Xbox is shutting down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games. Roundhouse Studios absorbed by ZeniMax Online Studios.

[Cassius Africanus]

But we already know why Xbox closed Tango. They weren't actively working on a game. Their past performance with HFR didn't matter. And that's the crux of it. You can make a fantastic game, a new IP no less, and still not have the chance to continue.

Nobody is under the illusion that MS is particularly evil, all corporations are. But MS are acting in a way that reeks of incompetence and shortsightedness. And if people are going to assign blame to the people who have propped themselves up to be the faces of Xbox, then they are completely right to do so. If Spencer, Bond and Booty can walk out to the cheer of the fans, have articles written about them about how they are saving Xbox, then they should also face the music when they do something vastly unpopular.

Lastly, personally I don't find it interesting at all whether MS' market share/PR image changes. This move will absolutely be good for their bottom line. Doesn't make it any less tragic (and stupid imo).

Click to shrink...

Xbox closed Tango because they didn't make money. My take is just ust because they haven't made money in a while, and aren't making money today doesn't mean they won't make money in the future. Xbox chose not to cultivate that money making future. Also, if Tango makes a GOTY tier game and still doesn't make money who's to say the next highly awarded game will make money? Wait five years, get all the awards, still make no money. Maybe it doesn't work in a gamepass system, maybe break even is too high for running an expensive foreign studio, we don't know. I would say Tango and Hifi have value beyond how much money they will make, so you keep them open for mindshare.

I don't know if Spencer and Bond would make decisions like this. They aren't stupid, they know what a PR hit this would be. They aren't innocent but this feels like forces that don't care about the PR/mindshare dictating moves. The big shots didn't say close Tango, but they did say make Xbox make financial sense.

In an effort to understand the logic here (not agree with it) you have to assume they aren't just tanking the brand for fun, so why? Cause if they are tanking for fun then every move could be illogical and random.

On market share, I meant long term. It may be good to shareholders now, but it could end up starting the downfall of.... something at Xbox even if it's just Phil's career.

Let's stop pretending like these studios actually made money. That doesn't mean they deserve to be closed, real human beings worked there ,but how do you choose which one of your 35 children to shut down. If studios has to close to make the math fit, what would be better choices? Or I can just say Phil is incompetent, Sara is a shill, Booty needs to be fired, and Xbox is stupid. Still wouldn't know why though.

 

[Bish_Bosch]

Xbox closed Tango because they didn't make money. My take is just ust because they haven't made money in a while, and aren't making money today doesn't mean they won't make money in the future. Xbox chose not to cultivate that money making future. Also, if Tango makes a GOTY tier game and still doesn't make money who's to say the next highly awarded game will make money? Wait five years, get all the awards, still make no money. Maybe it doesn't work in a gamepass system, maybe break even is too high for running an expensive foreign studio, we don't know. I would say Tango and Hifi have value beyond how much money they will make, so you keep them open for mindshare.

Click to shrink...

I mean winning awards is still important though. In every other medium studios will usually mix commercial efforts and prestige efforts. Though Activision besides Sekiro never bothered and that mentality may be taking over.

 

[Afrikan]

Xbox closed Tango because they didn't make money. My take is just ust because they haven't made money in a while, and aren't making money today doesn't mean they won't make money in the future.

Click to shrink...

Makes you wonder if Ghostwire Tokyo would have been more mainstream if it had guns. 🤢 Maybe that's how they should have pitched the sequal for MS to say yes. 😔

Graphics looked sick....atmosphere looked sick.....sad.

 

[Lowrys]

Selfishly I can't get over the fact that we aren't getting a new Dishonored game. Or Prey.

 

[brawndolicious]

Xbox closed Tango because they didn't make money. My take is just ust because they haven't made money in a while, and aren't making money today doesn't mean they won't make money in the future. Xbox chose not to cultivate that money making future. Also, if Tango makes a GOTY tier game and still doesn't make money who's to say the next highly awarded game will make money? Wait five years, get all the awards, still make no money. Maybe it doesn't work in a gamepass system, maybe break even is too high for running an expensive foreign studio, we don't know. I would say Tango and Hifi have value beyond how much money they will make, so you keep them open for mindshare.

I don't know if Spencer and Bond would make decisions like this. They aren't stupid, they know what a PR hit this would be. They aren't innocent but this feels like forces that don't care about the PR/mindshare dictating moves. The big shots didn't say close Tango, but they did say make Xbox make financial sense.

In an effort to understand the logic here (not agree with it) you have to assume they aren't just tanking the brand for fun, so why? Cause if they are tanking for fun then every move could be illogical and random.

On market share, I meant long term. It may be good to shareholders now, but it could end up starting the downfall of.... something at Xbox even if it's just Phil's career.

