Chazore said:
You know, the more I look back on our gaming history, the more I start to realise Steve Jobs was right, in that we are seeing suits replacing the people that loved making the products, and all we're being left with are people who only care about the money, not the customer, not the product, not the long-term success and reputation gains. I feel like the games industry right now is more cut-throat than it has ever been before. |
Something like this happened to the first company I ever worked for. Small, but large for a mom and pop business. The majority of the management were all fieldstaff who worked their way up the chain and eventually became office staff, etc, and most were good at their jobs because of it and the company did quite well and was growing. The company got bought up, along with a bunch of others, and were all brought into the larger company and things became corporatized relatively quickly. After the first year, most of the office staff got canned, were replaced with half as many people, and all of them were suits with some type of degree. Our pricing went way up for everything and the fieldstaff tools, equipment, and vehicle purchases and repairs were cut back on by a lot, to a detrimental degree. Some of the best fieldstaff left during this time, and the new fieldstaff who were brought in as replacements and to grow the company asap were not dependable or hard working. All it took was 3 years and the company was ran into the ground.
The company had been around for 40 years prior, and was relatively well known in the industry, even being a smaller company, for reliable quality reasonably priced work. The final year I worked there, the work became more and more scarce because the company had become seen as sloppy and incompetent, and fewer and fewer customers wanted to hire us again and potential customers weren't at all interested. They were right to think that. It ended up being broken into pieces and sold off. Since then another smaller company in the same sector was started in the same town as the one I worked for, and has found success. They cater to many of the same customers I used to work with, because they offer the same type of reliable quality service for a reasonable price.
I'd say you're right about Steve. The guy wasn't just a visionary, he knew his stuff.
If XB and PS were their own entity, no ties to MS or SNY, things would be much better off.