Outsourcing isn’t going anywhere, in fact it’s needed. Better hope Microsoft invest in a support studio of their own to help move the dev cycle along with their other studios.
I’ve noticed no one has mentioned about talent within XGS being allowed to move within all studios, so say an art director at 343i is bored of doing Halo stuff and wanted to do something else they’re allowed to move to other teams in the XGS group.
This is most likely how you keep good talent within your studios, allowing them the freedom to change it up after doing something for X and getting bored. That alone sounds like a cool work environment to be in.
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There are many support studios in the world, and many contractors, they always have work lined up so it’s not like they get out of a job when the scaling down starts, they just move to another project.
I’d argue that’s the thing that’s enabling those super complex games we are getting because if each studio had to employ massive headcounts to develop them we would be seeing even less AAA games than we have now.
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Outsourcing will not go away. Games will only get bigger with more content, so instead it will increase. Otherwise these games can’t get made.
Google and Amazon can only buy studios, not people. People can just quit and form their own outsourcing studio.
No, it’s not in trouble. Creatives and Computer Scientists are a growing number of people nowadays as they are enabled by our forms of entertainment moreso than any other time. Outsourcing will happen. Will models adjust? Sure, but no one is in trouble.
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But the thread title makes it seem so. If you meant all the industry, them you should have made this clear on the title.
You are right. I adjustet it.
I think there are a ton of support studios out there and we wouldn’t know most of them by name. Global Publishing will probably be impacted more than outsourcing. The studioa being purchased are those capable of building entire games.
Consolidations happen every generation but in those consolidations people leave and start indie studios and previous indie studios go mid tier and mid tier get a big bigger etc etc. it’s a cycle where the names all change but the philosophies stay the same.
The only thing that will break this cycle is if there really is a focus on reducing workloads while keeping graphical fidelity at the heights it is now or higher as the gaming hardcore expects. Otherwise the cycle stays the same
I think the cycle broke with the emergence of new players on the market, all looking to buy up talent left and right for their own services. I’m thinking of Google, Amazon, Tencent, Embracer and the likes.
It depends on what they are doing
Google hasn’t made any inroads yet and make more work for devs as their stadia is Vulcan based iirc
Embracer is out here buying a bunch of mid tier studios and I don’t know why
Ten cent has its fingers in heaps of pies but hasn’t really tried to enter the market in a traditional way
The same can be said of amazon who’s biggest contribution has been acquiring and growing twitch
After tonights news I assume @XboxP3 read this thread and went ‘hey this Hammer dude is right, gonna buy me some more talent’… 
This is now canon. 