Transition year: Bad management decisions inbound

Ten years ago I was a producer working for a boutique studio, and Microsoft picked us up to work on some games for them. I was at a meeting in Redmond with our studio management and the Microsoft dudes, who were headed by Ed Fries at the time. I admit, I was a little over-awed. This was before the 360, and Sony was eating Microsoft's lunch on console sales.

My boss asked Ed the burning question about how they're going to catch up, to which Ed answered, "We already own the office. Now we're going to own the living room." Followed by an all-knowing, friendly-yet-evil grin.

I was awed yet again. Microsoft did indeed own my office, and still does. And now they're going to take over my effing house!

Back to the top line of this blog: "Ten years ago." I heard several bloggers mention the same line in context to the Xbox Uno. Erm...their new console looks like a vintage VHS player. New launch excitement? Crickets, man.

But this blog is about and for managers, so HEY! WELCOME TO A TRANSITION YEAR, w00t!

What does this mean for us, as studio and dev team managers?

1. Emergency stress from converting a current-gen title to next-gen in time for the holiday rush.

You'll have to turn one or more of your 360 titles into Xbox One titles after E3. Your exec team might think you need more titles, because the competition showed more titles than you on the E3 floor. Too crazy? Get ready for it. Happened at the world's biggest game maker in 2005 with the last console launch.

2. Ballooning team sizes and a hiring blitz.

Watch programmer salaries skyrocket due to demand. And artist and designer salaries will creep up from the area-of-effect damage from engineer salaries.

3. Only Call of Duty will sell this holiday season on the new Xbox.

Either CoD or a similar blockbuster with a sky-highmarketing budget game will sell. Why?  The peeps that buy a new console will have burned all their cash, so they're only buying ONE title, if the last cycle was any indicator. So does making those extra titles at the last minute make any sense?

4. Engineering revolt!

Your engineers are all wanting a shot at the new hardware, leaving you with your whole engineering team wanting to transfer to the Xbox One and PS4 teams. That is, if you get to keep them at all. As soon as your game is finished, your staff are making inquiries at other studios. Fact of life.

5. Your pipeline will break.

A lot.

6. You'll expend copious resources on sweat droplets.

No one will recall how realistic the dripping sweat looks on the athlete's head. But you'll spend months in rendering, re-rendering, audio and video post making marketing clips, months that you could have used building more features or on polish.

I'm leaving this post unfinished on purpose, as I'd love to hear from you on what we need to be aware of with the new consoles.

So, what does this console transition year mean for you, as game dev managers? Comments welcome!