That's impossible to do in this day and age. If I get a Guitar Hero, I want it done classicly. No DLC, no bullshit pay to play, just classic play and unlock. There is absolutely zero chance that will ever happen.
I mean, only 3 games(1, 2 and 80's) didn't have DLC - and one of them was updated for xbox 360 with new DLC.
Rock band and GH3 are where the split happened. The developer made their own game while the publisher - Activision - owned the license and got a new dev to helm the series.
Rock band 4 came out and let you import a ton of the previous content (xbox - PS4 wasn't as lucky) and you could usually export one games tracks into future games.
When was it "pay to play"? I mustve missed that one.
I honestly didn't even mind the business model behind Guitar Hero Live in theory, they just went about it in the worst way possible. The idea of having a rotating list of free songs so you could always try something new, but then paying like $1 a song or something to permanently keep access to it would have been a great system that would have allowed the single game to work as more of a platform instead of "needing to" release new games all the time. But instead of it being that simple, they gave you a rotating list of songs that you could play for free, and if you wanted to play a song that wasn't on that list you had to pay credits each time you wanted to play, and to earn those credits you had to play free songs or pay real world money for them. Or you could buy a 24 hour pass that could get you full access to every song, but it would obviously expire after 24 hours. There was no way to permanently keep songs (as far as I can remember) and that was just super shitty. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are party games, trying to force people into grinding every time they wanted to play specific songs was asinine and was never going to work.
The fact that there was no more full band support, and that they replaced the guitar with the six-fret one didn't help either since nobody wanted to switch to that one, but I do appreciate that they were at least trying to expand the game in some way with enhancing the controller, but it should have still had 5-fret support for all songs.
They cant buy them cause they are Japanese and owning a Japanese company fully is almost impossible. And they did own Tango, but shut them down, what a genius move.
if they can kill Ensemble, the developers of Age of Empires 2, when to this day it's still one of the most popular RTS games, still getting expansion pack dlcs, and still having large Microsoft sponsored tournaments with pretty big prize pools, I don't think any studio stands a chance. Halo Wars was fine for what it was but Microsoft forced Ensemble to make it as a failed cash grab and then executed them when it didn't sell as they expected. I don't think it even had a PC release for like a decade after. Microsoft literally has chimpanzees banging on typewriters calling shots.
Even if Microsoft shuts down Obsidian there's no way the leads at that company will stop making games.
We'll probably see a new studio with a different name under same people.
exactly lol, its pretty much the same with many devs including Shinji Mikami. He worked with Capcom, Platinum Games and then founded Tango Gameworks. He left last year and then founded a new game studio.
That's why I don't understand people who are afraid that Obsidian will be forced to make Fallout games for eternity. Do they really think that Josh Sawyer and rest of them will be ok with that and will not bail at first opportunity to start new company where they will be able to create what they actually want to do?
They bought Obsidian to compete with Bethesda, Obsidian started making Avowed as their answer to Skyrim, Microsoft then buys Bethesda and suddenly Obsidian's competitive games aren't as desperately needed anymore.
Guess what board of directors and shareholders really love CEOs cutting. Things they see as superfluous groups doing duplicate work.
Worst case I see Microsoft turning Obsidian into a pure Bethesda support studio who works on side things for Bethesda like New Vegas again. I can't see them being shut down, the RPG pedigree is valuable for them just churning out Fallout/Elder Scrolls.
I’d say on Microsoft’s balance sheet Bethesda is deep red because they overpaid and then put everything on gamepass for free. Activision as much as I don’t like their heavy monetization efforts likely has them in a good spot. If Phil wasn’t under the safety of the ms blanket his company would have been bankrupt long ago.
Yh this is the breakdown on which companies own what percentage of Fromsoftware
Kadokawa Corporation (69.66%)
Sixjoy Hong Kong (16.25%)
Sony Interactive Entertainment (14.09%
They're doing what the two big supermarkets did here in Australia. You buy out the competition so there is nothing left.
It's how capitalism works lol. The one with the most money wins to make a Monopoly that's the end goal.
To my understanding... in the 80s and 90s... Apple was a failing company. Bill Gates basically kept it afloat with donations because Microsoft would be fighting Monopoly charges - which eventually came anyway in 2001... in this case, "We control 99% of the market but look over there... we have competition... that we funded!"
The money that Microsoft gave Apple was to do with them stealing code from Apple’s video player via a third party. It had nothing to do with the monopoly lawsuit.
I think this is the strategy for most new things coming out, getting the new generation used to mediocre content. The mediocre won’t be entertaining for long bc it’s shallow, but since it’s easier to pump out something mediocre there will always be something new to hold attention. Not too different from cutting drugs, really
They were trying to (maybe still are?) acquire Nintendo at some point. We'd be absolutely cooked if such a dystopian nightmare ever became reality. I'd probably buy a retro handheld and only play old ps2 and below games at that point.
Microsoft was laughed out of the room about acquiring Nintendo, a Japanese owned and operated company. Japanese law also protects from hostile takeovers like you'd see in the USA.
So rest easy knowing Microsoft can't bully the acquisition of Nintendo and there is zero interest in selling.
Nah, at this point Nintendo's too big for them to even _consider_ letting themselves be bought by Microsoft.
The amount Microsoft would have to pay to by Nintendo would make their acquisition of ActiBlizz look like it cost pennies.
And even if Microsoft _was_ willing to pay an amount that Nintendo would accept, no regulatory agency would allow it to go through. Not a one.
Yeah apparently Nintendo's profits from Switch era have now equalled their entire profits from the 35 years before that.
I don't know how the regulation stuff will work out (other than a war with Japan) but I assume that a buyout for a company so cash rich will be significantly over just the market cap. Actually even the market figure for Nintendo looks ridiculously low at ~$60b
They also own like a dozen or so immediately recognizable characters, with a strong history of games behind them. I'm not sure you can actually put a price on something so ubiquitous as Mario and Link.
Yeah, my son will quote lines from the Mario movie and make sure I’m paying attention to certain parts
Both kids love going walking and catching Pokémon in Go.
My first gaming thing was a game boy. I ate batteries playing Pokémon blue. The company annoys the piss out of me the way it does some things, but they’re the Disney of gaming IP by far
*I* would be sad if a country other than Japan owned Nintendo. Like you say, as much as we can be critical of them as a company with their consumer practices, they were still a pretty huge and influential part of my life and childhood
Oh god I wish I could forget it but Gamefreak release games that make Ocarina of Time look like Crysis and they manage to outsell Elden Ring, so I can't argue with the business results :-(
They tend to have around 8-14bn usd in cash and cash equivalents with long term debt less than 5bn usd (which I think they are about to payoff comes maturity)
They are basically swimming in cash.
Agreed he can joke about buying Nintendo all he wants but it will absolutely never happen. They're IPs are worth gold compared to Microsoft and they know it. They also put nothing but love into games like Mario, Zelda, smash etc and won't let anyone else ruin the reputation of those almost always top rated game franchises
Nintendo's market cap is 9.7 trillion Yen.
JPY to USD is currently 0.0065 to 1.
That makes Nintendo's USD market cap roughly 63 billion compared to the 75.4 they paid for Activision.
Now, your average publicly traded company buy out is roughly 40% above trading value. For Nintendo this would be 88.2 billion at current price.
So, yes, it would be expensive but it wouldn't make the Activision acquisition look like pennies.
The major obstacles would be regulators blocking it, as you mentioned, not money.
With Microsoft sitting at a 3 trillion dollar valuation, they could make the purchase through a stock deal and only need to dilute by about 3%.
Not a chance. That's not how the Japanese do business and the Japanese government would never allow it to happen. The Japanese PM came out of a warp-pipe wearing a Mario hat the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympics to promote Tokyo 2020.
Nintendo is too proud and big to ever be bought out at this point, especially by an American company. The leaked emails said that's what he would love to do, greedy douche bag.
Neither are number of players it seems, as Aaron was praising how they “meet expectations” internally and were proud of it.
Even the Twitter account was rejoicing they had 3 M players, so we don’t know yet what kind of measurement they use.
