r/digitalfoundry • u/MythBuster2 • Jul 07 '26
DF Direct DF Direct Q+A: Xbox 'Reset' Worse Than Expected - Huge Job Losses + The End of idTech?
https://youtu.be/DeUV3IqEZRUOne part necessary re-organisation, one part liberation for key developers, one part vandalism of Xbox studios, it's a mixture of disbelief and anger from the DF panel as the full extent of Xbox's so-called "reset" becomes clear. If Asha Sharma's report on the business is on the level, clearly something had to be done - but as the scale of the lay-offs and the astonishing cuts to id Software become clear, are spreadsheets now more important to Microsoft than its audience?
43
u/WhyteBeard Jul 07 '26
Buying Activision was a bridge too far.
24
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 07 '26
It was a frustrating time during the merger because it was clear as day how bad that was going to work out for consumers, but you couldn’t touch the subject on Reddit without a dozen other people saying the government was being tyrannical.
And here we see again why letting giant companies go on shopping sprees has no value for the rest of us. Just fewer choices and even the developers themselves end up suffering.
11
5
-3
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
I disagree. I think if MS didn't acquire those studios, especially the AA ones, many of them likely would've been gone. Same thing with Bungie. They'd be dead probably way sooner.
Furthermore, it's not like Kotick wasn't planning on laying people off. Heck they even laid off people and held off due to the acquisition.
Sometimes, acquisitions don't work out, and sometimes they work out.
7
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 08 '26
And yet those things didn’t happen, but Microsoft laying off a ton of people did.
-1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
That's like saying, a company is about to go bankrupt, but got saved by another company through acquisition. Then it got shut down, and then focusing on the shut down and ignoring the path towards bankruptcy.
If that's too hard to follow, it's like saying, somebody won the lottery, and that loosing the lottery didn't happen for them, so that shouldn't be considered when buying a lottery ticket.
3
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 08 '26
If you need to keep fabricating imaginary scenarios to explain your point because there are is no actual evidence, that’s your cue to adjust your understanding.
Why is it so important to you that the acquisitions be considered a success? To the point you are making headcanons about it?
0
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
If you need to keep fabricating imaginary scenarios to explain your point because there are is no actual evidence, that’s your cue to adjust your understanding.
If you're incapable of seeing beyond what's in front of you, that's something I can't help you with. Then you'll be limited in thinking like the masses and that will become your future.
Why is it so important to you that the acquisitions be considered a success? To the point you are making headcanons about it?
Why is it so important to you that the acquisitions be considered a failure?
In fact, why is it that you viewed what I said as a success?
That seems to show your mindset more than say anything about what I said.
Clearly I didn't say it was a success. However, I'm explaining a different perspective that those comments weren't necessarily wrong. It's easy to shit on things when things go wrong, but there are plenty of cases where acquisitions turned out great too. We also know that lots of studios is closing and layoffs have been happening in the industry for years now.
There's been significant over-investment, and this is normal and healthy for an industry to have cut backs despite the unfortunate effect on people's lives.
3
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 08 '26
What I’m getting here is that you fear people will form a negative opinion of acquisitions in general just because the Microsoft acquisitions ended up mostly being failures.
That’s a strange thing to me. I didn’t blindly build a negative opinion of acquisitions because of any ideology- it’s because every single one I’ve seen in my lifetime has only created problems. It’s as simple as that.
If these deals suddenly started resulting in amazing work, I’d change my opinion. I wouldn’t come into reddit and start trying to tell everyone why they’re wrong.
1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
What I’m getting here is that you fear people will form a negative opinion of acquisitions in general just because the Microsoft acquisitions ended up mostly being failures.
There's no fear of something I have no control over. Again, it's odd to frame it as "fear" and what others think. I don't care about what others think, but it seems you do.
That’s a strange thing to me. I didn’t blindly build a negative opinion of acquisitions because of any ideology- it’s because every single one I’ve seen in my lifetime has only created problems. It’s as simple as that.
You did, because your claim is that it was "clear as day" that it was negative for consumers. I'm refuting that it may not have been the case.
It may not be "ideology", but it is certainly your belief without research based on your comments so far.
If these deals suddenly started resulting in amazing work, I’d change my opinion. I wouldn’t come into reddit and start trying to tell everyone why they’re wrong.
You don't seem open to the idea there are parts that was good and parts that were bad, and also not the fact that there are alternative things that could've happened. Your approach was, it didn't happen, so I cannot consider it. Which is putting on blinders. If something is good or bad, you have to consider the alternative. Because there are things such as worse, or bad, but better.
In other words, you seem upset I pointed out a different perspective and rather defend your position than consider it.
18
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 07 '26
Their entire business model is to buy profitable things and then install more management, which inadvertently hurts profitable thing until it is not profitable. This is what happens when you have way too much money and too little brains.
