The fact that people at Xbox even tried to turn Redfall around tells me the incompetence levels run really deep over there, there was no turning that around, yeah you could fix the bugs and improve it in certain areas ways but turn it around? Who would have cared? This isn’t Fallout or Halo, people weren’t about to try it just because they “turned it around”.
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Trying to be level-headed with Xbox is getting more and more difficult, at this point expect the worst and don’t believe a thing the Xbox suits will say and you will be alright. Somehow this generation should have been the one (lol) but it’s slowly turning into a shit show.
Let’s hope all those games that we haven’t seen for 4-5 years (Perfect Dark, Everwild, Contraband, State of Decay 3 e.t.c.) don’t turn out to be shit or be cancelled/have their studios closed.
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I’m getting 2016 feels all over again, which is something I never expected to happen this generation.
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It’s one of those things where I can completely understand and truly feel for those who love the games that Arkane Austin/Tango have created being upset. Completely reasonable.
What I don’t buy is the performative “this is a travesty, how dare you Microsoft” from individuals who couldn’t be bothered to put more than a few hours into these games, then are ‘shocked and upset’ that the studios are being closed.
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Honestly, do you know nothing about the stuff you comment about?
All Naughty Dog’s games since Uncharted 2 have had multiplayer, and they have been ridden with microtransactions to the point where we are talking pay2win elements.
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I guess it all depends on how you decide to interpret the information presented to you. If you only focus on the negative news, then yes, this year sucks for Xbox.
But, later this month Hellblade 2 will drop and by all accounts it’s going to be good. Next month we’ll get the showcase and hopefully a peak at the games coming in the future (there should be a lot of them). Then, later this year we’ll be getting Avowed and the Indiana Jones game which looks like a lot of fun as well as updates to others games like the more casual friendly modes for flight Sim. There might also be other surprises coming this year like Gamepass drops from 3rd party (not including the ones already coming) and hopefully some of the ABK games. There’s also the possibly of getting Towerborn, which hopefully won’t slip to next year. Oh, and Starfield is getting massive updates.
I’m not trying to cheerlead for Xbox, but rather point out that if you only focus on the negatives and ignore the positives, it’ll make you think that everything sucks, when that doesn’t have to be the case. Believe me, I used to be an incredibly pessimistic person and I still am to some degree, but I decided many years ago to try to change how I view things because constantly focusing on the negatives was grossly impacting my mental health.
For some people the negatives are all that matter. If you listen to podcasts you’ll notice that more often than not hosts will talk about a game that they supposedly like and spend 80% of their time talking about the negatives. I think it’s just the way we’re wired as humans. We tend to remember the bad and largely ignore the good.
Anyway, sorry for the lecture. 
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Using Tango as a support studio would have made some sense, they could have handled/assisted in ports of Japanese third party games to xbox.
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I think it was a combination of what Lionhead had become under Peter Molyneux (Milo), and the state of Xbox at the time with their Kinect push.
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I’ve been saddened by the news, especially with Tango, but with the way the market is evolving, I’m not surprised. I think more studios will close at other publishers and Sony as well.
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It was a very simple question, their games haven’t launched with multiplayer since 2016 unless I missed a game, clearly getting a game out with both single player and multiplayer at launch has gotten way harder, 343i proves this.
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Am hoping at the least what they have to say in regards to Asian developed games and how they plan to overcome the closure of Tango, which was their only footwhole in Japan.
Even if they made an agreement with NETEASE as well as a Blizzard Studio in Shanghai i wonder what’s gonna happen there now because of this.
It’s probably too soon to make a “SEGA” joke, but the reality is that acquiring SEGA or another Japanese publisher is still a possibility. My personal opinion is that they’ll continue to foster good relationships with Japanese 3rd parties and indie studios and work out Gamepass deals. Outside of that, there’s not much they can really do in Japan. Also, I don’t think having Tango was really going to make a difference for them in that market one way or another.
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In the same way that 343i hadnt launched a game with multiplayer since 2015 before Halo Infinite, yes.
For a guy who is quick to criticism, it’s a bit wierd you are giving Naughty Dog a complete pass here. If someone was to look up you post history, would you be just as chill regarding 343is delay of the coop campaign?
Naughty Dog has changed. It’s not the same company it once was. They failed with their online game & had a very difficult PC launch for TLOU. Their revolving door hiring/firing process was also well documented during the production of TLOU Part 2.
What was once a studio with two dev teams churning out blockbusters every two years has turned into “Studio Druckmann” with a very expensive flagship franchise & nothing else.
