Xbox Reveal

[cidbahamut]

Re: Xbox Reveal

"fucking things up on that scale is a team effort," reads to me as, "The coders were doing what they were told."

"I hold the entire team responsible," reads to me as, "It's everyone's fault for working on the game as a team with hierarchical restrictions."

Either way, you take the lead position, you take responsibility for the fuck ups. That's how it is in adult world. No finger pointing at the peons. As the boss, you should be able to find weak points and correct it for the good of the project and company. As Square-Enix did by letting some people go.

If my boss tells me to implement some software and doing so will open holes in our network security you could drive a tractor trailer through, then it is my responsibility to bring up the issue and see that it gets corrected. What I don't do is blindly follow directions without voicing concerns that what we're about to do is going to be bad for everyone.

Just because there's a guy at the top doesn't mean the folks at the bottom are absolved of any responsibility.

[Malacite]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Again, you're talking from a western mindset/experience;

It doesn't work that way in Japan. You can disagree with it all you like (and I do too, for that matter) but that's not gonna change anything.

[Armando]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Both sides are talking about wildly different things. Cid's example is practically whistleblowing. There's a big difference between your superior giving you an order that violates company policy or the law, and your superior having a really fucking stupid business plan. In the former you're expected not to comply, in the latter you may or may not voice your concerns but the boss is still the one that takes the heat.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Xbox Reveal

I really just don't buy "different corporate culture" as an excuse. It just reads "shitty business decisions and irresponsible employees" to me. If your project lead is steering the project in a direction that will lose the company somewhere in the realm of a billion dollars, you owe it to the company to raise the issue.

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Both sides are talking about wildly different things. Cid's example is practically whistleblowing. There's a big difference between your superior giving you an order that violates company policy or the law, and your superior having a really fucking stupid business plan. In the former you're expected not to comply, in the latter you may or may not voice your concerns but the boss is still the one that takes the heat.

My example might be construed as whistleblowing, but I was basically trying to illustrate that part of my responsibilities as an underling include raising issues caused by my superiors because it's what's best for both the company and our clients.

[Armando]

Re: Xbox Reveal

My example might be construed as whistleblowing, but I was basically trying to illustrate that part of my responsibilities as an underling include raising issues caused by my superiors because it's what's best for both the company and our clients.

Sure. But I doubt the programmers have a responsibility to call out stupid business decisions. They can choose to voice their opinion, if the company's culture allows for that, but their superior is still free to dismiss it.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Sure. But I doubt the programmers have a responsibility to call out stupid business decisions. They can choose to voice their opinion, if the company's culture allows for that, but their superior is still free to dismiss it.

Sure it might not be the programmers' job to call out game design choices, but that responsibility fell to someone in the office besides Tanaka. For a project with such an enormous scope, it is utterly absurd to pin the whole success or failure on a single man. That's why I call it scapegoating.

[Etra]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Sure it might not be the programmers' job to call out game design choices, but that responsibility fell to someone in the office besides Tanaka. For a project with such an enormous scope, it is utterly absurd to pin the whole success or failure on a single man. That's why I call it scapegoating.

It's his job to see to the project's success. If it fails, it is his fault. That's just how it is when you're the boss. Again, welcome to Adult World. If this was a group project in college where everyone had an equal part to play, then I'd agree it's scapegoating. However, that's not the case here.

[Icemage]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Guys, get back on topic. If you want to kick around the ball of Japanese developer culture, kindly create a new thread for it. The smart money says Microsoft is going to get effectively zero support from Japan this time around, so the rest of the pontificating is off-topic here.


Icemage

[Etra]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Wasn't aware this was a forum that cracked down on threads going off-topic.

Either way, I'm still eager to see how this lolfest ends up for Microsoft.
I disliked them entering the console market.
I disliked them entering the mobile phone market.
I'm happy to see both are now failing.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Again, welcome to Adult World.

Saying this pithy phrase over and over does not absolve everyone of blame, despite what you want to believe.

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Either way, I'm still eager to see how this lolfest ends up for Microsoft.
I disliked them entering the console market.
I disliked them entering the mobile phone market.
I'm happy to see both are now failing.

Finally, some common ground!

It always confused me that they got into the console business. To my knowledge they were never really big into the hardware business aside from some peripherals, and with no real experience with the gaming market prior to it, the whole thing sort of blind-sided me when it happened.

[Malacite]

Re: Xbox Reveal

So apparently, MS is now considering selling off the Xbox property or some crap like that - including all the infrastructure etc.