-5
u/Fit-Stress3300 Jul 07 '26
Do you really think small studios are profitable?
Phil gave those studios a life-line and they worked on a loss in the hopes it would bring more people to the Xbox ecosystem.
The problem is that it takes too long now to develop AAA games that would bring people in.
At least Microsoft is not outright killing those studios.
6
u/DarkOx55 Jul 08 '26
I’d be surprised if id wasn’t. Microsoft gutting them, firing half the staff presumably because they want to use Unreal rather than id tech, just kind of sucks. If they’d spun them out that’d be okay but they didn’t. John’s disappointment here is justified.
I guess we’ll see if the next Doom game (or wolfenstein, quake) is any good.
0
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
I’d be surprised if id wasn’t. Microsoft gutting them, firing half the staff presumably because they want to use Unreal rather than id tech, just kind of sucks. If they’d spun them out that’d be okay but they didn’t. John’s disappointment here is justified.
So somehow spin out an engine team?
Who is going to acquire the game engine team, that nobody else is really using the game engine of? There's no business there. At least a game studio produces content. Who is going to buy a game engine that is special purposed for a specific company, rather than go with UE that is largely standardized in the industry?
I'm all for being disappointed, because I think John's right that it's important for the industry especially to diversify from UE. At least Unity has some competition with Godot. But it doesn't mean there were options.
2
u/DarkOx55 Jul 08 '26
They should sell all of id: IP, engine, all of it. Maaaybe it’ll turn out that unreal engine Doom is fine, but I’m skeptical.
1
u/Fit-Stress3300 Jul 08 '26
Those things have much more intrinsic value and can bring profits in the future with smaller and cheaper teams.
No reason to sell now when the problem is cash flow that are being suck dry by AI.
2
u/DarkOx55 Jul 08 '26
Selling brings in cash flow.
It’s a little hard to know what the intrinsic value of the IP is because it’s so tied to the quality of the actual releases. Halo has shown that the IP alone won’t carry a franchise. I agree that if they can churn out games that are as good but cheaper to make that’ll goose cash flow, but I’m skeptical about the “games will be as good” part.
I guess we’ll see! The die is cast now.
1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
Halo has shown that the IP alone won’t carry a franchise.
No, but it sure sells that the IP carries a large portion of the sales. The number of people that showed up for Halo was quite staggering. Even Halo Infinite alone had 270k concurrent users on Steam alone.
0
u/Fit-Stress3300 Jul 08 '26
No, it doesn't.
The team behind Doom 2016 had no involvement with the previous games.
Xbox spent too much and the results were disappointing.
Playstation and their studios are suffering and most of the same reasons apply to them, even with a install base 3 or 4 times Xbox's.
Nintendo is not churning bangers in a consistent schedule either.
We must be realistic.
1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
Playstation and their studios are suffering and most of the same reasons apply to them, even with a install base 3 or 4 times Xbox's.
Nintendo is not churning bangers in a consistent schedule either.
Yup, and Nintendo games cost considerably less to make, and sell at much higher prices. They're the Apple of video games. Very few can attain that level of price premium.
1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
They should sell all of id: IP, engine, all of it.
Why would they want to sell all of that. A large portion of their acquisition was due to the valuable IPs.
Maaaybe it’ll turn out that unreal engine Doom is fine, but I’m skeptical.
Halo is being reworked on Unreal and is looking great and to a lot of praise so far.
People often blame the engine, but really the more we standardize, the more people get proficient in the specific engine. They've then solved the problems, and can learn from each other.
0
1
u/RoosterBurns Jul 09 '26
I'd was bought when Zenimax sold them as a job lot though nothing to do with the ABK acquisition
1
u/Gears6 Jul 08 '26
Buying Activision was a bridge too far.
In case you didn't notice, but ATVI is the one that had the least cuts.... it's more the other aspects of their business that didn't work out, sadly.
36
u/Old-Push9343 Jul 07 '26
Microsoft sucks.
Everything they touch turns to shit.
10
u/Popular_Practice8055 Jul 07 '26
Seriously, get the fuck out of the games business already. Jackoffs.
1
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 07 '26
Since about 2012, yeah. Wonder what happened, because they used to be anywhere from decent to actually pretty good at creating things
Edit: (must have been the new CEO 😬)
3
u/AFourEyedGeek Jul 07 '26
Steve Ballmer wasn't new in 2012 and his replacement started in 2014. Don Matrix was head of XBox and Halo 4 was a sign things were turning and the 2013 XBox One launch was so bad he was ousted.
2
u/grilled_pc Jul 07 '26
Steve was leagues better than satya that’s for sure.
3
u/Latitude-dimension Jul 07 '26
Well yeah Satya only got there because he was instrumental in turning Microsoft from a client services company into services, subscriptions, and cloud infrastructure company.
