I wonder what the fireside chat with the Giant Bomb crew would have been like, had it not been cancelled.
11 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Big ol’ Xbox 3rd Party Releases Discussion Thread (HiFi, SoT, Pentiment, Grounded) (Part 2)
That was a Ryan McCaffrey interview, everyone. Disappointing setting and phrasing of the questions, I still hate the Tango closure and think it was a mistake. But at least we can now be sure the Xboy is coming.
I can’t watch it myself now but I’m curious, did he give some details on the next gen Xbox haedware? Console, that is, screw a handheld. 
Only indication that it exists in various form factors, and they’re committed to it. The interview is generally a feelgood puff piece with an audience of fans.
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Phil is also involved in the Dev roundtable.
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I understand that much of this interview likely had to go through PR however I felt that Ryan was often too soft (despite enjoying the interview overall).
For example we didn’t really get an answer in relation to Tango. Reading between the lines Phil seemed to suggest that Tango wasn’t financially viable (despite Aaron previously contradicting this). I feel Ryan should have followed up to specifically ask whether Phil is saying they were closed as they aren’t financially viable but he didn’t.
Also why didn’t Ryan ask about the ABK back catalogue coming to GP (despite repeatable talking about how much Xbox spent on them) or any update on the new controller (despite bringing up hardware)? It seemed like there was often obvious follow up questions which just weren’t asked.
Personally I would have also liked him to nitpick the multiplatform approach a bit more (e.g. talk about LEGO Horizon coming everywhere but Xbox and why Xbox aren’t doing the same to PS). Also dig into the benefits for Xbox customers other than GP and what is the criteria for these games to go multi-platform.
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Sony have a larger market share and these games tend to sell more on Switch, so should see sufficient-enough success and as they’ve conditioned their userbase to not view the Switch as a rival, easier to placate them.
For Xbox, well, beggars can’t be choosers.
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The interview was good but still somewhat vague about a lot of stuff and I think that was done purposefully. There are too many variables at play right now that are not set in stone, Xbox business is booming and they are dipping their toes with multiplatform but are not fully committing to it yet as there is no reason to do so either which is why they cannot give a clear answer as to what the “exact” strategy is for e time being.
I still think they are playing it from several angles and will keep Xbox console business (that includes PC) a priority while giving away some games to other platforms to boost their numbers once they’ve ran their course on Xbox. I do think they want their Xbox One owners to buy a Series console or maybe even jump directly into next gen to keep them in their ecosystem and that with barely any games still left cross gen (COD) I think that move will happen shortly so having this deluge of games coming into Gamepass and being next gen only might facilitate that transition for some.
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We lost Tango and Arkane Austin but, i think it time to let it go. Bringing this up again and again ain’t gone to bring them back.
We can still play their games whenever we want.
It is sad that the games they make are just not commercial successful.
At least now we know that you have to be making money straight from Phil himself.
Gaming is like any business and job. It needs to be financially feasible, if not? There will be consequences like any other Job and Business out there.
People really take all this personally. Layoffs and closure happens all the time. It sucks but that’s life. Keep bringing it up over and over ain’t gone to change nothing.
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Well at this point it’s pretty much obvious they are doing a handheld, very nice and definitely the direction they should go
So much of the consternation and hand-wringing isn’t from Xbox’s messaging but from “insiders” who got their assed kicked by Xbox PR yesterday. From the dozen or so things I was told were a “lock” not one of them happened. It’s clear that Xbox is sick of the internal leaks and obfuscated shit. Now actual reports with definitive answers from proper journalists (the handful of them)? Those are different, but even there it’s only ever “discussions”. Until something is going to PlayStation, per Xbox/Studio PR, don’t assume anything.
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The problem is we are assuming they weren’t financially viable but we still don’t know for sure.
Aaron Greenberg previously suggested Hi-Fi Rush was which is why Ryan asked the question the way he did. If they were profitable along with being critically acclaimed then it really does confuse the matter. Especially as it was their first game under Xbox and it literally had no marketing at all (shadow drop).
I think the fans do deserve some form of clarity rather than just trying to read between the lines.
To touch on your other point, yes we can still play their previous games but what does this mean for Prey, Hi-Fi Rush, Evil Within and Dishonored going forward?
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Games that don’t get played by many people don’t tend to get sequels
Yeah, really find the takes online weird. Like people saying Project Latitude and that now everything is guaranteed 3rd party, next gen is the last physical console from MS, etc.
Where is all that coming from I have no idea. You know what they say though, when you assume too much, you make an ASS of U and Me!
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It isn’t really assumptions as much as educated guesses. Companies don’t close sectors of their business that are making money.
And people really need to come to terms with business speak. Saying something hit projections and expectations doesn’t really mean anything. Those projections could have been an 80 Meta Critic average and 10k sold copies in the first month. That doesn’t mean the studio is financially solvent.
Remember he was directly addressing an assertion by Jeff Grub that “it didnt make what Xbox thought it would”. Greenberg was like “sure it did”. It did exactly what it we thought it would. Well they could have expected nothing. His words can mean anything.
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Exactly and these did.
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Evil Within 1 & 2.
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Dishonored 1, 2 & DotO.
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Prey 2 had allegedly been pitched multiple times.
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Hi-Fi Rush 2 was also allegedly being pitched.
Plus all the awards/recognition these games earned.
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Yeah that’s fair, I’m just still sore on the subject and was hoping for some real clarification 
.
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LMAO!!!
Evil Within sold a ton, Evil Within 2 did not.
HF:R did well, Ghostwire: Tokyo did not
Dishonored was both Arkane’s and not just Austin
Prey 2 was never made
I’m not sure your point.
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