That's a very singular view though. The problem with most companies and the reason they stagnate is because they only consider profit centers. When you actually ask most companies what their short and long term strategies are, they have a loose work of independent initiatives and no actual encompassing strategy. The best CEO's don't focus on profits, they focus on setting a proper vision throughout the company, building the right team and developing proper strategies and growth plans (things like BOS) and tie into the vision and values.

While I can appreciate your response because it's well articulated, I think what most companies say is their goals and what they show with their actions are 2 different things. Basically we can all say that we want to eliminate global hunger however if you look at our actions we don't do anything to actually make that happen. CEO's make statements about their vision and what they want to accomplish all the time. In a meeting with a Board of Directors however I doubt the discussion is on their vision and values. It probably leans a lot more towards the bottom line.

It does in most cases, but that's also a reflection on having a weak CEO, who should be showing the board the strategy and enforcing and promoting it to get buy in. Jack Welsh is considered one of the best CEOs of all time and he spent 80 percent of his time focusing on people. To paraphrase "the best leaders define a vision, enforce and reinforce the vision, get people excited and see the vision through implementation completion". The last board I had involvement with had 16 members and it took them over a year to agree on a capital reporting format. Perfect example of a CEO not managing the board well. Strictly focusing on bottom line is another example of weak leadership.

Ok so let's assume that you are correct. In your view does Bungie changing it's CEO mean anything at all to you and me as gamers or are we pretty much going to see the same thing we saw for the last year or so. If it falls on the CEO and has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else then how would you grade the job done so far at Bungie?

Honesty....it could go either way right now. If the new CEO truly has a vision for the product and decides this is the direction and gets everyone on board, we may see some improvements (but it will likely be slow moving for now because of the limitations of the Tiger engine). If he is a bean counter who is only interested in serving Activision, we may see even more focus on microtransactions and small scale events as a revenue generating stream. It really depends on how much money Bungie has been bleeding on maintenance over their forecasted cash flows and their baseline operating budgets. Also depends on whether Activision investor confidence has been lower lately. I believe it's under-performing based on original projections (and given the clauses for bonuses tied into performance that Bungie lost) and though profitable, Activsion definitely could see Bungie as a risk now. If that's the case we may see some rapid small tweaks or "wins" to improve the player experience. As for to date, I can totally understand wanting a new CEO. They haven't made any of their bonuses, the sale chart retention shows a very low retention rate and with TTK only sitting at #27 on the top selling list of last year, and if there is any truth to that "employee leak" and that the microtransactions aren't selling as well as they hoped, they had more than enough reasons to want to change the guard. It does sound like they have serious internal communication issues as well which shows weak leadership. Most engineers and techies don't make good managers or leaders!!! They are too involved in the details while no one watches the larger picture.

I just want to point out that several of the issues you presented are all based on profit or money which was my only point before, however your answer is exactly what I think right now. We aren't going to know if this is going to help us the gamer for several months. Frankly I see one of 2 things happening: 1. Things improve (slowly) clearer communication externally and happier people internally. The game flips around from the path it is taking and starts hitting the goals they mentioned at release. Maybe we actually see this 10 year plan in action. 2. Nothing improves and the company kills all future releases. Activision pulls the plug and basically says Bungie is too big a risk and they don't have a clear direction. It wouldn't be the first time that a large title had plans for the future and they were all scrapped. I don't want this to happen but all I can do is buy the freaking game I can't run their business. LOL.