I really wonder what kind of issues they're having. Or what makes the difference.
They seem to have a lot of studios and their studios seem to outsource a lot. (Or maybe they just advertise their partnerships more than Sony does). It doesn't seem like there's a lack of developers.
Was there a blank check and games are seeing a bigger scope creep than they should have?
A couple of studios they bought take a long time to make games in the first place (Undead Labs, Compulsion Games taking 5 years to put out a game, and their next one looks to be taking even longer).
One of the more surprising things is Turn 10 taking 6 years to put out the next Forza game, after releasing games on a 2 year schedule.
343: I've seen a lot of people talking about MS's policy to use contractors hampering this studio. Quite a few people apparently leave after 18 months.
Games taking longer is pretty much the norm, but it seems like some companies are doing a better job of handling that than others.
the use of contractors feels to me like something fundamental to MS culture.
if we start of remembering that MS mostly makes productivity software,.. this leadership style makes sense. MS is pushing hard on the "microservices" architecture where you build big thing as a collection of small things that is highly specialized at doing 1 thing. When you have something as massive as Windows or Azure you kind of need this approach. You can't have 100,000 employees "collaborating". You break off a small group and tell them to do 1 thing. ....and in this sort of environment contractors can make a lot of sense.
with respect to the 18 months,.. that's a legal requirement. government will not allow a long term contractor. after 18 months you either have to let them go or hire them as a full time employee. the intent (and whether it works or not is up for debate) is to prevent business from only hiring contractors because contractors don't get a lot of basic human rights such as:
- PTO
- Unemployment
- Benefits such as health insurance
I'm not sure if i remember where you are from Pi but this is pretty US-centric stuff where employment is basically a requirement to be allowed to live...
anyways,.. i think what MS is doing is fine for most of their company. it's just not great for video games. video games are more "art" than "software" and you can't just break-up a game into small pieces and expect it to come together and be fun. it will feel very "paint by numbers" which is exactly the gist of the criticism on things like halo 5 or gear 5. video games are far more than technical execution of code.
I can't speak to MS specifically but I will say this,.. i've never worked for a company under any leadership that seemed to understand that "they" need to support the team instead of the teams supporting them. all i ever hear about is how every employee in the company needs to standardize themselves to fit some dumb KPI the CEO is using to measure output.
The biggest team in my company is 500 people and the smallest is 2. the processes needed to manage the 500 man team makes the 2 man team like 90% inefficient because all they do is try to create data for the KPI and never get around to actually working. In the 500 man team there is are dedicated team members to do the KPI BS so that other people can actually work.
The point being,.. i'll bet Nadella has never even considered the idea that xbox should follow a different structure than other parts of MS. From day-1 his public idea was that xbox needed to run a windows OS on xbox and not do their own thing. I have no reason to believe this PoV doesn't extend to everything else xbox is doing.