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[Zeus The Dino]

They didn't develop that in the sense I assumed you were using. They coordinated the efforts of several other studios who iirc did the legwork (Ruffian, Saber, United Front and Certain Affinity). And they had no way of being made aware of the MP issues prior to launch due to how their playtesting worked.

I know they didn't develop it personally but they oversaw it and it is in their name. Their mess.

 

[Duckhuntdog]

There has to be more to Minecraft failing to met expectations than just game sales. Like licensing and products failing to hit or something to that affect. Can't be game sales alone.

Granted they probably paid a bit too much for the IP and Mojang.

 

[Chris1]

developers should not be blamed for how bad MCC was IMO, that blame should all go to Microsoft

Both

All developers involved (including 343, even tho they barely did anything on it) for fucking it up in the first place and MS for rushing it out in a broken state.

MCC has fucked Halo franchise badly IMO, that's the biggest and main reason for halo 5 selling low and I don't think they'll ever recover from it. I just don't know why MS thought it'd be smart to release it when AC unity came out the year later and that hurt Syndicate sales too. Oh well, lesson learned I hope.

If that were actually true, we wouldn't be discussing its underperformance.

Not to say that there aren't great games that sell poorly, but when the latest installment of MS's flagship franchise fails to make any impact, there's clearly something wrong with the product.

See I don't agree here, MCC had fucked Halo 5 badly, not even the greatest Halo to ever exist could have salvaged it. It would have helped, sure, because the low meta critic for Halo 5 sure as hell didn't help, but it would still have underperformed IMO. You can't release a completely broken entry to a franchise and come unscathed so easily, history has proven time & time again broken games hurt the franchise.

 

[Nutter]

A lot of folks want Bungie era Halo, but they also conveniently forget that Bungie had already changed the way Halo played in 3 and vastly changed it for Reach.

So what Halo do you want? Personally, H5 is a great addition to the franchise.

 

[JaggedSac]

If that were actually true, we wouldn't be discussing its underperformance.

Not to say that there aren't great games that sell poorly, but when the latest installment of MS's flagship franchise fails to make any impact, there's clearly something wrong with the product.

Well, sells poorly and misses projections are two different things.

 

[GOOCHY]

Windows 10 has been adopted at a faster rate than any other Windows OS. Under performed?

Minecraft - 50 million since they bought it. 50k per day sales. Under performed?

Not sure I buy it.

 

[BlazingDarkness]

Windows 10 has been adopted at a faster rate than any other Windows OS. Under performed?

Minecraft - 50 million since they bought it. 50k per day sales. Under performed?

Not sure I buy it.

To be fair though they're practically tricking people into installing W10, that could be an indicator people were initially ambivalent towards it.

 

[RichiRamjag]

The majority of consumers couldn't care any less about that. The only people that will buy the Scorpio are people who already own a Xbone, same goes for Neo.

I think they would if given a similar price and close release. 6-12 months later? Most likely not.

I disagree. Being the best place to play multiplats is a large part of why the PS4 is doing so well. It drive the value proposition a lot.

Yes, in addition to the original price being lower and a close release date. A semi-long head start can make a large difference. If a kid sees his pal's neo and psvr(assuming it's good), he isn't going to give a shit about power, he wants what he can play now. Personally, only one of these upgraded consoles is getting purchased and if Sony makes it enticing enough, early on, I'll be on that boat and keep my older X1.

 

[crab rangoon]

you're underestimating how important price is

The perceived value on offer alongside consumer agency is what matters. Nothing else (or rather, everything else serves to affect those two things).

 

[KinofChaos]

Windows 10 has been adopted at a faster rate than any other Windows OS. Under performed?

Minecraft - 50 million since they bought it. 50k per day sales. Under performed?

Not sure I buy it.

Win10 is free and it is forced on many users....They want to get money through the store which is under performing. This is where the issue is.

 

[Bastables]

Windows 10 has been adopted at a faster rate than any other Windows OS. Under performed?

Minecraft - 50 million since they bought it. 50k per day sales. Under performed?

Not sure I buy it.

Windows 10 is free so adoption should be faster than prior paid versions. This does not mean it's met the projections for it.

Mine craft also may not be meeting it's protections, and the Windows 10/directx version looks like a unmitigated failure.

 

[Dyson Industries]

Expect an all-in push for W10 and UWP going forward. Scorpio will be a branded PC a la Steam Machines. It was a good run.

