I remind myself all the time of why I’m glad that I don’t work for a big corporate entity.  Big corporations make decisions that make make no logical sense, and usually they have no clue what they did.  Mass layoffs and firings are a prime example of this.  We see that happening everywhere these days, both from companies that aren’t doing well and companies that fear that they might not do well unless they do something… and that something usually means axing people.  But what happens if your actions sabotage years of strategic effort?

Take the Gamerscore Blog folks at Microsoft.  We heard over the weekend that Microsoft was eliminating the Gamerscore Blog.  This was reportedly due to the fact that what the Gamerscore Blog did was starting to get redundant with their other efforts, and that eliminating it was an attempt to focus their efforts.  I think this makes sense.  If you want to know about the latest in the Xbox world, you should go to Xbox.com, not another website.  If you want to see video, watch Inside Xbox.  If you want to listen, download Major Nelson.  It makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is what came down yesterday, where it was reported that the entire Gamerscore blog team was fired.  It was generally assumed, with the come and go of the first announcement, that the team would be reassigned within the Xbox division.  I mean, you have some pretty high profile people there.  Chris Paladino.  Nelson Rodriguez.  But apparently the entire team was let go.

Does this make any sense?  Of all the console makers, Microsoft is the one that preaches “community, community, community.”  There’s a whole community section right there on the main part of the new dashboard.  “Community” is one of the six main dropdowns on Xbox.com.  And not only was the Gamerscore Blog all about community (“the inside scoop from Microsoft Xbox and Games for Windows employees” … from them to the community), but some of the online community managers like Paladino and Rodriguez were a big part of the community face of Xbox.  The both came from the community, having created successful podcasts and websites about the Xbox and about gaming before joining Microsoft!

I can see that when you are looking to cut staff, you cut redunancies.  Whoever ran the backend of the website, for instance, may not have a job when the website is eliminated.  But high profile community managers?  What does that say to the community?  To me it says that your community mantra rings a little hollow.

Will this have a lasting effect on Microsoft?  Probably not.  People will get all passionate about these things and say “I’m selling my Xbox” or whatever.  Which makes very little difference to a big company, no matter how much self-importance you place on yourself.  It’s also easy to say “well, it’s because the economy is crappy.”  That’s the excuse for everything these days.  But it seems as though a large effort of these console makers is to differentiate themselves from their competition.  Nintendo sure did that and look where they are now.  One of Microsoft’s differentiating pushes was this community aspect.  To me, it looks like they took a big step backwards this week in that regard.

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