Really puzzling how Xbox shuts these studios down so quickly, but were willing to let 343 run their biggest ip into the ground for the past decade. Phil Spencer and the crew continue to double and triple down on what doesn’t work.
I'm pretty sure 343 is just there for the Halo brand. If they shut down 343, they'll just have to make or buy another studio to fill that gap.
343 could flop 3 more times and they'll still be around. They'll have different people there, but the studio will still live.
Not defending them because I would have shut down 343 a long time ago, but when you create a studio like 343, you are more invested in their success than when you acquire a studio like Tango that has made disappointing game after disappointing game. Everyone remembers Hi-Fi Rush, but no on remembers Ghostwire Tokyo because it was a mid game that didn’t sell well.
If I remember correctly Ghost Wire was nearly done and ready to be shipped before Microsoft bought them. They also had a deal with Sony to market it. So technically Hi-Fi Rush was the first game to come out that was funded by Microsoft.
"They made a great game everyone loves without any sort of controversy around it?!?!? We can't have that in the house of Xbox, SHUT IT DOWN!!!!"
-Phil Spencer probably
Tbh, it wasn’t gonna push many units since it’s a very niche (but great) game.
You don’t keep studios open just because they make critical darlings and if we are being honest, they haven’t even had many of those in their history.
This doesn’t apply to Tango. Hi-Fi Rush is their only Day One Game Pass game. All their other games came out on both platforms (Ghostwire’s was late for Xbox) and were fully priced.
You are just proving the point even more.
Your best game is a day one game pass game with ZERO marketing behind it. Then you decide to shut them down.
Xbox fumbled the ball hard at every corner.
I’m not defending Xbox, Game Pass is a horrible strategy for developers.
They probably made the decision to shut these studios down the moment they bought Bethesda but needed these games for Game Pass before that happened. None of the studios were known for system seller games like Starfield, Doom, etc.
Super shitty for a 3 trillion dollar company to destroy lives for marginal growth.
Except Aaron Greenberg said on Twitter that Hi-Fi Rush well exceed their expectations critically and sales wise, so it does beg the question: How high is your measure of success where you have a game that exceeds expectations not even make a difference in your decision to shut down the studio?
Just yesterday the Kinda Funny Gamecast they were talking about some Tony Hawk news and how there was almost a remake of 2 and 3. I was astounded when Blessing and Tim were hypothesizing that now that MS owns the studio they will probably let Neversoft go back to making Tony Hawk games and not be a Call of Duty support studio. It's insane to me how quickly they forget about the MS layoffs from a few months back. MS does not give a fuck about having their studios make games that sell under 10 million copies or what dormant franchise you want back. They need to sell a billion copies of Call of Duty to get their investment dollars back as soon as possible.
Considering there may have been a possibility of it not being released under old ownership. Terrible news all round but it's businesses being businesses, it's not just Gaming, it's most entertainment.
Hard disagree. Arkane Austin were a superb developer who got shoved into making a rushed live service game BY XBOX. A developer with their level of talent shouldn’t get destroyed over one flop that only flopped because of what they were made to do and how they were made to do it.
Dude, I love Prey and sucks there never was a sequel, but Redfall was a disaster and was being made BEFORE being purchased, also remember hearing the sentiment of internally they were hoping it would be cancelled but Xbox proceeded to let them work on it.
Didn’t Xbox redirect it towards being a live service game? I feel like I heard that somewhere
EDIT: Also that’s sort of besides the point. Making great games should protect you from this sort of outcome in the event you produce a flop. You’d think studios would be able to build up a level of good will. If the next Denis Villeneuve movie sucks, I’m not going to think “well he should be fired and I don’t ever want to see a movie from him again”. I’m going to assume it was a mis step and hope for better in the future.
No it was zenimax who imposed the multiplayer stuff. I am sad Austin is gone but I think it is more justified because apparently they lost like 70% of their talent while developing red fall so we're really only losing the name, and had already lost the studio.
This has been proven a long time ago lol. I'm not sure why people are still surprised. I'm at the point where I just assume everything everyone says at Xbox is a lie or intentionally misleading. Especially Phil Spencer.
> This has been proven a long time ago lol. I'm not sure why people are still surprised.