 

[dh4niel]

a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft

I'm not sure an employee that worked closely with Microsoft and not at Microsoft would know anything about sale expectations. Seems like conjecture to me.

 

[jelly]

Both

All developers involved (including 343, even tho they barely did anything on it) for fucking it up in the first place and MS for rushing it out in a broken state.

MCC has fucked Halo franchise badly IMO, that's the biggest and main reason for halo 5 selling low and I don't think they'll ever recover from it. I just don't know why MS thought it'd be smart to release it when AC unity came out the year later and that hurt Syndicate sales too. Oh well, lesson learned I hope.



See I don't agree here, MCC had fucked Halo 5 badly, not even the greatest Halo to ever exist could have salvaged it. It would have helped, sure, because the low meta critic for Halo 5 sure as hell didn't help, but it would still have underperformed IMO. You can't release a completely broken entry to a franchise and come unscathed so easily, history has proven time & time again broken games hurt the franchise.

Microsoft should still be fixing MCC, that would show they at least care about the quality of their products and the tent pole IP Halo. MCC should go from trash to must own on Xbox, not forgotten like it is now. I'm amazed they have just let it die, consumers will remember that. 343 should fix it, improve it, support it, promote it. Always a great gateway to the series and classic fun Halo. I suppose REQs conquer all.

 

[crab rangoon]

I know they didn't develop it personally but they oversaw it and it is in their name. Their mess.

That's fine, but the assertion that they knowingly made an effort to mislead folks about how broken things were is clearly nonsense, right? And the launch of their subsequent title was fantastic. In any case, the nuances of Halo's merits are far afield of the topic. My point was that we don't actually know what its sales trajectory looks like and Halo 4 should have taught folks not to assume too much simply if a Halo game drops out of the monthly top charts. The games tend to have incredibly long legs.

There are other aspects of the interview here that could be called out (and have been) as sounding dubious. I don't wanna read too much into the tone of the interviewee here, but it sure does sound to me as if this is more of a venting session than a dump of reliable sales data.

 

[Diablohead]

Windows 10 has been adopted at a faster rate than any other Windows OS. Under performed?

Minecraft - 50 million since they bought it. 50k per day sales. Under performed?

Not sure I buy it.

What annoys me is that to get those windows 10 users they try to force it on you instead of making the product look reasonable and worth the upgrade, I have win 10 and I enjoy using it but so many people dislike the forced nature of upgrading to windows 10 that they just don't want too any longer.

 

[naitosan]

Just read the whole article on Kotaku UK. Seems those tidbits came from ex-Lionhead workers. They sounded a bit pissed (which I don't blame them) so that made me wonder how they get all info on Halo 5, Win10, Minecraft sales?

As someone mentioned, Minecraft and Win10 are doing well, Halo 5 may be doing good but not as well as previous Halo games.

This seems completely off, maybe they're trying to paint Microsoft in bad light because of whole Lionhead incident. I don't know.

 

[Ronan_Berthelot]

What caused Halo 5 to be a big miss? MCC? Halo 4?

Xbox One

 

[RichiRamjag]

No the developers are competent. Halo 4 & 5 were both competent games. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

It's the final decision makers at 343 that need to be axed.
I'm talking the person that read Halo 5's script and said "Okay this works."
I'm talking the person who looked at the redesigns for Elites/Jackals/Spartans/Weapons/Vehicles etc and said "Okay this looks kinda like Halo. It works."
I'm talking the person who looked at Sprint, Ground Pound, Spartan Charge, Random Weapon Drops, Promethean Vision etc and said "Okay this works"
I'm talking the person who read Nightfalls script, all the recent Halo novels and comics and said "Fuck the story. This works."
And finally I'm talking the person who after I assume received numerous bug reports from MCC and still said anyway "Okay this works."


Whoever the final decision makers are at 343 THOSE are the people who need to be gone.

Amen!

They need some stern words with whoever thought launching BTB late and in its current state was fine. I think the games are good mechanically (gunplay, etc), but I think many overarching decisions made were just bad ones.

 

[jelly]

That's fine, but the assertion that they knowingly made an effort to mislead folks about how broken things were is clearly nonsense, right? And the launch of their subsequent title was fantastic. In any case, the nuances of Halo's merits are far afield of the topic. My point was that we don't actually know what its sales trajectory looks like and Halo 4 should have taught folks not to assume too much simply if a Halo game drops out of the monthly top charts. The games tend to have incredibly long legs.

