What if Microsofts will not achieve their goals with their gaming division? That doesn't mean that they will not be successful in terms of revenue. Maybe they just will not be successful enough in the eyes of their stakeholders. Would this result in multiple thousand layoffs like we saw after the Nokia acquisition?
If there ever was a time for them to drop the Xbox brand, that would have been this generation, yet the business has been profitable despite the shortcomings at launch. Instead of winding down the business, they have doubled down and invested in the future.
Why does The Last of Us exist? Where did Horizon come from? I seem to recall Sony Santa Monica collaborating on over a dozen other games in the last two generations alone that weren't God of War, and Sony dumping a high eight/low nine figure sum into a new IP project that failed prior to returning to God of War.
In all those cases Sony let studios expend resources outside of their flagship franchises. When faced with the same decision MS let Bungie walk rather than stop being a Halo factory.
Microsoft also spent the middle part of last generation closing internal studios and pushing most of the ones still open into making Kinect games.
They were then incredibly slow to change this generation even as that failure was being reported by every media outlet there is.
The histories here aren't remotely comparable. Sony has walked the walk on letting studios pitch a variety of projects and being open to green lighting something new. MS has said this before with different PR personalities attached and it has not yet once come to fruition.
Their five new studios are:
The Initiative - a new start up clearly intended to draw away talent from other Santa Monica based studios, headed by David Gallagher , formerly of CD. If they reveal a game in the next 2 years that'll be a mild surprise and are likely 3+ from releasing anything. Why wasn't something like this done any time prior in the past 5 years? Will they get something out or will this turn into another Black Tusk/Coalition scenario where MS shutters something new early to stick them on another IP (who even knows what)?
Undead Labs - were already making exclusive content for Microsoft. If MS thinks State of Decay 2, a game I personally enjoy, is a corollary to what Netflix is doing on the TV/movies side or what Sony is doing in the first party game development side they're sadly mistaken as to where this industry is at today. Again, I like SoD2, but that's because I don't mind quite a bit of jank in my games. SoD2 even tests my patience. It is one of the most janky, glitch riddled games to come out of a major publisher this generation. If this is supposed to be a flagship acquisition both sides of the partnership need to step their game up pretty massively to deliver something more palatable to the average gamer.
Playground Games - again already an exclusive partner. They're trying to grow them into a multiple project studio. That is far from a guarantee of success.
Ninja Theory - the first real acquisition that might actually grow their first party offerings in the near term, but Ninja Theory isn't exactly the most productive developer of all time. They're a one project every three years studio, and just put out Hellblade. So 2020?
Compulsion Games - Young studio who have put out Contrast (2013) and We Happy Few (2018). There should be meaningful concerns about both reliability and productivity here. If it takes them another 5 years that's 2023 until we'll see anything, and I don't think anyone would be pleased with something comparable to We Happy Few as the product of this relationship.
In short this push was them formally acquiring already existing partners, starting a new studio, buying another (Compulsion) who will effectively need a similar level of expansion to get to where a first party studio should be, and Ninja Theory. I'm generally a fan of Ninja Theory so that's cool to me, but then they could have contracted Ninja Theory as far back as 2013 if they wanted to, it isn't like NT wasn't looking for work.
Microsoft has spent the last ~3-4 years talking about their renewed commitment to first party software, yet this E3 was the first semi-tangible news on that front and it's basically them bragging about getting to the starting line.
Meanwhile Sony and Nintendo have lapped them and are coming around again.
To make matters worse it feels like even their recent releases are just tone deaf as to where gaming is at right now. They spent literally years hyping Sea of Thieves and it releases as barren as a beta. State of Decay 2 is as janky as the first. Crackdown 3 is dematerializing into vaporware before our eyes. They've even had to run a PR and rebuild campaign for The Master Chief Collection. How do you fuck up an up-port of the most iconic game your company even has, and then take years to make meaningful progress on fixing it?
I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here as these are the same issues they've had for years. I really like what MS is trying to do with Game Pass. That's pretty cool as a concept, but they've got to be able to feed it. So far it looks like the only reason they're into the Game Pass first party titles day one concept is because their first party titles aren't bankable enough to where a $10/month sub attracting people out of curiosity who bounce straight off is more viable than asking $60 for these experiences individually.
That and you can't be the Netflix of video games with their trash tier UI. Clean that mess up.
1. Buying second party studios you have worked with is never a bad idea. Sony has done that in the past, Nintendo has done the same. In Microsoft's case, they should have done that with DICE, BioWare, Bizarre and Remedy. Three of those were bought off by third party publishers.
2. A company can never change instantly. For any company to change, you need a vision, and the vision of the leadership is what steers it forward or holds it back. Xbox under Terry Myerson was held back and it was not until his ouster that we started hearing of changes coming in. It was last year that Phil Spencer first indicated that they were going to build or acquire new studios in an interview with Bloomberg. They ended up doing both.
3. The Studios.
a) The Initiative: This is going to be another studio that Microsoft has started from the ground up and they have a good track record of starting studios and having them deliver a quality title on their first attempt. Turn 10, 343i, The Coalition were all built from the ground up and they are cornerstone studios for the Redmond based company. There is not a single person that believes that we will see a game from The Initiative soon, but they have been given the money to hire the best in the industry to try and deliver a huge game. This is all we can ask of Microsoft. I fail to understand the rant about Gears of War. A huge franchise needed an internal developer and they got one that did the game justice.
b) Playground Games: It would be silly not to buy this studio given their output in Forza Horizon 3 and Forza Horizon 4 have scored 91 and 92 on metacritic. Forza Horizon 2 scored 86 with the original scoring 85. This is the model of consistency any publisher would want from any developer they are working with. You are right that they are growing a second studio and that this is not a guarantee for success, but what should Microsoft do? Stand pat and do nothing when complaints have been about their first party offering all generation?
c) Ninja Theory: Another developer that has gotten better with each game that they have released. This was the jewel in the companies that they because they have a track record of making good games and they had not worked exclusively on Xbox since their original game. Enslaved, DMC: Devil May Cry and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are all quality titles, the latter being done by a team of 20 on a tiny budget.
d) Undead Labs and Compulsion Games: Of all the studios that Microsoft have, these are the two that have to prove themselves. The games they have release have had a lack of polish. Maybe what they need is more staff, more funding, more support, more time or a combination of all four. Guerrilla was not a great developer when Sony acquired them, but look at what they have done with Killzone3, Killzone 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn.
If your complaint was games or their lack of investment in them, then you really lack a platform to complain about their investment in studios.
