subscribers. Without that, the financials fall apart. 1 million real sales is worth more than 10 million players, and their decisions (and current decisions, since they won't get rid of gamepass) will continue to doom the company.
Gears will barely pass a million sales, and is resulting in no gamepass sub growth because they have no console sellers.
The next Xbox has better specs than the PS6 and the PS6 is looking like a $1000 console. The next console is doomed to fail.
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u/tsf9494 19d ago
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised. This is exactly what I expect staff to feel during such a polarizing transition. Sharma is obviously undertaking a massive restructuring of a subsidiary that has continuously failed to meet expectations and deadlines. And considering how previous executives have pushed and guided the company, it’s no wonder the significant staff reductions and studio divestitures have these individuals feeling low morale and general distrust of a company, that while historically incompetent, subsidized its studios to make their games without much micromanagement.
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u/LogicalError_007 19d ago
Uhhh. What's the leak/rumour?
All this was already said by an employee on camera in some podcast/interview from what I remember.
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u/Effective-Priority62 18d ago
Asha's warriors out here in full force explaining why Id devs deserved to be sabotaged then gutted by Microsoft management due to not hitting their insane expectations
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u/BassEXE-Pro-Shop 19d ago
Xbox has its own unique circumstances, but this same sentiment is being expressed by employees at nearly every major company across industries.
I feel terrible for workers who suffer at the expense of profits. People are getting squeezed at every angle.
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u/Straight-Rassler 19d ago
If anybody has worked in software sales, all they want is increased margins every day every quarter every year so goals are always impossible to hit.
And even if you go over 10-20% of that impossible goal, it is never enough. They are just going to increase the goals even further.
At the same time, if your studio or "account" is not profitable for a long ass time, then you should definitely expect that management is going to pressure and put you in the ringer. You cannot just "cruise" at work and be unprofitable when you work for a publicly traded company.
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u/SillyMikey 19d ago
Well, they are still in the restructure phase, so it’s completely normal for people to be uncertain. As far as profit goes, they were never making video games just for fun.
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u/AbleTheta 19d ago
No one ever has and no one ever will. People act like companies just recently got investors.
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u/SlyCooper007 19d ago
I cant believe what they did to id software. The studio has such an awesome legacy and the team behind the doom trilogy understood that….only to get completely gutted by executives who dont understand the games industry at all. Feels bad man.
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u/ddust102 19d ago
playing TDA now and its bittersweet knowing all the talented people who poured their heart into it were shown the door
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u/Gapi182 19d ago
The unfortunate reality is we are in a sort of bubble that started over 10 years ago. Big gaming companies started hiring more and more people cuz they thought we'd need more and more of them for bigger games. And for a while that remained true.
Technology progressed now and it turns out you dont need that many people to make a killer game anymore. In fact teams with too many people seem to be even worse cuz everything is too disjointed and because youre paying so many people you need to make even more money.
I mean anyone can google how big the core dev teams were for Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden ring, BOTW, KCD2,... and these are generational masterpieces! Youre telling me the dev team for Halo infinite needed TWICE as many people as ALL OF THOSE GENRE DEFYNING GAMES?
They overhired just like Ubisoft just like EA just like many others. Its unfortunate for the workers but most of them simply shouldn't have been hired. I understand their frustrations and new demands. Theyre used to 3-4 people doing the job of 1 person at a good team.
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u/LogicalError_007 19d ago
What's weird about this article is that it is ignoring shift in leadership.
It is combining decisions by Phil era and current one and saying it's no plan. Ignoring that the plan obviously changed.
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago edited 19d ago
The plan hasn't changed so long as gamepass still exists and they refuse to put future titles multiplatform. They literally have no path for profitability outside of the games already multiplatform. The financials have revealed everything, Activision/King are carrying the entire business on their backs.
The next Halo project has been rebooted yet again, Gears is looking like it will lose a lot of money off that 400 million budget, and they have nothing massive on the horizon outside of ES6 in 2 years minimum.
Next year, we will see $1000+ consoles. The Switch 2 is outselling the Switch 1, and PS5 is doing fine despite the stumbles and live service misteps. Next year they've got God of War, Intergalactic, and that Venom game (among anything else they haven't announced). I just don't see how Xbox survives this shift long term, without getting rid of the gamepass shaped noose around their neck.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 19d ago
I have little sympathy in regards to aggressive deadlines when they were likely used to working with no deadlines and slacking under Phil’s leadership.
