games as a service is an okay idea but it cannot be your entire catalog either.  i can invest in maybe 1 game as a service at a time.  for me that is rocket league.  otherwise i only play "1 and done" games.   so games as a service is great,.. if you are the top dog.  high risk; high reward.

wrt the article,.. i can really feel the pain of having 2 high level stakeholders that are not aligned on their vision.  it's a really tough place to be.  it's not easy to critique your bosses and tell them they need to align their vision or you will hault production but i've had to pull that protest off with my senior leadership a few times.

Fair enough. From a business point of view I suppose it can work for some games/genres. I just don't like the fundamental idea. As a video game enthusiast, I like the idea that I pay a price to get a game, and that's the end of my relationship with the game maker. That's why Destiny is such a turn-off for me.

He played a large role in Sonys first party output during the early PS3 years. Should say enough honestly lol

Maybe they wanted more DLC / Story Mode / merch sales for Minecraft? Didn't the majority of game sales occur pre-acquisition?

Free to play is fine in context, and even something you want one or two of.  It has plenty of fans and you want to appeal to everyone.  However, a super-expensive, AAA free-to-play game is the epitome of "dumb idea," especially when you're pulling studios off the types of projects that actually sell consoles and putting them on projects where they have no functional experience.

Of course, it also needs to be noted that the game itself supposedly wasn't very good or well balanced.

Good point. A small-budget free-to-play game could scratch a certain itch.

And also good point there at the end. As much as I'm blaming Microsoft for bad business decisions, maybe some of the blame belongs to Lionhead. Fable III is a major step down from Fable and Fable II, so it's possible the studio lost its touch.

I don't think it was just Phil Harrison, so let's not all bring out the pitchforks and use him as the scapegoat.

Microsoft knew what they were doing when they created this new vision for MS. A service based company using Azure cloud and many other software bundles as services. They tried to foist services onto gamestop, the tried to foist it onto consumers with always online, they are doing it with the EA partnership.

This isn't just Phil Harrison, this is their whole company. They've gone crazy.

Blizzard was smart creating new IPs for their game as a service model.

I can clearly see Halo, Fable or Gears as online only battle arenas. But the fans are a dificult lot, they rather see it burn than see it different.

PS: I can taste this guy bitterness here. He wont get any job at a major game company ever. You don't poisson the well thi way.

 This is basically the best way to describe Xbox this generation.

that is the part that really caught my attention.