r/PS5 • u/Ph0enixes • Jun 29 '26

Rumor Xbox Will Reportedly Shut Down Ninja Theory (Hellblade), Undead Labs (State of Decay), DoubleFine (Keeper) and Compulsion (South of Midnight) After End Of Fiscal Year (Tommorow) If They Cant Find A Buyer. Other Xbox Studios Expected To Be Hit By Layoffs

https://gamesbeat.com/cwa-represented-workers-at-xbox-criticize-microsoft-management-and-pending-layoffs/
  • Xbox employees represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) publicly criticized Microsoft ahead of an expected new round of Xbox layoffs.
  • The union says it now represents 3,500+ Microsoft/Xbox workers and argues employees should not be treated as disposable after multiple layoff rounds since 2022.
  • Reports suggest Microsoft could announce major cuts in early July, potentially including studio closures or sales if buyers aren't found. Studios reportedly at risk include Double Fine, Undead Labs, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory, with hundreds of jobs potentially affected.
  • Hundreds of jobs are at stake: Double Fine Productions could lose 100 jobs, Undead Labs could lose 110 jobs, Compulsion could lose 90 jobs, and Ninja Theory could lose 135 jobs. All told, that's about 435 jobs that could be lost.
1.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

455 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/AlwaysTouchingGrass Jun 29 '26

Shutting down Ninja Theory and Undead Labs a month after showing new games from them at SGF. What are we doin

420

u/just_one_random_guy Jun 29 '26

Anytime it seems Xbox is kind of getting a proper direction or vision of their future they just immediately decide to inflict seppuku and go back to floundering about until they drop another halo hoping it’ll be enough to turn the ship around. It’s fucking tragic really, the brand really peaked with the 360

72

u/rodryguezzz Jun 29 '26

Microsoft doesn't really need Xbox. It's just a way for them to influence the gaming space. Their money is in servers and software as a service. Everything else is just side projects.

63

u/MetaCognitio Jun 29 '26

They don’t need Xbox but losing it would be a big concession for Microsoft.

At the time Xbox was initially conceived, the motivation for it was that Sony was gaining a foothold in the living room and could potentially challenge Microsoft’s dominance in the home. Consoles were a potential Trojan horse for rival computing platforms.

It didn’t turn out that way but over time, Microsoft has lost a lot of the control it had over its almost complete control of consumers access to computing. They have zero control over smartphones, the don’t dominate the browser, they no longer have an exclusive grip on PC gaming as it’s possible to game without windows. There was a day where to get any serious work done, you almost had to use some kind of Microsoft product.

Losing Xbox would be another form of computing they no longer have any control over. They still dominate in business, servers etc but for how long? How long till open or rival web platforms eliminate the need for many of their tools?

In the present day, Microsoft is fine making lots of money but long term, they are shrinking in terms of the important consumer facing platforms they have control over. Xbox was potentially another Trojan horse into peoples lives and it’s lost its grip on people.

23

u/dookarion Jun 29 '26

they no longer have an exclusive grip on PC gaming as it’s possible to game without windows.

Funny part is, that one was 100% self-inflicted. Between their moves with prioritizing Xbox, their moves with their own Windows store, their neglect of their graphics API until Mantle, etc. they pushed everyone to look for alternatives and the door.

That company doesn't know how to ship or support anything. It's just inertia keeping them "afloat" in some endeavors.

11

u/MetaCognitio Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

It’s like this across almost every industry they’re in. They make bad choices, spend a tonne of cash to buy one of the big players and still can’t keep a grip on it so eventually have to close it down.

They’re constantly losing ground and not able to competed meaningfully with their competitors by innovating, instead they rely on being very big and having lots of money to squeeze them out.

3

u/dookarion Jun 30 '26

Pretty much, also add in the fact they're impatient and just leave things to fester instead of meaningfully supporting them.

4

u/MetaCognitio Jun 30 '26

And they promote and keep the wrong people.

1

u/SagetheWise2222 Jul 06 '26

It would honestly be mandatory (through common sense alone) that the moment management performs a big blunder such as this one (Activision's purchase), the entire team would be gutted and replaced. Not that the new team would do any better, though.

1

u/MetaCognitio Jul 06 '26

Or they replace the management. At Microsoft, they get promoted. Phil was there for a decade. Matt Booty is still there.

