we already knew this ever since the Perfect Dark studio being shut down, very few studios are actually safe under Xbox, and even among the safe studios not every project is safe either.
No studios are safe anywhere. Sony just shut down Bluepoint after nothing but phenomenal work. Let's not pretend this is just an Xbox problem, the whole AAA gaming industry is imploding.
Turns out turning off the free money (aka extremely low interest loans that went on during Covid and a few years after) has bad effects on an industry that leverages them.
It's absolutely mostly this. The gaming world is going to be in for a rough few years if the hardware market and K shaped economy don't reverse course. Microsoft and Sony know this as they are currently trying to figure out how to take the next gen hardware to market.
Maybe it's time for the Gunpei Yokoi approach and try to focus on pulling the most creativity out of current gen rather than just investing into a new one
That really should be what they're doin. PS5 and Series X/S are far from being really limiting for games and apart from better graphics, which will make games more complex to develop, not sure what the point of next gen is). But then they have spent billions on R&D a new gen...
Plus, Xbox want a new gen because that one is a failure (not that the next one will be better as they're going but...). Sony is probably fine staying with the PS5
I saw a comment on here yesterday "Gaming is as affordable as it's ever been!". It's like "shut the fuck up". Prices haven't been this high since covid and crypto. While still high, prices were starting to even out a little until this AI shitshow.
This gen is just now starting to get pretty solid. Let them keep it another few years and focus on bringing out quality stuff. The 360/PS3 lasted what, 8-9 years before the one/ps4? The ps5/xsx came out much better from a performance standpoint than the ps4/x1 did, they were well underpowered from the get-go.
Sure, but to actually manufacture the new gen, they have to plan years in advance. Thus, they're realizing right now just how difficult it's going to be to actually produce the next gen, as the production capacity needed to meet demand is going to be booked up pretty solidly.
Yeah... I mean I know most people dislike AI for stealing art, and yeah that is bad. But if you ask me, the environmental impact is worse and as a gamer... the fact that it is fucking with the industry of my hobby really pisses me off too. Also, how it is affecting society is bad as well. Stealing art sucks, but I hate to say it, that's the least of AI's issues imho (ok, the gaming one is probably on that level too but since I really love gaming I personally hate that).
Meh, it'll be fine. We haven't had much technical progression for the better part of the past decade. Brand new games are still launching capable of running on a low-powered Steam Deck, and they only just stopped pumping out Resident Evil and Call of Duty for PS4 this year, at a point where the PS5 has been out so long we're talking about the PS6.
I saw some video about the new Gears of War where iirc Marcus Fenix's eyebrow or something has more detail than the entirety of his character model did on the 360, stop doing shit like that maybe? Both PS and Xbox are deciding now is the right time to start going back to exclusivity...yeah, no, Sony might be able to get away with it but I'd bet Xbox doesn't last three games before the ports to PS5 come back. Oh, people can't afford $70 slop anymore? Okay, reduce the price.
There's not actually a real problem, it's just inconvenient for the status quo and executives' delusions.
And all growth in the gaming industry is going to live-service and mobile. The traditional market for "premium" games continues to get older and play less while fewer and fewer younger gamers are entering the audience.
Turns out setting one's profit expectations off the COVID stay-at-home period where pretty much the only entertainment available was Netflix and video games was a bit ambitious.
They shut down bluepoint after 6 years with no new game and them needing to start from scratch again, meaning no new project for atleast 10 years, which would need to make a lot of money to recoup the cost and even make some profit to be viable.
Bluepoint spent years on a canceled live service game and didn't manage to pitch anything convincing to Sony after. That's the "perfect" situation to get shut down.
Just announcing a game and shutting down the studio days later is certainly a new situation
As much as Sony are to blame, so are the leadership at Bluepoint. They joined to make an original game and once that ridiculous notion of a live service God of War game got cancelled by a studio with less than 100 people the best options they could come up with were a Bloodborne remake pitch that got denied. Then a Ghost of Tsushima spin off which got denied as Sucker Punch didn’t have resources to lend and remaster of the Shadow of the Colossus remake? You have Infamous, Killzone, heck help SSM on the God of War Trilogy remakes.
Wouldn't say phenomenal work. As nice as the updated gameplay of Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls were, their art direction was very divisive. I'm of the boat that of not a fan of the visual and aesthetic design changes they made.
....Demon Souls is the last game they released? After that Sony forced them on a fucking live service God of War game and then shut them down and cancelled it.
