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News Xbox isn't done closing studios or cuts

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Fercho said:
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All that needs to be said.
 
HockeyBird said:


Watching Sarah Bond give a meandering non-answer was painful to watch. Baffling that she didn't seem prepared to answer such a question at all.
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See this folks? This is the face of someone whose PR team absolutely did not do their job and brief you on a suitable answer for a difficult question, and instead have left you high and dry looking like a fool on the internet.

Microsoft really seem to have been caught with their pants down here. It's beginning to feel like a flashpoint for the future of the industry and their bigwigs don't know what to do.
 
If you really are going to be a heartless, soul sucking megacorp, then at the very least be efficient about it. Laying off hundreds of people is bad enough, but this carnival of contradictory PR, clueless statements and outright lies is just amateur hour. How incompetent do you have to be to not even get your basic messaging in order while you're shutting down studios and putting people out of work?


Paxie said:
Really cool how Spencer and Booty are MIA and letting a black woman be the face of their dogshit decisions, definitely does not imply poor things about their characters at all
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Sarah Bond is the president of Xbox. Not only will she be one of the people responsible for this current debacle and decision making, she also has plenty of history on making bad decisions and giving dodgy PR answers. During the Activision acquisition, she was doing more than anyone else to champion why it was going to be such an amazing outcome for everyone involved, how the FTC were totally out of line in bringing up concerns, etc etc

She doesn't need any sympathy.
 
Seems the endgame is third party publisher, hard pivot away from first party. It started with some games going multiplatform (with more assuredly to come), now it's this. When you're a first party trying to attract customers to your platform, you need diversity, even if some of the smaller games don't end up paying for themselves. The big games provide a buffer, and now you've got a new customer in your ecosystem netting you royalties on third party games, paying for your online services, etc. But if you're not trying to attract people to your hardware, you have no reason to keep those unprofitable games around. It's exactly what we saw with Sega when they dipped out of the race. I'm legitimately not sure if we'll even see a next gen console from Microsoft at this point
 
Fuck sake, just listening to that interview, and Bond keeps bringing up that FUD that this isn't an Xbox issue, it's an industry issue because apparently the industry isn't growing.

Sony and Nintendo are both selling every console they can make right now! Steam is adding millions of users year on year! Every other platform holder is selling gangbusters. If the industry isn't growing it's because Xbox has become the millstone that is dragging numbers down.

Rather than blaming everything on "the industry" why don't Xbox leadership just knuckle down, accept that their console hasn't been competing as it should, and actually try fixing that.

This is peak "I could have won, but I let the other teams win" energy.
 
Lord Azrael said:
Seems the endgame is third party publisher, hard pivot away from first party. It started with some games going multiplatform (with more assuredly to come), now it's this. When you're a first party trying to attract customers to your platform, you need diversity, even if some of the smaller games don't end up paying for themselves. The big games provide a buffer, and now you've got a new customer in your ecosystem netting you royalties on third party games, paying for your online services, etc. But if you're not trying to attract people to your hardware, you have no reason to keep those unprofitable games around. It's exactly what we saw with Sega when they dipped out of the race. I'm legitimately not sure if we'll even see a next gen console from Microsoft at this point
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What's funny is now Sega is going back to making those games. Gotta wonder if Microsoft will swing back around in 20 years as a third party game developer and start bringing Banjo and Hi-Fi Rush and Prey back.
 
Lord Azrael said:
Seems the endgame is third party publisher, hard pivot away from first party. It started with some games going multiplatform (with more assuredly to come), now it's this. When you're a first party trying to attract customers to your platform, you need diversity, even if some of the smaller games don't end up paying for themselves. The big games provide a buffer, and now you've got a new customer in your ecosystem netting you royalties on third party games, paying for your online services, etc. But if you're not trying to attract people to your hardware, you have no reason to keep those unprofitable games around. It's exactly what we saw with Sega when they dipped out of the race. I'm legitimately not sure if we'll even see a next gen console from Microsoft at this point
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I think they'll keep producing hardware but pivot it away from being a centerpiece for the brand and instead market it as a niche item like the Steam Deck.
 
