Utnayan
F-16 Patrolling Hekotat for no reason
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I doubt she has ever touched a video game in her life. Or even watched one being played.
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Xbox Megathread
- Thread starter spronk
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I doubt she has ever touched a video game in her life. Or even watched one being played.
Utnayan
F-16 Patrolling Hekotat for no reason
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Here is the bigger picture.
Valve is going to eat their fucking lunch.
Steam Machine will be plug and play, streamlined, with the strongest library and ease of use to enter the market in the living room with a streamlined OS and ZERO paywalls for what MS and Sony and Nintendo charge for basic online play. Not only that, the OS will destroy Windows 11 as a gaming OS. Then, add the Steamdeck which will get a hardware upgrade, and watch the market share vanish overnight as MS, Nintendo, and Sony slept.
This lady literally said she just created an account to understand the world of gaming. She doesn't understand culture, buying habits, game development, or an ability to have ANY thought leadership of the gaming industry as a whole. Any leader in a division of a major corporation has at least the foundational level of knowledge of the industry segment they lead, and when they don't, it leads to disastrous consequences.
MS is fucked. And it's about time. Because this not only opens up the gaming market to Valve, it also goes after something Microsoft deathly protects - WIndows.
I guarantee you it won't be long before Steam OS hits main line PC's.
Valve is going to eat their fucking lunch.
Steam Machine will be plug and play, streamlined, with the strongest library and ease of use to enter the market in the living room with a streamlined OS and ZERO paywalls for what MS and Sony and Nintendo charge for basic online play. Not only that, the OS will destroy Windows 11 as a gaming OS. Then, add the Steamdeck which will get a hardware upgrade, and watch the market share vanish overnight as MS, Nintendo, and Sony slept.
This lady literally said she just created an account to understand the world of gaming. She doesn't understand culture, buying habits, game development, or an ability to have ANY thought leadership of the gaming industry as a whole. Any leader in a division of a major corporation has at least the foundational level of knowledge of the industry segment they lead, and when they don't, it leads to disastrous consequences.
MS is fucked. And it's about time. Because this not only opens up the gaming market to Valve, it also goes after something Microsoft deathly protects - WIndows.
I guarantee you it won't be long before Steam OS hits main line PC's.
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M Power
N00b
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The sooner people can move away from Windows the better we are as a society. I get people need it to game but I left Windows a year ago and will never go back.
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Utnayan
F-16 Patrolling Hekotat for no reason
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Derkon
Blackwing Lair Raider
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M Power
N00b
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M Power
N00b
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Caeden
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I don't understand this in a business perspective. Years ago I applied for a job I was not qualified for. Not because I wanted it, but because I wanted the experience of going through the job application process for it as that was relevant to my current job at that time. It was a leadership position in a company operating in the the maritime sector, locally, but with a firm that has international business. They operate within the 100-150 million dollar range of cost/earnings per year. So nowhere near a "fortune X" company, but also enough to where they don't hire people randomly so to speak.
I did have some merit to my application, so I got past the send in application/CV part. The next steps were
- IQ / pattern recognition test
- Personality test
- SWOT analysis of myself compared to the job
That was before they selected people for interviews. While the first two went fine, I was honest in the swot analysis and where my greatest weakness for the job was, was that I had no experience in the part they actually needed, I didn't know the logistics, and I had no connections or relevant networks in their industry. Talked to them on the phone and they were glad I was honest, and I was also honest that I just wanted to test out their application procedures at a "high" level position. They also said I was a bit young for the position as well, considering I was still under 40 at the time. If I was "internal", so had grown with the company, knowing the ins and outs (Phil), age wouldn't be that much of a factor. But coming externally, being that young it would have been hard to procure as much experience as they ideally wanted for that job.
Now, that was a local small time business in Norway working with values around 600+ times less than what the new Microsoft gaming boss is in charge of.
What on earth was the job screening like? There is just no way she is the most qualified for the CEO of a "gaming" unit, even from internal applicants, or especially from outside. Was there even a process? Was she just picked out by someone extremely high up? Did Sony secretly buy up a market share in Xbox to get on the board and make sure their competitor hired someone unqualified to reduce competition?
Or.... did they internally just say "we are losing money, we are shutting this down, we need to hire someone with no care for gaming and the ability to streamline our exit from the market". That'd make sense.
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Wombat
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Am I the only person who gets the exact opposite vibes?
In living memory, Xbox was able to wrest significant marketshare from a global rival (the 360). "Their" IP has significant mass market recognition - the Fallout TV show is popular, The Minecraft Movie was the second biggest movie in the US released in 2025, and while the last couple entries haven't been popular, Call of Duty is still synonymous with "FPS" with the general public. More to the point, gaming is one of the only (if not THE) product lines where customers are _choosing_ Microsoft, rather than being locked into having to use the Microsoft platform for compatibility reasons (Office, Windows).
