As the former lead of CoreAI at Microsoft steps in to replace Spencer, the question remains. What does the future of Xbox with AI look like?
So, who exactly is she? Well, externally, she’s the former VP of Product and Engineering at Meta, CEO of Instacart, and current board member for Coupang and Home Depot. She only recently came to Microsoft in 2024 as the President of CoreAI. Don’t worry, if you’re double-checking to see if any of that is related to gaming in some sort of way, let me save you the trouble; it’s not.
The money is in real games, made by real humans, small teams, low budgets, no corpo meddling. It’s time to unplug from these huge corporations and their agendas. They are the ones out of touch. They are the ones in a bubble. The indie scene is thriving. Check it out!
Perhaps there is some future market for infinite AI generated slop, but I want no part in that. Games are art. We learn from and relate to art, grow as people. AI is nothing more the. infinite flashing lights. This is dystopian bread and circuses to keep us docile while the billionaires and civilization.
Lol I wonder if windowscentral and MS got in a feedback loop and that’s why MS was surprised at how much people hate copilot integration with the OS and every program they can shove it into.
Don’t you love it when you are working for a big company, and they announce that the new CEO is from Coke or Pillsbury or Ford or some other industry that has nothing in common with yours, but somehow just doing the same job as the last know-nothing that they fired, using the same current popular experimental business strategies, is going to be better this time?
And then they pay them millions to fuck it all up, while they pay you a pittance to try to keep it together, as they fuck it up.
At my last company they got rid of the CEO because of some thing she was doing. They have a big meeting to tell us and introduce the guy that’s replacing her… The guy who got hired a year ago, spent who knows how much on some “fleet management” software. Software that we never used because we all objected to installing the app on our personal phones that wanted to track our location and have all sorts of other crazy permissions. Dude just failed up to CEO
Im surprised they gave up so easily. Like they have huge pockets and this is one of their signature products. It had 1 bad generation and they were just like well i guess we’re cooked. There is so much to “innovate” on. They could have copied steams approach and had given their console a desktop mode that runs a stripped down but still fully functional version of windows. They could have made a console with good hardware.
Oh well at the end of the day a loss for Microsoft is a win for everyone else. They wont be missed by me.
To be honest Phil’s just done a bad job at the helm or maybe wasn’t empowered to do the things that needed to be done. Everything since the xbox360 has been weak from Microsoft, although Sony has really only held on due to some banger first party games.
Nintendo continues to understand that you need to offer something different in the console space to remain relevant. While the steam deck (and other handheld) are coming for the switch, they at least offer something unique.
Anyone who thinks Xbox is still going to be worth anything is a fool. They overspent on gaming studios, didn’t produce anything of value, gamepass value went down, and now everyone hates them for the constant enshittification. Even stepping back from “This is lemmy and we all hate microsoft” they have done some horrible business moves with Xbox. I don’t know anyone who is positive about the brand. They have ran it firmly into the ground.
But as always they will blame “market conditions” and “customers changing tastes”. Instead of “we pointed a fuckload of MBAs that only care about monetizing in the short term and milking every penny we can short term even though it’s killing all long term prospects of the product and driving away customers in droves”
“we pointed a fuckload of MBAs that only care about monetizing
If I ever end up in a position where I’m reviewing potential employees, having an MBA is going to be an automatic rejection, regardless of their other qualifications.
Imo, getting an MBA makes you worse at being a productive employee. And the people that get them don’t have personalities that are conducive to being good at their jobs
I dont think the analogy works. Gas taxes are universal in the U.S. for road fuel, they also fund infrastructure, not stock holders and CEOs.
A tax is not an arbitrary subscription fee, it’s an ongoing expensive.
In order for your analogy to work, the fee would need to be created out of no where for no reason other than self enrichment; and there would need to be a viable alternative that provides practically the exact same benefit with no fee. The fee would also need to expire and require renwal despite not using the product, which isn’t the case for gas.
