Xbox are such bad losers; despite all the practice they get – Reader’s Feature

I was going to open this feature by saying that this week has made me glad I’m a PC gamer. And then I remembered Star Wars Jedi: Survivor had become the latest game to launch completely broken and so instead I have to admit that everything is awful. Although, at least there’s not one company in charge of PC gaming, that I have to cringe at whenever they try to puff out their chest and pretend they’re the most important thing around. Which brings me to Xbox.

I have no idea what Xbox owners have been thinking while this whole Activision Blizzard thing has been going on, but I can’t imagine it’s pride in the way their company handles themselves. Microsoft has been acting like something between a schoolyard bully and a petulant toddler that isn’t get their way. I thought GC made a very good point in their article on the situation, when they asked why Microsoft didn’t just use their $69 billion to make their own Call Of Duty rival.

That’s what they said Sony should do but why not take their own advice and make a new game for far less money, that doesn’t have any baggage attached? Nothing lasts forever and Call Of Duty is a generic enough idea that it could easily fall permanently out of favour and be replaced with something similar. Spending a couple of billion making an alternative – heck, spending $5 or $10 billion to have multiple cracks at it – seems a much more sensible way to spend your money.

The problem with Microsoft’s plan for buying Activision Blizzard is I don’t think it ever occurred to them that anyone would not let them do it. Not only have they acted surprised this week but the way they’ve reacted has made them seem vindictive and unreasonably angry.

Angry that anyone else should ever interfere with what they want. Not only that but Activision’s odious Bobby Kotick immediately began making up conspiracies about how everyone’s out to get them for… reasons.

Microsoft is a multi-billion company and I assume its top execs are also probably billionaires themselves, so why is it the second something goes wrong they immediately start hurling insults, making vague threats, and mumbling conspiracy theories? It’s so unprofessional I’m embarrassed for them, and I don’t understand why they don’t realise it’s only making them look worse in the eyes of the people they’re trying to convince.

A five-year-old knows the best way to get something you want is to butter your parents up and pretend to be good for a while, not hurl your toys out of the pram and cry like a baby.

A Reader’s Feature earlier in the year talked about the Xbox having a ‘legacy of failure’ and at the time I thought it was a bit hyperbolic, but my thoughts immediately returned to it this week and I began to understand what it was getting at. Microsoft’s entire history is of underperformance and shooting itself in the foot.

The world’s richest company has consistently placed last in every recent generation of console and this one will be no different. It’s underinvested in first party games for years and then goes mad buying up independent developers – who it then manages so poorly that they never actually release anything.

The people in charge of Xbox are literally losers, so it’s ironic they do so with so little grace. No one likes to see a bully win, but beyond that I don’t particularly care whether they’re allowed to buy Activision Blizzard – who have never made a game I care about – or not.

But I’ve heard Call Of Duty players take defeat better than Microsoft and that’s embarrassing. Especially as these are supposed to be leaders of industry, in charge of the working lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

By reader Lurch

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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