There's a classic scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone looks at his son and says: "Never tell me what you're doing. It worries me."
Seamus Blackley — one of the guys who literally invented the Xbox back in the early 2000s — did the exact opposite. He talked. And then got nervous about his own honesty.
First, he went on social media and compared the work of Xbox's new leadership — with Jez Corden being cited regarding the division's direction — to that of a palliative care doctor. You know what a palliative care doctor does? They take care of patients with no path to recovery. They make sure the end comes with dignity, without suffering. A graceful exit.
Then, after the damage was done and the internet had already chewed up the statement and spit it out, Blackley walked it back. "Hey, I didn't mean Xbox is dead."
Classic. He performed the autopsy and then said the patient was still breathing.
What does this have to do with markets and investing?
Everything.
Because Xbox isn't just a video game console. It's an entire division of Microsoft — one of the largest companies on the planet, with a market cap in the trillions. And when the co-creator of a product of that strategic magnitude starts reaching for death metaphors, investors probably shouldn't be napping.
Microsoft's gaming division has turned into an expensive mess. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion — yes, billion with a B — was the biggest in the company's history. And what came after? Mass layoffs, studio closures, franchises buried before their time, and console market share shrinking while Sony's PlayStation 5 sells like hotcakes.
This is what happens when a massive corporation makes a billion-dollar strategic bet without any skin in the game. The executives who greenlit the Activision deal get their bonuses either way. If it blows up, the shareholders eat the loss.
Nassim Taleb explained this better than anyone: when the people making decisions don't suffer the consequences of those decisions, the decisions become terrible.
But is Xbox actually going to die?
Depends on what you mean by death.
Death of the physical console? Probably. The Xbox Series X/S is getting crushed by the PS5 in virtually every market outside the United States. The hardware strategy increasingly looks like an expensive distraction.
Death of the brand? That's more complicated. Microsoft has Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Azure running cloud gaming services, Activision, and the Call of Duty franchise, which by itself is worth more than several emerging-market economies.
What seems to be happening is a classic business model pivot. Walk away from hardware — where they keep losing to Sony — and double down on software and services, where nobody can touch Microsoft. It's basically what the company did in the enterprise market during the 2010s: ditched the fight over Windows Phone and went on to dominate cloud computing with Azure.
But this transition carries a brutal human cost. Thousands of developers laid off. Entire studios shuttered. People who spent years building incredible games, tossed aside like disposable line items on a balance sheet.
And Blackley knows that. That's why the metaphor slipped out.
The real lesson here
It's not about Xbox. It's about what happens when a giant company loses its sense of purpose and starts making decisions driven purely by the logic of "we need a good story for the next earnings call."
Microsoft bought Activision because it needed a compelling narrative to sell to the market. A growth story about the metaverse, gaming, the digital future. Wall Street loved it. The suit-and-tie analysts applauded. The investment bank reports came out with price targets through the roof.
And now? The co-founder of Xbox is comparing the division's leadership to a palliative care doctor.
You know who never has to walk back a metaphor? The person who never put their own money on the thesis they were selling.
The question worth sitting with: if you were forced to put your entire net worth behind a thesis you publicly defend — would you change anything?
If the answer is yes, you might be exactly the kind of person Taleb has spent his entire career calling out.
Think about it.
