Xbox has been under new management for a little bit now. At first, it was all sunshine and rainbows with a return to exclusives, more games getting pushed out, and new CEO Asha Sharma apparently as interested as the rest of us in making Bethesda get on with a new Elder Scrolls and Fallout. More recently, things have seemed quite tumultuous at the green team, as rumours of serious layoffs and even studio closures loom.
Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has gone for the throat in a comment on a LinkedIn post critiquing Xbox's recent strategy (thanks for the spot, PC Gamer). "At the risk of sounding like a 'hater' (which, I'm really not), the moves evince a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves," Layden wrote, under a post by game design consultant Tadhg Kelly, who said "the Xbox identity crisis will continue until morale improves."
Layden has previously criticised the industry's focus on live-service, its new obsession with subscription services, and the reliance that major companies have on big, blockbuster titles. Perhaps most importantly to his critique of Xbox, though, Layden has no time for massive industry consolidation, as he believes it to be counterintuitive to diversity in the games we see.
After the Xbox Games Showcase a couple of weeks back, it did seem like everything would be alright with the green team once more. Now, it seems that there's some deeper troubles hiding behind the big smiles and promises of exclusive titles, and we'll have to see if the new strategy pays off in the long run.