Magic-Man said:
What's funny is now Sega is going back to making those games. Gotta wonder if Microsoft will swing back around in 20 years as a third party game developer and start bringing Banjo and Hi-Fi Rush and Prey back.
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The difference here is, none of Sega's franchises are all that big. Microsoft now has some real juggernauts courtesy of Activision and Bethesda; games like Hi-Fi Rush and Hellblade II are simply not worth the investment in comparison, from a purely monetary perspective. Sega doesn't have that same opportunity cost. If one of their new reboots can sell a million or two, that's relatively in line with the rest of the stuff in their catalog, and they'd probably be quite happy

Mekanos said:
I think they'll keep producing hardware but pivot it away from being a centerpiece for the brand and instead market it as a niche item like the Steam Deck.
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I could see something like that. The main problem there is that the Steam Deck has, well, Steam. But Xbox hardware will need to have games developed natively for it. They have to invest a lot more into any machine they make than Valve does, whether it's developing games or courting third parties. Unless they just start selling gaming devices running Windows, heh
 
Paxie said:
Really cool how Spencer and Booty are MIA and letting a black woman be the face of their dogshit decisions, definitely does not imply poor things about their characters at all
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oh Booty was doing his own fuckups during a town hall
 
Lord Azrael said:
The difference here is, none of Sega's franchises are all that big. Microsoft now has some real juggernauts courtesy of Activision and Bethesda; games like Hi-Fi Rush and Hellblade II are simply not worth the investment in comparison, from a purely monetary perspective. Sega doesn't have that same opportunity cost. If one of their new reboots can sell a million or two, that's relatively in line with the rest of the stuff in their catalog, and they'd probably be quite happy
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I feel the difference with Sega is they don't really have the resources to produce assign AAA budgets to anything that isn't Sonic or an Atlus release. They're finding that as much historical weight as IPs like Golden Axe and Crazy Taxi have, spending gazillions on making them super high end tentpole releases just isn't really worth it. Their compromise is to not go crazy with budgets on one or two particularly popular games, but to utilise their historical franchises to release as many of them as possible with a reduced scope, and hope their brand name and historical popularity will make them a profit: even if they sell low numbers, the gameble is it's enough to keep the lights on.

Will it work? Dunno; SquareEnix tried something similar and they're backtracking it seems. But I feel it's folly in these times to put all your eggs in one basket, because then you're only a couple missteps away from disaster. That was always Acti-Blizz's issue with COD; it was a massive resource sink that constantly demanded feeding or the company was sunk. Now that hunger is beginning to rip Microsoft apart too.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Fuck sake, just listening to that interview, and Bond keeps bringing up that FUD that this isn't an Xbox issue, it's an industry issue because apparently the industry isn't growing.

Sony and Nintendo are both selling every console they can make right now! Steam is adding millions of users year on year! Every other platform holder is selling gangbusters. If the industry isn't growing it's because Xbox has become the millstone that is dragging numbers down.

Rather than blaming everything on "the industry" why don't Xbox leadership just knuckle down, accept that their console hasn't been competing as it should, and actually try fixing that.

This is peak "I could have won, but I let the other teams win" energy.
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On the Sony front their margins are really tight despite PS5 selling amazingly. Sony's first party games are getting far too expensive to develop.
 
ragolliangatan said:
On the Sony front their margins are really tight despite PS5 selling amazingly. Sony's first party games are getting far too expensive to develop.
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That's an issue across the board in the B2C space. Selling to consumers requires staying competitive and working with razor-thin margins to not scare them away to go and buy The Other One.

Heck, this has actively hurt Sony in the past when the PS3 "lost" to the X360 - the price was considered way to damn high and a lot of consumers went with the cheaper option instead.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Sarah Bond is the president of Xbox. Not only will she be one of the people responsible for this current debacle and decision making, she also has plenty of history on making bad decisions and giving dodgy PR answers. During the Activision acquisition, she was doing more than anyone else to champion why it was going to be such an amazing outcome for everyone involved, how the FTC were totally out of line in bringing up concerns, etc etc

She doesn't need any sympathy.
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This is a shitshow to a degree that we need all 3 people addressing this publicly like the multiplatform thing. Instead we have Booty making a fool of himself privately in front of employees and Spencer holed up in a cave playing Fallout (he especially needs to answer for this given his role in the 2016 closures), so they left Bond to be the public face of it. She is absolutely a shitty exec too, but it is still an interesting choice to have the woman of color take the brunt of consumer outrage
 
ragolliangatan said:
On the Sony front their margins are really tight despite PS5 selling amazingly. Sony's first party games are getting far too expensive to develop.
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the spider-man games are a special case because of Disney's massive scalp. 1/3rd of the budget alone goes to royalties
 
i'll say it again. Large scale layoffs while profitable should be a serious crime viewed as badly as a severe assault or a bank robbery.

