Year-late ports, released only on digital, with NO marketing, never sell well. It was sent to die BOTH times it came out.
[The Verge]: Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio
- Thread starter Celentano
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Year-late ports, released only on digital, with NO marketing, never sell well. It was sent to die BOTH times it came out.
MS wants to focus on the big IPs they acquired, but there's legitimacy to the strategy of growing franchises over time. And Hi-Fi rush deserved to get a sequel, with an actual marketing campaign behind it. It would be a risk, but if you want the prestige of having games in the GOTY conversation, that's the kind of risk you need to take!
Can say I disagree with that. Microsoft really put that word of mouth to the test with Hi-Fi. Game got no advertising outside of it. Guess they figured that positive reception would turn into sales with no help from them.
Ryan McCaffrey (Executive Editor at IGN) and Destin "Of course I'm an Xbox fanboy" Legarie (Producer at IGN).
I tried. I really tried. But unfortunately, stylish action games are a hard enough sell on their own, much less stylish action games with a rhythm core (rhythm games tend to scare off casual players because they're afraid they won't be able to keep up), and without an actual marketing campaign and - more importantly - a good run on the streamer/influencer circuit, there was just no way it was going to make a dent.
I think having an expectation that a game like that will hit those heights is kind of the problem. You make games like that to help build userbases not sell 10 million copies. That game would never sell that well on any platform, but they refuse to understand their still exist overall value to a game like it existing. It helps diversify your userbase and build prestige for your brand, something most console makers know is valuable.
MS wants that instant win now to the point they just buy already successful stuff, but they almost never build it up from within. The closest thing I can recall that they really nurtured internally was Forza, you could maybe bring up Gears as well even though that started externally. This has been their issue forever though, going back to Oddworld and Psychonauts on the original Xbox or things like Crackdown, Lost Odyssey, etc on 360. They simply can not imagine building up a brand, it's start big or get out.
It's almost as if Microsoft has like 8 tiers of management and nobody is truly in control. 😋
this does feel like MS biggest flaw, they really dont wanna grow shit now more than ever
that and their godawful marketing for games
lol
Hope he and the rest of the team form their own studio or at least join another developer elsewhere
"as long as they're all fighting each other, they're all motivated!"
reminds me of when the xbox one was revealed and everyone journalists talked to about 'always online' had a different answer
Sorry for posting my own tweets but streamable is being an ass. John Johanas, the director of HFR said in an interview that HFR was the smoothest development they had and that the game didn't change from its pitch document and was never rebooted. Not only that but he said he never received feedback from Matt Booty and Phil Spencer and then ended up interviews talking highly about the game and how important it is to Xbox. They were grifting off Johanas' work when Xbox's reputation was hitting a slump when they had little part in it
So the idea that HFR was somehow not smaller-scale compared to other Xbox games is laughable. Johanas started with himself and one programmer for a full year of development, then picked available people over the years when Ghostwire Tokyo's development was wrapping up.
"made by a smaller scale team for a long time until the final sprint"
SOURCE: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/04/hi-fi-rush-exclusive-oral-history/
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400268146577796
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400863851040972
SOURCE:
View: https://youtu.be/LKuPjmrDF4E
So the idea that HFR was somehow not smaller-scale compared to other Xbox games is laughable. Johanas started with himself and one programmer for a full year of development, then picked available people over the years when Ghostwire Tokyo's development was wrapping up.
"made by a smaller scale team for a long time until the final sprint"
SOURCE: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/04/hi-fi-rush-exclusive-oral-history/
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400268146577796
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400863851040972
SOURCE:
View: https://youtu.be/LKuPjmrDF4E
Sorry for posting my own tweets but streamable is being an ass. John Johanas, the director of HFR said in an interview that HFR was the smoothest development they had and that the game didn't change from its pitch document and was never rebooted. Not only that but he said he never received feedback from Matt Booty and Phil Spencer and then ended up interviews talking highly about the game and how important it is to Xbox. They were grifting off Johanas' work when Xbox's reputation was hitting a slump when they had little part in it
So the idea that HFR was somehow not smaller-scale compared to other Xbox games is laughable. Johanas started with himself and one programmer for a full year of development, then picked available people over the years when Ghostwire Tokyo's development was wrapping up.
"made by a smaller scale team for a long time until the final sprint"
SOURCE: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/10/04/hi-fi-rush-exclusive-oral-history/
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400268146577796
View: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1788400863851040972
SOURCE:
View: https://youtu.be/LKuPjmrDF4E
Johanas is a gem, where ever he and his team lands next will be blessed
I've made this point a few times but Tango was a lot more than just HFR. Ghostwire did proportionally much worse than HFR - it had a higher price and some Sony money but didn't sell very many copies and had like 4x the staffing.
But the reporting from Bloomberg indicates that the economics of the studio was probably not the number one reason for the closure falling here. As you say, a major breakout hit might have saved them, but otherwise, the decision may have come down to just that they were very early in dev, versus other studios that are still anticipating a release this year or next. From a strictly economic perspective, if you were culling the bottom earners, you'd probably close MachineGames before Tango, but the difference is MG hasn't shipped yet and Tango has, with nothing in sight.
This kind of logic being applied does underly a desparation in the studio, though. The only other recent publisher I can think of that was operating this way was Embracer, so the kind of economic constraints Xbox is now operating under must be quite dire if they're slaughtering their milk cows for food.
Matt Booty reading that YouTube thumbnail:
woooooof
Incompetence is a powerful defence against accusations of malevolence.
if they expect to get the numbers of what are basically anomalies in the industry then thats part of the problem.
AA games could become cult classics, sure, but the idea behind them is that they're cheap to produce and can recover from a modest marketing campaign
I kept seeing this thread all day and I have nothing to say but I am genuinely flabbergasted by the audacity
Brother Tango Gameworks is located in Japan and they get run in yens. If it werent for gamepass im sure Hi-Fi Rush wouldve made money.
And tbh, even if it didnt, the prestige such a game bring to your brand makes the relatively low cost worth it.
I did, and I absolutely loved it :(
But I get what you mean, though I think this was more on MS not doing a great job marketing the game as opposed to the game not having the potential to sell better.
It may actually be dumb shit like that, the additional overhead of working with a studio that needs translator middlemen.
They're gonna ask ChatGPT how to market their games, because Aaron Greenberg sure as fuck doesn't know how.
Idk, I read the whole situation as: Starfield way past missed expectations (and probably wouldn't have mattered much if it wasn't on Game Pass anyway) but rather than threathen or chop off that studio we'll burn everything else and say that things are fine
can someone give me a bullet-point list of all the Microsoft-related shit that has transpired over the last 7-10 days or so? It feels like so much has happened and it's getting blurry lol.