"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." That's an idiom I've got rattling in my head while the games industry stares down the barrel of further cuts at Microsoft's gaming division, which is presently citing eerily familiar reasons for its alarmingly-rapid contraction.
According to the report, Xbox's president Matt Booty talked about how thin-spread the company was, like"peanut butter on bread", adding that understaffing was a concern across multiple studios. Similarly, Bloomberg states that ZeniMax Studios' Jill Braff added:"It’s hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do … I think we were about to topple over.
I also think about Embracer, I feel like I'm watching the same car-crash happen all over again in slow motion—fingers crossed that somebody might have worn their seatbelt this time. Did Microsoft, like The Embracer Group, bite off more than it could chew when it dropped $68.7 billion on Blizzard—with all of its other freshly-acquired"Team Xbox" studios paying the price?
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer.