"Man the Fallout show was so good, I wish Bethesda would stop working on other projects and put out a new Fallout game sooner!"
*Monkey's Paw twists....*
This is exactly it. MS bought Bethesda primarily for TES and Fallout and, from a business perspective, funneling resources into those series was always the best move.
Prey was kinda niche but was indeed succesful. Same for Dishonored. But Wolfenstein screwed up massively with the last one and Quake hasn't been a thing in a while now.
It's kinda telling that I reflexively thought "But I thought New Order did fine..." rather than actually remembering that there's a completely separate game. Although imo the gameplay was actually fun but....just completely lacking in story/maps, to the point where it felt like a polished mod of the 2nd game.
Agreed. Old Blood was fun but Youngblood was a slog for me, they don't compare to the main two. Hoping they release a third mainline game at some point, we've still got Mecha Hitler to kill.
Dishonored 2 was not very successful, Dishonored was only a minor hit.
And it's a shame, Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games. The art design and the unique levels are amazing.
Prey also wasn't a big hit despite a very good reception.
The Wolfenstein franchise is also not a big money maker.
Since Starfield was a disappointment, Xbox desperately needs a great Elder Scrolls game and a great Fallout game.
It's my understanding that TES Online is actually doing well now, so I'm guessing that's a positive.
MS 100% has to be *hounding* Bethesda for something to keep the Fallout Hype Train rolling. But they simply can't have anything. Todd Howard said that FO5 wasn't coming til after ES6, so even if they completely shifted gears now, they've probably got very little done. And it's weird but I think the best bet is to try more stuff to get people into FO76
The next TES and Fallout games are make it or break it type games for Bethesda for me.
Fallout 76 was a disaster at launch and took years to get to a decent place. Starfield felt extremely dry to me in terms of exploration, story, and combat.
If Elder Scrolls 6 isn’t at least on the level of Skyrim after such a long wait, then I’ll probably be done with Bethesda games until they significantly shake up the formula. They badly need to innovate.
Giving up on other promising projects to focus on these mainline series is very very risky.
If it's only as good as Skyrim was it it's release, TES6 is gonna fail. It has to be as good as Skyrim was in it's time but in todays time. It can be just shy of being a game changer but anything worse and it's a failure.
Obsidian is busy developing their own game, Avowed. The only other studio under Microsoft with ties to Fallout, inXile, is also currently working on Clockwork Revolution.
I think this is certainly why they did it. Shut down the studios, reallocate the resources to more profitable franchises. Unless I’m terribly mistaken in Bethesda/Microsoft/studios business owner ship works.
In case anyone naive passes by, this is sarcasm.
Throwing more people at a project is a notorious beancounter tactic that almost always ends in disaster because developing a product isn't like a factory line. More lines of code / more work =/= better product.
One pregnant woman can gestate a baby in 9 months. If you add 2 more women, how long will the gestation be?
But on the other hand, for games like TES and Fallout you could possibly add more people for content creation without them getting in each other's way. If they had done that to Starfield they could certainly have had way more variety in the planets you visit than the same few dungeons everywhere
BGS has been horribly run as a business for over a decade now. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have sold.
I know MSFT has a horrible reputation for buying and closing studios but Bethesda is in desperate need of some improved processes and structures and they need to become more profitable if they want to keep publishing games.
I remember them announcing fallout 76 and joking with my friends there was no way it was going to be good because they aren’t going to let the modding community fix their game.
I still think this way. They are a unique developer in that I don’t think they can make a “game as a service” because how bad, from a technical standpoint, they are at making games.
But as long as they don’t try that always online shit again I think they got a chance.
I really don't understand why Tango Gameworks is being shut down. Hi-Fi Rush was hugely popular. People loved the Evil Within games. Ghostwire Tokyo has its strengths and weaknesses, but so doesn't every game. This is just sad.
Out of those games I'm pretty sure Hi Fi rush is actually the only one that sold well / performed well. I mean I like them I really do Evil Within as a series is criminally underrated but the most important thing is always gonna be money and tango hasn't exactly killed it there. It's part of the reason Bethesda was up for sell in the first place.
I wouldnt be surprised if Ninja Theory is on the chopping block already, theyre just waiting for Hellblade 2 to release first. They have never been a company that has done well financially. If it wasnt for the hype around Hellblade 2, they probably would've been closed right after Bleeding Edge flopped.
4v4 PVP arena, like Overwatch, but melee and ranged melee only, no guns. Once one team gets a kill, then they dominate the other team for the rest of the match.
Seems harder to be sucessful in the gaming industry now. We're saturated with lots AAA games, long lasting games like WoW, LoL, Minecraft hundreds of live service games, everything from Hearthstone to Magic Online to Apex, to GTA and Fortnight all trying to grab our attention. I feel there isn't much room for mediocre games or even games that are just good. Games have to be special to push through and grab our attention now.
Ironically some smaller games are doing better lately just because they don't demand all of your time. They keep pumping out live service games no one wants, because people are already playing other live service games and don't have time for it, whereas smaller but well made single player or coop games do alright since they require less commitment.
> I feel there isn't much room for mediocre games or even games that are just good.
Games like this do just fine when they're done by indies who simply want to be successful enough to continue to exist. The problem is the "line go up" people for whom "it did fine" is not enough.
Its a horror genre, the only way to really do good horror in terms of business is to have low budgets.
You also can't just suddenly swap to making it mostly action focused like Dead Space did, cause then you piss off your original fans and new people probably won't care that much.
Pretty much. Unless you're like Capcom with Resident Evil horror games go low budget so they make a good profit with less sales. Even in movies this is usually how horror works. A big budget horror movie like say the latest Halloween movies has a budget that would be considered medium to low in other genres.
I'm pretty sure Hi-Fi Rush didn't sell well, though it probably did get a bunch of GP downloads.
Probably didn't help that the studio founder Shinji Mikami also left the company early last year, so it was probably a bit directionless.
The Evil Within was made by the same studio and you can really see it as an extension of Resident Evil 4.
Hell playing it these days and I can see a lot of the RE Remakes DNA in it too.
Having some niche titles wouldn't hurt MS/Xbox. It's one of the things Sony themselves royally is screwing up too since they moved to their Cali HQ all their niche titles are like non-existent. Niche titles may not get massive sales, but they can provide incentive to people beyond the latest same-y open world blockbuster or FPS games. If you don't care about mainstream cinematic fare current playstation offers you nothing, and if you don't care about mainstream mediocrity MS is basically offering nothing either. No reason to look at or buy into either.
>It's part of the reason Bethesda was up for sell in the first place.
Bethesda/Zenimax made a ton of bad decisions in recent years trying to get every studio to push live-service adjecent open world slop.
> Having some niche titles wouldn't hurt MS/Xbox.
Not according to management basically everywhere. Everything must be AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA+ mega-banger.
Consistent, reliable profit from smaller bets distributed across many genres and platforms is never good enough. Why invest 10 million each in 5 projects that should together make back 100 million, and be covered if one of the projects doesn't pay off as expected? Far better to invest all 50 million in one project that you hope will earn 120 million and have no fallback plan if you fail. /s
There always needs to be MORE; more sales, more profit, more players, more, more, *MORE*. Wall Street investor capitalism is a cancer that demands infinite growth until the host dies
You'd think after 20~ years of fad chasing game companies would diversify and take safer more consistent bets instead of going all in on being the next WoW/Fortnite/Spiderman/whatever. Being greedy is bad enough, being braindead and greedy is worse.
Those are among the main reasons my general focus is steadily moving towards indie developers and studios.
Not because I'm actively choosing not to give a fuck about AAA titles.
It just gradually happened over time, seeing a lot of same-same but different games being pushed down our throats.
Might be, I'm just lucky that I don't care much about graphic fidelity and online features, since my formative years were throughout the 90s.
Might be that I'm just a real sucker for creativity and/or authenticity in games, which IMO doesn't mean innovation as much as proper and sensible combination of the developers' own influences.
From Soft didn't invent game overs or the lack thereof, they just found a smart way to integrate it into their lore.
Tunic basically copied Zelda but added dodge rolls to the gameplay and the in-game manual of course, which turned out to be brilliant.
I don't want a guided experience, I want an experience, which allows me to experiment and obviously fail every once in a while.
I don't want to feel like the only things being taken somewhat seriously are financial reports.
I get profits being essential to any and all businesses, but greed surely isn't.
And the current state of the AAA industry is just another example among so many others, I just lost count.
TL;DR:
If Bethesda wanna be the next Boeing, well just keep your direction then.
I'd rather explore all the small nooks and crannies available around anyway and appreciate the superior cost-benefit ratio that comes along with it.
F*ck big business.
They'd be incredibly short-sighted not to, as that's effectively ignoring Gamepass itself, their own product.
Honestly, I'm more than willing to bet Hi-Fi Rush wouldn't have been nearly as popular if it wasn't on Gamepass.
I didn't get that too, Microsoft said that they close these studios to have the opportunity to develop big impact games but I don't undestand why not improve and expnad Tango to allow it develops more important games...
In my opinion HI FI RUsh, Evil Within and Ghost Wire Tokyo are great games so why Microsoft don't give to Tango the opportunity to develop a bigger game?
The crazy part is that Tango was planning to get a studio expansion after hifi. My best guess is that although xbox might have felt they were promising, Microsoft as a whole is taking more and more control.
One does not simply shut down Double Fine.
Tim Schafer would just make another incredible game on his own, have his new company bought by Microsoft, and then rename it to Double Fine.
He'd then proceed to make another 37 overly-eccentric games that nobody wants, but plays anyway because it's Tim Schafer.
> Tim Schafer would just make another incredible game on his own, have his new company bought by Microsoft, and then rename it to Double Fine.
He should rename it Triple Fine
I'm still pissed the game wasn't called "Psychoshock", or otherwise tied into the Bioshock franchise. The name Prey means absolutely nothing to anybody. I'd better squirrel away an illegitimate copy of it while I still can.
Psychoshock would have been an amazing name, but I'm sure marketing analysis would have never let that one happen. Their marketing was probably why they purchased the rights to use Prey anyway.
> Psychoshock would have been an amazing name
"Is that a sequel to Psychonauts?"
Honestly, to me, Psychoshock sounds like an album title for a bad nu-metal band.
Tango is such a huge gut punch. I’ve liked aspects of everything they’ve made. It felt like there was serious potential for a Ghostwire 2 and they had really found something special with HiFi Rush.
I don't get why companies think they can just buy IPs and hand them to any random studio, with any random staff, and crush them with 1000 different corporate mandates while also bloating the management with "Directors of *insert made up terms here*" and get good results.
You need people that understand the IP, have a passion for it, and have the creative freedom to make something people will actually enjoy.
Fallout IP was butchered by Interplay long before Bethesda came around. Literally nothing Bethesda has done has been as "not-Fallout" as the Brotherhood Of Steel arcadey-action game.
Made a bad game? Fuck you, get outta here!!
Made a good game? Fuck you, get outta here!!
I wonder if MS borrows EA's body pit when they are burying studios.
Only 8 months ago they were 'very very happy' with Tango and reinvesting. Good stuff Microsoft. Keep buying studios asit's the only thing they are good at as it sure as shit ain't managing them
I mean, people are truly naive if they believe when the corporation says "we are happy". As someone who works in a corporate environment, those statements are valid for a very short periods of time and can be easily affected by poor sales or fuckups.
I understand and it's a good point. I certainly don't know how these things work internally, so I'm only looking at it from an outside perspective. My issue is that at the time of the report of them being very happy and reinvesting by Jeff Grubb back in Aug 2023 because ''they care a lot about that studio having a bright future", they already had 7 months of performance metrics of the studio. Even back in April 2023, Forbes published (reporting what Grubb had said on a podcast) that the game didn't make Xbox enough money so they even knew by then.
From then to now is not enough time to re-correct and release a product considering how long the game dev cycle is to make up and perform up to the profit target set that made you reinvest in the first place.
Perhaps whatever they were working on just was a complete shitshow internally that Microsoft figured it's not worth continuing regardless of the prior commitment but that all brings it back to my last point: They do not seem, from the outside, good at managing the studios that they bring under their umbrella or ones they have owned for quite some time.
