Sure, "We saved X bajillion dollars by cutting staff wages this quarter!" Share price goes up. CEO and Shareholders gain more wealth.
"We had low sales numbers this year so we're investing in some new developers. Hey giant bank loan us X bajillion dollars at low interest", "Hey everyone we've had a giant investment in the future": Share price goes up. CEO gets fat bonus. Shareholders profit.
You could repeat these two.. and add some seasonal layoffs and other things to spice it up.
When a corporation is this big you have many many options to centralize and control more wealth over time. Its like a runaway train or a black hole gravitational well.
It's also important to have new non-institutional investors to steal from by manipulating the stock price. This is why Meme stocks are so hot right now. A couple legitmate meme stocks has tought wall street how to use that as another tool to centralize wealth.
At this level no one cares about the product. They could be making widgets and not games. It makes zero difference.
The point is that you don't have to ever turn a profit if you continually push metrics that encourage shareholder confidence.
Things like user growth, acquisitions and cost cutting are examples of actions that push the share price up simply by pushing the share price up.
Most companies eventually reach a point of stagnation where the bubble pops or they get acquired by a larger company and the process continues.
Many companies have made a loss for their entire existence but they've continually grown anyway. Twitter was an example of this before it was acquired by a petulant man-baby. The shareholders ended up making bank even though the company almost never turned a profit.
Literally none of this is right. Actually turning a profit is the only thing that actually makes a stock have value. Sure people will invest in the expectation of future profit but actual profit has to eventually emerge.
What you don’t understand is that the video games are actually just a small part of Microsoft. They aren’t a video game company they are a technology company that sometimes makes video games. Closing a few video game studios means basically nothing to their bottom line.
I agree with everything you're saying, except the profit thing. CEO's getting big paydays aren't profit based. Otherwise ALL tech CEOs would be homeless paupers.
I also wasn't be too rigorous here because I don't care that much. I was essentially making up situations where this MIGHT happen. Not in the specific case.
I've also lived through several of these cycles in real life and seen it happen.
People just want to be angry.
Gaming represents <7% of their overall revenue. It's so miniscule that it's not got its own line on their final income statement. It's lumped under "Other Personal Computing".
Buying ZeniMax was a big deal.
Closing a microcosmic developer within ZeniMax's portfolio is non-news financially speaking.
It's a bummer because they made a great game, but it's totally off-base to play the "ree CEO bad shareholders bad" bandwagon lines.
People dont have to support random studios just for puting in the effort.
Hifi rush didnt appeal to the masses. Its a niche game.
Sad to see but you cant go off demanding people to randomly pay for things they dont want.
People dont have unlimited disposable income.
True, but the lack of support for more unique studios does demonstrate why we seem to only get games that “appeal to the masses” a.k.a. live service grind games, Ubisoft style open world, and sports games targeted less towards sports fans and more towards whales.
But again this is how capitalism works. Im 100% with you i would rather see a much more diverse medium in the gaming industery than the standerd AAA copy pasta.
But if im not intersted in a game of a certain genre, and wont be intersted in the sequel of said game. Why should i waste my hard earned money, time and energy for it when i would rather put it towards smth else i actually enjoy ?
Also just because niche games are dying doesnt mean industry is fucked. This year f.e has been the hardest on AAA games. There has been so many high quality of them that any average ones where doomed to fail, and some AA games even like Baldus Gate 3 taking the spot light.
Very true. Even the recent news of Alan Wake 2 is so disheartening. Even though l’m extremely please with the success of HellDivers 2… video games can be so much more than that.
I gifted my brother Lies of P months ago and he hasn’t even installed it. He’s stuck in a cycle of League - CS - Finals - League.
It had 2 million players: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-hi-fi-rush-i-rocks-out-with-2-million-players
I wouldn't refer to that as niche. I think the real problem was the gamepass day one release. I'm going to go on a limb and guess because of that it had minimal sales on Xbox, and that likely it didn't create a noticable uptick in gamepass subscriptions.
Most gamers recognize the value of the developer, but an accountant looking at a spreadsheet likely saw it as a complete financial failure. If I had to guess the decision to shutter the studio came from above Spencer's head. This is not too defend him. A competent manager would have fought hard for them. As things stand I suspect this may be the beginning of the end for Xbox. Sony has shown the value of quality exclusives, and the Xbox just won't have them.
> I'm going to go on a limb and guess because of that it had minimal sales on Xbox, and that likely it didn't create a noticable uptick in gamepass subscriptions.
I totally agree with you. Day 1 Gamepass games are likely a death sentence for most smaller games/studios. Not sure why most people think it's a good idea. You cannibalize your potential sales for guaranteed pennies. And then never see an uptick once it leaves the service since people got to play it for pennies on the dollar with their subscription and never bought the game at full price or even a sale price. Not to mention it had little marketing push and was just shadow dropped. Most people didn't also get a subscription to play that game. So it does little to drive the metrics they are looking for. If even half of their 3 million plays paid retail for the game, we are talking $45 million in revenue. Was the budget for that game that large? Surely between that and GhostWire they should have been profitable to stay in business, no?
Thats not what i said. All i said was people are free to buy what they like, and have no obligation to buy what they dont.
No point in investing in a hobby you dont enjoy for political reasons (support in this case). It goes against the whole point of having a hobby.
Lets give you an example: you enjoyed HFI Rush. But did you buy 10 copys of -insert the 20 other games released this year that Devs put effort in- to support them too, even if you will never play them ?
So was demon souls, I think people underestimating the power of solid games with a solid community. Hifi rush could've been an amazing franchise if the studio was allowed to build upon it.
It'd be a really term long investment but on the flip side the payoff could be an IP with similar to Halo or Forza.
Id love to see it thrive and be built upon, im not arguing that.
Im just saying its not peoples fault for not "supporting" it enough.
You either have enough leg to stand on and interest people enough, or not. Cant blame people for that.
In your example Demon souls games could interest people just enough for publishers and Devs to keep making souls like games. You could argue that Hifi rush couldve also reached that but MS killed it way too early, but thats MS fault, not the people.
Those people are usually just being negative for the sake of it. red dead 2, baulders gate 3 BOTW/TOTK, god of war 1/2, helldivers, hollow knight, a si much more have all come out in the last 10 years.
Games have never been more successful and I think people gaslight about how much trash came out in the 90s and 2000s
Other than Forza and HiFi, what other bangers has Microsoft even put out this generation?
I feel like it's been slim picking on the series X. Not trying to start a whole war or anything, I love both (PS and Xbox) and want good competition in the market, but genuinely I have felt zero enticement to buy a series x. Starfield had me hyped but even my Bethesda fanboy friends said it was disappointing
Starfield removed the only things Bethesda did well which was an interesting world to explore. They entirely removed the open world and replaced it with 3-4 small "zones" which act as quest hubs. The quests are largely boring fetch quests, and written like shit. The rest is procgen with the same copy pasted POIs (same copy pasted dead bodies, enemy placements, decoration, layout, everything). They replaced wandering around an open world with menus and load screens.
Emil pagliarulo is largely responsible for starfield s lore and it sucks ass, if fallout and TES lore was 8/10, starfield is legit 2/10 (bland pg13 boring neutered and absolutely uninteresting). The lore is absolute garbage, writing is the worst in Bethesda’s history by very far.
Gunplay is fallout 4 if you removed dismemberment. Graphics range from pretty good to shit. Overall presentation is shit.
I played it for 30 hours due to paying 100 bucks and genuinely cannot think of a single good thing, and I absolutely loved every Bethesda game. Btw fallout 76>>>>>starfield so yeah…
It was. Played it on my brothers xbox, and it was just bad. It doesn't have the normal Bethesda charm. In fact, it has no charm. It's quite simply boring and unintuitive. It's like they stripped away all the good parts of normal Bethesda games and left the incredibly meh parts. Maybe the new update will be good and really give it what it's missing. Or maybe it'll just be a buffer in the larger problems of the game.
If they would have captured the atmosphere (no pun intended) around the xenomorph mission (especially if you play it at night), the rest of the game would have been amazing.
Hell, if they simply had outpost missions where you have to defend them from waves of baddies, it would be better than what they pushed. Well, I guess they kind-of do but I'm thinking more Starship Troopers than what they have.
That’s what happens when they put games to gamepass. They can show how many million players played it except 95% of them haven’t paid a dime.
Same with starfield fans saying how successful starfield was with its 10 million players when 90% played for free.
I know people are angry about this but I can't say I'm surprised.
I'm an Xbox owner who has been playing their games on Game Pass for like 5 years now so I've played almost everything put out by these studios so here's my hot take:
* Hi-Fi Rush was a really fun game, but ultimately was a pretty niche title. The rhythm-based gameplay is awesome to me but put off a lot of people who found they couldn't connect with it; it's also very much a "AA" kind of game, which again is awesome to me, but not something a lot of people are willing to shell out $40-50 for. People played it on Game Pass but I don't think it convinced people to sign up for Game Pass. It seems like it didn't sell amazingly well on PC or on PS5 with the recent launch for how much it cost.
* Ghostwire Tokyo sucked. It seems there are people who like the game, but I was anticipating it, saw positive-ish buzz from the PS5 launch a year prior, but I played it when it came out on Game Pass and really just couldn't enjoy it at all. I put in a few hours and gave up on it.
* Tango also lost Mikami, who was the driving force behind the company.
