Lmfao
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So a dev talked up their project in an interview to make it seem more significant than the zero marketing, shadowdropped release made it seem to be. That doesn’t mean their project wasn’t small. It is still a much smaller project than the Halos, Forzas, or any other modern AAA game with an ever-expanding budgets. And it definitively had the prestige, more than any other AAA Xbox game, that’s for sure. It won more awards than the other small Xbox games, Grounded, Pentiment or Psychonauts 2 combined.
John Johanas’s reaction on Twitter says it all, really.
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LOL, always ready your responses ready to laugh.
Okay, that’s done. Trust me there has been zero defense of this from any moderators. Only attempts to understand why and clarifications on actual reality versus online narratives. So let’s get back to a healthy discourse that doesn’t call for people’s jobs or insult them directly as that is against our terms of service for any and everyone, no matter which company.
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The dev clearly said it was not a small project and it took nearly five years to make. Let’s not twist his words because it doesn’t tie in your narrative.
Phil dyes his hair??
The narrative that the director of the game is stunned at the quote that Xbox needs more small games with prestige when his studio gets axed?
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you know i’m talking about this blatantly false statement:…"So a dev talked up their project in an interview to make it seem more significant than the zero marketing, shadowdropped release made it seem to be. That doesn’t mean their project wasn’t small. "
The dude just lost his job, of course he is going to react.
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Yeah, Hi Fi Rush was probably a big game. That’s why MS launched the game at 30$. Right after they had raised the prices of their games to 70$, and hey, they made this huge game cheaper than Grounded, too! But nah, not a small game.
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It wasn’t a big game, it was mid tier by the end of development. It started small and grew.
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The dev who just lost his job is clearly lying (s)
It is weird though, Matt Botty has had a long tenure, surely people are looking at him sideways.
Maybe they had previews with select audiences and their early impressions was that it felt AA and MS priced the game accordingly. Considering the low sales, I’m guessing at full price it would have done even worse. Unfortunately, while it’s a cool game and I’ve played through the whole thing at release, in the industry at large, due to the cartoony graphics, it will be seen as low budget by the majority of the gaming populace unfortunately, that’s just reality.
As for what Matt Booty said to be on topic, even a game like grounded, made by a team a fraction the size of HFR, has managed to get several times more players and sell a lot more copies. This is the kind of small game I think he alludes to, and while they like awards, they most likely prefer cash, as cash keeps studios alive and running, not awards.
People tend to call anything without “bleeding edge” photorealistic graphics a “small game” these days. Anyone who played HFR could see the quality and polish of a AAA game and it’s cell shading is up there with the likes of Guilty Gear Strive!
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Maybe, but I think that would be quite a reach to make that assumption. That’s besides the fact that if Hi Fi Rush was indeed more expensive than assumed, than it is simply not financially responsible to launch such a game with zero marketing or buildup at a price where the game would need to move a insurmountably considerable amount of units to break even. Besides, Psychonauts 2 is IMO even more childishly cartoony in dialogue and look than HFR but was still 60$.
As for the Matt Booty quote, we can only go with what he said, and not add things that he did not say. As of now he said :‘’ We Need Smaller Games That Give Us Prestige and Awards’'. He did not say ‘‘small’’, he said ‘‘small*er*’’, and he did not mention players or any other metrics besides ‘‘prestige and awards’’.
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There’s a lot going on with this news & a lot of rumors flying around, i.e. some of which really are problematic (stuff like a GPU prices hike & no COD day one on the service). If that happens then it’s a strategy course-correction which doesn’t exactly benefit the consumer who bought into Xbox based on the previously stated strategy & marketing of Gamepass day one first party titles.
But, I reiterate the fact there’s a hell of a lot of performative console warring going on around the internet whereby this is all getting weaponized by people who live inside the ‘war bubble’. I mean I almost spat my coffee out when I read a comment on other era inquiring as to whether it’s legally possible for Sony to ‘rebirth’ Tango now… i.e. like they’re philanthropists or something!
It all reeks of “my team is noble & good, yours is evil & bad”.
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It really is a cess pool and is completley unmoderated. No wonder there are barely any Xbox fans left over there.
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Well, Pentiment was 2022 and Palworld was a real lightning in a bottle situation, it’d be a pretty difficult plan to implement “just make the game return thousands of times more than it cost to make, if you can make it reach millions of players with largely zero budget for marketing like they did, then we’d consider that a bit of a success.”
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You think after all the layoffs and studio closures to come at the end of it all Phil leaves. Better to have him take the heat and start fresh with someone new
When people make posts like this do they realize whoever replaces him will follow the same strategy he’s enacting? The need to see someone “punished” is so weird. It doesn’t matter if he’s fired or not, those studios, jobs, etc. are never coming back.
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