In an all-timer of a candid photo, team green’s big leadership triumvirate sit, after a tour of the Play Days show floor, huddled together on camping chairs. Toy fishing rods aloft, their focus set intently on a tiny blue paddling pool of plastic fish, the setup here is a Fallout 76 fishing expansion booth-slash-photo-op at the behind-closed doors part of Summer Game Fest last month.
The result is Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, and Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, squished into that kind of mystically flowing composition found in classic portraiture. A portrait in this case of perfect subversive humour: three studies in body language cringe. The kind of scenario that feels straight from an Armando Iannucci production where very serious people try to maintain gravitas while holding brightly coloured children’s tat.
It’s unfortunate – fortunate? – timing that we get a picture like this, from what is really just them trying to have a bit of fun, just before the latest of a truly exhausting sequence of Xbox debacles. It was taken a month ago – but look at it now, in the light of yet more studio closures, cancelled games, and hundreds if not thousands of gaming division layoffs at Microsoft – and it takes on new meaning. The three of them here, at the village fête Fallout fishing stand, seem trapped, almost. A little helpless. Cornered against the sagging canvas of one of their once-tentpole studios, amidst the searing radioactive cloud of what has undoubtedly become their own true, weapons-grade, fully-enriched incompetence.
But also, perhaps, amongst something bigger and stronger. Xbox’s bosses ultimately report to Microsoft’s supreme overlord of course, Emperor Satya Nadella – we’ll come to him later! – but there’s also no denying it. As much as this latest, stunning round of cuts will have originated from above their heads, together this leadership team has – oh, how can I make this brand-safe? – .
It might not be a stretch to suggest there’s a large amount of video game developers, video game company employees, video game players and video game fans who might also wish they could just . The vibe has shifted. We’ve had enough of the disasters now – more than enough – where the attempts at providing reasonable business cases for “organizational shifts”, or whatever the latest placative, idiomatic glibness from this lot is, don’t so much ring hollow as they do sound a great summoning bell of absolute white-hot rage.