Bethesda was (very) recently folded into microsoft proper, it was operating as it’s own thing for the first few years, like every company microsoft purchases. then gets folded in.
Clearly Microsoft is trying to avoid more bad game launches, they need to exert some amount of control but I’m looking at that and seeing them trying to do it with a minimal touch.
Microsoft has had a spat of sub-par, underwhelming releases lately - Redfall, Starfield, even going back as far as Halo Infinite and to my knowledge, none of the war stories there have said it had anything to do with Microsoft meddling. I’d go as far as to say that Microsoft needed to keep a closer finger on the pulse of all these studios, not less.
Bethesda was (very) recently folded into microsoft proper, it was operating as it’s own thing for the first few years, like every company microsoft purchases. then gets folded in.
Not quite, they promoted some folks and reorged the upper structure of Xbox a bit but Zenimax is still operating fairly independently:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933049/microsoft-reorg-xbox-marketing-ai-leadership-changes
Clearly Microsoft is trying to avoid more bad game launches, they need to exert some amount of control but I’m looking at that and seeing them trying to do it with a minimal touch.
Microsoft has had a spat of sub-par, underwhelming releases lately - Redfall, Starfield, even going back as far as Halo Infinite and to my knowledge, none of the war stories there have said it had anything to do with Microsoft meddling. I’d go as far as to say that Microsoft needed to keep a closer finger on the pulse of all these studios, not less.
They aren’t, that’s all business speak to avoid bad press. Microsoft do this a lot.