It works pretty well. The console network fees fund infrastructure, the employees that run the infrastructure, etc. neither the gas tax nor the console network fees are arbitrary. As for the “required renewal despite not using it” thing we just have other things for that in the form of vehicle registration.
well. The console network fees fund infrastructure
I mean where they spend the money is irrelevant. If I rob you, is it suddenly okay if I spend your money responsibly? No.
PC has had online multiplayer since the creation of the internet, and PC did it without ever having a fee on top of internet access.
I would also argue that playstation plus membership fees, with all their millions of dollars, have not created a better environment than what available on PC for free, so…
So it’s ok to pay money for infrastructure for your car to use, but when you have to pay for the infrastructure for your video games it’s robbery? Now I feel like you’re the one being arbitrary.
PC has had online multiplayer since the creation of the internet
This tells me you weren’t around for the early days of PC gaming. On the contrary, PC gaming went through a couple phases when it came to online multiplayer. Early multiplayer games often didn’t have matchmaking or dedicated server discovery at all, then there was the Gamespy era where a bunch of games delegated their multiplayer matchmaking to a third party with limited functionality and ads unless you paid a premium subscription.
It was the game consoles that really fixed multiplayer early on with their party systems that persisted outside of each game. Today Steam has similar functionality, but Valve is just eating those costs, just as Sony used to. Difference is Valve doesn’t have to sell you your computer at a loss, they they can have loss leaders like that in different areas.
but when you have to pay for the infrastructure for your video games it’s robbery?
We already discussed this. The Playstation Plus subscription isnt paying for internet infrastructure. PC has no monthly fee, and it’s infrastructure is exactly the same.
This tells me you weren’t around for the early days of PC gaming
Oh I was… So Xbox game pass released in 2002, PlayStation followed much later in 2010.
In 2002 Warcraft 3’s multiplayer was fine. In 2002 Battlefield 1942 was fine; It was a good as Halo’s multiplayer, which somehow ALSO had fine multiplayer at release in 2001 despite the subscription service for multiplayer not until a year after the game had already launched.
It was the game consoles that really fixed multiplayer early on with their party systems that persisted outside of each game.
Even if I gave you that, the subscription “fee” isn’t what fixed multiplayer design, that was fixed by… Game developers.
The health of video games shouldn’t be measured by what Microsoft does. That’s like measuring the economy based on how a bunch of big companies are doing.
It’s inaccurate as hell and doesn’t actually take into consideration the small folks who make up the majority.
Thankfully, it’s not, not in any meaningful way. The source is a big indicator of how much you should trust the assertion being made.
Actual broad metrics show that gaming in general is currently the most profitable entertainment industry, and it’s not even close. So that’s good, MS is just assmad that they’ve very efficiently begun removing themselves from that industry at this point.
Agree. I’ve been buying more games than ever and they’re mostly indie. Best part is you can get them for like $10 - $20 if you wait for a steam sale. Necesse might be my favorite so far. It’s like rimworld and terraria had a baby.
So. In the other post they promised not to go AI, but in this one we see black on white proof that she is totally gonna dive deep into ai gaming? Makes me think how much longer gamers (your typical cod/fifa gamer) will stay silent?
P.S. Players do not have to become loud. Best way to actually tell gaming industry to fuck off with their anti-consumer narrative is to vote with your wallet. Yes, it is that easy.
Would it even matter to a FIFA player though? The game’s mechanics are not that different from generation to generation and I think AI could decently simulate player stats and likeness. They’ll probably lap the slop up and ask for more.
Well FIFA players are mostly just gamblers so that checks out. The contingent of non-gamblers should be big enough to sway the rest of the industry if they really did stop spending though. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to happen. Most big games are attempting to shift their players slowly into gambling addiction too. Roblox, Fortnite, Overwatch, they’re all attempting to hook players on gambling. We need regulation to more heavily restrict those games from having anything related to gambling in them before we can expect players to bail (or stop spending) in large enough numbers to make anything change.
Microsoft can just go on doubling and tripling down on bad decisions indefinitely and make it everyone elses’ problem because they have so much money that it barely matters if they fail.
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The money is in real games, made by real humans, small teams, low budgets, no corpo meddling. It’s time to unplug from these huge corporations and their agendas. They are the ones out of touch. They are the ones in a bubble. The indie scene is thriving. Check it out!