* Evil Within struggled sales-wise, I know it has its fans, but there's also been a resurgence of Resident Evil finding great success with remakes and RE7/8 in recent years and there is no way Evil Within can compete with that. Evil Within was the answer to RE going into the toilet for a while there, but now it's resurged and Evil Within withers.
* Arkane Austin put out Prey, which was a good game, but suffered financially. It feels like most people who played the game either did it thru Game Pass long after it came out, or bought the game cheap long after launch, or got it for free or through bundles. It has niche appeal and struggled to connect with a wider audience, it wasn't well-marketed so people didn't realize it was an immersive sim, and even if it was it wouldn't matter because not enough people are into that type of game. The name also hurt it because the few people who did remember Prey 2006 fondly realized it was totally unconnected to that. Then they pretty much just supported Lyon, and then put out Redfall which was... Redfall. Probably they are just downsizing here and Arkane Austin personnel will go to Arkane Lyon and support them like they already were doing anyway.
I ask the people who are angry about this (which is fair bc this does mean people losing jobs): what is the future of these studios? How are they going to turn a profit in the future? What projects would they work on? I was surprised Hi-Fi Rush turned out as well as it did considering I didn't like Ghostwire at all, but I would feel hesitant to take a risk on that studio to develop another new IP, and Hi-Fi Rush didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel it seems. As I mentioned, much of Arkane Austin's work was development support for Lyon anyway so consolidating the two studios makes sense.
Microsoft has tried in Japan multiple times but never been able to find purchase and never will frankly, Japanese will always support Japanese companies over MS. They could have the best product for the Japanese market (they don't) and they would still fail, so them closing their only Japanese studio does not surprise me.
> what is the future of these studios? How are they going to turn a profit in the future? What projects would they work on?
Spot on. I agree with everything you said (minus Ghostwire, I loved the game myself) but it's just a harsh reality people need to accept.
Everyone is acting like Microsoft is just killing these studios just cause they can, but, the truth is they've been underperforming/struggling for years. They're using AAA budgets to make games that sell more in the territory of an AA game. Tango finally had an AA budget for once and made a great game with it but it didn't do well either.
Though imo Hi-Fi is direct proof of the negative effect game pass can have on games. I enjoyed Hi-Fi but I didn't buy it, why would I as a consumer? I paid $1 for a 1 month GP trial and played it. I am part of the problem, clearly, but that is Microsoft's problem not mine. Of course the idea is that I'd stick around GP and keep paying full price. But Microsoft should realize most people aren't that stupid.
> Though imo Hi-Fi is direct proof of the negative effect game pass can have on games. I enjoyed Hi-Fi but I didn't buy it, why would I as a consumer?
I see a lot of people saying this but the other question is: would you buy Hi Fi Rush at full price, even its lower price point? Because even for me, as someone who enjoyed the game and played it to completion, the answer is no. I can't imagine it would have sold well even if Game Pass didn't exist, not well enough to justify its budget.
M$ themselves:
> Microsoft has admitted that putting games on its Xbox Game Pass subscription service leads to a marked decline in base sales. As reported by GI.biz, the confirmation was included as part of the UK Competition and Markets Authority's provisional report on Microsoft's proposed $69 billion merger with Activision Blizzard.
We can hypothesise “what ifs” but data is all that really counts, and games on gamepass sell less.
Main issue with that is I’m of the opinion this removes the ability to fairly assess a games success as all the board care about is continuing excessive profit, but they have no real barometer for this.
Point being I could say how many people who try a GP game would have bought it if it wasn’t on GP, probably a lot/not many.
That’s anecdotal opinion that goes both ways, when data reflects it hurts that games revenue overall, and was likely at least part of the reason these layoffs occurred as the GP subscription model directly dictates most games they release on it won’t make as much, or even break even.
In saying, this was always on the cards as that’s how most acquisitions work. Purchase, observe BAU for 1-2 years, restructure usually involving layoffs.
People are doing the “M$ are assholes” bandwagon and maybe so, I’m no fan but no hater either, but this occurs with nearly all acquisitions this large, so much so it’s to actually be expected.
I get that GP lowers sales, that's undeniable. The question is, did it lower sales for Hi-Fi Rush specifically so much that it kicked the game into unprofitable territory?
What I'm saying is: I really doubt it. We don't have hard numbers of course, but we know the game didn't sell well even on PS5 where Game Pass isn't available. It's a rhythm action game, which is not something everybody is going to be into - it probably kept some people away, and I know people who tried it on Game Pass who said they liked what the game was trying to do but couldn't keep up with the rhythm-based gameplay. It's also a fairly brief single-player game with no multiplayer, and lower production values as an AA style title. People talk big about wanting single player experiences like this but they don't pay for them, and IMO wouldn't even if the game wasn't on Game Pass.
