ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️

Director Prod Solutions in FinTech, Gamer and Father/Husband. Former Air Force officer. Grew up on a farm. Retired DJ.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Because I'm not going to repeat this shit another three times:
In 2003-04, my company joined forces with First National Bank and Blizzard to create the World of Warcraft Visa cards. We visited the Blizzard offices and my first encounter with Mark Kern was him saying the N-word.🧵

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Whatever the XBox COMPANY did in the past, it's going to change to be whatever the CORPORATE direction is. That's the new leader's role - to slowly bring XBox and the customers into the MSFT way of doing things. Good or bad, we're watching it happen.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

I have said it before -
MSFT the corporation is now in a hoard and board mode, and since XBox is their child company, they have decided to bring XBox into the larger corporation's operational policy. This means you're going to see more corporate strategy, activity and decisions.

[Mephisto - Lord Of Hatred ''🏴'' @robsoniecker]

Vou fazer o advogado do diabo.

E se o "This Is An Xbox" nunca foi uma estratégia de expansão? E se foi uma estratégia de sobrevivência?

Analisando os últimos acontecimentos, começo a acreditar que a campanha "This Is An Xbox" pode ter sido muito mais uma tentativa de preservar o ecossistema Xbox do que uma simples mudança de marketing.

Durante anos, a gestão de Phil Spencer parecia seguir uma direção clara: expansão da marca Xbox através de consoles, Game Pass, estúdios próprios e exclusivos. A aquisição da Bethesda e posteriormente da Activision Blizzard reforçava essa visão. O objetivo parecia ser fortalecer o ecossistema Xbox e aumentar sua relevância no mercado de hardware.

Porém, algo parece ter mudado dentro da Microsoft. A partir de determinado momento, a discussão deixou de ser crescimento e passou a ser margem de lucro. Eu lembro de uma entrevista que ele comemora a adição de COD no Game Pass onde rumores já apontavam que a Microsoft não queria, ali já era um sinal de desgaste.

Quando uma empresa investe quase 70 bilhões de dólares em uma aquisição, naturalmente surge pressão para justificar esse investimento. Não basta crescer; é preciso apresentar resultados financeiros cada vez melhores. O problema é que a Activision Blizzard sempre operou sob uma lógica diferente da divisão Xbox. Enquanto o Xbox historicamente foi uma plataforma que exigia investimentos pesados em hardware, ecossistema e conteúdo, a Activision é uma máquina de geração de caixa, acostumada a trabalhar com margens significativamente superior é por isso que Asha quando fala em queda separa XBOX da ABK mesmo ambas estando no mesmo grupo. Nesse cenário, o console passa a ser um problema. Hardware tradicionalmente trabalha com margens menores, exige subsídios em alguns momentos do ciclo e demanda investimentos constantes em pesquisa, produção e distribuição.

Se essa leitura estiver correta, Phil Spencer e Sarah Bond podem ter perdido toda a autonomia estratégica que possuíam anteriormente. Não necessariamente porque falharam, mas porque a Microsoft passou a exigir no meio do caminho um modelo mais rentável. Não estou dizendo que Phil ou Sarah seja uma vítima. Ele participou de todas essas decisões e tem responsabilidade por elas. Mas também é possível que tenha chegado um momento em que o Xbox que ele imaginava já não fosse mais o Xbox que a Microsoft queria.

É nesse contexto que a campanha "This Is An Xbox" ganha outro significado. Em vez de representar a morte do console, ela poderia representar uma tentativa de salvar a relevância da marca Xbox em um cenário onde a Microsoft já não deseja depender tanto do hardware próprio. Lembrando que como conceito não acabou e está mais vivo que nunca.

Se a empresa não quer mais investir pesadamente em consoles, a única alternativa é fazer com que o Xbox exista em qualquer lugar: PC, celulares, TVs, nuvem e futuramente dispositivos fabricados por parceiros. O foco deixa de ser vender um aparelho Xbox e passa a ser vender o ecossistema Xbox. Isso também ajuda a explicar várias decisões recentes: jogos chegando a outras plataformas, maior foco em serviços, a insistência no Cloud Gaming e até mesmo o aparente abandono da tradicional guerra dos consoles.

