Following the news developer id Software has been significantly impacted by Asha Sharma's sweeping Xbox job cuts, John Carmack has shared his thoughts.
The problem with what you’re saying is that they’ve always bought out other studios and then fucked them up. Going all the way back to their original IP Halo; Halo was a product of Bungie, a Mac exclusive game company at the time. Halo was originally going to be Apple’s big jump into gaming. The release of Halo was delayed to port it to the Xbox and today… today Bungie barely exists and all of their IPs are owned by MS.
Xbox was a passion project, Bill Gates was obsessed with getting Microsoft into the living room. Once Bill Gates left, and later Steve Balmer left, there was nobody left who gave a shit about this passion project and it became a money grab. So Microsoft went back to doing what it does best, buying people out and running their IPs into the ground.
The problem with what you’re saying is that they’ve always bought out other studios and then fucked them up.
Just replace “they” with “all publicly-traded companies”. That is the nature of buyouts and short-term stock market thinking. Just look at all of the buyouts EA turned to shit. Or Activision. Or countless other smaller studios that have died to larger buyouts.
If a company gets bought out by a corporation like this, they know what they are getting into.
I reckon that’s less about Microsoft and more about Bungie though. Bungie are primarily responsible for their own downfall with some terrible management decisions.
Microsoft were very good to Bungie from the beginning in terms of finance and support, and Halo on Mac would never have had the same impact as Halo on Xbox.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Bungie left Microsoft. In this case, I think it’s unfair to blame Microsoft for what they’ve since become.
They became wildly successful under Microsoft. As far as I remember, it was Bungie who were the driver behind leaving Microsoft because they wanted to move on to other IP, as opposed to being “The Halo company”.
I can’t blame them for that, but it’s not Microsoft’s fault that what they did afterwards was a shadow of their former glory.
I mean, I literally said it was Bungie making terrible management decisions.
But there’s no way Halo would have had the same impact on Mac as it did on Xbox. The Microsoft purchase was win-win. Leaving Microsoft let them pursue other IP and give greater creative control, but they also never reached those heights they did under Microsoft either before or after their stewardship.
Edit: don’t get me wrong, clearly recent Microsoft game studio acquisitions have been a bad thing for the industry, but I just don’t think the Bungie example is a good one. I think it’s rewriting history a bit to say that Bungie may have suffered under Microsoft.
This is a company that became industry rockstars with an incredibly successful franchise and were given an inordinate amount of money and support at the time. Them believing they’d be better off on their own was partly a fallacy, and only really resulted in going full circle and letting Sony purchase them.
The problem with what you’re saying is that they’ve always bought out other studios and then fucked them up. Going all the way back to their original IP Halo; Halo was a product of Bungie, a Mac exclusive game company at the time. Halo was originally going to be Apple’s big jump into gaming. The release of Halo was delayed to port it to the Xbox and today… today Bungie barely exists and all of their IPs are owned by MS.
Xbox was a passion project, Bill Gates was obsessed with getting Microsoft into the living room. Once Bill Gates left, and later Steve Balmer left, there was nobody left who gave a shit about this passion project and it became a money grab. So Microsoft went back to doing what it does best, buying people out and running their IPs into the ground.
Just replace “they” with “all publicly-traded companies”. That is the nature of buyouts and short-term stock market thinking. Just look at all of the buyouts EA turned to shit. Or Activision. Or countless other smaller studios that have died to larger buyouts.
If a company gets bought out by a corporation like this, they know what they are getting into.
Phil Spencer was a good steward (edit: of Xbox) I think for a long time, but he didn’t make the decisions to buy all the studios.
I reckon that’s less about Microsoft and more about Bungie though. Bungie are primarily responsible for their own downfall with some terrible management decisions.
Microsoft were very good to Bungie from the beginning in terms of finance and support, and Halo on Mac would never have had the same impact as Halo on Xbox.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Bungie left Microsoft. In this case, I think it’s unfair to blame Microsoft for what they’ve since become.
I was blaming Microsoft for what they became 20 years ago.
They became wildly successful under Microsoft. As far as I remember, it was Bungie who were the driver behind leaving Microsoft because they wanted to move on to other IP, as opposed to being “The Halo company”.
I can’t blame them for that, but it’s not Microsoft’s fault that what they did afterwards was a shadow of their former glory.
Then they shouldn’t have allowed themselves to be bought out.
I mean, I literally said it was Bungie making terrible management decisions.
But there’s no way Halo would have had the same impact on Mac as it did on Xbox. The Microsoft purchase was win-win. Leaving Microsoft let them pursue other IP and give greater creative control, but they also never reached those heights they did under Microsoft either before or after their stewardship.
Edit: don’t get me wrong, clearly recent Microsoft game studio acquisitions have been a bad thing for the industry, but I just don’t think the Bungie example is a good one. I think it’s rewriting history a bit to say that Bungie may have suffered under Microsoft.
This is a company that became industry rockstars with an incredibly successful franchise and were given an inordinate amount of money and support at the time. Them believing they’d be better off on their own was partly a fallacy, and only really resulted in going full circle and letting Sony purchase them.