I dont understand how people act like Arkane got closed because of one miss? It's weird people act so angely around these studios and most of them probably actually worked in a corpo so they should understand it's different than letting an NBA player go who misses a shot in finals.
Prey came out in 2017. Their next game came out in 2023; Redfall. Redfall did not sell even a bit. So now what? Support the studio no matter what? Look that's my utopia too cuz i want Prey 2, Ghostwire Osaka and everything. But Microsoft, sadly, closes studios that would close if they were independent. 150 people in Tango is too much for one AAA in 4-5 years which will sell 4 million. They needed Hi-Fi Rush to be sth like at least Rift Apart.
To me it's totally understandable but i dont agree with decision. I think they needed to invest into those studios maybe in a smaller scaler for the sake of Gamepass. But I dont understand people who act like Microsoft closed Hades or Dead Cells or Cuphead either.
Thing is... they didn't kill Arkane after one miss (albeit you're right that they had, aside from the first Dishonored, not a ton of success to their name). They kept them open for a year, and by all accounts, Arkane were earnestly trying to make good on the deluxe edition bonuses and were literally weeks away from having a patch to make the game playable offline. And until the closure, I'd thought they would at least fulfill those promises--because Xbox management said they were behind Arkane doing that. They also said that Hi-Fi exceeded their expectations. That they had been more than happy with how Hi-Fi had gone, and were going to invest more in Tango. They said the multiplatform initiative would prevent further layoffs.
That's what's gotten people upset, more than just the closures. It's the rapid, no-warning about face from everything they were saying even weeks ago. Like... being an Xbox fan has been rough for a fair amount of time, but like, Gamepass was terrific for us, and the fact that they were approving experimental games that most AAA studios wouldn't was refreshing... like the common refrain when the multiplat announcement hit was along the lines of "but they're just about to finally get exclusives" (which I always thought as too little, too late). My thoughts on exclusivity was really a "so what?" sorta thing. But what happened Tuesday really casts a shadow over Xbox... because it means that the oddball stuff that was actually super interesting coming from a huge pub is dead and buried.
I never bought the Good Guy Phil stuff. But I at least felt that supporting lower-tier stuff was genuine--ID@Xbox, stuff like Grounded, SoD, Hi-Fi Rush. As much as it was clear that they needed to step in more when studios are in chaos (Initiative, Arkane in the leadup to Redfall, 343i), the fact was they let studios do some super unique shit. And whether it's true colors time or he very suddenly ran out of time to show results, that era of Xbox is over.
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