Let's stop pretending like these studios actually made money. That doesn't mean they deserve to be closed, real human beings worked there ,but how do you choose which one of your 35 children to shut down. If studios has to close to make the math fit, what would be better choices? Or I can just say Phil is incompetent, Sara is a shill, Booty needs to be fired, and Xbox is stupid. Still wouldn't know why though.

Click to shrink...

Good point. Even if Bethesda was still independent, I think they would have shut down both Tango and (at least) the Austin branch of Arkane.

This whole thing feels exactly like 15 years ago when a bunch of small studios went bankrupt bringing their series up to PS360 graphics level. That was when we saw a lot of consolidation of both studios and technology as well as the adoption of middleware tools to make development cheaper/faster/less risky. That was also when we saw a bunch of studios switch to mobile development but that whole market is kind of a crap shoot today with a few huge successes and a bunch of bombs.

Studios serving niche genres are sort of a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the industry. They always die first and everyone acts all surprised. I think the main issue today is that we live in an age where a lot of people just keep replaying the same game over and over. Stuff like Genshin, Fortnite, CoD, GTA, etc just suck up all the gaming time and dollars.

 

[Yerffej]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

 

[Rustyspider13]

Xbox closed Tango because they didn't make money. My take is just ust because they haven't made money in a while, and aren't making money today doesn't mean they won't make money in the future. Xbox chose not to cultivate that money making future. Also, if Tango makes a GOTY tier game and still doesn't make money who's to say the next highly awarded game will make money? Wait five years, get all the awards, still make no money. Maybe it doesn't work in a gamepass system, maybe break even is too high for running an expensive foreign studio, we don't know. I would say Tango and Hifi have value beyond how much money they will make, so you keep them open for mindshare.

I don't know if Spencer and Bond would make decisions like this. They aren't stupid, they know what a PR hit this would be. They aren't innocent but this feels like forces that don't care about the PR/mindshare dictating moves. The big shots didn't say close Tango, but they did say make Xbox make financial sense.

In an effort to understand the logic here (not agree with it) you have to assume they aren't just tanking the brand for fun, so why? Cause if they are tanking for fun then every move could be illogical and random.

On market share, I meant long term. It may be good to shareholders now, but it could end up starting the downfall of.... something at Xbox even if it's just Phil's career.

Let's stop pretending like these studios actually made money. That doesn't mean they deserve to be closed, real human beings worked there ,but how do you choose which one of your 35 children to shut down. If studios has to close to make the math fit, what would be better choices? Or I can just say Phil is incompetent, Sara is a shill, Booty needs to be fired, and Xbox is stupid. Still wouldn't know why though.

Click to shrink...

Xbox has had an image problem since the end of the 360 gen. To the general public they do not have award winning, headline grabbing exclusive games that are worth playing. HFR broke that trend. So I agree with you completely on your evaluation of Tango and its worth to Xbox. That is not even mentioning Tango being their only Japanese studio when they are often overlooked by Japanese devs.

But I honestly think you are overthinking the motives of Spencer, Bond and Booty and giving them a lot of benefit of the doubt. They made the decision because they were "spread too thin" and "about to topple over". They were simply incapable of managing the studios that they bought. That's where the incompetence and shortsightedness comes in. They simply didn't care about the human cost of such an expansion. And they do not care about the PR hit either because they know in 1 month every headline will be about 40 mins of CoD 2024 or the new Doom or Perfect Dark or Fable. And they'll be right.

To me , the better choices would've been to either expand less aggressively or wait until they had fully integrated Bethesda. I know that's never considered an option under capitalism but MS didn't need to buy ABK. An exclusive contract with ABK about launching CoD on gamepass would likely cost less and would've saved jobs. I know it sounds idealistic/unrealistic, but that's just my two cents. Then again I'm not a CEO so I guess my view is moot in the grand scheme of things.

 

[alr1ght]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

Well of course, but who decided they wanted to buy 2 major publishers? This is all on Xbox management's shoulders for that huge bet not paying off.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

I just feel like people trying to draw lines and be like "no, it's not Xbox's fault, it's Microsoft's fault" are missing the forest for the trees. Xbox is Microsoft and has always been Microsoft. Xbox's leadership may have benefitted in the short term by the person above them not caring enough about them to pay attention to what they're doing, but at the end of the day, Phil, Matt and Sarah are Microsoft staff and are part of Microsoft's corporate culture. If they weren't, Phil's strategy for fixing Xbox's woes wouldn't have been "buy out literally the biggest publisher on the planet so we get to brag about owning all of their stuff".

And when Nadella started giving a shit, he's not the one who said "close these studios in particular", he said "fix your shit" and killing these studios is the conclusion Phil and his team came to. For all their kumbaya "we love games, we love gamers, we love developers" bullshit, they're still MBA corpo scum and they always have been. They'll always gut talent to save their own hides. You don't rise as high as their positions in a company like Microsoft without caring more about what you own than about who makes it.

 

[Tobor]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

Whatever made Xbox different from MS is going to be purged just like these studios.

If it hasn't already.

 

[disparate]

And when Nadella started giving a shit, he's not the one who said "close these studios in particular", he said "fix your shit" and killing these studios is the conclusion Phil and his team came to.

Click to shrink...

This is ultimately what it is, Nadella isn't going be sitting there with knowledge of the different studios at Zenimax, but Spencer, Bond, and Booty would. They probably looked at what their next projects could be, looked at how long it would take to make them, and how much it would cost to run studios producing nothing for half a decade and called it a day.

 

[MissingString]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

Right, but this is still an Xbox leadership problem. If you've been flying under the radar you should know that a massive acquisition like the ABK acquisition is going to spotlight you internally. And with that will be expectations to make good on the investment you just made. So if you then proceed with that acquisition without a plan to respond in a way that doesn't ruin peoples lives, the buck stops with you. This is Phil's mess. Both Gamepass and ABK were things he pushed for (apparently much to the chagrin of everyone around him) and neither bet has paid off. He owns this and the consequences.

 

[disparate]

people focus too much on gamepass alone and IMO not enough on Xbox not really having a coherent IP and product strategy lol, it sometimes seems like they don't know what they're making, when their stuff is supposed to come out, or how they fit relative to each other

 

[Cyrus365]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

I mean this is what happens when you end up spending 70 billion. It's the LARGEST Tech acquisition in the industry (Not just gaming), but all of tech (Bigger than Nvidia trying to buy ARM, or Dell buying EMC for 65 bill). Prior to all this, Xbox division was "rounding error", a "small" team that could do essentially whatever, if it lost money or made money, it wasn't going to move the needle per say because they weren't ever spending huge amount of dollars. Now you've spent 70 billion to acquire one of the largest publisher, now all shareholders, CEO want to know what is the plan to ensure profitability as #1 directive.
It's interesting that nothing of Activision so far has been labelled as "exclusive" forget the CODs, but the other "others" titles, it's because paying 70 billion for a company, doesn't allow the kind of write to make things exclusive. Now this is merged into Xbox as whole, they are examining why aren't we making more money on our key titles - Gears, Halo, Forza, etc.

 

[Iwao]

I think John from DF's take was right. It doesn't feel like an Xbox move. It felt like MS forcing it because MS have them more leeway before they made one of the biggest acquisitions in history.

Click to shrink...

Who do you think championed and pushed for these major publisher acquisitions in the first place, as well as created Game Pass and pushed it to become a brand in and of itself that has been almost inseparable from the Xbox conversation, and in turn conditioned an audience to change their expectations and buying habits over a number of years? It's Phil Spencer that has put Xbox in this position. Nadella didn't land on any of this by himself.

 

[SpotAnime]

I mean this is what happens when you end up spending 70 billion. It's the LARGEST Tech acquisition in the industry (Not just gaming), but all of tech (Bigger than Nvidia trying to buy ARM, or Dell buying EMC for 65 bill). Prior to all this, Xbox division was "rounding error", a "small" team that could do essentially whatever, if it lost money or made money, it wasn't going to move the needle per say because they weren't ever spending huge amount of dollars. Now you've spent 70 billion to acquire one of the largest publisher, now all shareholders, CEO want to know what is the plan to ensure profitability as #1 directive.
It's interesting that nothing of Activision so far has been labelled as "exclusive" forget the CODs, but the other "others" titles, it's because paying 70 billion for a company, doesn't allow the kind of write to make things exclusive. Now this is merged into Xbox as whole, they are examining why aren't we making more money on our key titles - Gears, Halo, Forza, etc.

Click to shrink...

Remember how the RROD issue was such a big deal because it was a costly mistake that Microsoft decided to eat? That was $1.15 billion.

Peter Moore recounts $1.15bn Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death saga

Video game executive Peter Moore has recounted the infamous Xbox 360 'Red Ring of Death' saga that cost Microsoft over …

www.eurogamer.net

This Activision acquisition is SEVENTY TIMES that...

 

[Dis]

Well of course, but who decided they wanted to buy 2 major publishers? This is all on Xbox management's shoulders for that huge bet not paying off.

Click to shrink...

Yep. It's not like higher ups both knew the inside and outsides of the gaming industry and at the same time knew next to nothing and turned a blind eye to Xbox. If the narrative is that Xbox got away with shit by being hidden away somewhat then it makes no sense for them to be pushing for these mergers instead of Phil/other Xbox execs to be doing so.

MS by and large didn't care until Phil and co wanted to start buying up companies to make his failing strategy make some sense, which it still didn't by that point. The moment that other parts of MS looked at it with spending that kind of money is the moment they realised overall shit had to change because it didn't make sense to be throwing the cash at the Xbox part of the business over other areas if the return couldn't be made good on in a timely manner.

 

[Tigress]

IT's crazy to me, both Sony & Msoft and others would rather just shut down a studio - eat the losses (Get that tax right off) rather than sell said studio. Did no one want to buy Tango? Like Capcom or Square,or whomever?

I know the reason is because they rather own IPs and keep it in their vaults, rather then sell it in studio deal. It's why Insomniac went for so cheap (They didn't have an internal successful or semi successful IPs of their own), but it's just insane to me publishers would rather just up and close studio then sell it.

Like Sony couldn't sell Studios London to someone?

Click to shrink...

It's not just htat they want to own the IPs, it's way worse than that.. they don't want the IPs competing with the games they do put out. Nor do they want the studios out there competing. They would rather shut them down and leave less competition out there so there stuff is some of the only stuff consumers have to pick from. If the studio isn't going to work for them, they sure as hell don't want them turning into competition or working for other competition.

 

[Lowrys]

An exclusive contract with ABK about launching CoD on gamepass would likely cost less and would've saved jobs.

Click to shrink...

This would never have been commercially viable for MS or commercially sensible for ABK. ABK would never have agreed to put CoD exclusively on game pass. Not only because of the enormous sum it would take - we're talking billions and MS wouldn't own anything. But also because it would massively devalue and probably kill the series due to the much lower userbase.

 

[Dekim]

Yep. It's not like higher ups both knew the inside and outsides of the gaming industry and at the same time knew next to nothing and turned a blind eye to Xbox. If the narrative is that Xbox got away with shit by being hidden away somewhat then it makes no sense for them to be pushing for these mergers instead of Phil/other Xbox execs to be doing so.

MS by and large didn't care until Phil and co wanted to start buying up companies to make his failing strategy make some sense, which it still didn't by that point. The moment that other parts of MS looked at it with spending that kind of money is the moment they realised overall shit had to change because it didn't make sense to be throwing the cash at the Xbox part of the business over other areas if the return couldn't be made good on in a timely manner.

Click to shrink...

Right. If you're a MS investor, you want to know why the company is spending that kind of money on a tiny division within MS that's a rounding error and not, say, on more AI and data center investment, proven money makers.

 

[Rustyspider13]

This would never have been commercially viable for MS. ABK would never have agreed to put CoD exclusively on game pass. Not only because of the enormous sum it would take - we're talking billions and MS wouldn't own anything. But also because it would massively devalue ansld probably kill the series due to the much lower userbase.

Click to shrink...

I phrased it badly. I, of course, agree that CoD is too big to put on one platform. I meant that CoD would launch on gamepass with an exclusive marketing deal of some sort that prevented it from appearing on the other subscription service. Basically what Sony did with their CoD marketing deal but with launching on the service instead of being added after like a year. Still would've been expensive though but would've associated CoD with GP and Xbox like the 360 days.

 

[iareharSon]

Who do you think championed and pushed for these major publisher acquisitions in the first place, as well as created Game Pass and pushed it to become a brand in and of itself that has been almost inseparable from the Xbox conversation, and in turn conditioned an audience to change their expectations and buying habits over a number of years? It's Phil Spencer that has put Xbox in this position. Nadella didn't land on any of this by himself.

Click to shrink...

I mean these types of decisions aren't made in a vacuum. A lot of multibillion-dollar corporations were driving growth via acquisitions during COVID because the economic climate "called for it" in the eyes of greedy capitalists, and it was seen as advantageous for tech companies to spend their tens of billions of dollars of reserves instead of sitting on it. And I guess Phil Spencer could have given one hell of an elevator pitch and he was disproportionately the reason for it happening, but I really doubt that the decision to spend $70 billion on Microsoft's biggest acquisition in history was a decision that wasn't in many ways a part of some broader corporate directive to find opportunities throughout the organization to spend down funding reserves. And it's probably not a coincidence that Xbox happened to pivot towards services and cloud computing given that's Microsoft's overall direction Lol, which also happen to be Nadella's backgrounds and the through point under which he's funneling the entirety of the company under. Maybe it's just a coincidence. They're still ultimately decisions under the prevue of Phil Spencer, but similar to how there was a tendency to whitewash him of all Xbox misfires over his tenure, I think there's an overcorrection on the opposite end to place all blame at his feet. He's still largely responsible for Xbox's current standing and people being out of work though, and is definitely deserving of a pink slip.

 

[TalonJH]

Wow, that's insane! This is the first time I've heard of this and it's almost hard to believe! How is it legal that stuff done off-hours with personal property belongs to the company?

Click to shrink...

Not meaning this as a defense of Microsoft because not allowing moonlighting has always been shitty but, yes this isn't just a Microsoft thing. Some companies like to think that they own all your work if created while you are employed by them. I don't work in gaming but at a Creative/Art Director, it's always important to discuss non-competes and moonlighting clauses before you accept a job offer.

 

[Last_colossi]

I just wanted to pop back in and say that this move was obviously made by people that have no real knowledge of the gaming industry. They probably looked at any studios that were making a loss and also seemed easily severable, so they made a short list. Obviously not even thinking for a second that Tango's game had basically zero marketing before release and was dropped onto game pass day one.