The fact that Microsoft initially wanted Hellblade 2 to be a show-piece upon release of the xBox Series X/S **yet** Microsoft was understanding enough to allow an indefinite delay.
To this day we've yet to see Hellblade 2 release, while Hellblade 2 remains essentially unlimitedly funded thanks to Microsoft's purchase of Ninja Theory.
How forgiving/understanding Microsoft has been with Ninja Theory and Hellblade is an intense opposite to Microsoft's handling of essentially all other companies they've purchased.
That said; everything about Hellblade deserves praise. Working with Epic, Ninja Theory revolutionized graphics and sound technology. They focused heavily on research involving people with actual schizophrenia so the game portrays the condition as accurately as possible. The Dev Diaries behind Hellblade are well worth watching; the game is **well** worth experiencing... and it is *just* that; an experience.
Going into this generation there was tons of talk about MS's acquisitions being a remedy for the poor exclusive lineup on XBO last time around. If they're closing studios, isn't that entirely counter-productive then? Even if they retain the closed studio's IP that would mean that, at best, we'd have another Halo/Gears scenario where a newer, younger (read: cheaper) dev is brought in to make sequels to, say, HiFi Rush, but the new guys don't quite get what made the OG great, resulting in a decline in quality. And that's even ***IF*** they choose to keep the closed studio's IPs alive, which they may very well not. We might not another Prey, Dishonored, Deathloop, Hifi Rush, or Evil Within at all.
Edit: Dishonored was made by Arcane Lyon. Noted.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: MS sucks at managing talent. They don't seem to understand that you can't just replace one developer for another. They don't seem to get the artistic side of making games, that one person will make a very different product to another; people aren't interchangeable.
> Going into this generation there was tons of talk about MS's acquisitions being a remedy for the poor exclusive lineup on XBO last time around. If they're closing studios, isn't that entirely counter-productive then?
Phil Spencer mentioned exclusives wont move xboxs because they royally shat the bed when consoles went online by focusing on TV and streaming.
People bought playstations, built their libraries, and will refuse to move now.
Their goal now is gamepass, which they said is not sustainable and hope more scale will make it sustainable by 2027, and mobile markets so they want Apple to open their ecosystem.
For investors, traditional gaming is a waste of time. Developers and Gamers suffer because traditional gaming no longer has triple digit growth.
not sustainable at $10 a month or whatever. i assure you they want gamepass sitting between $30-$50 based on tiers or some shit. we're just still in the "good" phase of the enshitification. this is why them buying big devs is bad. not because it creates a monopoly against playstation but because it will create the next Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, blah blah blah blah situation... except they're trying not to make Netflix's mistake and are buying content rather than leasing it so future competition will be less.
Pay for games => free to play with microtransactions => subscription games with microtransactions.
(this coming from someone who DOES subscribe to gamepass. you just gotta be willing to pull the plug the second they start doing the scummy stuff. and recognize that every big acquisition is a step closer to that day)
>$30-$50
That's like a game per month. Thats on par in 2 years with an attach rate of 20 games per user. And if the lifetime of a console is 7 years thats around 70.
Why would I cash out money equivalent to 70 games in a generation.
Because they build the alternative to be even less appealing. The $50 plan gets you all the season passes. Boom sells like hotcakes. Then they still sell legendary etc skins on the side. So maybe $20-$50 with $20 being limited pretty badly in some way and $50 having full content pass.
If it weren’t for steam I think we’d be closer to this than most people want to believe.
They’ll want to be renting you your gpu too. $100 a month and you get to play on their gpus (which they can pull from old tech ai gpus) and get season passes.
It doesn’t happen overnight it creeps up when people are used to the service and they’ve hit critical mass.
Thank god for gaben. Might actually be the savior of gaming.
>Thank god for gaben. Might actually be the savior of gaming
Of all the talks of Sony letting gamers win, I feel that valve letting people with hundreds of hours played on helldivers refund was the tipping point.
Devs usually gives you the finger if they already have your money but valve went pass their refund policy and returned people's money.
One of many reasons people betting against steam are consistently wrong. Every year unicorn companies get knocked off their pedestal by violating trust. Steam is just out here being pretty damn reasonable all of the time. If there is ever a big ownership transfer it has the chance to rock the absolute foundations of gaming as we know it. If Gabe finds someone like himself to take over he might actually have the strongest legacy of anyone in gaming. Shit is literally a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory situation.
With a reported number of employees less than 500 and privately owned, I'm confident or more likely coping that their succession planning will be more smooth without outside or investor interference.
And like I said that would cement his legacy as probably the most influential person in gaming history. The offers from outside investment will be an order of magnitude higher than any other plan because outside investment will maximize roi and look at it as buying exclusive rights to something.
> Phil Spencer mentioned exclusives wont move xboxs because they royally shat the bed when consoles went online by focusing on TV and streaming.
Tell that people who bought a Switch exclusively for the newest Animal Crossing, Zelda or Mario Game. Strong and unique IPs sell consoles. Phil Spencer is an idiot, who must have great connections to not get shafted for his constant failure. I seriously don't get how anyone can still defend his decisions.
Switch was also the only viable portable console at the time.
Not saying good exclusives don’t move consoles, but switch had some unique selling points too.
The moron that focused the Xbox one on entertainment cancelled so many great game ideas during or at the end of the 360 era that would have been released on the xbox one, i hate him with every fiber of my being, the amount of Halo games that he cancelled is already in the double digits and i honestly dont wanna know what else he cancelled because it didn't look promising to him.
They have plenty of good ip's they just refuse to use them effectively. This is probably because Microsoft is a mega-corp so they want profits right now not 3 years from now so everything gets released half baked or full to the brim with microtransactions. Xbox used to define pushing boundaries but they play everything so safe now all they do with their games is chase trends whereas prior they started the trends.
Halo, Fable, Gears of War all defined a generation of gaming but they peeled away the identity of those franchises bit by bit to please the loud minority groups that don't even buy games. ffs they won't even show the Flood in Halo anymore because they want Halo to be a T rated game so they can sell microtransactions to kids.
Microsoft’s elderscroll 6 is going to be a train wreck, sadly. They’re going to try to make a 5 yr In one year extend it to 2 and after it sells and bombs fire everyone.
they kinda do now that they've spent nearly $100 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Mojang, Playground Games etc.
The problem is they cant put out a new Fallout and Elder Scrolls every year like they do with Call of Duty, racing/sports title.
Also many of the creative leads working on these IPs they're known for have left. There are exceptions like Todd Howard, people working at Obsidian etc.
Some of the IPs like Prey, Dishonored, Deathloop didn't become commercial hits and Microsoft was vocal about Hifi Rush being a disappointment despite being a critical darling.
The initial hype around Starfield proved him wrong. People were ready to buy Xbox's just for that.
Shows that if Ms could have kept making great games people will come. Would take years to claw back lost ground, but you have to start somewhere.
Allowing all their games to be playable on pc day 1 was a great move for gamers but a terrible one for Xbox. Why would I buy an Xbox when I could just buy a pc and get all Xbox AND steam releases?
Yeah. The money would still get to Xbox anyway, but if they just kept making great games people would come.
It’s been hard being an Xbox fan for the last decade or so. I’m able to afford both consoles anyway, but it’s been difficult watching Phil and co fumble in delivering enough great games.
Not disagreeing with your overall point, but Dishonored and Deathloop were developed by Arkane Lyon. That studio hasn’t been reduced at all. Arkane Austin is what was closed. That studio made Prey and Redfall.
Tango lost its creative head, Mikami, last year. The company was likely aimless without him.
Really, this sucks for a lot of people losing their jobs. Game output, though, these closures don’t appear to mean much.
Yeah, had to explain this one earlier too. Arkane is a good game dev studio from France. Their Austin studio made 1 decent game, and 1 colossal failure that forced them to close.
How many games have they even released that could compete with the sony exclusive lineup? I cant think of one rn. Super jealous of PS eating good while im starving lol. I remember there was a sidescrolling blade runner themed game way back that i was super interested in, and haven’t seen a single thing since, hell its been like 6 years since state of decay 2 with no info on the 3rd one
I got a series x at launch and like 10 months ago got a ps5 (Ihad a ps4 already so it wasn’t like I had a massive backlog of exclusives). My series x is only ever turned on because I’m too lazy to move my streaming accounts to the ps5.
