Saying Xbox has $2.4T at their disposal is ridiculous. They are such a small part of the overall company, they don’t have the pull of, say, the Windows team or Office team. Otherwise, why would they wait a whole generation when they could have just made moves when they were being outsold 2:1 during the XBO days? People really don’t understand how close Xbox got to going the way of Mixer or Windows Phone especially with Nadella made CEO right after that launch.
Playstation understood. And that’s why they went with this scorched earth policy expecting MS to make the sensible decision to close up shop if they could get Xbox to repeat last gen. There’s really no other reason for it unless you want to believe that somehow Xbox was going to not only catch up but overtake Playstation’s massive install base, rich IP library, and crazy talented 1st party studios by just having a bunch of 3rd party games that are already on PS5. That’s laughable.
Somehow Phil Spencer convinced Nadella to invest heavily in Xbox. But realistically, Xbox division is so inconsequential to Microsoft’s success, the only way he would realistically do it is if the ROI was massive. Hence giant acquisitions and not a tit for tat bid wars against Sony on a game by game basis. Jim Ryan gambled big and he lost big. And we’ll all suffer for it. Maybe not right away because Spencer doesn’t strike me as the type of person Ryan is, but he’ll leave one day and who knows who’ll be next.
Saying Xbox has $2.4T at their disposal is ridiculous. They are such a small part of the overall company, they don’t have the pull of, say, the Windows team or Office team. Otherwise, why would they wait a whole generation when they could have just made moves when they were being outsold 2:1 during the XBO days? People really don’t understand how close Xbox got to going the way of Mixer or Windows Phone especially with Nadella made CEO right after that launch.
Playstation understood. And that’s why they went with this scorched earth policy expecting MS to make the sensible decision to close up shop if they could get Xbox to repeat last gen. There’s really no other reason for it unless you want to believe that somehow Xbox was going to not only catch up but overtake Playstation’s massive install base, rich IP library, and crazy talented 1st party studios by just having a bunch of 3rd party games that are already on PS5. That’s laughable.
Somehow Phil Spencer convinced Nadella to invest heavily in Xbox. But realistically, Xbox division is so inconsequential to Microsoft’s success, the only way he would realistically do it is if the ROI was massive. Hence giant acquisitions and not a tit for tat bid wars against Sony on a game by game basis. Jim Ryan gambled big and he lost big. And we’ll all suffer for it. Maybe not right away because Spencer doesn’t strike me as the type of person Ryan is, but he’ll leave one day and who knows who’ll be next.