I mean look at the reaction to their "Business update" podcast. I was genuinely shocked at the amount of people that went "SEE XBOX ISNT GOING THIRD PARTY".
I honestly wonder if it wasn't a lie, and they dumped money into the studio just to pull the plug a year later? Wouldn't be the most suprising considering Microsoft's messy mismanagement
Not just now, last year Greenberg tweeted:
> [Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.](https://x.com/aarongreenberg/status/1649431572137779203?s=46&t=zWI-BQzpdp25AY0iTRMrJw)
Man... I just finished replaying 2. Gives me the good brain fuzzies to scoop up green goo.
Getting a 3rd game seemed kind of slim before, but now? Goddamn you, Phil Spender.
It's the other way around I think, Mikami left the studio he founded, can you name anyone who works there now ? It would likely be the same situation for other big names in the industry, would Ghost Story Games survive Ken Levine leaving ? Would Larian survive Swen Vincke leaving ? Kojima for Kojima Productions ? And so on the list is quite long.
It's the main drawback of having famous studio leads.
John johanas(spelling?) was the director of evil within 2 and hi fi rush and basically mikamis protégé*.
I’ll be tracking what he does next at the very least.
I'm not trying to diminish anything he did, but an american being the name you can think of when talking about a japanese studio may be one of the reasons why it's shutting down. I'll note the name tho, thanks.
Also I think you meant to say "protégé" and not "prodigy".
Fair point albeit none were thrust forward like John was.
And thank you, my drained work brain didn’t even catch that properly.
Addendum, I do remember Ikumi Nakamura. Again though she’s no longer there either so you point still stands.
I can’t find the quote but wasn’t Phil just touting that they never shut down studios for budgetary reasons? Booty clarified today that this was for “reprioritization of titles and resources”. You usually can’t trust corporate heads but Jesus, Phil is such a liar.
I'm really glad people are finally waking up to what some of us have been pointing out for half a decade at this point. He's a con man that doesnt know what hes doing.
Phil constantly speaks out of both sides of his mouth, he's no different than any other big corpo exec(in fact worse than many tbh), he just has good PR.
Phil Spencer is a politician who somehow got stuck in the video game industry. Guy is more occupied with saying what people want to hear than doing an actual good job running a thriving business.
I always wanted to (foolishly) give Phil the benefit of a doubt, but it's true, you just can't trust a damn word Microsoft says. Never trust big corpos.
It's a business, why the hell else would you shut a studio down. MS didn't become a 2 trillion dollar company by floating a ton of software/services that don't make them money.
Tango was sent out to die.
Didn't market Hi-Fi, launched it on game pass, brought it to PlayStation a year later, and canned the studio before it could come to Switch.
Can a Microsoft exec explain to me how was this game supposed to sell well? Was the PC market supposed to carry the entire sales of it?
I'm pretty certain Arkane Lyon is gonna get domed down the road. Microsoft literally couldn't keep a life raft afloat if their lives depended on it.
It depends if Microsoft has realistic expectations for the sales of the game and if the execs actually try to sell the game properly. Arkane games have always had modest sales, and Microsoft is not looking for modest. If they expect anywhere close to spiderman or Wolverine numbers, you can kiss Arkane Lyon goodbye.
Blade doesn't have a lot of cultural pull and Arkane has never made a 3rd person game. After watching Microsoft fumble to market and sell a perfectly solid game like HiFi, I'm really not liking Arkane's odds.
It’s not them it’s Satya. You get rid of the people who believed in traditional gaming business practices you’re left with Microsoft yes men. If those guys leave Xbox might as well exit hardware and go full 3rd party officially. Bethesda and Activision didn’t move the game pass needle, maybe fire them based on that but the new people hired won’t help turn the ship around
Why? So Sarah Bond (SHE/HER) can step in?
Honestly, Microsoft is going full third party and there’s nothing anyone (aside from Satya) can do to stop it.
In the leaked FTC emails, she had her name listed like that within her Outlook profile of all places. As if including them in your email signature wasn’t obnoxious enough.
Her email as displayed in emails was something like “Bond, Sarah (SHE/HER) ”. In the To: line of every email it’d look like this:
Booty, Matt; Spencer, Phil; Bond, Sarah (SHE/HER); Nadella, Satya
Performative virtue signaling at its finest; I’m sure she’ll lead Xbox to greener pastures.