There are other aspects of the interview here that could be called out (and have been) as sounding dubious. I don't wanna read too much into the tone of the interviewee here, but it sure does sound to me as if this is more of a venting session than a dump of reliable sales data.

There is no way MCC worked for Microsoft before launch, that's not even getting to the other issues not revolving around multiplayer. They shipped a mess to sell Xbox consoles they desperately needed and hoped to throw a patch out to fix things later and it blew up in their faces. A year for it kinda working. Absolutely shameless and an embarrassment. They could save some face if they actually continued to fix and improve it but like the ugly stepchild, ignored. Why would anyone have faith in 343 and Halo after that and it shows.

 

[etta]

Expect an all-in push for W10 and UWP going forward.

Xbox One has been running Windows 10 since November 2015, and will soon support UWP, since it's a Windows 10 standard.

Scorpio will be a branded PC a la Steam Machines. It was a good run.

Uh huh yea, as PlayStation is a Sony Machine branded PC. Well they'll have two Sony Machines on the market this year with Neo coming in. Nintendo Machines are on track for 2017, then, hopefully it will have a nice modern PC x86 architecture.

 

[SneakersSO]

That seems a little strange too. Xbox One until the end of 2015 was tracking ahead of 360, but Microsoft was projecting the double?

As several people in sales threads have pointed out regarding the X1 tracking ahead of 360 - the first few years of the 360's life had the system both not selling all that well (up until Gears launched at the end of '06) AND it was undershipped. This continued up until the end of the 2nd year, which was when Halo 3 launched. X1 did was not supply constrained at all at launch, so them outselling the 360 in its first 2 years on the market isn't exactly some unbelievable feat. It would've been sadder if they hadn't.

And sure enough, as many in sales gaf predicted, the X1 sales have begun dipping under where the 360 was tracking in its 3rd year relative to X1's 3rd year - this was around the time 360 sales had begun spiking towards their ultimate plateau of when the Kinect launched.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Minecraft and Windows 10 below expectations? I struggle to believe that. Who are they, Sqeenix?

 

[darkinstinct]

Xbox One

I don't think so. Halo CE had a 1:2 adoption rate. Halo 5 could have sold ten million if it was a great game on 20 million Xbox One. I think you have to blame the game, not the platform here.

 

[SpiceMelange]

If that were actually true, we wouldn't be discussing its underperformance.

Not to say that there aren't great games that sell poorly, but when the latest installment of MS's flagship franchise fails to make any impact, there's clearly something wrong with the product.

It's 100% MCC shitting up the franchise like Unity did with Assassin Creed. Halo 5's campaign story is disappointing as is fighting the same boss 4 times. However the most important part, gameplay, is absolute spot on. The multiplayer is the best since CE imo. MCC did thrash all goodwill I have for 343 though. I paid 400$ to relive the old Halo days and I got a non functional product for that money. No refund program, no long term support to fix the game, just thrown under the dirty mat. I'll never forgive them for that.

 

[MicroCuts7]

No the developers are competent. Halo 4 & 5 were both competent games. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

It's the final decision makers at 343 that need to be axed.
I'm talking the person that read Halo 5's script and said "Okay this works."
I'm talking the person who looked at the redesigns for Elites/Jackals/Spartans/Weapons/Vehicles etc and said "Okay this looks kinda like Halo. It works."
I'm talking the person who looked at Sprint, Ground Pound, Spartan Charge, Random Weapon Drops, Promethean Vision etc and said "Okay this works"
I'm talking the person who read Nightfalls script, all the recent Halo novels and comics and said "Fuck the story. This works."
And finally I'm talking the person who after I assume received numerous bug reports from MCC and still said anyway "Okay this works."


Whoever the final decision makers are at 343 THOSE are the people who need to be gone.

So much.

 

[sam777]

Just read the whole article on Kotaku UK. Seems those tidbits came from ex-Lionhead workers. They sounded a bit pissed (which I don't blame them) so that made me wonder how they get all info on Halo 5, Win10, Minecraft sales?

As someone mentioned, Minecraft and Win10 are doing well, Halo 5 may be doing good but not as well as previous Halo games.

This seems completely off, maybe they're trying to paint Microsoft in bad light because of whole Lionhead incident. I don't know.

.