MS doesn't want to kill gaming, they want it to succeed, so they've brought in one of their shiny young executives, fresh from the most important product line to investors (AI), to turn that division around.
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Of course she's going to fail miserably (and honestly, I don't know why she agreed to take the position at all, unless she's running out the clock until her shares vest). Gaming isn't an established software product, it's an entertainment product where the creatives are still developing the equivalent of new cameras, special effects, etc. with every new release. She will of course be pushing AI hard, which will just generate unremarkable dialogue and art assets, when new scenarios and art styles are one of the few things that make a game stand out from the many, many competitors in the market.
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TL; DR: Sharma may well oversee Xbox's death, but she wasn't brought in to kill it - the exact opposite, in fact. Direct your ire at the higher level MS execs that think formulaic AI art and dialogue generation will fix gaming development.
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Utnayan
F-16 Patrolling Hekotat for no reason
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Speaking of Shit, I still have the Xbox App on my phone and was just spammed with "This is a test dummy message from Blaze" 26 fucking times - didn't click any of it. \
Fucking morons cannot even contain bot spam on their retarded service.
Fucking morons cannot even contain bot spam on their retarded service.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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The only "win" there is a console that was released 21 years ago. A lukewarm ratings TV show and a movie aren't games, and Call of Duty being "synonymous" with FPS is some meaningless bullshit when it cost them $70 billion just to release a dud.
If you have to struggle that much to come up with positives, that should tell you something
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If she was actually accomplishing anything in AI I don't think they'd have moved her, since that is their current focus above all. And since they haven't been doing well in that space I think... she probably hasn't been. She may have done a good job looking like she was pushing goals and getting people to work on them, but I doubt she accomplished anything worthwhile there.
Obviously she took the job for a major F'ing raise. Went from some no-name VP to "CEO of Gaming" or whatever. Its a no brainer when you get an opportunity like that. Even if she sucks at the role she'll be getting multimillions more in stock per year.
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Utnayan
F-16 Patrolling Hekotat for no reason
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Basically it's just more DEI shenanigans and lessons not learned. Xbox is cooked anyway. As a software company they cannot even integrate two OS services across the "Play anywhere" ecosystem which was evident in the Ally launch (Which was basically utter shit and confusing for any gamer of any level of technical expertise). They are most likely going third party for hardware just like they did with their branded Asus Xbox handheld, and their software line up has officially been completely fucked with to the point of no return, even their flagship IP.
GP price increases, shit software support, horrid leadership and no direction - with an upcoming Steam Machine with VR and Handheld and huge software / SteamOS ecosystem - Forget it. Sony will likely have huge issues dealing with the Valve disruption when it comes here. Sony's 1st party quality has tanked in the last 3 years as well with shit writing and forced politics.
We will witness a major change in how this is all delivered, and Valve is holding all the cards while MS and Sony don't even realize it.
GP price increases, shit software support, horrid leadership and no direction - with an upcoming Steam Machine with VR and Handheld and huge software / SteamOS ecosystem - Forget it. Sony will likely have huge issues dealing with the Valve disruption when it comes here. Sony's 1st party quality has tanked in the last 3 years as well with shit writing and forced politics.
We will witness a major change in how this is all delivered, and Valve is holding all the cards while MS and Sony don't even realize it.
M Power
N00b
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The handheld thing was confusing as shit. I don't game like I used to but I still keep track of what is going on and I would read articles and just wonder... wtf is it? I couldn't tell you how I'd even buy one.
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goishen
Macho Ma'am
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As soon as Valve introduced the Steamdeck, both XBox *and* Sony should've been shitting in their pants. We have yet to see what Sony response is gonna be, and I'm guessing it'll be a large one. But, XBox has been strugglebussing for a long time. It was only a matter of time before someone came along and knocked them over.
Of course, this is all to say that in order to get quality games, you have to pay people. XBox's struggles go far deeper than just whatever shit CEO they've got.
Of course, this is all to say that in order to get quality games, you have to pay people. XBox's struggles go far deeper than just whatever shit CEO they've got.
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This is just one aspect of the sickness that plagues Microsoft. For years, it seems like they’ve had no goal beyond selling subscriptions to azure/cloud. Now it seems like their main focus is getting ai slop into every product. They do these things to the detriment of their other divisions and legacy products. I’m slowly giving up on anything Microsoft, because even when they do something cool or interesting, they either fuck it up or abandon it within a few years. They have no focus or long term effective leadership vision.
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