As best as I can tell, the overall strategy is to pivot to full third party slowly over time, while maybe keeping hardware as an ancillary reference design thing. Like Surface.
[Bloomberg] Microsoft’s Xbox Is Planning More Cuts After Studio Closings, Also Details on game pitches from Arkane & Tango before closure
- Thread starter Red Kong XIX
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As best as I can tell, the overall strategy is to pivot to full third party slowly over time, while maybe keeping hardware as an ancillary reference design thing. Like Surface.
Short term profits, no matter how many undeserving people lose their livelihoods and how many important gaming teams and IPs are lost forever
Seems like it. Still disastrous PR and complete murder of goodwill all around though, the effects of which will last a long time, if not indefinitely. :/
This is of course assuming there actually IS a longterm strategy yet.
Talented, hardworking people having the honour of their livelihoods being destroyed in order to enrich the least talented and least useful. The way it should be and we should all be thankful for it.
I will never make peace with the fact that one of my favorite franchises is dead.
Now that they bought Activision, they realize they have to become Activision.
COD MW3 came out and people at the top of Microsoft (not necessarily part of the Xbox division) saw a big increase in profit and started wondering why all of their games are not like this and why the rest of their business would be flat if not for COD. It's turning the entire Xbox division and the strategy inside out with what Xbox wants and what Microsoft wants being two very different things.
They never tasted COD numbers before, but now that they have, everything is being thrown into question about how Xbox runs.
Deus Ex is dead as well thanks to Embracer killing the sequel, immersive sims are in a really bad spot now, it sucks.
Yeah Prey bombing and then the subsequent disaster of System Shock 3 really did a number on the genre. There's some stuff on the indie side to look forward to iirc. I guess there's Ken Levine's thing and the next Bioshock as well if either of those actually make it to market.
Probably in terms of bigger budget games, the immersive sim as it's traditionally presented is not appealing to the current trends. Specifically I think first person gaming has dropped in popularity outside of multiplayer games. The genre might have more of a chance in 3rd person tbh. Gamers like the elements of immersive sims, and there's been very popular games in recent years that draw on those elements(take BotW/TotK or Larian's RPGs for examples), but I think the traditional first person perspective for the immersive sim genre itself might be a big road block right now.
I think VR gaming would really needs to take off for first person single player games to get really popular again.
Yeah, these things can come in cycles, we had an awesome load of them last gen after Human Revolution seemed to popularise them again the gen before, seems like this is the gen that sent them away again, sadly.
I was kind of hoping VR would bring them back in a big way, like lightgun games did getting a mini resurgence.
Speaking of which, we all really need to support the System Shock Remake, since it's apparently really good and one of the last chances we have to show there's a market for these kind of games.
I need to do a deep dive into Steam for any Indie made Immersive Sims. Would love to check some of them out. I'd be down for a third person ImSim. I've got Baldur's Gate 3 demo ready to play after I finish the current slate of games I've got.
I am really curious how Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 actually turns out. Got to say it's been rather disappointing news so far on that front, but the game could end up surprising people, fingers crossed.
Deus Ex is one of my all time favourites (Human Revolution rejuvenated my love for gaming when it came out and the original Deus Ex was one of the first games I ever played on PC), so I'm right there with you. :(
I missed the whole Arkane Austin may have been working on another SP immersive sim like Dishonored. There were rumors of a new Dishonored before the Blade announcement so I wonder if it had some truth. Or even Prey 2.
What a fucking blow to the industry. Arkane is one of my top 3 studios and it sucks their Austin branch had one shit game at the worst time ever.
I wonder also how this affects Arkane Lyon in general. They still seemed to be one studio of two teams. They still seemed to be complementary in their development so that Lyon was able to focus on more "dream" projects. But now that Austin is gone, do they absorb any people? Does Lyon now have less room for exploration and have to focus on just being one brand?
What a fucking blow to the industry. Arkane is one of my top 3 studios and it sucks their Austin branch had one shit game at the worst time ever.
I wonder also how this affects Arkane Lyon in general. They still seemed to be one studio of two teams. They still seemed to be complementary in their development so that Lyon was able to focus on more "dream" projects. But now that Austin is gone, do they absorb any people? Does Lyon now have less room for exploration and have to focus on just being one brand?
Good question, has there been any actual details of the re-organization and how many jobs were cut?
Social media wise, I have no doubt MS is staying quiet
Going by Matt Booty's comments, it sounds like this, yes. Unless Blade doesn't sell well, I suppose, but again, that's a scary prospect after this news.
What we need is a thread to highlight these. I'm sure I've seen clips of really cool looking in-development indie immersive sims but I stupidly didn't make a note of them at the time. One of them gave me big System Shock vibes.
There's also Routine. Been waiting 12 years and counting for that one.