Greg Canessa quits Microsoft

[quote name='hiccupleftovers']This is fantastic news! I hope you guys know that this guys resignation/quitting of Microsoft is actually apart of their quit "underground" restructuring of the company. Since Gates is going out and Balmer is coming in, Balmer is a much more management-centric person compared to Gates (though both are good). [/QUOTE]


You lost me there. The only thing Ballmer is good at is being a big sweaty dumbass.
 
[quote name='porieux']You lost me there. The only thing Ballmer is good at is being a big sweaty dumbass.[/quote]

If you could manage to distance yourself from your inherent Microsoft bashing-self (it's so clear from this post) and think objectively on the matter, then you would see that Balmer is a great CEO/manager. There's a fucking reason that Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world with a 200+billion market cap. And don't give me that bullshit of there business tactics, etc.:roll:

There's a reason why the Balmer yelled the infamous "developers, developers, developers" line and that is because the primed Vista to be extremely easy to develop and that's where you're going to start to build your base with more software for you OS then the other guys.
 
I'm not a MS basher, you can find plenty of posts on this forum with me praising the 360.

Ballmer is clearly a dumbass. If you can't see that I don't know what to tell you....
He has had absolutely nothing to do with any of MS' success.
 
[quote name='porieux']I'm not a MS basher, you can find plenty of posts on this forum with me praising the 360.

Ballmer is clearly a dumbass. If you can't see that I don't know what to tell you....
He has had absolutely nothing to do with any of MS' success.[/quote]

Just because you praise their console cannot, nor does it, take away from the fact that you just bashed Balmer and Microsoft. It's far too common and has been made out to be the "cool" thing in bashing Microsoft for one thing or another. The only thing I have ever really disliked about them is that I felt the first Xbox was fairly lackluster and had a lot of missed potential.

Whatever your personal opinion of Balmer does not matter. And to say that he has had "absolutely nothing to do with any of MS' success" is an absolute false diatribe towards the company. Balmer has been with the company nearly as long as Gates has been and has been his number 2 man through all the years; through the 80s, so again, to say that he has had nothing to do with their success is simply ridiculous.
 
[quote name='toper']Good riddance...I won't shed a tear over this worthless windbag.

I'd like to think that maybe Nintendo's VC might have had something to do with this...this is where competition benefits us by showing how something "should" be done (from a release schedule standpoint).[/QUOTE]

Microsoft doesn't view VC as competition because:

A) Nintendo is just using Emulation, XBLA doesn't.
B) VC is mostly for Classic Nintendo games, not originals.

XBLA is meant to be a whole new platform, almost like a different console. Let's not forget the whole online multiplayer aspect and achievements, which require a lot more work than lots of people realize.

I am not aware of one XBLA game that has taken less than 6 months to make, and that goes for ports like pac-man and frogger. VC on the other hand, is just emulation, so it can be done in less than a month.... Hence lots of realeses.

If you still insist on seeing VC as competition to XBLA, consider that the only way Microsoft could ramp up releases is to multiply their XBLA team by quite a bit. But this is unlikely to happen, because honestly there is very little $ in XBLA for microsoft.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']....honestly there is very little $ in XBLA for microsoft.[/quote]

You know this how?

Call me uneducated, but it seems to me that digital distribution would have much higher profit margins than disc based games. Making money on XBLA is about sales volume more than anything else. Hence, the better, more quality releases the more money MS will make. If XBLA is not very profitable, it is entirely MS's fault for a poor business, distribution, and marketing model. I'd love to see a quality arcade game worthy of advertising in magazines and websites etc.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']there is very little $ in XBLA for microsoft.[/QUOTE]
Do you have a source for that? MS hasn't released numbers, but developers who have published through it say it is very profitable. Here's a very good and specific breakdown of numbers from an actual publisher.
 
[quote name='Damian']Do you have a source for that? MS hasn't released numbers, but developers who have published through it say it is very profitable. Here's a very good and specific breakdown of numbers from an actual publisher.[/QUOTE]

I didn't say it wasn't profitable for developers. I said it wasn't that profitable for Microsoft.

Just do the math in the article you linked. The install base for people who actually DO download and buy XBLA games is not that big when you are talking profit margins like that for MS.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']I didn't say it wasn't profitable for developers. I said it wasn't that profitable for Microsoft.[/QUOTE]

Not only are we being vague, we're also being subjective.

Nice.
 
[quote name='CocheseUGA']Not only are we being vague, we're also being subjective.

Nice.[/QUOTE]

What do you want from me? Graphs and charts from an official Microsoft source? I'm sorry, you aren't going to get it. I'm stating my own subjective opinion. Last I checked, there were three pages of that in this thread. But go ahead and single me out if it makes you feel better.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']I didn't say it wasn't profitable for developers. I said it wasn't that profitable for Microsoft.[/QUOTE]
I'm sure compared to, say, the Office group the XBLA group isn't grossing huge amounts of money, no. But that's not what matters. The XBLA group is small with low overhead and is pulling in plenty more than they cost to keep around. I don't see why that wouldn't be encouraged.
 
