Escapist Magazine: Microsoft is promising a whole new Xbox, with multiple new services and consoles in the works. But has Microsoft really learned from past mistakes? Microsoft made the second-biggest Understatement of the Year last week when Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox said, “We’ve not always lived up to our aspiration of keeping gamers at the center of everything we do when it comes to the experience they’ve had on Windows.” I think it would be more accurate to say that they’ve failed at living up to the most basic expectations of consumers, but I guess the other way sounds nicer. I’d prefer it if the company admitted to specific mistakes so we knew what faults they were supposedly trying to improve.
Microsoft has 'let Blizzard be Blizzard' following the acquisition of the veteran developer according to World of Warcraft's executive producer.
Diablo 4 storefront being a cash grabbing shitshow does unironically attest to that, kudos.
Okay i will be interested if they become old Blizzard but might as well be dead.
Shame most of the people that made Blizzard what they were, have already left a while ago.
Were you expecting Microsoft to hire everyone that had left Blizzard long before they purchased the company...
Microsoft has let the Blizzard company they purchased continue to be the Blizzard company they purchased.
Hanzala from eXputer: "With Ubisoft's practices becoming increasingly anti-consumer lately, the destruction of The Sands of Time Remake looks almost inevitable."
Hey Ubi, here's a gun, don't shoot yourself in the foot.
*Ubi takes gun, aims at foot, empties clip*
Take-Two Interactive has announced that it will lay off 5% of its workforce and cancel some of its games in an effort to increase profits.
There should be a law that says you can’t get rid of employees just for profits without executives taking a x % pay cut first. Encourage them to figure something else out.
They haven't even released the game, previous game made 10000% percent profits and then layoff?
Should be canceling the casino simulator sports games, but I know it's not them. It better not affect BioShock 4 and the Borderlands games
"(For nitpickers who want to claim that Microsoft doesn’t control PC gaming: I realize that people do sometimes play games on MacOS and Linux, but those platforms have such a tiny market share that they just don’t matter to big publishers when deciding where to release their games. )"
Microsoft does not control PC gaming and not because of the existence of Mac and Linux. Because Windows is an open platform and becasue of the existence of platforms such as Steam, GOG, EFS, Origin, Uplay, etc. where Microsoft receives none of the revenue and dictates nothing to those companies.
"Putting Microsoft first-party titles on Steam makes it seem like Microsoft is conceding. Is the company really going to swallow its pride and pay tribute to Valve? Is the company ready to accept that, despite its best efforts, it will never control the marketplace on PC?"
lol.....way to just contradict the hell out of your previous statement. So somehow MS controls PC gaming but doesn't control the PC gaming marketplace? Come on. If there is one company who can be described as having the most control over PC gaming it is Steam and that is because of its marketplace.
"I seriously doubt that Microsoft is changing plans due to a change of heart. My guess is that the company is changing strategies not because we didn’t like the old strategy, but because the old strategy wasn’t working. This is the equivalent of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”"
They are adapting. MS is going to Steam for its marketplace for the same reason Sony may be going to MS for Azure. Because someone else does that job better than they do. Phil Spencer admits they have done a poor job with PC. These are good steps in the right direction.
"The company that made Games for Windows Live is once again promising to serve PC gamers. Based on their track record, I’d feel safer if they went back to ignoring us."
Games for Windows Live? Uh.....a lot has changed since then. Time to move on. Regardless, the fact remains whether MS ignores PC gaming or not, PC gamers are 100% free to ignore MS if they choose to.
Jesus how much did MS pay this site to write this sh*t?
When we play together we all win.
Xbox is going to suck next gen too. Body products instead of games. What a joke.
Microsoft doesn't make a difference when it comes to PC games, they just provide an operating system. Whether they focus on it more or not is irrelevant really, provided they don't break the OS with something stupid (likely). Steam, Origin, etc, etc are the main delivery vehicles for games. They have tried with Games for Windows and the new Windows Store, but its all crap and always will be crap.
What matters is how they focus on their Xbox system, which has been terrible in recent years, because of conflicting priorities.
For MS, as their history shows, the Xbox Console is lost in the woods most of the time. It will do ok for a while, then get kicked aside for some other higher priority project in the company that is being run/pushed by some pet President that currently has the focus of their Board and is getting all the funding. Microsft has a history of running like this, in all divisions for over 15 years now.
This is why the Playstation brand is always better. Sony isn't dealing with conflicting priorities, they need to make a console and games and this is what they do. Sony runs into trouble when they decide to be different and make things like the Cell Processor, but that isn't happening with the PS5.
We might get 2 or 3 years of focused attention out of Microsoft for making better games, but that can and will change and the quality level will drop right after. Disagree? Sure go ahead, but history proves me right.