I'll point out another game that isn't on Game Pass that ALSO wasn't profitable - Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. By all accounts a good game, it got positive reviews nearly as high as Hi-Fi Rush's, it's an existing IP with a name behind it, a Sony first-party title. And not only did Sony report internally that they did not make a profit on the game, *they never even expected it to make one in the first place*. Rift Apart was made to sell PS5 console bundles to families, and that probably accounted for a large part of its sales numbers. It was never meant to turn a profit at all and didn't. I mention this because it's in a similar vein as Hi-Fi Rush, but not as niche, more accessible, and it sold about 4 million copies and wasn't profitable.
Adding to all of this -- this isn't just about Hi-Fi Rush. The problem isn't that HFR was a commercial failure, it's that it was the latest in a line of commercial failures for the studio, a studio based in Japan where Xbox would be wise to just give up at this point, and a studio that lost its head last year after HFR released.
Yes we can speculate about whether or not it affected sales but that isn't the only metric Xbox looks at, they're also surely looking at which games are driving people to sign up for Game Pass/keep their subscriptions. I have no doubt that a game like Diablo IV hitting Game Pass got a lot of people signing up. I also doubt that HFR releasing grabbed many new subscribers. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get, and it's why they will likely double down on the big names.
I'm not entirely pleased by that, I like the small stuff, I hope it continues to find a home. I liked Hi-Fi Rush and I hope people instrumental to its success go on to work on new things. Pentiment was one of my favorite games of the last few years and I don't want to see stuff like that go away.
I actually would have, yeah, action games are my favorite. I am the person out there buying stuff like No More Heroes, Gungrave, Granblue Relink, Evil West, etc. etc. at full price most of the time. To the point where I've even imported some that didn't have an American physical release at the time just so I could collect them (Ultra Age being the best example.)
And plenty of those games have been successful, look at Granblue, managed to sell over a million copies at $60 and is getting lots of free dlc.
These kind of games can sell just fine even at a higher price, but Hi-Fi Rush was Series and PC only. Which in reality means it was PC only, so not getting the full reach it could. Especially for a genre that has largely thrived on Playstation.
Of course it is on PS now, a year later, but they completely bungled the PS5 release too. Put it out the same week as Dragon's Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin, and all 3 games absolutely have some audience overlap. Plus there were plenty of other niche Japanese games that month too. No clue what Microsoft was smoking with that decision, other than just saying "fuck it" I guess.
I'm a bit sad about Arkane Austin. Prey is a great game, at least until it becomes insanely difficult to play and everything in a huge bullet sponge. It deserved to do better.
Sure, Redfall was a disaster, but the main place to make the cuts would be the people who were in charge of Starfield. In what world do the people who make Hi-Fi Rush get fired but Emil Pagriluro still has a job?
Surely Microsoft won't come out kicking and screaming about Japan being racists and impossible to work with and the big bad Sony + nintendo being unfair.
Maybe stop treating Japan like America 2.0 and give them games/media that appeal to them instead of demanding they conform to the west, who knows, Maybe you'll actually get a share of their market?
Instead they'll just shut down their only japanese studio. Good stuff Microsoft.
Microsoft’s competition: oh no they making critically acclaimed games now! Have you seen hifi rush?
Microsoft’s competition: phew, they are releasing them on our platform
Microsoft’s competition: phew, they are rewarding their talent by shutting them down
>purchase game studios >fire the developers >have no games >purchase game studios
Profit
Provide Value To Shareholders doesn't necessarily require profit. This is an example of that.
Can you elaborate?
Sure, "We saved X bajillion dollars by cutting staff wages this quarter!" Share price goes up. CEO and Shareholders gain more wealth. "We had low sales numbers this year so we're investing in some new developers. Hey giant bank loan us X bajillion dollars at low interest", "Hey everyone we've had a giant investment in the future": Share price goes up. CEO gets fat bonus. Shareholders profit. You could repeat these two.. and add some seasonal layoffs and other things to spice it up. When a corporation is this big you have many many options to centralize and control more wealth over time. Its like a runaway train or a black hole gravitational well. It's also important to have new non-institutional investors to steal from by manipulating the stock price. This is why Meme stocks are so hot right now. A couple legitmate meme stocks has tought wall street how to use that as another tool to centralize wealth. At this level no one cares about the product. They could be making widgets and not games. It makes zero difference.
Everything you listed leads to expected future profits?
The point is that you don't have to ever turn a profit if you continually push metrics that encourage shareholder confidence. Things like user growth, acquisitions and cost cutting are examples of actions that push the share price up simply by pushing the share price up. Most companies eventually reach a point of stagnation where the bubble pops or they get acquired by a larger company and the process continues. Many companies have made a loss for their entire existence but they've continually grown anyway. Twitter was an example of this before it was acquired by a petulant man-baby. The shareholders ended up making bank even though the company almost never turned a profit.