The fact that HiFi-Rush was as popular as it was without nearly any external help is amazing, but obviously it was going to make a loss if most of its players were coming from game pass. Any good higher up with half a brain of knowledge about the industry could see that HiFi-Rush could've been a major success if it actually had a marketing budget, wasn't released on game pass day one and was released as a multiplatform title from the get-go.

But no, Microsoft seems to have basically said:

Our ROI was shit from that dev that we bought recently, so it's clearly all their fault and has nothing to do with us and how we forced their games onto our service that revolves around no game purchases. Also, I don't give a shit if they won a bunch of awards and have major potential to make smash hits for us in the future (that we so desperately need), if I don't have the cash in my hand now then I don't give a shit, just shut them down.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I just wanted to pop back in and say that this move was obviously made by people that have no real knowledge of the gaming industry. They probably looked at any studios that were making a loss and also seemed easily severable, so they made a short list. Obviously not even thinking for a second that Tango's game had basically zero marketing before release and was dropped onto game pass day one.

The fact that HiFi-Rush was as popular as it was without nearly any external help is amazing, but obviously it was going to make a loss if most of its players were coming from game pass. Any good higher up with half a brain of knowledge about the industry could see that HiFi-Rush could've been a major success if it actually had a marketing budget, wasn't released on game pass day one and was released as a multiplatform title from the get-go.

But no, Microsoft seems to have basically said:

Our ROI was shit from that dev that we bought recently, so it's clearly all their fault and has nothing to do with us and how we forced their games onto our service that revolves around no game purchases. Also, I don't give a shit if they won a bunch of awards and have major potential to make smash hits for us in the future (that we so desperately need), if I don't have the cash in my hand now then I don't give a shit, just shut them down.

Click to shrink...

This is not how it works. As I keep saying, Nadella and Hood did not personally select these studios to shut down. They gave Phil and his team orders - make this business model make sense, show us potential growth, cut costs - and these were the studios Xbox and Bethesda's leadership chose to sacrifice.

Nadella and Hood are simply not involved in the day to day operations of Xbox and this isn't how business is done for them. They just look at the numbers and tell the division heads to fix shit and they have to act.

 

[Buckle]

Selfishly I can't get over the fact that we aren't getting a new Dishonored game. Or Prey.

Click to shrink...

Wait, I thought this was like a secondary studio, not like the main Arkane?

Arkane lyons I think. This was Austin.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Click to shrink...

Creativity and personal projects for me, not for thee.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Wait, I thought this was like a secondary studio, not like the main Arkane?

Arkane lyons I think. This was Austin.

Click to shrink...

Arkane Lyon made Dishonored (Austin helped), but Austin did make Prey.

 

[Bish_Bosch]

I just wanted to pop back in and say that this move was obviously made by people that have no real knowledge of the gaming industry. They probably looked at any studios that were making a loss and also seemed easily severable, so they made a short list. Obviously not even thinking for a second that Tango's game had basically zero marketing before release and was dropped onto game pass day one.

The fact that HiFi-Rush was as popular as it was without nearly any external help is amazing, but obviously it was going to make a loss if most of its players were coming from game pass. Any good higher up with half a brain of knowledge about the industry could see that HiFi-Rush could've been a major success if it actually had a marketing budget, wasn't released on game pass day one and was released as a multiplatform title from the get-go.

But no, Microsoft seems to have basically said:

Our ROI was shit from that dev that we bought recently, so it's clearly all their fault and has nothing to do with us and how we forced their games onto our service that revolves around no game purchases. Also, I don't give a shit if they won a bunch of awards and have major potential to make smash hits for us in the future (that we so desperately need), if I don't have the cash in my hand now then I don't give a shit, just shut them down.

Click to shrink...

That's what driving me nuts too. Let's take something comparable with Apple TV and they are supporting far bigger budget difficult titles. Killers of the Flower Moon was a big budget prestige project from a tech company these things do happen. But now MS is struggling with supporting fairly commercial small to mid budget projects.

 

[Last_colossi]

This is not how it works. As I keep saying, Nadella and Hood did not personally select these studios to shut down. They gave Phil and his team orders - make this business model make sense, show us potential growth, cut costs - and these were the studios Xbox and Bethesda's leadership chose to sacrifice.

Click to shrink...

It doesn't matter who. That's not the point, the point is that whoever is responsible made an obvious mistake for the long run and was reacting from current cash flow, but that's not how the gaming industry works, you have to play the long game.

 

[Lowrys]

Wait, I thought this was like a secondary studio, not like the main Arkane?

Arkane lyons I think. This was Austin.

Click to shrink...

Arkane Lyon made Dishonored (Austin helped), but Austin did make Prey.

Click to shrink...

Sorry, I was referring to Arkane Austin pitching to make a new Dishonored entry.

