Not every project has to be so damn profitable. Some projects serve niche audiences and nostalgia that give you attachment and loyalty sometimes. The whole ABK organization is profitable, literally more profitable than Playstation at times, who cares if some smaller games aren’t the biggest money makers.
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What we know for sure is that it sold in 2 months what the N.Sane Trilogy sold in 2 weeks. Based on player count, a common assumption is that it stands somewhere between 800K and 1M. The N.Sane trilogy sold over 10M copies.
You don’t get to stay as an executive in a big US corp without being scummy. You can like Phil for what he did for the brand and things that you liked, for the fact that he engages and plays games, but he’s a big executive at the biggest (or 2nd, idk) tech corporation in the US/world, he isn’t in that position unless he has signed on and initiated multiple cold and horrible decisions that were not in the interest of anyone but his and his company’s bottom line.
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I came across this “common assumption” while trying to find sales information, it’s a reddit post from shortly after launch and the first reply is someone pointing out that using player counts was not an accurate metric for sales. Even if it was remotely accurate at the time being 3 years old this also does not factor in games full life of sales - including that the game later got next gen versions, a switch release and a steam release - as well as later getting a PS+ release and reportedly getting it’s sales boosted by the mobile game.
As of right now the only actual information on how it sold seems to be first month digital sales (in which yeah, it sold less than Crash N Sane Trilogy - a game sold at a lower price point) and an Activision sales report noting a strong quarter based on sales of Tony Hawk and Crash 4.
The US of A, and most of the world, live and breath capitalism. That’s not being scummy, that’s being realistic. If a project isn’t making any money or isn’t looking like it’ll bring any and is just a money sink, when there are signs of contraption around you in the overall industry, when there is less money coming in, etc, at some point you’ll have to make those decisions. No company, even if they have the money (and they ain’t giving it away for free) will keep employees on the payroll if it’s not profitable for them. You need a reason to exist. It doesn’t matter that you might be necessary or could be useful in 5 years from now, if you aren’t right now, you are an expenditure, at a time where the Xbox division is asked to bring its profits margins up while the industry around it is contracting. That’s just reality. 1900 payroll is a lot for the Xbox division and overall, keeping those employees on, if they don’t pull their weight for the company in terms of profits, would be bad management
on MS’s part and then the potential grows for even more layoffs. At some point the bleeding needs to stop to protect what you have and that’s how it’s done unfortunately. Xbox is reaching the point where big daddy MS is asking for results and now they have to pull their weight.
That’s not scummy, that’s just reality.
That is not very constructive to talk about that if we do not know the roles and duties of the fired people.
I bet some of them will be needed very soon and then they will complain that they are missing talents.
You can talk about capitalism as much as you want, what we have is short sighted companies that are here to provide money for shareholders no matter it makes sense or not.
Ok, I’m a capitalism hater to the bone, but this is only an excuse to an extent. There are companies in this same capitalism that avoid mass layoffs at this scale and find other solutions until layoffs become the last resort.
Hell, this isn’t just because the number of layoffs, it’s also the context and who’s affected the most. The number is already bad, but the fact that this is their first big action with ABK after the acquisition, I don’t know how they can expect to gain ABK employees’ trust like that, when it was already gonna be a difficult task. We’ve seen especially Blizzard’s devs voice their support and excitement for this acquisition, and then imagine some of them got laid off just like that. This is a blow to a culture already suffering and was looking to be saved by this acquisition.
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A lot of people are drawing conclusions without information to back them up. Also, calling someone’s character into question without knowing them, simply because you don’t don’t like capitalism is wrong in my opinion.
I’m sure most of you are beautiful people, but some of you sound less beautiful when talking about this topic regardless of what side you’re coming down on. 
We’ve been real lenient with the moderation as it’s a terrible thing that happened to over 1900 real human beings, but don’t start up with personal insults/attacks at each other. That goes against the main tenants of our site, it’s great to disagree but never to attack someone personally.
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Well sorry, some language can be interchangable to some of us who aren’t native speakers so “scummy” might not be a proper word use, I agree. But the point stands all the same, it shouldn’t even be controversial, executives at big corporations, when in their executive role, arent gonna be nice people and are gonna be cold and ruthless at the expense of others a lot of the time. I don’t know if this to question their character, or to question what this system requires of people to fit in with it, it’s probably the latter.
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I agree that data is critical to this discussion. However I see the lack of data as a bad sign. For instance, looking at Microsoft games, despite the narrative that Hi-Rush and Starfield have failed, they’ve shared updates about the number of players so frequently that I read this as a very good sign. That same year however, we have heard nothing about Forza Motorsport, so I would assume that it must be way below their expectations.
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It’s what it takes for businesses to succeed. There is a more humane part for sure, but you need that disconnect sometimes in some decision making. In the end it’s about he well being of the organization more than it is about the well being of specific individuals.
ABK though I think was a special case. The growth they had was inorganic, and look at the last few years and how many employees they added, something doesn’t add up. Maybe MS preferred to rip off the bandaid now, but in the end they probably had some numbers not making any sense for them to make this decision as I doubt it’s only about making shareholders happy as some think.
There could be some restructuring happening in order to better support the current main pillars and then adjust course as needs be. I have a feeling that a layoff of this size was being prepared long before the takeover was even completed to be honest. Maybe ABK overhired to complete some stuff faster and was already planning to let go of those employees and it just fell on MS to have to do it.
The timing sucks but since we don’t have the financials it’s hard for us to judge properly. Some were saying the OW2 team lost some people, but the reality is the PVE modes they released didn’t set the world on fire. That’s just one example.
I think in these uncertain times MS preffered to go with known quantities, trim the fat, and go from there.
My apologies. I have fixed my comment and I’ll try to be better in the future.
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I agree that if the numbers were big they’d be talking about it more too, but that still leaves a lot of room before we can say confidently it was a bomb.
Forza Motorsport was never that big. Not comparative to what Horizon has become.
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Have we got any player numbers?
I don’t believe they have an in-game metric like FH5 does, so not that i know of.
Sim racers in general have fallen off hard compared to what they once were
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They have a decent sized audience that is dedicated to the space, but it’s nothing compared to what the arcade side can get.
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I know it’s true achievement but numbers for the FM7 for example was 1/3 of FH4 of population which is not bad since game is less causal
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