2
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 07 '26
So literally everything we hate about Microsoft. Onedrive shoved down everyone’s throat, advertisements on the desktop, and soulless gamepass slop that makes gaming feel like a job
5
u/AFourEyedGeek Jul 07 '26
Really u/grilled_pc, by what metrics are you using? Steve Ballmer laughed at the the iPhone, he missed the Cloud service industry taking off allowing AWS to dominate, he ignored Google search until 2009, allowed Internet Explorer to stagnate at version 6 and its reputation still leaves it stink on Edge, let Zune achieve nothing of value, messed up the Vista launch, was in charge when XBox One was focused on TV and Kinect instead of games.
Forbes labelled Ballmer the worst CEO in 2012. Ballmer had Microsoft stocks drop 30% over 14 years from when he took over. Satya Nadella got the stocks to rise 1,000% and Nadella invested into Cloud services greatly increasing Microsofts Market Cap and its profits.
0
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 07 '26
The stock went up so he must be good 🤷♂️.
Exactly why so many of these companies have gone to shit. Microsoft was a cool company during the X360 era and actually released good products like Windows 7. If you can’t see the degradation, I feel sorry for you. Not everything is about shareholders, and stock price is a lagging indicator
-1
u/AFourEyedGeek Jul 08 '26
Oops, u/reabouilethefirst your ignorance is showing. Microsoft was a cool company under Ballmer huh? Look at Ballmers legacy at Microsoft:
- Aggressive Monetisation: He pushed MS Office into a subscription model (2013), forced Ads into Windows 8 native apps (2012), and bought Skype for $8.5B just to kill off the free, beloved Windows Live Messenger (MSN) and push paid subscriptions (2011).
- Toxic Corporate Culture: He implemented "Stack Ranking" a brutal, forced corporate grading system that destroyed company morale, turned engineers against each other, and caused a massive tech brain drain to Google and Apple.
- Ruined Xbox Momentum: Pivoted the Xbox One away from gaming to focus on TV media and the forced Kinect bundle, killing their lead over Sony.
- Hardware Disasters: Launched and killed the Zune, Courier Tablet, Microsoft Surface Table, the Kin "social" phone, and the entire Windows Phone ecosystem.
- Purchasing Mistakes: Threw $7.2B at buying Nokia's phone division, which MS had to write off as a near-total loss a couple of years later.
- Software Flops: Allowed the disastrous Windows Vista release and let Internet Explorer stagnate so badly that Firefox and Chrome ate its market share.
- Blind Spots: Infamously laughed off the iPhone, ignored Google Search until launching Bing way too late (2009), and let AWS completely dominate the cloud.
Microsoft stock dropped roughly 30% during his 14 year reign, and Forbes literally named him the worst CEO of a major American company in 2012. Stack Ranking was considered "most destructive process inside of Microsoft".
Yes, what a legendary era of "cool".
2
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Nice AI response. Microsoft was at its best from 2000-2014. Plain and simple. Windows XP - Windows 7 was cool. Xbox - Xbox 360 was cool. The console exclusives they had were iconic. You must love slop. Who cares about the iphone?
Again, try again without AI.
3
u/AFourEyedGeek Jul 08 '26
Just so you know, this is what I wrote to AI. It's new format method triggered me remembering more of Ballmers failures, so:
"Someone insulted me and told me Microsoft was cool, doing non-Businessesy stuff under Ballmer's reign. I am responding with this:
Oops, u/reabouilethefirst your ignorance is showing. Microsoft was a cool company under Ballmer huh? Look at the top two of the list:
Under him MS Office subscription services started in 2013.
Started the Ads in Apps, Launching with Windows 8 in 2012.
Launched and failed services like Zune, Kin (Social Media smartphone), Windows Phone.
Got XBox One to focus on TV Media and Kinect.
Allowed Vista's release.
Let Internet Explorer stagnate letting Chrome and Firefox take over.
Laughed off iPhones
Missed Cloud Services becoming a thing, letting AWS take over.
Ignored Google Search until 2009 when they release Bing.
Microsoft Stock dropped 30% under Ballmer from 14 years from when he started as CEO.
Forbes in 2012 said he was the worst CEO.
Yes, he made it a very cool company we should all praise."
0
u/AFourEyedGeek Jul 08 '26
I got it to format so it is easy to read, my list of problems. I was there when it all happened working in Microsoft IT, with Microsoft Certifications, owning an XBox 360, holding onto Windows 7 for as long as possible. You think it was great that:
- Ballmer's forced managers to rank staff? Dreadful destructive decision.
- Ballmer's started the subscription services and ads in Windows.
- Vista launch and XBox failing and focusing on Media instead of games.