Also, Harvey Smith was a huge part of Dishonored (and immersive sim history) and now he's been fucking sacked.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Sorry, I was referring to Arkane Austin pitching to make a new Dishonored entry.

Also, Harvey Smith was a huge part of Dishonored (and immersive sim history) and now he's been fucking sacked.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I was just clarifying specifics for folks. Harvey Smith was really important and he had a lot more to offer Bethesda that he never got to pay off, which is a real shame.

 

[Lowrys]

Yeah, I was just clarifying specifics for folks. Harvey Smith was really important and he had a lot more to offer Bethesda that he never got to pay off, which is a real shame.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely. I've been Xbox as my primary platform for years but this situation with Tango and Arkane (and Smith and Ricardo Barre, ffs) given what both studios have achieved tells me MS have NFC about gaming.

 

[Tobor]

That's what driving me nuts too. Let's take something comparable with Apple TV and they are supporting far bigger budget difficult titles. Killers of the Flower Moon was a big budget prestige project from a tech company these things do happen. But now MS is struggling with supporting fairly commercial small to mid budget projects.

Click to shrink...

Apple didn't spend $70 billion on a movie studio. If they had, they would be in a similar pickle in needing some big ROI.

 

[ternarybanana]

Remember how the RROD issue was such a big deal because it was a costly mistake that Microsoft decided to eat? That was $1.15 billion.

Peter Moore recounts $1.15bn Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death saga

Video game executive Peter Moore has recounted the infamous Xbox 360 'Red Ring of Death' saga that cost Microsoft over …

www.eurogamer.net

This Activision acquisition is SEVENTY TIMES that...

Click to shrink...

Lighting fire to $1 billion isn't quite the same as acquiring an asset for $70 billion.

 

[roguesquirrel]

Arkane Lyon made Dishonored (Austin helped), but Austin did make Prey.

Click to shrink...

Can we stop with the weird downplaying of Austin's role in Dishonored

 

[j7vikes]

people focus too much on gamepass alone and IMO not enough on Xbox not really having a coherent IP and product strategy lol, it sometimes seems like they don't know what they're making, when their stuff is supposed to come out, or how they fit relative to each other

Click to shrink...

I think they had a strategy coming into/early in the gen.

Most powerful hardware with a cheaper option, gamepass, and what seemed like a steady stream of games bound to come from new studios. Except those studios either had delays or a lot of the releases weren't the expected hits.

It's just been disappointment after disappointment. Halo Infinite not being ready at launch. An expected smash in Starfield where people were saying Elder Scrolls 5 in space. But one has a 96 and the other an 83 on metacritic. Clearly not the reception hoped. Gamepass failing to grow like they thought and speculation about it costing profit. We could go on and on.

I think they have been in panic mode for a while now. The expected plan early in this generation did not happen like they thought and the brand is in significant trouble in multiple markets.

It seems like they are making up a strategy as they go now possibly with significant discussion and disagreement internally. I don't know how they couldn't be in a bit of panic mode based on how things have gone lately.

 

[Lowrys]

Can we stop with the weird downplaying of Austin's role in Dishonored

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Fucking tragic.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Can we stop with the weird downplaying of Austin's role in Dishonored

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I wasn't downplaying anything, I was pointing out that Prey was entirely an Austin project whereas Dishonored (1 only) was a joint project. I was clarifying for people who didn't realize Prey wasn't made by Lyon.

 

[Cassius Africanus]

Xbox has had an image problem since the end of the 360 gen. To the general public they do not have award winning, headline grabbing exclusive games that are worth playing. HFR broke that trend. So I agree with you completely on your evaluation of Tango and its worth to Xbox. That is not even mentioning Tango being their only Japanese studio when they are often overlooked by Japanese devs.

But I honestly think you are overthinking the motives of Spencer, Bond and Booty and giving them a lot of benefit of the doubt. They made the decision because they were "spread too thin" and "about to topple over". They were simply incapable of managing the studios that they bought. That's where the incompetence and shortsightedness comes in. They simply didn't care about the human cost of such an expansion. And they do not care about the PR hit either because they know in 1 month every headline will be about 40 mins of CoD 2024 or the new Doom or Perfect Dark or Fable. And they'll be right.

To me , the better choices would've been to either expand less aggressively or wait until they had fully integrated Bethesda. I know that's never considered an option under capitalism but MS didn't need to buy ABK. An exclusive contract with ABK about launching CoD on gamepass would likely cost less and would've saved jobs. I know it sounds idealistic/unrealistic, but that's just my two cents. Then again I'm not a CEO so I guess my view is moot in the grand scheme of things.