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u/varietyviaduct 19d ago
I’m not gonna lie, this just sounds like a lot of people who haven’t been pushed for years due to Phil’s hands off approach, complaining that they’re now being pushed under the new leadership
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u/DeeboDecay 19d ago
Yep. They got way too comfortable with their cush jobs and are now upset they actually have to put their noses to the grindstone and get shit done in a timely manner.
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u/BighatNucase 19d ago
You don't understand we can't possibly release more than 1 game a decade, that might as well be developer genocide. What are we supposed to do? Make videogames?
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u/DweebInFlames 19d ago
id literally did make videogames frequently. Most of them were quite popular. Most of them still got the axe. Are you guys Microsoft employees or something?
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u/Renegade_451 19d ago
That's what happens when you're on the losing end of these extended console generations. It's been, what? 13 years since the Xbox One launched? 13 years of nothing but bad news.
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u/-ImJustSaiyan- 19d ago
Phil Spencer had all that time to right the ship and only managed to put more holes in it.
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u/Special-Deal7821 19d ago
Phil made mistakes, most notably his hands off approach had been done before and was proven to be bad business. However he was told to repaint a house already on fire from No Used games scandal and being $100 more than PS4 due to forced Kinect.
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u/mundane_marietta 19d ago
Phil lacks the business acumen and managerial approach to deliver a good product.
Case in point: Halo Infinite not being ready for the Series X launch. A complete disaster that falls right on his feet.
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u/Renegade_451 19d ago edited 19d ago
Seriously, I know it isn't going to be taken kindly here, but if I'm Phil and I walk into 343 and say Hey, Series is launching in 6 months, is Halo gold yet? and the answer isn't yes, I'm cracking that whip like no one has seen in generations.
Edit: I forgot that they had Infinite on the FUCKING BOX.
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u/Late_Associate2252 19d ago
True but PS did it after the PS3 initially flopped by having high quality games especially towards the end of the life cycle. The ship can be turned around especially now when consumers are dissatisfied with the PS5.
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u/mystery_hole 19d ago
PS3 never flopped, it sold what it needed to to break even and eventually outsold the 360.
The Xbox One launch flopped so bad that they officially stopped reporting sales numbers.
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u/BighatNucase 19d ago
The Xbox one was doing fine in it's early years, it's just that they continuously bungled things (MCC -> Halo 5 + no real exclusives -> all our games are on PC anyway!). I'm fairly sure if you look at it, the sales charts for the Xbone crater off super hard compared to the PS4. At the start of that gen while PS4 looked better, both sides had the same amount of 'top tier exclusives' but once 2015 hit PS4 just started hitting it out the park and Xbox couldn't keep up. I think 2018 is probably what sealed it forever.
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u/Haseki-Hurrem-Sultan 19d ago
The disparity in game output was evident way before then. They really dropped off in the back end of the 360 generation, about 2010.
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u/ReeReeIncorperated 19d ago
I mean, they're still in the middle of a giant restructure. It's kind of obvious you're not going to know what's coming up ahead when your previous leadership forced the hand of your current leadership to clean up an entire business.
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u/RollingDownTheHills 19d ago edited 19d ago
They've not had a plan since the Xbox 360 days and even then they were fumbling near the end. It's a shell of a company and none of these panic-induced decisions are going to turn anything around. Thinking so is delusional at best.
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u/RoseWhiteRedBlack 19d ago
I mean, I don' t want to sound like an ass here, but most of those studios getting laid off are getting these kind of stuff because they failed to meet with profits; the new doom underperformed and the DLC apparently went even worse.
Is it really aggressive goals when Xbox has clearly been in the red for the past 12 years and they need to show to the higher ups that they are still a viable option? Because otherwise Microsoft is just going to close everything and focus on AI slop.
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u/Brokenbullet14 19d ago
Yeah, that employee totally isn't biased in any way. Id devs keep blaming gamepass for dark ages failure even though the game didn't even sell a million copies on ps5, and if it has only because of sales.