Those responsible unironically should be serving prison time. It willfully causes hardship for a great deal of people, actually reduces real value of the company longterm and damages social cohesion. Its essentially stealing from everyone you fired and longterm shareholders to give to Execs and Day Traders.

it also should be legaly mandatory for execs and shareholders to take a minimum decrease in compensation/pay before large scale layoffs.
 
MonHunterORB said:
i'll say it again. Large scale layoffs while profitable should be a serious crime viewed as badly as a severe assault or a bank robbery.

Those responsible unironically should be serving prison time. It willfully causes hardship for a great deal of people, actually reduces real value of the company longterm and damages social cohesion. Its essentially stealing from everyone you fired and longterm shareholders to give to Execs and Day Traders.

it also should be legaly mandatory for execs and shareholders to take a minimum decrease in compensation/pay before large scale layoffs.
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This is kind of how it works in Japan, isn't it?

I'm not necessarily in favor of legal restrictions but seriously, why does this keep happening? It's such a dumb cycle of massive spending -> big regret -> layoffs to cut costs. A common mentality in tech that's infiltrating gaming, and I honestly kinda blame Microsoft for it. They want gaming to just be part of the tech industry and work on the same messed-up principles.
 
I have to legitimately ask what the point in working on an Xbox-published title is at this stage.

Hi-Fi Rush was a critically beloved, "successful" title according to Xbox. You'd expect such a great title to keep the studio alive, many studios make excellent titles that underperform financially (Alan Wake 2 still hasn't made back it's money to date), and Hi-Fi rush is one of Xbox's best titles in recent memory, winning several major awards across various institutions in one of gaming's best years as a collective industry. If your critical success or financial success isn't enough to keep your studio alive from the mind of Xbox... what's the fucking point? Why bother trying your hardest to make a great work of art that will keep you and your peer's jobs?

Xbox stated in their documentary that they "learned" their mistakes about the Lionhead closure and that they needed to grow their studios naturally and support them when needed. I remember the story behind Fire Emblem Awakening's development and how that game was made as a culmination of all the studio's experience as a result of a declared "last chance" for the franchise. That opportunity to make something great made one of Nintendo's biggest foundational RPG series. Xbox, more than any other publisher, should've learned that studios need a chance to do great, not to be let go at the drop of a hat.

Without the opportunity of renewal, Xbox is essentially giving out last chances that are unbeknown to those who work there. Ninja Theory is days away from releasing Hellblade 2, a massive money sink for Xbox. If that game massively underperforms, how can the developers trust that their studio can survive? What about Machine Games' Indiana Jones, that IP has been in the toilet for years, who says the studio will survive? What about Obsidian with Avowed, inXile's Clockwork Revolution, Rare's Everwild? Why be optimistic with what you're releasing when in the end you have a strong chance to disappear just because Xbox needs to reorganize and condense again?

Xbox has built an environment where any and all studios are at risk of being let go. Of employees at studios with rich histories fearing for their jobs or being so downtrodden that they know they'll be done for anyway. Dinga Bakaba, director at Arkane Studio's Blade, basically only just started work on his new project. Why should he feel passionate at a project that might not even see the light of day or that, when it does, will result in the destruction of the entirety of Arkane? I wouldn't blame him one bit for thinking that, the incentive to work at the studio he loves again is a fucking fantasy at this point, a pipe dream that should be the standard at the industry.

I genuinely don't believe anyone has faith in Xbox as a publisher at this stage. Not me, not the hardcore fans that have stuck with them for years, not the developers who are victims of the whims of upper management, I don't even think the heads of Xbox are that confident anymore. Xbox is a culmination of two decades of poor faith and judgement, a project started from four people honestly trying their best to make a video game system in a trillion-dollar company into a multi-billion dollar Hindenburg where people are thrown overboard to keep the vessel off the ground.

