Xbox Games Marketing General Manager Aaron Greenberg discusses the recent studio acquisitions and their effect on Microsof's portfolio.
During the IGN Live interview with Phil Spencer, the crowd cheered even if the topic was about closures, and its because they were told to.
A very "slimey" thing to do right Phil???
Anyhow ive never trusted IGN, corrupt to the core.
It's not scummy... how is this any different than any late night talk show for the past 60 years. People are cued when to cheer, partially artificial I am sure. It's also good for IGN, last thing they want is THEIR show to be a dud.
I would definitely do it if I owned IGN, especially getting someone huge like Phil.
@roadkillers... I dunno, maybe because late night talk shows aren't asking people to cheer for hundreds of people losing their jobs?
Late Night Talk Show vs Consumer Showcase/Interview. How are you even putting them in the same category. One is for pure entertainment the other is an interview based on a product.
And how much is MS worth? 3 trllion and Phil the piece of shit saying "the closures are very hard, but needed for sustainable business" Really? Your worth 3 trillion and the closures were no where near necessary. I don't know about you but I want this asshole to just leave and resign. He's just cancer to the industry.
It's crazy. Some of the top people at IGN are really great, but the organization as a whole just continually finds itself in controversy.
It's all for recognition and publicity. Which doesn't work. It was all staged and disingenuous.
Hard to trust anything IGN does especially now they have a monopoly.
Hard to trust the integrity of the reviews when they are caught manipulating their audience
And some get triggered when we call on their BS and state the obvious. Anyone with half a brain knows the gaming media is biased as heck. It's been like that since forever and the sad part is they will gladly do it for free, anything to help their preferred and irrelevant brand.
Should be laws in place against these form of actions. Same goes for all the fake 5 start reviews for receiving free items. You can’t believe anything you read or hear anymore.
In journalism school they straight up taught us to never take free products, swag, food, etc, even if there are no strings attached. Even if someone doesn't realize it, and no matter how far removed the swag is from what you're covering/reviewing, free stuff does affect how you perceive the company and its products. It tricks you into feeling more positive about things.
How's this Phil doing?
Was Phil in charge of the 3-day fanfest called IGN Live 2024?
https://www.ign.com/article...
When they're "professional critics" console war on Twitter, you should know not to take them seriously.
Just reading this headline alone made me feel grimy. Disgusting, all around. Haven't trusted IGN since over a decade ago, so this isn't really surprising to hear.
I think that kind of thing night be standard. I once was in the audience for Wheel of Fortune and there was a guy that briefed us before the show on his hand signals, when we were supposed to react/applaud and stuff like that and we were told to check under our seats because one of them had a prize underneath it.
Edit: Okay, read the article, this was definitely some slimy behaviour by IGN and it sounds like it wasn't just on the behalf of Xbox either.
Also, since IGN bought Humble Bundle years ago, they stopped occasionally giving a game away for free during certain big sales events etc, screw IGN.
It is for say a game show or similar shows for entertainment purposes but a interview not really.
Bruno Rodriguez confirmed that his statement applied to the entire three-day Fanfest event, not solely Phil Spencer's interview. Regrettably, this part of his response is absent from the article, which raises questions about its omission.
Here is the complete explanation
https://x.com/BrunoRo115301...
Petebloodyonion,
It is an odd omission. While I do believe IGN has some problematic biases, one can't really say it's done for Spencer in light of this information.
Good follow up.
I remember when they gave Alien Isolation a bad review because the alien AI acted like a actual Xenomorph which was free to do what it wanted and hunt you down, and docked Days Gone points because it had a white female as Deacons Girl, oh and they have one of the worst fanboys in Dustin, he has no shame whatsoever.
Don't forget "too much water". It's like they hate hire people that hate their jobs. This is a people problem, when people aren't humbled they become full of themselves. IGN and other news publishers have been given too much sway, and too much preferential treatment. They forget they're meant to inform the people, and have instead become a tool to sell an image these companies want to portray. Perception of power and authority and influence corrupts people.
Former PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden mocked Xbox Chief Phil Spencer on Twitter over his comments in a recent interview, though it seems the former PlayStation boss didn't see the entire interview before reacting.
Must be a slow news day 🙄 😴 We're talking about a former ceo that doesn't even work for Sony anymore
@mp1st.com’s Ibrahim Kabir is so invested in the format wars that when Shawn Layden called out Phil Spencer for his hypocritical stance on Call of Duty exclusivity, Ibrahim got upset at the mocking of Spencer. So now he’s written a useless article to say Phil Spencer deliberately said that because IT WAS A TRAP?!!
Please stop this nonsense, just stop it. Write about news, not this crap.
Just more senseless crap in attempts to distract us away from all the DEI BS the industry is trying to pull.
He wasn't baited, it was a stupid hypocritical comment from one Phillip Spencer which is par for the course for him.
