Yes, and that's precisely what Jez probably imagined and decided to report on, but he clearly didn't have much information. Maybe he just knew when it had started development and thought it must be close to being revealed.
[The Verge] Blizzard President Mike Ybarra Is Departing Microsoft, Unannounced Survival Game Has Been Cancelled
- Thread starter vestan
- Start date
- News Microsoft Activision/Blizzard
I swear, I understand that the whole tech/entertainment sector overhired during the pandemic like Disco Stu going, "if these trends continue, ayyyy!" but the people who made those bad decisions are too infrequently the ones being held to account.
Guess Ybarra has more time to push keys.
Guess Ybarra has more time to push keys.
Sounds like the game wasn't close to being done.
Still, Xbox is losing another game with this development (Blizzard is an Xbox studio now). Wonder if Blizzard is working on another unannounced game.
Still, Xbox is losing another game with this development (Blizzard is an Xbox studio now). Wonder if Blizzard is working on another unannounced game.
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I'm a little confused by that, especially considering the timing with a similar game becoming a massive worldwide phenomenon in the last few days, but I wonder if the Microsoft team looked at it and realized that it was going to take a lot more time and wasn't worth it?
What does this even mean? Lol
Sounds like a Game of Thrones move and the Xbox people securing their higher up positions in the organization. Imagine keeping him around and that Survival game became a massive hit, after Spencer and co. have shitted the bad on a lot of releases in the past couple years ? Better to get rid of him asap.
I'm joking. At least to some extent.
I'm joking. At least to some extent.
Crazy to see the survival game cancelled, with indie survival titles coming from nowhere and blowing up in popularity(see Valheim and more recently Palworld) you would think this could be a ripe market to try and get into for some big AAA Publisher/Studio by creating a survival game with triple A polish and production value.
Like it happened with Battle Royales being dominated by Independent projects and games(Like PUBG) until Epic(Fortnite), Apex (Respawn, EA) and Warzone(Activision) came in with triple A polish and production. You could do the same with the survival genre. Strange no big dev has tried it so far.
Like it happened with Battle Royales being dominated by Independent projects and games(Like PUBG) until Epic(Fortnite), Apex (Respawn, EA) and Warzone(Activision) came in with triple A polish and production. You could do the same with the survival genre. Strange no big dev has tried it so far.
Disappointed to hear the survival game did not make it. Was really looking forward to a survival game in the WoW universe or whatever it was going to be.
Ybarra being gone is definitely good for Blizzard as a whole, just a shame he's being axed at the same time a large chunk of Blizzard is being axed
Ybarra as the savior of blizzard is something I'm sure the devs at blizzard don't agree with.
If what Jason is reporting about Booty is accurate and Ybarra chose to leave instead of being pushed out presumably as a fall guy for the survival game, then some serious shit must be happening over at ActiBlizz.
It really felt like if Blizzard were ever to reassert themselves in the industry hierarchy again, a banger survival game in this current state of the industry would be the thing to do it.
I guess we'll never know now. The outlook for Blizzard looks dreadful. The decision to sell to Activision has been awful for them from the beginning and continues to get worse.
I guess we'll never know now. The outlook for Blizzard looks dreadful. The decision to sell to Activision has been awful for them from the beginning and continues to get worse.
Hopefully they can find a way to re-use the assets like we saw with Project Titan becoming Overwatch.
I mean it is? CoD will remain multiplatform and Blizzard has nothing else on its plate except WoW expansions.
As was mentioned in the Xbox thread, for a AAA Blizzard survival game to be cancelled after so many years of work Phil and the decision makers at Xbox must have come to a similar conclusion that Naughty Dog did with TLOU's live service game. That the dev resources and money it would've taken to sustain it for years and years to come was simply too much and not worth sacrificing the rest of the company for.
I see that the proud tradition of Blizzard axing games even when they are close to done is still alive.
Acquisitions usually result in layoffs so I was waiting for fallout. I hope we don't see anything large scale but I expect we will. I also think Bobby probably left a pretty toxic and dirty company behind and I hope Spencer is up to the task of fixing morale and a bunch of floundering IPs. I think WoW is the only property that is not in bad shape which is fucked up because that was the one everyone expected to tank first. They better not let Metzen leave for fuck sake.
Edit: Never mind. I didn't see the thread on the almost 2k layoffs at MS.
Edit: Never mind. I didn't see the thread on the almost 2k layoffs at MS.
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Yeah. The layoffs are awful however you look at it, but cancelling the game is an unrelated issue and may well have been the right choice.
nah jez hears a scrap then turns it into a fabricated scoop more often than not. He's about as disreputable as they come.
I guess someone dragged him out.
On a more serious note, him going from the "SO FUCKING GOOD I LOVE MY WORK" to "I'm leaving y'all" in less than two months is alarming.
Yeha the cancellation I am not concerned about. If it wasn't working it wasn't working. Its just combined with everything else I think makes it seem more worst than it probably is.
I posted before about how xbox should have just cancelled Redfall, so I cant go off at them about that really. Just everything else :P
Jesus, with 6 years cooking that's crazy.
Thanks for the reporting Jason.
Nah he was just putting on a face. I imagine he wasn't too thrilled to be working for the same company he had left not long ago (although that is me speculating).
Sunk cost fallacy, why sink more time/money into a shit game that probably won't review or sell well. Better to cancel and move staff to greener pastures. This is true regardless of the game was a year away or 5 years away from releasing.
Was it in dev hell? Did many people working on that team get layed off as part of the 1900 XboX layoffs?
Hopefully not but I hope if they are part of the layoffs that they land on their feet. Getting layed off in general must already be soul crushing in this enviroment(considering how hard it must be to find new jobs with tech companies tightening the purse) and on top of that you seeing 6 years of your work ultimately end up leading to nowhere as the project gets cancelled, must be very hard.
It's not collapsing, it's contracting. Blame capitalism.
The pandemic pushed a huge increase in revenues for entertainment like gaming and as we get into this contraction period where the YoY comparisons make companies look like they're doing horribly to stockholders, this is going to be the result.
So cancellation of Odyssey might seem like a bad thing. But after Redfall, perhaps Microsoft learned a lesson. No one will ever know.
Ybarra definitely seemed to have some baggage. Again who's to say how much of a positive or negative this is.
Don't like that many people being laid off.
Ybarra definitely seemed to have some baggage. Again who's to say how much of a positive or negative this is.
Don't like that many people being laid off.
Does anyone know how many devs were working on Odyssey? I remember a prominent systems designer from Undead Labs got a senior role for that project.
I mean, Halo took six years and still arguably could've used three more. Live services are tricky.