Grounded had waaaay more players. That probably means more sales. It also is the 3rd biggest game from it’s studio, whereas Hifi apparently needed to be the tentpole for Tango. Hifi Dev team was closer to avowed than grounded. Avowed doing Hifi numbers would be a big blow to them too.
Uhhhh maybe one? And not a big one? Per Google his total package is thought to be around 10 mil. Assuming buildings and support staff aren’t free, this is not enough for even a 100 person studio. Hifi probably cost more a year average
I think if he gets $10 million a year, it could support a 100-person team with an average salary of $100,000 a year, which might be enough for surviving Tango.
If money was the only issue you could reason it out, but lack of middle management to oversee all of their studios was also a key reason. They wanted the studios to “run themselves” with strong leadership and Tango definitely lost a lot of theirs at the top. In the end we’re all speculating
Do you think he plans to cancel call of duty and have all of those guys work on one small award winning game?
No, that’s dumb. Budget matters. Hifi didn’t do enough for its budget. Games like grounded had bigger reach with less. Pentiment was also lauded, and was even cheaper still!
As much as I enjoyed HFR though, I must have put 10x more time in Grounded and had more fun with it in the end. No matter what Booty’s quote is, HFR still bombed on Xbox and PC and is bombing hard on the console with the highest user base that were all apparently going to buy the game if it came to their system as its apparently the only “shining beacon” in all of the games and released. Yet MS releases Grounded and SOT on PS5 and it seems more. Go figure.
They apparently needed more staff to make a sequel. That’s means even more budget when the first one didn’t do as well as its peers. It’s just a tough sell for a studio that made games that people didn’t really play. Even free on gamepass!
John: Hey Matt! Remember that game we made that got critical acclaim but could barely squeak pass 3 million players, despite being available to 30+ million subscribers for ‘free’?
Matt: Yep.
John: Well, I propose a sequel to that game. Oh, we need a bigger budget so we can hire more staff. How about it buddy?
You’re on a board for Xbox enthusiasts, do you not think many of us would’ve played it?
It’s one of my favourite games of the last few years, I bought it again on PC for my partner and played it through multiple times.
So yes people did play it and there’s going to be a few of us in this thread, who are gutted we won’t get a sequel.
While I understand the closures and it’s fine to talk sales figures / player numbers, the belittling of HiFi Rush in order to defend Xbox is antagonistic to the verge of trolling