Well he saying he didn't want to do slimy tactics because he wants it to go to everyone like he's a saint...but we know Starfield still isn't on PS and the call of duty parity is due to a 10 year contract they signed to help get the Activision buy out to go through.
https://www.google.com/amp/...
He also complained that he couldn't advertize COD on their showcase because of the Marketing deal Sony had with COD when they had one with Cyberpunk and currently have one with all the Atlus games. It's just hypocrisy all around.
@VersusDMC they're also the ones who did those deals first on the 360. You'd also bet if they were market leader, they'd be doing the same thing because Microsoft are a bunch of hypocrites.
Also, Phil Spencer is far from a saint. I've never seen such a despicable and worthless human being in my entire life. Plus his stupid smile, clearly evil and I just want to punch him in the face as hard as I can.
Gamepass is good for gamers, but the worst thing for developers and you can bet if it takes off even more, the monthly fee will skyrocket. Not that it will, the subscriptions aren't increasing and I seriously doubt they will, they've reach their peak already.
@Giga_Gaia I don't know what's worse the comment or the people who liked your comment.
"Phil Spencer is far from a saint. I've never seen such a despicable and worthless human being in my entire life. Plus his stupid smile, clearly evil and I just want to punch him in the face as hard as I can."
He is the CEO of a video game company. I can think of a hundred other people who deserve that level of hatred.
You failed to mention what vile act was done by Phil Spenser but I suspect the main thing he is really guilty of is that he is Sony's main competitor. Xbox in the 360 days is much different than the Xbox of today so whatever was done back then doesn't apply to how Xbox is being run today. Had Xbox continued with that style of management, they would likely have remained the market leader by a significant margin as they would purposely outbid Sony on every deal. Except what we are hearing Phil Spenser say is that Sony is making all these deals which are detrimental to Xbox which is odd because he has more money than PlayStation. This leads me to believe that his style of leadership is much different from what we know Xbox was back in the 360 days.
Leave this console war nonsense behind. They are just pieces of plastic for your entertainment. Start thinking like a consumer and show no loyalty to either side.
"And Microsoft absolutely ripped Hifi rush, redfall and Starfield off playstation as they had PS5 versions in development."
Big difference between knowing the back room politics of what we found out and those games not being formerly announced to be on PS in the first place, vs a game like Stellar Blade that was announced to the world that its coming to Xbox only years later no longer coming to Xbox. Again those games weren't announced to be on PS. Plus, just like COD they own those games which means they can do what they please with those games. Hi FI made it on PS5 eventually.
Unlike Final Fantasy remakes, keeping a 3rd party IP off other platforms. IP Sony doesn't own. You're right MS was very slimy mainly during the 360 days and early X1 days. As of late in the past 8+ years or so Sony has been doing more 3rd party deals and having timed exclusive things compared to MS. Again I go where the facts are, as you know.
Ms hasn't had many 3rd party exclusives games cause all the 3rd party games their paying for day 1 on gamepass. Idk how tf yall can't see that. They can't pay for both. Well won't pay for both. So what do you want. Day 1 3rd party or 3rd party exclusives
Also come on we already know game sales just aren't there
So if Sony bought Square and every Square game was exclusive to playstation it would be fine but 3 Square games exclusive to PS5 and several on other consoles is worse?
And Microsoft is slimy for not releasing Indiana Jones on PS5 because it is IP Microsoft doesn't own, right?
"So if Sony bought Square and every Square game was exclusive to playstation it would be fine but 3 Square games exclusive to PS5 and several on other consoles is worse?"
Yeah since they would own them. They can do as they please. If the roles were reversed you would be real mad at MS for keeping those games to themselves instead of investing in new IP MS would poach 3rd party constantly, like they use to do. Everyone would hate MS for making the remakes only on Xbox, I mean everyone. Let's not pretend ppl won't.
From a PR standpoint Phil won't mention all the slimy stuff he used to do constantly. Like the entire 360 generation and early x1 days until fans and media blasted him when it came to TR. That's just common sense he won't talk about that.
These are two professional sleaze bags. They know what they are doing when it comes to lying, being slimy and turning a profit. They might be okay outside of work, but while they are playing out their drama for a paycheck, their characters are the moustache twirling bad guy.
I think most people knew that was just click bait stuff meant to get a rise out of sony fans. Unfortunately, some fell for it. Phil wasn't taking a shot at sony or anyone else. All he meant was we are giving you a choice.
Ybarra, who spent two decades at Microsoft, acknowledged concerns about the future of Xbox hardware by fans once more first-party games go multiplatform.
As an xbox guy, If porting some exclusives to sony and nintendo allows MS to continue offering gamepass day one, I'm all for it. Port them all if you need to.
