Phil Spencer has finally spoken out about the recent layoffs Microsoft Gaming made, most of which were conspicuous after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
Speaking to Ryan McAffrey in an interview with IGN Live, Phil said this:
“The closure of any team is hard obviously on the individuals there, hard on the team. I haven’t been talking publicly about this, because right now is the time for us to focus on the team and the individuals.
It’s obviously a decision that’s very hard on them, and I want to make sure through severance and other things that we’re doing the right thing for the individuals on the team. It’s not about my PR, it’s not about Xbox PR. It’s about those teams.
In the end, I’ve said over and over, I have to run a sustainable business inside the company and grow, and that means sometimes I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make.
We will continue to go forward. We will continue to invest in what we’re trying to go do in Xbox and build the best business we can, which ensures we can continue to do shows like the one we just did.”
It was surprisingly thoughtful for Phil not to refer to Tango Gameworks in specific. While gamers are rightly outraged that the very popular studio was closed, Phil made it a point to make this about all the staff that had been fired in Microsoft Gaming.
That includes not only people who were in Arkane Austin, and some people at Alpha Dog Games, but also people who were fired in Activision Blizzard, shortly after Microsoft finished their acquisition of that company.
With that said, there is certainly a lot unaddressed in Phil’s answer. In particular, it was well known that Xbox isn’t very popular in Japan. Not only have the Xbox consoles never been financially successful in the country, but they have also long had issues getting Japanese developers on board to make games for Xbox.
We will acknowledge that Microsoft has clearly made progress in that direction, with new big deals with Sega / Atlus and Square Enix. But as many fans point out, owning one of your own studios in Japan seemed like a breakthrough moment that Microsoft just let go.
And of course, since Phil didn’t get more specific, there’s so many smaller questions that have gone unaddressed as well. For example, if Roundhouse Studios could be incorporated into Zenimax, why couldn’t they do the same for Tango Gameworks? Alternately, why couldn’t Tango be allowed to find new funding and go on as their own company? Maybe it could have also been possible for Tango to keep going as a studio outside Zenimax, under the Microsoft Gaming banner.
We will see if Microsoft Gaming management, or possibly Zenimax, will address these questions in the future. Truthfully, in spite of the negative reputation they earned from this, Microsoft has been turning their game business around in the past five years (before the Activision purchase), and the money speaks more than the online dislikes or downvotes. So no, the fans won’t be able to bully Xbox to give answers or to reverse course, but if the negative sentiment keeps going, maybe they’ll really tell us what happened there.
