Xbox Game Studios |OT9| How many games would a game studio make if a game studio could make games?

Its not a giant mistake for Xbox if you headcanon does not align with reality. Idk, maybe adjust your headcanon?

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Yeah, I think these micro shows have only improved the reputation of Sony and Nintendo because whether news is big or small gamers crave it. My dream scenario is at least a show every quarter and can use the shows to promote gamepass, ID @Xbox and updates to XGS games. Plus should do something like starfield showing for major games a month before it comes out.

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I would be fine with just one show early Q1 for a start.

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This was discussed in the Xcast this week. They are working on it and planning on it. Paris specifically mentions talking to a Microsoft rep at Summer game fest and they say that it is basically heading that way but microsoft is a monolith and changing directions like that takes time. They can’t just snap their fingers and make it happen overnight. And with the impending Activision deal closing the sheer volume of studios they will have essentially demands it.

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Speaking of mistakes Xbox is making. They’ve owned Fallout for two years almost and still haven’t greenlit a game yet? Xbox shouldn’t let that ip sit dormant regardless of how busy Todd Howard is. I have other examples as well but these are just some of the glaring self owns Xbox is making this month :laughing:

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We also had those recent hires that heavily hint at it, let’s be honest, It should be a matter of time. I really feel like in In Q1/1H is when they need it most. Because June and after they have their big showcase, attend TGS, Gamescom, and TGA. A show in March, just a focused 30-45 minutes one, preferably focused on XGS, would be what I’d want. But just do a show, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Continue the news cycle.

In a way they had multiple shows last year. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Sea of Thieves had its own stream thingy about the updates and another game had one. Was it Flight Sim?

It absolutely is just a matter of time.

Anyone who has worked for larger organizations knows exactly why this sort of thing takes so much time. I work somewhere that isnt even close to the size/scale of MS, and even the most basic projects/changes of direction are timelines of months or more. The number of meetings, reviews, approvals, sign offs, committees, etc is mind boggling.

I’m impressed they managed to do last year’s show that well considering that at the time Bethesda just officially joined a couple of months ahead

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Well, does Forza Monthly show any gameplay or it is just a talk (interview)? I also remember some Horizon monthly or something, but it is on Twitch and I don’t like going there at all.

The thing is that their whole slate is

  • E3
  • Gamescom
  • TGA
  • TGS
  • XO
  • Minecon
  • Quakecon
  • Blizzcon

Considering that the games are ready in different time, they should have some random smaller events - make Inside Xbox - I agree here, but I presume this name is tainted now :joy:

E3 is supposed to be that huge event, outlining the future of Xbox. Xbox Showcase this time was in fact Game Pass Showcase as it did include stuff that was not even available on Xbox.

Maybe some small Game Pass 1-2 minute video before each drop would be nice too.

Actually they’re entirely unique compared to troubleshooting & bug fixing for other software - in that you don’t know how users are going to act in the software once it’s released. Accounting software - you know the normal paths through the system that users will take to use it. For most business software - typically you know what steps people will take going through it (and I can first hand state that even with vendors knowing this, I’ve seen software rollouts that have taken at least 2 years longer than anticipated while still having major problems despite the extra time). A coworker of mine just had a vendor system that is web based go live that was supposed to be up and running at least a year ago, and we still can’t figure out why the business unit is using it because it’s got so many issues. An office suite dev can understand how people will use the product, what actions they’re going to take. They don’t worry about people jumping into areas they aren’t intended to be in and falling through the floor in Excel. They also don’t have to worry about physic effects in TurboTax and whether the projectile will hit something at the right time that the user expects.

I’ve done a ton of troubleshooting on systems that people use in their day to day jobs, and I definitely have it easier than people trying to recreate the situations that people manage to generate in games. And even with that, I still run into stuff where we just can’t figure out what the user did to create a certain set of actions that caused an issue. Part of the issue in putting out timelines (which I do see other industries sometimes having issues with as well) - in this type of dev, is that you don’t always know what the issue is or what else will have to change to fix it, so trying to give timelines is going to be hard. There’s also a ton of bad pr if you keep pushing stuff back because it’s not clicking - just look at Ubisoft for this.

Sorry if this ran a bit long, and I’m not jumping on you for your opinion, but just wanted to give a couple of quick examples of how different this is from business dev. Games have - UIs that have to work how people expect, with people performing actions in combinations that they can’t predict while also having to monitor physics, present music and sound effects, stories that have to make at least some sense, programed character behavior that is supposed to try to interact with the player in predictable ways, etc. Lots more systems running that interact with each other inside a game than in anything else I can think of. And even then - as you note, other stuff has bugs as well because all software dev is more complicated than people realize once it starts talking to other things.

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Todd needs a successor or protege first before he can think of fallout lol.

The question is whether Xbox or Devs were interested in the first place.

I don’t see the correlation here. FF is a JRPG - the whole genre that Xbox severely lacks, while CD is their partnership studio. It has always been a strange assumption that Microsoft would go and buy CD 100%. We don’t even know if they wanted to do that in the first place.

Just like a lot of folks dreaming of some small studio acquisitions, Microsoft won’t go and buy all or any of them, even if from our point of view it makes sense - because Microsoft knows what makes sense to them.

So? Games take years to make.

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Not greenlighting a game you have in your headcanon is something but certainly not a selfown of Xbox :woman_shrugging:

Oh, and btw they have greenlit the next Fallout. Thats why Todd talked about it. Please pay more attention.

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I don’t believe Xbox get to greenlight Bethesda’s games or not. Bethesda manage themselves.

One of his former chess club members will probably do

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I feel as if a lot of folks really want Xbox to “strong arm” Bethesda on a few issues, next Fallout game, canceling 76, change to Unreal 5, being forced to use some support studios to get games out sooner.

They would totally ruin the relationship just because they want Fallout 5 or New Vegas 2 so badly.

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I mean you answer your own question by bringing up Fallout New Vegas. People understand Fallout 5 might be off the table but I see no reason why a spin-off can’t be made by a different studio. Not only that, it should’ve been already in production by now. Even if you greenlit the game today that is already a mistake because games take a long time to produce. Current Xbox leadership lacks a bit of decisiveness. They only get things right half the time. I could do better than current leadership honestly.

Xbox allows studios to do whatever they want. The same thing like with Josh Sawyer where he constantly asked about Fallout New Vegas, while he wants to do something different.

Who would you assign to work on it?