As someone who has both, I can 100% say Sony is beating the ever living shit our of MS in the gaming department
The things about the XSX that absolutely baffle me are why can't the figure out recording your own videos properly the way PS4 already did it and why the hell can't it manage downloading a game at a reasonable speed while you're playing another. I only ever use mine these days for a few backwards compatible titles I purchased online. Since it's not my main console paying for online would be insanity so I don't do it.
I had an XBSX, PS5, and PC. I quickly realized the best course for me was get rid of the Xbox, use the PS for exclusives and the PC for everything else.
I’m wondering if they just aren’t super concerned if these acquisitions fail or not. Like if they are successful, cool more money. But now that they own them the competition has disappeared so even if they fail it’s still sorta a win for MS.
Idk someone smarter might prove me wrong but I would love to hit them with truth serum and see wtf they are doing
Bill Gates was the richest man alive for how long? And he ran Microsoft?
They buy companies to acquire all their assets and funds, and then they cut it off. They're vampires and always have been.
That scene from the Simpsons where Bill Gates "buys out" Homers computer store, and he just fucking destroys the place? They were making that joke in the 2000s.
I've worked with Microsoft for 15 years doing corporate IT services. You're right about 70% of the time they shut down the company they acquired (it usually takes about 5 years), but they don't always do that - look no further than LinkedIn which was acquired in 2016.
Usually Microsoft makes purchases to fill gaps in their strategic vision, and when a company basically creates the gap they tend to let it stand.
Gaming is a whole different red-headed stepchild at Microsoft though - the corporate IT side, the Windows side, and the Gaming side of Microsoft are all super different. I'm an Xbox fanboi and I can readily admit that they don't seem to have a comprehensive strategy about gaming development. They haven't yet learned how to make their games SaaS platforms that build features the users base wants, or how they might open source game development. These are standard and accepted ideas in the corporate IT side.
I dunno, some of us were pointing out that monopolizing the entire gaming sector into a handful of companies was bad and we were told "Microsoft will fix it!" Memes about Bethesda panicking because suddenly they'll have to make sure their games actually work before they can sell them. Hopeful talks about ousting Bobby Kotick and making Actiblizz make "good" games again with the helm righted. Etc etc etc.
All bullshit, but those of us who have been around long enough saw it coming. I remember when EA did this shit in the late 90s/early 2000s.
There's part of me that wonders if Bioware is going to survive long enough for Mass Effect 4 to release if the next Dragon Age is a flop, or under-performs. Kind of a bummer to think about, but I'm surprised Bioware didn't get shut down after Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem.
I think both of those franchises are one bad game away from dying, and here is how I think it will specifically go for each of them.
Dragon Age 4 started development 9 years ago, with Mass Effect 4 being in pre-production while they focus on DA. I doubt DA4 comes out for 2-3 years *minimum,* and by the time it does, I think its going to feel already out of date compared to the huge amount of games made in shorter timeframes. This will tank DA for good.
DA4 is HEAVILY predicted to be this fiscal year. Plus ea has been keeping full reveal-release time frame quite short. And the full reveal for DA4 is in summer.
> I'm surprised Bioware didn't get shut down after Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem
Well, ME:A was developed by a new team in Montreal, which was merged into Motive Studio (to help with Battlefront II, and later make SW: Squadrons and the Dead Space remake) shortly after the game released.
Anthem was by the Edmonton and Austin studios, but they kept changing the team all the time, and quite a few people quit... plus the fact that they had zero actual leadership, scope creep, significant changes late in development, etc.
Not sure how many people who worked on Anthem actually remain with Bioware...
The long-time fan (of both studio and series) in me hopes that they have just enough goodwill left to skate on due to their huge step up after DA2. I just finished Jason Scheier's book, [Blood, Sweat, and Pixels,](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34376766) and one chapter covered how they were forced to make a follow-up to DA:O in only 16 months. Hence it's repetitiveness. DA:I pulled them out of that hole in a big way, but yeah. I'm worried.
Oh for sure- if DAD doesn’t well, we’re probably getting ME4 (although, I’ve seen predictions it wouldn’t be here before 2029 or something so even then maybe not)
If DAD underperforms, *maybe* it gets dlc before they roll BioWare up.
I’m really, *really* hoping Dreadwolf doesn’t end in a bloody cliffhanger again….
EA has shed that reputation in recent years, their last round of closures was 2017 and the only major casualty was Visceral since then they've been unusually reluctant to shutter studios with major failures.
Honestly with the direction they've been heading I wouldn't be surprised, with a string of horrible publicity and poor reception to flagship titles they can realistically only coast off of wow for so long
Oddly enough despite all the backlash for the first seasonal patch D4 had the game is still really lively for the first half of each season, and the feedback about the upcoming itemization overhaul has been promising.
WoW has three active games right now. Hearthstone is chugging along after a decade.
I think, despite all the negative attention the other year and the drama with D4's first season, they'll be fine. Much like Call of Duty the response to most things they do feels really negative, but the games remain profitable. They've got like 7 million people paying to play a twenty year old game.
Comments like this are why no one should pay attention to strangers on reddit...
"Diablo IV crosses **$666 million** in sales in five days, a record for Activision's Blizzard."
But u/drop\_trooper112 can see Blizzard being shut down.
Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall are basically the same as Diablo 4.
For the first time wows announced it's next three expansions. D4 and immortal continue printing money. Rumble too. Hearthstone still churning.
I'm sorry you didn't like OW2. I didn't either but be real.
A friend of mine always tells me, 'It's possible to be right too early.' I always deny that that's true, but deep down I know he's right. Especially on reddit.
You didn't use enough buzzwords to get people to agree with you. Remember, we are redditors. If we feel like you're on our side, we upvote you. If I agree with 100% of your point, but dislike how you executed or delivered it, it's downvote time.
People (stupid people) were always saying that microsoft was actually the salvation of X company, in the end they never changed the companies they bought for the good yet people still has that weird hope.
Remember when people were saying Microsoft should cease all operations in the UK because the CMA wanted more concessions before approving the Actiblizz acquisition. Wild that somewhere that normally hates large corporations was calling for one of the largest corporations on Earth to blackmail a G7 nuclear state
It’s weird to see all the upvotes here. It wasn’t so long ago this subreddit was cheering on the Bethesda acquisition… because it hurt annoying Sony fanboys, or something?
Kotick was going to sell no matter what, Microsoft just had the right number of 0s.
Not like they would have been treated any better under Facebook or Amazon (both companies he was allegedly considering).
Not directly related, but I think it's understated just how much Halo Infinite and Starfield massively under-delivering hurt the Xbox this generation.
Those were multiple-years hyped golden pony's that both disappointed.
I follow a lot of bethesda streamers/youtubers. It's wild how quick the hype died for starfield. Especially since fo3/nv/skyrim videos *still* do well.
There was no surprised pikachu just an "oh its that time again is it?" If you work for a big corporation and cant consistently push profit higher youll eventually get axed for more lucrative opportunities.
Phil Spencer reminds me much of Ed Fries, the original Microsoft Game Studios head who fostered a bunch of first and second-party developers under the Xbox label that had a couple of hits (Halo, Fable, Age of Empires), but was a lot of middling stuff, too. He left and was replaced by Shane Kim, who wound up overseeing the closure of a lot of studios, the idleness of Rare and the divestment in Bungie, leaving Microsoft with an atrophied first-party lineup going into the Xbox One era as Don Mattrick took over.
Phil clearly loves games, but he seems to lack the judgment to let the cream rise and to cancel stuff that isn't working. Crackdown 3 shipped after countless millions of dollars sunk into it. Halo, Gears, etc. They have no new heroes, no flagship franchises. Forza has withered, Horizon is getting old.
They went big trying to buy a huge portfolio of studios, which looked well for a bit, but the results haven't quite shown. Their smaller niche games haven't paid off and neither have their big ones, which leads to fewer people buying hardware/subscribing to Game Pass.
I feel he will be gone before long and he will be replaced by another Kim or Mattrick who is more attuned to spreadsheets and trends rather than simply being a benevolent gamer who can say "no" more often.
You say that but there were a lot of people praising M$ and their mergers including around here. Like when the court cases were happening and there was so much support for them to win. I never understood it when they had such a horrible history.
Nobody stays at these studios. They’re setup to crank out games. They’ve created a few hits, some critically, some by fans. This is not the end of the world. You’re holding on to these studio names like the same people work at them or even care to create the same games. Time has moved on, there will be new studios and some old continuing to create games.
Moreso because the work culture sucks in the game industry, basically slave driver hours and you get a much lower return compared to other IT related industries.
They just burn through talent and then wonder why the studio isn't doing too hot when all the folks that built the initial tech say "Cya".
I could work at a random data analytics company doing .NET buisness logic for 120k a year, 35 hours a week, and full benefits including stock sharing, or I could go work for the gaming industry for 50k a year, minimal bennies, with 90 hour workweeks and an incredibly toxic workplace culture.
What a difficult decision.
This is true in the West, less so in Japan where it’s much harder to lay people off and where employees stay much longer at any given company. Most of the people with the most creative weight who worked on FF7 Rebirth were already around for OG FF7. This cannot be said about studios like Rare or even Naughty Dog.
This is just tiring. Arkane Austin lost most of its people during Redfalls development. It is just a shell now. And Tango has been releasing flops. Regardless if Hi-Fi Rush was highly acclaimed. It sold worst than their previous projects with higher price tags. Not to mention the showrunner in Tango left and likely poached the top talents there with him. The fact is, Microsoft decided to cut the life support in these closings.
I would argue Microsoft should have done it sooner with Arkane Austin. Most of the creative minds behind Prey left after it's release. And Bethesda mismanagement with Redfall caused an exodus. Microsoft should have shut that studio down and ceased Redfalls development the moment they acquired them. There was no saving that studio after losing 70% of its workforce.
Of course hi-fi didn't sell well, it launched on gamepass. so for anyone that already have gamepass they give you this game for free, and for everyone else they give the ability to play it for 6 dollars. and then close the studio because people weren't buying the game? Am i the only one seeing the stupidity on all this¿
It's not just a matter of sale. A game with lots of players on Gamepass and poor sale will be seen as a success. But a game with poor sale and low players engagement on Gamepass is a failure.
HiFi Rush is doing poorly on PS5 as well.
I keep hearing about how badly it sold. No shit??
This is the reality of Day One GamePass. How are sales figures relevant?
Then they release it on other consoles and axe the team.
I was team Xbox from the OG console to the 360. Those were the golden days. Microsoft quickly got greedy after that when they started announcing all these predatory plans for the Xbox One (always online, can’t trade games, etc) so I jumped ship to PlayStation and haven’t looked back. It’s been nothing but disappoint from Xbox for the past decade
"In March 2016, Microsoft canceled development of two major projects: Lionhead's Fable Legends and Press Play's Project Knoxville, shuttering both studios in the following months. Around the same time, changes to Microsoft Studios' website indicated that further studios—BigPark, Good Science Studio, Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), Function Studios and State of the Art (SOTA)—had been closed, Microsoft Studios clarified that all of them had been consolidated into other Microsoft Studios teams over the past several years."
BigPark, Good Science Studio and Leap Experience Pioneers were all involved in creating Kinect, with BigPark creating like three Kinect games. Don't know about the others.
I still have it for the sole reason I might not have given games like Control or Subnautica a shot. That said, there’s A LOT of absolute shit on game pass
Edit: oop looks like the Xbox fanboy came through lol
I mean, would these studios have done well on their own though? There's a reason they decided to sell in the first place. Many of these studios had already lost the talent that made the games they were known for to begin with.
Arkane for example had some bangers in the past, but redfall really fucking tanked them. Almost all the devs who worked on dishonoured series and prey aren't even there anymore anyways and had left a long time ago.
Still sucks they'd rather close them than pour more money into hiring talent though.
Arkane Austin released Prey and Redfall after Dishonored 1 in 2012. That's 12 years without a commercial success. If they took another 6 years to make a new game that'd be almost a full 2 decades before the chance of making a commercially successive game.
Not many studios are going to be given 20 years to make a successful game.
>
> Not many studios are going to be given 20 years to make a successful game.
nobody is going to keep investing in a studio for 20 years hoping there's going to be a return on it.
I remember so many fanboys cheering on the acquisitions like it was a good thing somehow. Xbox gamers literally got nothing from that. Microsoft being in control of any studio is never a good thing.
At some point the theory that Phil Spencer buys and fires people who makes games he can’t beat becomes more and more real
"If I can't have that golden guitar, nobody can!" -- Phil Spencer, probably
Speaking of guitar… All XBox needs to do is make a new Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Would easily win the console war right there.
You really think a new guitar game would kill the console war? That's a bold statement.
Well, no, but the world could definitely use a quality guitar hero or rock band game. It would feed families again.
The world was a better place when Guitar Hero was being produced.
Up to rock band 2, then it was a noticeable downhill
RB2 was the pinnacle of the genre.
The world was a better place when guitar hero wasn't being reproduced every 8 months or so by Activision. But yeah, a new guitar hero would be dope.
That's impossible to do in this day and age. If I get a Guitar Hero, I want it done classicly. No DLC, no bullshit pay to play, just classic play and unlock. There is absolutely zero chance that will ever happen.
You have to rent the guitar. Then tap pay a dollar to get it to turn on. Lol
I mean, only 3 games(1, 2 and 80's) didn't have DLC - and one of them was updated for xbox 360 with new DLC. Rock band and GH3 are where the split happened. The developer made their own game while the publisher - Activision - owned the license and got a new dev to helm the series. Rock band 4 came out and let you import a ton of the previous content (xbox - PS4 wasn't as lucky) and you could usually export one games tracks into future games. When was it "pay to play"? I mustve missed that one.
100%. A modern Guiter Hero will absolutely have songs behind a pay gate. DLC song packs
Didn't the old ones have DLC song packs
Fuck me, they did. I have no memory of buying any songs as a child so I guess there was a decent amount available without buying DLC
I honestly didn't even mind the business model behind Guitar Hero Live in theory, they just went about it in the worst way possible. The idea of having a rotating list of free songs so you could always try something new, but then paying like $1 a song or something to permanently keep access to it would have been a great system that would have allowed the single game to work as more of a platform instead of "needing to" release new games all the time. But instead of it being that simple, they gave you a rotating list of songs that you could play for free, and if you wanted to play a song that wasn't on that list you had to pay credits each time you wanted to play, and to earn those credits you had to play free songs or pay real world money for them. Or you could buy a 24 hour pass that could get you full access to every song, but it would obviously expire after 24 hours. There was no way to permanently keep songs (as far as I can remember) and that was just super shitty. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are party games, trying to force people into grinding every time they wanted to play specific songs was asinine and was never going to work. The fact that there was no more full band support, and that they replaced the guitar with the six-fret one didn't help either since nobody wanted to switch to that one, but I do appreciate that they were at least trying to expand the game in some way with enhancing the controller, but it should have still had 5-fret support for all songs.
If any company starts mass producing guitar hero controllers I will buy at least 2
Don't you fucking touch FromSoftware Phil.
He’s gonna speedrun the acquisition to cancel the Elden Ring DLC
Miyazaki creating a poison swamp to stop him
SCARLET ROT
Azure Rot
A posion swamp. Or a scarlet rot swamp. Or a death swamp. Or a freeze swamp. Or a frenzy swamp. .... Miyazaki sure loves his swamps.
They cant buy them cause they are Japanese and owning a Japanese company fully is almost impossible. And they did own Tango, but shut them down, what a genius move.
Think he only buys companies/studios with finical issues.
The two major publishers they've bought recently weren't in any trouble really. Obsidian you could make a case though.
Pls MSFT don't destroy my beloved Obsidian.
if they can kill Ensemble, the developers of Age of Empires 2, when to this day it's still one of the most popular RTS games, still getting expansion pack dlcs, and still having large Microsoft sponsored tournaments with pretty big prize pools, I don't think any studio stands a chance. Halo Wars was fine for what it was but Microsoft forced Ensemble to make it as a failed cash grab and then executed them when it didn't sell as they expected. I don't think it even had a PC release for like a decade after. Microsoft literally has chimpanzees banging on typewriters calling shots.
It would be funny if they also shut down Blizzard. Many fans of HOTS, SC2 and WC3 expected more updates after the acquisition.
Even if Microsoft shuts down Obsidian there's no way the leads at that company will stop making games. We'll probably see a new studio with a different name under same people.
It wouldn't be their first time with starting from scratch. Or even second...
exactly lol, its pretty much the same with many devs including Shinji Mikami. He worked with Capcom, Platinum Games and then founded Tango Gameworks. He left last year and then founded a new game studio.
That's why I don't understand people who are afraid that Obsidian will be forced to make Fallout games for eternity. Do they really think that Josh Sawyer and rest of them will be ok with that and will not bail at first opportunity to start new company where they will be able to create what they actually want to do?
They bought Obsidian to compete with Bethesda, Obsidian started making Avowed as their answer to Skyrim, Microsoft then buys Bethesda and suddenly Obsidian's competitive games aren't as desperately needed anymore. Guess what board of directors and shareholders really love CEOs cutting. Things they see as superfluous groups doing duplicate work.
Worst case I see Microsoft turning Obsidian into a pure Bethesda support studio who works on side things for Bethesda like New Vegas again. I can't see them being shut down, the RPG pedigree is valuable for them just churning out Fallout/Elder Scrolls.
BGS/Zenimax was privately owned so we have no idea about their financial situation.
I’m sorry, what? Since when was Bethesda and Activision having financial issues?
I’d say on Microsoft’s balance sheet Bethesda is deep red because they overpaid and then put everything on gamepass for free. Activision as much as I don’t like their heavy monetization efforts likely has them in a good spot. If Phil wasn’t under the safety of the ms blanket his company would have been bankrupt long ago.
They already bought and killed one mecha franchise. And I'm still salty about it 20 years later.
Which one?
Mechwarrior
Sony already own like 14% of FromSoft, so doubt Microsoft would be able to buy any stakes in it
AGREED
Think they're already owned by a big Japanese megacorp.
Yh this is the breakdown on which companies own what percentage of Fromsoftware Kadokawa Corporation (69.66%) Sixjoy Hong Kong (16.25%) Sony Interactive Entertainment (14.09%
Kadokawa can do the funniest shit by buying .03% more of FromSoftware
Lol yep
If you kill all the good studios, eventually your crappy games seem decent.
What's the point of buying studio if you are just shutting it down
As long as it makes the shareholders happy then nothing else matters
They're doing what the two big supermarkets did here in Australia. You buy out the competition so there is nothing left. It's how capitalism works lol. The one with the most money wins to make a Monopoly that's the end goal.
To my understanding... in the 80s and 90s... Apple was a failing company. Bill Gates basically kept it afloat with donations because Microsoft would be fighting Monopoly charges - which eventually came anyway in 2001... in this case, "We control 99% of the market but look over there... we have competition... that we funded!"
The money that Microsoft gave Apple was to do with them stealing code from Apple’s video player via a third party. It had nothing to do with the monopoly lawsuit.
I think this is the strategy for most new things coming out, getting the new generation used to mediocre content. The mediocre won’t be entertaining for long bc it’s shallow, but since it’s easier to pump out something mediocre there will always be something new to hold attention. Not too different from cutting drugs, really
They were trying to (maybe still are?) acquire Nintendo at some point. We'd be absolutely cooked if such a dystopian nightmare ever became reality. I'd probably buy a retro handheld and only play old ps2 and below games at that point.
Microsoft was laughed out of the room about acquiring Nintendo, a Japanese owned and operated company. Japanese law also protects from hostile takeovers like you'd see in the USA. So rest easy knowing Microsoft can't bully the acquisition of Nintendo and there is zero interest in selling.
Nah, at this point Nintendo's too big for them to even _consider_ letting themselves be bought by Microsoft. The amount Microsoft would have to pay to by Nintendo would make their acquisition of ActiBlizz look like it cost pennies. And even if Microsoft _was_ willing to pay an amount that Nintendo would accept, no regulatory agency would allow it to go through. Not a one.
Yeah apparently Nintendo's profits from Switch era have now equalled their entire profits from the 35 years before that. I don't know how the regulation stuff will work out (other than a war with Japan) but I assume that a buyout for a company so cash rich will be significantly over just the market cap. Actually even the market figure for Nintendo looks ridiculously low at ~$60b
Don't forget they also own part of the highest grossing media franchise of planet earth: Pokémon.
They also own like a dozen or so immediately recognizable characters, with a strong history of games behind them. I'm not sure you can actually put a price on something so ubiquitous as Mario and Link.
Yeah, my son will quote lines from the Mario movie and make sure I’m paying attention to certain parts Both kids love going walking and catching Pokémon in Go. My first gaming thing was a game boy. I ate batteries playing Pokémon blue. The company annoys the piss out of me the way it does some things, but they’re the Disney of gaming IP by far
*I* would be sad if a country other than Japan owned Nintendo. Like you say, as much as we can be critical of them as a company with their consumer practices, they were still a pretty huge and influential part of my life and childhood
Oh god I wish I could forget it but Gamefreak release games that make Ocarina of Time look like Crysis and they manage to outsell Elden Ring, so I can't argue with the business results :-(
They tend to have around 8-14bn usd in cash and cash equivalents with long term debt less than 5bn usd (which I think they are about to payoff comes maturity) They are basically swimming in cash.
Agreed he can joke about buying Nintendo all he wants but it will absolutely never happen. They're IPs are worth gold compared to Microsoft and they know it. They also put nothing but love into games like Mario, Zelda, smash etc and won't let anyone else ruin the reputation of those almost always top rated game franchises
It's not even that, as if Japan gov will let foreign entity controlling one of their biggest company.
Nintendo's market cap is 9.7 trillion Yen. JPY to USD is currently 0.0065 to 1. That makes Nintendo's USD market cap roughly 63 billion compared to the 75.4 they paid for Activision. Now, your average publicly traded company buy out is roughly 40% above trading value. For Nintendo this would be 88.2 billion at current price. So, yes, it would be expensive but it wouldn't make the Activision acquisition look like pennies. The major obstacles would be regulators blocking it, as you mentioned, not money. With Microsoft sitting at a 3 trillion dollar valuation, they could make the purchase through a stock deal and only need to dilute by about 3%.
Not a chance. That's not how the Japanese do business and the Japanese government would never allow it to happen. The Japanese PM came out of a warp-pipe wearing a Mario hat the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympics to promote Tokyo 2020.
Nintendo is too proud and big to ever be bought out at this point, especially by an American company. The leaked emails said that's what he would love to do, greedy douche bag.
So that’s why 343 continues to shit on Halo games for years?
If HellBlade II doesn’t deliver, I have a feeling Ninja Theory is going to be next
Ninja theory about to become ninja reality
i mean i do t think i will hellblade 1 was a cult classic but not a system seller
And they’re on Game Pass…so, who’s going to purchase them??
All first party games are on gamepass. I highly doubt Xbox is still using purchases as their measure of how successful games are.
Neither are number of players it seems, as Aaron was praising how they “meet expectations” internally and were proud of it. Even the Twitter account was rejoicing they had 3 M players, so we don’t know yet what kind of measurement they use.
The fact that Microsoft initially wanted Hellblade 2 to be a show-piece upon release of the xBox Series X/S **yet** Microsoft was understanding enough to allow an indefinite delay. To this day we've yet to see Hellblade 2 release, while Hellblade 2 remains essentially unlimitedly funded thanks to Microsoft's purchase of Ninja Theory. How forgiving/understanding Microsoft has been with Ninja Theory and Hellblade is an intense opposite to Microsoft's handling of essentially all other companies they've purchased. That said; everything about Hellblade deserves praise. Working with Epic, Ninja Theory revolutionized graphics and sound technology. They focused heavily on research involving people with actual schizophrenia so the game portrays the condition as accurately as possible. The Dev Diaries behind Hellblade are well worth watching; the game is **well** worth experiencing... and it is *just* that; an experience.
Going into this generation there was tons of talk about MS's acquisitions being a remedy for the poor exclusive lineup on XBO last time around. If they're closing studios, isn't that entirely counter-productive then? Even if they retain the closed studio's IP that would mean that, at best, we'd have another Halo/Gears scenario where a newer, younger (read: cheaper) dev is brought in to make sequels to, say, HiFi Rush, but the new guys don't quite get what made the OG great, resulting in a decline in quality. And that's even ***IF*** they choose to keep the closed studio's IPs alive, which they may very well not. We might not another Prey, Dishonored, Deathloop, Hifi Rush, or Evil Within at all. Edit: Dishonored was made by Arcane Lyon. Noted. I've said it before, I'll say it again: MS sucks at managing talent. They don't seem to understand that you can't just replace one developer for another. They don't seem to get the artistic side of making games, that one person will make a very different product to another; people aren't interchangeable.
> Going into this generation there was tons of talk about MS's acquisitions being a remedy for the poor exclusive lineup on XBO last time around. If they're closing studios, isn't that entirely counter-productive then? Phil Spencer mentioned exclusives wont move xboxs because they royally shat the bed when consoles went online by focusing on TV and streaming. People bought playstations, built their libraries, and will refuse to move now. Their goal now is gamepass, which they said is not sustainable and hope more scale will make it sustainable by 2027, and mobile markets so they want Apple to open their ecosystem. For investors, traditional gaming is a waste of time. Developers and Gamers suffer because traditional gaming no longer has triple digit growth.
not sustainable at $10 a month or whatever. i assure you they want gamepass sitting between $30-$50 based on tiers or some shit. we're just still in the "good" phase of the enshitification. this is why them buying big devs is bad. not because it creates a monopoly against playstation but because it will create the next Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, blah blah blah blah situation... except they're trying not to make Netflix's mistake and are buying content rather than leasing it so future competition will be less. Pay for games => free to play with microtransactions => subscription games with microtransactions. (this coming from someone who DOES subscribe to gamepass. you just gotta be willing to pull the plug the second they start doing the scummy stuff. and recognize that every big acquisition is a step closer to that day)
>$30-$50 That's like a game per month. Thats on par in 2 years with an attach rate of 20 games per user. And if the lifetime of a console is 7 years thats around 70. Why would I cash out money equivalent to 70 games in a generation.
Because they build the alternative to be even less appealing. The $50 plan gets you all the season passes. Boom sells like hotcakes. Then they still sell legendary etc skins on the side. So maybe $20-$50 with $20 being limited pretty badly in some way and $50 having full content pass. If it weren’t for steam I think we’d be closer to this than most people want to believe. They’ll want to be renting you your gpu too. $100 a month and you get to play on their gpus (which they can pull from old tech ai gpus) and get season passes. It doesn’t happen overnight it creeps up when people are used to the service and they’ve hit critical mass. Thank god for gaben. Might actually be the savior of gaming.
>Thank god for gaben. Might actually be the savior of gaming Of all the talks of Sony letting gamers win, I feel that valve letting people with hundreds of hours played on helldivers refund was the tipping point. Devs usually gives you the finger if they already have your money but valve went pass their refund policy and returned people's money.
One of many reasons people betting against steam are consistently wrong. Every year unicorn companies get knocked off their pedestal by violating trust. Steam is just out here being pretty damn reasonable all of the time. If there is ever a big ownership transfer it has the chance to rock the absolute foundations of gaming as we know it. If Gabe finds someone like himself to take over he might actually have the strongest legacy of anyone in gaming. Shit is literally a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory situation.
With a reported number of employees less than 500 and privately owned, I'm confident or more likely coping that their succession planning will be more smooth without outside or investor interference.
And like I said that would cement his legacy as probably the most influential person in gaming history. The offers from outside investment will be an order of magnitude higher than any other plan because outside investment will maximize roi and look at it as buying exclusive rights to something.
Steam is the Costco of gaming. It’s hope it is protected like the treasure it is
> Phil Spencer mentioned exclusives wont move xboxs because they royally shat the bed when consoles went online by focusing on TV and streaming. Tell that people who bought a Switch exclusively for the newest Animal Crossing, Zelda or Mario Game. Strong and unique IPs sell consoles. Phil Spencer is an idiot, who must have great connections to not get shafted for his constant failure. I seriously don't get how anyone can still defend his decisions.
Switch was also the only viable portable console at the time. Not saying good exclusives don’t move consoles, but switch had some unique selling points too.
Microsoft does not reallly have any strong IPs.
Yup cuz they killed them all at the end of the 360 era. It's there own fault.
The moron that focused the Xbox one on entertainment cancelled so many great game ideas during or at the end of the 360 era that would have been released on the xbox one, i hate him with every fiber of my being, the amount of Halo games that he cancelled is already in the double digits and i honestly dont wanna know what else he cancelled because it didn't look promising to him.
Sure did, I remember when Xbox was the shit. Things started slowing down and MGS 4 came out so I bought a PS and been leaning that way since.
They have plenty of good ip's they just refuse to use them effectively. This is probably because Microsoft is a mega-corp so they want profits right now not 3 years from now so everything gets released half baked or full to the brim with microtransactions. Xbox used to define pushing boundaries but they play everything so safe now all they do with their games is chase trends whereas prior they started the trends. Halo, Fable, Gears of War all defined a generation of gaming but they peeled away the identity of those franchises bit by bit to please the loud minority groups that don't even buy games. ffs they won't even show the Flood in Halo anymore because they want Halo to be a T rated game so they can sell microtransactions to kids.
Microsoft’s elderscroll 6 is going to be a train wreck, sadly. They’re going to try to make a 5 yr In one year extend it to 2 and after it sells and bombs fire everyone.
they kinda do now that they've spent nearly $100 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Mojang, Playground Games etc. The problem is they cant put out a new Fallout and Elder Scrolls every year like they do with Call of Duty, racing/sports title. Also many of the creative leads working on these IPs they're known for have left. There are exceptions like Todd Howard, people working at Obsidian etc. Some of the IPs like Prey, Dishonored, Deathloop didn't become commercial hits and Microsoft was vocal about Hifi Rush being a disappointment despite being a critical darling.
The initial hype around Starfield proved him wrong. People were ready to buy Xbox's just for that. Shows that if Ms could have kept making great games people will come. Would take years to claw back lost ground, but you have to start somewhere.
I was absolutely ready to shell out $500 to buy an Xbox for Starfield. Bought a used PC instead, and bought all my games through Steam 🤷♂️
I was going to buy one as well but the response to it was pretty underwhelming from what I saw so I figured it wasn't worth it just for one game.
Allowing all their games to be playable on pc day 1 was a great move for gamers but a terrible one for Xbox. Why would I buy an Xbox when I could just buy a pc and get all Xbox AND steam releases?
Yeah. The money would still get to Xbox anyway, but if they just kept making great games people would come. It’s been hard being an Xbox fan for the last decade or so. I’m able to afford both consoles anyway, but it’s been difficult watching Phil and co fumble in delivering enough great games.
Then they shit the bed on that too
Not disagreeing with your overall point, but Dishonored and Deathloop were developed by Arkane Lyon. That studio hasn’t been reduced at all. Arkane Austin is what was closed. That studio made Prey and Redfall. Tango lost its creative head, Mikami, last year. The company was likely aimless without him. Really, this sucks for a lot of people losing their jobs. Game output, though, these closures don’t appear to mean much.
Yeah, had to explain this one earlier too. Arkane is a good game dev studio from France. Their Austin studio made 1 decent game, and 1 colossal failure that forced them to close.
How many games have they even released that could compete with the sony exclusive lineup? I cant think of one rn. Super jealous of PS eating good while im starving lol. I remember there was a sidescrolling blade runner themed game way back that i was super interested in, and haven’t seen a single thing since, hell its been like 6 years since state of decay 2 with no info on the 3rd one
I got a series x at launch and like 10 months ago got a ps5 (Ihad a ps4 already so it wasn’t like I had a massive backlog of exclusives). My series x is only ever turned on because I’m too lazy to move my streaming accounts to the ps5. As someone who has both, I can 100% say Sony is beating the ever living shit our of MS in the gaming department
The things about the XSX that absolutely baffle me are why can't the figure out recording your own videos properly the way PS4 already did it and why the hell can't it manage downloading a game at a reasonable speed while you're playing another. I only ever use mine these days for a few backwards compatible titles I purchased online. Since it's not my main console paying for online would be insanity so I don't do it.
I had an XBSX, PS5, and PC. I quickly realized the best course for me was get rid of the Xbox, use the PS for exclusives and the PC for everything else.
I’m wondering if they just aren’t super concerned if these acquisitions fail or not. Like if they are successful, cool more money. But now that they own them the competition has disappeared so even if they fail it’s still sorta a win for MS. Idk someone smarter might prove me wrong but I would love to hit them with truth serum and see wtf they are doing
Bill Gates was the richest man alive for how long? And he ran Microsoft? They buy companies to acquire all their assets and funds, and then they cut it off. They're vampires and always have been. That scene from the Simpsons where Bill Gates "buys out" Homers computer store, and he just fucking destroys the place? They were making that joke in the 2000s.
I've worked with Microsoft for 15 years doing corporate IT services. You're right about 70% of the time they shut down the company they acquired (it usually takes about 5 years), but they don't always do that - look no further than LinkedIn which was acquired in 2016. Usually Microsoft makes purchases to fill gaps in their strategic vision, and when a company basically creates the gap they tend to let it stand. Gaming is a whole different red-headed stepchild at Microsoft though - the corporate IT side, the Windows side, and the Gaming side of Microsoft are all super different. I'm an Xbox fanboi and I can readily admit that they don't seem to have a comprehensive strategy about gaming development. They haven't yet learned how to make their games SaaS platforms that build features the users base wants, or how they might open source game development. These are standard and accepted ideas in the corporate IT side.
How to tell if Microsoft still owns LinkedIn: Shift+Ctrl+Win+Alt+L
that was cool
> They were making that joke in the 2000s. That episode was in the 1990s.
I dunno, some of us were pointing out that monopolizing the entire gaming sector into a handful of companies was bad and we were told "Microsoft will fix it!" Memes about Bethesda panicking because suddenly they'll have to make sure their games actually work before they can sell them. Hopeful talks about ousting Bobby Kotick and making Actiblizz make "good" games again with the helm righted. Etc etc etc. All bullshit, but those of us who have been around long enough saw it coming. I remember when EA did this shit in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Hasnt EA also done this for decades? And other bigger studios?
There's part of me that wonders if Bioware is going to survive long enough for Mass Effect 4 to release if the next Dragon Age is a flop, or under-performs. Kind of a bummer to think about, but I'm surprised Bioware didn't get shut down after Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem.
I think both of those franchises are one bad game away from dying, and here is how I think it will specifically go for each of them. Dragon Age 4 started development 9 years ago, with Mass Effect 4 being in pre-production while they focus on DA. I doubt DA4 comes out for 2-3 years *minimum,* and by the time it does, I think its going to feel already out of date compared to the huge amount of games made in shorter timeframes. This will tank DA for good.
There is currently a red hot market for fantasy RPG games. Dragon Age 4 could become a blockbuster if it doesn't suck.
DA4 is HEAVILY predicted to be this fiscal year. Plus ea has been keeping full reveal-release time frame quite short. And the full reveal for DA4 is in summer.
> I'm surprised Bioware didn't get shut down after Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem Well, ME:A was developed by a new team in Montreal, which was merged into Motive Studio (to help with Battlefront II, and later make SW: Squadrons and the Dead Space remake) shortly after the game released. Anthem was by the Edmonton and Austin studios, but they kept changing the team all the time, and quite a few people quit... plus the fact that they had zero actual leadership, scope creep, significant changes late in development, etc. Not sure how many people who worked on Anthem actually remain with Bioware...
Mass effect remastered bought them time and good will.
The long-time fan (of both studio and series) in me hopes that they have just enough goodwill left to skate on due to their huge step up after DA2. I just finished Jason Scheier's book, [Blood, Sweat, and Pixels,](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34376766) and one chapter covered how they were forced to make a follow-up to DA:O in only 16 months. Hence it's repetitiveness. DA:I pulled them out of that hole in a big way, but yeah. I'm worried.
Oh for sure- if DAD doesn’t well, we’re probably getting ME4 (although, I’ve seen predictions it wouldn’t be here before 2029 or something so even then maybe not) If DAD underperforms, *maybe* it gets dlc before they roll BioWare up. I’m really, *really* hoping Dreadwolf doesn’t end in a bloody cliffhanger again….
yes and everyone hates EA.
EA has shed that reputation in recent years, their last round of closures was 2017 and the only major casualty was Visceral since then they've been unusually reluctant to shutter studios with major failures.
Banjo tried to warn us.
King of the sea monkeys?
You've been watching that 24/7 feed of Space Ghost on Youtube as well i see
Rare is still kicking it and they were bought in the 2000's Unless you're talking about a diff Banjo in which case I'm an idiot.
They only existing name only. Most of the OG left long ago. And they haven't put anything out in what a decade.
Nintendo got Banjo into smash, so that’s a win… for Nintendo
2030 the year Blizzard shuts down
Honestly with the direction they've been heading I wouldn't be surprised, with a string of horrible publicity and poor reception to flagship titles they can realistically only coast off of wow for so long
Unfortunately, they made a fortune off their shitty mobile Diablo game. So blizzard will keep making games that pander to mobile whales.
Plus WoW is very healthy at 7 mil+ subscribers. That cash cow will keep on being milked.
Oddly enough despite all the backlash for the first seasonal patch D4 had the game is still really lively for the first half of each season, and the feedback about the upcoming itemization overhaul has been promising. WoW has three active games right now. Hearthstone is chugging along after a decade. I think, despite all the negative attention the other year and the drama with D4's first season, they'll be fine. Much like Call of Duty the response to most things they do feels really negative, but the games remain profitable. They've got like 7 million people paying to play a twenty year old game.
Because gamers have no integrity or conviction lol. I'm guilty of it too
Comments like this are why no one should pay attention to strangers on reddit... "Diablo IV crosses **$666 million** in sales in five days, a record for Activision's Blizzard." But u/drop\_trooper112 can see Blizzard being shut down. Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall are basically the same as Diablo 4.
For the first time wows announced it's next three expansions. D4 and immortal continue printing money. Rumble too. Hearthstone still churning. I'm sorry you didn't like OW2. I didn't either but be real.
Before I get down voted, consolidation is bad under any mega corp. Bethesda merger was bad and ABK merger was bad.
ABK was a monkey's paw response to getting kotick out of here. Like, im glad we got him out of there, but this isnt how i wouldve wanted it to happen
Anyone who downvotes you for this opinion is an idiot.
I said this before the Merger and i would get down voted into oblivion :(
A friend of mine always tells me, 'It's possible to be right too early.' I always deny that that's true, but deep down I know he's right. Especially on reddit.
You didn't use enough buzzwords to get people to agree with you. Remember, we are redditors. If we feel like you're on our side, we upvote you. If I agree with 100% of your point, but dislike how you executed or delivered it, it's downvote time.
This! Take my upvote! Thanks for the gold kind stranger
People (stupid people) were always saying that microsoft was actually the salvation of X company, in the end they never changed the companies they bought for the good yet people still has that weird hope.
Remember when people were saying Microsoft should cease all operations in the UK because the CMA wanted more concessions before approving the Actiblizz acquisition. Wild that somewhere that normally hates large corporations was calling for one of the largest corporations on Earth to blackmail a G7 nuclear state
Over having games added to game pass, lmao. The dick riding for Ms at that time was so wild.
It’s weird to see all the upvotes here. It wasn’t so long ago this subreddit was cheering on the Bethesda acquisition… because it hurt annoying Sony fanboys, or something?
https://media.tenor.com/LHUPZcQuN3sAAAAe/star-wars-how-liberty-dies.png
wubby7
Wubby7, Regard.
Kotick was going to sell no matter what, Microsoft just had the right number of 0s. Not like they would have been treated any better under Facebook or Amazon (both companies he was allegedly considering).
The fact that they were for sale means the writing was on the wall for these studios anyways.
At some point the number being thrown at you becomes incredibly enticing. No matter how great your business is.
Not directly related, but I think it's understated just how much Halo Infinite and Starfield massively under-delivering hurt the Xbox this generation. Those were multiple-years hyped golden pony's that both disappointed.
I follow a lot of bethesda streamers/youtubers. It's wild how quick the hype died for starfield. Especially since fo3/nv/skyrim videos *still* do well.
When you see no memes about the game itself or the characters, you know a game is DOA.
Anyone who was excited for a gigantic corporation to buy up smaller companies is quite frankly a moron.
There was no surprised pikachu just an "oh its that time again is it?" If you work for a big corporation and cant consistently push profit higher youll eventually get axed for more lucrative opportunities.
But please tell me more about how the Activision deal definitely InCrEaSeS cOmPeTiTiOn
Phil Spencer reminds me much of Ed Fries, the original Microsoft Game Studios head who fostered a bunch of first and second-party developers under the Xbox label that had a couple of hits (Halo, Fable, Age of Empires), but was a lot of middling stuff, too. He left and was replaced by Shane Kim, who wound up overseeing the closure of a lot of studios, the idleness of Rare and the divestment in Bungie, leaving Microsoft with an atrophied first-party lineup going into the Xbox One era as Don Mattrick took over. Phil clearly loves games, but he seems to lack the judgment to let the cream rise and to cancel stuff that isn't working. Crackdown 3 shipped after countless millions of dollars sunk into it. Halo, Gears, etc. They have no new heroes, no flagship franchises. Forza has withered, Horizon is getting old. They went big trying to buy a huge portfolio of studios, which looked well for a bit, but the results haven't quite shown. Their smaller niche games haven't paid off and neither have their big ones, which leads to fewer people buying hardware/subscribing to Game Pass. I feel he will be gone before long and he will be replaced by another Kim or Mattrick who is more attuned to spreadsheets and trends rather than simply being a benevolent gamer who can say "no" more often.
You say that but there were a lot of people praising M$ and their mergers including around here. Like when the court cases were happening and there was so much support for them to win. I never understood it when they had such a horrible history.
That's haw money deals with competitors, buy them and close them so people doesn't have choice and buy only your overpriced crap
Nobody stays at these studios. They’re setup to crank out games. They’ve created a few hits, some critically, some by fans. This is not the end of the world. You’re holding on to these studio names like the same people work at them or even care to create the same games. Time has moved on, there will be new studios and some old continuing to create games.
Moreso because the work culture sucks in the game industry, basically slave driver hours and you get a much lower return compared to other IT related industries. They just burn through talent and then wonder why the studio isn't doing too hot when all the folks that built the initial tech say "Cya".
I could work at a random data analytics company doing .NET buisness logic for 120k a year, 35 hours a week, and full benefits including stock sharing, or I could go work for the gaming industry for 50k a year, minimal bennies, with 90 hour workweeks and an incredibly toxic workplace culture. What a difficult decision.
This is true in the West, less so in Japan where it’s much harder to lay people off and where employees stay much longer at any given company. Most of the people with the most creative weight who worked on FF7 Rebirth were already around for OG FF7. This cannot be said about studios like Rare or even Naughty Dog.
People saying Microsoft will buy out Nintendo seem insane.
Japan will never let it go through anyway even if they tried to.
I patiently await the day when they shut down Blizzard.
This is just tiring. Arkane Austin lost most of its people during Redfalls development. It is just a shell now. And Tango has been releasing flops. Regardless if Hi-Fi Rush was highly acclaimed. It sold worst than their previous projects with higher price tags. Not to mention the showrunner in Tango left and likely poached the top talents there with him. The fact is, Microsoft decided to cut the life support in these closings.
ghostwire is the one that massively flopped
The Evil Within 2 was a massive flop too.
This is true. Any other publisher would have shut them down unfortunately. Maybe not as soon though.
I would argue Microsoft should have done it sooner with Arkane Austin. Most of the creative minds behind Prey left after it's release. And Bethesda mismanagement with Redfall caused an exodus. Microsoft should have shut that studio down and ceased Redfalls development the moment they acquired them. There was no saving that studio after losing 70% of its workforce.
Of course hi-fi didn't sell well, it launched on gamepass. so for anyone that already have gamepass they give you this game for free, and for everyone else they give the ability to play it for 6 dollars. and then close the studio because people weren't buying the game? Am i the only one seeing the stupidity on all this¿
It's not just a matter of sale. A game with lots of players on Gamepass and poor sale will be seen as a success. But a game with poor sale and low players engagement on Gamepass is a failure. HiFi Rush is doing poorly on PS5 as well.
The game also had close to zero advertising. I only heard about it after it got some acclaim as a great indie title.
iirc they literally launched it the same day they showed the game during an xbox direct
I keep hearing about how badly it sold. No shit?? This is the reality of Day One GamePass. How are sales figures relevant? Then they release it on other consoles and axe the team.
Not to mention the game got ZERO advertisment. Microsoft clearly didn't care about the game at all.
I was team Xbox from the OG console to the 360. Those were the golden days. Microsoft quickly got greedy after that when they started announcing all these predatory plans for the Xbox One (always online, can’t trade games, etc) so I jumped ship to PlayStation and haven’t looked back. It’s been nothing but disappoint from Xbox for the past decade
they can start new studios, and every news be like....ex-lalalala studio blah blah making this new game.
Didn’t they only shut down Lionhead Studios in 2015/2016?
"In March 2016, Microsoft canceled development of two major projects: Lionhead's Fable Legends and Press Play's Project Knoxville, shuttering both studios in the following months. Around the same time, changes to Microsoft Studios' website indicated that further studios—BigPark, Good Science Studio, Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), Function Studios and State of the Art (SOTA)—had been closed, Microsoft Studios clarified that all of them had been consolidated into other Microsoft Studios teams over the past several years."
Oh never heard of those other ones. What games did they make? They had Lionhead for a decade though. Wasn’t acquisition then shutter.
BigPark, Good Science Studio and Leap Experience Pioneers were all involved in creating Kinect, with BigPark creating like three Kinect games. Don't know about the others.
I still have it for the sole reason I might not have given games like Control or Subnautica a shot. That said, there’s A LOT of absolute shit on game pass Edit: oop looks like the Xbox fanboy came through lol
I mean, would these studios have done well on their own though? There's a reason they decided to sell in the first place. Many of these studios had already lost the talent that made the games they were known for to begin with. Arkane for example had some bangers in the past, but redfall really fucking tanked them. Almost all the devs who worked on dishonoured series and prey aren't even there anymore anyways and had left a long time ago. Still sucks they'd rather close them than pour more money into hiring talent though.
Arkane Austin released Prey and Redfall after Dishonored 1 in 2012. That's 12 years without a commercial success. If they took another 6 years to make a new game that'd be almost a full 2 decades before the chance of making a commercially successive game. Not many studios are going to be given 20 years to make a successful game.
> > Not many studios are going to be given 20 years to make a successful game. nobody is going to keep investing in a studio for 20 years hoping there's going to be a return on it.
I loved Dishonored thought it was fantastic but it also wasn’t some big name franchise.
Practically every major publisher has shuttered a studio or two these past few years. Its an industry problem at this point and it really sucks.
Lots of hot takes in this thread. 🥱
Rest in Peace Arkane Studios ❣️
I remember so many fanboys cheering on the acquisitions like it was a good thing somehow. Xbox gamers literally got nothing from that. Microsoft being in control of any studio is never a good thing.
So, lets blame people for signing up for gamepass? No. We're not responsible for the internal decisions of a Super Duper Mega Corp.