Hdcase

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Game Pass used to mean all first party games, day one, and now 2/3 tiers on console won't have that. It's a pretty shocking turnaround.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Surely this will turn things around for them 🙄

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I think a lot of people will end up unsubscribing and then buying the games they miss.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Different voice actor too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm surprised Aaron Greenberg didn't fight for it, since according to him their last game smashed every metric and exceeded all expectations.

 

"The closure of any team is hard obviously on the individuals there, hard on the team," Spencer said. "I haven't been talking publicly about this, because right now is the time for us to focus on the team and the individuals. It's obviously a decision that's very hard on them, and I want to make sure through severance and other things that we're doing the right thing for the individuals on the team. It's not about my PR, it's not about Xbox PR. It's about those teams.

"In the end, I've said over and over, I have to run a sustainable business inside the company and grow, and that means sometimes I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make.

"We will continue to go forward. We will continue to invest in what we're trying to go do in Xbox and build the best business we can, which ensures we can continue to do shows like the one we just did."

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

The whole piece is worth a read but to me this paragraph sums it all up:

"Who even knows what would please these people? They say they're focusing their resources on bigger games, then they say they need smaller games. They say they love your games, then they shut your studio down. They make more money than they've ever made before, then they cut costs repeatedly, drastically, and cruelly. They buy more studios than they can manage, so the answer is not to use that aforementioned money to hire more (or perhaps better) managers, but to have fewer studios so management's job can be easier."

 

If you're a developer working for Xbox, what can you do to secure your job?

 

The platform holder has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Me too. The writing is on the wall, especially if you're at a small studio working on "small" games like Ninja Theory or Double Fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Give it a year. Thankfully Toys for Bob was able to buy themselves out, otherwise surely they would have either been shut down or put to work in the Call of Duty mines.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Shutting down entire studios should not be a part of normal cost saving.

 

Xbox is offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax as part of a broader cost-cutting initiative

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

No one's asking you to trust them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I heard they were basically forced into that situation after Bethesda canceled their Prey sequel (which looked great BTW.)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There have been rumors and speculation, but that's not what MS is saying.

"More interestingly, [Xbox President Sarah] Bond teased a roadmap focused on next-generation hardware.

"'And what we're focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions they're building," Bond explained in the recent episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.'"

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-next-gen-console-confirmed-business-update

 

Microsoft has released its latest financial results, showing significant growth in gaming revenues — thanks in no small part to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

However, Xbox hardware sales continue to decline and saw the steepest drop since the Xbox Series X and S launched in 2020, down 31% year-on-year.

 

This is a fascinating deep dive into the development of the game, with many people involved giving interviews. Instead of being in a long development hell, Lionhead knocked out the game in a stunning 18 months - which made Microsoft happy, but resulted in the cutting of a ton of content.

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