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Ex-Halo Infinite developers criticise "incompetent leadership" at Microsoft

clarky

Gold Member
I call out how amazing the Multiplayer Leadership team was during development.

Cracking Up Lol GIF
Agreed. Immediately discredits anything this guy says.
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
yea its confirmed, theres some major mismanagement going on in Xbox. this is the most definitive proof you could find
The most definitive proof of major mismanagement you could find was Microsoft's output throughout the past 2 decades.
What these tweets are showing are the reasons for the mismanagement.


Maybe these people should’ve spoke up during the development of the game.
Who said they didn't, through their internal channels?


Bunch of fucking pussies wait 2 years after the fact to say something.
If you're talking about coming out to say this publicly then it could be that they were under a contract and yesterday they were fired.
 

Three

Member
Not sure I believe it when other MS studios are doing fine. Forza Horizon, Ori, Psychonauts, Flight Sim, Age of Empires, Pentiment, Grounded. I’ll agree that Phil should have cracked down on internal 343 mismanagement much sooner though.
Just a minor correction. Ori and Flight Sim aren't made by MS studios but are first party games.
 
I feel that Batman the animated series was green lit sometime after the box office success of the 1989 Batman movie. Then in 92 they released Batman Returns and then that same year the animated series came out for the first time and believe me the kids ate that shit up.
And now for the twist, amazingly in that same year (1992) Marvel releases X-Men the animated series the same year as the Batman animated series
And to my knowledge I think the Punisher is the only movie Marvel attempted before Brian Singers X-men trilogy.
 
The most definitive proof of major mismanagement you could find was Microsoft's output throughout the past 2 decades.
What these tweets are showing are the reasons for the mismanagement.



Who said they didn't, through their internal channels?



If you're talking about coming out to say this publicly then it could be that they were under a contract and yesterday they were fired.
I would think that it could fall under the whistle blowing act? Which would nullify any NDC.

But then again it could be why Bonnie Ross is no longer there. Who else has gone MIA from the top over the past year?
 
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How Matt Booty has a job is beyond me.

What is his resume?

He worked on sound effects/design for games in the early 90s. Then designed a bunch of shit games at Midway like NFL Blitz and NBA Ballers before becoming President and CEO of midway after a bunch of executives left during their bankruptcy. He was in charge of product development during their bankruptcy.

Microsoft then hired him as studio head of their redmond team that made xbox live arcade games and windows phone games. He then got promoted during a restructure to take over all of microsoft's development.

In the last 8 years as head of Microsoft gaming...he's done essentially nothing
 
As a Microsoft investor, I want the entire 343 shut down and all that money spent elsewhere.
I think it’s a white elephant. The series and the people involved have negatively impacted the brand of Xbox.
I don’t want to see another Halo anything for 3 more generations.
 

Interfectum

Member
How Matt Booty has a job is beyond me.

What is his resume?

He worked on sound effects/design for games in the early 90s. Then designed a bunch of shit games at Midway like NFL Blitz and NBA Ballers before becoming President and CEO of midway after a bunch of executives left during their bankruptcy. He was in charge of product development during their bankruptcy.

Microsoft then hired him as studio head of their redmond team that made xbox live arcade games and windows phone games. He then got promoted during a restructure to take over all of microsoft's development.

In the last 8 years as head of Microsoft gaming...he's done essentially nothing
Phil and Matt's philosophy is to give developers time and money to make their "dream game." If you've ever managed people before you know full well what a ton of money and a fuzzy deadline does to them. All survival instinct is gone with those developers which is what a lot of creatives need to do their best work.
 
It's probably both. Bonnie Ross is only a problem if she's enabled by having no accountability.

Most of the problems at Xbox come down to accountability.
Your leadership needs accountability and a schedule to abide by.
I almost feel like Microsoft takes any criticism to heart and try to fix every specific criticism and it ends up being this chaotic scene of no accountability but hey it’s the cool development studio with no sense of direction just kick your feet up on the desk and this shit will make itself.
I’m only talking 343 here.
 

Razvedka

Banned
Phil and Matt's philosophy is to give developers time and money to make their "dream game." If you've ever managed people before you know full well what a ton of money and a fuzzy deadline does to them. All survival instinct is gone with those developers which is what a lot of creatives need to do their best work.
Good engineering requires constraints. There must always be deadlines, requirements, etc.