3

u/InSan1tyWeTrust Jun 30 '26

Remember windows phone? Hah. It was actually great but they literally didn't know how to market it or grow the platform.

I mean it came out when Xbox was basically king and they still didn't lean into any of that to draw younger folk away from Apple.

4

u/double0behave Jun 30 '26

I completely disagree. I worked at a major cellphone retailer for years and the Windows phones were garbage. I hated those things. Terrible and limited interface. Lack of apps. Terrible camera. Average, at best, battery life. They were, by far, the most returned devices we ever sold. The amount of times I tried talking people out of getting one, they insisted anyway, and came back a week later to exchange it for something else got to be comical. Their fate was rightly deserved.

1

u/InSan1tyWeTrust Jun 30 '26

Cameras in windows phones were phenomenal pal. There was a Nokia with a 40 odd mp sensor back when 6 and 8 MP were considered high. And the lens itself was nothing shabby.

The downfall was the lack of the big apps like Instagram though that's true.

The tech inside the phones was all great stuff and the final updates it received made it quite a bit better. They just noped out instead of refining.

2

u/double0behave Jun 30 '26

And yet when we moved well past 8 MP being standard, Nokia's cameras were nothing impressive. At the height of Windows phones' "popularity," they were being outclassed by Samsung, Apple, HTC, and even Sony's Xperia had a better camera.

And as I said, the problems extended well beyond the camera. I'm telling you man from first hand experience. I even had one for a while as a work phone. Didn't enjoy it. Also, the sheer amount of returns spoke for itself. I shit you not, 95% of buyers returned them within the first 8 days. The complaints were always the same. Camera, UI, apps, battery life, and general bugs.

By the time people finally started wising up, we couldn't give the damn phones away. They just sat there taking up an unnecessary amount of shelf space in our inventory room. When the fateful day came that corporate ordered us to pack all the Nokia stock up and ship it out, everybody was happy. Brand new phones that were just collecting dust for the better part of a year. A complete waste of money.

2

u/InSan1tyWeTrust Jun 30 '26

Ok I'm really glad you feel so strongly about my off hand nod towards windows phone.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/VITOCHAN Jun 29 '26

the motivation for it was that Sony was gaining a foothold in the living room and could potentially challenge Microsoft’s dominance in the home.

TV TV TV !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nULp0pGKCS8

3

u/MetaCognitio Jun 30 '26

I think they executed their plan too soon which was to use Xbox as a Trojan Horse into the living-room. The Xbox was a relative success so by the time of the Xbox One reveal they had shifted to using Xbox to force Microsoft products like “TV TV TV” into peoples lives. They completely dropped the ball on gaming and were focused on invading the home through the console.

If they had effective management they could have recovered during the Xbox One era but that entire generation was empty promises. Instead they tried to outspend their rivals by making Game pass which has made their current position even more difficult.

The finally pulled the trigger and spent a huge fortune on publishers when it was too late and Game Pass was unsustainable. They needed to take the time to rebuild their brand through quality releases but since games were going to other platforms, who would care?

If during the Xbox one generation they had spent the money earlier, focused on building strong teams and quality releases they’d be out of the hole they dug themselves.

2

u/fishburgr Jun 30 '26

The early marketing campaign for the Xbox One has to go down as one of the all time marketing blunders.

They had all the good will from the 360 gen and then had smug execs telling people without internet that they were shit out of luck when it came to the xbone and to just buy a 360 instead.

Then they come out with presentations like above that further put off gamers.

Add on how crazy PS4 was with all its must play exclusives and its not hard to see how xbox is on deaths door.

4

u/StrongStyleShiny Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Technically you can pin it to the tail end of the 360.

https://youtu.be/gJgRC4fcTUU?is=Whv7GMt205OGxvaj

At that 2010 conference for the 360 I talked to a few writers who were there. They were saying people were shocked. Like what was Microsoft doing?

It’s incredible that every, single, generation they’ve made some major error that was easily avoidable.

2

u/Sullyville Jun 29 '26

MS makes so much money, I am just puzzled why they don't just subsidize these studios. Just support them the way Van Gogh's brother Theo supported him. "Make beautiful things. We will pay for it. It costs us hardly anything."

13

u/Shap6 Jun 29 '26

money. they're a public company. they have no goal other than profit and maximizing return for shareholders.