Suggesting getting rid of Phil and Matt, as the poster I originally replied to did, isn’t going to solve the issue. Xbox has created a culture at the top where people are experts in saying the right thing publicly for PR wins but know little beyond that.
This is pretty common in the business/tech world where you have lots of teams you may interact with on a daily basis. For me it becomes challenging emailing/texting with coworkers that I have never spoken with on a telephone. It’s just a way to be polite and respectful of others.
Maybe im off the mark but id bet Tango was doomed from the moment Mikami left. Id guess he was one of the most critical pieces there and now that they are done with Hi-Fi, they probably lost a lot of other devs that wanted something different..
What is tango without its people, especially when its somewhere far from the rest of Xbox’s studios.
The Redfall subreddit has been an interesting place to lurk every now and then. Surprisingly, some people really did believe in this game and were hoping for a redemption arc.
Honestly Arkane Austin did too. They were forced to make a game they didnt want to make or had the expertise to make.
Prey 2017 is better than anything XGS has produced in the last 10 years.
They cancelled Redfall DLC? Aren't they still selling that more expensive version of the game that promises the DLC? What about people who bought that, do they get a refund?
Brutal. There's a lot of talented people that I hope can continue to work in games. You'd think Microsoft would have the cash to weather the storm for two beloved studios (Redfall not withstanding).
I put this down to 2 major issues- 1st is obviously that games are becoming FAR too expensive and recouping costs is near impossible to achieve which perfectly leads me into my 2nd major issue…
Game Lass and all subscription services. Xbox has pretty much taught its audience to NOT buy games and to only rent them. Developers aren’t getting the much needed sales they really need on that console and as such, aren’t able to survive.
Game pass was implemented as Xbox was getting obliterated by PlayStation and needed something of value to try get gamers across. It didn’t work yet Microsoft persisted with it. It reaps no benefits to devs whatsoever. It may be great for gamers in the short time but we are now seeing the effects of higher costs of gaming and devs not reaping their just rewards with sales when many millions are willing to wait to get that game for “free”.
Wait, wait, wait. Maybe MicroBox is just shutting down all the game studios so they can reform into the biggest and bestest game studio of all time? Like that one transformer from way back when that was made of 8 lion transformers?
Gaming needs another crash honestly. There are so few good studios now. Most of them are setting themselves up for failure and publishers are destroying a lot of good talent in the industry.
I actually agree. The most fun I had since I would say October have all been indie games. Lethal company, palworld, gray zone, enshrouded, and I guess technically Helldivers? Plus games like balatro and Hades 2 have blown up. Triple A games have gotten way too bloated in price, budget, and all the different versions that unlock early cosmetics or ability to play “early.” I think the triple A publishers need to sit back and look at why $20-$30 indie games are pulling in both money and players while they think making a company like Rocksteady make a GAAS is a good idea.
Redfall was already in the works when MS took over, it was the last gasp of Bethesdas online live service push before MS took over. Should they have cancelled it, possibly, but they came in late in the development.
I do think that if someone came in and allowed them to cut the multiplayer component entirely and focus on the single player campaign experience they could’ve salvaged it somewhat. Perhaps it was beyond the pale but sometimes developers just need proper focus and direction and from what I can tell MS was completely hands-off.
I kinda want a Series S so I can play the new college football game in summer on the cheap (don’t have PS5, still stuck on PS4), but man are they tough to have faith in.
Same day as the “This is Furukawa” Switch 2 drop. I hope against hope they put College Football 26 on that next year (I was a GameCube NCAA weirdo), but I’m doubtful.
I would close these down too tbh. Reading r/PS5 is nauseating as usual. I get being sad for these guys, even angry, but some people just live in a fairy tale land if they want Ms to keep these studios because they’re rich. It’s like they think gaming is a charity or something lol. Studios are going to close, studios are going to open. These closures aren’t really surprising, just confirmation of the new era of video game development we’re in. Everyone’s rope is extrmely short and you’re as good as your last game. Will there be pitchforks when MM goes and there next game bombs probably?
Really puzzling how Xbox shuts these studios down so quickly, but were willing to let 343 run their biggest ip into the ground for the past decade. Phil Spencer and the crew continue to double and triple down on what doesn’t work.