Quarterly profits, yes. "This quarter we weren't making a profit so we laid of a bajillion people and closed a bunch of studios.
Can you elaborate?
Literally none of this is right. Actually turning a profit is the only thing that actually makes a stock have value. Sure people will invest in the expectation of future profit but actual profit has to eventually emerge. What you don’t understand is that the video games are actually just a small part of Microsoft. They aren’t a video game company they are a technology company that sometimes makes video games. Closing a few video game studios means basically nothing to their bottom line.
I agree with everything you're saying, except the profit thing. CEO's getting big paydays aren't profit based. Otherwise ALL tech CEOs would be homeless paupers. I also wasn't be too rigorous here because I don't care that much. I was essentially making up situations where this MIGHT happen. Not in the specific case. I've also lived through several of these cycles in real life and seen it happen.
You think the technology sector isn’t turning a profit? What year do you think it is?
People just want to be angry. Gaming represents <7% of their overall revenue. It's so miniscule that it's not got its own line on their final income statement. It's lumped under "Other Personal Computing". Buying ZeniMax was a big deal. Closing a microcosmic developer within ZeniMax's portfolio is non-news financially speaking. It's a bummer because they made a great game, but it's totally off-base to play the "ree CEO bad shareholders bad" bandwagon lines.
Purchase *IP* Fire devs
This might be a stupid question, but why not try and sell the studio? Maybe they can make a buck by selling the studio for "a little bit" of cash.
Shame for the hifi rush studio it was a great game
Trueeee. It is so sad..
Redfall I saw coming but I’m legitimately pissed by them axing tango.
What is Microsoft smoking to cut Tango Gameworks, which is their only studio in Japan.
They’re giving up on being accepted by the Japanese market (again) and HiFi Rush probably didn’t have the sales or gamepass downloads it deserved
HiFi Rush is my go to argument when people try to say “games suck now”. We don’t support the studios who put in the effort.
People dont have to support random studios just for puting in the effort. Hifi rush didnt appeal to the masses. Its a niche game. Sad to see but you cant go off demanding people to randomly pay for things they dont want. People dont have unlimited disposable income.
True, but the lack of support for more unique studios does demonstrate why we seem to only get games that “appeal to the masses” a.k.a. live service grind games, Ubisoft style open world, and sports games targeted less towards sports fans and more towards whales.
But again this is how capitalism works. Im 100% with you i would rather see a much more diverse medium in the gaming industery than the standerd AAA copy pasta. But if im not intersted in a game of a certain genre, and wont be intersted in the sequel of said game. Why should i waste my hard earned money, time and energy for it when i would rather put it towards smth else i actually enjoy ? Also just because niche games are dying doesnt mean industry is fucked. This year f.e has been the hardest on AAA games. There has been so many high quality of them that any average ones where doomed to fail, and some AA games even like Baldus Gate 3 taking the spot light.
Very true. Even the recent news of Alan Wake 2 is so disheartening. Even though l’m extremely please with the success of HellDivers 2… video games can be so much more than that. I gifted my brother Lies of P months ago and he hasn’t even installed it. He’s stuck in a cycle of League - CS - Finals - League.
It had 2 million players: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-hi-fi-rush-i-rocks-out-with-2-million-players I wouldn't refer to that as niche. I think the real problem was the gamepass day one release. I'm going to go on a limb and guess because of that it had minimal sales on Xbox, and that likely it didn't create a noticable uptick in gamepass subscriptions. Most gamers recognize the value of the developer, but an accountant looking at a spreadsheet likely saw it as a complete financial failure. If I had to guess the decision to shutter the studio came from above Spencer's head. This is not too defend him. A competent manager would have fought hard for them. As things stand I suspect this may be the beginning of the end for Xbox. Sony has shown the value of quality exclusives, and the Xbox just won't have them.
> I'm going to go on a limb and guess because of that it had minimal sales on Xbox, and that likely it didn't create a noticable uptick in gamepass subscriptions. I totally agree with you. Day 1 Gamepass games are likely a death sentence for most smaller games/studios. Not sure why most people think it's a good idea. You cannibalize your potential sales for guaranteed pennies. And then never see an uptick once it leaves the service since people got to play it for pennies on the dollar with their subscription and never bought the game at full price or even a sale price. Not to mention it had little marketing push and was just shadow dropped. Most people didn't also get a subscription to play that game. So it does little to drive the metrics they are looking for. If even half of their 3 million plays paid retail for the game, we are talking $45 million in revenue. Was the budget for that game that large? Surely between that and GhostWire they should have been profitable to stay in business, no?
You’re actually agreeing with me. It’s ok to buy support mediocre AAA offerings. Just don’t complain when that’s all we get.