Talvez a ironia seja justamente essa: "This Is An Xbox" não tenha sido criada porque a Microsoft acredita que o console é o futuro, mas porque ela acredita que o futuro do Xbox precisa existir mesmo sem depender dele.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Jon's getting really tired of people in his space continuing to call him out for being a wife-beater. He's really getting tired of people who don't like him getting together to expose his poor choices and bad takes.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

If you force your players to roll for everything, dice lose their effectiveness as a RP tool. The DM who does that in essence is a tool.
Great RPing should be rewarded with success, and not another die roll (unless you're rolling for the level of success, but that does take time)

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

One narrative sequence. One.
The problem is many peoole didn't actually go see what was being discussed, so they assume it's the entire game. It wasn't - the players got caught up in a wave of good role-playing, and the DM decided that was good enough to succeed at that time.

[Corpse Kings @CorpseKings]

Just heard about Critical Role not using dice to determine important gameplay moments and I don't know if I should be either embarrassed or annoyingly bored at this point. Just stage a play already, this isn't even a game anymore.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

1. Riding a horse slowly to the next town. Not really a roll unless you have a negative in an animal handling/riding skill, and then it's just to see how much longer it takes.
2. Riding a horse full speed, or fighting on horseback, or performing stunts, or pushing.
Roll the dice

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

The layoffs are actually a very small part of a larger change that might make gamers less enthusiastic in the coming months.
Inevitable? Maybe. But the parent corporations took the gamble and now XBox is along for the ride.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

The parent organization is a corporation. XBox was a different company that got the blessing of a corporation to make games.
Now the corporation has decided that XBox needs to join the bigger corporate model, and that's going to change everything. Some good, some really bad.

[Derek Strickland @DeekeTweak]

I don't think people are really considering the human impact of the Xbox situation.

There are whole teams of people that had to, for years, put their trust into a risky, misunderstood biz model that they had absolutely no control over.

It's a tough, morale-tanking issue.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Part of it is the AI fumble. It's not making money or more sales the way MSFT needs it to. So now the corporation wants to hoard and board its money, so XBox is looking at a squeeze (although technically, it shouldn't in the way MSFT is doing it, but corporations do that anyway).

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

@furbyflav @K__Med @JamieMoranUK The new Modern Warfare seems to be a new direction with a different feel and enough innovation, so players might jump ship on the others. That is actually what all these titles should do. Not just reset a seasonal tree of "look at the new Simpson models!"

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

@furbyflav @K__Med @JamieMoranUK Burnout is a thing. Gamers burn out if the rotation between new releases is too short. But that's an issue of someone in corp leadership going, "Why hasn't the number of new players increased exponentially over the last year? Make the same game with a few different things."

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

I don't think I heard much about why the game was going to improve. Just the brand was going places. New places. Which is interesting if I just cared about numbers, but I'm a gamer as well. I told them that more than once. I think I confused them.

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Remove Embracer because that's actually a totally different monster in terms of harm. That's a private equity company. We all know what happens under private equity eventually (short term profit over long term gains).
The others had corporate issues. Treating games as numbers.

[Jamie Moran @JamieMoranUK]

Since 2020 these companies have shut down these studios…

Embracer - 44

PlayStation - 8

Xbox - 4

Ubisoft - Around 5

Something needs to change, there’s an industry wide problem

Blaming Game Pass is a copout, lazy & not the problem, and wanting Xbox to shut down is childish

[ENR EmCeeKhan 🕹️ @emceekhan]

Best example - as a MSFT investor, I visited XBox not that long ago. The person escorting me kept telling me the brand of Gears of War was undergoing a change. Not the GAME, the BRAND. So I asked about the game, and got more talk about the BRAND, the projected NUMBERS.