I don’t like Rhythm games so no.

That was one of several industry veterans voicing similar sentiments. He may not be a numbers guy, but he certainly knows and talks to people who are more familiar with this than we are. But I provided it mainly to illustrate that these ideas are not just emotionally driven by fans. And also because his hypothesis is close to my thought process.

The reactions are seemingly primarily driven by the Tango closure in particular, for reasons that have been reiterated quite a few times in this thread and elsewhere. SkillUp's latest video posted a few hours ago goes over it in detail for example.

Xbox have their own numbers, but Microsoft purchased AKB for Xbox. That $68 Billion was Microsoft's money.

Keep in mind, I'm focusing on the Tango closure only, and I don't group it together with the rest, because while those are also terrible, you could at least make some sense out of those. A lot of people, in this thread included, have struggled to make sense out of the Tango closure in particular over the past few days.

If Tango's future was relying on Hi-Fi Rush generating money, why shadowdrop it with 0 promotion leading up to launch, + give it away for free with Gamepass? And you don't decide to close down a studio in a day. So how many days of sales, if any, did they monitor on "other" platforms before pulling the trigger? Did it even matter?

Due to Xbox's plan with Gamepass, you'd think Tango should have been in a safer position with a game like Hi-Fi Rush than they would have been under just Bethesda. Because Xbox wanted more creative non-AAA titles to expand the variety of the service. The goal of those is not to generate a lot of money on their own. And this was a multi award winning game at that, which created more positive buzz for Xbox than many games have in a long time. One of their best reviewed releases in two console generations.

There is a lot of value in that as well, and not just the immediate monetary return on investment.

You called it "a bit successful" but Greenberg described it as "a breakout hit in all key measurements" and they couldn't be more happy with it. And that is the opposite of "good PR" if there was a concievable chance of shutting down the studio within a year.

Xbox are aware of games and studios that started off not selling much, that went on to blow up in success. Larian and Fromsoft. Nier, Persona and Yakuza, etc.
Xbox knew they had a great game on their hands with HFR, and one that cost notably less to make than bigger titles (Hi-Fi Rush only had 2 people working on it for the first year, and only brought in a lot of people during the last stretch).

Xbox even stated yesterday that they need smaller titles to win awards for them. At least the lead director of Hi-Fi Rush thought the description fit his project, and made that sarcastic quote tweet above.

By "Having the game on Gamepass is not considered at all", do you mean Xbox not considering the game's effect on the subscription?

Of course I think they do.
And it sounds like they were more than happy with what Hi-Fi Rush brought to the service. Everyone who played it were saying how great it was.

I can't say I've seen this argument that they're unable to do do simple math.
In my recent post in the other thread I even argued that this was likely purly a numbers decision.

The state of the Industry and Capitalism (vgchartz.com)

There are different numbers though. And there's long term and short term.
Investors prioritizing more revenue now instead of later, as they tend to do, does not mean they are doing "wrong math". They have different priorities, and may not even be investors in this company some years from now, etc.

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.

Yes, PR statements are supposed to shine a light on everything and its one of the reasons why most companies keep their mouth shut when it comes to the direction of the company because they never know when it will come back to bite them.  Phil is like Peter M in this respect.  He likes to talk and he loves to make these nice glossy feel-good statements and now they are coming back to haunt him.  You do not see statements from any of MS competitors because they are not foolish enough to put stuff out there that could end up coming back and bite them in the butt when they need to make unpopular decisions.

At this time, I really do not see a 180 with MS direction or even Phil statement.  I see a consolidation and a push to get Bethesda to move quickly in getting their best IP to market but it's not MS has canceled any projects that we know of at the moment.  Things still need to shake out so we will see what happens going forward but at the end of the day, what MS need and what they have always needed are consistent hits from their studios.  Nothing else really matters in the gaming entertainment industry because you are always measured on the game that drive customers to your platform and business.  I bet you one thing.  No one will care if the next couple years MS continue to drop nothing but hits because that is the measure for any of these companies.