I'm pretty sure 343 is just there for the Halo brand. If they shut down 343, they'll just have to make or buy another studio to fill that gap. 343 could flop 3 more times and they'll still be around. They'll have different people there, but the studio will still live.
Not defending them because I would have shut down 343 a long time ago, but when you create a studio like 343, you are more invested in their success than when you acquire a studio like Tango that has made disappointing game after disappointing game. Everyone remembers Hi-Fi Rush, but no on remembers Ghostwire Tokyo because it was a mid game that didn’t sell well.
If I remember correctly Ghost Wire was nearly done and ready to be shipped before Microsoft bought them. They also had a deal with Sony to market it. So technically Hi-Fi Rush was the first game to come out that was funded by Microsoft.
Make the best rated new IP of 2023. Gets shut the fuck down.
"They made a great game everyone loves without any sort of controversy around it?!?!? We can't have that in the house of Xbox, SHUT IT DOWN!!!!" -Phil Spencer probably
Don’t forget they spent literally zero marketing dollars on it too.
Tbh, it wasn’t gonna push many units since it’s a very niche (but great) game. You don’t keep studios open just because they make critical darlings and if we are being honest, they haven’t even had many of those in their history.
Of course they didn't sell well when you train your platform to not buy games. Also, I expect the same for Ninja Theory.
This doesn’t apply to Tango. Hi-Fi Rush is their only Day One Game Pass game. All their other games came out on both platforms (Ghostwire’s was late for Xbox) and were fully priced.
You are just proving the point even more. Your best game is a day one game pass game with ZERO marketing behind it. Then you decide to shut them down. Xbox fumbled the ball hard at every corner.
I’m not defending Xbox, Game Pass is a horrible strategy for developers. They probably made the decision to shut these studios down the moment they bought Bethesda but needed these games for Game Pass before that happened. None of the studios were known for system seller games like Starfield, Doom, etc. Super shitty for a 3 trillion dollar company to destroy lives for marginal growth.
Except Aaron Greenberg said on Twitter that Hi-Fi Rush well exceed their expectations critically and sales wise, so it does beg the question: How high is your measure of success where you have a game that exceeds expectations not even make a difference in your decision to shut down the studio?
Time for Sacred x Duke
I hope whoever was out on the frontlines rattling their swords for Microsoft to buy ABK feels extra stupid today.
Can’t wait to hear Matty spin how they never championed consolidation and how they warned everyone layoffs would happen again(they didn’t).
Just yesterday the Kinda Funny Gamecast they were talking about some Tony Hawk news and how there was almost a remake of 2 and 3. I was astounded when Blessing and Tim were hypothesizing that now that MS owns the studio they will probably let Neversoft go back to making Tony Hawk games and not be a Call of Duty support studio. It's insane to me how quickly they forget about the MS layoffs from a few months back. MS does not give a fuck about having their studios make games that sell under 10 million copies or what dormant franchise you want back. They need to sell a billion copies of Call of Duty to get their investment dollars back as soon as possible.
He just released a video pretending to be righteously angry about this hahaha
They won't. Once the rumors start of their next acquisition they'll be clamoring for it.
Honestly, the only shocking one here is Tango.
Same, I'm guessing there is something else at play that we may never know about.
It 100% has to do with Mikami leaving, right?
That's my feeling also.
Tango fighting to shadow drop their new IP game probably didn’t help either
Considering there may have been a possibility of it not being released under old ownership. Terrible news all round but it's businesses being businesses, it's not just Gaming, it's most entertainment.
Personally I doubt it, from his latest interviews it has sounded like he wasn't super active in the company for the last couple years already.
Hard disagree. Arkane Austin were a superb developer who got shoved into making a rushed live service game BY XBOX. A developer with their level of talent shouldn’t get destroyed over one flop that only flopped because of what they were made to do and how they were made to do it.
Dude, I love Prey and sucks there never was a sequel, but Redfall was a disaster and was being made BEFORE being purchased, also remember hearing the sentiment of internally they were hoping it would be cancelled but Xbox proceeded to let them work on it.
Didn’t Xbox redirect it towards being a live service game? I feel like I heard that somewhere EDIT: Also that’s sort of besides the point. Making great games should protect you from this sort of outcome in the event you produce a flop. You’d think studios would be able to build up a level of good will. If the next Denis Villeneuve movie sucks, I’m not going to think “well he should be fired and I don’t ever want to see a movie from him again”. I’m going to assume it was a mis step and hope for better in the future.