Your way of thinking is why Microsoft is where they are. All they had to do was hold the line of the 360 circa 2010. Had the continued with thay strategy they would not have had to introduce gamepass which has spectacularly kneecapped them.
@hof, but then they would still be in the same position as sony, fighting for those same 150 million customers. As a publicly traded company, they still need to show growth. Once sony is day and date on PC, they will also need to find new customers, likely by embracing 3rd party. What you consider "kneecapping" I consider an incredible customer value in gamepass.
Kneecapping the xbox and pc owners are loving it I do t think u telise how popular gamepass is
They were faltering in the last year or two of the 360 era. Don't forget that they doubled down on Kinect, which might be part of the reason why they didn't have much to show going into Xbox One.
But GamePass is not MS' consolation effort; it was always the endgame! MS is all about subscription-based revenue-streams now! They have turned almost all of their businesses into software-as-a-service; only Windows remains. Stay tuned for that one in the next 5 years.
As a consumer, I really get that point of view.
As an ex dev seeing what's happened to the industry I have no doubt that GP is harming the industry I love by devaluing games, so my thoughts are little less positive about it.
I can agree with the sentiment that most of their games should be multi platform. Until they swallowed up these devs, most of the titles we are wating for would have been multi platform anyway.
@ThinkThink
"As an xbox guy, If porting some exclusives to sony and nintendo allows MS to continue offering gamepass day one, I'm all for it. Port them all if you need to."
I won´t say all, but definitely some games I wouldn´t care either as long excellence continues to be delivered to us.
If some then why not all? Think think isn't wrong, his reasoning is quite concise in that yes multi platform brings more funds to develop more games all available day 1 on gamepass, he's happy as Larry.
you keep saying continues mate, like its been happening all a long, I see on another post, you used the same word,
xbox has forza, which is a quality game, and the rest are 8/10's
they have very little 9 or 10/10s. quality bar is set lower for xbox.
also on topic, which would Playstation fans buy ported 8/10 games when they are accustomed to 9's
@Cockney
"If some then why not all?"
Because if MS wants to remain in the console, business (like they already confirmed multiple times been working on a next gen Xbox console), they would never allow all of their flagship first party games to be available on the main competitor´s console.
Yeah it's better for the games too.
Like yeah Playstation gets Doom and Call of Duty. But they have to pay 70 dollars for it or 100 dollars if you want a special edition. Meanwhile we get it for nothing extra or 30 dollars for upgrades like the Black Ops 6 Vault Edition.
If Playstation and Nintendo players are used to fund my gamepass content I'm fine with that.
It benefits the games and me as well.
I still find it funny that Microsoft is spinning its obligations that it has to releasing on other systems as if it is some noble decision. Before they bought the companies they did these games were all in development easily the last 3-5 years and had some type of standing agreement they absorbed.
People are acting like this is a dependency when in reality it’s them just trying to avoid major lawsuits. I am willing to bet any game that’s started development in the last year that would release in the next 5 will eventually be Xbox only unless in the next 5 years Xbox just fails hard.
And with the new skus they released I REALLY don’t foresee them having a huge jump. When now the disc version is a HUGE luxury at 600 with them not even having a physical presence anymore it’s them killing their physical market.
It's not just about them avoiding lawsuits. It's about them trying to maximize their returns. They didn't buy multiplat publishers to become exclusive. That wouldn't make sense money wise.
They just need super strong games and consistency. This showcase was the first time since the 360 era where I actually was excited for what Xbox has. I already own a paper weight Xbox Series X, but now it’s looking like it’s time to blow the 3 inch layer of dust off it and give it some loving.
What Xbox needs to do now is be consistent with the releases. Don’t let this be a one time thing and then back the the poultry exclusives and typical Forza, Halo, and whatever else they just release. If they can do that I honestly believe they can rebuild the brand and possibly get it back to how it was when the 360 was alive.
I agree with article and I believe sony will follow suit budgets to big development times to long none can sustain this forever and sony won't be able to either
I also think in 20 years we are going to look back and say "Remember when we used to have to buy a game publishers box to put under your TV in order to play their games?"
I just hope with all these acquisitions that next gen isn’t so inundated with so many “wait till E3” every year
Maybe they could even live up to that “Greatest Lineup in Xbox History” tagline they were so emboldened to make a few years ago but then dropped shortly afterwards next gen.
15 Studios now and it will be 20 by the time Scarlett launches. We are not done!
https://www.gamesindustry.b...
Wanna mention something here real quick Greenberg mentions Matt Booty and the impact hes made. We know Matt's position isn't as a big deal as we once thought. Phil had his position for years only not to do much of anything. Why? Because Mattrick was his boss and we know how he felt about 1st party offerings. Proof that Matt's role is influence who evers in charge of Xbox and what their vision is.
I will do the "wait and see" game first, then criticized or praise depending on the decisions made by Sony, Nintendo, etc...