[quote name='jrutz']http://www.spotanime.com/2006/11/17/greg-canessa-must-go/

Just a few examples.[/QUOTE]

While I am no fan of Canessa (no reason to be). Those examples are pretty poor. Let me tell you why.

Lumines - Do I even need to elaborate? $15 for demo game modes and a gimped Challenge mode (only 12 skins available with the base pack). Even though the news was leaked [link broken] months before the game was released, Microsoft never informed, or should I say warned, consumers before they spent their hard-earned points.
Click to expand...

The developer pushed for that pricing structure. Blame them.

Street Fighter II - Announced in January 2006 for an “early 2006″ release. This thing didn’t even get released until August 2006, and the promised online multiplayer mode was barely playable in the final product. It’s as if Microsoft just dumped it to the Marketplace in its unfinished state, instead of having to field questions about when would it eventually be released. All that for a fifteen year-old arcade title which probably saw a better home version on the 16-bit SNES than the triple-core Xbox 360.
Click to expand...

Again, blame Capcom and Sensory Sweep if you didn't like the quality of the port. It's true Microsoft could have said "It's just not playing as well as we'd like it to on live". But there comes a point where, as a developer, you run out of $ and MS can either scrap the whole project or put it up anyway. But honestly, would there be any less fanboy whining if they had scraped it instead of releasing it as it was?

Texas Hold ‘em - Garnered press in March 2006 because it was announced as a free Xbox Live Arcade title. Fast forward to late July 2006, and my main man Greg quietly let it slip the game wasn’t going to be free, for no apparent reason. Mass hysteria ensues, and Microsoft appeases the horde by making the game free for the first 48 hours of availability on the Marketplace. I would venture to guess those who have it got it for free, the others who had to pay probably didn’t even bother. Especially since it kinda sucks.
Click to expand...

This is the big one that you can't blame Canessa for. It was originally going to be free because of a major sponsor (a Casino, as I remember it). That sponsor pulled out. MS still gave it for free for 48 hours, taking a LOSS because it had been said it would be free before, even though there was nobody to pay for it anymore.

He Said/She Said - Worms is finished, says Team17. Introversion is willing to pimp Darwinia on the service. Space Giraffe and Alien Hominid are rumored as ready to roll. Yet Microsoft is so desparate for consistent releases, they end up dumping said retro classics on a weekly basis. Yes that sounds like a bottleneck to me, one that only a management change can address.
Click to expand...

I can't comment on Worms. But Space Giraffe, as many of you know, was just submitted last week to MS for APPROVAL. That means MS hasn't even said they would put the game on XBLA yet. This is almost unheard of, since most games get approved before anyone works on it. Go here to see Jeff Minters blog as proof. He says the game is now just entering alpha. Your link was written in November so whoever wrote it is seriously misinformed.
 
i was just listening to gamertag radio podcast. For the 2/5/07 episode they talked to Martin Brown, from team 17,who works on worms on the xbox 360. The interview starts roughly with 20min into the podcast...The guy talks about how msft came to them when they announced the 360 and they wanted worms on the marketplace. He said that it was no suprised that a developer was promosing all these great things on there hardware and that they were busy with other projects and didn't deem it a priority and decided not to go ahead with putting worms on the arcade. After getting a 360 in the winter of launch and seeing the arcade they felt they needed to get it on live arcade. 2 months later they were back in talks with msft about it.

When talking about the game itself, he said the game was done in sept, but they were going thru internal testing to get everything balanced out. When asked about the release date, he stated that they have missed several of the dates that were alloted to them. He said it should be on the marketplace within the next couple of weeks, but couldn't give an exact date. He blames that on the fact that when they are finally done with the game that can't tell konami that worms is ready and we are launching this wend, you can take symphony of the night to next week, but was insistent the game would launch within the next couple weeks.

Canesa was far from great, but imo he gets blamed for a lot that he had no control over.
 
[quote name='ryanbph']He blames that on the fact that when they are finally done with the game that can't tell konami that worms is ready and we are launching this wend, you can take symphony of the night to next week, but was insistent the game would launch within the next couple weeks.

[/QUOTE]


This is true. Developers of the XBLA games don't typically even know which Wednesday the game will go live until the Monday before (two days).
 
true, but the most important point fromt the guy running team 17 is they aren't done with the game...for weeks people have been bitching about getting worms on the 360, and then they blame canesa for holding it back. It was an interview from this week, and as a company they weren't happy with the product that is out being tested currently.
 
[quote name='ryanbph']true, but the most important point fromt the guy running team 17 is they aren't done with the game...for weeks people have been bitching about getting worms on the 360, and then they blame canesa for holding it back. It was an interview from this week, and as a company they weren't happy with the product that is out being tested currently.[/QUOTE]


Here's to hoping this doesn't mean Worms will be a "just release it already" type of mess.

I loved the older 2D worms on the computer... :) IF they are tweaking the game now to make it better.. I can wait. :)
 
in the interview he said they refused to just release it like there forums have been asking for....I forget what it was but they weren't happy about something, it was in the interview.
 
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