These constraints don't need to be brutal or anything, but they do need to exist.
 
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Phil and Matt's philosophy is to give developers time and money to make their "dream game." If you've ever managed people before you know full well what a ton of money and a fuzzy deadline does to them. All survival instinct is gone with those developers which is what a lot of creatives need to do their best work.

I don't know if that is their philosophy.

That's not what happened with Halo Infinite at least. I think they put a shit ton of pressures on their studios to deliver GOTY games on time, and then they realize the pressure hasn't worked out, the game isn't GOTY and then they're forced to delay to save some face.

This has resulted in two years of Xbox Series with very few releases and even the Xbox One didn't have a slew of hits and Booty has basically been in charge since the Xbox One days.

I think Booty went to Spencer who in turn went to Nadella and basically said, we don't have the studios to compete and if we want GamePass to be successful we need our own content. They told Nadella, they needed to buy studios with established track records for making good games and that had relationships with Microsoft especially when they were at their peak (360) best-selling games included CoD and Elders Scrolls.

Nadella, flush with revenue from O365 enterprise subscriptions who will do anything to expand subscription revenue bought the idea and nearly 80 billion dollars later, here we are.
 

Interfectum

Member
I don't know if that is their philosophy.

That's not what happened with Halo Infinite at least. I think they put a shit ton of pressures on their studios to deliver GOTY games on time, and then they realize the pressure hasn't worked out, the game isn't GOTY and then they're forced to delay to save some face.

This has resulted in two years of Xbox Series with very few releases and even the Xbox One didn't have a slew of hits and Booty has basically been in charge since the Xbox One days.

I think Booty went to Spencer who in turn went to Nadella and basically said, we don't have the studios to compete and if we want GamePass to be successful we need our own content. They told Nadella, they needed to buy studios with established track records for making good games and that had relationships with Microsoft especially when they were at their peak (360) best-selling games included CoD and Elders Scrolls.

Nadella, flush with revenue from O365 enterprise subscriptions who will do anything to expand subscription revenue bought the idea and nearly 80 billion dollars later, here we are.
Wasn't Halo in development for like 6-7 years? And even after all that time the game was released massively unfinished? Seems to me that these devs are given way too much time and money to make these kinds of mistakes. MS owns more studios than Nintendo or Sony yet they basically skipped an entire year last year. Their biggest game for this year is one they bought half (or more) finished. What are all of these people working on and where is the urgency to ship some shit?
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
What exactly you expect them to do actually? Chain devs to desks? If they would not allow them to buy back their company they would left and create new studio with money that they had to pay MS.
Bungie wanted to not make halo
MS said keep making halo.
That's why they left. Bungie would have stayed if MS gave more creative freedom.
 
Wasn't Halo in development for like 6-7 years? And even after all that time the game was released massively unfinished? Seems to me that these devs are given way too much time and money to make these kinds of mistakes. MS owns more studios than Nintendo or Sony yet they basically skipped an entire year last year. Their biggest game for this year is one they bought half (or more) finished. What are all of these people working on and where is the urgency to ship some shit?
The Initiative leaks described similar phenomenon. They let them have complete freedom.

I think they're trying to over-correct from the late 360 / early Xbox One mistakes they made with their studios. Mandated Kinect games for Lionhead and Rare. They're probably trying to just let people make what they want, which is a good thing.

The problems at each studio will be different also. Each one has a different development system and culture. Naughty Dog doesn't make games in the exact same way that Sucker Punch does. It sounds like MS also does internal studio seminars to share knowledge between teams, so that's kind of the best they can do really. They need experienced directors, producers and studio heads. The people above that are mostly in charge of just giving them time and money, which they do.
 
It's not just 343. I don't know how you can look at the state of Xbox right now and see anything but incompetence.

It starts at the top.

Spencer has made some bets that so far haven't paid off (or they have, and my old school way of thinking is wrong). The hardware and GamePass are fantastic, but the content side--necessary to sell said hardware and GamePass subs--is incredibly lacking, especially when compared to Sony. It's not enough to have some great AA and indie games. You need those AAA, "catch the general public's attention" games.

I've yet to see evidence that all the studio acquisitions is going to be a strong play, especially since there's no product out in the marketplace. Plus, if the acquired studios are just going to be subject to how Microsoft manages studios, they'll soon become a shell of their former selves. And not pushing the content that the hardware and GamePass subs need.
 

kuncol02

Banned
The Initiative leaks described similar phenomenon. They let them have complete freedom.