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I agree that I am giving the top three at Xbox the benefit of the doubt. Not because I think they are good business people but I want to think they understand the video game business a least a little bit. Especially Phil. Phil needs to make better choices, but again I think he could see this would not go over well. Especially because people will lean on his past comments. But it's also fair to say that they just are clueless,...because they haven't done much to prove otherwise recently. They could be ghouls that will crush workers in the pursuit of numbers going up. That goes against the persona Phil has been building over the years. How's he gonna come out and wear his Lost Vikings T-shirt and blazer combo in June if he's seen as the axe swinging business man? I think he would prefer to make money and keep selling that image if it up to him. I think Phil would have kept Toys for Bob if he could. It's breeds more loyalty for the brand long term if he isn't seen as Iron Fist Phil. You could also give them no benefit of the doubt, but their actions before this point don't make me think they are suddenly ruthless dev crushers.

" They shouldn't have bought Activision" deserves and asterisk. It was probably too soon to be biting off another big chunk of the industry after Bethesda, but the opportunity presented itself and Phil couldn't resist. Kotick was sinking and wanted a way to save some value before most of it was drained from Activison due to mounting scandals. Turns out Phil is one of the few that could write a check to accomplish that. Phil got a bargain vs what Activision's IP is really worth. He made a move, an expensive one. Yeah human cost was never considered, and if everything went smoothly we probably wouldn't be talking about it either. But games flopped, and the industry contracted. Years of no to poor results were adding up. We've yet to see if the Activison purchase will pay off for Phil. It's IS gonna pay off for Microsoft regardless, clearly they are making sure of that. I don't think he had the option to wait on Activison. They had to move while Kotick was desperate. They had leverage, and it was a deal....or was it?

The Activision purchase will determine Phil's legacy.

 

[Shaneus]

Saw this brought up as how Matt Booty shows up in the Psychonauts 2 documentary on the topic of moonlighting that devs do with side projects:


View: https://twitter.com/EMBYRDEV/status/1789920968275574807


View: https://twitter.com/ponettplus/status/1789146095433425004

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I'd have expected better from the guy who... worked on sound effects on Cruis'n USA:

 

[Cassius Africanus]

I just wanted to pop back in and say that this move was obviously made by people that have no real knowledge of the gaming industry. They probably looked at any studios that were making a loss and also seemed easily severable, so they made a short list. Obviously not even thinking for a second that Tango's game had basically zero marketing before release and was dropped onto game pass day one.

The fact that HiFi-Rush was as popular as it was without nearly any external help is amazing, but obviously it was going to make a loss if most of its players were coming from game pass. Any good higher up with half a brain of knowledge about the industry could see that HiFi-Rush could've been a major success if it actually had a marketing budget, wasn't released on game pass day one and was released as a multiplatform title from the get-go.

But no, Microsoft seems to have basically said:

Our ROI was shit from that dev that we bought recently, so it's clearly all their fault and has nothing to do with us and how we forced their games onto our service that revolves around no game purchases. Also, I don't give a shit if they won a bunch of awards and have major potential to make smash hits for us in the future (that we so desperately need), if I don't have the cash in my hand now then I don't give a shit, just shut them down.

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This is what I have been thinking. I get Phil has been fucking up. They have destroyed my beloved Halo from multiple angles. But these closures don't feel like the typical Phil and friends screw up. They would have known this was stupid.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

This is what I have been thinking. I get Phil has been fucking up. They have destroyed my beloved Halo from multiple angles. But these closures don't feel like the typical Phil and friends screw up. They would have known this was stupid.

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They knew it was stupid but it's also their jobs. If they were told to cut the business, who else were they gonna shut down? 343i? The Coalition? Zenimax Online?

 

[roguesquirrel]

I wasn't downplaying anything, I was pointing out that Prey was entirely an Austin project whereas Dishonored (1 only) was a joint project. I was clarifying for people who didn't realize Prey wasn't made by Lyon.

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sorry i misread the post. theres been a lot of minimizing of Austins role in DH on social media to downplay the closure (from not working on it at all to only having a small role) so "Lyon made DH (Austin helped)" came across that way

 

[TeaberryShark]

I've said from the start, gamepass is nice for the average Joe, but the extent to which it is devaluing games with already spiraling development costs is a recipe for disaster for this industry (to be fair, steam sales are also on this list imo). I'm really sad that these studios got the axe, some really talented folks that didn't deserve to be treated like that. I hope this bites microsoft in the ass and slaps the other 2 big players in the face as a wake up. But this whole industry is in turbulent times and I think some big corrections are necessary.

 

[Yerffej]

I just feel like people trying to draw lines and be like "no, it's not Xbox's fault, it's Microsoft's fault" are missing the forest for the trees. Xbox is Microsoft and has always been Microsoft. Xbox's leadership may have benefitted in the short term by the person above them not caring enough about them to pay attention to what they're doing, but at the end of the day, Phil, Matt and Sarah are Microsoft staff and are part of Microsoft's corporate culture. If they weren't, Phil's strategy for fixing Xbox's woes wouldn't have been "buy out literally the biggest publisher on the planet so we get to brag about owning all of their stuff".