My problem with people taking these industry veterans word is that they are all just guessing. Meaning that they site no sources close enough to make any real difference then them just taking a stab in the dark like everyone else. Unless that source is Phil, Matt or Sarah, all we see are just a bunch of people throwing stuff against the wall which is no better than the rest of us.

If GP numbers were really affecting everything than it was a very poor decision by Phil which would mean that Sarah stating that they would continue to release all of their first party content on the service a huge issue and crux. Working at large corporations like I have, I know from personal experience that there are people who job is to crunch the numbers so if anything, what is driving MS direction is that they do not have enough big IP games hitting the service to grow GP not the other way around. If I am analyzing MS move I would say that MS believes smaller games like Grounded, HI FI Rush, Pentiment are great games, but they are not moving customers to GP which is their primary goal for the service. COD, Doom, Halo, Gears, Fallout, Eldar Scrolls. Those are the games that need to come out and hit the service to grow it and if you believe MS words, they need those games to come out sooner not later.

Smaller mid tier games can be filled in by GP day one which MS continue to do and add to the service but their own output needs bigger and better hits to because if GP is stagnating and its their primary service, they need to correct it.

I imagine you at least see the 180 from the quote about nurturing the devs that want to be more creative instead of pushing out the expected established franchises? Because now they're closing studios to focus more on the opposite.

Part of the plan with Gamepass was, according to them, to diversify it with smaller titles. Because they're cheaper to make, and can be added much more frequently to the service than AAA titles with 7 year dev cycles.

To be truthful, I always thought that Phil talked to much. Its really not common for a C level exec in his position to make so many interviews.  I think of other execs doing the same Musk and how that goes.  As a CEO, you never can put anything in stone unless you back yourself into a corner and then have to make a bunch of excuses.  This is where we are today.  At no time do I ever believe any person on Phil level is a nice guy or someone who isn't going to make the hard choices or even the unpopular ones.

As to your question on if Phil quote is a 180, probably so but then again it doesn't mean he hasn't tried to go that route but it's evident its not working.  Are games like Grounded, Hi Fi Rush, Pentiment, Redfall hell even starfield growing GP or gaining any traction to making GP the service of choice.  None of those games are driving sells to MS hardware or GP and while Phil may wish to be more like his PR statements in the end he definitely has to be realistic in the state of Xbox and its position in the industry.  What is going to drive GP, Xbox to those lofty 100 million subs.  It ain't Hi Fi Rush that is for sure or Hi Fi Rush 2.

The way I see it  MS need hits like Spiderman, GOD of War, Final Fantasy.  Games like this or on this level to drive GP and hardware sells for Xbox.  MS continue to miss out on such big hits and it shows in the number those smaller games are just not doing it and at MS current state, something needs to change now, not later.

Nor do I but I love Devil May Cry and Hi-Fi Rush is more DMC, not a Rythm game. It had rythm-based combat but you can ease that in menu settings to not worry about it.

There's definitely an argument for Phil Spencer talking too much.

And I think the main purpose of the smaller non-AAA titles was more about sustaining interest in GP in between the major releases. While the latter being the ones primarily meant to grow the service.

If some of these comments were made a few years ago, I wouldn't think much of it other than that they tried, and it didn't work out. Change of plans.
But it's difficult to imagine those comments being made so wholeheartedly if they considered the possibility of a shutdown within this timeframe.

And in fact, look at this.

Just two months ago Sarah Bond congratulated them on their 14th birthday, and added "here's to many more".

That's not an opposie. That's just inconceivable. She could not have known even 2 months ago that this would happen. There's no way you would say that.

I had to check if it was real, and it is.
https://x.com/BondSarah_Bond/status/1763685686295826790

I've never seen her flounder in an interview before this most recent. Probably a decision she found out in the last few weeks or sooner. She wasn't even prepared for it. Makes me wonder when Phil knew.