I think they're trying to over-correct from the late 360 / early Xbox One mistakes they made with their studios. Mandated Kinect games for Lionhead and Rare. They're probably trying to just let people make what they want, which is a good thing.

The problems at each studio will be different also. Each one has a different development system and culture. Naughty Dog doesn't make games in the exact same way that Sucker Punch does. It sounds like MS also does internal studio seminars to share knowledge between teams, so that's kind of the best they can do really. They need experienced directors, producers and studio heads. The people above that are mostly in charge of just giving them time and money, which they do
No one mandated Rare to make Kinect games.
https://www.destructoid.com/microsoft-didnt-push-for-kinect-development-rare-chose-it/
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not


Who was the leadership at the Multiplayer Team.
Cuz it might be time to promote them.
 
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Poor upper management & leadership is a constantly recurring theme in every industry and prevalent at most companies.

I'm beginning to think that what comes off as poor upper management and leadership is actually just good business in the grand scheme. it's just "bad" for the lower 4/5ths (or whatever) of the company.....but theyre replaceable if they dont like it...
 

gothmog

Gold Member
Now MS gives their devs creative freedom and are now being accused of not tamping down on them enough. Doesn't look like they can win.
Nope. Guess its time to shut it all down. Absolutely no shades of gray between those black and white concepts of full accountability and no accountability.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
What is that saying about success having many fathers but failure is an orphan? Obviously it is in the interests of the people who made these games to say that the fact that the games are shitty is not their fault. The truth is, a decade of nonstop failure and stumbling of the sort 343 had is a group effort.

The buck stops with Phil Spencer who kept Bonnie Ross on way too long (she should have been canned after Halo 5 released) but it’s failure all the way down.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
I really have a hard time putting a lot of faith in people who trash their former employer. The issues surrounding Halo are well-known. Bonnie Ross lost her job due to those issues. There are no revelations here. So now we have a guy who has moved on and pointing fingers at those he left behind. It reeks of "look at me" twitter bullshit.



Who was the leadership at the Multiplayer Team.
Cuz it might be time to promote them.


He is the "Former Senior Multiplayer Designer" at 343.

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?
 
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LordOfChaos

Member
And they want to buy Activision lol.

Firing 10,000 people and buying just short of 10,000, interesting lol

Really does hurt to see a favorite gaming franchise mismanaged this much...I wonder if they'll be releasing Infinite DLC at all now or if the game's just in maintenance mode, and if we'll ever get a satisfying end to the Master Chief saga, or give up and reboot years down the line. The end of Infinite was just potentially getting into the interesting stuff after prior years of mismanaging Halo. Real shame.
 
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yurinka

Member
Funny that the reason Scalebound failed was MS constant meddling then...
As I remember the game started as a single player Xbox game but during development MS asked them to make it multiplayer and also to release it on PC. All this without giving them enough extra time to implement these things.

Not sure I believe it when other MS studios are doing fine. Forza Horizon, Ori, Psychonauts, Flight Sim, Age of Empires, Pentiment, Grounded. I’ll agree that Phil should have cracked down on internal 343 mismanagement much sooner though.
The top staff from PlayGround in charge of the recent Forza Horizon games left MS recently to create their own studio. So probably some people will be promoted and hired there. I don't expect this studio to be axed because they made the most successful and well reviewed recent MS games.

Ori is a 2nd party game (meaning, MS funded and published it but an external studio they don't own developed it).

But yes, even if we don't have numbers seems these games you mention did a good job at least in quality.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
As I remember the game started as a single player Xbox game but during development MS asked them to make it multiplayer and also to release it on PC. All this without giving them enough extra time to implement these things.
Funny that the reason Scalebound failed was MS constant meddling then...
That’s not true at all.

"We were working in an environment we weren't used to," Kamiya said.

"We were developing on the Unreal engine. We also lacked the necessary know-how to build a game based on online features. The hurdles we had to overcome were very big.

"We weren't experienced enough and couldn't get over that wall, leading to what happened in the end.

"I'm sorry to the players who looked forward to it, and moreover I'm sorry to Microsoft who had placed their trust in us as a business partner. I want to apologise both as a creator and as a member of PlatinumGames."
 
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