-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Phil Spencer: "I know we have to take risks [after Scalebound cancellation],"
- Thread starter Alpha Phoenix
- Start date
Man I feel sorry for Phil. If they don't have some tangible and real exclusive, first party or otherwise, games in the pipe line already E3 is gonna be brutal. Even then no one will believe him. The interview and podcast circuit over that time is gonna suck for him. I wonder if he'll appear on Giant Bomb's E3 this year? They are usually pretty good at questioning developers and executives when they get the chance. I still remember Jeff questioning him about the Master Chief collection and releasing broken games.
FinaruDensetsu
Member
Um... but he's been saying it's his fault... WHat do you want him to do? Commit seppuku?
Goose_Se7en
Banned
You crazy fool. I love these hypotheticals and I know a little bit of how game dev works and how long it takes to make games but to give Mattrick any credit for any of these titles is straight bs. Crackdown 3 is such a Spencer backed game. Do you honestly think Mattrick greenlit that title? State of Decay 2? Which was a 3 game deal (I may be mistaken) that Undead Labs signed after SoD and after Spencer was head of Xbox. This is the Undead Labs blog post announcing the deal.
You're a funny guy/gal.
Edit: I was incorrect. At the time of said Undead Lab blog post, Spencer was not Xbox Head.
You are being willfully obtuse or ignorant. There is no way anyone who is actually reading the comments surrounding this could possibly dismiss it as just an overblown reaction to one game's cancellation. if you think the outrage was just because of Scalebounds cancellation. This a pattern that has been building up more and more as time goes on and people are fed up with it. Scalebound was the straw that broke many a camel's back.
onemanasylum
Banned
PR sure. but by 2009 it had a great slew of exclusives, and was selling better then the competition...it did not take 4 years for ps3 to "Get BAck" whatever that means. Despite it's perception it didn't stop it from selling better
It's a Kamiya game. The team behind a game is far more important than any pre release footage. Pre release footage has literally been faked before with other games, so I am not sure why you think it is a reliable way to gauge the quality of a game. Kamiya never delivering a bad game in his whole 20 year career is a better way to gauge the quality of it.
It's also worth noting that many Kamiya games are very hard to explain without putting it in your hands and spending time with it. W101 certainly had that problem.
Prithee Be Careful
Industry Professional
By risks he likely means another spin-off of the Forza franchise. He's already got a sim and a open world racer - just needs an edgy underground racer to complete the pack.
As COD has already demonstrated, three studios on three year rotations is pay dirt.
As COD has already demonstrated, three studios on three year rotations is pay dirt.
I said the end results are comparable. You as a consumer should compare both lineups and decide which is more interesting to you. That's what the market has done and Sony is the clear winner. I'm just saying you can't just say "MS should organise like Sony" as if that was an easy thing to do.
Acquiescence
Member
I agree with you that the game looked crap, but is that due to Microsoft's rumoured interference/mismanagement with the project, or did PlatinumGames simply work on a stinker for four years that had no hopes of achieving any kind of success upon release.
That's a rhetorical question by the way. Point being, we don't really know who's fault it is that Scalebound looked as shoddy and bereft of focus and direction as it did.
That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, it is also a chance to keep working and making your dream game a reality. Each and everyone of these publishers or the big 3 have their own drawbacks.
onemanasylum
Banned
Agreed, Professionals talking on twitter is just poor, it seems fake and leads to nothing good imo. Anyone in his position should stick to official posts only.
TissueBox
Member
Under 9,000. :/
Crayon
Member
Tweets cancelled. Too risky.
We'll find out this year like we always do? I mean, this is the same stuff people here were saying back in 2014 before ntkrnl dropped bombs, this is the same cycle that takes place every year about this time, i understand Xbox fans (i say that deliberately, fans) lost a game but lots are using it to push toxic dishonest view of the system (just look at the Sea of Thieves threads when some posters were accusing MS of damage controlling by releasing a video). There will be games, there will be announcements, there always is.
FinaruDensetsu
Member
I think he will have something to show and will be able to go on Giant Bomb just fine.
If you listened to this week's bombcast, they talked about the cancellation like it was no big deal. They are pretty pro Xbox at Giant Bomb so I don't think he really has much to worry about.
You know if he said nothing for days or weeks after this happened, there would be a thread and people would go nuts anyway right?
