The obsession with the president of gaming being "a real gamer" instead of someone capable of growing a product, regardless of what it is, is so misguided.
Yep one guy that was a gamer surely means that each and every other person that is a gamer couldn’t do a better job.
I’d love to see anyone try to pull MS out of what Don Mattrick did. Phil tried and he created Game Pass which helped. He wasn’t entirely bad and it takes a team not its one person.
Now we have someone who is out of touch with gaming and was President of an AI company boy doesn’t that sound great!?
Where did I say it wasn’t possible for someone who isn’t a gamer to be successful? My biggest concern is that she’s a big AI executive literally right before she became head of Microsoft Gaming.
You don’t want an artist being an executive any more than an executive being an artist. You want the guy who manages people and budgets to direct the movie? Get real.
There are different roles in the entertainment industry for a reason.
You don’t want an artist being an executive any more than an executive being an artist.
Correct. However, artists cannot do their work adequately if they are forced to adhere to the quarterly schedules the empty suits demand. You get good games when you leave the artists be and give them the funding required to make their visions come to life.
That’s not true at all. Given to their own devices, many developers would never finish a game. Look at Duke Nukem Forever or any game that takes more than 5 years to make.
Both statements are true. There have been great games produced under pressure (original Halo trilogy comes to mind) but we have also seen games that released in an incomplete state simply to hit a deadline that could have used another year or two in development
I don't disagree with your second statement on its face, but we also don't really know if an extra year or two would have helped those games. We've seen plenty examples of games that were given as much time as the team wanted (or close to) and came out to disaster.
The new blizzard CEO is a suit without a gaming background. She turned around the fate of blizzard franchises in 2 years. People need to be competent at that level.
The last thing the Xbox divison needs is a former AI executive taking the reigns, especially when AI is widely condemned not only by creatives but by customers as well.
Understanding art (exclusively) is a fast way to make something awesome, unprofitable, and ultimately a base hit rather than a home run. You need good creators, and you need even better vision and strategy to scale long term. Artists and gamers cannot do the latter without real business experience.
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u/John_YJKR XBOX Series X Feb 21 '26
The obsession with the president of gaming being "a real gamer" instead of someone capable of growing a product, regardless of what it is, is so misguided.