So out of all the major Sony studios, it’s the one in the worst shape in terms of financial risk versus reward for Sony.
Nuance isn’t going to help me move my friend who was laid off yesterday any faster!
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One of my issues with this recent news (& the overall reaction to it) is the lack of perspective. Certainly regarding the actual nitty gritty of what game development entails.
People get hired & fired all the time during a dev cycle. People get hired short term, stay a few months then leave to work somewhere else. But none of this ever makes the news. So when studio closures occur there’s this idealized fantasy portrayed in the collective response whereby the people who made a game (or worked in the studio) are portrayed as having been there from minute one & had passion for the project or projects they worked on.
In reality devs simply work on what they’re assigned & have little to no say in the creative decisions, nor do they actually have ‘passion’ for whatever the creative heads & studio has assigned them to work on. It’s a job for over 80% of these people & in this industry they move around from studio to studio a lot. I mostly feel bad for developers who’re victims of poor decision making of their superiors, i.e. be it the heads of the project or the people who employ them. I mean if you’re some animation or texture dev working on Redfall, you’ve been given a pretty thankless task tbh.
I disagree that devs don’t have “passion” for what they’re doing - yes for some it’s just a job, but they’re often the ones who don’t have a head for coding and it’s just a stepping stone or something they tolerate as it can pay well.
For many developers though, writing elegant code, making something work well or be pleasing to the eye is a feeling of satisfaction - I definitely have a passion for applications I’m developing (admittedly a bit less so when I’m fixing older ones!) and so do many of my team, and we’re not building anything as creative or fun as games.
For many, it’s something they’ve done since they were a child or teenager - and while some work days can suck as they do in all places, and you’ll sometimes be made to do something a way you don’t want to, in general the really good coders do have a passion for what they’re doing.
You can see it in the pride of the teams as games release too - they get to update their CVs and LinkedIn sure, but also they get to point to a bit of a game and say “I made that” - it’s a great feeling of satisfaction
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It’s exaggerated by modern marketing which encourages players to ‘connect’ with the makers of the game, especially via lots of behind the scenes developer direct-style infomercials.
You get the ubiquitous X post with the dev team all smiling whilst posing for a group photo. In fact this has sort of blown up in MS’s face as well because there’s a few of those featuring Phil Spencer at Tango & Activision-Blizzard… just before these layoffs.
I honestly feel bad for people who’ve been laid off here but layoffs happen all the time behind the scenes. People also get laid off & find work immediately elsewhere.
So… I basically don’t buy into the hyper emotional response to this news because it comes from a weird place IMO, namely resulting from the unhealthy relationship between players & the makers of these products (& yes, the companies themselves are responsible for this via nurturing this social media proximity).
It’s why when the hammer falls like yesterday, the news hits really hard for some people. Meanwhile when these devs get replaced during a dev cycle, no one cares about them or their future because it’s not in the news.
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I feel like you can make your point, without making stuff up. Your comment shows pretty clearly that you have no knowledge about how game dev works. ANY developer could quit the industry and earn 30%-50% more at other jobs. People literally put up with abuse at shitty companies to keep doing their passion. To claim it’s just pr is quite something.
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Yep but during a dev cycle it’s normally due to fixed term contracts expiring - many are contractors who move onto new roles (and indeed, their way of working requires they move regularly enough as for example in the UK they get classed as permanent workers after a few years) and others at least know how long the contract is so can plan for it.
I do think gamers probably identify more with game studios being closed / teams laid off as many have thought “I’d like to make a game / I have a great idea for a game” at some point in their lives, and many of us probably do work in IT so feel a camaraderie with others in similar roles.
Yes the whole “we’re one big happy family” thing from corporations is all shtick - they’ll say that then the next day have an all-department meeting where they outsource a team, or announce a redundancy consultation - but generally teams do look out for each other as much as they can, the brutal decisions are normally made higher up by people on many times more income than the people they’re impacting.
Timing is another thing - we’ve got Hellblade 2 in a fortnight, and the showcase in a month so excitement was starting to build, likely within Xbox too, and if it’s taken the wind out of our sails who knows how they’re feeling.
Finally it’s also feeding into a negative cloud around Xbox that had just begun to dissipate, and into an unrelenting pile of bad news that keeps coming out of the industry - team after team downsized or laid off, and it’s only human to feel bad for the people in these studios having to find work in a sector that’s already got more than double the unemployment rate of the US in general (Stephen Totilo had someone try and calculate it).
Even more so when those studios have created games you’ve got good memories with, and enjoyed the art style, humour and music of, given they’re the people that helped create that…
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