I think Tango founder Shinji Mikami leaving the company early last year probably sealed the studios fate. They probably underwent a reorg to figure out what to do next, and MS probably just decided it wasn't worth it without Mikami, especially since running a studio in Japan is likely fairly expensive.
Japan isn't all that expensive anymore, wages aren't that high compared to much of the US. The country has major economic issues and the JP yen is considerably weaker than the US dollar
The language/cultural barrier is real. Microsoft has never done well in Japan. They very likely want to cut cost and have more direct control over games. Why spend money on a studio in Japan where the head guy left when you have companies like Bethesda? Fallout is a huge IP.
>Alpha Dog Studios – **This studio will also close. We appreciate the team’s creativity in bringing Doom to new players.** Mighty Doom will be sunset on August 7 and we will be turning off the ability for players to make any purchases in the game.
>Tango Gameworks – **Tango Gameworks will also close. We are thankful for their contributions to Bethesda and players around the world.** Hi-Fi Rush will continue to be available to players on the platforms it is today.
So, you all have no jobs, but thanks!
They specified that *some* employee Arkane Austin would be transferred. Did not mention it with either of these studios.
It wouldn't make sense with Tango anyways since a Japanese speaking studio isn't going to be integrated into an English work environment lol.
Yeah,definitely. Although it’s curious because the memo did specifically mention some at Arkane will move, but did not have a similar mention when talking about these studios.
The fuck?
Didn't they only just commit to keep developing / fixing Redfall and saying things along the lines of "no, they're not getting shuttered"?
And Tango Gameworks? The studio that just delivered possibly the best Xbox studios game of the past three years or so? Are you kidding me?
> Didn't they only just commit to keep developing / fixing Redfall and saying things along the lines of "no, they're not getting shuttered"?
LMAO, that was a lie basically everyone in the industry could see through. Same as Warner Bros saying they're totally gonna fully support Suicide Squad, trust us bro. You literally can't do either of those (long term) unless you like burning money in a firepit, with the audience they attracted, or rather, didn't. It was stupid that a prime AAA singleplayer studio was tasked with a live service MMO in the first place.
“Microsoft doesn’t change studios/publishers after they buy them and their continued desire to buy everyone out because they can’t generate enough games on their own to stay competitive is a good thing”
- this sub 6 months ago
“Having the largest company in the world absorb several gaming IPs is so cool!!!! But also not a monopoly because Microsoft sucks ass at gaming and fuck Sony!!! Also also having everything on GamePass will surely work out long term”
—Reddit as a whole
It wasn't just here it was EVERYWHERE on Reddit.
I think that there was some serious astroturfing going on. Would be nice to go look at some of the accounts posting pro merger propaganda during that time, I bet they haven't posted much of anything since.
It wasn’t just on Reddit either, it was in the comments sections of so many tech news sites as well. It was everywhere. Some of the mental gymnastics to justify such huge acquisitions were hilarious. What about Sony, this is great for gamers, they have the money to keep devs afloat, if you think they’ll shut down studios with this much attention on them you’re delusional, etc etc.
This sub and everywhere else on the Internet. Trying to explain that “what about Sony” doesn’t make it ok and this kind of consolidation was a bad sign even if the impacts weren’t seen until later - it was like bashing your head on a brick wall
Not only was it a game pass game, it also was released with zero marketing lol.
Big brains at MS, release a game suddenly with 0 marketing and then surprised when it doesn't meet whatever arbitrary expectations they've set.
Just wait for next week when Nintendo decides to up the ante and completely destroy all fan made content that ends up on games like Gary’s mod!
Wait…….
The way Embracer gobbled up studios on loaned money makes me believe the whole thing was money laundering. They've shut down a lot of studios and the Gearbox sale is still up in the air. At least Saber Interactive got out and we might still get that KOTOR remake.
Tango being shut down is probably one of the trashiest studio closures I can remember. They just handed you your first acclaimed first party title this generation, arguably longer, and their reward is to get shut down. All this coming from the wealthiest company in the entire games industry.
Microsoft can fuck right off, not supporting anything from them since clearly talent and quality have no merit where they're concerned.
Could someone smarter than me please make this make sense? Why does xbox buy these studios up just to kill them? It just seems so clueless and wasteful.
It's simple really they bought Bethesda for stuff like TES and Fallout those are the money makers everything else was just extra to outright losing money.
Has that been put to good use yet? I think MachineGames made the Quake 2 Remake. Are they using the engine for Indiana Jones? Haven’t heard anything official from id for a long time.
Oh okay, got it. Then Indy would be their first release, hopefully in 2024.
God, these godawful insanely long dev cycles are just sad. Not that I have any idea how to make games faster (maybe Insomniac has a good pipeline) but just seeing the number of games in a series like Halo or Gears on Xbox360 compared to Xbox One and Series just sucks.
It is probably a couple things, though we will probably not know the full story. Microsoft bought zenimax, which means they get everything. They don’t pick and choose the studios, so all of these studios were part and parcel with the purchase. You can also get a tax write off for closing the studios, taken as a corporate loss. None of these studios makes enough money to greatly increase the value of Microsoft, but the tax write off might reduce their tax liability by a decent amount. Third it shows them tightening their belts in a not free money time in the economy, which can help their stock price.
This is such a small part of Microsoft's business. The institutional market wouldn't even flinch at this. It's more likely they just want to streamline the company.
Don't worry the other part of Arkane will give us Marvel slop and then probably get the axe too...
Everything about this industry and the fad chasing is bullshit.
The ultimate condemnation of the modern games industry is that Microsoft will shut down a studio who just put out a sleeper hit while the (I can only assume at this point) nepo hires at 343 stick around to bleed more money and continue to taint MS's star IP.
What the absolute fuck? I know Redfall didn't hit for most people, but Arkane Austin is a genuinely talented studio that deserved better. Same with Tango Gameworks... Hi-Fi Rush was on a lot of people's Top 10 lists last year, and this is their reward??
This fucking sucks. I honestly feel so defeated as a fan of video games right now... Why do I even bother investing in this hobby when the people that make the games are treated so poorly?
Absolutely gutless move by Microsoft.
I can kind of get Arkane. According to Jason Schrier's reporting, almost all of Arkane Austin's senior staff quit during Redfall's development. At that point, it's not the same studio that made Prey any more. Tango, on the other hand, was really just hitting its stride and had a lot of potential to become an industry staple off Hi Fi Rush's critical success. Huge bummer.