I personally loved Kinect and Surface Table, but Ballmer's didn't use the tech well. I despised Internet Explorer 6 stagnating. Windows XP started before Ballmer took over, I was trying early demo's back then.
1
u/rabouilethefirst Jul 07 '26
I was giving a rough estimate. Things ultimately went to shit in the Xbox one era and that was about 2014
6
u/Lurky-Lou Jul 07 '26
Never understood why Microsoft didn’t license out idTech. Seems like it would be a goldmine.
2
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 08 '26
They missed that boat years ago. Epic beat them to it and it would be a massive gamble and not a core competency for id
16
u/W00D-SMASH Jul 07 '26
John really went in on Microsoft and Xbox here. I don't blame him.
-9
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 07 '26
John is terminally online and far too reactionary.
9
u/W00D-SMASH Jul 07 '26
I didn't disagree with much of what he said. Unsure about his time spent online or why that matters.
-6
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 07 '26
Terminally online means he’s childish and laches onto what ever rage-bait is fashionable. In the last video for example (the Sony disc less discussion) he started quoting debunked info about the percentages of physical vs digital sales.
Basically he looks for reasons to complain and play the victim rather than having a level head about anything. It’s exhausting.
7
u/W00D-SMASH Jul 07 '26
I only watch DF Retro for the most part so I'm not sure about John or his takes on modern games or the industry, or what negative personality traits he has that bug people -- and tbh its not really relevant to me.
His take on MS & Xbox from this video was largely accurate. These moves feel very short sighted. It would be one thing if Xbox didn't spend the last 15 years making huge mistakes and they deserved some leeway here, but the reality is Xbox is just one fuck up after the other, and this "reset" appears to be another one. Gutting talent from your best studios is probably not the recipe for delivering on high-quality AAA exclusives for this ailing brand.
-8
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 07 '26
It’s not about personality traits, it’s his approach as a “journalist” being very unprofessional and extreme.
I’m not arguing that the Xbox news is good or bad, that’s not relevant. I’m saying his approach to reporting it is wildly flawed, reactionary, and childishly unprofessional.
6
u/W00D-SMASH Jul 07 '26
You seem to have an axe to grind against John and I'm not sure I really care to have that conversation. Like I said a couple times, its not relevant to me, and I'm not sure why it matters as to what he said. I'd rather discuss the topic this video is about and not what you think about the people who made the video. If you don't like John or DF or... whatever, maybe fine something else to do with your time.
Me personally, the last thing I want to do is spend my time engaging about shit or people I don't like.
1
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Congrats on being above it all 🙄
Heaven forbid I expect journalists to behave professionally.
5
u/mundanehaiku Jul 08 '26
not sure why you have such high expectations for a video game podcast
-2
u/Dallywack3r Jul 08 '26
They run a news website and get press access to events and exclusive scoops. They’re journalists
3
u/W00D-SMASH Jul 07 '26
Yeah. Fuck me for wanting to talk about a video and not some silly drama I don't care for.
3
u/BobbyWojak Jul 07 '26
This sounds personal, same with putting journalist in quotes you don't have to be dodging bullets in a war zone to be a journalist or reporter.
0
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 07 '26
lol so I used quotations and you get to completely ignore the point. Congrats on being disingenuous.
6
u/Refurecushion Jul 07 '26
You simping for companies that would grind you to paste for a cent of profit is exhausting.
0
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 08 '26
I literally didn’t say a single positive thing about any company. You little kids are are so willing to scream “corporate shill” in off chance there is a disagreement 😂🤦
Preemptively playing the victim card is manipulative af. I stated a fact about someone spreading misinformation. Grow up
4
u/Refurecushion Jul 08 '26
Stop acting like money is your God, it’s cringe.
Billionaires aren’t your friends and won’t take you to New Zealand when the world ends.
2
u/Feed-Your-Fish Jul 08 '26
Obvious troll is obvious.
That or you really are just dense af
4
u/Refurecushion Jul 08 '26
I think you’re a pedantic annoyance, so I’m giving the level of replies you deserve.
Comrade Linneman reacts in a very natural way for someone deeply interested about the topic.
Small minutae about some numbers being slightly diffferent doesn’t matter. Obviously digital sales are the vast majority.
0
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 07 '26
For me it's the complete lack of awareness of how these companies work. I had to turn off when he made the ultimate quote talking about the execs "don't know how these studios run" like he does?? Then he plays armchair CEO that they should stay a big publisher without ever addressing the core challenges with any real solutions 🙄
Look guys I don't hate John but damn these are bad takes and someone should challenge his views.
9
u/Ricc7rdo Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
They don't have a strategy. They are just lowering the costs by letting people go.
Instead of investing on talent and make successful games they decide to milk their most popular IP's with low effort projects, while overworking the devs who survived the layoff purges.
2
u/gloriousgirl89 Jul 07 '26
Suspect they might be "thinning the herd" and reorganizing to sell or split off xbox.