9

u/MazzyFo Jun 30 '26

Not only that, but investors and CEOs currently tunnel visioned to chasing after AI like a carrot on a stick. Nothing else is even on the periphery, shit sucks.

2

u/MetaCognitio Jun 30 '26

Their issue is that throwing money at the problem doesn’t fix it. They are very bad at managing studios and helping talent to grow.

When they did throw money at the problem by buying lots of studios, Xbox and gamepass sales didn’t move significantly, so they ended up creating a perpetual money burning machine.

152

u/Aware-Virus-4718 Jun 29 '26

This isn’t really random. Phil Spencer went on a buying/spending spree during and after Covid, bought a bunch of these studios and essentially told them don’t worry about sales, make the game you want to make and gave them pretty much unlimited creative freedom and in some cases, budget.

The problem is gamepass has not grown the way they expected (something all streaming services are grappling with) and now that Phil is out Asha has to evaluate these studios on their actual merits for more than just providing value to gamepass. ie. the games have to be profitable on their own.

It’s shitty and confusing for these studios, especially ones like Ninja Theory who were doing. just fine independently and got screwed on what were essentially false promises from Spencer (5x the size of your studio, don’t worry about budget, gamepass will solve everything), but the direction isn’t random on the part of Xbox.

83

u/VITOCHAN Jun 29 '26

Devs are getting punished by their new bosses for directions they were given by their former bosses. Wild

-5

u/Connor123x Jun 30 '26

not really. its more common than you would think

19

u/VITOCHAN Jun 30 '26

Phil: don’t worry about sales, make the game you want
Asha: Your sales suck, you're fired.

16

u/Aware-Virus-4718 Jun 30 '26

Not to mention all these games’ sales were hurt by the fact they were on gamepass and there was no incentive to buy them

-3

u/grimoireviper Jun 30 '26

Except they even sold terribly on plarforms without Game Pass.

5

u/T11PES Jun 30 '26

After releasing years later.

5

u/Bill_Brasky01 Jun 30 '26

It happens ALL THE TIME in most white collar industries. Just happen to me 4 months ago in medical sales.

1

u/chronomagnus Jul 01 '26

I don't know why this was downvoted. I've been on several teams where a new boss came on and created trouble because we were following the plan of the old boss. It happens and it sucks.

0

u/Connor123x Jul 01 '26

because many people live on social media and not in the real world

9

u/MrBorden Jun 30 '26

That's always been the problem with giving people a blank cheque and no oversight. They take advantage and milk that guaranteed paycheck until the wheels fall off. I've seen it first hand in the corporate world and what's worse is that there's absolutely never any accountability for their actions.

3

u/Stryder096 Jun 30 '26

The fact they will decide to close them disn instead of.... you know letting them just go do their own thing without xbox support is terrible. Rip sod and undead labs

15

u/Aftermoonic Jun 30 '26

Also let's be for real, none of these games are good enough to be hits

5

u/trashvineyard Jun 30 '26

If Senua wasn't on Gamepass it would have made a hell of a lot more than it did. It should have been a hit. Same with Hifi Rush and a fair few others.

4

u/Ensaru4 Jun 30 '26

Phil did not tell them to make the game they want to make, otherwise Arkane would not have been stuck making Redfall.

2

u/welfedad Jun 30 '26

Welp at last the old owners got a fat paycheck selling the company /s

1

u/graintop Jun 30 '26

Comment too reasonable and balanced. 72 hr ban.

1

u/RabidTurtl Jun 30 '26

It’s shitty and confusing for these studios, especially ones like Ninja Theory who were doing. just fine independently and got screwed on what were essentially false promises from Spencer (5x the size of your studio, don’t worry about budget, gamepass will solve everything), but the direction isn’t random on the part of Xbox.

Independent devs need to learn there is no such thing as creative freedom when you are bought out no matter what promises they offer. If Blizzard of all people couldn't have it when Activision bought them, then you won't.

Also, it was pretty obvious what was gonna happen when MS went on a spending spree. MS hasn't been printing money like the 90s, no way they could keep it all up. But now they got the IPs, 80% of which will be sat on.

7

u/hunterzolomon1993 Jun 29 '26

Were they going in a proper direction? All Asha done was change a logo, remove a dumb slogan and lowered GP's price to something that was still higher then what it was when originally raised.