It not rocket science Phil. You just need to diversify your portfolio. You have shooters like Halo/Gears along with racers like the Forza games. Just add some adventure and platformer games to the Xbox family. Reboot Perfect Dark, Banjo and make a big new adventure ip. If you are having issues rebooting game and making new ip then let the HaloGearsForza formula rest for several years. You can bring them back later.
I agree with everything you said except the bolded. Anyone expecting the Scorpio to change the fact that Sony is doing doughnuts around everyone else is going to be disappointed. It'll be a more powerful PS4 Pro at best.
It's a niche system. Actual graphics snobs are all on PC and will never be swayed. Consoles have one thing PCs never had, convenience. That's changing. As PC digital stores have gotten more competitive and hardware is more standardized, it's been easier to get into PC gaming now more than ever. Yet MS and Sony are hell bent on trying to grab an audience they'll never have, resulting in the failure to retain their own, because they keep trying to make something they can't at the cost of giving up the one benefit they've had.
How about not speak about how they need to take risk and actually just show us how he is so committed to this idea of taking risks. Talk is cheap and he has proven time and again that his is cheaper than most. I'm sick of seeing people gulping down his words like they are manna from heaven.
Salty Rice
Member
Thats why i never got the love people have for Spencer.
He always came across kinda creepy and trying too hard with his shirts and him saying all the time "I loooove games!".
tiredheadcrab
Member
Is that a Jap thing when they stab themselves? Pretty sure that was in Man in the High Castle last season.
But "in the eyes of the public" is wrong. The market has a pretty easy way to show if they have confidence in a product...they buy it or they don't. If it had bad word of mouth, the market shows it. We had the data to prove that in the eyes of the public the PS3 was fine from the start. It didn't have to turn anything around.
Triggerhappytel
Member
If I recall correctly, that infamous Xbox leader nktrnl (I think that was it?) leaked Scalebound as 'Project Nagano' in very early 2014 when they were in full damage control mode, so I assumed the game had actually been greenlit some months beforehand.
I didn't think the game looked great. But there is also word that MS was giving PG impossible milestones and wouldn't budge when PG asked if they could scale back certain things to get the game to run properly.
Sure I didn't expect the game to light up the sales charts, but it's a game they needed to add some sort of diversity to the lineup. It was definitely something different. And with the cancellation of this game is put on spotlight on a huge issue for them. That they've cancelled a lot of previously revealed games and that this year really isn't looking all that great for them on the software front.
Phil talks about taking a risk. Someone posted in the other thread that maybe they should have put out a demo or an Alpha build to gamers just to see if there was interest. Look at Nioh. I don't know how that's going to sell, but you can't deny that the demo or Alpha they put out vastly helped get people interested in that game.
LordRaptor
Member
As people are apparently still scapegoating Don Mattrick to absolve Phil Spencer, I'll just remind you that one of them came from a pure videogames background including a stint at EA, and the other came from productivity software
Expect increases in professionals talking on twitter if they election cycle is to be believed.
I think Spencer is being honest here. I imagine they did everything they could between the two companies to keep this game going, but there are always cancellation clauses if it seems there is no way for either party to come out of the agreement in a satisfactory manner.
chromatic9
Member
Did Phil cancel Project Spark and Phantom Dust as well?
Totally random question as well but is this $400 million NFL deal bearing fruit in the US? The rest of us outside don't give a fuck and you could make 8 big games at least with that money. I know this was under Mattrick.
Totally random question as well but is this $400 million NFL deal bearing fruit in the US? The rest of us outside don't give a fuck and you could make 8 big games at least with that money. I know this was under Mattrick.
FinaruDensetsu
Member
Because it's January and there's not a whole lot of opportunities to show anything at the moment; E3 is a full 5 months away. If you just stay radio silent when all these people have all these concerns, you just end up with a No Man's Sky situation. He needs to say something to reassure people that their concerns are being heard.
That's on them though. They choose quanitity before quality and milked it for short term and in turn damaged the brand long term. If Halo games had a fantastic SP + MP it would still do great numbers. I mean Halo 5 did a lot of damage. You'd think a writer that so very obviously failed to deliver a quality product wouldn't be able to write the next one but they are so incapable of quality control that they're rewarding the bad things to continue to exist and in turn run the once major franchises into the ground.
FunkyPajamas
Member
Sure. Get back to not being a PR mess. I'm not talking about sales and I understand that those that are touting the "got back to #1" are wrong. I'm just saying that there was a PR issue with PS3 initially and Sony did turn that ship around. Don't you think that's a fair assessment?
