er-top-width:1px; height:387px; width:640px” />
Oddworld Inhabitants boss Lorne Lanning isn't too happy about Microsoft's stance on indie developers and its overall messaging with the Xbox One. As such, Lanning believes The Big M would be better off firing its current PR and marketing staff and starting over fresh.
Speaking to VG247, Lanning explained:
I’ve watched them make this mistake before. I’ll give you a true story. When they were launching the first Xbox – and we were a launch title on that – it was an exciting time as well. We did a European tour before Xbox released, and I was with Peter Molyneux and other designers of note, and we met with the press in Germany and France. We could not talk about the games. The press were so irate about the price point, about the way they were handling the euro in different territories, and we couldn’t talk about the games. We couldn’t get in that discussion, and they wanted to hammer on Microsoft.
We get back to the States and we were like, ‘You’ve got a big problem. You’re sinking, tanking in Europe.’ ‘No, no, no, no. You don’t understand. We’ve got our numbers covered.’ We could not get them to avoid the train wreck that was right in front of them. You know what this feels like? Déjà vu.
So what does the Oddworld boss think the company should do? Send the Xbox One PR and marketing guys packing and start over with a new crew.
Quite frankly, out of Washington, we see a pretty good understanding of who makes really expensive great games, but beyond that there’s not really any insight into how people get there from nothing.
It’s a bit puzzling. It’s clear they’re not listening. I’m not sure who they’re listening to. Whoever their PR people are, whoever their marketing agents are, they should fire them all. That’s where they should start. There should be a big, mass firing and they should publicize that. Then they’d get people saying, ‘Hey, maybe there’s going to be a good change.’ But if they keep the rhetoric flowing, obviously everyone’s looking at it saying, ‘This isn’t real.’ How are they going to keep what they’ve got today? That’s a big question.
What do you think? Do you agree with Lanning? Should Microsoft axe the current Xbox One team and make it known to the gaming world that they're starting fresh? Sound off with your thoughts in the comments below.