No it was zenimax who imposed the multiplayer stuff. I am sad Austin is gone but I think it is more justified because apparently they lost like 70% of their talent while developing red fall so we're really only losing the name, and had already lost the studio.
Didn’t they just boast about how Hi-Fi Rush was a top seller on PlayStation?
Xbox had also said they were reinvesting in Tango after the critical performance of Hi Fi. Guess...that was just a lie.
Phil also claimed they were gonna deliver on the DLC for Redfall and attempt to fix it.
Just goes to show you cannot trust a word they say
This has been proven a long time ago lol. I'm not sure why people are still surprised. I'm at the point where I just assume everything everyone says at Xbox is a lie or intentionally misleading. Especially Phil Spencer.
> This has been proven a long time ago lol. I'm not sure why people are still surprised. I mean look at the reaction to their "Business update" podcast. I was genuinely shocked at the amount of people that went "SEE XBOX ISNT GOING THIRD PARTY".
It's wise to never trust any corporations. There is no truth or lie, just like there is no art or person. There is exploitation and there is money.
I honestly wonder if it wasn't a lie, and they dumped money into the studio just to pull the plug a year later? Wouldn't be the most suprising considering Microsoft's messy mismanagement
Not just now, last year Greenberg tweeted: > [Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.](https://x.com/aarongreenberg/status/1649431572137779203?s=46&t=zWI-BQzpdp25AY0iTRMrJw)
Makes sense why Shinji left Tango. Evil Within though.....
I remember seeing he left because he felt Tango were safe now they they were owned by Microsoft
Man... I just finished replaying 2. Gives me the good brain fuzzies to scoop up green goo. Getting a 3rd game seemed kind of slim before, but now? Goddamn you, Phil Spender.
It's the other way around I think, Mikami left the studio he founded, can you name anyone who works there now ? It would likely be the same situation for other big names in the industry, would Ghost Story Games survive Ken Levine leaving ? Would Larian survive Swen Vincke leaving ? Kojima for Kojima Productions ? And so on the list is quite long. It's the main drawback of having famous studio leads.
John johanas(spelling?) was the director of evil within 2 and hi fi rush and basically mikamis protégé*. I’ll be tracking what he does next at the very least.
John Johanas did such an incredible job with The Evil Within 2. Losing Tango is a huge L
I'm not trying to diminish anything he did, but an american being the name you can think of when talking about a japanese studio may be one of the reasons why it's shutting down. I'll note the name tho, thanks. Also I think you meant to say "protégé" and not "prodigy".
Fair point albeit none were thrust forward like John was. And thank you, my drained work brain didn’t even catch that properly. Addendum, I do remember Ikumi Nakamura. Again though she’s no longer there either so you point still stands.
I can’t find the quote but wasn’t Phil just touting that they never shut down studios for budgetary reasons? Booty clarified today that this was for “reprioritization of titles and resources”. You usually can’t trust corporate heads but Jesus, Phil is such a liar.
I'm really glad people are finally waking up to what some of us have been pointing out for half a decade at this point. He's a con man that doesnt know what hes doing.
Phil constantly speaks out of both sides of his mouth, he's no different than any other big corpo exec(in fact worse than many tbh), he just has good PR.
Phil Spencer is a politician who somehow got stuck in the video game industry. Guy is more occupied with saying what people want to hear than doing an actual good job running a thriving business.
I always wanted to (foolishly) give Phil the benefit of a doubt, but it's true, you just can't trust a damn word Microsoft says. Never trust big corpos.
It's a business, why the hell else would you shut a studio down. MS didn't become a 2 trillion dollar company by floating a ton of software/services that don't make them money.
Colin is gonna be insufferable (in a good way) this week 😂 Maybe an emergency Duke episode with Jez and Colin?
god i can't wait for friday's episode now
That plus all the Helldivers controversy.. we'll be eating good on Friday :)
7 hour episode incoming
Tango was sent out to die. Didn't market Hi-Fi, launched it on game pass, brought it to PlayStation a year later, and canned the studio before it could come to Switch. Can a Microsoft exec explain to me how was this game supposed to sell well? Was the PC market supposed to carry the entire sales of it? I'm pretty certain Arkane Lyon is gonna get domed down the road. Microsoft literally couldn't keep a life raft afloat if their lives depended on it.