 

[gamz]

It's 100% MCC shitting up the franchise like Unity did with Assassin Creed. Halo 5's campaign story is disappointing as is fighting the same boss 4 times. However the most important part, gameplay, is absolute spot on. The multiplayer is the best since CE imo. MCC did thrash all goodwill I have for 343 though. I paid 400$ to relive the old Halo days and I got a non functional product for that money. No refund program, no long term support to fix the game, just thrown under the dirty mat. I'll never forgive them for that.

MCC wasn't 343. Right?

 

[SneakersSO]

I disagree. Being the best place to play multiplats is a large part of why the PS4 is doing so well. It drive the value proposition a lot.

Not nearly as much as you think. We have routinely seen a few 3rd party games be able to see the X1 sku outsell the PS4 sku in both the US & UK - power is not stopping users from buying the so-called 'inferior' version.

 

[RichiRamjag]

MCC wasn't 343. Right?

Technically, no, but their logo is right there on the box, so it doesn't matter much. Someone at MS or 343 should have seen the condition of that game. I play it now and it is more than serviceable, but it could have been a huge hit had it actually been playable at the time.

 

[Dyson Industries]

Not nearly as much as you think. We have routinely seen a few 3rd party games be able to see the X1 sku outsell the PS4 sku in both the US & UK - power is not stopping users from buying the so-called 'inferior' version.

"a few" being the key phrase. PS4 multiplats routinely outsell the Xbone across the board. This isn't conjecture, it's fact.

 

[Hockeymac18]

This reminds me of a comment I saw a few days ago

"343 can't handle Halo. 343 has proven they can't manage the franchise. Halo 4, while the story was better than Halo 5's was still shit because it relied on the player to know the lore behind the Forerunners. I didn't, I had only read the first 3 books and was confused as shit when the Didact showed up. I shouldn't have had to go to Halopedia to understand what the hell was going on. The multiplayer for Halo 4 was just playing catch up to CoD and it failed. The player retention on 4 was terrible. MCC was a disaster. The launch was a wreck and it took them forever to fix it. Halo 5 is a total fucking train wreck. The UI, story, and art design is all shit. That's the only way to describe it. 343 was created to carry on Bungie's legacy. They've utterly failed to do that. They took a sharpie, wrote "Property of 343", shit on it, then threw it at us. I get that Halo had to change to maintain its popularity, but instead of building on all the good things that Bungie had done, they ignored it and tried to make it too much of their own thing. They disrespected Halo."

Halo threads are the best threads...also, so much freaking opinion and hyperbole in this post. MS doom and gloom threads always bring it out. And I love how Bungie never seems to catch any flak with these people for being the ones that started the whole change to the franchise.

Halo 5 was pretty good actually. It certainly has issues (such as some content issues in the beginning) - but "shit"? Really? And I didn't really like Halo 4 very much. I'd love to see 343 just make a Halo 2-like game so that these people would see that the game would probably still sell the same amount (potentially even worse because that game is dated to most modern FPS players).

 

[Poster#1]

I'm not sure an employee that worked closely with Microsoft and not at Microsoft would know anything about sale expectations. Seems like conjecture to me.

Shhhh we only rage and riot here.

 

[J_Viper]

See I don't agree here, MCC had fucked Halo 5 badly, not even the greatest Halo to ever exist could have salvaged it. It would have helped, sure, because the low meta critic for Halo 5 sure as hell didn't help, but it would still have underperformed IMO. You can't release a completely broken entry to a franchise and come unscathed so easily, history has proven time & time again broken games hurt the franchise.

It's 100% MCC shitting up the franchise like Unity did with Assassin Creed. Halo 5's campaign story is disappointing as is fighting the same boss 4 times. However the most important part, gameplay, is absolute spot on. The multiplayer is the best since CE imo. MCC did thrash all goodwill I have for 343 though. I paid 400$ to relive the old Halo days and I got a non functional product for that money. No refund program, no long term support to fix the game, just thrown under the dirty mat. I'll never forgive them for that.

MCC certainly hurt a lot, no other way to view it, but I think if Halo 5 had a stronger campaign, split-screen, better graphics, more modes, better MP maps, and third pillar of content that wasn't liquid shit (Warzone), I believe word of mouth could have carried it to better sales.

Well, sells poorly and misses projections are two different things.

Selling poorly is maybe an overstatement, I could be wrong, but I remember reading that Halo 5 is the lowest selling mainline entry in the series? That's gotta hurt.

