Microsoft Runs The Rake Factory

While the full Xbox oil spill on the horizon has yet to take shape, one thing’s for certain: It’s gonna be ugly. But the truth is, Microsoft has never entirely known what to do with its beleaguered games division, because it’s a tech company—not a dedicated entertainment enterprise. This is how you get creatives under the same figurative roof as those building software employed by a genocidal vassal state, and it’s also how you wind up in a situation where Xbox’s entire future is being undermined by AI—which the company is all in on. Xbox can’t stop stepping on rakes, and Microsoft runs the rake factory. On the latest Aftermath Hours, we discuss the absurdity of Xbox’s plight.

This time around, we’re joined by Post Games’ Chris Plante to discuss an ambitious new episode of his show: the Earliest Game Of The Year awards. Why now? Because games that release near the beginning of the year often get ignored or forgotten by the time GOTY season rolls around. Also, as of now, nearly 11,000 games have already come out this year. We ask Chris why, despite a glut of same-y industry award shows, he believes we need more—not less—and what the value of those shows could be if they focused more on specific types of games or just generally dared to be weirder.

Then we move on to the latest grim tidings out of Microsoft, where multiple studios including Double Fine, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory are now on the chopping block. What’s the plan here? Is there one? Was there ever—at least in terms of building a coherent identity around Xbox? Lastly, I get to talk about the UFC’s White House card, to the surprise and delight of no one.

You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave a review so that we can erect our own hideous megastructure on the White House lawn not for any specific event or occasion but just because it would be funny.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):

Chris Plante: I think the bet that [Microsoft] made—and I don’t think internally this was a thing that everybody was buying into—was first hundred days to build the brand, second hundred days to pull the band-aid. The band-aid I feel like is so much worse because those first hundred days were wasted on “Should we call it XBOX?” It would have been horrible for it to just start with all of the pain, but 100 days really matters for the future of these studios, and having to rush this over the course of the next—what—two weeks? Just so bleak.

Chris Person: There’s also just this [idea of] “Hey, I’m not like the old boss. I’m cool. I’m with it.” That shit always felt fake. It always felt like some shit you just said, like “I’m just an AI person, but what if I got into games?” No, I’m sorry.

Microsoft has had this problem where it’s wanted this prestige for these studios in the service of Game Pass, I guess, in the abstract—which has not done well. The Activision thing kind of backfired a lot. I don’t think that ever should have gone through. But also, there are these studios you’d normally like to [support], like Double Fine. The people who care about the BDS boycott and the people who care about Double Fine are a circle.

It has always felt disingenuous because Microsoft doesn’t have an identity that lasts longer than a few fiscal quarters or years. They are always changing shit; they are always burning what they used to be and trying a new thing and never letting things come to fruition. Nobody knows what this console is. It’s posting [Xbox] 360 in Shibuya numbers at this point. It’s not a healthy console. Nobody believes in it. Xbox has become a game publisher first and foremost—one that is fraught and refuses to answer for 1) how weird the entire endeavor is and 2) it’s taking the brunt for a huge problem that Microsoft refuses to answer.

I don’t know how you reconcile any of this shit. Do you believe that Xbox is going to be a real thing? I don’t. It feels like they inherited the Dreamcast curse. It feels like they inherited the weird third console slot, because people aren’t gonna buy three consoles, because nobody has money, because of AI—because of Microsoft. They are causing the problems that are then subsequently hurting them.

Nathan: Not only are they stepping on every rake, but they also run the rake factory.

Chris Person: They run the fucking rake factory! And it makes what they’re doing worse.