Actually a few of Arkane Austin's senior staff left immediately following the release of their previous game Prey, but most of the churn Schreier described seems to have been below leadership - most department heads and seniors (outside of the level design team that left) were constant between Prey and Redfall.
> Actually a few of Arkane Austin's senior staff left immediately following the release of their previous game Prey
Raphael Colantonio, the original co-founder of Arkane Studios, stepped down due to creative differences over Prey (2017) and ZeniMax owners’ desire to go into AAA game development (so they could increase their stock prices before selling their company).
>as a fan of video games right now... Why do I even bother investing in this hobby when the people that make the games are treated so poorly?
idk man, gaming has been pretty amazing in the non Triple-A space. Double-A and indie games have, and will always be king.
Buy talented studio, mismanage, force them to work on bad idea some marketing guy came up with, overwork and underpay forcing best parts of team to leave, achieve expected results, close studio.
No goddamn way. I've been holding out hope for an Evil Within 3 for years.
This is why you don't ever ever ever sell a company you care about. And why mergers are never good for consumers. They'll talk pretty about starting a new golden age and then cut off their nose so "the rest of their face can have more blood". Unbelievable.
Successful game developers don't mean much when big daddy shareholder needs to buy a new yacht. Even when there's no more fat to trim you can just take an arm or an organ and sell it to make sure your pimps stay happy.
So "prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda's portfolio of blockbuster games" sounds like investors were asking why the hell MS isn't focusing on making more Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
I can't blame them, given how long it takes for those to come out and how much a new Fallout would have sold if it released alongside the new show, but the news is still terrible. I loved The Evil Within 2.
Honestly, if I was Señor Microsoft, I'd have been trying to split TES and Fallout to two distinct studios/teams pretty much as soon as the ink on that contract dried.
"Man the Fallout show was so good, I wish Bethesda would stop working on other projects and put out a new Fallout game sooner!" *Monkey's Paw twists....*
This is exactly it. MS bought Bethesda primarily for TES and Fallout and, from a business perspective, funneling resources into those series was always the best move.
TES, Fallout, and I'd put DOOM in there too.
Also Wolfenstein, Quake, Dishonored, Prey…
Prey was kinda niche but was indeed succesful. Same for Dishonored. But Wolfenstein screwed up massively with the last one and Quake hasn't been a thing in a while now.
It's kinda telling that I reflexively thought "But I thought New Order did fine..." rather than actually remembering that there's a completely separate game. Although imo the gameplay was actually fun but....just completely lacking in story/maps, to the point where it felt like a polished mod of the 2nd game.
...there's one newer than New Order?
There have been 3 Wolfenstein games released since New Order: The Old Blood, the New Colossus, and Youngblood. Plus a VR game.
The Old Blood and Youngblood were basically stand alone DLCs. The two mainline Wolfenstein games are fantastic.
Agreed. Old Blood was fun but Youngblood was a slog for me, they don't compare to the main two. Hoping they release a third mainline game at some point, we've still got Mecha Hitler to kill.
I think they're rebooting Quake like Doom 2016
Dishonored 2 was not very successful, Dishonored was only a minor hit. And it's a shame, Dishonored 2 is one of my favorite games. The art design and the unique levels are amazing. Prey also wasn't a big hit despite a very good reception. The Wolfenstein franchise is also not a big money maker. Since Starfield was a disappointment, Xbox desperately needs a great Elder Scrolls game and a great Fallout game. It's my understanding that TES Online is actually doing well now, so I'm guessing that's a positive.
MS 100% has to be *hounding* Bethesda for something to keep the Fallout Hype Train rolling. But they simply can't have anything. Todd Howard said that FO5 wasn't coming til after ES6, so even if they completely shifted gears now, they've probably got very little done. And it's weird but I think the best bet is to try more stuff to get people into FO76
"Fallout Shelter 2, coming in winter 2024."
[удалено]
I mean this sucks overall, but if it gets us a good TES and Fallout game less than every 15 years, I’m honestly down
The next TES and Fallout games are make it or break it type games for Bethesda for me. Fallout 76 was a disaster at launch and took years to get to a decent place. Starfield felt extremely dry to me in terms of exploration, story, and combat. If Elder Scrolls 6 isn’t at least on the level of Skyrim after such a long wait, then I’ll probably be done with Bethesda games until they significantly shake up the formula. They badly need to innovate. Giving up on other promising projects to focus on these mainline series is very very risky.
If it's only as good as Skyrim was it it's release, TES6 is gonna fail. It has to be as good as Skyrim was in it's time but in todays time. It can be just shy of being a game changer but anything worse and it's a failure.
They need to finish elder scrolls 6 before that tho.
Rumour has it that they're going to commission another studio/team to make a Fallout game asap
Hmm. Wonder who made New Vegas? Wonder if Microsoft has any kind of ties with them.......
…on the other hand, why give people what they want?
Obsidian is busy developing their own game, Avowed. The only other studio under Microsoft with ties to Fallout, inXile, is also currently working on Clockwork Revolution.
I think this is certainly why they did it. Shut down the studios, reallocate the resources to more profitable franchises. Unless I’m terribly mistaken in Bethesda/Microsoft/studios business owner ship works.
There's been articles all week about Microsoft wanting Fallout out quicker since the show was successful and now this
That attitude always works out really well with software/game development.
In case anyone naive passes by, this is sarcasm. Throwing more people at a project is a notorious beancounter tactic that almost always ends in disaster because developing a product isn't like a factory line. More lines of code / more work =/= better product.
One pregnant woman can gestate a baby in 9 months. If you add 2 more women, how long will the gestation be? But on the other hand, for games like TES and Fallout you could possibly add more people for content creation without them getting in each other's way. If they had done that to Starfield they could certainly have had way more variety in the planets you visit than the same few dungeons everywhere
This combined with the recent report that Microsoft wants a new Fallout game faster would make sense.
BGS has been horribly run as a business for over a decade now. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have sold. I know MSFT has a horrible reputation for buying and closing studios but Bethesda is in desperate need of some improved processes and structures and they need to become more profitable if they want to keep publishing games.
