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News Xbox closes Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and others.

www.theverge.com

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox turmoil

Xbox employees are bracing for what follows more layoffs.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

"Xbox employees are now bracing for what’s next, as it seems unlikely that we’ve seen the last of Microsoft’s gaming layoffs and cutbacks. There are whispers among employees that core Xbox Game Studios are set for cutbacks next. Last month, Microsoft reported that Xbox hardware revenue was down by 31 percent year over year and an obvious admission that this was “driven by lower volume of consoles sold.”
 
HockeyBird said:
The hits keep (and will keep) coming

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Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said.
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Jill Braff, head of ZeniMax studios, said in the town hall that she hoped the reorganization would allow the division, which also develops Fallout and Doom, to put more focus on fewer projects. “It’s hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do,” she said, according to audio of the meeting reviewed by Bloomberg.

“I think we were about to topple over,” she added.
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It's unfortunate, but this is simply how business works. After the economy something something something and forced Microsoft to do layoffs, the studios had no choice but to close in order to keep enough staff to maintain operations.
This week, Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax, which it purchased in 2020 for $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Others across the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are on the way.
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Thankfully, it looks like Microsoft has a handle on things. Further layoffs should help stabilize ZeniMax's ability to produce content, and they won't need to close more studios until after their next game ships to universal apathy on an abandoned platform.
HockeyBird said:
www.theverge.com

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox turmoil

Xbox employees are bracing for what follows more layoffs.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

"Xbox employees are now bracing for what’s next, as it seems unlikely that we’ve seen the last of Microsoft’s gaming layoffs and cutbacks. There are whispers among employees that core Xbox Game Studios are set for cutbacks next. Last month, Microsoft reported that Xbox hardware revenue was down by 31 percent year over year and an obvious admission that this was “driven by lower volume of consoles sold.”
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Xbox now has a strong lineup of games planned for 2024, with Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II set to debut in a matter of weeks on May 21st. I understand Hellblade II is another game that Microsoft has been considering for the PS5. If that ever happens, at this point, it’s not clear if even that would be considered a success.
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Ninja Theory should have expected before they were acquired that Microsoft would go on to suck larger portfolios of studios through its ever-expanding gullet followed by a demand that the studio's upcoming game see huge profits upon being unceremoniously shunted to a stagnating subscription service. Do these developers even know how the game industry works?
 
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Hailinel said:
That I don't doubt. As a victim of a past mass layoff, it's the one of the absolute worst ways to find out.

But I doubt Krvavi's priorities in the way he hyperfocused on Redfall's state. Like Microsoft would (or even should) bring in a scab crew to finish the update after closing the studio? That's laughable.
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if the servers shut off, that’s years of worth of work from countless developers going completely down the drain. I can’t imagine that shit being good for your resume.
Microsoft is supposed to have a “Game Preservation Team” for various projects, and this is exactly the sort of thing they should get involved with.

there’s a similar situation going on with Mighty DOOM, as the studio behind that game is also part of the shutdowns, and the servers for it are explicitly shutting down on August 7th.


to make matters worse, the game lacks an actual credits screen listing everyone involved. requiring external sources like Linkedin and a small set of dev diaries to even learn who they are.




just to name one example of a staffer who’s getting swept under the rug and barely acknowledged thanks to the lack of info, there’s composer Joshua Richardson. who made various decent rearrangements of classic DOOM (and even a smattering of tracks from Quake II and Wolfenstein 3D) songs for the game.
 
Krvavi Abadas said:
if the servers shut off, that’s years of worth of work from countless developers going completely down the drain. I can’t imagine that shit being good for your resume.
gs for the game.
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That's not how resumes work. Everyone that worked on Redfall will be able to say that they worked on it. They can explain the incompetence of Microsoft's leadership and the project's mismanagement in the state it released, and work that went into improving it. The servers shutting off don't change that.

I feel like you honestly care more about the software than the people behind it.
 
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Danny said:
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Microsoft is going more aggressive than Sony in shutting down studios, probably because the failure of current gen Xbox sales.
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TIL that there was a Nintendo Tokyo that predates the current Nintendo EPD Tokyo team.

EDIT: Oh, they developed the original Mother. Cool. Wikipedia also lists a "Nintendo of America (NOA) Special-Projects" development team, but it seems they moreso oversaw North American projects than an actual studio in their own right?
 
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JorgenRaft said:
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My brain hurts so much from all of this. Oh my god-

I’m trying to figure out what their insane ‘logic’ is behind this stuff, and I’m not being all serious about it but I just imagine the higher-ups at Microsoft looking at Call of Duty and going “well, they make a new one of those every year, so surely our devs can make ‘small’ games in that time or less.” Like if they expected Tango Gameworks to pour out Hi-Fi Rush 2 within a year and threw them out when they saw that it’d take years and that they also wanted some more staff.
 