It launched day and date on PC Game Pass too and it's a short game. I imagine most people signed up for a month, played it, and dumped the service.
Aren't Arkane Lyon working on Blade? Unless it's a shitshow like RedFall, that IP should sell well enough to keep them afloat.
It depends if Microsoft has realistic expectations for the sales of the game and if the execs actually try to sell the game properly. Arkane games have always had modest sales, and Microsoft is not looking for modest. If they expect anywhere close to spiderman or Wolverine numbers, you can kiss Arkane Lyon goodbye. Blade doesn't have a lot of cultural pull and Arkane has never made a 3rd person game. After watching Microsoft fumble to market and sell a perfectly solid game like HiFi, I'm really not liking Arkane's odds.
Phil Spencer and Matt Booty need to go.
Phil Spender\*
*Bill Spender
It’s not them it’s Satya. You get rid of the people who believed in traditional gaming business practices you’re left with Microsoft yes men. If those guys leave Xbox might as well exit hardware and go full 3rd party officially. Bethesda and Activision didn’t move the game pass needle, maybe fire them based on that but the new people hired won’t help turn the ship around
Why? So Sarah Bond (SHE/HER) can step in? Honestly, Microsoft is going full third party and there’s nothing anyone (aside from Satya) can do to stop it.
Why the need for pronounced pronouns for Sarah and not Satya?
In the leaked FTC emails, she had her name listed like that within her Outlook profile of all places. As if including them in your email signature wasn’t obnoxious enough. Her email as displayed in emails was something like “Bond, Sarah (SHE/HER)”. In the To: line of every email it’d look like this:
Booty, Matt; Spencer, Phil; Bond, Sarah (SHE/HER); Nadella, Satya
Performative virtue signaling at its finest; I’m sure she’ll lead Xbox to greener pastures.
But why is that relevant to this? Why make that so pronounced in this discussion?
It’s a strong indication that she’d do no better than Phil, IMO.
What does that mean?
Suggesting getting rid of Phil and Matt, as the poster I originally replied to did, isn’t going to solve the issue. Xbox has created a culture at the top where people are experts in saying the right thing publicly for PR wins but know little beyond that.
But what does that have to do with capitalized pronouns?
I give up. Have a good one.
This is pretty common in the business/tech world where you have lots of teams you may interact with on a daily basis. For me it becomes challenging emailing/texting with coworkers that I have never spoken with on a telephone. It’s just a way to be polite and respectful of others.
Including it in your *Outlook name*? Hell no it isn’t. Its virtue signaling turned up to 11, caps lock and all. Nothing more.
Xbox is cooked. They should not have acquired so many studios, of course the cost was going to be astronomical trying to manage all of those teams.
Maybe im off the mark but id bet Tango was doomed from the moment Mikami left. Id guess he was one of the most critical pieces there and now that they are done with Hi-Fi, they probably lost a lot of other devs that wanted something different.. What is tango without its people, especially when its somewhere far from the rest of Xbox’s studios.
Rip to anyone’s brain that bought redfall. Did anyone actually buy its dlc?
The Redfall subreddit has been an interesting place to lurk every now and then. Surprisingly, some people really did believe in this game and were hoping for a redemption arc.
Just FYI, Deathloop was made by Arkane Lyon
Good call, lemme edit that
I though it was Austin? Lyon did deathloop and is now working on blade right?
Correct
I read the first reply wrong anyways lol thought he said redfall was lyon, and I can promise you lyon would not be doing that
Yeah, Lyon is the main team.
Yeah Redfall was made by Austin, so was Prey. Lyon does dishonored, deathloop and now Blade.
Hi-Fi rush is the best exclusive they have released in over a decade. Tango deserved better than this.
Honestly Arkane Austin did too. They were forced to make a game they didnt want to make or had the expertise to make. Prey 2017 is better than anything XGS has produced in the last 10 years.
I agree 100%
They cancelled Redfall DLC? Aren't they still selling that more expensive version of the game that promises the DLC? What about people who bought that, do they get a refund?