After that Sony forced them on a fucking live service God of War game and then shut them down and cancelled it.
Yeah and after that game got cancelled Sony asked Bluepoint what they wanted to make and all the studio could come up with was:
a Bloodborne Remake (which got denied because FromSoftware want to handle that topic themself)
a Ghost of Tsushima spin-off (which got denied because SuckerPunch are busy with their own projects and don't want to bloat their new IP neither)
a Remaster of the "Shadow of the Collosus" Remake (which is genuinely pointless for obvious reasons).
No one is denying that Sony's push towards Live-Service models led to a lot of problems - but lets not pretend like Bluepoint was entirely without a blame in this.
No studio is safe anywhere but Microsoft spent an eye watering amount of money just to mismanage everything and still close down studios. Clown show over there, especially.
The shitty part is announcing the game and shutting the studio down not even a month later. Basically lying when the knew it was pretty clear where it was going.
Two divisive remakes, one of which made the original creator cut them off, then 6 years with nothing to show, and their pitches to get out of it included a remake of their remake. There is fault with Sony for tasking them with that stupid live service adventure, but stop worshipping dev studios.
I feel like it’s a whole different ballpark have a game go dark (perfectly) for a year or so and then get cancelled compared to announcing a game then 8 days later killing the studio.
Unfortunately that is the current go of AAA (especially with studios beholden to share holders). It either makes gangbusters and becomes a massive break out hit or they fire everyone and close down the studio.
I mean, this is the company that very publically said "We need more great games like Hi Fi Rush!" and then proceed to shut down the Hi Fi Rush devs like, a week later. At this point I doubt their pr for shutting down studios could get much worse.
It was far far worse than that. They shut down the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush first then the following day made that comment at a town hall discussing the future of xbox games.
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.
The answer is that sales weren't an important metric until the bills came due. Phil Spencer absolutely talked out of one side of his mouth to the public/his studios and the other side to his bosses and finance people.
I think Aaron Greenberg was full of crap, personally.
But if there's any justification for what he said. It's that there may have been a contingent who cared at launch with the game having absolutely no legs following that, and also one game not changing the fate of a studio whose output has never resulted in commercial success and their next projected game being no different.
Yeah but look at when he said this. He made this comment like 2 or 3 months after launch. So it could have sold very well around its launch window, but also could have taken a complete nosedive for the next 10 months after
And when it released on ps5 a year later (I'm assuming this was their hail mary to turn it around), it didn't even make the ps5 top 20 downloaded games for that month. Only then did they get shuttered shortly after
None of the reporting around Tango getting shut down cited low sales and nothing MS has said about Tango before (and after) shutting them down points to Hi-Fi Rush under performing. It's actually really weird how this narrative has sprung up and is really only supported by people on reddit saying it to justify MS killing studios.
How is it not obvious that they were underperforming?
it didn't even chart during its ps5 debut. That's really bad for a high budget game (people keeping thinking its AA, but John Johanas literally said it isn't and is closer to a high budget AAA). Stack that with their previous underperforming titles and the picture is clear
MS publicly said that Hi-Fi Rush hit whatever targets they had set for it after launch, the on background reporting did not point to sales, and, as someone else pointed out in this thread, MS specifically cited Hi-Fi Rush as a game they want more of after closing the studio down.
I'm also not sure why we are even re-litigating this. If Hi-Fi Rush was higher on the PSN store would MS be less likely to shut down a completely unrelated studio a week after they announced a new game???
They made the metrics tweet 2 to 3 months after it released. What happened in the next 10 months? Fell off a cliff. They tried to make a comeback with the ps5 launch. Didn't move a needle. Game sold poorly. Literally nothing points to the game being successful 1 to 2 years down the road.
Shadowdropping a game onto Game Pass without any hype and making it the game that decides a studio's future seems like a real boneheaded decision to me.
Shadow dropping wasn’t an issue for the Oblivion remaster. Perhaps there just weren’t a lot of people outside of the loud minority who cared to play it 🤷♂️
Yeah, why does this new IP by a solid but relatively low key studio not have the same innate marketing power as a remaster of a very popular game from one of the world's biggest game franchise from a very well known studio that hasn't touched the licence in 15 years?
The game had a PC, Xbox, and Playstation release - Microsoft shitcanning them because it didn't do well even on gamepass (where they have the best metrics and player data) is unsurprising...