Do they reall think that the IP is all that counts and if you have enough people to make something and let them "hands off", basically anyone can do any game? That somehow everything will be fine again with Spencer, Botty and Greenberg acting as your best Gamer Buddies covering everything up?

I don‘t have any words for how stupid all of this is.
 
Maybe Microsoft got taken over by their Bing AI, because they are not making any sense right now.
 
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The only thing I can think of that makes sense is that Nadella or other internal non gaming influences within Microsoft demanded cost savings at any cost. I’m not saying that Phil and the gang are benevolent or anything, but I do believe they aren’t stupid enough to have not seen this backlash coming, and now they have their marching orders and have to stick with them.
 
WestEgg said:
The only thing I can think of that makes sense is that Nadella or other internal non gaming influences within Microsoft demanded cost savings at any cost. I’m not saying that Phil and the gang are benevolent or anything, but I do believe they aren’t stupid enough to have not seen this backlash coming, and now they have their marching orders and have to stick with them.
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I don't know. Phil would have to be incredibly up his own ass to not ask Nadella for $70 billion to buy Activision, and weather all of the drama that entailed, and not expect the check would come due.
 
WestEgg said:
The only thing I can think of that makes sense is that Nadella or other internal non gaming influences within Microsoft demanded cost savings at any cost. I’m not saying that Phil and the gang are benevolent or anything, but I do believe they aren’t stupid enough to have not seen this backlash coming, and now they have their marching orders and have to stick with them.
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Honestly the more info comes out, the more it seems like Phil cares about gamers first, even at the expense of his own career. You gotta almost respect a guy who is gamers first.
 
If I was working at Xbox I’d be spending my time brushing up my CV about now. Strong ‘circling the drain’ vibes given the contradictory statements around ‘we need award winning small games’ and ‘close down studios that make award winning small games’.
 
JorgenRaft said:
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How do i say it?

I'm done

I'm fucking done with Microsoft. Only reason why i don't cancel my GPU subscription is because i got it by redeeming codes instead of directly paying for it, i'm so, SO incredibly pissed off with all this.

Jesus fucking christ.

Stop

Just fucking STOP

It almost feels like Redfall was an excuse to get rid of Arkane, and as for Tango... I just have no words. The lastest games i've played from them are Ghostwire Tokio and Hi-Fi Rush, GWT is not my jambut feels like a pretty well designed game, and Hi-Fi Rush is a masterpiece.

How do you shut down a team that developed such a masterpiece!? A multi-award winner! And then you have te gall to say THIS!?

Not an ounce of shame.
 
JorgenRaft said:
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And this shows exactly what the problem is for Microsoft; they do not have the ability to communicate clearly. It’s their number one problem ever since the introduction of the original Xbox.

They change their minds and messaging so many times, it leaves everyone confused and unable to truly understand what the point of the Xbox brand is. What is their goal? What is their software philosophy? What’s the long term plan? How will they entice you to buy into their ecosystem? They can’t because almost every year it’s different. Hey we have these games announced! Oops now they are gone because we cancelled it. Hey we want to chase these opportunities within our dev teams? Later on the teams get cut short. Oh now we are buying several studios, let’s goooo. Oh yeah, we need close stuff. We want to control the livingroom! Oh yeah maybe that’s too lofty of a goal, so maybe not.

And while what we messageboard type are saying isn’t that interesting and to MS themselves they might have a clear path now (I sincerely doubt it though), the market in itself are having the same reaction. Why would I buy an Xbox?

I mean I wish I could be a fly on the wall during that Town Hall meeting. I can imagine seeing all this happening and thinking as part of MS studios; this makes no sense.

Look Nintendo and Sony are just corporations as well and they want money; however both (whether you like either is up to you) have a clear strategy which makes it clear for consumers to either pick Sony or Nintendo.
 
so what happens if they now say. "Hellblade 2 did extremely well and we are satisfied with it's performance"? No one is ever going to believe them again
 
Lugia667 said:
so what happens if they now say. "Hellblade 2 did extremely well and we are satisfied with it's performance"? No one is ever going to believe them again
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Ninja Theory: ‘Wait why am I hearing the Majora’s Mask Final Day music’
 
lexony said:
Do they reall think that the IP is all that counts and if you have enough people to make something and let them "hands off", basically anyone can do any game?
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That's essentially how the corporate people see the creatives. Just machines to spin wool into gold. Replaceable. To this day it astonishes me how many industries, even outside gaming and tech, do not understand the value of preserving and nurturing your talent.
 
A healthy level of distrust is always warranted for C-Suite types. Even so, how am I as a consumer supposed to trust in Xbox when their actions and messaging are so contradictory and self-defeating?

Hardly inspires confidence for the future.
 
Zellia said:
A healthy level of distrust is always warranted for C-Suite types. Even so, how am I as a consumer supposed to trust in Xbox when their actions and messaging are so contradictory and self-defeating?

