The gaming media parroting the “Game Pass is unsustainable, it’s bad for gaming” and “it doesn’t allow for big AAA games like PlayStation’s” lines from Sony really didn’t help, agreed.
But in many ways it does feel like Xbox expected huge word-of-mouth growth, which doesn’t work when PC gamers prefer Steam and Xbox is in third place.
Practically everyone I know with an Xbox has Game Pass, but those without an Xbox only a few who are really into gaming have even heard of it.
There is now a small A5 poster next to the Xbox and Game Pass top-up cards in our local supermarket’s gaming section about Game Pass, but that’s the most advertising I’ve seen for it outside of the showcases and maybe a few ads on PC Gamer back when the Series launched I think?
Admittedly I barely see any Xbox advertising in the UK, but did see a Starfield one, a few Series X ones and a few third-party games with Xbox marketing on them - but zilch explaining what Game Pass is to the average consumer, even at the marketing points where you buy the consoles…
What Xbox needs, or needed like 4-5 years ago already is a leadership that cares a bit about the state of their games before their releases, and about the marketing too.
Wasteland was a pain to play during the first 2-3 months even if it was a really good game, tons of bugs, 1-2 minutes load screens etc.
Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport’s campaigns were bleh, we are not talking about small games or short development periods. Both games also had some other serious problems outside of the campaigns too.
Forza Motorsport and specially Redfall had a pathetic AI, not even worthy of an amateur team. Okay, Arkane’s game was never going to be an incredible game, but was it impossible to fix the AI and make it at least fun to play with friends? Really nobody at MS tried the game and thought the state of the AI was unacceptable and that they had to fix it no matter what? Ugh
I just wanna say the statement “this is the situation everywhere” can’t be used indefinitely for any and every shitty move microsoft makes.
And it’s starting to not even be true at this point to be honest, they are making too many horrible moves in too short of a time to compare to other platforms.
You know, I keep almost replying to this thread to say, “Eh, Arkane Austin didn’t turn Redfall around quick enough and Tango lost its star power, so while this sucks, it doesn’t really forebode anything for Ninja Theory or Obsidian,” but then I realize that MS management is why Redfall didn’t turn out great (IIRC) and Tango put out a GOTY contender last year.
So… I dunno. Someone somewhere may be incompetent.
How is this a bad move? The studios that were closed were loosing money. Should they have forced them to make CoD instead? Or should they have closed them as soon as the deal went through? What’s the right choice?
No you’re right it was a great move. Close every single studio that isn’t making big money, fire devs, give exclusives to ps, those are the moves to make.
It’s been first half of the year move they been akin to do. Sony does theirs in the later half. Not to mention, Microsoft is much bigger, so they have much bigger to lose.
I can’t argue - as someone who loved Halo Infinite’s campaign, it launched without the promised co-op and multiplayer was still a bit barren, while Forza Motorsport I just found a bit dull, and yes Redfall was just awful.
It does sometimes feel like Xbox games are launched as early access, when they’re not - and if they’re struggling with certain aspects you’d think other teams could help out (Playground with making Motorsport more fun for example), but it did feel for quite a long time like they were a collection of studios with no real management rather than a major publisher and platform.
Starfield did at least launch without too many bugs (although it is annoying to me how much they’ve added in post-launch when I’ve already played most of the story) but yes I really do hope they learn now to stop releasing games before they’re the finished article.
To be fair though, it does seem almost everyone does it now - even Insomniac released new graphics modes for Miles Morales after release - so maybe it’s more a sign of a broken industry where development takes too long so the urge to rush it out then add “features” in later is too strong.
But it does feel like Xbox should have been above that, particularly with the desperate need for games to be of high quality in order to get around a hostile media
I won’t argue against any of this. But all AAA development has problems. Aka gaming… has gone to sh*t. I realize that’s a bit of a cliché but seriously there’s just too much smoke now to ignore the fire.
I was gutted way back when Visceral got shuttered by EA. Their Dead Space games were some of the best survival horror titles ever made… but EA said they cost too much & didn’t make enough money, so they were shut down.
I can’t fix that. I can’t shout online about it or decry the ‘injustice’ of the industry bleeding talent. These companies (be it MS or any other major publisher) speculated on gaming reaching absurd numbers. Even Jim Ryan used to talk about wanting hundreds of millions of people playing God of War. It isn’t happening!
It’s the limits of globalism, capitalism & the world as we know it biting them all in the ass.
Sorry, I went overboard, but this is just frustrating for Xbox fans and the devs who just lost their jobs. I hate that Xbox is turning into Activision or Sony that “blockbuster” games are becoming priority, even though they fumbled on that too.
It’s okay, as I stated from my first post, there’s no ethical/moral justification for this and Xbox, and its leadership, deserve the flak they get from this (as does every C suite in these situations). We can all vent without becoming toxic, and clearly the lack of moderation we’re doing is proof of that - calling for people’s jobs and misrepresenting what people have said, here or otherwise, falls into that toxic area.
It’s a risky move if that is the play, that’s for sure - given their last attempt at a “blockbuster” game was the Initiative with Perfect Dark, which clearly has not gone well.
Maybe ABK will let them in on the “secret sauce” to making those big games - but yes I also hope they’ll still allow their smaller teams to make the games that give Xbox its variety
