Easy, they hired the wrong people based on the wrong criteria. They don't hire gamers, they hire yes-men and activists that agree with their own eco chamber and political views. They actually despise gamers and their goal is to "own the chuds" and hijack the medium to push their own world views and self inserts. And the studios tolerated this for a while during the ZIRP era because all stocks were going to the moon regardless, especially during covid. But now they finally got to see the output of those people they hired.

>Hell, one of their flops, Redfall, apparently "reviewed well internally"

Easy, they don't make games for gamers, they only make games for themselves full of self inserts. Except there's not many customers like them, so the game flops and mass layoffs happen or the studio gets shut down because that's the only way to get rid of the rot.

Just look at the people at those studios today vs what idsoftware, bethesda, blizzards was like back in the days. Polar opposites.

Indie studios are now where it's at.

I bet you - if they had people like Facepunch [running independent studios] - then yeah Xbox would've been successful (they kinda already are, but fucked themselves over due to an incoherent strategy)

Unlike - Xbox - Nintendo have an identity. Fun games first, graphics second. Xbox had an identify before - multiplayer/ live games. but now who knows what they're.

[0]: Facepunch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepunch_Studios

I'm being harsh. I'm sure that there are plenty of people in the org that have taste. And they have a lot of users. But MS is where products go to die (i.e. enshittify).

The core argument of the article still hold as does my point of contention so it's not a big deal for me.

This article itself references a similar article I read years ago [0] so I see no reason in having it derail the rest of the convo.

[0] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/companies/japan-s-oldest-co...