I don't think Xbox will crash and burn. There's enough money to stave off the destruction for as long as they need to. However, to people who still have faith in Xbox as a publisher, either as a developer or consumer... I need to ask 'why'. Why are you still giving them the benefit of the doubt? They've shown that they aren't changing. They haven't changed after their numerous blunders in their 20 years in the industry. They'll never change and haven't given us a reason to believe that they will. They don't deserve your faith.

I'm still interested in the developers trying to make great games under the Xbox banner, but I am absolutely done with pretending that Xbox as a console manufacturer and a publisher is any better than the company they spent 68 billion dollars to acquire.
 
Is going to be interesting to see how they approach their June event. Gamers who care enough about Xbox to watch it are the ones who know what they've been doing lately: closing studios and massive layoffs. Something that terrible can't be hidden with new games or new hardware.
I hope they have some dignity and don't try to pretend this isn't a big hit to the brand and their reputation.
 
Paxie said:
This is a shitshow to a degree that we need all 3 people addressing this publicly like the multiplatform thing. Instead we have Booty making a fool of himself privately in front of employees and Spencer holed up in a cave playing Fallout (he especially needs to answer for this given his role in the 2016 closures), so they left Bond to be the public face of it. She is absolutely a shitty exec too, but it is still an interesting choice to have the woman of color take the brunt of consumer outrage
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As your own reaction shows very well, the public reaction is not focused on her, far from it. Her appalling response doesn't make the cowardice of her colleagues any more dignified, but the fact that she's speaking out doesn't exonerate her from being criticized for the bullshit of her statements. The only dignified thing the 3 of them should do is resign.

Having said that, I'd like to reiterate that this has always been Microsoft. We've had studio closures long before ABK and Zenimax. We already had Rare bought to "get Donkey Kong" 25 years ago. They're arrogant fools who think they can crush everything with their money, that's their corporate culture, that's the culture of Windows.
 
Kinda regret getting a Xbox this gen (was my first time getting into their ecosystem), they truly went downhill after all those aquisitions. Feel sorry for the laid off studio’s especially tango….. hi fi rush was amazing and seeing Arkane go aswell :( such a shame i understand the anger of Xbox fans.
 
SoldierDelta said:
I have to legitimately ask what the point in working on an Xbox-published title is at this stage.

Hi-Fi Rush was a critically beloved, "successful" title according to Xbox. You'd expect such a great title to keep the studio alive, many studios make excellent titles that underperform financially (Alan Wake 2 still hasn't made back it's money to date), and Hi-Fi rush is one of Xbox's best titles in recent memory, winning several major awards across various institutions in one of gaming's best years as a collective industry. If your critical success or financial success isn't enough to keep your studio alive from the mind of Xbox... what's the fucking point? Why bother trying your hardest to make a great work of art that will keep you and your peer's jobs?

Xbox stated in their documentary that they "learned" their mistakes about the Lionhead closure and that they needed to grow their studios naturally and support them when needed. I remember the story behind Fire Emblem Awakening's development and how that game was made as a culmination of all the studio's experience as a result of a declared "last chance" for the franchise. That opportunity to make something great made one of Nintendo's biggest foundational RPG series. Xbox, more than any other publisher, should've learned that studios need a chance to do great, not to be let go at the drop of a hat.

Without the opportunity of renewal, Xbox is essentially giving out last chances that are unbeknown to those who work there. Ninja Theory is days away from releasing Hellblade 2, a massive money sink for Xbox. If that game massively underperforms, how can the developers trust that their studio can survive? What about Machine Games' Indiana Jones, that IP has been in the toilet for years, who says the studio will survive? What about Obsidian with Avowed, inXile's Clockwork Revolution, Rare's Everwild? Why be optimistic with what you're releasing when in the end you have a strong chance to disappear just because Xbox needs to reorganize and condense again?

Xbox has built an environment where any and all studios are at risk of being let go. Of employees at studios with rich histories fearing for their jobs or being so downtrodden that they know they'll be done for anyway. Dinga Bakaba, director at Arkane Studio's Blade, basically only just started work on his new project. Why should he feel passionate at a project that might not even see the light of day or that, when it does, will result in the destruction of the entirety of Arkane? I wouldn't blame him one bit for thinking that, the incentive to work at the studio he loves again is a fucking fantasy at this point, a pipe dream that should be the standard at the industry.