Hardly inspires confidence for the future.
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Yeah even now it‘s hard to say why they closed down those studios because you can‘t really trust what Microsoft is saying.

Of course this is somewhat true for any company, you will never get the full reason behind certain decisions but Microsoft takes this on another level.
 
Crazy how this thread has more replies than the Switch 2 pre-announcement thread. Not saying it's unwarranted, just kind of weird.
 
Phil's problem is that he might actually be too much of a gamer. Spends too much time playing games instead of running a company. You probably want someone who's fucking sick of looking at games after work because they are so dedicated to making good ones while on the job!

I think a few Nintendo employees have said that they don't have time to play their own games, let alone games made by other companies. I seem to recall Miyamoto once talking about how we was pretty much only playing games like Brain Age at home.
 
I finally saw an ad for Hellblade II. Fifteen seconds long and all cinematics. It was almost completely uninformative except the ad narrator saying "Play it day one on Game Pass".

That game is DOA.
 
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Zellia said:
A healthy level of distrust is always warranted for C-Suite types. Even so, how am I as a consumer supposed to trust in Xbox when their actions and messaging are so contradictory and self-defeating?

Hardly inspires confidence for the future.
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agreed AND even weirder, most broad customers of any gaming company are not chronically online, outright don't know or care about studio closures and layoffs, and are just not ingrained in the goings on of the industry. there are still plenty of people who have Xbox's just because they've always had an Xbox. how many people actually know what their slate of upcoming games is? what chance is there for these games to succeed even on a broader level once they finally DO make it out of development hell?

HockeyBird said:
Phil's problem is that he might actually be too much of a gamer. Spends too much time playing games instead of running a company. You probably want someone who's fucking sick of looking at games after work because they are so dedicated to making good ones while on the job!

I think a few Nintendo employees have said that they don't have time to play their own games, let alone games made by other companies. I seem to recall Miyamoto once talking about how we was pretty much only playing games like Brain Age at home.
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to quote Kyle Bosman, this is the face of a man who DIGS through the comments. when he's not playing games, he's doing way too many fucking interviews, making way too many statements, getting wayyyy too involved online. he really needed to just shut up and get to work.

like i still find it so weird that Microsoft bought ZeniMax before Redfall was even announced, so that was, for all intents and purposes, a Microsoft product. and there wasn't anybody at Microsoft that went "this is really bad this needs a delay"? it was surprisingly a relatively short turnaround (2 years from announcement to release). like who is Microsoft's Tanabe? who is the producer that actually goes to these studios and checks in? something tells me it's Phil himself and that's another problem.
 
Brock Reiher said:
You can see when he's playing games online, he does it a lot. Might explain why he puts value for gamers ahead of the profits of a corporation.
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Nothing says that more than shutting down studios that make good games for people to enjoy in order to increase profits for the corp, after all.
 
I became aware this morning while reading an article on the FO76 nuke that Phil...hasn't actually said anything publicly. His underlings are the ones making statements.
 
Metroid said:
Nothing says that more than shutting down studios that make good games for people to enjoy in order to increase profits for the corp, after all.
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Thankfully all of that studios games are available for free, even if only one of them is particularly good 🫡
 
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The Sex Pistols were asked for their thoughts on the future of Xbox as a hardware brand:
Screenshot-20240509-110930.jpg
 
neil said:
Crazy how this thread has more replies than the Switch 2 pre-announcement thread. Not saying it's unwarranted, just kind of weird.
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It's not that crazy, it was inevitable that the Switch 2 would be revealed soon and we have two threads dedicated to it already. This on the other hand was completely unexpected, especially when Tango released a highly acclaimed game not too long ago.
HockeyBird said:
Phil's problem is that he might actually be too much of a gamer. Spends too much time playing games instead of running a company. You probably want someone who's fucking sick of looking at games after work because they are so dedicated to making good ones while on the job!

I think a few Nintendo employees have said that they don't have time to play their own games, let alone games made by other companies. I seem to recall Miyamoto once talking about how we was pretty much only playing games like Brain Age at home.
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Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading an article years ago where it was mentioned that Nintendo prefers hiring those who have experience and interests outside of the gaming community.
 
Seven said:
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading an article years ago where it was mentioned that Nintendo prefers hiring those who have experience and interests outside of the gaming community.
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They do, in fact, hire people that aren’t tapped into gaming, in the interests of getting as wide a variety of ideas and skills as possible.
 
Part of me wants to get the physical copy if/when it comes to Switch or Switch 2, but I also kind of don't want to, knowing none of that money would be going to the actual people behind it.
 
microsoft just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the fami of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this signifies is that the Japanese public, upon learning of this, will not be inclined to buy XBOX, nor will they invest in any of Microsoft's games. This is a significant development. Laugh all you want, but Microsoft has effectively estranged an entire market with this decision.

microsoft, publicly apologize and cancel the shutdown of Tango or you can kiss your business goodbye.
 
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