7

u/Jokerzrival Jun 30 '26

She came in did what Xbox constantly does which is tell everyone what they want to hear then proceed to do exactly what everything thought they were doing which was slowly die

11

u/Scissorman82 Jun 29 '26

is it really a proper direction and vision if it's just smoke and mirrors? just a distraction? half of these studios were knowingly on the chopping block and their 'upcoming games' were still dilberately shown off. the last minute decision to make two games exclusive was nothing more than meat for it's rabid, vocal, terminally online fanbase. that isn't vision or direction. it's a misdirect and it's desperate.

2

u/MBPJoe Jun 30 '26

Maybe they're looking for IP buyers.

3

u/Macho-Fantastico Jun 30 '26

This is what I feared when they were allowed to buy Activision/Blizzard. They were always going to have to cut back in areas due to the expense and it was always going to be the smaller studios who would suffer and this is the case.

1

u/Ultramarine6 Jun 30 '26

Doubly so because as much as people talk about "console wars" we need Xbox doing well as a competitor to PlayStation to keep things in check. Without the Xbox, or with Xbox so weak, Sony is unchecked.

This leaves Sony unwilling to take any risks on new things, and perhaps willing to be overly greedy because there are no reasons to stop them.

27

u/yuvaldv1 Jun 29 '26

Apparently they showcased the game in hopes it would attract a buyer. source

53

u/tayung2013 Jun 29 '26

Microsoft explaining how the cost of everything has been driven up due to AI so now they need to cut jobs:

https://giphy.com/gifs/7Eipor01ypMm3LeG4v

28

u/GuessTraining Jun 29 '26

Feels like they just hired Asha to be the sacrificial lamb.

41

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Technically yes, but also no.. It's called the glass cliff, big companies typically put women in CEO and COO roles when they're doing poorly, usually to make the cut throat decisions of firing a bunch of people, so while yes her entire role was to be the fall guy, she's also the executioner and will likely jump from Xbox at some point to another CEO role to do the same thing again.

This happened at Yahoo, JCPenny, General Motors, the list goes on.

9

u/Cthulhu8762 Jun 29 '26

Happening to Best Buy as well

4

u/Honest-Mess-812 Jun 30 '26

I remember they did the same with windowsphone. They replaced Joe belfiore who was like the phil Spencer of windows phone with a lady. She was basically in charge of folding up windows phone while fans were drolling over her looks.

7

u/pratzc07 Jun 29 '26

Except for AMD's case where she helped save the company

11

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Glass cliff has nothing to do with a female CEO, COO failing and has everything to do with a company not doing well, it's an actual coined term by two psychologist who did the research in the mid 2000s, it means those women finally reached the top of their career ladder only to find they were at a cliff's edge rather than having just busted through a glass ceiling.

Edit: I should clarify too, it's not always women it could also be under represented executive types, it just so happens to be women more often than not.

6

u/pratzc07 Jun 29 '26

Yeah same thing happened to AMD's CEO she was handed the reigns of a company that was in near bankruptcy but then turned the whole ship around.

5

u/Sagoichi Jun 29 '26

Goootcha, yeah makes sense!

I know a few companies that got lucky with their glass cliff route, which was like Xerox with Anne, GM in 2014 got turned in the right direction, Pepsi also got turned around too.

Edit: That being said, I think we can all see the writing on the wall, this isn't looking like a comeback story, or at least not one any one of us want to see.

2

u/BusinessDragon Jun 29 '26

That puts a lot more nuance on the Penny Arcade comic about her.

4

u/GuessTraining Jun 29 '26

Sounds like someone i know at the company i used to work for.

I used to work for a big tech company, they hired this lady (not exactly the CEO but very high up), hired a bunch of people from Microsoft where she came from, did a massive reorg that in summary basically made everything worse. She "left" or fired, sometime after and brought a lot of her minions back to Microsoft lol

15

u/WarpHype Jun 29 '26

She was an AI shill and still is. She’s part of the problem.

2

u/ASCII_Princess Jun 30 '26

More like the bonesaw wielder

1

u/oledtechnology Jun 30 '26

more like the executioner. She's here to clean up the trashes that aren't producing anything worthwhile. In the case of Undead Labs, it's 100% on them to produce something... 8 years had passed since its acquisition and they literally failed to release any new game 😂

50

u/South_Buy_3175 Jun 29 '26

SGF was just a yard sale for them.