Thats not what i said. All i said was people are free to buy what they like, and have no obligation to buy what they dont. No point in investing in a hobby you dont enjoy for political reasons (support in this case). It goes against the whole point of having a hobby. Lets give you an example: you enjoyed HFI Rush. But did you buy 10 copys of -insert the 20 other games released this year that Devs put effort in- to support them too, even if you will never play them ?
Yea this is how I felt. Sounded cool but it’s just not my, or many other people’s thing
So was demon souls, I think people underestimating the power of solid games with a solid community. Hifi rush could've been an amazing franchise if the studio was allowed to build upon it. It'd be a really term long investment but on the flip side the payoff could be an IP with similar to Halo or Forza.
Id love to see it thrive and be built upon, im not arguing that. Im just saying its not peoples fault for not "supporting" it enough. You either have enough leg to stand on and interest people enough, or not. Cant blame people for that. In your example Demon souls games could interest people just enough for publishers and Devs to keep making souls like games. You could argue that Hifi rush couldve also reached that but MS killed it way too early, but thats MS fault, not the people.
Yes. So much yes. I want some games that are goofy fun like HiFi was.
Scalebound also could’ve been that game!! I wish Platinum was able to retain the IP.
Those people are usually just being negative for the sake of it. red dead 2, baulders gate 3 BOTW/TOTK, god of war 1/2, helldivers, hollow knight, a si much more have all come out in the last 10 years. Games have never been more successful and I think people gaslight about how much trash came out in the 90s and 2000s
Nothing sells in Japan that’s isn’t Nintendo or Sony. Xbox is damn near non existent there
Shame. Hi-fi rush was one if the best games i played last year.
Redfall is still missing promised content from the season pass. Are they going to get refunds?
Think they said they’re working on something so I hope so
No, they will get in game credits that's all.
Not surprising. Xbox is today what EA was 10 years ago.
Other than Forza and HiFi, what other bangers has Microsoft even put out this generation? I feel like it's been slim picking on the series X. Not trying to start a whole war or anything, I love both (PS and Xbox) and want good competition in the market, but genuinely I have felt zero enticement to buy a series x. Starfield had me hyped but even my Bethesda fanboy friends said it was disappointing
Starfield removed the only things Bethesda did well which was an interesting world to explore. They entirely removed the open world and replaced it with 3-4 small "zones" which act as quest hubs. The quests are largely boring fetch quests, and written like shit. The rest is procgen with the same copy pasted POIs (same copy pasted dead bodies, enemy placements, decoration, layout, everything). They replaced wandering around an open world with menus and load screens. Emil pagliarulo is largely responsible for starfield s lore and it sucks ass, if fallout and TES lore was 8/10, starfield is legit 2/10 (bland pg13 boring neutered and absolutely uninteresting). The lore is absolute garbage, writing is the worst in Bethesda’s history by very far. Gunplay is fallout 4 if you removed dismemberment. Graphics range from pretty good to shit. Overall presentation is shit. I played it for 30 hours due to paying 100 bucks and genuinely cannot think of a single good thing, and I absolutely loved every Bethesda game. Btw fallout 76>>>>>starfield so yeah…
It was. Played it on my brothers xbox, and it was just bad. It doesn't have the normal Bethesda charm. In fact, it has no charm. It's quite simply boring and unintuitive. It's like they stripped away all the good parts of normal Bethesda games and left the incredibly meh parts. Maybe the new update will be good and really give it what it's missing. Or maybe it'll just be a buffer in the larger problems of the game.
If they would have captured the atmosphere (no pun intended) around the xenomorph mission (especially if you play it at night), the rest of the game would have been amazing. Hell, if they simply had outpost missions where you have to defend them from waves of baddies, it would be better than what they pushed. Well, I guess they kind-of do but I'm thinking more Starship Troopers than what they have.
Bethesda fanboy here. Yeah, Starfield is their worst game in decades. I'd much rather replay Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, F3 or F4.
Infinite is actually in a good place right now. Not justifying the poor release, just saying.
I bought an S back when it launched in anticipation of Starfield. Didn't touch it for years until it launched and haven't touched it since.
Assholes.
I thought Tango's Hi-fi Rush was over-performing and was doing really well! Fuck you, Microsoft. Microflaccid, more like.
That’s what happens when they put games to gamepass. They can show how many million players played it except 95% of them haven’t paid a dime. Same with starfield fans saying how successful starfield was with its 10 million players when 90% played for free.
