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Games Industry Reacts to Tango Gameworks Closure: "Why?"

Dane

Member
Tango put out good games and from I can understand they sold decently well despite being niche but still not good enough apparently? Do games needs to sell COD numbers in order not get shutdown?


Monolith Soft's games dont do crazy number but Nintendo still willing supports them because they know they are talented developers.


But with Sony and MS only huge sells matters and nothing else.
I'm gonna be that asshole guy, only TEW 1 and 2 sold decently, and it was a slow burn with lots of sales by that point, Hi Fi Rush despite having been a sleeper hit of sorts, only had like 6k players on Steam at its peak, and that was at its launch week, it needed to do much more than that. Grounded was made by a fraction of people and 6k is the daily playerbase with an all time high of 31k.

Monolith Soft doesn't do crazy numbers, but Nintendo doesn't do major sales either, so they are mostly sold at full price selling 1-2 million copies, far more profitable than Hi Fi Rush, and one of the reasons why Nintendo has huge profit margins.
 
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Withnail

Member
The truth is more likely just that MS doesn’t want the difficulty of managing a Japanese studio. They probably don’t even know where to start with it. Do they have any other subsidiaries in non English speaking countries?

HiFi Rush isn’t really relevant to the decision, that’s the sunk cost fallacy. What matters is what they would expect to happen in the future and I think Phil and the MS management know their limits.
 

35cent

Member
What a weird decision. They released an absolute banger of a game last year and there's interest in a sequel so I have no idea why they would think closing down Tango would be a good idea.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Closing Tango doesn't make much sense to anyone obviously.. I'd really like to see some MS emails subpoenaed..
 
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iHaunter

Member
On Fire GIF
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Why in the world is Microsoft so hellbent on sabotaging the Xbox brand?

It's clearly not profitable. Phil's endless cock ups have ruined its capacity to make money, and once that happens to a subsidiary, the sharks from other departments start circling. They'll carve up Xbox into whatever they think they can still squeeze money from, and dump the rest. This is the start of that.
 
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Killjoy-NL

Member
The comments on twitter are just incredible right now. It is like we are reliving the Xbox games to PlayStation rumors all over again.

Why in the world is Microsoft so hellbent on sabotaging the Xbox brand?
Because it's pretty much dead as far as being a platform-holder concerns.

All that's happening lately is the reality-check for some.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
$21 billion in profits in 3 months. Cant afford a few hundred employees.

This country is a fucking joke.

But, but, that would mean the board has to take a 500k pay cut each for the year.. 😱😱

I've seen it first hand more than once. It's sickening.
 

ReyBrujo

Member
I heartily say in the software industry the videogames one is the worst because even when you launch a good product you can be done for.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
$21 billion in profits in 3 months. Cant afford a few hundred employees.

This country is a fucking joke.
It is funny how much shit people talk about MS ever spending company money outside the gaming division like it would literally be cheating, nonstop for years. But then immediately criticize when they don't float the gaming division anyway. Just makes no sense really.
 

Nankatsu

Member
It takes two to tango.

Microsoft:

Jonah Hill No GIF by The Taboo Group


The solution is simple: every worker quits and they found Salsa Gameworks under Sony's umbrella.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
It is funny how much shit people talk about MS ever spending company money outside the gaming division like it would literally be cheating, nonstop for years. But then immediately criticize when they don't float the gaming division anyway. Just makes no sense really.

Well there are 75+ billion reasons why they can no longer float the gaming division.

Hope all those Activison games on gamepass have been worth it. Oh wait...
 

Red5

Member


MS as a whole is up but I doubt Xbox division is performing as expected. Spencer probably killed these studios to cut down on costs and make Xbox look more profitable instead of using the talent he bought to make games that sells. Idiots never learn.
 

AmuroChan

Member
MS as a whole is up but I doubt Xbox division is performing as expected. Spencer probably killed these studios to cut down on costs and make Xbox look more profitable instead of using the talent he bought to make games that sells. Idiots never learn.

I empathize with what he's saying, but unfortunately that's not how business works. One highly profitable division in a company isn't going to act as a shield to protect another division out of altruism.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Not even comparable. Japan studios didn't make a single game that was worth playing in years. Almost a decade in fact.

This studio literally released last year the game that MS considered their biggest success story of Gamepass. The subscription service they pushed for years. This was a huge surprise today.

Sony also didn't close the entire Japan studio. They still managed to salvage the two parts (teams) of the studio that was working properly, Team Asobi (Astro Bot) and xDev Japan.

To even be comparable, Sony would need to close the entirety of Japan studios (including Asobi) one year after they released a huge VR hit (Astro Bot Rescue Mission) which they didn't do.
Japan Studio put out lots of great stuff, like The Last Guardian and Gravity Rush 2. And I literally said "but even worse." But thanks for the cool lecture.
 

