It is safe to assume that this is an ongoing learning process for Microsoft and that they are trying to improve in this aspect.
Honestly, after watching the entire Double Fine Psychodyssey documentary series, all of the info mentioned in the article seems to be rather ‘normal’ for any game in active development. I am not saying there shouldn’t be any room for improvement, but this is no earth-shattering news IMO. Also, Jez and others have been saying for a while that Perfect Dark may not be coming earlier than 2025 anyway.
Well Matt Booty said during the Giant Bomb interview that he spoke with Darrell Gallagher and they were discussing Perfect Dark and Darrell watched the showcase. Darrell said in a joking way that if The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics don’t stay on schedule then Perfect Dark won’t be in the 2024 Xbox Showcase and he would be watching the other studios instead. I’m quietly confident in Perfect Dark. It seems Darrell wants to go big and make it a Blockbuster! Microsoft needs to buy Certain Affinity and Crystal Dynamics as soon as possible.
I read the article. I think it’s really overblown.
The studio was created in 2018 and was being built from the ground up. You have a studio that was trying a different approach “initiative”.
This isn’t new information, we basically had people who worked there that weren’t ok with this process and thus the turnover.
The new news is Certain Affinity. However, it sounds like they wanted to be a production house over a development creative partner.
They are building something ambitious and were prototyping systems. It will come together, especially with Crystal Dynamics being a partner. Fact is, all this preparation and trial and error will make for a better game in the end.
Oh yeah for sure, it’s all been a learning process for MS and with what we saw with Redfall, they are clearly still learning.
Just because none of this info is earth shattering, that doesn’t make much of it good and that’s unfortunate. When looking at games with troubled development, going back to Infinite, to Redfall, and now Perfect Dark, one of the common issues seems to be a disconnect between what those in the trenches think versus what those in the leadership positions think or believe. So I was just thinking of ways that the lower level developers can easily, and safely, communicate their concerns, wishes, or even praises in a way that it’s relatively easy for Booty’s team, and their equivalent at Zenimax, to get a good idea on the overall thoughts from the whole studio, not just the leaders they are typically in direct contact with. With a system in place, problems can potentially be caught earlier and the proper actions can be taken.
No doubt they are continuing to improve and maybe that could be one solution to improving their processes.
The article seemed to just go through the history of things, so I’m not sure what was overblown. I’m glad it ended with development in a better state now. My main point was that it is a game that has had a troubled development, even if those troubles are now in the past. It’s not like acknowledging this takes anything away from what the game can still potentially be.
One of the most interesting things I got from the article was them switching to UE5 right before signing with CD. Makes me wonder what they were working with before since I always assumed it was UE5.
If you watch that Double Fine documentary, you will see in one of the latter episodes where Matt Booty was asking Tim Schafer and others about how the whole team, not just the leadership, was feeling while making Psychonauts 2. So, it is being done in some capacity, but like you said, there is always room for improvement.
2025 could be a wild legendary year in the numbers of Xbox 1st party exclusives we might see, it just seems like it’s inevitable at this point that we get a year like this at some point, for example:
2025:
Fable
South of midnight
State of decay 3
Contraband
Indiana Jones
Forza Horizon 6
Everwild
Quake Reboot
And maybe some others from the likes of Double Fine.
Although I wouldn’t be surprised if FH6 isn’t coming out until after Fable.
It seems crazy but Xbox is 100% going to have a year like that eventually because they just have so many games in development, at some point that will happen, didn’t even mention stuff like Stalker 2 and Ark 2.
I was going to mention The Outer Worlds 2 but not sure if Obsidian will be able to release 2 AAA games in back to back years, unless they’re different teams.
Never ending Showcase