Xbox is a disaster
Xbox is a disaster
Xbox 是一场灾难
Major changes are looming for Microsoft’s gaming division after years of bad decisions. 在经历了多年的错误决策后，微软游戏部门正面临重大变革。
How it started 事情的起因
Microsoft closed out Summer Game Fest with a bang. The company’s annual June showcase was packed with crowd-pleasers: Halo, Gears of War, Fable, a translucent Xbox, and even some pleasant surprises like new Persona and Crazy Taxi games. It was the kind of event that harkened back to the boisterous days of E3, when the industry was in a healthier place and game reveals were cultural events. 微软以一场盛大的发布会结束了夏季游戏节（Summer Game Fest）。公司每年六月的展示活动中充满了令观众兴奋的内容：《光环》（Halo）、《战争机器》（Gears of War）、《神鬼寓言》（Fable）、半透明版 Xbox，甚至还有《女神异闻录》（Persona）和《疯狂出租车》（Crazy Taxi）新作等惊喜。这场活动让人回想起 E3 展会那段喧嚣的岁月，那时游戏行业处于更健康的阶段，游戏发布本身就是一种文化盛事。
It was also a sham. 但这同时也是一场骗局。
Just three days after the showcase, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma warned of a “reset” at Microsoft’s gaming division, which would require “making hard choices.” The weeks that followed were filled with reports of impending layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations. Ninja Theory is reportedly one of the studios on the chopping block, despite having just revealed a new game at SGF. If all this comes to pass, Xbox will be a shell of its former self. 在发布会结束仅三天后，新任 Xbox 首席执行官 Asha Sharma 就警告称微软游戏部门将进行“重置”，这需要“做出艰难的抉择”。随后的几周里，关于即将到来的裁员、工作室关闭和游戏取消的消息层出不穷。据报道，Ninja Theory 也在裁撤名单之列，尽管他们才刚刚在夏季游戏节上公布了新作。如果这一切成为现实，Xbox 将名存实亡。
After muscling its way into the console space nearly 25 years ago, Microsoft’s gaming division is at its lowest point ever. And the fallout from some disastrous decisions is going to get very ugly in the coming weeks and months. 在近 25 年前强行进入主机市场后，微软游戏部门正处于有史以来的最低谷。而一些灾难性决策所带来的后果，在接下来的几周和几个月里将会变得非常难看。
It wasn’t always this way. With the arrival of the original Xbox in 2001, Microsoft seemed poised to be a viable contender in the space, with all of its resources helping it play catch-up with the likes of Sony and Nintendo. Major exclusives like Halo and a prescient foray into online play through Xbox Live helped to solidify this position for a time. But Microsoft flubbed the launch of the Xbox One in 2013 with an ill-fated push into non-gaming features like TV, and the brand has never really recovered. With the oft-confusing Xbox Series X / S generation, the company only fell further behind. 情况并非一直如此。随着 2001 年初代 Xbox 的问世，微软似乎有望成为该领域强有力的竞争者，其雄厚的资源助力其追赶索尼和任天堂等巨头。《光环》等重磅独占游戏以及通过 Xbox Live 在线游戏领域的超前布局，曾一度巩固了其地位。但微软在 2013 年 Xbox One 的发布上搞砸了，其对电视等非游戏功能的盲目推进导致了失败，此后该品牌一直未能真正恢复元气。而在令人困惑的 Xbox Series X / S 世代，公司更是进一步落后。
There are many reasons for this, but arguably the most damning was Microsoft’s extremely expensive push into subscription services. On paper it made some sense: Streaming services like Netflix were upending the film and TV landscape, so maybe the same could happen for gaming. Microsoft made some absolutely gigantic bets on this unproven future, spending billions of dollars to acquire studios and publishers in an attempt to build out a large library of content for Game Pass that would lure subscribers. 造成这种情况的原因有很多，但最致命的无疑是微软在订阅服务上极其昂贵的投入。从理论上讲，这似乎说得通：Netflix 等流媒体服务正在颠覆影视行业，或许游戏行业也能如法炮制。微软在这个未经证实的未来上押下了巨额赌注，花费数十亿美元收购工作室和发行商，试图为 Game Pass 构建庞大的内容库以吸引订阅用户。