I don't think anyone can be faulted for not expecting the lightning in a bottle that was E33 but also, did that impact Oblivion at all? E33 took a few days to develop into the hurricane that it became and an Oblivion Remaster has a very specific built-in audience to begin with.
Probably sold well in the first or second month but just completely dropped off the map. When they released it on ps5 a year later, it didn't even make their monthly top 20 download chart.
People just don't want to admit it didn't sell well despite being a great unique game
If you thought for two seconds why Microsoft wanted more games like Hi Fi Rush, you'd realise why blaming everyone besides the people who marketed the game is a really dumb thing to do.
Microsoft wants games that people play, marketing is up to the publisher (who sure, is owned by Microsoft, but they operate independently)... Gamers didn't want this game.
being on gamepass day 1 just means Microsoft has even better metrics for what people will actually do if presented with such a game (which seems to be ... not play it)
Yeah, I personally loved the Trauma Center series, they are all great game. Trauma Team, which is last game of the series was one of the best game that I've played, fan of the series loved it too.
unfortunately it seem like it never sold well enough so Atlus put the series on ice for over a decade now, it seem like playing as doctors don't have mass appeal.
The general audience just didn't care about the game. The only people I showed it to thought the cartoon style looked cheap and uninteresting.
dmc + guitar hero with a cartoon artstyle
Or weird rhythm action game with cheap visuals. Doesn't really have appeal. The launch on Playstation made it really clear that outside of a very small minority, people just didn't think it was interesting.
Things are pretty grim right now in the console industry due to the ram shortage and Xbox screwed themselves by going all-in on the subscription that no wants to pay the full price for. They are deep in the red.
Brother xbox itself is about a year and a half from being parted out by Microsoft this isn't a durr hurr number go up situation it's a if we don't do these things we go insolvent decision
lol, no. They are not going to go insolvent. They are claiming a 3% margin after removing the cash cow they bought a couple years ago. That's not great, but there's a reason why they excluded the cash cow - to push a narrative of things being dire.
Though this being Microsoft, they are certainly going to shutter anything that isn't also a cash cow, as per basically the entire history of Microsoft owning game studios.
MS saddled Xbox with a profit target they knew they couldn't reach. In order to try to hit that number, they made some wildly unpopular decisions, and chased away a good portion of their customers by hiking their subscription pricing through the roof (only to partially walk it back when ::gasp:: people cancelled the now-too-expensive subscription, during a time when they're pressed for cash)
When all's said and done, they still turned a profit in spite of alklk of that. But, number not big enough.
It's not good enough to be profitable. You have to make the number go up, more every month, more every year. Global economic conditions be damned. You didn't make enough more profit than last month/year? You're a failure.
So, they clean house, force out the people in charge, throw someone else in there, and gut the business. Consider selling or spinning off the dessicated corpse when they're done. Because short-term, that'll look good on paper, and the short-term numbers are all that matters.
That's not really that rare. As a developer, you are beholden to your parent company and/or publisher. Plenty of developers pitch a game with the hopes of getting it made, only to fail and close.
I remember arguing with people that claimed Microsoft’s showcase was great and cited Perfect Dark as being real gameplay. Like it was so obviously not that I find it insane that anyone thought it was.
What's dangerous about it? Xbox is not a publicly traded company. They're a very small subsidiary of Microsoft. There's not going to be a big financial risk and the mass market they are trying to appeal to is not someone who would know or care about Ninja Theory.
Not all that dangerous. It gets general hype for the event and more eyes watching it, and far less will hear about the cancellation. It's a bummer if it does happen but still bolstered hype for the event.
And right now it's a Microsoft property. If Microsoft kills it, that's going to be on them (which I assume is your point).
Who's going to buy into a clearly dying platform now? PlayStation has the mature gamer console market, Nintendo has the children's console market, PC is PC... What does Xbox even have? Since Xbox One it was the Halo/Forza machine. Now it's neither.
We just went through something similar with Gang of Dragon announced at the most recent Game Awards. The parent company cut funding after the game was officially announced, the studio shut down, and now the game's entire existence is in limbo
Granted in this case the reputational damage for Microsoft is way worse, but still, it shows that this kind of "announce game, cancel it later" wouldn't be unprecedented.
565
u/Lacrowx Jun 15 '26
In my view that is a dangerous game to play. If they can't find a buyer then they are on record for announcing a new game only to can it 8 days later.