Perhaps there is some future market for infinite AI generated slop, but I want no part in that. Games are art. We learn from and relate to art, grow as people. AI is nothing more the. infinite flashing lights. This is dystopian bread and circuses to keep us docile while the billionaires and civilization.
Lol I wonder if windowscentral and MS got in a feedback loop and that’s why MS was surprised at how much people hate copilot integration with the OS and every program they can shove it into.
Don’t you love it when you are working for a big company, and they announce that the new CEO is from Coke or Pillsbury or Ford or some other industry that has nothing in common with yours, but somehow just doing the same job as the last know-nothing that they fired, using the same current popular experimental business strategies, is going to be better this time?
And then they pay them millions to fuck it all up, while they pay you a pittance to try to keep it together, as they fuck it up.
At my last company they got rid of the CEO because of some thing she was doing. They have a big meeting to tell us and introduce the guy that’s replacing her… The guy who got hired a year ago, spent who knows how much on some “fleet management” software. Software that we never used because we all objected to installing the app on our personal phones that wanted to track our location and have all sorts of other crazy permissions. Dude just failed up to CEO
You get to watch somebody make more money than youll make in your entire life to fuck up to the point where you lose your job
I’ve got 2,000 steam games I haven’t played yet. The era of the gamer has a big enough buffer to not end for years.
And the fact that indie studios continue to put out bangers. It’s just aaa corpotrash gaming that is ending.
Exactly. I don’t mind paying 30 euros for Mewgenics, for example.
Im surprised they gave up so easily. Like they have huge pockets and this is one of their signature products. It had 1 bad generation and they were just like well i guess we’re cooked. There is so much to “innovate” on. They could have copied steams approach and had given their console a desktop mode that runs a stripped down but still fully functional version of windows. They could have made a console with good hardware.
Oh well at the end of the day a loss for Microsoft is a win for everyone else. They wont be missed by me.
To be honest Phil’s just done a bad job at the helm or maybe wasn’t empowered to do the things that needed to be done. Everything since the xbox360 has been weak from Microsoft, although Sony has really only held on due to some banger first party games.
Nintendo continues to understand that you need to offer something different in the console space to remain relevant. While the steam deck (and other handheld) are coming for the switch, they at least offer something unique.
Xbox died the day Peter Moore left.
At the very least they’ve continued to have their games on PC too 🤷
Anyone who thinks Xbox is still going to be worth anything is a fool. They overspent on gaming studios, didn’t produce anything of value, gamepass value went down, and now everyone hates them for the constant enshittification. Even stepping back from “This is lemmy and we all hate microsoft” they have done some horrible business moves with Xbox. I don’t know anyone who is positive about the brand. They have ran it firmly into the ground.
But as always they will blame “market conditions” and “customers changing tastes”. Instead of “we pointed a fuckload of MBAs that only care about monetizing in the short term and milking every penny we can short term even though it’s killing all long term prospects of the product and driving away customers in droves”
If I ever end up in a position where I’m reviewing potential employees, having an MBA is going to be an automatic rejection, regardless of their other qualifications.
Imo, getting an MBA makes you worse at being a productive employee. And the people that get them don’t have personalities that are conducive to being good at their jobs
Screw all the consoles. They deserve extinction for scamming everyone for years by requiring monthly subscriptions to play online.
Literally like selling someone a subscription to drive your car out of town.
We do have that. It’s the gas tax we pay to the government.
I dont think the analogy works. Gas taxes are universal in the U.S. for road fuel, they also fund infrastructure, not stock holders and CEOs.
A tax is not an arbitrary subscription fee, it’s an ongoing expensive.
In order for your analogy to work, the fee would need to be created out of no where for no reason other than self enrichment; and there would need to be a viable alternative that provides practically the exact same benefit with no fee. The fee would also need to expire and require renwal despite not using the product, which isn’t the case for gas.
It works pretty well. The console network fees fund infrastructure, the employees that run the infrastructure, etc. neither the gas tax nor the console network fees are arbitrary. As for the “required renewal despite not using it” thing we just have other things for that in the form of vehicle registration.
