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Machiavellian on 10 May 2024
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Dulfite said:

Phil *may* be to blame, but his bosses (yes multiple, the board is also above him) are *absolutely* to blame.

We can assume generals are the reason soldiers are operating the way they are in a war, we can't assume colonels are the reason as they have considerably less control.

Phil is a colonel. Don't let the fancy CEO title fool you, he is not a practical CEO. He's essentially a USA secretary of whatever level, seemingly powerful, but can't do anything the president doesn't sign off on and *must* do whatever the president says.

The board does not run MS.  Not sure why people think this because if the board ran MS, the Xbox division would have been long gone.  We have heard during Xbox creation, plenty from MS board about what MS should do with the Xbox division but MS has ignored them every time. The thing about MS board is no one controls enough of MS stock to fully direct them against their CEO which we have seen time and again.  There were a few play from some of MS bigger players but they still could not muster enough direction because no one owns enough stock.

Phil is not some foot soldier; he reports to no one but Satya so who else do you believe is lording over him.  There has never been a moment that I have seen from Satya where it appears he has directed Phil in any direction.  If anything, all I have seen is that Satya has full trust in Phil direction and leadership because why keep promoting him.  While these decisions do not sit well with most of you, think about it from MS side.  Now with Bethesda, ABK and their other studios, MS is now the largest publisher with the biggest IPs that generate huge sums of money. There are no angles at MS and that include Phil, Sarah Matt and the rest.

Neither Phil, Matt nor Sarah is going to resign over these decisions because they all were made together.  No matter what your opinions are of these corp executives personally, never doubt that they are more than capable to do the dirty work when needed.  It's just that I have worked at to many big companies to ever doubt that outside appearances have nothing to do with how a person truly operates on the corp level.  All my bosses were very nice guys, but they would fire your butt and layoff personnel in a heartbeat, which they have done.

Anyway, I have beaten this topic enough.  We probably will never get the full story but who knows, years later depending on how all this plays out we might get some real insight.  Maybe when Phil finally steps down, he will write a book and reflect on these days but even then it probably might not be the full truth.