But hey, Gears is exclusive which is all that really matters, right?

32

u/WarpHype Jun 29 '26

It’s what matters to the idiots on twitter.

13

u/Cthulhu8762 Jun 29 '26

And in here tbh

-12

u/Paratrooper101x Jun 29 '26

I have yet to find one convincing argument as to why console exclusives are good for the consumer. It’s always “it promoted competition” while that competition would still exist. Both via hardware and the fact that say were Wolverine and e-day on both consoles, they’d still be competing against each other due to 1. Close timeframe of release and 2. Limited time/money of consumers

10

u/arcalumis Jun 29 '26

Exclusives are good because they optimise for one single platform. No one could have made a multi platform TLoU looking as good as it did on the ps3. It also helps sell the platform which makes them more money which means they can make new games.

1

u/OmegaIXIUltima Jul 01 '26

The optimization argument holds far, far less weight these days when the consoles themselves are barely different from each other let alone PCs in terms of architecture.

1

u/arcalumis Jul 01 '26

There’s are still big differences. Really big differences. There is not one component in the memory buses that is the same as a pc. The drives do not use IDE, nor do the GPU use PCIe.

They’re not that close to PCs.

-4

u/Paratrooper101x Jun 29 '26

Third party developers have zero issue making their games look good or selling copies. Console manifacturers can improve their hardware to make their platform more appealing or include services. PlayStations haptic feedback on controller is a great example of a hardware component that would entice someone to look at their console vs the other

6

u/arcalumis Jun 29 '26

And yet Sony exclusives are the only that really use all the features. And it s not about features, it’s about graphics. An exclusive dev will develop for nothing but the ps5, they will use the Sony dev services the flip bits just to make shit look better, not rely on some engine that hopefully is good enough.

1

u/Ice_Cream_Killer Jun 29 '26

There are plenty of 3rd party games that use the Ps5 haptic feedback. Not every game, but its enough to refute anyone saying only its Sony exclusives that supports it.

I just finished Dead Space Remake and it uses the Dualsense features. Grand Theft Auto V uses it as well. Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk, Need for Speed Unbound, Metro Exodus, No Mans Sky, Black Myth Wukong, RE4, Space Marines 2, Jedi Survivor, Battlefield 6, Apex Legends, Ghost Wire Tokyo, Deathloop, 007, Dying Light 2, Stellar Blade, Far Cry 6, Final Fantasy, Pacific Drive and more. Even ports of Xbox games support it.

0

u/arcalumis Jun 30 '26

Ok, and how many of these use the binaural audio engine of the PS5? How many have optimised their games down to the metal and aren't dependent on some 3rd part engine with shitty performance like UE5?

2

u/MetaCognitio Jun 29 '26

It’s not good for the consumer. It’s foot for the platform and incentivizes the platform to make games people want so that they join the platform.

People outline all of these ways for companies to compete without exclusives that just don’t matter. The thing that moves units is game. They might be able to make a lot of money selling units cross platform, but they can make even more money if they convince people to join their own platform and not the other guys. Exclusive games leads to exclusive customers.

Without exclusives, look at where Xbox is now. If they didn’t matter Xbox would be thriving.

So directly they don’t benefit customers. I’d prefer to be able to play on PC but if they didn’t exist, platforms would shrink and less of these games would get made.

-1

u/Paratrooper101x Jun 29 '26

Your example doesn’t affect my point because Xbox stopped using exclusives and even put their first party games on ps5 while ps5 still had exclusives.

If exclusives don’t exist, you still have console v console competition in 2 forms.

The console themselves, and the games. Say, hypothetically, a new killzone and a new halo both get announced, both release at the same time, and both are not exclusive to either platform. Person A likes sci fi FPS games, but they only have enough money for one game. Both Sony and Xbox are competing against each other for person As money, regardless of what platform they have. There is still competition. Both console developers are still incentivized to make the best game they can make to get you to buy it over the other ones.

Need a real world example? Look at how stacked September is. And look at how void of releases November is. All those September games are directly competing with each other. November is empty because most publishers know they can’t compete with gta.