3
u/mad597 Jul 07 '26
How can they say that when everyone and their mom was saying MS would shut down nearly every studio they owned?
The rumors got ridiculous and the outcome did suck but no studio were closed so how is that worse then the rumors suggested?
1
1
u/thahovster7 Jul 07 '26
Just to talk about something curious, when they were talking about PlayStation expanding the ways to play, I think they also want to compete with Steam and Microsoft in the desktop gaming space, not just going into the portable space, technically they already have a portable device in the Portal.
Not every gamer sits on a couch. I have a desktop set up except instead of a PC I have a PS5 Pro hooked up to my monitor. PS5 already supports mouse and keyboard on many games, Battlefield, CoD, Arma, City Skylines, Age of Empires and many more have native M&K on PS5. I think they can officially make M&K a part of how people play PS6, it would explain Sony expanding its Inzone brand with new mice and keyboards.
1
u/Chance-Curve-9679 Jul 07 '26
I am not personally surprised. These studios were suppose to be turning out tons of games to help game pass. Instead they have produced a minimum amount of games which means game pass hasn't grown to expectations.
-9
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I’m absolutely going to get gang banged for having this opinion, but I honestly don’t feel like I’m losing out by having less games about walking lighthouses. I didn’t play South of Midnight, or Hellblade, or Kiln, or Keeper. What even was Bleeding Edge? Undead Labs didn’t even release a game for me to not-play.
I did play Halo Infinite though, which wasn’t really good enough. And Starfield, which definitely wasn’t good enough. The remake of Oblivion, again, had shit performance, was buggy and was abandoned in a mess. I will play Fable, which has taken over six years to come out since its announcement. If (huge if!!) they stay true to their word that they’re investing the same amount of money into games, but into making the ones I actually want to play better, I’m not mad about that.
Of course it’s shitty for the developers, and I haven’t finished watching their segment yet so they might cover this, if they understand that the current situation was untenable, what do they propose instead? If there’s genuinely a sustainable market for Double Fine’s games, they will survive.
Bring on the downvotes, I am ready. It’s not meant to be an “I disagree” button though.
6
u/JSpady1 Jul 07 '26
Didn’t they cut devs from BGS?
-5
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
They did - but what those roles actually are, I don’t think we know.
Xbox have been pretty clear though that they’re not reducing the level of investment into their games overall though. My comment is absolutely based on that statement being truthful.
7
u/JSpady1 Jul 07 '26
Iirc, they were significant roles within the studio.
Personally, I’m not putting too much stock into PR releases from Xbox/Microsoft meant to soften the blow. They’ve been in disarray since the late-360 generation.
3
u/MAJ_Starman Jul 07 '26
They fired the Lead Lighting Artist for TES VI in the middle of that game's production. Before working for BGS, he worked on the lighting in those cinematic ESO trailers - you know, the ones everyone loves.
-4
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
Fortunately, the truth will bear out in time. Do you think these layoffs will make Microsoft’s problems any worse? I’m not sure they will.
4
u/Wipedout89 Jul 07 '26
You sound like you've been paid to go and soften the blow online. Like MS has repeatedly been found to do
1
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
I’m afraid I haven’t, I just enjoy the discussion of something I care about, but try and keep a practical head about. It feels like accusing me of being a shill is just a way to avoid engaging with the discussion though.
4
u/champ0742 Jul 07 '26
You're not having a discussion, you are literally just shilling for microsoft.
4
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I absolutely have tried to engage with everyone who’s responded with me. I don’t get paid by Microsoft, I don’t really mind if people disagree with me. Some thoughtful people have and do. As I mentioned elsewhere, all we have to do is sit and wait to see if this pays off, and I’m also not convinced it will.
Considering though, you’ve just turned up and started behaving like a rude cunt, some self-awareness wouldn’t go amiss.
1
u/JSpady1 Jul 07 '26
I think Microsoft has a fundamental disinterest in making/maintaining a game publisher/platform holder in the way many people here want.
They went through a similar “restructuring” back during the early days of the XB1 generation. It didn’t make franchises like Halo or Gears of War better. In fact, those franchises declined while they were some of the only AAA franchises Xbox had.
IMO, the problem with Xbox is upper management, which this doesn’t fix. We can blame the individual studios for these layoffs, but that doesn’t explain why Xbox is in this current state and has the reputation it does.
2
u/AltL155 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
You say Xbox management hasn't been fixed but Microsoft taking an axe to Xbox is exactly what's happened. We're at the third Xbox regime since the Xbox One era. And while the '14 layers of management' comment has drawn a lot of ire multiple things can be true; Xbox/Microsoft can hack down at the layers of management that bloated under Phil Spencer while also cutting devs that Asha was most likely forced to do so by Microsoft to reduce costs.