And while Game Pass proved popular initially, it ultimately plateaued, which meant that Microsoft spent all of that money on a business that didn’t grow anywhere near as large as it expected. (The service currently has around 30 million subscribers, while Microsoft had hoped to hit 100 million by 2030.) This misguided play also coincided with the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which suggested that Xbox wasn’t a single console but rather a suite of Game Pass-capable devices, leading to even more confusion around the brand. 虽然 Game Pass 最初很受欢迎，但最终陷入了停滞，这意味着微软投入巨资经营的业务规模远未达到预期。（该服务目前拥有约 3000 万订阅用户，而微软曾希望到 2030 年达到 1 亿。）这种误导性的策略恰逢“这就是 Xbox”（This is an Xbox）营销活动的开展，该活动暗示 Xbox 不再是单一的主机，而是一系列支持 Game Pass 的设备，这导致品牌形象更加混乱。
How it’s going 现状如何
Just how bad are things? As Sharma and Xbox’s chief content officer Matt Booty wrote in the “reset” memo, “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.” The Activision deal, meanwhile, cost $68.7 billion. The company spent all of that money just to make it even less clear what an Xbox is. 情况到底有多糟？正如 Sharma 和 Xbox 首席内容官 Matt Booty 在“重置”备忘录中所写：“不包括动视暴雪（Activision Blizzard King），过去五年我们在内容、平台和硬件补贴方面的持续投资超过 200 亿美元，但我们的年收入在此期间却下降了近 5 亿美元。展望未来，这种情况不能再持续下去了。”与此同时，动视的收购案耗资 687 亿美元。公司花了这么多钱，结果却让 Xbox 的定义变得更加模糊。
This past February, there was a major shake-up at the Xbox division. Former boss Phil Spencer, who oversaw the brand through the Game Pass push and its many costly代价高昂的 acquisitions, retired, while former president and COO Sarah Bond left the company. Despite some uncertainty around her lack of experience in the world of gaming — her prior role at Microsoft was head of the CoreAI division — Sharma’s early days provided some cause for optimism. She appeared willing to listen to fans on things like backward compatibility and exclusives, scrapped the unpopular Microsoft Gaming branding in favor of just Xbox, and moved the brand away from controversial AI features. She also made some strange and superficial changes, like restyling Xbox as XBOX. 今年二月，Xbox 部门进行了重大改组。曾主导 Game Pass 推广及多项昂贵收购的前任负责人 Phil Spencer 退休，前总裁兼首席运营官 Sarah Bond 离职。尽管外界对其缺乏游戏行业经验（她此前在微软担任核心 AI 部门负责人）感到担忧，但 Sharma 上任初期还是带来了一些乐观情绪。她似乎愿意倾听玩家在向下兼容和独占游戏等方面的意见，废除了不受欢迎的“Microsoft Gaming”品牌，改回“Xbox”，并让品牌远离了充满争议的 AI 功能。她还做出了一些奇怪且肤浅的改变，例如将 Xbox 的样式重塑为 XBOX。
But it’s clear the issues at Xbox run much deeper than a simple name change can fix. Sharma inherited a business that spent colossal amounts of money and had little to show for it, and now the bill is coming due. What makes this especially tragic is the sheer pedigree of the game studios that are being impacted. My colleague Tom Warren reported that Microsoft was mulling over closing at least five studios, which includes the likes of Arkane — best known for the wildly influential Dishonored series — and Double Fine Productions, a beloved team behind cult hits like Psychonauts, and more recently Keeper and Kiln. That’s multiple teams filled with talented individuals responsible for some of the most notable games ever made. Now they’re being discarded because of poor decisions they had no part in. 但很明显，Xbox 的问题远非改个名字就能解决。Sharma 接手的是一个投入巨资却收效甚微的业务，现在到了买单的时候了。尤其令人悲哀的是，受影响的游戏工作室背景深厚。我的同事 Tom Warren 报道称，微软正在考虑关闭至少五家工作室，其中包括以极具影响力的《耻辱》（Dishonored）系列而闻名的 Arkane，以及开发了《脑航员》（Psychonauts）等邪典名作及近期作品《Keeper》和《Kiln》的备受喜爱的 Double Fine Productions。这些团队汇聚了众多才华横溢的人才，他们曾打造出史上最著名的游戏。如今，他们却因为自己并未参与的错误决策而被抛弃。
What happens next 接下来会发生什么
It’s important to note that Microsoft currently exists within a video game industry that is perpetually on fire. Hardware is getting more expensive by the day, successful studios are being gutted, anti-consumer behavior is the norm, and major hits are crashing down to Earth. 值得注意的是，微软目前所处的游戏行业正处于持续的动荡之中。硬件价格日益昂贵，成功的工作室被掏空，反消费者行为成为常态，而曾经的重磅大作也纷纷折戟。