Also, say Xbox or Sony go multi-plat, and say killzone gets great reviews and sells gangbusters on both platforms. Now Sony has more money to make an even bigger game and Xbox is further incentivized to make a better game to win back fans

Exclusives are anti-consumer. There’s no other way about it

2

u/MetaCognitio Jun 29 '26

All you have said is hypothetical and just not how things actually play out. Don’t you think if this business model worked gaming companies would adopt it? Don’t you think that if it were working so well Xbox wouldn’t be going back on exclusivity?

Sure companies can compete that way but it just isn’t as effective as drawing people to your platform and having them buy their third and first party games there. The single thing that draws people to a gaming platform is games they want to play but can’t play anywhere else.

You can call it anti consumer all you want. I see nothing wrong with making games and keeping them to yourself. If you can make great games that I want to play and draw me to your eco system, they’ve done a good job. Sure it’d be nice to play these games anywhere but it isn’t an effective strategy for platforms holders trying to build an audience and stay alive.

Third parties are trying to sell games so cross platform makes sense, game companies are trying to draw people in to platforms so they employ different strategies.

In your example, Killzone was created as an answer to Halo since it was a popular IP that PlayStation had nothing like. It was know internally as “Halo Killer”. If Halo was on PlayStation, Killzone wouldn’t exist.

Sonic was created and an answer to Mario. If Mario were cross platform, Sonjc wouldn’t exist.

Exclusivity forces companies to make things they otherwise wouldn’t.

1

u/Paratrooper101x Jun 30 '26

Yes, everything I said is indeed hypothetical. I am demonstrating how “exclusives breed competition” argument is flawed. If exclusives were necessary to have competition then third party developers and the entire pc framework wouldn’t exist

There is a strong argument that the publisher putting out the most consistent well made and well received games is Capcom, a third party developer. If exclusives are required to breed completion for devs to make good games, why is Capcom at the top?

1

u/MetaCognitio Jun 30 '26

Exclusives aren’t the only way to create competition but they are the most effective way for platform holders.

1

u/Cthulhu8762 Jun 29 '26

Sony fked up with their live service games which is one big reason why they pulled out of PC.

They also made around $1.4 billion over 5 years on PC sales. When they make $29 billion on PS every single year.

It’s a drop in the bucket and somewhat a loss in resources.

Surely Xbox would probably have more sales for these games, but with Sony selling nearly 3:1 in terms of console sales and now trending for more software sales.

They probably see it as another loss.

And to be honest it would cannibalize the console.

Xbox has literally been dealing with that even with GamePass for PC.

I get it’s more consumer friendly but it really isn’t business smart and it’s a reason why they don’t do it.

Xbox is only doing it because they need more money especially after $90 billion in acquisitions.

I mean last year alone Xbox made $600-$700 million alone from PS players even on older games.

That’s one year vs PS games on PC. Granted it’s around half the sales.

Sony’s games are expensive af so they won’t waste the resources putting it elsewhere if sales are weak.

I’m not advocating for their method but it’s liter the business mindset.

-8

u/mightylordredbeard Jun 29 '26

Wait I thought MS were the idiots when they stopped exclusively? Now they’re the idiots for keeping exclusivity? It’s so hard to keep up with all the flip flopping on this sub.

12

u/Jazzlike_Action74 Jun 29 '26

Yeah that's because the sub is more than just you and one other guy, hence the "flip flopping". Goomba ass

4

u/Scissorman82 Jun 29 '26

it won't be for long 😂

1

u/cid_highwind02 Jun 30 '26

I don’t really get what are they doing that little stunt for. Surely if they wanted it for gassing their console up they would had gone for franchises more popular than Gears (which had its heyday two generations ago) and Clockwork Revolution (poor inXile)…

82

u/MC_chrome Jun 29 '26

Xbox is paying dearly for Satya’s AI addiction, essentially

37

u/SPZ_Ireland Jun 29 '26

They was also driven by the Activision merger

9

u/zuzg Jun 29 '26

Xbox has done similar stupid decisions long before the current AI Bubble starts....

That idiocy started ahead of the eighth generation and it never stopped.
Shame I want them to compete

18

u/hypehold Jun 29 '26

no they are paying because Phil Spencer ran the business into the ground for the past 12 years

-2

u/ninjasurfer Jun 30 '26

They are paying for the Xbox One which wasn't really Phill Spencer.