I mean where they spend the money is irrelevant. If I rob you, is it suddenly okay if I spend your money responsibly? No.
PC has had online multiplayer since the creation of the internet, and PC did it without ever having a fee on top of internet access.
I would also argue that playstation plus membership fees, with all their millions of dollars, have not created a better environment than what available on PC for free, so…
So it’s ok to pay money for infrastructure for your car to use, but when you have to pay for the infrastructure for your video games it’s robbery? Now I feel like you’re the one being arbitrary.
This tells me you weren’t around for the early days of PC gaming. On the contrary, PC gaming went through a couple phases when it came to online multiplayer. Early multiplayer games often didn’t have matchmaking or dedicated server discovery at all, then there was the Gamespy era where a bunch of games delegated their multiplayer matchmaking to a third party with limited functionality and ads unless you paid a premium subscription.
It was the game consoles that really fixed multiplayer early on with their party systems that persisted outside of each game. Today Steam has similar functionality, but Valve is just eating those costs, just as Sony used to. Difference is Valve doesn’t have to sell you your computer at a loss, they they can have loss leaders like that in different areas.
We already discussed this. The Playstation Plus subscription isnt paying for internet infrastructure. PC has no monthly fee, and it’s infrastructure is exactly the same.
Oh I was… So Xbox game pass released in 2002, PlayStation followed much later in 2010.
In 2002 Warcraft 3’s multiplayer was fine. In 2002 Battlefield 1942 was fine; It was a good as Halo’s multiplayer, which somehow ALSO had fine multiplayer at release in 2001 despite the subscription service for multiplayer not until a year after the game had already launched.
Even if I gave you that, the subscription “fee” isn’t what fixed multiplayer design, that was fixed by… Game developers.
At some point you have to be impressed by Microsoft’s dedication to ruining their own products
They’re like the Democrats of the Gaming Universe, always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The health of video games shouldn’t be measured by what Microsoft does. That’s like measuring the economy based on how a bunch of big companies are doing.
It’s inaccurate as hell and doesn’t actually take into consideration the small folks who make up the majority.
Thankfully, it’s not, not in any meaningful way. The source is a big indicator of how much you should trust the assertion being made.
Actual broad metrics show that gaming in general is currently the most profitable entertainment industry, and it’s not even close. So that’s good, MS is just assmad that they’ve very efficiently begun removing themselves from that industry at this point.
Hard disagree. The indie gamer era has never been better.
Hell, based on my hopeless addiction to Space Station 14, it’s also a great time to an open-source gamer.
Agree. I’ve been buying more games than ever and they’re mostly indie. Best part is you can get them for like $10 - $20 if you wait for a steam sale. Necesse might be my favorite so far. It’s like rimworld and terraria had a baby.
So. In the other post they promised not to go AI, but in this one we see black on white proof that she is totally gonna dive deep into ai gaming? Makes me think how much longer gamers (your typical cod/fifa gamer) will stay silent?
P.S. Players do not have to become loud. Best way to actually tell gaming industry to fuck off with their anti-consumer narrative is to vote with your wallet. Yes, it is that easy.
Would it even matter to a FIFA player though? The game’s mechanics are not that different from generation to generation and I think AI could decently simulate player stats and likeness. They’ll probably lap the slop up and ask for more.
Well FIFA players are mostly just gamblers so that checks out. The contingent of non-gamblers should be big enough to sway the rest of the industry if they really did stop spending though. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to happen. Most big games are attempting to shift their players slowly into gambling addiction too. Roblox, Fortnite, Overwatch, they’re all attempting to hook players on gambling. We need regulation to more heavily restrict those games from having anything related to gambling in them before we can expect players to bail (or stop spending) in large enough numbers to make anything change.
But no one does.
Microsoft can just go on doubling and tripling down on bad decisions indefinitely and make it everyone elses’ problem because they have so much money that it barely matters if they fail.
… we could have both industries… but fuck AI
XSlop era.
Slopya Nadella
As an ex-record industry executive, I know what it’s like to be part of an industry that decides to just shoot itself in the head.