I’ll continue to preface these comments acknowledging the human element here and hoping everyone impacted lands on their feet:
None of the cuts have particularly surprised me. I’m disappointed in Booty’s leadership over first-party for not having snuffed out several of these projects sooner, and ultimately that years have been wasted which will impact output moving forward.
I want big AAA games from Xbox and the Obsidian model alone won’t suffice for me personally. They need to figure out how to deliver large quality games within Xbox Studios specifically. I won’t shed a tear for Everwild or Motorsport as IP, but Perfect Dark and The Initiative represented Xbox committing to producing “bangers”.
I’ll be very controversial and say even this year, supposedly a god-tier run for Xbox, has not impressed me. Compulsion and South of Midnight were not worth waiting six years for. On the second-party side of the house, the sterile and bland Towerborne is a poor representation of partnership efforts. I’d easily rank 2021 and 2014 lineups over this year.
Looking ahead, something has to change. I totally respect if you’re someone who liked Hellblade 2, but that game should not have taken five years of development. State of Decay 3 should be out by now. We should have had the next Gears in our hands already. Some of these studios are either taking Xbox for a ride or are being managed poorly.
I say that to circle back on the theme of the thread and suggest this won’t be the end of layoffs unless something fundamental changes at Xbox. Not necessarily ActiBliz or Bethesda, but Xbox Studios who I feel have whelmed more than impressed. I’ll go out of my way to point out that I’m not saying there haven’t been great games along the way.
I mentioned Obsidian at the top, not my cup of tea thus far, but they’re at least delivering. InXile and Clockwork appears to represent what we thought these acquisitions would do: empower talented teams to punch above their weight. We need more of that. At least after all these years I can look at what InXile is working on and be taken aback at its fidelity, scope, and depth relative to the studio’s size.
This is a bit off topic but I found the latest Xbox showcase to be good - not great. In this time of transition of business models and messaging, the one thing Xbox needs to deliver on if nothing else are great to fantastic games.
Not good games - certainly not middling titles or games that are pretty good because we get them via Game Pass for “free”. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing the few still left hanging around. I don’t want to see anyone else lose their jobs. Xbox’s leadership has to do better.
This isn’t an emotionally charged critique of Xbox. Again, I can’t disagree with a lot of the cuts here. I only game on Xbox. I love Game Pass. But I think there’s some validity in the criticism I’m leveraging with the intent of wanting the games, platform and brand to be better.
