Phil’s interview with Ryan McCaffery. Topics discussed: -studio closures -doom being multi platform -xbox business side
And others
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Dodged the tango question and seemed way too happy to be bringing games to other platforms lol but besides that it was a solid interview.
12 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Big ol’ Xbox 3rd Party Releases Discussion Thread (HiFi, SoT, Pentiment, Grounded) (Part 2)
He didn’t dodge it. He just isn’t saying what people want to hear.
People think there is some magic bullet answer that they can trot out that will make everyone suddenly go “ohhhh okay. I get it”
He said everything you need to know without being insensitively direct. “I am beholden to the balance sheet/cash flow statements”. That’s it. That is the reason. The numbers said something needed cut. They cut.
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When I meant he dodged it i mean that on previous interviews he had said with pride they had never closed a studio for p and l reasons. Now they have. Ryan asked why tango and phil just said well i have to run a substainable business. What people want to know is why tango when like ryan says Aaron Greenburg had said it hit all targets.
Also was phil buzzed lol? Seemed like it. Specially when they were talking about the hand held.
Do you need to know this information? As a poster on Xboxera?
Lol I thought people look like they came from a happy hour tbh
I actually would. If theyre gonna tell us the game hit all its marks and still closed down then I as someone heavily invested in the eco system begins to worry about the health of the eco system and the studios within. They want confident consumers and i think we should get a bit of insight into the rationale. Like we understand arkane. It sucks but it makes sense in a traditional way. Tango just makes me worried for the other boutique studios in the org
You understanding the nitty-gritty details of why they closed down some studios does nothing for you as a customer.
There will be a new console, Xbox will continue to work to maintain strong third party relationships, gamepass is going strong, Xbox remains devoted to backwards compatibility These are the things that matter.
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One game hit its target. The previous two didn’t and the next one was years off. You can kind of just extrapolate the math from there.
They prioritized not cancelling projects that were further along over funding ones that wouldn’t pay off for half a decade or more.
I find it really baffling that people can’t accept professional lawyers, accountants, and all manner of business experts, at the largest corporation in the world, looked at the numbers and came to the conclusion that those were the cuts to make. Like it was made arbitrarily.
Mind you, I don’t like that tango is gone either, but we have to divorce our disappointment from the reality that people with all the data saw something we can’t.
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Everything is going to PlayStation the question isn’t will it show up on PlayStation it’s when will it show up on PlayStation.
Honestly it is what it is. Basically PlayStations customers are funding game pass. Everyone has to decide on their own if only having an Xbox with game pass worth it to you? Or should you move on from Xbox and get a PlayStation? Get both consoles? A gaming PC?
Everyone will have a different opinion on it but will have to make that decision. I wasn’t happy about it either but it is what it is. I just don’t really care anymore and I’ve basically checked out on as a fan of Xbox itself. It’s just a game console to me and not that serious.
Like today it was a great show and I’m gonna play pretty much everything shown, but anything Xbox puts out to me I just consider it multiplat. I don’t have that reaction to first party games anymore like anything first party showed to me is the equivalent of seeing Assassins Creed or Dragon Age today. It’s all basically 3rd party to me and I’m still excited to play it. When games skip Xbox like they do I don’t even bat an eye anymore I just play something else.
I’ll be with Xbox as long as they make a console I have a massive library of games and always something to play. More games then I have time to play honestly.
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Well the good vibes from the day were great while they lasted…a whole six hours or so.
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They are going to release some of their games elsewhere. Not all, but definitely more than most of you probably want them to. The way I see it is if they release half of their games elsewhere, they’ll still have more exclusives than they’ve ever had before and probably still more than their competitors. I don’t think that sounds so bad if I’m being honest.
Also, if they ever want o make another big purchase, these types of moves will help prove that they’re not full of shit when they say they won’t be dicks and just make everything exclusive.
Also also, if you guys were investing in the ecosystem when Xbox only had a few 1st party studios, why would you feel compelled to abandon the platform because some of the games from the studios they’ve acquired over the last handful of years might also be going elsewhere? It really doesn’t make any sense to me.
If you just wanted Xbox to “win”, I can see being disappointed with these moves, but I just saw a great showcase filled with great games coming from Xbox and all of those great games are coming to Gamepass. They’re also openly talking about their next hardware, which sounds like it’ll be coming sooner rather than later and if the rumors are true, sounds pretty exciting.
The bottom line for me is that Xbox doesn’t sound like it’s going anywhere, and it seems poised to be better than ever.
TL’DR: Everything’s probably going to be fine. 
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This was a great interview
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I don’t even know what this means.
Their hardware ecosystem is going nowhere and their 3rd party support is the best it’s been. I don’t know how after a day like this all you can do is fine things to complain about.
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For the love of God, do you read what you’re typing on a day like this? They just had the greatest showcase in their history and all you can do is assume the worst about everything. You’ve talked yourself into dream scenarios or demanded answers to inside rumors. It’s not healthy.
We have been extraordinarily lenient with the anger over potential multiplat takes since January. If you can’t let people enjoy a show for a single night I thin kthat is going to end.
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You see, I don’t interpret what he said as all of their games going to other platforms, on the contrary. MS owns ABK and Bethesda. From the showcase, the only games officially going to PS5 so far are Doom and COD. We know COD will now reach Nintendo Switch as well in the future.
To me, ‘‘More of Our Titles’’ simply means that stuff from ABK and Bethesda makes sense to be released elsewhere, like Doom, because those games were released everywhere in the past. So those games will continue to be released everywhere. Don’t expect a new Spyro to be announced for example and be Xbox exclusive, unlike a new Banjo for example.
As for the new stuff like Gears, Perfect Dark, Avowed, and South of Midnight? I don’t think it’s headed anywhere else, and I think MS will keep that balance. And for those titles that head to other consoles, if it’s anything like they have done this year, it’ll be late ports for full price that have run their course and are at a point in their lifecycle where people have already moved on and have lost significant relevance. And so for those titles, it honestly has no negative impact on Xbox hardware as the people who are willing to wait years to play an Xbox game were already not willing to buy your hardware in the first place anyway or already did the game on either Xbox or PC.
I think people watching the interview and interpreting that the floodgates are open have got it completely wrong.
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Didn’t he just answered the question? It’s pretty simple, tango didn’t make the money it needed to. So you think MS would get rid of a company that makes money? Does it hurt to lose tango, of course it does but that is capitalism for you. The answers you want is very simple.