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Note that this post was written shortly after seeing the News so it's likely modestly incoherent, and only given the most basic of editing pass. As always, hopefully there's enough meat for discussion.
Link to article below, but today I was greeted by an IGN article titled:
That in the same breath IGN and Microsoft feel the need to announce Matt Booty's promotion, is... indicative of how they perceive the public reception of this announcement. Kiwi Farmers are likely feeling vindicated, and potentially mounting despair, as even under the most anti-DEI culture we've had in ages, a man retires and is replaced by a woman, chosen by the venerable Satya Nadella.
IGN provides this quote:
Now, I'm going to ignore all the fluff as it was incredibly well-prepared and likely approved by multiple PR people to have the just-right wording. I am be tempted to ask Satya: What was the point of letting (or directing) the closing of all those existing, profitable studios? You wouldn't need to back these ideas. Xbox has historically been a money-printer and the most present in consumers' minds, the one people would argue on forums and reddit and making youtube videos for days defending your honor? Such that even fanboys are rapidly admitting the rot has occurred under your feet?
And now, Gamers are left with shit on plates and eating it over the last 5 years, as Microsoft has done everything they can to push the limits of their fans' loyalties.
Xbox was already struggling under the thumbs of Phil Spencer, someone that actually enjoyed and was from gaming and gamer culture. Whether or not normies are going to Notice these canned and prepared responses and coincidental promotion alongside her remains to be actually seen, but even worse: the woman appears to have comparable-or-less Gamer Credentials than Zoe Quinn, so Sharma has to tap another person to be the internal "voice" of games. Probably already being talked about on one of the chans at any rate, so I'll leave that discourse to Those Places for the time being.
That said, unless I am blind and failed my reading comprehension like an average "Gamer", as far as I can tell, Sharma has done basically nothing related to games or gaming throughout her career. So the open-ended question is: why would Satya take that risk despite the general consumer climate?
Again, another quote:
So yes, I'm sure consumers, who have been finally pushed off the edge onto switching off windows, and upset that they literally cannot afford gaming hardware any more are extremely excited for the lady that put Copilot into notepad.exe and the beleagured and oft-derided Microsoft Recall.
Satya really loves his wordsoup that's for sure.
Loose thoughts that don't fit anywhere else in this already-eclectic post, and may be duplicated:
Notably, as far as I can read she does not have any qualifications or past interest in gaming.
Seems that Satya wants more wordsalad and wordsoup to throw at consumers to sound like they're Super Advanced and Definitely Things Will Get Better. Watch for more wordsoupification of the Xbox and microsoft gaming division.
More push into renting in order to play games.
CoreAI is one of Microsoft's largest money-sinks in the company-- they have done their absolute best not to discuss the cost vs revenue during earning calls.
Having been at both Meta and Instacart and head over the CoreAI department, means Sharma has some credible credentials toward running large teams and driving some level of product.
The incessant ai push means microsoft has gobs of compute, and gamers are being starved of what little compute they did have access to even a year ago
At any rate, if you're a capital-G Gamer, the sign was on the wall, but if you're actually invested in the future of the hobby, you probably want to migrate off Xbox before your xbox turns into an diffusion-ran agenticifed gas town, maximizing memory, entitlements, and workflows for such world-changing ideas as Microsoft has clearly been driving forward with such ... vision.
As some of the other posters note, I'm not sure what overall point you are making here? Microsoft has switched out one (massive failure) corpo for another - an Indian(!) woman(!) - and this suggests all kinds of disasters?
Phil Spencer was a capital-G Gamer. He successfully reversed the absolute disaster that was the Xbone... and then succeeded in little else but spaffing hundreds of billions up the wall on poor acquisitions. He's one of many, many gamer leaders who have been shit at their jobs. You clearly understand the damage he's done, mentioning Xbox's shocking reputation at multiple points. Is there any reason to believe a non-gamer could do any worse?
You also state:
My only response is: What?? What Xbox are you thinking of? It's also been a giant money sink, fortunate that it's an irrelevance to MS's balance sheet or else it would surely have been killed a decade ago. Most recently they sunk another 70bil into Activision just to watch the latest CoD have a disastrous reception. The most shocking thing about this announcement is that Microsoft have actually published this news and are pushing Sharma as some kind of saviour, instead of abandoning it once and for all.
As for Sharma herself, is there any reason to suspect she's not a perfectly capable corpo? As you note, time at Meta is almost an anti-signal at this point, but given her other experience and several years now at Microsoft, it would be a surprise if she was useless. I suppose you could see it as Indian nepotism, but if anything this a downgrade for the woman. She's gone from Microsoft main focus, the all-important AI push, to their failing, irrelevant gaming division, which is surely on its last roll of the dice. She must be confident in her ability to turn it around.
As for her AI experience, well, she also worked at Instacart. Why is no one assuming Xbox is getting into the grocery business?
Anyone gamer with any sense would have long ago abandoned the Xbox brand. Indeed, Spencer ensured such a thing by pivoting so heavily towards their PC presence and gamepass. I don't see much reason to assume it could get any worse.
I actually wanted to post something on this myself, but in a completely different direction. I saw on another forum the most curious reaction to the news:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aa23o5w4w2afknay44oqxqz6/post/3mfdtqu5wjk2x
The linked post is a negative reaction from noted game journalist Jeff Gerstmann.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but this is absolutely insane. Merely expressing concern over birth rates - from a minority woman no less - is enough to immediately get cast as some kind of super Chud. Sure, the AI angle is an easy attack point for some of the more obsessed members of Bluesky, but for that to filter out to a relatively normie game journo is another step.
Gerstmann, from what I know of him, has never been particularly lambasted as a woke or poor journalist. GiantBomb was popular as far as I was aware. Has game journalism become so poisoned that everyone has to jump onto the latest left-wing fad or risk being cancelled?
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Gamergate does feel like it was a thousand years ago.
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