I really don't know what to say if you don't think there's a difference between Sony's PR message on year one and then year three+. Sales back your point, but I know I didn't imagine the reports of developers complaining about PS3 hardware, the issues with price because of BR drive, the initial drought of games, etc.
Again: I know sales were never really a problem. I know WW has always been Sony's target (vs a single market). I'm just saying Sony's message/PR at launch was very different than it was years later, and then most of the issues I mentioned above were gone (developers complaining about hardware, price (price drop, duh), proper support from first/second/third party, etc).
I'm sure he's aware that new IP, trying new unexpected experiences, is how Halo, Gears, Forza Horizon, and Minecraft all got established and drove platform growth. They've tried a lot of new things that didn't pan out. It's also that the new things he has to try, being bound to Xbox Live and Windows 10, leaves him with very little options in the types of games they can get buy-in to try out and see through.
Online game services that drive big communities is like finding lightning in a bottle, and then to strap that to a distant second place console and the Windows Store that people love to hate. It's not something I would want to stake my entire business on, but he likely has no choice and the higher-ups probably would love to see the Xbox division gone.
Online game services that drive big communities is like finding lightning in a bottle, and then to strap that to a distant second place console and the Windows Store that people love to hate. It's not something I would want to stake my entire business on, but he likely has no choice and the higher-ups probably would love to see the Xbox division gone.
Papacheeks
Banned
Never said they need to copy them directly, but taking the coporate influence that seems to be the biggest key factor for xbox's decline would go a long way.
And that's what Sony pretty much did mid PS3, they stopped letting people like crazy Ken turn the Playstation into some kind of cobbled computer for music/movies/ entertainment and concentrated on games and the gaming community.
Xbox has the gaming community part, they just need people to stop meddling with the creative side of the xbox division and let it be creative. That 2.8 Billion for Majong could have been the money for restarting the brand by starting more studios or buying them, and curating new IP's, and even services for gaming.
Aztechnology
Member
It doesn't seem to matter much if they have a ton of exclusive software. I don't even think that's honestly the reason the Xbox sold worse, I think it was the whole hardware debacle, and yes probably the launch titles, after that it often snowballs because console ties you and all your friends into one ecosystem. Outside of that, it hasn't played nearly as large a factor as you would think. It's about features and hardware now and Microsoft is moving more towards PC/Xbox as one platform anyway. They need to sort their shit out with UWP, but beyond that, if they can integrate that Xbox experience/simplicity into the PC with some kind of Xbox mode. Maybe even the future Xbox's are like the Alienware Alpha's and double as PC's they have effectively captured the largest core gaming audience in existence.
Their focus is just on other things right now, and I think potentially, if they get their shit together it could really pay off for them.
Falchion
Member
...... I would play Forza Wars no questions asked.
supernormal
Member
Actually he doesn't have to take any risks.He should just follow what Sony has been doing and prey on people's nostalgia. Bring back some old beloved franchises and watch the internet explode. Perfect Dark, Banjo, Conker. PGR, Jet Grind Radio, etc.. They don't even have to show gameplay just make the announcement along with a CG trailer and you win E3
finalflame
Member
Very little reason to keep my XBOS now. As soon as I get my Oppo 4K player this thing is going out the window.
Damn, those were good times on GAF. Might as well have lit the message board on fire
In Phil Spencer's defence, I can't imagine his job being easy with the hand he was dealt at the start of the generation, nor will I pretend to know how much say he has in matters critical to Xbox's brand health. It's also not easy when you're being outsold 2:1 by the competition worldwide, but investing in a 1st party network of developers should have been their top priority for many years now and they haven't done that very well and I can't blame anyone who looks at Xbox with the perception that they're merely a Halo/Forza/Gears factory, because at this rate, they could head that way.
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
The Xbox team since Phill Spence took the lead gave us backward compatibility, a game previews access program and support for unrestricted mods.
How are those not risks?
They are steering in the right direction. Obviously, mistakes will be made, but overall things are positive. Why do people want to act like there is nothing positive?
How are those not risks?
They are steering in the right direction. Obviously, mistakes will be made, but overall things are positive. Why do people want to act like there is nothing positive?
I still like Phil Spencer. I think he cares about video games. I think he "gets it". I also think that one voice, even one important voice, isn't enough to bring more interesting things to the Xbox One. Honestly, at this point they would have to take a ton of risks if they were going to reverse the image their console is getting. Maybe they are fine with that, there are still lots of people who love Halo, Forza, and Gears of War, but they have told the people that want a little more variety that Sony is their best option.