@Antwan3K:

It's because Xbox, with the help of gaming journalists and influencers, have painted themselves as this white knight of gaming under Phil's tenure.

People didn't believe "good guy" Phil would ever chop down a studio after a successful release. Heck, Hi-Fi Rush is arguably their best new IP and game in *years*. It just completely tears down people's expectations of Phil and team.

Sony, on the other hand, hasn't been as heavily criticized because they've been delivering on their promise of best in class games and they don't shy away from the fact that they are in the money making business.

Also, "no major first party releases" isn't a big deal when they've helped release games like Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade and Helldivers 2. I'm pretty sure everyone on Steam at this point considers Helldivers 2 a Sony game for better and for worse. lol

This game was one of the first games they showed when announcing the Series X and, it's been in not 1 or 2 but 4 Xbox E3 press conferences. I'm not quite sure there's more to gain by marketing it heavily.

Sarah Bond would have nothing to do with these decisions; she's the president of Xbox (platform and hardware).

Matt Booty is the president of game content and studios; he is the one making these decisions.

However, Phil Spencer, being the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, is equally responsible for the decisions made by his executive leadership team. It's not his job to tell Matt Booty exactly what to do but, it's absolutely being done based on what he's set out to do.

Ex. Phil Spencer is on the record (FTC hearing) saying that Xbox *needs* to be profitable and, unfortunately, their core business is shrinking, and Zenimax hasn't exactly been performing very well financially (see Redfall, Deathloop, Ghostwire etc). I don't think we need all the details but, I think it's safe to say that Matt Booty would rather accelerate Blade, Indiana Jones, Starfield, Fallout 5, Elder Scrolls 6, new Doom etc. than wait around for whatever Tango and, Arkane Austin were working on.

They've done an incredibly poor job in managing customer expectations.

However, Xbox is positioned to be significantly more successful than they've ever been. The major challenge they face is materializing all of their recent investments into actual growth drivers in the near term and that will unfortunately result in some tough decisions or at the very least decisions that won't resonate with the legacy Xbox audience.

I believe I have PSN+ Premium for another year. I stacked two (?) years when they announced it.

That being said, I'll more than likely downgrade to Extra next time around.

And people refused to accept what it truly meant; many of which are in this very thread acting like they didn't totally miss it.

What exactly is your point? An executive producer is still involved in the production of video games.

He's still very much "making" video games.

He was the Executive Producer on Hi-Fi Rush; he left right after the game released.

It sounds like there was a divide between what Mikami and Tango wanted to do vs what Xbox wanted.

PlayStation Plus was never billed out to be a game changing business model.

Gaming journalists, console warriors and gaming influencers are to blame for eating up Xbox's marketing.

Jim Ryan and, Strauss Zelnick have always been right on this subject. Live services > Subs

The idea that Xbox was gaming's white knight was always laughable; they have an obligation to Microsoft's leadership team and shareholders. Nadella didn't hand Phil Spencer a $80B bag to make gamers feel warm in the inside.

The frustrating part in all of this is that Xbox seems to need to explain their strategy every single year and, to be brutally honest, there's no freaking way Xbox shifts strategies that often. They've been lying to people's faces for goodwill for years and the truth is they've always been in it to make money and strengthen Microsoft and not "Xbox gamers".