 

[LordRaptor]

Just read the whole article on Kotaku UK. Seems those tidbits came from ex-Lionhead workers. They sounded a bit pissed (which I don't blame them) so that made me wonder how they get all info on Halo 5, Win10, Minecraft sales?

Depending on how senior a position they were in, it's not unreasonable to think they were given sales MAU targets to achieve and comparative data on how those targets were derived.

 

[gatti-man]

A lot of folks want Bungie era Halo, but they also conveniently forget that Bungie had already changed the way Halo played in 3 and vastly changed it for Reach.

So what Halo do you want? Personally, H5 is a great addition to the franchise.

Halo 5 multi was amazing. The single player was the worst of the series IMO. The biggest problem was none of my friends own Xbox ones.

 

[crab rangoon]

There is no way MCC worked for Microsoft before launch, that's not even getting to the other issues not revolving around multiplayer.

It worked fine for reviewers and Frankie said it worked well prior to its public release. Maybe you don't trust Frankie, which is fine, but you are in no position to speak as an authority on the matter. You're just making assertions with nothing behind them here. Let's maybe have just a bit of intellectual honesty here, yeah?

 

[Kaibutsu]

win 10 installs fell short from projection ? that doesn't sound right unless they had unrealistic projections.

I think their expectations were that nearly everyone running Windows 7 and 8 would upgrade because why not? It's free and it's better but that was a miscalculation on their part. They underestimated people 1) not wanting to change 2) being upset because they are told that they need to change

 

[njean777]

Halo 5 is great, I still play it daily. That stinks that it hasn't sold well...

 

[blue_phazon]

No the developers are competent. Halo 4 & 5 were both competent games. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

It's the final decision makers at 343 that need to be axed.
I'm talking the person that read Halo 5's script and said "Okay this works."
I'm talking the person who looked at the redesigns for Elites/Jackals/Spartans/Weapons/Vehicles etc and said "Okay this looks kinda like Halo. It works."
I'm talking the person who looked at Sprint, Ground Pound, Spartan Charge, Random Weapon Drops, Promethean Vision etc and said "Okay this works"
I'm talking the person who read Nightfalls script, all the recent Halo novels and comics and said "Fuck the story. This works."
And finally I'm talking the person who after I assume received numerous bug reports from MCC and still said anyway "Okay this works."


Whoever the final decision makers are at 343 THOSE are the people who need to be gone.

Your argument doesn't really work considering the bolded DO work, and can be integrated while still being Halo. As for your complaint about designs, it's your opinion that the designs don't look Halo. The designs are still distinctly "Halo" and people would recognize it as such if they were looking at H5 for the first time.

And the gameplay additions make sense in the sandbox, especially with how well they are balanced and work with each other.

Spartan abilities, implemented how they are in H5, WORK unlike those found in Reach or H4.

 

[Guerrilla]

Just read the whole article on Kotaku UK. Seems those tidbits came from ex-Lionhead workers. They sounded a bit pissed (which I don't blame them) so that made me wonder how they get all info on Halo 5, Win10, Minecraft sales?

As someone mentioned, Minecraft and Win10 are doing well, Halo 5 may be doing good but not as well as previous Halo games.

This seems completely off, maybe they're trying to paint Microsoft in bad light because of whole Lionhead incident. I don't know.

Yep, i think we have a winner here

 

[Dyson Industries]

It worked fine for reviewers and Frankie said it worked well prior to its public release. Maybe you don't trust Frankie, which is fine, but you are in no position to speak as an authority on the matter. You're just making assertions with nothing behind them here. Let's maybe have just a bit of intellectual honesty here, yeah?

There's no defending the state MCC shipped in. There's your honesty.

 

[crab rangoon]

Depending on how senior a position they were in, it's not unreasonable to think they were given sales MAU targets to achieve and comparative data on how those targets were derived.

For the platform? Sure. For other titles? I doubt that.

 

[SpartanN92]

There is no way MCC worked for Microsoft before launch that's not even getting to the other issues not revolving around multiplayer. They shipped a mess to sell Xbox consoles they desperately needed and hoped to throw a patch out to fix things later and it blew up in their faces. A year for it kinda working. Absolutely shameless and an embarrassment. They could save some face if they actually continued to fix and improve it but like the ugly stepchild, ignored. Why would anyone have faith in 343 and Halo after that and it shows.

They knew... I was at E3 2014, and PAX Prime 2014. I don't think I played it at E3 (I honestly can't remember) but I remember vividly playing at PAX and the game crashed after every single match. The line was so freaking long because they had to reboot the consoles every time.

