I took a week-ish break from the internet and came back to this news.
I’ve tried to remain generally optimistic and pragmatic as far as business realities go. And to a point, I still understand the business realities at play here as well.
But Arkane Austin is a bit much. I think Ill punch my ticket to the doom train now.
It really sucks hearing about Tango when Mikami said before he left that he wanted that studio to be a place where younger devs could thrive.
Hearing about these studios closing is just super disappointing.
With how rapidly things seem to change on Xbox in the last few months this list makes me anxious…oh man.
Grounded is a massive hit, and Pentiment costed nothing and has been a sleeper hit on Steam.
Obsidian is nowhere near in danger. InXile is.
It is a concern - if Brad Sams is right and we’re now away from “experimental Xbox” that invests and has variety for Game Pass, to “ruthless Xbox” where it’s all about the money, there’s a number of teams in Xbox that don’t have massive selling IPs but bring joy to us gamers.
Pentiment and HiFi Rush are games that might not have got made elsewhere, and I’m slightly concerned if all studios now have to generate massive profits then Xbox will lose something in the same way Sony did when it moved away from the PS2-era studios and focused purely on AAA movie-like games…
I’m really worried about Compulsion games. Their last game was released on 2016, and South of Midnight appears to be a niche game that won’t be a massive hit. If Hi-Fi Rush was not good enough, than a niche game that will have an almost decade long development won’t either.
The long 6+ year dev times for AA titles just isn’t feasible…
For that dev time, the game needs to hit and be a major success.
This is what it takes. Like it or not.
So they did 1/3rd of that the top of the genera does, despite being on Gamepass. Thats a great argument that the game should never see the light of day in the first place!
Hellblade 2 is a core example.
6 year dev time, mo cap investment… all for a 8 hour 50 dollar game ?
I fail to see the connection between closing a Japanese studio and developing a new Fallout game.
Which is “funny” because we all thought that Xbox should avoid the way that Sony is doing things in the AAA/1st party space not imitate them.
Don’t worry it will come to the PS5 and Switch 2 to get their money /s
And if it doesn’t make enough money…
I see we’re back into the phase where we try to discuss the justification of closing four fucking studios from the publisher’s side huh
Taking layoffs too lightly | This Week in Business | GamesIndustry.biz
the the relationship between creatives and the indifference these publishers have over their workforce versus appealing to the bottom line will continue to persist. these investors and excecs will continue to be tremendously dogshit at their job as they are often reported by, by creatives, but it will continue to persist.
It’s my fault that I responded seriously to a bad troll like you in the first place I guess.
2 bars to meet before studio closure evidently.
There’s no way Ninja Theory will survive this or next year, Bleeding Edge didn’t sell at all, and Hellblade 2 had a fairly big budget and will do mediocre numbers sales wise, pretty sure that’ll be their last game.
I only see three options for them:
-Get Closed
-Become another CoD pew pew support studio, for the technical stuff maybe
Yeah, it’s really funny that when any other company closes their studios, pretty much everyone agrees that it is a terrible move, but when Xbox does it’s justified somehow. “It’s bad but they had to do it guys”.
Definitely not justified as its largely as a result of their own incompetence.
Yeah it does feel a little like they’re great developers when it comes to graphics etc. but they’ve put all their eggs in the Hellblade basket - we’ve still no idea what Project Mara is or when it’ll come out.
It felt like it could be a Detroit: Become Human or Beyond: Two Souls type of game, the kind of accessible great-looking game that would sell well - which could be exactly the kind of game Ninja needs, given Hellblade does seem pretty dark and niche…