This is an excellent post. I am so glad people are starting to see through Phil's bullshit. On old gaf, I got banned for questioning this guy's sincerity for months, it was infuriating. He is a hypocrite and lies profusely. Every decision he's made has been flawed and led to this embarrassing moment.
You are right about him being insecure. I figured him doing all those interviews and bigging himself up was confidence but it was insecurity. And you know what? That's ok. He didnt have the games, and that's not a crime. The issue I have with him is that he misled not just us, but his fans. He riled them up with statements like 'just being honest', 'feeling good about our showcase' and straight up misled his fans when he claimed that current gen wouldnt hold back Halo. That's a bald face lie that his fans accepted because well why wouldnt they. He's the CEO. He's THE top source.
Quite frankly, he wouldn't be in this position if he didnt cancel every good thing Don Matrick did. Don before he left, did the following:
- inked a deal with Platinum Games
- created a new studio Coalition Games and showed off a great looking AAA title at E3 2013
- He had Fable in the works back in 2013.
- He had insomniac making him an AAA game for year 1.
- He had crytek making him an AAA game for launch window
- He had Remedy making him an AAA game
- He literally went in and saved Titanfall after EA was about to kill it without additional funding. secured a launch window game.
- He was the one who entrusted Playground with a new twist on Forza
What did Phil do?
- Canceled Coalition new IP
- Canceled Fable
- Canceled Scalebound and completely destroyed his relationship with Japanese studios.
- Allowed Nier 2, Nioh, Yakuza, Shenmue, FF7, Persona 5 and so many other Japanese games to go exclusive to PS4. In some cases, Sony didnt even have to moneyhat. MS simply wasnt interested. Imagine Peter Moore doing all that work to get FF13 and watching this in horror as Sony literally gets these exclusives for free.
- Canceled Obsidian's new IP Don had commissioned years ago. Obsidian said they wasted two years passing notes and couldnt agree on an idea. 2 years!
- Wasted/Spent $100 million on a dead IP like Gears and forced Coalition to make another sequel no one wanted
- Wasted/Bought Minecraft for $3 billion instead of spending $200 million buying insomniac
- Wasted/Bought Tomb Raider timed exclusivity and Titanfall perma exclusivity AFTER they had already been confirmed to come to PS4
- Sat around until 2018 before buying studios. Way too late as we see now.
Don might have been a jackass, but he still knew that you needed AAA games. He knew you needed single player games. I can dig up a thread from 2017 where Phil literally said that single player games no longer have the impact they used to have so he's gonna invest in GaaS instead. This was a month after RE7, Horizon, Nier and Zelda BOTW came out.
Now he HAS delivered on two consoles in a row now. So he does have a good track record there. But consoles are only as good as their games, and he simply cant produce them fast enough. A better approach would be to shut up and be honest. We are not going to have first party games ready for the first couple of years. Simple. Be a man, take the hit. Dont say it's anti-consumer. Dont rile up your consumer base. Dont make next gen games a bad thing. The arguments i have had with xbox fans recently have given me literal headaches. I cannot imagine a reality where next gen games on next gen consoles were considered a bad thing especially when MS themselves were going to make them.
Lastly, and this is very important. he simply shouldn't be tweeting guys like Timdog. He's toxic. His feed is toxic. I dont know about him, but greenberg follows timdog. Their twitter feed should be full of toxic comments aimed at gaf, gaf mods, gaf users and sony fans. How can you be ok with that?