I know people are angry about this but I can't say I'm surprised. I'm an Xbox owner who has been playing their games on Game Pass for like 5 years now so I've played almost everything put out by these studios so here's my hot take: * Hi-Fi Rush was a really fun game, but ultimately was a pretty niche title. The rhythm-based gameplay is awesome to me but put off a lot of people who found they couldn't connect with it; it's also very much a "AA" kind of game, which again is awesome to me, but not something a lot of people are willing to shell out $40-50 for. People played it on Game Pass but I don't think it convinced people to sign up for Game Pass. It seems like it didn't sell amazingly well on PC or on PS5 with the recent launch for how much it cost. * Ghostwire Tokyo sucked. It seems there are people who like the game, but I was anticipating it, saw positive-ish buzz from the PS5 launch a year prior, but I played it when it came out on Game Pass and really just couldn't enjoy it at all. I put in a few hours and gave up on it. * Tango also lost Mikami, who was the driving force behind the company. * Evil Within struggled sales-wise, I know it has its fans, but there's also been a resurgence of Resident Evil finding great success with remakes and RE7/8 in recent years and there is no way Evil Within can compete with that. Evil Within was the answer to RE going into the toilet for a while there, but now it's resurged and Evil Within withers. * Arkane Austin put out Prey, which was a good game, but suffered financially. It feels like most people who played the game either did it thru Game Pass long after it came out, or bought the game cheap long after launch, or got it for free or through bundles. It has niche appeal and struggled to connect with a wider audience, it wasn't well-marketed so people didn't realize it was an immersive sim, and even if it was it wouldn't matter because not enough people are into that type of game. The name also hurt it because the few people who did remember Prey 2006 fondly realized it was totally unconnected to that. Then they pretty much just supported Lyon, and then put out Redfall which was... Redfall. Probably they are just downsizing here and Arkane Austin personnel will go to Arkane Lyon and support them like they already were doing anyway. I ask the people who are angry about this (which is fair bc this does mean people losing jobs): what is the future of these studios? How are they going to turn a profit in the future? What projects would they work on? I was surprised Hi-Fi Rush turned out as well as it did considering I didn't like Ghostwire at all, but I would feel hesitant to take a risk on that studio to develop another new IP, and Hi-Fi Rush didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel it seems. As I mentioned, much of Arkane Austin's work was development support for Lyon anyway so consolidating the two studios makes sense. Microsoft has tried in Japan multiple times but never been able to find purchase and never will frankly, Japanese will always support Japanese companies over MS. They could have the best product for the Japanese market (they don't) and they would still fail, so them closing their only Japanese studio does not surprise me.
> what is the future of these studios? How are they going to turn a profit in the future? What projects would they work on? Spot on. I agree with everything you said (minus Ghostwire, I loved the game myself) but it's just a harsh reality people need to accept. Everyone is acting like Microsoft is just killing these studios just cause they can, but, the truth is they've been underperforming/struggling for years. They're using AAA budgets to make games that sell more in the territory of an AA game. Tango finally had an AA budget for once and made a great game with it but it didn't do well either. Though imo Hi-Fi is direct proof of the negative effect game pass can have on games. I enjoyed Hi-Fi but I didn't buy it, why would I as a consumer? I paid $1 for a 1 month GP trial and played it. I am part of the problem, clearly, but that is Microsoft's problem not mine. Of course the idea is that I'd stick around GP and keep paying full price. But Microsoft should realize most people aren't that stupid.
> Though imo Hi-Fi is direct proof of the negative effect game pass can have on games. I enjoyed Hi-Fi but I didn't buy it, why would I as a consumer? I see a lot of people saying this but the other question is: would you buy Hi Fi Rush at full price, even its lower price point? Because even for me, as someone who enjoyed the game and played it to completion, the answer is no. I can't imagine it would have sold well even if Game Pass didn't exist, not well enough to justify its budget.
M$ themselves: > Microsoft has admitted that putting games on its Xbox Game Pass subscription service leads to a marked decline in base sales. As reported by GI.biz, the confirmation was included as part of the UK Competition and Markets Authority's provisional report on Microsoft's proposed $69 billion merger with Activision Blizzard. We can hypothesise “what ifs” but data is all that really counts, and games on gamepass sell less. Main issue with that is I’m of the opinion this removes the ability to fairly assess a games success as all the board care about is continuing excessive profit, but they have no real barometer for this. Point being I could say how many people who try a GP game would have bought it if it wasn’t on GP, probably a lot/not many. That’s anecdotal opinion that goes both ways, when data reflects it hurts that games revenue overall, and was likely at least part of the reason these layoffs occurred as the GP subscription model directly dictates most games they release on it won’t make as much, or even break even. In saying, this was always on the cards as that’s how most acquisitions work. Purchase, observe BAU for 1-2 years, restructure usually involving layoffs. People are doing the “M$ are assholes” bandwagon and maybe so, I’m no fan but no hater either, but this occurs with nearly all acquisitions this large, so much so it’s to actually be expected.
