I like how Steam is always the "positive" example how to do it. The company which has like 300 employees, gives a shit about tens of millions of Counter Strike players who only get the bare minimum of updates, the company who just doesn't give a fuck about cheaters destroying the experience for everyone else, the company who can't even be bothered to work on Half Life 3 and so on...

If it would be on Valve and Gaben, they would be fine with only 10% of the game releases we have every year as long as the games which are already successful print money with people buying in-game stuff.

I know that the Steam as eco-system is awesome (that's why I stopped console gaming after Xbox 360) but yeah, Valve is really only doing the bare minimum at everything lol. You won't hear from them kicking thousands of employees out of the window because they almost have no employees.

Yeah, I hear you and I have it the same way. I just don't want to support this company anymore. Sony is not much better than Microsoft though. Leaving us with Nintendo as the last console choice, and they have made plenty of greedy and anti-consumer decisions with the Switch2 themselves. So it will probably have to be PC (unless we want to go pure retro gaming). 

All those hyperbolic posts over the past years about Xbox/M$ being the worst thing to happen to gaming are looking pretty correct these days. This company just fucking sucks

There are now reports that Gregg Mayles will be leaving Rare after 35 years.

Honestly it's just the whole gaming industry. Basically none of the major gaming platforms are good these days, I see all of them doing things I dislike alot. Most of the 3rd party publishers suck too. The future of gaming in general seems bleak, the death of physical releases and traditional console hardware, raising costs leading to more and more people sticking with their GaaS favorites instead of buying new games. As making new games becomes riskier and riskier, innovation will die as the industry moves toward making mostly safe sequels and safe ideas when we do occasionally see a new AAA IP. The same thing that happened to movies is happening to gaming.

As I said would happen and can you really blame him? Microsoft didn't even give him a chance to salvage Everwild and this after he gave them fucking Sea of Thieves! It's a complete disrespect to him. With Gregg leaving there goes any hope of Banjo ever being made by Rare, and there goes Rare's most senior employee. End of an era and it's all Microsoft's fault. It would be one thing if he retired after Everwild released but this very much looks like Microsoft is to blame.

Who'd thought that treating employees like shit would drive away talent?

Could see Josh Sawyer being the type of person to leave a shitty company like Microsoft soon too.

Gregg Mayles was highly liked inside of Rare too, the dude was a little camera shy IIRC which is why we hardly saw him on stage or anything, but Gregg Mayles leaving is probably going to be a serious blow to morale at Rare and may cause even more people to leave, Microsoft is fucking clueless at how important it is to nurture talent.

Gregg Mayles leaving is like Josh Sawyer leaving Obsidian.

Rare's just lost a bit of its soul now.

I can't believe they'd treat this man with so much disrespect after he gave them Sea of Thieves which has tens of millions of players, was a massive success, one of Microsoft's most successful new IPs ever and even today, ensures that Rare Ltd runs at a profit. Microsoft can't even hide that Rare is profitable because UK businesses are required by law to report on it!

I'm willing to give Bond a small chance simply because she seems a lot smarter than Phil and Booty, Phil gives the vibes of someone who stumbled his way up to the top and made a bunch of crazy promises which he ultimately failed to deliver on and that bit him in the ass and the employees suffered as a result, Booty is responsible for the studios who just had multiple cancellations and closures and straight up said they closed Tango because it would stretch him too thin, both Phil and Booty promised these studios one thing and did another. Thousands of employees are being laid off under Phil's leadership and Booty is also their direct leader while Bond is more adjacent.

I'm not really sure I can pinpoint a major mistake that Bond made, her initial steps were into Game Pass which was amazing and she managed to grow it rapidly, then Microsoft dumped her with a ton of other roles, she was M&A and then 3rd Party Relationships and Ecosystem Support of which she did a brilliant job with and managed to get a lot more 3rd parties supporting Xbox, she grew her Global Ecosystem team (before Phil started laying everyone off) and she was given the task of saving the ABK deal which she worked her ass off and achieved (while Phil slept, Lol) and now she has been given the incredibly difficult task of creating hardware (ROG Xbox Ally X would be her partnership too) with no exclusives to back it up and she has to merge Xbox with PC which is essentially the only way Xbox can survive now as a piece of hardware. Oh and she has created the B/C team who are reportedly ensuring all our libraries will transition with us over to this new piece of hardware.

I think she has dabbled in pretty much everything. However she is still part of the leadership team and she does share some responsibility for these layoffs too, not as much as Phil or Matt I would say, enough to criticise her but little enough to see how she would manage as a leader, she seems far smarter than Phil and maybe she could lead the overall business to be healthier. My main fear is that her being smarter than Phil and Booty is probably because she is more business orientated, but hey, Phil is a massive gamer and look at where we are right now, Lol.