Truly repugnant. Prey is without question one of the greatest games of the last decade. Hi-Fi Rush probably the best Xbox exclusive of last year. Both teams unceremoniously dumped the second they commercially underperform.
I remember how excited everyone was when all these studios were joining Microsoft - the prospect of such a huge variety of amazing games hitting Game Pass month after month, from the big hitters like Elder Scrolls to the quirkier, smaller budget titles like Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. From Booty’s email today - “prioritizing high-impact titles”, “further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games” - it seems Microsoft is now adopting Sony’s approach of betting everything on a smaller number of safe, existing blockbuster franchies. This is not the Game Pass future we were looking forward to.
Microsoft is better placed financially than virtually any other coroporation in the world to invest in riskier, innovative new titles that might not generate massive yearly revenue but which contribute to the creativity, originality and fun of the medium as a whole. The company’s decision making of late makes it clear that its only real ambition is to wring every last drop of financial return on the huge investments it’s made, regardless of the cost to employees or the medium itself. Fuck 'em.
Man we didn’t even see wat roundhouse studio was doing at all. Xbox shouldn’t have got Activision of they were going to start cost cutting to this extent. Probably going to double down on cod even more.
Continue moving the goalposts, from “no one played the game” to “2M players for a new IP that is also a character action game is terrible” when the biggest game in the genre (DMC5) has sold 6M copies after being fully multiplatform, released two SKUs AND after heavy discounts.
I fear for NInja Theory because there’s no way Hellblade 2 sells that many units or increase sub. I feel bad for all of these devs because there’s no way they feel at ease about any of this
Make no mistake, I’m upset with this. I’m not defending or even make a light of this action. I’m just unfortunately accustomed to this action and we can expect many more to come from other companies. We have seen so many studios closure from indie to publisher like Take Two. It will not end here.
Yep while “prioritising high impact titles” could be a positive if it delivered a regular cadence of big first-party games that make Xbox the place to be, that was what was being called for 5 or so years ago.
Now, with games potentially going multi-platform and Game Pass offering variety, it doesn’t feel like this is as good a move as it would have been back then - plus I don’t really see how the cost savings from this pay for that future?
In particular, my biggest fear in “prioritising high impact titles” is yes that they become ABK and prioritise CoD over everything - just like the Boeing takeover of McDonnell-Douglas brought their style into Boeing, I’m really, really hoping Microsoft Gaming doesn’t just become ABK in all but name…
(I’m sure it won’t, but it’s a real fear of mine from that statement!)
Same goes for Obsidian. Pentiment was an incredible game, but I’m willing to bet it and Grounded flopped commercially given how niche they are and how they were the first two game to be ported. I’m now incredibly anxious that if Avowed doesn’t do well we won’t get The Outer Worlds 2 (or anything else for that matter).
