Train wreck
Next Generation – Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News – Another Xbox Live Arcade Leader Splits — You do not lose people like this unless something is wrong.
Anyone who is a Microsoft watcher knows that this company has serious internal political issues that began to hurt the company in the late 1990’s. Introverted coders who want to be promoted to bosses is at the core of all this. Too many unqualified and, frankly, incompetent folks are now in positions of responsibility and they meddle like old women. The Monty Python bit where an accountant wants to become a lion tamer is pretty much what this is all about. The company seems unable to deal with it.
Microsoft has confirmed to Next-Gen that Xbox Live Arcade portfolio manager Ross Erickson has left the company to join Sierra Online, just weeks after XBLA general manager Greg Canessa quit; Microsoft says departures not indicative of any turmoil.
ImageXBLA figurehead Canessa left Microsoft in early February to join casual game developer PopCap, but Microsoft insists that the departure of the two prominent figures doesn’t mean the XBLA program is stumbling.
The turn-around in the IT industry is quite high, having myself been through it.
This happens in many other IT related industries, where 25% attrition rate is common per year.
Could it be that in the past, Microsofties could become millionaires just by maxing out buying of stock off their paychecks in 5 years, through the 90’s, then when MS stock stopped skyrocketing, squabbles started?
IOW, if you’re making, or will be making, big bucks with a regular job that is below your qualifications, you shut up and endure.
Introverted coders who want to be promoted to bosses
That very sentence does a shivers me timbers to me.
As for a suggestion for Microsoft…break up the company into smaller parts / companies…located in different geographical locations.
To promote horizontal staff changes, meaning you don’t lose valuable employees because of personal conflicts.
// being extra careful in my response to a DV post… 🙂
The salient point about this post is that XBLA was one of the stronger points of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 initiative. Sony may have a competitor in the works but I don’t think it’s even on deck.
So I agree, this turnover at the top smells like trouble, and JCD is probably right, the Xbox team had been going on for far too long without the usual signs of Microsoft problems.
Only slightly off-topic: I think HD-DVDs best hope is to release an updated 360 with the drive built in to compete against PS3/Blu-Ray. But this doesn’t seem to be in the cards ever, or maybe for the fall update, which may be too late. I don’t think an add-on can compete with a built in drive.
great
As an engineer in the games industry for the last several years, this doesn’t seem like anything unusual. Everyone wants to do something sexier once the project is done and all the work that’s left is maintenance. John’s right, though – there are alot of coders who think they are management material.
A corporation is an organism that follows the same aging and deterioration process. You can really see the slow rot of Microsoft from within. They are not the nimble youngster they used to be. A new generation of hotshots is already passing them by. If you were a cell in this organism, you’d want to jump too.
Is this why tehy can’t fix Splinter Cell DA’s lag out issue when joining matches? Fix that shit!
Remember “The Peter Principle”? from the 1980’s? From your description of the promotion of coders to managers, it sounds like it TPP is alive and well there.
As a coder, I find it strange that those a MS, especially in the gaming area, want to become managers. I don’t want to. And most competent programmers I know I don’t want to. We love working on code, and we hate the politics of management.
So perhaps those that want to move “up” are really just untalented programmers.
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