Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's big company reset came with a promise to re-invest resources into ventures that would boost Xbox revenue — alongside thousands of layoffs. Previous investments in award-winning games didn't pay off, despite Xbox wanting culturally relevant, award-winning games. So now it's time for more of the things Xbox players love. It's a terrible decision that seems designed to inevitably result in Marvel-style blandness and oversaturation.

The rationale Sharma gave in her July 6 company memo, for these changes is that the Xbox division's profit margins are lower than its competitors. She doesn't say the money isn't there — just that other companies are making more. That is not a normal, healthy way to look at running a business.

Xbox will invest the same amount of money or more into developing new games as it did in previous years, but not in games from smaller studios. Those ventures weren't profitable, which is what happens when you buy studios and mismanage them for years, publishing one or two games from each of them across five years or, in cases like Compulsion and Undead Labs, nearly a decade.

That investment is going toward games Sharma and her team believe will generate more sales, and given the........

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