this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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So, who exactly is she? Well, externally, she’s the former VP of Product and Engineering at Meta, CEO of Instacart, and current board member for Coupang and Home Depot. She only recently came to Microsoft in 2024 as the President of CoreAI. Don’t worry, if you’re double-checking to see if any of that is related to gaming in some sort of way, let me save you the trouble; it’s not.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 106 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Anyone who thinks Xbox is still going to be worth anything is a fool. They overspent on gaming studios, didn't produce anything of value, gamepass value went down, and now everyone hates them for the constant enshittification. Even stepping back from "This is lemmy and we all hate microsoft" they have done some horrible business moves with Xbox. I don't know anyone who is positive about the brand. They have ran it firmly into the ground.

[–] CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But as always they will blame “market conditions” and “customers changing tastes”. Instead of “we pointed a fuckload of MBAs that only care about monetizing in the short term and milking every penny we can short term even though it’s killing all long term prospects of the product and driving away customers in droves”

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

“we pointed a fuckload of MBAs that only care about monetizing

If I ever end up in a position where I'm reviewing potential employees, having an MBA is going to be an automatic rejection, regardless of their other qualifications.

Imo, getting an MBA makes you worse at being a productive employee. And the people that get them don't have personalities that are conducive to being good at their jobs

[–] Abundance114@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (16 children)

Screw all the consoles. They deserve extinction for scamming everyone for years by requiring monthly subscriptions to play online.

Literally like selling someone a subscription to drive your car out of town.

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[–] MrDrProf@lemmy.ca 72 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At some point you have to be impressed by Microsoft's dedication to ruining their own products

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They're like the Democrats of the Gaming Universe, always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

[–] nothingcorporate@lemmy.today 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've got 2,000 steam games I haven't played yet. The era of the gamer has a big enough buffer to not end for years.

[–] athatet@lemmy.zip 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And the fact that indie studios continue to put out bangers. It’s just aaa corpotrash gaming that is ending.

[–] despicablequail@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Exactly. I don't mind paying 30 euros for Mewgenics, for example.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Don't you love it when you are working for a big company, and they announce that the new CEO is from Coke or Pillsbury or Ford or some other industry that has nothing in common with yours, but somehow just doing the same job as the last know-nothing that they fired, using the same current popular experimental business strategies, is going to be better this time?

And then they pay them millions to fuck it all up, while they pay you a pittance to try to keep it together, as they fuck it up.

At my last company they got rid of the CEO because of some thing she was doing. They have a big meeting to tell us and introduce the guy that's replacing her.. The guy who got hired a year ago, spent who knows how much on some "fleet management" software. Software that we never used because we all objected to installing the app on our personal phones that wanted to track our location and have all sorts of other crazy permissions. Dude just failed up to CEO

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 week ago

You get to watch somebody make more money than youll make in your entire life to fuck up to the point where you lose your job

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The health of video games shouldn't be measured by what Microsoft does. That's like measuring the economy based on how a bunch of big companies are doing.

It's inaccurate as hell and doesn't actually take into consideration the small folks who make up the majority.

[–] Binturong@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago

Thankfully, it's not, not in any meaningful way. The source is a big indicator of how much you should trust the assertion being made.

Actual broad metrics show that gaming in general is currently the most profitable entertainment industry, and it's not even close. So that's good, MS is just assmad that they've very efficiently begun removing themselves from that industry at this point.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 1 week ago (5 children)

the fact that they picked a woman of color to be the new lead of xbox lmao. least obvious glass cliff

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

Soulless corps and political parties love to put women and especially women of color in positions of power when things go sour. They don‘t expect her to be there for long. She‘s essentially a scapegoat hire.

[–] BaroqueW@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Interesting concept

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[–] Auth@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Im surprised they gave up so easily. Like they have huge pockets and this is one of their signature products. It had 1 bad generation and they were just like well i guess we're cooked. There is so much to "innovate" on. They could have copied steams approach and had given their console a desktop mode that runs a stripped down but still fully functional version of windows. They could have made a console with good hardware.

Oh well at the end of the day a loss for Microsoft is a win for everyone else. They wont be missed by me.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To be honest Phil's just done a bad job at the helm or maybe wasn't empowered to do the things that needed to be done. Everything since the xbox360 has been weak from Microsoft, although Sony has really only held on due to some banger first party games.

Nintendo continues to understand that you need to offer something different in the console space to remain relevant. While the steam deck (and other handheld) are coming for the switch, they at least offer something unique.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

At the very least they've continued to have their games on PC too 🤷

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[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think if anything this proves the Gamer Era has just begun: Free of corporatocracy.

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think that gamers will fight tooth and nail to keep the yoke on.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

You have that alternative already so when you‘re in that boat nothing really changed. But yes indie games will see the largest growth in the game industry this year for sure. Mega corps can‘t help but shooting themselves in the foot in blind greed.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

so is microsoft just abandoning xbox like rumored?

