Honestly this reeks of corporate politics. I’m willing to bet at some point in development there was a regime change, and current management pushed this out the door just to clear the board.
Everything I heard about this came seems to indicate that it isn’t terrible by any means, just mediocre and overpriced in an absolutely oversaturated genre. If management was invested in it, they probably could have spent a ton on marketing, achieved middling numbers, and then used those middling numbers to justify continued development for another few months.
I’m confident in saying that because there are a handful of shitty live service games being operated at a loss for no real reason other than shutting them down would mean management would have to actually admit they fucked up.
I get the feeling the part of capitalism Phil Spencer hates is the part where consumers can take their business elsewhere if they don’t like the product.
Honestly if you read the actual email I think there could be significant legal trouble ahead.
Spencer talks about how the main barrier to acquiring Nintendo is that they sit on a mountain of cash. He calls that unfortunate. He then proceeded to state a company with connections to Microsoft had just bought a lot of Nintendo shares, and how they could work with said company to make such an acquisition a reality.
The company in question publicly bought a massive amount of Nintendo shares. They then proceeded to pressure Nintendo to invest more capital instead of sitting on the cash pile they have now. They did this under claims that such a move would be beneficial to Nintendo in terms of ROI. However, it would also result in Nintendo being more vulnerable to an acquisition from Microsoft if any of those bets don’t pay off.
In short, it could be argued that Microsoft worked with investors to tank Nintendo so they could buy it. That’s a huge deal and will probably result in a shitstorm.
Investors generally want to get a positive ROI. They don’t want to tank the company to the point where it can be acquired by another company for pennies on the dollar.
Look at Nokia. When they hired a former Microsoft exec, they weren’t expecting him to tank the entire company so it could be acquired by Microsoft.
A statement from a Google employee, Dov Zimring, has been released as a part of the FTC vs Microsoft court case (via 9to5Google). Only minorly redacted, the statement gives us a run down of Google's position leading up to Stadia's closure and why, ultimately, Stadia was in a death spiral long before its actual demise....
"Concord servers are now offline. Thank you to all the freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy" angielski
Is this the fastest video game death of all time? Not even Lawbreakers died this fast.
Phil Spencer blames capitalism for games industry woes: 'I don't get [the] luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Microsoft addresses the huge Xbox leaks: here’s Phil Spencer’s full memo (www.theverge.com) angielski
The leaks revealed plans for a revised Xbox Series X.
Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
A statement from a Google employee, Dov Zimring, has been released as a part of the FTC vs Microsoft court case (via 9to5Google). Only minorly redacted, the statement gives us a run down of Google's position leading up to Stadia's closure and why, ultimately, Stadia was in a death spiral long before its actual demise....