Bkdk

Member
THis one is a little surprising considering the success of hi fi rush, I did not like it but apparently it's well received and sold well, thought they would be downsized but at least kept a small team to continue making some more small or mid budget games like that.
 

bender

What time is it?
I'd put money on them and Obsidian being shut down within the next 12 months.

Microsoft could, and should, put Obsidian on another quick and dirty Fallout project. The writing might not be as strong as NV, but people eat up anything of passable quality with the Fallout name attached to it and maybe they could get it out by season 2 or 3 of the show.
 
To see the team that put out such a joyful, beautiful, and quality game like Hi-Fi Rush get kicked out the door is beyond disheartening. Like what is the barometer for who gets to keep their job anymore when making quality games isn't good enough?
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Microsoft could, and should, put Obsidian on another quick and dirty Fallout project. The writing might not be as strong as NV, but people eat up anything of passable quality with the Fallout name attached to it and maybe they could get it out by season 2 or 3 of the show.

I know they knocked out NV in 18 months, but times have changed a lot since then. It's going to take at least 5 years to work on a new FO from scratch. It's also worth considering how many of the people who made NV are still at the studio? Can current Obsidian still make something as good as NV?

They're last few games haven't been that great either, certainly not to the same standard as NV. If Avowed is shit and/or flops, Obsidian are getting the old yella treatment.
 

bender

What time is it?
I know they knocked out NV in 18 months, but times have changed a lot since then. It's going to take at least 5 years to work on a new FO from scratch. It's also worth considering how many of the people who made NV are still at the studio? Can current Obsidian still make something as good as NV?

They're last few games haven't been that great either, certainly not to the same standard as NV. If Avowed is shit and/or flops, Obsidian are getting the old yella treatment.

Didn't they knock out the Outer Worlds (Wilds?) pretty quickly? Even with a long development cycle and absent of the show hype, Fallout still does numbers. Microsoft need to figure out a way to get Bethesda on a better tick (TES)/tock (Fallout) cadence. If nothing else, just remaster NV.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Didn't they knock out the Outer Worlds (Wilds?) pretty quickly? Even with a long development cycle and absent of the show hype, Fallout still does numbers. Microsoft need to figure out a way to get Bethesda on a better tick (TES)/tock (Fallout) cadence. If nothing else, just remaster NV.

There was a leak a while ago that Fallout 3 and NV (as well as ESIV) are all being remastered, but I have no idea how true it is.

They should have had the remasters ready for the show.
 
All those japanese trips phil put in and coutring devs for years, just for nadella and co to destroy everything in an instance lmao.

more focus on fewer games, only AAA and no diversity in the portfolio it seems to me is that path forward that xbox will take.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
I know they knocked out NV in 18 months, but times have changed a lot since then. It's going to take at least 5 years to work on a new FO from scratch. It's also worth considering how many of the people who made NV are still at the studio? Can current Obsidian still make something as good as NV?

They're last few games haven't been that great either, certainly not to the same standard as NV. If Avowed is shit and/or flops, Obsidian are getting the old yella treatment.
Obsidian used to be renowned for rushing blatantly unfinished games out of the door, because they were always on a knife edge of the business surviving. They were carried by the writing of people like Chris Avellone, who could bang out engaging work to deadline like a machine. Outer Worlds was a long development compared to old Obsidian and relatively polished, but some noted that the writing seemed insipid and not as funny as it acted like it was.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Based on nothing but rampant speculation, I guess that Microsoft sniffed out staff being systematically poached and decided it wasn't worth the hassle to keep open.
 

H-I-M

Member
It is funny how much shit people talk about MS ever spending company money outside the gaming division like it would literally be cheating, nonstop for years. But then immediately criticize when they don't float the gaming division anyway. Just makes no sense really.

It's funny how the Xbox division is 'healthier than ever' 'everybody is winning' 'record revenues every quarter', yet they keep closing studios.

Make it make sense baby!
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
It's funny how the Xbox division is 'healthier than ever' 'everybody is winning' 'record revenues every quarter', yet they keep closing studios.

Make it make sense baby!
This had nothing to do with my post. Everyone knows Xbox division is done and they're going 3rd party. Some people called it much earlier but pretty much everyone had agreed by February of this year.
 
Sorry, but that motley crew of soap-dodgers would be the first people rushing to twitter screeching "poor me, stop" if people were making assumptions online about business decisions they were making, so they shouldn't be throwing stones, especially the ugly one.
 
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SHA

Member
This will go down as their worst decision ever. It's the MS version of Japan Studios closure, but even worse. Still don't understand it.
Post pandemic problems probably we'd never encountered before, it's still in effect and we don't know when it will end.
 

Isa

Member
MS is trying to steal the “worst company in America” championship from EA
Seriously, MS is giving me flashbacks to EA and all the companies they've butchered over the years. I swear these corpos are giving me PTSD. It all just reinforces my investment in other systems lately and exiting Xbox's. I've already been through that turmoil in the 80's-90's.

flashback GIF
 
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