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They wont abandon the brand but it will be much more focused monetization and exploration of existing gamers. Pushing for more subscriptions, more live servcies, pushing for their streaming services, and using gamers to train their AI.

Given their push for copilot gaming, wouldn't surprise me if they use the last two to make some kind of claim they're use AI to reduce latency by having AI "predict" your moves making streaming better.

[–] kboos1@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So Sony said something similar about milking it's current customer base more by charging more for services/software and not really offering anything new in return. Console gaming maybe dead or at least the next generation will most likely be the last.

I don't see consoles surviving for much long with so many things working against them like AI, cloud services, mobile offerings, PC alternatives, and increasing hardware costs.

Also if AI can predict what I'm going to do and do it for me then what if that's not what I was going to do. It would suck the joy out of actually doing the things. Single player games probably don't matter as much but feel like it would ruin PVP like overly aggressive aim assist.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Consoles will be the last to go because they’re the only gaming hardware sold as loss leaders. The days where you could “Build a better PC for the same price” are long, long gone. When the consoles go, gaming as a mainstream industry goes wirh them.

[–] doublah@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There wasn't ever a time you could build a better or even comparable PC for the same cost as consoles in modern gaming history. It's always been something with a higher entry cost and the cost benefit coming over time with cheaper games and no mandatory subscription.

Yet PC gaming is now the "mainstream", with it being the biggest platform globally.

For the past 15 years, the hardware costs have been subsidized by both online subscriptions and storefront cuts for digital purchases.

That being said, consoles haven't been sold at a loss for multiple generations now. They've mainly been cheaper due to economies of scale

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They've already announced that the new Xbox is made by ASUS so I think that confirms my long held suspicion that they're transitioning to an XBOX store for PCs, much like the XBOX Ally

[–] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I remember being very annoyed, for years, that Microsoft stoped releasing their flagship gaming franchise, Halo, for their most popular platform: Windows. For years, only Halo and Halo 2 were released for PC, and Halo 2 was almost unplayable due to Microsoft's massive cockup with Games for Windows Live. It was clear they didn't give a shit about their customers as they tried to force them to re-buy hardware and pay a monthly fee, while simultaneously sabotaging gaming on the PC.

It wasn't until just a few years ago where Microsoft released their most popular franchise for their most popular platform. I'm still salty about that.

God damn am I happier now though. I don't have an xbox or a Windows computer, I'm not beholden to their decades of compounding bad decisions.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

I mean they made a console for the same reason as everyone else: They wanted a dedicated DRM machine. One that they can control from bottom to top.

[–] scala@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Play splitgate. It's pretty much halo done right.

And works on Linux flawlessly.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 20 points 1 week ago

Microsoft can just go on doubling and tripling down on bad decisions indefinitely and make it everyone elses' problem because they have so much money that it barely matters if they fail.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago
[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So. In the other post they promised not to go AI, but in this one we see black on white proof that she is totally gonna dive deep into ai gaming? Makes me think how much longer gamers (your typical cod/fifa gamer) will stay silent?

P.S. Players do not have to become loud. Best way to actually tell gaming industry to fuck off with their anti-consumer narrative is to vote with your wallet. Yes, it is that easy.

[–] fishy@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Would it even matter to a FIFA player though? The game's mechanics are not that different from generation to generation and I think AI could decently simulate player stats and likeness. They'll probably lap the slop up and ask for more.

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[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hard disagree. The indie gamer era has never been better.

Hell, based on my hopeless addiction to Space Station 14, it's also a great time to an open-source gamer.

[–] AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Agree. I've been buying more games than ever and they're mostly indie. Best part is you can get them for like $10 - $20 if you wait for a steam sale. Necesse might be my favorite so far. It's like rimworld and terraria had a baby.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

I really think that part of what is changing is that the hardware people run games on is becoming less and less differentiated in both power class and capability. And the hardware that does bring a large performance gap is very expensive.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

As an ex-record industry executive, I know what it's like to be part of an industry that decides to just shoot itself in the head.

[–] hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago

I'm just going to stop looking at articles with remotely sensational headlines.

[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

... we could have both industries... but fuck AI

[–] Binturong@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

More wishcasting gigacope from window's personal diary. The windows gaming era may be over, that's the kernel of truth.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Lol I wonder if windowscentral and MS got in a feedback loop and that's why MS was surprised at how much people hate copilot integration with the OS and every program they can shove it into.

[–] ChadGPT2@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The money is in real games, made by real humans, small teams, low budgets, no corpo meddling. It’s time to unplug from these huge corporations and their agendas. They are the ones out of touch. They are the ones in a bubble. The indie scene is thriving. Check it out!

Perhaps there is some future market for infinite AI generated slop, but I want no part in that. Games are art. We learn from and relate to art, grow as people. AI is nothing more the. infinite flashing lights. This is dystopian bread and circuses to keep us docile while the billionaires and civilization.

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