I really find this hard to believe and unless he is able to back up his claim with hard data (or more people in the know backing him up). There is a difference in leaking games and then stuff like this.
Edit: If true then this is were I will actually start getting concerned at MS. Were they really expecting this game to do gangbusters numbers or something? I was paying attention to its performance on the steam chart (which shows how much revenue a game makes not how many copies sold) and HFR at $30 was making far more money than Forspoken at $70 and stayed in the top 100 while the later evaporated in a week.
Yeah i have a hard time believing this from Jeff. Who in their right mind has high sales expectations for a rhythm game which you shadow drop on a subscription service? This all makes no sense.
I donât really know what their expectations were for a small but well made single player game but I canât see them expecting it to be a system selling game that sold a ton of copies or got a lot of people to sign up for gamepass. Iâm thinking more that itâs time for a bit more over sight over the game studios.
HFR part sounds unlikely, the part about the management if true hopefully sees some big changes then. So they basically say their complaints and issues arenât taken seriously or much done with?
Exactly. This take completely ignores the existence of game pass.
It would way more believable if they were disapointed in engagement numbers or retention. I donât think pure revenue through sales is the right metric here.
Sounds weird yeahâŚespecially if you consider that it also:
did decent enough sales wise on Steam.
it is one of the highest rated character action games ever and a highly rated game in generalâŚhell it has a higher MC score than fuckinâ Devil May Cry 5.
generated a lot of hype and positive word of mouth for Tango AND Xbox.
covered the Japanese character action hole in Xboxâs 1st party portfolio.
It definitely feels like overkill now, and Iâm likeâŚcan we just get to some good Xbox news now?
But i do believe that there is a problem, it canât all be bullshit. Itâs not only Jez with hot takes now, Grubb now covered it as well. And I donât think that this coming out is a bad thing, it could potentially light a fire up the ass of those who are responsible.
Hopefully they get it sorted soon. The year started so nice with the live stream and HFR shadow drop. Letâs go back to that please. Letâs get to June please.
Really dumb decision by Xbox to disable the console video sharing to Twitter due to the Twitter api fee. This is the way the majority of people share gaming videos, especially with how ass backwards the YouTube sharing is. I really really donât understand the decision making regarding marketing at Xbox. The twitter fee is relatively low and enables tons and tons of advertising for Xbox. Xbox hardly advertises their own games and now they are making it hard for users to share the games. How do they think that people will find out about their games???
Marketing is far and away the biggest issue at Xbox. It is an utter mess right now and desperately needs change.
Also, HFR didnât make the money it needed to make. So are they going with software sales? Isnât it all about Game Pass usage now and wasnât this game very well played by many?
So I have to ask, which management was saying theyâre not happy with Xbox?
As management can mean anyone across Microsoft, which isnât run by a single management team. From the Todd Vaughn e-mail I guess we can say his team isnât the one making the complaints. Especially in light of how leaks from Microsoft donât come from the gaming division, they come from other parts of Microsoft.
The thing also is what kind of budget are they playing with? We know Sonyâs budget on marketing is almost infinite, if iâm watching some TV show, iâll get at least one PS ad, hell i saw one talking about Spiderman 2 already a few days ago, if i watch a soccer match, specially in the Champions League, which is seen by hundreds of millions of persons, i will permanently see playstation ads both during match and on the half time.
The last ad i remember from MS was in a spanish league game, and it said âMicrosoft.â nothing about Xbox of course so.
Also they need something to work with, if you can pay dozens of millions to market exclusively a game like Hogwarts Legacy, well even i would be able to do that, or God of War a few months ago
You need budget, and material to work with marketing wise, and MS so far has nothing of that, they did well with Forza Horizon 5 imo, and the game performed very well, i saw it on internet in a lot of places, but other than that, well itâs hard. Letâs see what happens with Starfield.
About the management thing, who is even Jeff refering to? Xbox management? because itâs only them to blame about the momentum of Xbox, no one else. Honestly i trust Jeff many times, both on good or bad news, but this one looks like Jez was getting a lot of attention and insiders and people from the industry know they will get it too by just saying anything bad about Xbox nowadays
Microsoft marketing relies too heavily on word of mouth ratter than actually advertise products. I have no clue why their marketing acts like a small company rather than a Mega corporation. Microsoft should be creating gamepass ads for the nba and nhl playoffs . I have a bad feeling theyâre not going to market starfield heavy.
Yeah, this I would like to know too. Iâve already seen some crazy takes here and there that this is why Mikami left, completely ignoring the fact the man wanted out for a while now. Weâre all guessing here but like many here thought as well itâs more likely he wanted to see if Tango was in a good enough condition, that he trusted heâd be leaving it to good people, then left.
I donât know the slightest about management, running tons of studios. Fact is compared to a few years ago they have a huge amount of studios overall to run and manage and I canât imagine that being an easy thing. Wonder if weâll get more details on it and other than saying I hope they get it on track as soon as possible thereâs not much else to say.