I genuinely don't believe anyone has faith in Xbox as a publisher at this stage. Not me, not the hardcore fans that have stuck with them for years, not the developers who are victims of the whims of upper management, I don't even think the heads of Xbox are that confident anymore. Xbox is a culmination of two decades of poor faith and judgement, a project started from four people honestly trying their best to make a video game system in a trillion-dollar company into a multi-billion dollar Hindenburg where people are thrown overboard to keep the vessel off the ground.

I don't think Xbox will crash and burn. There's enough money to stave off the destruction for as long as they need to. However, to people who still have faith in Xbox as a publisher, either as a developer or consumer... I need to ask 'why'. Why are you still giving them the benefit of the doubt? They've shown that they aren't changing. They haven't changed after their numerous blunders in their 20 years in the industry. They'll never change and haven't given us a reason to believe that they will. They don't deserve your faith.

I'm still interested in the developers trying to make great games under the Xbox banner, but I am absolutely done with pretending that Xbox as a console manufacturer and a publisher is any better than the company they spent 68 billion dollars to acquire.
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couldn't have put it better myself. I'm actually kinda worried for the other half of Arkane atm. Blade isn't exactly one of Marvel's A-listers AND they have Disney's royalties to account for so..good luck
 
boodream said:
We already had Rare bought to "get Donkey Kong" 25 years ago.
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The story according to Chris Seavor is that it was a Microsoft executive touring the company after they bought it and going "hey that's great, we own Donkey Kong right?" after seeing all the posters there. Which only makes them seem slightly less stupid.

...And also doesn't change the fact that Microsoft repeatedly mismanaged Rare's projects to death instead of just letting them get on with it like Nintendo did, and then put them on Kinect duty for half a decade because they weren't making enough money.
 
Squiddo said:
Kinda regret getting a Xbox this gen (was my first time getting into their ecosystem), they truly went downhill after all those aquisitions. Feel sorry for the laid off studio’s especially tango….. hi fi rush was amazing and seeing Arkane go aswell :( such a shame i understand the anger of Xbox fans.
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I don't regret it but the chances of me showing up for the next one are extremely slim for sure.

Pretty disgusted here and also annoyed at how much the first party releases have been so sluggish and then you have games falling short of the hype like Starfield and Halo which instead of being generation defining like Prior Halo or Bethesda games are just good. Microsoft is struggling to manage and leverage their studios. Too much out of touch and short sighted thinking.
 
The literal only reason why I have never regretted buying an Xbox Series X is because from the start, I knew it was just going to be a backwards compatibility machine. I knew from that disastrous May 2020 showcase that Xbox was just cooked. And most of the games they showed from the July 2020 showcase are STILL NOT FUCKING OUT! "Completely mismanaged" is the understatement of the century; they are a shambling corpse that consumes publishers and studios into their gray mass of slop. And that doesn't even get into their contractor bullshit and Game Pass utterly destroying their business model, not looking to the music and movie industry how those subscription services fucked everything over there too.

Microsoft never deserved any of the benefit of the doubt after they shipped the Series X/S.
 


Short excerpt from a longer interview Bloomberg did with Sarah Bond. That shot at 0:49 is priceless đź’€

Here's the full interview:
 
Hailinel said:
I'd be curious to tune into the June Xbox presentation just to see how much of it is obvious panic overcorrection.
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"We heard you, and that's why, today, we're announcing a new initiative to bring new, high quality games to you, and to GamePass, on a bimonthly basis, from our studios here at XBOX."
(crowd goes wild)
"And here's our roadmap!"
giphy.gif
 
It's been a few days, still unbelievably fucking disappointed. And I think to myself, does it even matter that I'm not putting money into MS's ecosystem anymore? I'm a big game buyer, 2-3 a month. I've swapped to Steam Deck or Switch for my buys, but did my money even come close to the whale buying $50 COD points every day? Because that appears to be the only consumer MS cares about going forward.

It at least brings me joy the Switch and Switch 2 exist with Nintendo publishing their usual 500k-2M seller unique experiences on top of the heavy hitters without hell freezing over (on top of Steam being a fantastic home for indies and such).
 
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