www.gamespot.com
I don't mean no harm, but he says that like it is something he has no say in and can't do anything about
Prior to being head of Xbox he was also head of first party.
Yeah this should not be something we can look at and go 'oh neat'. This is a hygiene factor. This isn't a slight on Xbox though, this is an industry wide problem.
There was a thread that suggested this a while back, but I dunno if it was ever confirmed.
Funny how hands off ALWAYS defaults to white straight male. That isn't a management thing, that is a cultural thing.
He's trying to give studios creative freedom. Mandating from the top down who they should have as protagonists isn't that. However, he can adjust the culture that drives that diversity, like you're seeing with some of his senior staff appointments, which has already born fruit (see Gears 5).
I know you don't mean it but you rolling back to anything but a white dude has to be justified.
Isn't that partly because most of their major first party devs are locked into legacy franchises? With their investments you are seeing the push with the studios they acquire
He doesn't tell his studios what games to make. Its up to them if they want to have a female protagonist.
Exactly, my point is that he could only nudge studios into having more diverse make characters and keep the hands off approach going. If we want this to change it needs to be at the dev level and each dev under xbox has a different culture and is at different levels regarding this. Maybe the solution is making sure these studios hire and promote diverse groups of people (which is something I think he can and should do).
He literally says that to acknowledge the fact and to say that they are working on it, with Perfect Dark.
^
I think Phil played himself lol. Shot himself in the foot even though they're already doing a decent job at giving player's agency over their characters in many of their games, and as others have pointed out, female leads specifically are not as scarce as you'd assume.
Of course the inherited them, still 1st party titles. Hell maybe the rumour of Quake having a female protag is real too.
I really need to revisit ReCore. I tried a while back but felt that I couldn't get the graphics looking right on Xbox. I try to adjust the HDR settings, and Joule looks like she's sunburnt, and the sand has the detail blown out of it. The HDR implementation in ReCore is so bad. I mostly enjoy the game play, fast travel issues aside.