I thought it was just an Alpha/Beta/Dev Kit issue and disregarded it at the time.

Welp :/

It worked fine for reviewers and Frankie said it worked well prior to its public release. Maybe you don't trust Frankie, which is fine, but you are in no position to speak as an authority on the matter. You're just making assertions with nothing behind them here. Let's maybe have just a bit of intellectual honesty here, yeah?

Bullshit

 

[VincentMatts]

No the developers are competent. Halo 4 & 5 were both competent games. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

It's the final decision makers at 343 that need to be axed.
I'm talking the person that read Halo 5's script and said "Okay this works."
I'm talking the person who looked at the redesigns for Elites/Jackals/Spartans/Weapons/Vehicles etc and said "Okay this looks kinda like Halo. It works."
I'm talking the person who looked at Sprint, Ground Pound, Spartan Charge, Random Weapon Drops, Promethean Vision etc and said "Okay this works"
I'm talking the person who read Nightfalls script, all the recent Halo novels and comics and said "Fuck the story. This works."
And finally I'm talking the person who after I assume received numerous bug reports from MCC and still said anyway "Okay this works."


Whoever the final decision makers are at 343 THOSE are the people who need to be gone.

I dont disagree with you, however sometimes the story that gets approved (as a story) doesnt end up necessarily working particularly well as gameplay, so parts of it gets axed.

Its not always about who approves it.

Edit: Halo is made by a bunch of people, but yes i do agree that whoever is making the decisions is not doing a great job. Just look at BTB. Terrible fucking decision. One of the most played gametypes in halo since its inception im sure is practically dead now.

 

[SpartanN92]

Your argument doesn't really work considering the bolded DO work, and can be integrated while still being Halo. As for your complaint about designs, it's your opinion that the designs don't look Halo. The designs are still distinctly "Halo" and people would recognize it as such if they were looking at H5 for the first time.

And the gameplay additions make sense in the sandbox, especially with how well they are balanced and work with each other.

Spartan abilities, implemented how they are in H5, WORK unlike those found in Reach or H4.

Dude you just got on me for opinions literally in this post.

Technically everything in Reach, H4, H5 "works".
That doesn't make them good.

 

[LordRaptor]

For the platform? Sure. For other titles? I doubt that.

Makes sense to me that if you're being told by an exec that you have to achieve x its in the context of "because we also expect y to achieve z"

 

[curiouscharles]

Gaming pc's are on the rise. It is the office pc's that are on the decline. I mean, you don't need a new pc to run spreadsheets.

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-shipments-decline-for-sixth-consecutive-quarter-but-gaming-pcs-are-on-the-rise/

ah cool, thanks for that.

hadn't actually read anything myself on the subject, just thought i'd heard "PC's not selling!' around here a bit or something.

that's very interesting then...

i wonder if the teams behind corporations such as MS consider this properly, or if they're just looking at raw PC / Windows install numbers.

you'd think they'd be aware of gaming PCs being on the rise and take that as a good sign with regards to the potential success of FTP fable etc.

 

[Pound_lb003]

Just read the whole article on Kotaku UK. Seems those tidbits came from ex-Lionhead workers. They sounded a bit pissed (which I don't blame them) so that made me wonder how they get all info on Halo 5, Win10, Minecraft sales?

As someone mentioned, Minecraft and Win10 are doing well, Halo 5 may be doing good but not as well as previous Halo games.

This seems completely off, maybe they're trying to paint Microsoft in bad light because of whole Lionhead incident. I don't know.

This would make sense to me. No doubt there's truth to it, but people who've been made redundant by a company are bound to pick at the company.

I wouldn't say totally off though.

W10 is free and still meeting resistance. And they just spent upwards of 2bn on Minecraft and Mojang, it just continuing to sell is not a good ROI at all.

I'm not sure an employee that worked closely with Microsoft and not at Microsoft would know anything about sale expectations. Seems like conjecture to me.

I think it means they were a Lionhead employee, that had interaction with the MS execs. Different from, shall we say, a gameplay programmer, who has no reason to speak to the big-wigs.

 

[crab rangoon]

There's no defending the state MCC shipped in. There's your honesty.

Nobody is defending the state of its MP when it shipped. Also, an expression of certainty about specific nuances you are not in any position to know anything about is not an example of intellectual honesty. Nor is chest thumping.