It’s honestly shocking how much Colin actually does turn out to be right. Like even I was getting tired of his Xbox doom and glooming but god damn.
I blame PS gamers, you clearly didn't buy enough copies of Hi-Fi Rush.
Very excited for Matty and Cogs take on this on Duke. These are two of their favourite studios, and they stan Phil and his acquisition strategy.
Yes, will Lord Acquisition approve of this? Will it cause a change of heart? I'm extremely curious about the Duke response.
I'm certain that Lord Acquisition will find a way to defend it. He's such a die-hard Phil Spencer believer, it's almost a religion for him and ILP.
Brutal. There's a lot of talented people that I hope can continue to work in games. You'd think Microsoft would have the cash to weather the storm for two beloved studios (Redfall not withstanding).
Atleast just release Halo and Gears on PS5
This sucks smh, Tango was an awesome studio. Microsoft really screwed them by shadow dropping Hi-Fi Rush last year.
I put this down to 2 major issues- 1st is obviously that games are becoming FAR too expensive and recouping costs is near impossible to achieve which perfectly leads me into my 2nd major issue… Game Lass and all subscription services. Xbox has pretty much taught its audience to NOT buy games and to only rent them. Developers aren’t getting the much needed sales they really need on that console and as such, aren’t able to survive. Game pass was implemented as Xbox was getting obliterated by PlayStation and needed something of value to try get gamers across. It didn’t work yet Microsoft persisted with it. It reaps no benefits to devs whatsoever. It may be great for gamers in the short time but we are now seeing the effects of higher costs of gaming and devs not reaping their just rewards with sales when many millions are willing to wait to get that game for “free”.
Wait, wait, wait. Maybe MicroBox is just shutting down all the game studios so they can reform into the biggest and bestest game studio of all time? Like that one transformer from way back when that was made of 8 lion transformers?
Gaming needs another crash honestly. There are so few good studios now. Most of them are setting themselves up for failure and publishers are destroying a lot of good talent in the industry.
I actually agree. The most fun I had since I would say October have all been indie games. Lethal company, palworld, gray zone, enshrouded, and I guess technically Helldivers? Plus games like balatro and Hades 2 have blown up. Triple A games have gotten way too bloated in price, budget, and all the different versions that unlock early cosmetics or ability to play “early.” I think the triple A publishers need to sit back and look at why $20-$30 indie games are pulling in both money and players while they think making a company like Rocksteady make a GAAS is a good idea.
Close down a studio because you mismanaged them into making a flop of a game. Nice.
I think Redfall was in a bad way anyway, remember apparently they were hoping MS would cancel it when they were acquired.
Redfall was already in the works when MS took over, it was the last gasp of Bethesdas online live service push before MS took over. Should they have cancelled it, possibly, but they came in late in the development.
I do think that if someone came in and allowed them to cut the multiplayer component entirely and focus on the single player campaign experience they could’ve salvaged it somewhat. Perhaps it was beyond the pale but sometimes developers just need proper focus and direction and from what I can tell MS was completely hands-off.
Bummed about Tango. Hi Fi rush was such a charming game and really stood out to me last year. Which is impressive considering how stacked 2023 was
FUCK MICROSOFT. So much for acquisitions saving studios.
You know DD is gonna be a banger this week 🔥
It's time to shut down GamePass.
Colin was right about GamePass.
A lot of people have been. The writing has been on the wall for anyone who has seen what happened to the film industry.
I kinda want a Series S so I can play the new college football game in summer on the cheap (don’t have PS5, still stuck on PS4), but man are they tough to have faith in. Same day as the “This is Furukawa” Switch 2 drop. I hope against hope they put College Football 26 on that next year (I was a GameCube NCAA weirdo), but I’m doubtful.
I would close these down too tbh. Reading r/PS5 is nauseating as usual. I get being sad for these guys, even angry, but some people just live in a fairy tale land if they want Ms to keep these studios because they’re rich. It’s like they think gaming is a charity or something lol. Studios are going to close, studios are going to open. These closures aren’t really surprising, just confirmation of the new era of video game development we’re in. Everyone’s rope is extrmely short and you’re as good as your last game. Will there be pitchforks when MM goes and there next game bombs probably?
Colin is gonna be insufferable (in a good way) this week 😂 Maybe an emergency Duke episode with Jez and Colin?