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Opinion: Phil Spencer, long cast as Xbox’s saviour, may be remembered as the man who killed it
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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There's a common thread between a lot of the missteps listed here and Embeacer group's recent troubles. The idea that you could fund 230 Spiderman 2's for the same price as buying 1 Activision-Blizzard-King really drove the point home to me.
The problem (in my obviously uneducated opinion) is that when you spend so much money in acquisition, especially of established companies, you're neither funding nor rewarding innovation. You spend $70B on ABK and some randos in suits get a huge payout that they invest in oil or crypto or whatever. Spend $70B on talent and early career devs and you could unleash a tidal wave of creativity and experimentation.
True. These mega-deals are rarely about games, it's more in the realm of finance. In fact it doesn't really matter if it's games, films, cars, saucepans, it's all about the financial side. And as a consequence in order to make good on that investment these companies end up producing the blandest, widest-appealing pap, the complete opposite of innovation. However, the breathless way these stories are reported by a media, both specialist and mainstream, which is more concerned with business "success", means we're told it's a very good thing, when it clearly isn't.