I really don't see *why* they'd do that, especially now, but that's what I heard.

EDIT: It's Samsung that they're thinking of selling it to, which honestly would be a great thing to happen IMO - might be the only way to salvage it at this point after the PR shitstorm (nice going Harrison you dolt).

[Icemage]

Re: Xbox Reveal

Finally, some common ground!

It always confused me that they got into the console business. To my knowledge they were never really big into the hardware business aside from some peripherals, and with no real experience with the gaming market prior to it, the whole thing sort of blind-sided me when it happened.

To understand the story of Xbox, you have to go back to the original vision from Bill Gates.

From its inception, Microsoft has tried to be the centerpiece of technology integrated into every day life. They've tried to achieve this through a number of ways, from becoming the dominant PC operating system (Windows), to the ubiquitous productivity software (Office).

Fifteen years ago, Microsoft saw the oncoming wave of gaming consoles as a threat to their PC business. PC games were vanishing like ice cubes in the desert, and they were taking with them the audience for games on the Windows platform, which in turn weakened Microsoft's position as the go-to operating system for PC. In the mean time, game consoles like the PS1 and N64 were dominating the living room, putting the focus for families squarely around the TV - not the PC.

To combat this threat, they entered the console market, spending an incredible amount of time and money to try and buy their way into a place at the table. The original Xbox was more or less a failure. While Microsoft had the right idea in hiring people who were extremely game-focused originally, they didn't count on Sony and Nintendo being so heavily entrenched and with such long-established relationships with software developers.

The Xbox 360 was then created in response to this; Microsoft tried to leverage their superior core talent at software and design a system that could be easier to program for and make use of modern telecommunications (internet). Thus we saw the rise of Xbox Live, even as Sony played catch up via PSN and Valve were off merrily resurrecting the PC gaming space from the ashes via Steam.

Fast forward to today. Microsoft has jettisoned all the gamers who got them where they are now like J Allard, and you can see how out of touch they are with the market with the almost complete meltdown on the Xbox One design. They still know what a gaming console is, but they've decided that gaming consoles are a dead end, and that multimedia devices in the home are the wave of the future. This comes back to their original reason to enter the console market in the first place: to control the living room, be it through control of a PC or through a game console. You can see their attempt to shift with the trends with Microsoft Surface being their (sucky) answer to the tablet revolution.

So that's why they're still in the market today. Microsoft believes in their corporate DNA that dominating mindshare in the tech that people use every day is the gateway to success, and to an extent that's true. Apple finally figured out how to do just that after years of flailing around with half baked tech, and look where they are now.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it looks like they're about to learn a very hard lesson in what happens when your priorities stop dovetailing with what the priorities of consumers are. Windows 8 has already taught them one lesson, and I suspect the Xbox One will teach them another. Even the fanboys can't save them (any more than Nintendo's have for the Wii U, and no more than Sony's could if they do something equally dumb).


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: Xbox Reveal

So what happens if Sony does do something equally dumb? Does everyone run back to the PC space?

I hate to be "that guy" but personally I haven't seen the appeal of consoles for a long time. At the price point they've gotten to, you could maintain a PC good enough to run any game you put on it for the same amount of money it would take to stay current with just one company's products. If you were going to invest in multiple consoles per generation, you could put all that money in one box and get better performance than either would give you. If the appeal is the living room space, you can have that just as easily now with a PC as well, and it actually does only do everything. All the features Microsoft is so proud about putting on their new Xbox have been on the PC for ages. Plus it has an extreme degree of backwards compatibility, has zero hoops or barriers for indie developers, and at least the possibility of picking up a piece of software without some absurdly draconian rights management system ...

[Taskmage]

Re: Xbox Reveal

From 0:31-0:34 this may be NSFW

[cidbahamut]

Re: Xbox Reveal

That's pretty much where I'm at now TM. I missed out on the PS2 generation aside from handhelds and when I came back in the next generation I got burned pretty bad on Wii. The whole time the PC has been very kind to me and from a price point a PC is just the better investment. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it though. I miss being able to get excited about console gaming, but they've drifted away from what they were back in the heyday of my childhood. They become more and more like PCs every generation, while simultaneously trying to pretend they're not PCs. I feel like they're simply accumulating more and more flaws with the trade-off being that they can offer additional services that are still inferior to what my PC can.

I just want my consoles to play the games I put in it without any fuss. Most consoles don't offer me that convenience anymore. The upcoming generation appears to be embracing that fact, and that just drives me further away from the market.