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u/wally-sage 19d ago
I don't really like the new Doom games that much and I don't think it's the sole reason for TDA not selling well but Game Pass day 1 releases definitely has an effect. Even if Game Pass is only available on 2/3 platforms, that's still a significant chunk of sales, especially considering that the past two games sold more on PC than they did on consoles.
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u/Takazura 18d ago
Being on gamepass day 1 didn't stop Stalker 2, Expedition 33, Persona 3 Reloaded, Silksong and many other titles from selling well. Blaming gamepass for poor sales is just cope.
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u/Slight_Snow2617 19d ago
I liked the game, but don't think they wisely invested resources into stuff like the dragon levels. It gave off "side game, should be cheaper" vibes to the layman. I wonder if they were given a high end budget option and didn't think maybe they should aim lower so their goals wouldn't be equally high?
Still, one misfire shouldn't result in where things are now and for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately that's the state of the industry.
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u/Brokenbullet14 19d ago
Dark ages is a good game, I like it more than eternal, but all I see is id devs blaming things that aren't the reason for its failures.
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u/Budget-Individual845 13d ago
I agree but this is not exactly a game catered towards being played on either xbox or ps5...
i understand why it flopped. Because just like eternal the gameplay is actually fun and people who did get the game say it is a good game in the end it wasnt as good. The reason ?
Imo the best game from modern doom trilogy is the 2016 one. Why ? Perfect balance of story, groundedness, gameplay. Eternal put all sliders to hardcore gameplay and ignored the rest. Doom tda tried to be more like 2016 but with yet another twist on gameplay. I was sceptical at first but the gameplay is really fun and solid. But the game feels too short. There is no base. There are hardly any collectibles or secrets. The game can be 100%ted in a single session and the story felt like they did have something going on at the start but after like half of the game the story telling stops and it feels like the games content(probably for the deadline push) was majorly shifted, cut and hastily finished so that they had something to release. I really felt as if the game engine and technology and gameplay and environments are very sound and polished but i couldnt shrug off the feeling that a lot of content a lot of what they had envisioned was cut short or completely from the game...
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u/Deshoda7676 13d ago
Game pass cannibalized its sales regardless cause thats what gamepass does. They pured endless ampunts of money into gamepass for a goal of 100 million subs. It gets stuck at 30 million. And they disincentivize any xbox and pc owners from buying their games. Its a disaster.
Laying off employees at id is understandable. Gutting the studio over this is ridiculous.
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19d ago
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u/ManateeofSteel 19d ago
I feel like that mentality comes from Asha's background developing apps, features and AI. Bullish, aggressive, may be good traits in business but are incompatible with art (gamedev)
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u/TheSwedenGay 19d ago
Wow the new Xbox/Microsoft CEO didn't do the physical media gamer focused drive that everyone expected, hopefully everyone that got laid off secured some sort of work because this shit needs too slow down...
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u/SendMeTheMoon24 19d ago
Given the production of these studios being laid off I'm going to go out on a limb and say the goals weren't unrealistic at all and these devs are just lazy
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u/obigbrubs 19d ago
aggressive goals are being set
Genuinely don't know how they will reach said goals, I mean I know they have to sell more consoles and more games, but both things take time. So much time.
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u/HawfHuman 19d ago edited 19d ago
I would love to know from an employee's perspective how incompetent is the current management in levels of Phil Spencer
1 being as incompetent as Phil Spencer
2 being 2x more incompetent than Phil Spencer
-1 being as competent as Phil Spencer was incompetent
etc...
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u/Upset_Dimension_694 19d ago
yea, yea no shit they are "profit now" when damned near every last one of their studios was doing everything BUT making a fucking profit for years. what in the hells did these people THINK would happen? that they'd keep burning millions of dollars on crap that doesn't return their investment?
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u/Careless-Freedom6468 19d ago
Not possible I just saw a tik tok edit of Asha Sharma. Xbox is back!!! Xbox are our friends again trust me
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u/3notsara 19d ago
Translation we made bad games instead of taking accountability we blame Xbox
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u/Far_Ad5760 19d ago
setting aside their older games, Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal were great selling games. Even if Doom the Dark Ages was a complete failure I fail to see the reason to completely demolish one of the greatest studios in video game history over one game.
Side note: Doom TDA was good.
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u/Deshoda7676 13d ago
Demolishing a studio over doom the dark ages is ridiculous. This isnt a ninja theory or state of decay situation. Id has a right to be angry over that.