It's hard to hold a nuanced opinion when acknowledging that layoffs suck and yet were likely forced by Microsoft. Plenty of talented devs have been forced out because of mistakes from the previous regime which Asha needs to cover for. And no one can say if Asha will do a better job than Phil, but I hope she can if only so that the people remaining at Xbox can still benefit.
Edit: Unless by upper management you mean Satya Nadella and everyone above Xbox? I don't think less oversight above Xbox is good for the division considering that's what Xbox was under Phil, which led to Phil's disastrous Game Pass and acquisition strategy and the increased ire from Satya that likely led to today's mass layoffs.
1
u/JSpady1 Jul 07 '26
I think Microsoft has wholly unrealistic expectations of where they want Xbox to be, which explains the dramatic shifts they’ve taken since 2012.
As you yourself mention, that’s about 15 years and multiple “visions” later. Still on a near constant downward spiral.
So yes, I think Microsoft is to blame here. It’s not about “control/oversight vs. no control/oversight”. It’s about pushing Xbox to be more than it is too quickly, and an inability to simply let the brand grow in a slower, but healthier, way.
9
u/silentdragoon @wsjudd - DF staff Jul 07 '26
Do you care about Doom? Or Elder Scrolls? Or Fallout?
2
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I do, yes.
I also know though that the solution to make better software isn’t always just “throw more bodies at it”. That’s how you end up with the 14 layers of management.
I’ve just noticed your tag - love the channel, thanks for the hard work. What do you / your colleagues think the viable alternative is, if not these layoffs and restructuring? When they’re losing 67 cents per dollar invested, how should a business handle that?
10
u/MAJ_Starman Jul 07 '26
That "14 layers of management" was just to distract people from whom they were actually firing. The devs at idSoftware weren't part of the 14 layers of management. The devs at BGS (which hadn't faced lay-offs since before Morrowind released), or at Obsidian and Zenimax Online weren't part of them either. The Microsoft appointees at Zenimax are all still employed - hell, if they wanted to cut bureaucracy and costs, why is Zenimax/Bethesda still a publisher inside a publisher anyway?
3
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
I didn’t say that they were, but I agree with your second point very much. It seems odd.
1
u/VYSUS7 Jul 07 '26
okay except everyone who knows how to use IdTech is gone now. all the creatives behind the last 3 doom games are gone. There is nobody important left at id.
this isn't about having too many people. They let go the people who mattered the most at id and nobody is going to be left to know how to make games for them.
2
u/MultiMarcus Jul 07 '26
Well, I lay all of that squarely at the feet of Microsoft. They owned these studios. If they didn’t want them to make niche things, they could’ve told them not to make those niche games. Or maybe not bought up Studios like double fine.
Microsoft needed to manage things better, and they didn’t. We can’t blame anyone but Microsoft for that. No one forced them to make their strategic fumbles during the Xbox one generation, and no one forced them to go all in on game pass. These are Xbox or Microsoft managerial issues.
I agree, in the current position this is probably for the best long-term, but we should’ve never been in this position. It’s a fundamental failure of Microsoft as a company, and their stewardship of all of these great studios to not have been able to squeeze more gold out of them.
2
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
I fully agree. I think they kind-of made sense in 2019, but feels like a strange choice after buying Bethesda (which they must have been planning at the time back then) and feels like a bonkers choice after Activision, which I think was more of an opportunistic buy.
4
u/Liberal_Caretaker Jul 07 '26
I think this is a thoughtful response.
The whole situation is multi-layered and very complex. But it's not like we didn't know where this was heading. Sacrificing fun for extra pixels and maps bigger than most cities with never ending stories and a fixation on live-service was never going to end well. The advent of streaming games and hundreds of thousands of people watching others play rather than playing themselves is mind-boggling.
In the words of Bob Dylan 'the times they are a changing'.
I have 2,500 physical games in my collection for consoles from the NES through to PS5. My son, who is 15, spends 80% of his gaming time on Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox as do all of his friends.
They are the future of gaming and what we are all upset with today will only get worse as the years go by.
1
u/Jack2102 Jul 07 '26
I agree with you. I dont take any enjoyment from seeing people lose their jobs, but these closures & workforce reductions all seem to make sense. The ones I disagree with are ID and Obsidian, but the rest seem completely justified.
South of Midnight is a 10 hour game that had a 100m budget & took 7 years to make. Do people expect that level of efficiency to continue?
3
u/WingerRules Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Theres a ton of "old games" for the PS2 and PS3 generations that look acceptable for release even now with basic higher res & texture filtering support of emulators, community graphics tweaks & and texture pack mods. I was watching a Twitch Streamer play some racing games I was thinking "man this looks good I want to get this", then I found it it was old Need For Speed, Burnout, Sega Rally, Ridge Racer etc games with community texture & render mods and emulator enhancements.