And when Nadella started giving a shit, he's not the one who said "close these studios in particular", he said "fix your shit" and killing these studios is the conclusion Phil and his team came to. For all their kumbaya "we love games, we love gamers, we love developers" bullshit, they're still MBA corpo scum and they always have been. They'll always gut talent to save their own hides. You don't rise as high as their positions in a company like Microsoft without caring more about what you own than about who makes it.

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Don't disagree. I think John himself said (if not as verbosely) something similar along with what I already said. Him or Alex.This event is gonna be so weird. Imagine if they show Hi Fi in highlight reel. Imagine if they don't. Vibes will be very very off.

 

[M.Bluth]

Saw the latest Kyle Bosman vid, which is about 2 weeks old and predates the closures now, he's talking about the four games coming to Xbox (and before Spencer announces which games they are but simply says "four games are coming"). Of the four, Pentiment and HiFi Rush he says they weren't built as big huge consoles exclusives so it makes sense to port them and that it makes sense from a business standpoint to extract more value out of them also among other things to justify a sequel.

That he said that, specifically knowing one the games he knew was HiFi Rush, from a studio he knew at the time was likely to close, just highlights the complete lack of morals you have to have to be a C-Suite exec. You're just constantly lying about the future of people's jobs when in the back of your mind you know they're screwed. Just abhorrent.

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Yeah, that's the thing, people played HiFi Rush and told others to play it. They celebrated when Xbox celebrated its player numbers. Some might have even bought it despite playing it on GamePass first.

And when the PS5 version came out, fans bought it because they were told by Phil Spencer that hey, we're putting this on more platforms so we might be able to make more!

It wasn't even 50 days between the PS5 version releasing and the studio getting shut down! So they knew all along they're not giving them another chance.

And now the question forever hanging is, why would you show more support for a game you like? It's not like the devs are getting royalties, and there's no clear measure of success that would guarantee that the studio will be given more work. Certainly it doesn't matter if MS told us they succeeded, because they told us HiFi Rush was a success too and closed Tango anyway.

I'll never understand people's obsession with pointing fingers at specific people and saying they are responsible, or defending these corporate individuals. It doesn't really matter: stuff like this is always the end result of a string of bad decisions on different levels, and I reckon it's better to say there's something dysfunctional about Microsoft's/Xbox's path (or their misplaced bets) that they should get to the bottom of, instead of caring if Spencer/Bond/whoever the fuck is behind the closure or not.

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Weird.
So is Don Mattrick now absolved of the Xbox One debacle?

 

[Minthara]

Weird.
So is Don Mattrick now absolved of the Xbox One debacle?

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As bad as Don Mattrick was, he didn't operate in a vacuum.

People tend to forget that.

People above, below and equal to him all fucked up too.

He still sucks, but yea.

 

[M.Bluth]

As bad as Don Mattrick was, he didn't operate in a vacuum.

People tend to forget that.

People above, below and equal to him all fucked up too.

He still sucks, but yea.

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Yeah, but for years now everyone was more than comfortable placing blame on him over the mistakes of the tailend of the 360 and XBO launch.

But now it's come to Spencer and co, and suddenly it's a huge organization, where somehow no one there makes decisions and steers the ship, and therefore responsible for anything.

Not that I entirely disagree with your point. After all, Phil Spencer was running Xbox's 1st party back in the day and his mismanagement set the whole business for failure. So it was always strange that people acted as if he was an outside hire when he kept failing upwards.

 

[Luckett_X]

I don't think I particularly understand the "business is business, kids!" responses in the last few pages. I'd understand if Xbox was anywhere near the head of the gaming business and crushing it, but they're in distant Third Place, if not 4th/5th/6th when you bring Steam, Apple, and Google Play into the equation. Their last profit call was a "good thing those Activision games on all the platforms continue to make money huh" show, from a purchase that will take 20 years to pay out.

People are in their feels about games and art they loved now ceasing to get produced, as well they should be, but they're also tongue-lashing some incredibly incompetent executives that have played so fast and loose with trying to be a platform holder in the industry and all that now looks to be largely over. You can't be a platform holder thats forced to release COD on everything because thats where the money is and you are in fact Not Steam just as much you can't be a platform holder that kills the sole GOTY providing studio in Japan, a land so completely interwoven with the very concept of console games that it's astounding anyone thinks they can get by without some of them.

Going back to that 20 years to make the acquisitions make sense (maybe fewer if they really get some growth on ActiBlizz intake), what do you think the next MS CEO will make of having some weird videogame third party publishing arm wrapped around them like an albatross? Will anyone even be there that remembers the "battle for the living room" sentiment? 23 years takes you back to the Xbox OG for instance all the way to the mess of now. I do think the people that started Xbox wanted to make great games at some point and had that dog in them. That's not what it seems Xbox has been for two gens now, so, yknow, what is the point of Xbox?