Microsoft to Cut 9k Workers in Second Wave of Major Layoffs

>Their pivot to a marketplace model where their games run everywhere is an admission that they lost the race to Sony.

Don Mattrick has a lot to answer for. Microsoft was killing it during the seventh generation and he was able to burn everything down over a period of two days. Xbox never recovered after that.

The Kinect was super cool as a demo but totally failed to actually make compelling gameplay in the standard living room

I dunno, Dance Central was really fun.

The dream of the Kinect lives on in the Nex Playground... the Mattel HyperScan of the 2020s.

Don Mattrick isn't the reason that so many Microsoft studios have repeatedly shipped poor products or failed to ship at all over the past decade. Don Mattrick isn't the reason reason that Microsoft still seems to have the worst taste-testers in the industry. Don Mattrick isn't the reason that internal studios like 343 have messed up 18/6 requirements. Don Mattrick isn't the reason that Microsoft kept acquiring, messing up and then firing studios, ending with a massive acquisition that can't even pay itself off for over a decade. And above all, Don Mattrick isn't responsible for the relentless drive for a weird fusion of unprofitable subscription service and cloud streaming offerings at the cost of overall game sale profits.

Don Mattrick's mistakes were near-fatal, but Phil Spencer's done more than his equal share of torpedoing the Xbox division. The blame at this point can rest squarely on his shoulders.

Well, him, and the person who refuses to replace him.

Both are true.

Mattrick's missteps were not just about two days of revealing the XBox One, but really the entire second half of the 360's lifespan. The focus on Kinect to chase the Wii audience and the shuttering of many of their development studios left them thin on the exclusive front, which became a huge liability as they transitioned to the next generation.

But Spencer has a lot to answer for. He has been acquiring studios for 7 years now with little to show for it besides Obsidian having prolific output. Game Pass is flat, Xbox Cloud is flat, and their hardware is being outsold by Sony month over month, year over year. They seem to be pivoting to "Play Anywhere" which feels like the first phase of a three phase plan to retreat to the moat of Windows, where they can use Steam's momentum to ensure that games will at least appear on the platform. He inherited a mess but has made plenty of his own mistakes as well.

The real legacy of the Kinect was that it revolutionized vision in robotics, as it made sensors that used to cost thousands, cost $150.

What's funny is most of that bad PR the Xbox One got leading up to its launch with anti-consumer practices are more or less standard now because everyone basically just forgot that video games didn't used to require online connections, and very few are still buying physical games so you can't just lend your friend a game like Sony dunked on Microsoft for. Even a lot of physical games now have a code for an install that ties itself to your account, to discourage buying used games.