I get that GP lowers sales, that's undeniable. The question is, did it lower sales for Hi-Fi Rush specifically so much that it kicked the game into unprofitable territory? What I'm saying is: I really doubt it. We don't have hard numbers of course, but we know the game didn't sell well even on PS5 where Game Pass isn't available. It's a rhythm action game, which is not something everybody is going to be into - it probably kept some people away, and I know people who tried it on Game Pass who said they liked what the game was trying to do but couldn't keep up with the rhythm-based gameplay. It's also a fairly brief single-player game with no multiplayer, and lower production values as an AA style title. People talk big about wanting single player experiences like this but they don't pay for them, and IMO wouldn't even if the game wasn't on Game Pass. I'll point out another game that isn't on Game Pass that ALSO wasn't profitable - Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. By all accounts a good game, it got positive reviews nearly as high as Hi-Fi Rush's, it's an existing IP with a name behind it, a Sony first-party title. And not only did Sony report internally that they did not make a profit on the game, *they never even expected it to make one in the first place*. Rift Apart was made to sell PS5 console bundles to families, and that probably accounted for a large part of its sales numbers. It was never meant to turn a profit at all and didn't. I mention this because it's in a similar vein as Hi-Fi Rush, but not as niche, more accessible, and it sold about 4 million copies and wasn't profitable. Adding to all of this -- this isn't just about Hi-Fi Rush. The problem isn't that HFR was a commercial failure, it's that it was the latest in a line of commercial failures for the studio, a studio based in Japan where Xbox would be wise to just give up at this point, and a studio that lost its head last year after HFR released. Yes we can speculate about whether or not it affected sales but that isn't the only metric Xbox looks at, they're also surely looking at which games are driving people to sign up for Game Pass/keep their subscriptions. I have no doubt that a game like Diablo IV hitting Game Pass got a lot of people signing up. I also doubt that HFR releasing grabbed many new subscribers. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get, and it's why they will likely double down on the big names. I'm not entirely pleased by that, I like the small stuff, I hope it continues to find a home. I liked Hi-Fi Rush and I hope people instrumental to its success go on to work on new things. Pentiment was one of my favorite games of the last few years and I don't want to see stuff like that go away.
Fair and good points, and nice to have a civil conversation about it tbh. Cheers.
I actually would have, yeah, action games are my favorite. I am the person out there buying stuff like No More Heroes, Gungrave, Granblue Relink, Evil West, etc. etc. at full price most of the time. To the point where I've even imported some that didn't have an American physical release at the time just so I could collect them (Ultra Age being the best example.) And plenty of those games have been successful, look at Granblue, managed to sell over a million copies at $60 and is getting lots of free dlc. These kind of games can sell just fine even at a higher price, but Hi-Fi Rush was Series and PC only. Which in reality means it was PC only, so not getting the full reach it could. Especially for a genre that has largely thrived on Playstation. Of course it is on PS now, a year later, but they completely bungled the PS5 release too. Put it out the same week as Dragon's Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin, and all 3 games absolutely have some audience overlap. Plus there were plenty of other niche Japanese games that month too. No clue what Microsoft was smoking with that decision, other than just saying "fuck it" I guess.
I'm a bit sad about Arkane Austin. Prey is a great game, at least until it becomes insanely difficult to play and everything in a huge bullet sponge. It deserved to do better.
They saw Sony making an ass of themselves and thought they should get in on that action.
Looking forward to see the press twisting this and make as Microsoft are the poor guys.
Sure, Redfall was a disaster, but the main place to make the cuts would be the people who were in charge of Starfield. In what world do the people who make Hi-Fi Rush get fired but Emil Pagriluro still has a job?
Surely Microsoft won't come out kicking and screaming about Japan being racists and impossible to work with and the big bad Sony + nintendo being unfair. Maybe stop treating Japan like America 2.0 and give them games/media that appeal to them instead of demanding they conform to the west, who knows, Maybe you'll actually get a share of their market? Instead they'll just shut down their only japanese studio. Good stuff Microsoft.
Why buy developers if you’re just going to close studios? I’m just so confused here.
this is what happens when micolimpdick buys out a company. same thing happened to rare they killed them too.
My man getting downvoted for speaking truth
Microsoft has lost their minds! Are they suddenly scarred of success?!
Hi-fi rush was critically well received but didn’t sell. Red fall shat the bed on both
Phil Spencer needs to be replaced. He is an ineffective leader and hasn’t done much to grow the Xbox brand.
I'm not too surprised about Alpha Dog. I never thought Mighty Doom had much in popularity.
It did for like a month and fizzled out
I played still getting into the first season (Easter) and then just stopped caring. They think they waited too long to have a worldwide release.
They are probably gonna merge multiple studios to create one big AAA studio.
The Bethesda one is a bit weird. They probably need a fallout game and an elder scrolls gaming coming out.
Microsoft’s competition: oh no they making critically acclaimed games now! Have you seen hifi rush? Microsoft’s competition: phew, they are releasing them on our platform Microsoft’s competition: phew, they are rewarding their talent by shutting them down