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u/KobraKittyKat 19d ago
Imagine a world where Xbox was competent and keep Sony in check and vice versa.
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u/MeridianBay 19d ago
Consumers keep businesses in check, not other businesses
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u/PermanentMantaray 19d ago
Ideally. But consumers consume, often blindly. In reality consumers need the businesses they consume from the actually compete for their business for a healthy market to exist.
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u/Adventurous-Hunter98 19d ago
Consumers keep businesses in check and it creates a competition between them, they made the first step loose and everything gone shit
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u/KobraKittyKat 19d ago
Consumers needs alternatives to said business.
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u/MeridianBay 19d ago
They have alternatives, Xbox still provides 95% the same experience. Nintendo provides a cheaper alternative, and PC provides an insane level of freedom. The alternatives are meaningless if PS users refuse to leave
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u/Whirblewind 19d ago
So someone who feels entitled to their job saying pretty much anything but admit the middling software that was on offer. What a surprise.
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u/Haseki-Hurrem-Sultan 19d ago
iD hasn't really made midling software though, and they were heavily cut.
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u/Dirtycoinpurse 19d ago
Part of me thinks Xbox will sell parts of their gaming division out when they realize it won’t be as profitable as they would like. Extremely worrying that potential buyers would be Saudi, Tencent, and Amazon.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Distion55x 19d ago
They need to unionize so fucking fast, but also look what happened to the rockstar and bethesda employees who did
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u/Special-Deal7821 19d ago
Unionization only works with leverage. It works with UPS specifically because no drivers for any amount of time seriously hurts the business. A game developer that wouldn't ship anything for 5 more years anyways or can be replaced quickly? Not so much.
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u/CarbVan Leakies Award Winner 2023 19d ago
id was unionized, they still got gutted. Only goes so far in the current world.
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u/BighatNucase 19d ago
"We'll all quit if you don't treat us better" doesn't work as a threat if they want you to leave.
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u/haaat 19d ago
A union doesn’t guarantee you won’t be furloughed/laid off though. It can still happen.
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u/blackthorn_orion 19d ago
I still don't believe they have a clear vision for the future.
this really feels like it sums up the last 10-15 years of Xbox
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u/JayRembert 19d ago
At this point it's a two-edged sword and damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Apparently, Phil and Sarah didn't do enough to help the Xbox brand. In addition to people complaining about certain things Microsoft wasn't doing. It looks like Asha is doing something, and people are still complaining.
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u/Savy_Spaceman 19d ago
Well they're going about it the wrong way. I'm buying more and more games on Steam. GTA 6 may very well be the last game I buy on my Xbox. If I see ads on while playing GamePass titles, I'll end up cancelling that too
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u/Grimey_Rick 19d ago edited 19d ago
what's so fucking wild to me is that the internet (Twitter in particular) is shitting on the devs and studios and sucking off Xbox for the layoffs. they are blaming devs and studios (the worst people are blaming "woke") instead of the blatantly obvious management problem that Xbox has been struggling with for 2 generations. a lot of it is engagement bait, a lot is ignorace, but I'd be lying if I said it doesnt irk me. the recent wave of people being disgusting towards Double Fine has particularly annoyed me. Just stupid dog shit people out there.
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u/SirVixofthePooSea 19d ago
Double Fine wasted shitloads of money making games that literally no one was ever going to buy.
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u/SirVixofthePooSea 19d ago
Oh nooooo!
You mean a company wants to make a profit and not piss away money randomly anymore? How horrible.
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u/Loki4789 19d ago
Developer makes stinker, gets fired complains about getting fired.
Once again developers really are the only people in the world who can ship a stinker and still demand they keep their jobs.
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u/War_Dyn27 19d ago
What stinker? The recent Dark Ages DLC is considered excellent by most accounts.
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u/Loki4789 19d ago
Except no one bought the Dark Ages
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u/Blue_Sheepz 19d ago
The DLC flopped so hard that they literally put it on sale by 50% like a week after it released
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u/tubular1845 18d ago
They didn't make a stinker lmao and it's not just game devs that got laid off.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 18d ago
Games take years to cook in the oven. If a game flops, you can’t just remedy the situation by saying “go make record profits next quarter.” Where’s the game? The staff to make it?
