In the grand journey that is life, there are always many choices involving which roads to travel.
Some dangerous paths worth it for the soundtrack options alone
Though, there is something to be said that fate is beyond us, as choosing what always seems like the right path does not always get us to the best outcome. In only a semi-related note, this post marks a brief departure from my currently ongoing multipart series involving the Castlevania series, and the end of a self-issued challenge to post everyday for a month straight. Having successfully done so, I can say completing the endeavor was of great satisfaction, and provided some valuable insight into a lot of different facets of both my own machinations, and into the gaming industry in general. While I do intend to maintain consistency in the immediate future by continuing my Castlevania articles, I will likely shift into a more concentrated but more spaced out approach to posting write-ups, as I feel as if ATE is not as suited for smaller one off headline pieces, and more solidly geared to more succulent feasts of considered creativity.
I’ve learned from the best: know your judo well
Which translates to me as live your best life, in any case. Speaking of democracy manifest, the boss of the Xbox Phil Spencer seems to be on quite the kick of interesting rumblings as of late, with recent comments made at PAX West providing some invaluable information into his time as the head of the Xbox division, involving some of the hard choices he had to make over the years in terms of franchises that would remain exclusive to the Xbox brand:
“There’s so many mixed emotions and stories for me around Destiny, Obviously, Bungie was part of Microsoft when I started at Xbox, and I shared a floor with Alex Seropian [and] Jason Jones in the building that we were in Redmond. I learned a ton from just being around Bungie.“
Not capable of the 30 seconds of fun Spencer thought it would be
the Xbox head honcho would go on to decide against keeping Bungie around, by passing on keeping Destiny exclusive to the brand, mentioning the game didn’t really “click” for him, which was a sentiment he shared involving another game where a lot of “clicking” was involve:
“An interesting one is when this team came down to Redmond and Alex Rigopulos, he pitches a game where they’re actually going to make plastic guitars, and they’re going to plug into consoles, and then they’re going to sell tracks where you’re going to play Simon on this guitar and I’m like, really? Do we really think that’s going to work?
“I hear that turned into a pretty good game…”
Wonder if this will take off?
You heard it from the man himself folks: Destiny is not the vibe. While I tend to agree with Spencer on Destiny, there’s no denying the looter shooter genre in general exploded in popularity in part due to Destiny’s success, and even though the music game genre is dead in the water now, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games would go on to make billions of dollars, so that is definitely one of those big oopsie-daisy moments. However, Spencer would go on to comment he is not a big regrets guy, and just focuses on how proud of the work he is of the teams he’s been involved with over the years have done, Bungie included.
Spencer discusses all this and more in a lengthy conversation he held at PAX west. You can find all of those sentiments and more in the video below.
~Pashford
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