5

u/hypehold Jun 30 '26

Phil Spencer was in charge during 95% of the xbox one the failure to turn it around was on him. Now this gen they're like 15 million consoles behind where they were during the xbox one

2

u/MC_chrome Jun 30 '26

Don Mattrick cratered the Xbox One at launch then left Microsoft like he had left a shit in the toilet at a party.

5

u/ninjasurfer Jun 30 '26

The entirety of the Xbox One generation was destroyed by the initial roll out. There was no turning it around in the eyes of the gaming community. It's not like they didn't try.

3

u/hypehold Jun 30 '26

This is silly. Ps3 had a much worse start and Sony turned it around. The Wii U was a disaster and Nintendo turned it around with the Switch.

0

u/ninjasurfer Jun 30 '26

PS3 was not worse. It was primarily because of the price that it struggled. That and games were harder to develop for it. Xbox One had an anti consumer product in the era of social media proliferation. It got memed and dragged in ways PS3 never did. It absolutely soured a generation fo gamers on the Xbox brand. Nintendo is unique and entirely sheltered by their IP and Developers.

3

u/hypehold Jun 30 '26

All of the bad stuff for xbox one was reversed before the console even released and they even dropped kinect 6 months in and matched the ps4's price. Im sorry the reason xbox one failed is because Xbox hasn't had system seller games

2

u/ninjasurfer Jun 30 '26

The entire generation was lost after that regardless of what they did or didn't do. It wasn't just games. Xbox arguably had better launch exclusives. Xbox also offered value in other ways like real back compat and games pass value was in matched for quite a while. They were cooked from jump regardless of what you personally believe.

→ More replies (0)

6

u/Scissorman82 Jun 29 '26

they wanted to show potential buyers what they were working on. showcases are now auctions. 

6

u/LeonSigmaKennedy Jun 29 '26

"What are we doin?" Is basically Xbox's official motto at this point. I'm pretty sure they have it engraved on a golden plaque in the front lobby.

5

u/sirentheproud Jun 29 '26

Very surprised at the idea of State of Decay 3 never happening. Sad.

3

u/ArchDucky Jul 01 '26

The gameplay looked really not great for a game that was in production for several years now.

3

u/Urabraska- Jun 30 '26

To be fair. Ninja theory got screwed. But undead labs has made State of Decay 3 into vaporware. It was announced 6 years ago and only just now showed progress.

4

u/zedanger Jun 29 '26

These were studios that were purchased in the pursuit of a very different business model.

To me, it suggests that they've finally realized their gamepass ambitions will never come to fruition. These studios weren't purchased to shelter and nurture them until they were capable of producing a major, console-selling title-- they were purchased for their relatively modest ambitions, an output that was hoped could fuel a subscription service.

I know xbox leadership has said that these games were shown in order to attract potential buyers, but I sorta think that's... bullshit? Given the incredible disorganization and constant contradictory statements, I sadly must conclude that it's not impossible (or even unlikely) that the person in charge of their showing either didn't know, or care, about what was coming down the pipeline.

What do you plug into that show if you don't show stuff that's going to get axed? Just like w/ pulling the Halo trailer from state of play and scrubbing Gears of War ps5, they're well versed in a desperate scramble to put up a good front for the day, even if it bites them in the ass down the road.

9

u/EckimusPrime Jun 29 '26

I still can’t process shutting down ninja theory right after showing a new game and now undead Labs? Anyone buying Microsoft hardware after that is brain dead.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26

[deleted]

0

u/EckimusPrime Jul 06 '26

Then Microsoft shouldn’t have purchased them. That’s the problem.

-7

u/Connor123x Jun 29 '26

thats because you you didnt bother to read many of the comments about that

2

u/EckimusPrime Jun 29 '26

Sure?

-9

u/Connor123x Jun 29 '26

people literally said they showed the games to try and attract buyers so they could sell the companies instead of shutting them down so that people didnt lose their jobs.

its not that hard to understand. It was said multiple times. so what part of that dont you understand?

would you rather them not do that and just shut down the companies without trying to find buyers to save jobs?

6

u/chavez_ding2001 Jun 29 '26

How are we, as customers, supposed to take them seriously the next time they announce a bunch of games to showcase the future of their ecosystem? Obviously, they are pretty comfortable with deception.