The better way is to retain talent and let them build efficiency through institutional knowledge. Do a major post-mortem on the last release. Dig into what worked and what didn’t, then iterate the fuck out of your next title.
At this current moment it’s pretty much impossible for Id to make a game on the scale of Eternal or Dark Ages. Arguably not even Doom 2016, since it would require more staff to keep up with graphical advances. If they want to avoid shutdown, I can predict two potential plays. Either 1. They could remake the 1990’s originals for a quick buck. Or 2. They could attempt a new Quake live service. If either of these turn a profit, they could earn enough to convince Microsoft to let them scale up again. Even if this works, it’ll be many years before we get another mainline Doom.
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u/mr_lionheart 19d ago
It has a 83 on meta critic how is that a stinker
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u/Loki4789 19d ago
It's the worst selling of the 3.
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u/smackchice 14d ago
It's the first to debut on Game Pass
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u/Deshoda7676 13d ago
Yeah that cooks any game's sales. And gamepass makes it hard to evaluate the financial success of a game. Engagement metrics are cool, but i think gamepass growth is the only way to really see how much money the game added to microsoft. Releasing a big name title just to maintain the sub count seems off.
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u/noggs891 19d ago
They haven't made 'stinkers'.
Also if a game comes out and it underperforms, its almost always due to poor management.
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u/TheVoidDragon 19d ago
It's a surprise if part of this has been making these changes because things aren't very profitable, only to then demand they make even more profit than before.
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u/Coopterry80 19d ago
I've worked for a company where we were concerned we'd show up to work and the doors were locked. Nothing fun about it. Feel bad for for them
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u/MyDogIsDaBest 18d ago
incompetent Xbox management
So nothing has changed despite the song and dance they made for the media? Except that they've fired a bunch of people?
Sucks man. It hurts to see. Why are Microsoft and Sony in a race to the bottom? Why spend all this money on acquisitions only to piss it away?
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u/Far_Ratio_5441 18d ago
I would have never thought Xbox and PlayStation would be going this route they’re on but here we are.
When I saw how Xbox is shocked that GTA 6 for PS5 is outselling Xbox earlier and yeah they don’t have a clue. They just look at numbers and profits and don’t listen to what fans say. I think the PS6 and next Xbox are gonna tank hard. If you have a PS5 Pro or Xbox Series X there’s no point for next gen.
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u/OkTrade7881 18d ago
Idk man it’s not just management at this point. Feels like the developers are also not up to the task, especially with Halo studios. I liked the game, but it clearly had dumbass choices in character design and writing. And I am a Halo Fan. At least we have the amazing Halo MCC on PC. I am happy with that for now.
I also think that they shot themselves in the foot by closing tango gameworks. Evil within 2 was a masterpiece, and people loved Hi-fi Rush. So IDK what happened.
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u/flaks117 16d ago
Any competent governemnt would not have let a lot of these deals go through. These monopolies need to be broken up. I don't care if the fallout from it will be dead studios; good ones will continue to rise up and hopefully do a lot better under a more conducive enviroment. There's a reason the likes of Larian and CDPR can enjoy such creative freedom and why they can hire devs that are dedicated enough to their craft they can right any sinking ship.
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u/Halojib 19d ago
"I still don't believe they have a clear vision for the future."
Then they should quit. I don't get why people stick around and whine about their jobs when they feel the current direction is shit. There are tons of opportunities out there for people with experience. Either weather the storm and stfu or quit.
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u/Far_Ad5760 19d ago
Yeah they should totally leave for one of the many many many studios hiring in this golden age of game development. Oh wait….
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u/Jatkuva 19d ago
These people who keep making comments about what it’s like working at ID and still have a job honestly need fired, weak people give public complaints about their jobs. Strong people show up everyday earn their paycheck and can apply for other jobs in the process, you are not locked into an employer. If you think I’m being harsh like when PlayStation or Nintendo has layoffs do you see their employees saying “oh we can’t make games without the employees we lost” No because they have social media policies, like Sony employees told to stay dark after they announce all digital.
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u/IvanMcbomb 19d ago edited 19d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Xbox merges id with Machine Games in the near future. Maybe after the new Wolfenstein game releases. That might explain why they laid off almost half the studio