// PC GAMER — GAMING
Xbox's latest tactics display 'a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves', says former PlayStation exec
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Xbox is flailing again. Major studio closures loom, the AI boom continues to erode the affordability of console hardware components, no one seems to want those consoles anyway and, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella—a fierce advocate of the AI industry crippling the rest of consumer tech—the corp isn't making enough money from its first-party games.
All this, despite Microsoft having a market value of over $2 trillion, and owning some of the biggest games studios and IPs in the world, including Call of Duty and Minecraft.
What's going on? Everyone has an opinion, some more authoritative than others. Among those opining include Shawn Layden, a high profile former Sony executive who helped usher in the PlayStation 5 before his resignation in 2019. Overall, he spent 32 years with Sony.
Sony's PlayStation, of course, has troubles of its own, but Layden bowed out long before the worst of them manifested. He's criticized the industry's pivot to live service—which has proven a terrible tactical shift for Sony—and the continued reliance that major publishers and platform holders have on blockbusters. He also thinks industry consolidation is "the enemy of diversity", and that subscription services stifle creativity.
In other words: the beliefs he espouses would seem to put Microsoft firmly on his shit list.
In a LinkedIn post, game design consultant Tadhg Kelly reiterates some of the blunders, strategic shifts and curious tacks taken by Xbox since Asha Sharma took the reins in February. "The Xbox identity crisis will continue until morale improves," he writes. "We've had:
"And on and on and on," Kelly adds. "Strategy isn’t a collection of contradictory decisions that might matter. That's just tactics. Bob and weave. Let's just get through this. Sad times for Big Green."
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Layden sounded off in the comments. "At the risk of sounding like a 'hater' (which, I'm really not), the moves evince a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves."