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Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, HiFi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda

Sleepwalker

Member
Clear signs that growth in the industry isnā€™t likely right now. When you canā€™t grow revenue, the axe comes out.

ā€œWelcome to the Xbox family.ā€ Lol
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graywolf323

Member
Absolutely nothing Phil Spencer could have done. Lionhead was ran to the ground and lost a lot of talent when Phil was the General Manager of Microsoft Studios, so when the became the Head of Xbox, he had to shut them down.
guess what Phil did before he became GM of first party studios overall?

he was the GM of MGS Europe, he is directly responsible for the state of Lionhead because he had been the person in charge of them since 2001

Wikipedia said:
With the launch of the Xbox in 2001, Spencer joined the Xbox team and served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008

 
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DaGwaphics

Member
Yikes, was watching the latest Daniel Owen video and heard about this. Tango networks is a sad one. Hi-Fi Rush was so good. I guess those PS sales were a lot less impressive than they thought they would be.

I agree with Owen that this is moving in the wrong direction. Looks like they are doubling down on the giant AAA and dropping some of the lower budget games.
 
Hilarious.

Your very first line:

Studio's that don't make money, don't produce games that make money will always be in danger

Now itā€™s about interest and excitement.

They canā€™t make money because they are hamstrung by Microsoftā€™s shitty business model.
Are you dense? Games that generates excitement are exactly how you grow Gamepass subscribers who pay!
You kill me man, probably your most funny post and the competition was fierce
I'm sorry you don't understand logic, carry on.
 
The leadership team at XBOX needs to be scrapped, this includes Phil.

Redfall was avoidable, good leadership at Microsoft would have spared Arkane Austin the embarrassment by cancelling that game, and avoiding the marketing spend. A good leadership team would have seen this coming from a mile away. Tango is mind boggling, nothing but misleading statements and lies coming from Phil these days.
 

danklord

Gold Member
Games make too much money and the c-suite business world is clueless on how to sustainably create blockbuster games while driving historic profit. They're heartless, zero personality, excel warriors who are so fearful of their shareholders they will literally do anything to look good at their company and have a good meeting during earnings reports. This sucks, and won't even out until there's governmental regulation.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
Absolutely nothing Phil Spencer could have done. Lionhead was ran to the ground and lost a lot of talent when Phil was the General Manager of Microsoft Studios, so when the became the Head of Xbox, he had to shut them down.

He was directly responsible for them and oversaw their demise when he was head of EMEA game studios.

Please read this interview from 2008 and look at how backwards his thinking always has been:



The guy has been stinking the place out from the moment he was put in a position of power at Xbox and things have only become worse over time.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
This is why I don't trust MS.

So to just put this into perspective. They took a publisher, who makes games for everyone. Bought them, started off by making that publisher only make exclusives, and then now, closing studios within the said publisher, while reverting back to taking some of that publisher's games back to being multiplatform.

And people don't see how twisted this company is.

Call it whatever you like, but when MS acquired Bethesda, I called this, I said, (from the other site)

Why should anyone be happy about a company buying Bethesda that has barely managed to keep any of its tent pole studios happy and running? Just watch them fail here and start closing shit here too.

And here we are.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Anyone else NOT surprised that underperforming studios got closed down?

Sometimes NeoGAF is a place where common sense goes out the window.
 
I've been saying this forever after MS bought ABK. When you buy so many big studio, you will need billions to make these games, especially now that games are getting way expensive. If your division isn't making enough money (you need to SELL GAMES), the solution is to make small AA games, close the studios (more layoffs), make more multiplatform games, and/or sell studios/IPS. Just image the amount of money to make a new COD or blizzard games.

The solution is to focus on big games that make money, and try to make more from all of them. It's a snowball effect. Now all eyes are on Hellblade due to the lack of excitement surrounding it.
 
Considering that layoffs and closures affected ABK and Bethesda now, I wonder what studios will be affected in XGS. I guess performance of some games might depend on that.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Anyone else NOT surprised that underperforming studios got closed down?

Sometimes NeoGAF is a place where common sense goes out the window.
At least Arkane and Tango were releasing stuff. Why not trim the fat on a studio like Compulsion games, who haven't released anything in the six years that Microsoft has owned them?
 

eerik9000

Member
I think the future of Game Pass is highly compromised... can MS actually kill it? at this point I think it is a possibility.
Don't worry. We have been assured for years by industry leaders like Phil Spencer, that Game Pass is sustainable, and by industry analysts like Mat Piscatella, that Game Pass somehow magically increases game sales. Absolutely no worries. It's the best deal in gaming!
 

IAmRei

Member
few years ago, i heard GP from my worker, and then i said it wont work. the sustainable model is not broken, and why fix it with new model which dev will suffer in the long run?
the gamedev community in my place hates me because i dont like the GP model.

Seeing now, turns out i was correct by then.
 

Red5

Member
Holy shit.....this video....



"You acquire a studio for what they are great at now and it is your job to accelerate how they do what they do. Not them accelerate what you do."
-Phil Spencer


Never trust corpo suits, they're hired not for their creativity or passion for video games but for their abilities to lie, twist and worm their way to the top.

There's a reason why real creative minds have left Blizzard, Tango and a lot of studios that were swept up in the MS buy ups.
 
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