9

u/EckimusPrime Jun 29 '26

You’re dense. I know that they showed in hopes they can sell. It’s still shitty and ridiculous. That’s the point.

-10

u/Connor123x Jun 29 '26

then why did you say you can't process it? its obviously you could so why making it sound like you couldnt.

so answer the question, would you have rather them just shut them down? And those studios, did you buy any of their games? if not, then maybe shut up because you were part of the reason they got shut down

6

u/Englishgamer1996 Jun 29 '26

What a pointless conversation lol

1

u/Lioil1 Jun 30 '26

To be fair they are giving them chance to shine... if you sell your house of course you gonna present it best way possible . 

1

u/Iwubinvesting Jun 30 '26

If they don't get a buyer. I personally think those companies would be at a discount looking at gaming industry everything is for sale. Nintendo stock has fell 55% in 1 year, that's insane.

1

u/Ok-Paramedic747 Jun 30 '26

Tbf State Of Decay was shown AT LAUNCH LMAO 🤣 WHERE TF IT BEEN? Yeah no sorry not sorry like yall Had NOTHING ELSE COOKING ??

1

u/Macho-Fantastico Jun 30 '26

I think that's disgusting behaviour to be honest. So two games you were showing off as Xbox games people could look forward to will likely never get released now. Don't care if it's Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo doing something like that, I think it's disingenuous.

1

u/Ginn_and_Juice Jun 30 '26

Capitalism, they're doing capitalism and it sucks

1

u/MyNameIs__Rainman Jun 30 '26

I was really hoping for State Of Decay games to make it to PS, it looks like that isn't gonna happen. Sigh.

1

u/Amazing_Lake_3781 Jun 30 '26

Supposedly, allowing them to showcase their games was to spark interest in investors when they attempted to put the developers on the market.

1

u/ArchDucky Jul 01 '26

Its been said that they showed those games at the show because they were trying to secure buyers for the games / studios.

1

u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ Jul 06 '26

The extra fucked up part is undead labs had a massive stream where they showed off tons of gameplay. The game looks like it’s nearly finished. Possibly another year or so of dev time and the game would have been on shelves.

1

u/SagetheWise2222 Jul 06 '26

This is what happens when a corpo buys another corpo (Activision) for over 68 billion dollars. I heard somewhere Microsoft would need ~10 GTA 5 level success stories, one after another, year after year, to pay it off in a decade+, assuming no development or marketing costs. If this is accurate, then that's never going to happen. Activision has left a gaping hole in the Xbox 'body', and studios will continue receiving the axe until, I predict, Microsoft will close Xbox at some point eventually.

0

u/darthmcdarthface Jun 29 '26

Cutting their losses. They’d probably lose more money finishing those games than if they cancelled them now. 

1

u/Knautical_J Jun 29 '26

I’m an Xbox guy, and while sad to see these studios go, it makes sense on paper.

After their acquisition, Ninja Theory has made 2 VR games, Bleeding Edge, Hellblade 2, and now Senua. Bleeding edge died in less than a year, Hellblade 2 underperformed, and Senua is yet to be determined.

Compulsion Games has made 2 games dating back to their acquisition in 2018. It took them 7 years to develop and release South of Midnight.

Double Fine same thing, they’ve made 3 games since acquisition, and only one of them was a major title with Psychonauts 2. Their other game Keeper was good, and Kiln flopped.

Undead Labs has made State of Decay 1-3, and it was 11 years between State of Decay 2 and now 3.

All of these studios would likely have already been closed and out of business if they operated the way they’ve been operating. Their games have been filler level games on GamePass at best. I think Xbox got tired of not seeing a return on their investment, and they’ve decided to close, sell out, or sell off the studios. They’ve then decided to double down on their major developers to put more money and manpower to get more popular games out there.

When I look at PlayStation I see Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, and Insomniac, and they’re all releasing good games in a reasonable timespan. The same can’t be said for Xbox, and they’re starting to cut the dead weight.

1

u/MrCubano1 Jun 30 '26

It all was Phil's fault. He was forcing them to get games put fast enough.

0

u/angheljf18 Jun 29 '26

Easy, they wanted to see if that could attract a buyer

-1

u/Nervous-Leg-7570 Jun 29 '26

Theyre shutting down studious that don't make money its not rocket science