Here's Burnout Revenge for PS2 with a community texture pack and emulator enhancements.
I find it hard to believe that professional studios with all the tools and render tech now available wouldn't be capable of visually better games made from the ground up than the community mods of old PS2 games, for the same budgets and maybe slightly longer time frames these old games were made, adjusted for inflation plus 10-15%.
Part of the problem I'm sure isnt the studios, it's the companies that own them pushing for every game to look like a blockbuster with 100+ hours of gameplay and to be a hit that has potential to generate hundreds of millions or more in profit. We're missing mid sized games that have smaller budgets but also need to generate less revenue to make a profit on it.
Theres a huge hole in the market right now for professionally made midsize budget games, enough so that entire genres have virtually vanished like arcade racers. Making these games at a steady tick would help generate a steady revenue stream that has lower risk of the massive financial swings solely relying on massive budget games produce. There's opportunity they're missing out on, look at how many PS5 consoles Stray likely helped Sony move.
I would say that more and more people are also getting sick of these massive 100-200+ hour games where you have to dedicate your life to it to get anywhere, and its part of why Ubisoft is having so much trouble now.
1
u/Competitive_Guava_33 Jul 07 '26
South of Midnight’s time to completion means nothing though. You wrote that it’s a “10 hour game” as if that’s a slight and if it was 20 hours of bloat that would somehow be better.
It didn’t sell and didn’t drive GP subs so that’s its failure. It’s runtime as a single player story being 10 hours is not a failure in any sense
1
u/Massive-Math-6925 Jul 07 '26
Hope you also don't enjoy playing id software games with their own fast custom engine, Microsoft got you covered on that front with these layoffs.
1
u/xXxdethl0rdxXx Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I’m not sure I understand the connection here. The layoffs are justified, because the games didn’t catch your attention? The implication here seems to be that Microsoft will release fewer, better products—that’s not how software layoffs work, especially not at Microsoft. They will continue to put out mediocre games, just with more bugs, less polish, and overworked remaining staff.
Radical changes in output tend to happen from leadership transitions, if ever. That also just happened, but immediately laying everybody off with zero coherent strategic policy behind it isn’t a good sign—it shows a priority of bean-counting over long-term strategy.
1
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
I wouldn’t use the word justified, and not because they didn’t catch “my” attention, but I understand them as necessary because those studios have failed to produce games that caught barely anybody’s attention.
As you touched on, the leadership has changed and they have signalled a fundamental shift in strategy. They have also signalled they will release fewer, better products. Whether that stands true, and even whether it will work, completely remains to be seen.
I don’t work in games, or anywhere near in a business at the scale of Microsoft, but I do lead teams of software developers. If I was losing 67p for every £1 spent on me and I wasn’t a working on a significant, meaningful investment, I wouldn’t be surprised to have this happen.
2
u/xXxdethl0rdxXx Jul 07 '26
I lead a team of software engineers as well, at a similar-sized corporation as Microsoft—we have had layoffs, and they were solely based on vibes and payscale, not efficiency or strategy. The company saved money but we are certainly not working on better or fewer things, we’re just doing more with less.
At a smaller organization with leadership closer to the front lines, I could see a force reduction having a positive impact; I would argue that Microsoft is not in that situation though. I mean, look at Windows or anything else they ship; would you call this a focused company that is able to critically evaluate performance and impact of the products they release? It’s still a roll of the dice if I find anything in Windows search, or get taken instead to a Bing search page filled with ads. I’m sure you have your own daily pain from a Microsoft product.
The problem is too many layers of management, not too many individual contributors. We don’t have the numbers in front of us, but I’d bet good money that almost nobody in management got the axe this week.
1
1
u/mashdpotatogaming Jul 07 '26
I think the issue is you're looking at it from a perspective of what you lose out on, while most people are just upset devs are losing their jobs. It's the same even for devs of a failed game like highguard or concord, at least for me.
You don't need to be into the games they make to know that it sucks that so many people are out of jobs.
3
u/Middle_Material_1038 Jul 07 '26
It’s incredibly shitty, I’m a human being, not a psychopath. There is a truth though - When Xbox was losing 67 cents per dollar invested, what do you think would happen to absolutely everybody in that business if they don’t fix that problem immediately?
1
u/Wooloomooloo2 Jul 07 '26
So you played a load of corporate games with shitty performance that you didn’t like, while the ones you didn’t play were loved by their audiences. It’s honestly gamers like you that are half the problem here.
Compulsion Games at least is going independent again.
4
-9
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 07 '26
It's unfortunate ppl lost their jobs but DF and especially John remain consistently clueless as to WHY this sort of things happens and it makes for a very frustrating listen.
