Phil Spencer blames capitalism for being bad at his job
(www.pcgamer.com)
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The problem is investment money.
Go back to the days of rolling past profits into future ventures.
Instead they have an addiction to VC cash. He's right about perpetual growth, because everybody is leveraged to hell and if you make money and turn a profit a new round of investors buy in and now you need to do better and bigger. It's not enough to tread water because you will just break even paying back the investment.
This didn't used to be a thing.
The industry practically operates on the premise of taking out a second mortgage so you can improve your house and then use the higher valuation to take out a third mortgage to pay back the second one, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Every game now costs $600 million to make and has to sell $4 billion to pay everybody back, and then they need $800 million for the next game so they borrow it and need to sell $5 billion.
I think this also speaks to an emphasis on volume over quality. A good product will turn a profit, but the current trend is to try to make everything so big to conquer some theoretical market share. Get big, don't worry about whether or not your product is good or if your production cycle is sustainable, just get Amazon big or burn down the whole industry trying.
It's absurd.
Make a good product and you will make enough money to pay everyone and fund the next product. Repeat ad nauseam. You now have a thriving and successful company.