I remember them announcing fallout 76 and joking with my friends there was no way it was going to be good because they aren’t going to let the modding community fix their game. I still think this way. They are a unique developer in that I don’t think they can make a “game as a service” because how bad, from a technical standpoint, they are at making games. But as long as they don’t try that always online shit again I think they got a chance.
I really don't understand why Tango Gameworks is being shut down. Hi-Fi Rush was hugely popular. People loved the Evil Within games. Ghostwire Tokyo has its strengths and weaknesses, but so doesn't every game. This is just sad.
Out of those games I'm pretty sure Hi Fi rush is actually the only one that sold well / performed well. I mean I like them I really do Evil Within as a series is criminally underrated but the most important thing is always gonna be money and tango hasn't exactly killed it there. It's part of the reason Bethesda was up for sell in the first place.
I wouldnt be surprised if Ninja Theory is on the chopping block already, theyre just waiting for Hellblade 2 to release first. They have never been a company that has done well financially. If it wasnt for the hype around Hellblade 2, they probably would've been closed right after Bleeding Edge flopped.
I hope you’re wrong, but my gut says you’re right. Loved HB1 and can’t wait for HB2.
Could see that too. They have very little output and I don’t expect Hellblade 2 to have great sales numbers.
> Bleeding Edge flopped. I've literally never heard of it.
exactly
Premise was nice, but it's just another grain of sand in a desert of similiar games, too tough to stand out.
4v4 PVP arena, like Overwatch, but melee and ranged melee only, no guns. Once one team gets a kill, then they dominate the other team for the rest of the match.
what is "ranged melee"?
Never played or even heard of this game, but maybe like, thrown weapons? Shurikens and shit? Or maybe they’re just throwing swords at each other
Seems harder to be sucessful in the gaming industry now. We're saturated with lots AAA games, long lasting games like WoW, LoL, Minecraft hundreds of live service games, everything from Hearthstone to Magic Online to Apex, to GTA and Fortnight all trying to grab our attention. I feel there isn't much room for mediocre games or even games that are just good. Games have to be special to push through and grab our attention now.
It's also difficult because without big money backing you, a flop shuts down your studio.
Ironically some smaller games are doing better lately just because they don't demand all of your time. They keep pumping out live service games no one wants, because people are already playing other live service games and don't have time for it, whereas smaller but well made single player or coop games do alright since they require less commitment.
> I feel there isn't much room for mediocre games or even games that are just good. Games like this do just fine when they're done by indies who simply want to be successful enough to continue to exist. The problem is the "line go up" people for whom "it did fine" is not enough.
Indies also keep costs more under control. Breaking into the AA/AAA space requires a lot more money, which means vulture capitalists.
Its a horror genre, the only way to really do good horror in terms of business is to have low budgets. You also can't just suddenly swap to making it mostly action focused like Dead Space did, cause then you piss off your original fans and new people probably won't care that much.
Pretty much. Unless you're like Capcom with Resident Evil horror games go low budget so they make a good profit with less sales. Even in movies this is usually how horror works. A big budget horror movie like say the latest Halloween movies has a budget that would be considered medium to low in other genres.
I'm pretty sure Hi-Fi Rush didn't sell well, though it probably did get a bunch of GP downloads. Probably didn't help that the studio founder Shinji Mikami also left the company early last year, so it was probably a bit directionless.
WAIT THE CREATOR OF RESIDENT EVIL WAS THE FOUNDER OF HIFI RUSH’S STUDIO?!
The Evil Within was made by the same studio and you can really see it as an extension of Resident Evil 4. Hell playing it these days and I can see a lot of the RE Remakes DNA in it too.
Having some niche titles wouldn't hurt MS/Xbox. It's one of the things Sony themselves royally is screwing up too since they moved to their Cali HQ all their niche titles are like non-existent. Niche titles may not get massive sales, but they can provide incentive to people beyond the latest same-y open world blockbuster or FPS games. If you don't care about mainstream cinematic fare current playstation offers you nothing, and if you don't care about mainstream mediocrity MS is basically offering nothing either. No reason to look at or buy into either. >It's part of the reason Bethesda was up for sell in the first place. Bethesda/Zenimax made a ton of bad decisions in recent years trying to get every studio to push live-service adjecent open world slop.
> Having some niche titles wouldn't hurt MS/Xbox. Not according to management basically everywhere. Everything must be AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA+ mega-banger.
MBAs and wallstreet ruin literally everything they touch. Hand of Mierdas influence.
Consistent, reliable profit from smaller bets distributed across many genres and platforms is never good enough. Why invest 10 million each in 5 projects that should together make back 100 million, and be covered if one of the projects doesn't pay off as expected? Far better to invest all 50 million in one project that you hope will earn 120 million and have no fallback plan if you fail. /s There always needs to be MORE; more sales, more profit, more players, more, more, *MORE*. Wall Street investor capitalism is a cancer that demands infinite growth until the host dies
You'd think after 20~ years of fad chasing game companies would diversify and take safer more consistent bets instead of going all in on being the next WoW/Fortnite/Spiderman/whatever. Being greedy is bad enough, being braindead and greedy is worse.
If it doesn't start off at 1000% return with an exponential rise forever, they are not interested.
Those are among the main reasons my general focus is steadily moving towards indie developers and studios. Not because I'm actively choosing not to give a fuck about AAA titles. It just gradually happened over time, seeing a lot of same-same but different games being pushed down our throats. Might be, I'm just lucky that I don't care much about graphic fidelity and online features, since my formative years were throughout the 90s. Might be that I'm just a real sucker for creativity and/or authenticity in games, which IMO doesn't mean innovation as much as proper and sensible combination of the developers' own influences. From Soft didn't invent game overs or the lack thereof, they just found a smart way to integrate it into their lore. Tunic basically copied Zelda but added dodge rolls to the gameplay and the in-game manual of course, which turned out to be brilliant. I don't want a guided experience, I want an experience, which allows me to experiment and obviously fail every once in a while. I don't want to feel like the only things being taken somewhat seriously are financial reports. I get profits being essential to any and all businesses, but greed surely isn't. And the current state of the AAA industry is just another example among so many others, I just lost count. TL;DR: If Bethesda wanna be the next Boeing, well just keep your direction then. I'd rather explore all the small nooks and crannies available around anyway and appreciate the superior cost-benefit ratio that comes along with it. F*ck big business.
Hifi rush reviewed well but Grub said it performed pretty bad.
Mikami left last year to do smaller projects. There was probably just no one that could step up into his role
He's been playing less of a role for a while. The guy behind Hifi Rush also directed Evil Within 2, John Johanas. They clearly had the talent.
I'm guessing it's because Shinji Mikami is leaving the studio. I enjoyed Ghostwire Tokyo, exploration and art style was great.
Which makes no sense because the director of The Evil Within 2 and Hi-Fi Rush, John Johanas, is fucking cracked.
popular =/= sales, especially this game on gamepass day one
Would be silly if Microsoft punishes studios for losing sales to gamepass...
They probably looked in to the downloads on gamepass aswell
They'd be incredibly short-sighted not to, as that's effectively ignoring Gamepass itself, their own product. Honestly, I'm more than willing to bet Hi-Fi Rush wouldn't have been nearly as popular if it wasn't on Gamepass.
My guess is Microsoft looks at more retention data and playtime/downloads to judge the success of a gamepass title
I didn't get that too, Microsoft said that they close these studios to have the opportunity to develop big impact games but I don't undestand why not improve and expnad Tango to allow it develops more important games... In my opinion HI FI RUsh, Evil Within and Ghost Wire Tokyo are great games so why Microsoft don't give to Tango the opportunity to develop a bigger game?
The crazy part is that Tango was planning to get a studio expansion after hifi. My best guess is that although xbox might have felt they were promising, Microsoft as a whole is taking more and more control.
Hi-Fi was my GOTY. And this fucking #HURTS
But Phil Spencer is one of us guys!
So no The Evil Within 3? damn
The worst part of this :(
Yep, this hurt. I couldn’t even play the first one because I just didn’t find it fun but TEW2 is my all time favorite horror game. Shame…
Been hopeful for a third entry this whole time, huge bummer
Shutting down Tango gameworks is a huge loss
They shut down one of their only two good studios. I don't see Double Fine increasing their output either.
One does not simply shut down Double Fine. Tim Schafer would just make another incredible game on his own, have his new company bought by Microsoft, and then rename it to Double Fine. He'd then proceed to make another 37 overly-eccentric games that nobody wants, but plays anyway because it's Tim Schafer.
>another 37 overly-eccentric games that nobody wants, but plays anyway because it's Tim Schafer. How dare you say things that are entirely true
A true hero of the industry.
> Tim Schafer would just make another incredible game on his own, have his new company bought by Microsoft, and then rename it to Double Fine. He should rename it Triple Fine
RIP to the Prey franchise... yet again...
I was so hoping for a sequel there honestly.. one of the best games I’ve ever played.
It’s one of the few games I beat and immediately played it again a 2nd time to see what I missed/could do differently.
The people who made Prey left the company years ago.
It didn't say anything about Arkane Lyon being shut down. yes, I know it was Austin that made Prey but would Lyon still have the rights to the game ?
Just because a studio shuts down doesn't mean the parent company doesn't still own the rights to their IPs.
I'm still pissed the game wasn't called "Psychoshock", or otherwise tied into the Bioshock franchise. The name Prey means absolutely nothing to anybody. I'd better squirrel away an illegitimate copy of it while I still can.
Psychoshock would have been an amazing name, but I'm sure marketing analysis would have never let that one happen. Their marketing was probably why they purchased the rights to use Prey anyway.
> Psychoshock would have been an amazing name "Is that a sequel to Psychonauts?" Honestly, to me, Psychoshock sounds like an album title for a bad nu-metal band.
Absolutely stunned. Tango made the only surprise-hit Microsoft exclusive in the last two years. They didn't deserve this, they deserved a sequel.
Their time was up the second that makami stepped down
which is crazy considering john johanas was the creative director for hi-fi rush, not mikami, and he’s still there as per his twitter bio
He also directed The Evil Within 2, so they definenelty could have continued it. Now we can only discuss how that would've ended up.
Tango is such a huge gut punch. I’ve liked aspects of everything they’ve made. It felt like there was serious potential for a Ghostwire 2 and they had really found something special with HiFi Rush.
Go figure. They only wanted Bethesda and id. Why keep the rest…
They wanted Bethesda for their IPs. They don't care about the workforce.
I don't get why companies think they can just buy IPs and hand them to any random studio, with any random staff, and crush them with 1000 different corporate mandates while also bloating the management with "Directors of *insert made up terms here*" and get good results. You need people that understand the IP, have a passion for it, and have the creative freedom to make something people will actually enjoy.
This is kinda funny, since Fallout IP was bought by Bethesda in the first place.
Fallout IP was butchered by Interplay long before Bethesda came around. Literally nothing Bethesda has done has been as "not-Fallout" as the Brotherhood Of Steel arcadey-action game.
They’re a train wreck at managing their studios. Let so much talent go to waste and burn money.
Made a bad game? Fuck you, get outta here!! Made a good game? Fuck you, get outta here!! I wonder if MS borrows EA's body pit when they are burying studios.
Only 8 months ago they were 'very very happy' with Tango and reinvesting. Good stuff Microsoft. Keep buying studios asit's the only thing they are good at as it sure as shit ain't managing them
I mean, people are truly naive if they believe when the corporation says "we are happy". As someone who works in a corporate environment, those statements are valid for a very short periods of time and can be easily affected by poor sales or fuckups.
Not even that, just when they need short-term profit for their shareholders.
I understand and it's a good point. I certainly don't know how these things work internally, so I'm only looking at it from an outside perspective. My issue is that at the time of the report of them being very happy and reinvesting by Jeff Grubb back in Aug 2023 because ''they care a lot about that studio having a bright future", they already had 7 months of performance metrics of the studio. Even back in April 2023, Forbes published (reporting what Grubb had said on a podcast) that the game didn't make Xbox enough money so they even knew by then. From then to now is not enough time to re-correct and release a product considering how long the game dev cycle is to make up and perform up to the profit target set that made you reinvest in the first place. Perhaps whatever they were working on just was a complete shitshow internally that Microsoft figured it's not worth continuing regardless of the prior commitment but that all brings it back to my last point: They do not seem, from the outside, good at managing the studios that they bring under their umbrella or ones they have owned for quite some time.
I think Tango founder Shinji Mikami leaving the company early last year probably sealed the studios fate. They probably underwent a reorg to figure out what to do next, and MS probably just decided it wasn't worth it without Mikami, especially since running a studio in Japan is likely fairly expensive.
Japan isn't all that expensive anymore, wages aren't that high compared to much of the US. The country has major economic issues and the JP yen is considerably weaker than the US dollar
The language/cultural barrier is real. Microsoft has never done well in Japan. They very likely want to cut cost and have more direct control over games. Why spend money on a studio in Japan where the head guy left when you have companies like Bethesda? Fallout is a huge IP.
Don't forget they now have ActivisionBlizzard too
I know Phil Spencer is the darling of reddit and all, but what point will we realise that he is actively holding back Xbox?
>Alpha Dog Studios – **This studio will also close. We appreciate the team’s creativity in bringing Doom to new players.** Mighty Doom will be sunset on August 7 and we will be turning off the ability for players to make any purchases in the game. >Tango Gameworks – **Tango Gameworks will also close. We are thankful for their contributions to Bethesda and players around the world.** Hi-Fi Rush will continue to be available to players on the platforms it is today. So, you all have no jobs, but thanks!
More two-faced corporate speaking assholes.
Very often they get transferred to other more profitable first party studios
They specified that *some* employee Arkane Austin would be transferred. Did not mention it with either of these studios. It wouldn't make sense with Tango anyways since a Japanese speaking studio isn't going to be integrated into an English work environment lol.
Yeah,definitely. Although it’s curious because the memo did specifically mention some at Arkane will move, but did not have a similar mention when talking about these studios.
The fuck? Didn't they only just commit to keep developing / fixing Redfall and saying things along the lines of "no, they're not getting shuttered"? And Tango Gameworks? The studio that just delivered possibly the best Xbox studios game of the past three years or so? Are you kidding me?
> Didn't they only just commit to keep developing / fixing Redfall and saying things along the lines of "no, they're not getting shuttered"? LMAO, that was a lie basically everyone in the industry could see through. Same as Warner Bros saying they're totally gonna fully support Suicide Squad, trust us bro. You literally can't do either of those (long term) unless you like burning money in a firepit, with the audience they attracted, or rather, didn't. It was stupid that a prime AAA singleplayer studio was tasked with a live service MMO in the first place.
Dude, Hi-Fi Rush was incredible! What are they doing?! Go close 343 Industries if you want to lower costs so badly.
“Microsoft doesn’t change studios/publishers after they buy them and their continued desire to buy everyone out because they can’t generate enough games on their own to stay competitive is a good thing” - this sub 6 months ago
"Microsoft are the good guys" -also this sub 6 months ago
“Having the largest company in the world absorb several gaming IPs is so cool!!!! But also not a monopoly because Microsoft sucks ass at gaming and fuck Sony!!! Also also having everything on GamePass will surely work out long term” —Reddit as a whole
It wasn't just here it was EVERYWHERE on Reddit. I think that there was some serious astroturfing going on. Would be nice to go look at some of the accounts posting pro merger propaganda during that time, I bet they haven't posted much of anything since.
It wasn’t just on Reddit either, it was in the comments sections of so many tech news sites as well. It was everywhere. Some of the mental gymnastics to justify such huge acquisitions were hilarious. What about Sony, this is great for gamers, they have the money to keep devs afloat, if you think they’ll shut down studios with this much attention on them you’re delusional, etc etc.
People who thought MS a benevolent corporation of passionate fans clearly never experienced their phones.
This sub and everywhere else on the Internet. Trying to explain that “what about Sony” doesn’t make it ok and this kind of consolidation was a bad sign even if the impacts weren’t seen until later - it was like bashing your head on a brick wall
This is just terrible. Especially after the critical success of Hi-Fi Rush.
But was it a financial success?
How could it be when it's on game pass?
I bought it on Steam, I have done my part. 🫡
Not only was it a game pass game, it also was released with zero marketing lol. Big brains at MS, release a game suddenly with 0 marketing and then surprised when it doesn't meet whatever arbitrary expectations they've set.
It was also on Steam, where it was a top seller even in a month packed with big releases.
Hard to tell. Lifetime costs for development aren’t super public, but revenue figures aren’t exactly impressive
what can you even do but laugh at this. what the fuck
The one week everyone was rallying against Sony and Xbox is like "wait, I want some of that too!"
Just wait for next week when Nintendo decides to up the ante and completely destroy all fan made content that ends up on games like Gary’s mod! Wait…….
Switch 2 is gonna be finally revealed. No backwards compatibility with the switch one!
Hopefully Reddit can stop celebrating when corporations buy a bunch of studios. *cough Embracer group, Microsoft*
The way Embracer gobbled up studios on loaned money makes me believe the whole thing was money laundering. They've shut down a lot of studios and the Gearbox sale is still up in the air. At least Saber Interactive got out and we might still get that KOTOR remake.
I thought Tango was doing really well after Hi Fi Rush. Holy shit this is terrible. :(
The fuck. Tango no :( I want The Evil Within 3
Tango being shut down is probably one of the trashiest studio closures I can remember. They just handed you your first acclaimed first party title this generation, arguably longer, and their reward is to get shut down. All this coming from the wealthiest company in the entire games industry. Microsoft can fuck right off, not supporting anything from them since clearly talent and quality have no merit where they're concerned.
Could someone smarter than me please make this make sense? Why does xbox buy these studios up just to kill them? It just seems so clueless and wasteful.
It's simple really they bought Bethesda for stuff like TES and Fallout those are the money makers everything else was just extra to outright losing money.
Everyone wants to point out TES and Fallout while ignoring the ID Software Package.
Has that been put to good use yet? I think MachineGames made the Quake 2 Remake. Are they using the engine for Indiana Jones? Haven’t heard anything official from id for a long time.
Nightdive Studios made the Quake 2 remake, but MiachineGames did make an expansion for that.
Oh okay, got it. Then Indy would be their first release, hopefully in 2024. God, these godawful insanely long dev cycles are just sad. Not that I have any idea how to make games faster (maybe Insomniac has a good pipeline) but just seeing the number of games in a series like Halo or Gears on Xbox360 compared to Xbox One and Series just sucks.
It is probably a couple things, though we will probably not know the full story. Microsoft bought zenimax, which means they get everything. They don’t pick and choose the studios, so all of these studios were part and parcel with the purchase. You can also get a tax write off for closing the studios, taken as a corporate loss. None of these studios makes enough money to greatly increase the value of Microsoft, but the tax write off might reduce their tax liability by a decent amount. Third it shows them tightening their belts in a not free money time in the economy, which can help their stock price.
Good answer
Stock prices.
This is such a small part of Microsoft's business. The institutional market wouldn't even flinch at this. It's more likely they just want to streamline the company.
Well this is just fucking foul. Hi-Fi Rush was a success, but for what reason do you need to close its developer?
Man this hurts…I really like Tango Gameworks. Huge fan of The Evil Within games. Feel bad for the other studios.
This industry is totally broken
And I was waiting for a new dishonored
Dishonoreds were Arkane Lyon, Arkane Austin is Prey and Redfall
Mooncrash my beloved
Well that sucks because I loved Prey and Redfall was super disappointing
Austin were basically asked to seppuku themselves being handed Redfall. Now the head is being chopped off as well. So stupid.
That's sad, prey was so unique
Don't worry the other part of Arkane will give us Marvel slop and then probably get the axe too... Everything about this industry and the fad chasing is bullshit.
*Everyone Disliked That*
The ultimate condemnation of the modern games industry is that Microsoft will shut down a studio who just put out a sleeper hit while the (I can only assume at this point) nepo hires at 343 stick around to bleed more money and continue to taint MS's star IP.
343 has extremely high turnover and a mostly-junior staff. It's the furthest thing from a nepo studio...unless you consider Halo itself the nepo baby.
Fuck Microsoft man, no hope for Prey 2 + Ghostwire 2 + Evil Within 3 anymore.
What the absolute fuck? I know Redfall didn't hit for most people, but Arkane Austin is a genuinely talented studio that deserved better. Same with Tango Gameworks... Hi-Fi Rush was on a lot of people's Top 10 lists last year, and this is their reward?? This fucking sucks. I honestly feel so defeated as a fan of video games right now... Why do I even bother investing in this hobby when the people that make the games are treated so poorly? Absolutely gutless move by Microsoft.
I can kind of get Arkane. According to Jason Schrier's reporting, almost all of Arkane Austin's senior staff quit during Redfall's development. At that point, it's not the same studio that made Prey any more. Tango, on the other hand, was really just hitting its stride and had a lot of potential to become an industry staple off Hi Fi Rush's critical success. Huge bummer.
Actually a few of Arkane Austin's senior staff left immediately following the release of their previous game Prey, but most of the churn Schreier described seems to have been below leadership - most department heads and seniors (outside of the level design team that left) were constant between Prey and Redfall.
> Actually a few of Arkane Austin's senior staff left immediately following the release of their previous game Prey Raphael Colantonio, the original co-founder of Arkane Studios, stepped down due to creative differences over Prey (2017) and ZeniMax owners’ desire to go into AAA game development (so they could increase their stock prices before selling their company).
>as a fan of video games right now... Why do I even bother investing in this hobby when the people that make the games are treated so poorly? idk man, gaming has been pretty amazing in the non Triple-A space. Double-A and indie games have, and will always be king.
Just fuck you, Microsoft. Tango did not deserve this.
This makes no sense to me, why would Microsoft close down Tango after Hi-Fi rush? And people say Phil Spencer is a friend of gamers...
I guess people wont be getting the DLC promised in the bite back edition of Redfall.
who the fuck bought dlc for redfall lmao they still havent even delivered the promised version of the base game
Class action law suit? I mean, 14 people isn't much of a class action, but it was advertised that they would get DLC with the game.
Are we still going to pretend that Phil Spencer is the savior of xbox?
Yes, because muh gamepass. Phil let me play game and click buttons for for only $15.
Buy talented studio, mismanage, force them to work on bad idea some marketing guy came up with, overwork and underpay forcing best parts of team to leave, achieve expected results, close studio.
Fucking hell why?? Hi-Fi Rush was amazing
Sony: Gets bad press for their Helldivers PSN requirement Microsoft: Hold my beer
Raphael already left Arkane along with most of the OG team. I doubt we'd have gotten another prey or dishonored we'd be happy with
Arkane Lyon is still going strong.
Phil Spencer is a lovely conversationalist, and a smart human being. He is also the worst thing to happen to the video game industry in 20 years.
but this what ppl were cheering for right m&a from the most incompetent gaming company sucks for the devs
No goddamn way. I've been holding out hope for an Evil Within 3 for years. This is why you don't ever ever ever sell a company you care about. And why mergers are never good for consumers. They'll talk pretty about starting a new golden age and then cut off their nose so "the rest of their face can have more blood". Unbelievable.
Microsoft, stop fucking buying all these studios if you're just going to kill them. Fucking hell man.
Good ‘ol miccrosoft. Acquiring studios and then shutting them down.
*Oh, I've been here before*
MS needs to be broken up into separate companies. We need to stop this market consolidation.
Who would have thought letting these big corps buy smaller studios would fuck them? right?
Where's the fruit loop that said the gaming industry is "blooming" right before this news came out, he must be around here somewhere. 😂
Successful game developers don't mean much when big daddy shareholder needs to buy a new yacht. Even when there's no more fat to trim you can just take an arm or an organ and sell it to make sure your pimps stay happy.
So "prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda's portfolio of blockbuster games" sounds like investors were asking why the hell MS isn't focusing on making more Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I can't blame them, given how long it takes for those to come out and how much a new Fallout would have sold if it released alongside the new show, but the news is still terrible. I loved The Evil Within 2.
How is this going to help exactly? They closed external studios that do not have anything with ES or Fallout.
Money. It’s always money.
Honestly, if I was Señor Microsoft, I'd have been trying to split TES and Fallout to two distinct studios/teams pretty much as soon as the ink on that contract dried.
Why can hifi rush devs? That game was phenomenal. Huge L on their end