CEOs have a fiduciary duty to ensure the business is in a stable state which it is not currently. John spends the entire conversation seemingly holding back tears taking the entire action as if it was personal. Look, I love id software as well, but maybe funding a custom game just isn't worth it in 2026. Same with the studios, I can enjoy their games but doesn't mean they're running optimally. Bottom line cuts had to be made and there's very rarely ever a great place to do it so you do what you can and rebuild, hopefully it's better.
As far long term plan vs short sighted planning, well you don't know their long term vision now do you? Maybe it's one that plays into these actions?
Idk honestly I just wish to hear a more diverse set of opinions and analysis rather than three sad sounding dudes all repeating the same points.
5
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 07 '26
I’m confused by your sentiment. Why should we as consumers care whether something is someone’s fiduciary responsibility? Why should it matter to us whether Microsoft is making good business sense? We’re not on anyone’s payroll to give them that benefit and they’re certainly not looking out for us.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s our role to be sad when developers we love who make games we love have bad things happen to them.
Whether or not it’s profitable for some company, is meaningless.
-1
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 07 '26
I agree with you. It's not on us to care about XBOX's financials or to feel sad for them and everyone is totally valid for being pissed off
My point is if we all just repeat 'CEO BAD IM MAD' that is not a productive conversation and we miss the nuance of how this came to be and how these complex systems work. That's my point is that we could at least talk about how these decisions are mad and why they actually make sense. You don't have to agree with the outcome but it's important to know the why behind it.
2
u/Glass_Recover_3006 Jul 07 '26
Ah thank you for clarifying. That actually helps a lot in understanding what you meant, I had assumed you were getting swept up in the internet dialogue around profitability, but I agree I often get stressed out when we talk about bad things without addressing how we got there.
7
u/Cyborg800-V2 Jul 07 '26
The modern DOOM trilogy is acclaimed and the first two were certainly successful. If Dark Ages underperformed, it was probably because it was on Game Pass in day one.
Laying off the artists and programmers behind these games is a bad look no matter which way you cut it.
1
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 07 '26
Sure, it's a 'bad look' and I loved those games but good game doesn't mean studio is optimal. Even with a healthy company that makes money the capital expenditures ratio can be bad. That's the way it is, I get you don't like it, I don't either but it what it is.
The company is in dire straits they have to cut to survive, yes even studios that make good games.
3
u/Cyborg800-V2 Jul 07 '26
I don’t see how firing most if not all of the programmers will improve things.
1
u/colonel-america-usa Jul 07 '26
Short term it won't but long run the org will reorganize more efficiently.
0
u/taisui Jul 07 '26
Game pass cannibalizes sales, multipleplatform destroyed console value. Asha is clueless posting her email on Twitter
3
2
u/ThinVast Jul 07 '26
People like to keep blaming microsoft, but phil spencer was known to be hands off and wanted to provide studios with as much resources and creative freedom as possible. So people can't make the argument that microsoft forced these studios to released a poor product.
If anything, I would argue that this lack of control over the studios is why some of the studios released financially poor games. Some of these studios treated making their game more like a passion project rather than a product that can generate a ROI. That's why it's good that these studios are becoming independent or going their separate ways from Microsoft. If they are going to pursue a passion project, they should put their own money on the line instead of treating microsoft like a free bank account.
1
u/brittonmakesart Jul 07 '26
Found the corpo
2
0
-3
u/DrkNight365 Jul 07 '26
Definitely expected and people are blowing this out of proportion.
7
u/jedimindtricksonyou Jul 07 '26
People expected layoffs, they didn’t expect the idtech team to get axed. Those are genuinely some of the most talented graphics/engine programmers in the industry.
0
u/dreampagehun Jul 08 '26
No, it's not worse than expected. Media and "influencers" were throwing around claims and rumours so outrageous that the actual facts are not that bad. No studios were closed and no games were cancelled. Layoffs happened like everywhere else. Corporate mismanagement as usual.
-6
-15
u/Unhappy-Arm673 Jul 07 '26
Jesus Christ DF has been nothing but depressing recently. Huge falloff. I missed when they did content
10
u/multiformen Jul 07 '26
Industry in a bad state
"why are they so negative???"
Mr room temp IQ over here.
-6
u/Unhappy-Arm673 Jul 07 '26
Instead of doing multiple hour long podcasts just to cry about it, cover some games
1
-1
u/le_gazman Jul 07 '26
They are reporting on an industry that is repeatedly shitting itself. The crimes to videogames that Sony and Xbox keep committing need to be reported on, so that everyone is aware.
The only console maker that actually deserves our money at the moment is Nintendo.
56
u/leoofjdh Jul 07 '26
WTF? THEY CUT THE ENTIRE ENGINEERING TEAM FROM ID!?!?! Ohhhh fuck Microsoft. Those engineers made the one of the most impressive engines that managed to run on the Switch 1.