After seeing Microsoft speed-running the end of the Xbox brand, culminating in more cancellations and thousands more jobs deleted from existence, I’m reminded of an unfortunate truth about cultural artefacts and the nature of public companies –they don’t belong together.
For clarity, when I refer to public companies, I mean those whose shares are available for the great unwashed to buy from exchanges or their broker of choice. A great many companies involved in the games industry are public –Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, TakeTwo etc.
Their job, above all else, is to provide value to shareholders. The line must always go up. Either the price of a share needs to increase, or you need to kick back enough in dividends to keep investors interested.
The main reason why they are not compatible with culture is, culture is never a one-size-fits-all thing. It is meant to provoke a reaction in people. It is meant to ask questions that may not have cute, cuddly answers.
Public companies want to make things that have the broadest appeal, that is not going to make waves or make anyone feel anything that might be considered unpleasant. It has to be neutral, it has to be safe, or someone might not like it. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about games, music, movies or paintings. Are you making art, or the wall it is mounted to?
As that saying goes, those that try to please everybody, end up pleasing nobody. Without Xbox, Microsoft has no product that customers would use were they not forced to by their employer’s IT department. A company bereft of culture; a 3.65 trillion dollar super-massive black hole.