toys for bob going indie has to be the best decision they ever made, cuz microsoft is out here spending billions on all these studios just to shut them down i genuinely feel like they wouldve been next
I really hope that more studios are willing to do the same. I imagine the main concern would be funding. And downsizing would be a necessity for most, but I think it would be the needed action to survive a potential collapse.
Agreed Honestly I was hoping tango would just buy back the rights to Hi fi rush from them and after that go indie honestly though should have done it the moment the game dropped on PS5. I hope john the and rest of the team can salvage something out of this. And if so maybe We'll get a spiritual sequel in the future?
@JONATHANP1619 indies definitely thrive more on gamepass objectively but Nintendo has done a great job all around... their executives are najotly out of touch but otherwise it's like Nintendo has no real console competition for the next console launch I swear lol
@JONATHANP1619 I think indies are thriving a bit too much on Switch. The e-shop is filled with shovel ware garbage. I feel like part of that can be blamed on how successful indie games have been on the Switch so now every hack in the industry is flooding the store with their nonsense and Nintendo doesn't enforce it at all.
@@MetalizationerI mean the switch has shown that the casual audience doesn't need 90 fps 1080p 4k blow it out your butt performance, we just need fun unique games and a convenient console to play them on. There's a reason its still outselling the other 2 consoles by and large (in addition to being cheaper too which is nice). Don't get me wrong Id like to have those things in a switch 2 like everyone else, but at the end of the day what I NEED is for games to be playable, stable, and fun. Look at vampire survivors, it looks like it'd run on a calculator but its so absurdly fun and addicting that its spawned a new category of gaming.
*facepalm. nintendo aren't even in the top 5. Nintendo 2022 earnings 3.9 billion (7th in the industry). Tencent 80 billion (1st). A Hugely successful console with amazing exclusive don't mean anything anymore. Gamers still think it's the 90's. Todays market is driven by engagement. Not exclusives, not consoles numbers, not even good games. Just engagement of the masses.
The very idea that Square Enix would say "we are focusing on what we know works" is hilarious. They're always coming out saying their games performed "below expectations." They don't know "what works."
The way Japanese businesses are run has a lot to do with why Sony, Squeenix and the like are in freefall-- the people who run the company are on average twice the age of people actually making the games, and back when they first got to their position in the company, Japan was still in the Boom Years, where throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck was a massive advantage-- even if they didn't 100% understand the technology, they could have it explained to them in a way that made sense. That's not true anymore. The tech has gotten so advanced, it's harder and harder to explain to these 70-80+ year old men who are, behind closed doors very self conscious about the fact that they don't understand it. Despite that, the over all culture means they can't/refuse to admit they don't understand any of it anymore-- so they throw themselves behind any new thing that sounds cool: the Metaverse, NFTs, hoping that bravado will make up for the painful and very personal reality that they're too old to understand the tech anymore. Saying things are "below expectations" is code for "But this always worked before! I don't understand what changed!"
@@MoonLitChildYou do realize both of those studios are more western now, right? Sony has backstabbed its jpn devs and is litetally home in cali now. Other long running japanese studios like nintendo or atlus do have their issues but they are still consistently making overall good decisions. How in the world isthis a japanese issue lol
The focusing on "blockbuster" games is what bothers me the most. Just means that we will keep getting live services, the same first and third person shooters and safe and generic AAA games instead of more riskier and interesting AA games. These companies just don't get it
100% this!!! The smaller projects made with heart and unique stories and design choices are what I love most about gaming. This “safe” game development where they keep puking out remakes and remasters or live service looter shooters is disgusting and takes the “art” out of game development.
Society doesn't get it. The companies know exactly what they're doing; they're pandering to the lowest common denominator while cutting all corners possible to please the executives' bank accounts.
Is it really so bad to want to be optimistic and trust that someone wants what’s best for consumers? Sure take everything with a pinch of salt but otherwise it’s just kinda sad, we have to have something to believe in or you’d have given up on the industry long ago!
Especially sorry for Tango Gameworks. They were the one studio that put out a good game for Xbox’s first party lineup in 2023 (in my opinion). And they got shafted
Calling any modern studios talented is strong language. If modern games is what we had in the PS2 era, gaming wouldnt exist today. The industry needs a purge and reset
@@chiquita683 So having hundreds of poorly-made licensed games is "peak gaming" to you, huh? Doesn't bother me much, just expect people to bombard you with questions
That was a long "microsoft bad" section that was pure misinformation. In know Arlo is not a Microsoft/Xbox expert but that needed more research on his part.
@@pheww81 To be fair, they say the same about Starfield which was also being made before the acquisition, Xbox is just the easiest scapegoat now SEGA isn't there to take a fall.
What makes the Tengo shut down especially said is that by the admission of the Xbox Marketing VP, Hi Fi Rush was a huge success for them in every factor so it makes 0 sense to shut it down when a studio actually does deliver success everyone is happy with. Microsoft has actually just gone insane when even performing well won't save you from the axe
I know Arlo is a family friendly content creator, but when looking at this situation for what it is… *cough* DEI hiring and corporate climbing practices *cough* Microsoft’s new head in charge has no idea what she’s doing. Successes or failures don’t matter; just reorganize the company and downsize anyways while making a public statement that everything is fine.
@@CTomCooper Exactly. Critical and commercial performance doesn't matter, all they care about is the appearance of "fiscal responsibility". Every single dev under Xbox/Microsoft could have made a game as successfull as Minecraft, but we'd still be seeing massive layoffs and shutdowns because that's what you're supposed to do to please investors. Everything has gone downhill for western devs/publishers ever since they adopted the tech industry model.
I am baffled that they would close the studio behind Hi-fi Rush. Easily one of the best games from last year in a year with some of the best games of all time.
It won 5 awards too. Even if it wasn't a financial success, who cares? It's a lower budget game. If they need to cut Tango's budget to make up for the financial issues then whatever, Tango can clearly make a low budget work but to outright fire everybody and shutdown the studio is baffling. How is it that Forza Motorsport can come out unfinished and lose more than half of it's playerbase, thus lose money because it's a live service games with undoubtedly expensive servers to keep it running, yet Turn 10 doesn't face any of the repercussions from Microsoft that other studios do? Make it make sense. Forza cost at least quadruple the amount that Hi-Fi Rush did and I doubt it's managed to make its money back.
Microsoft doesn't want good games, it wants microtransaction filled gambling machines like FIFA. Hence their focus on Gamepass, they want to get as many users as possible in their platforms, with the lowest possible investment, to then milk those people using microtransactions and gambling like strategies. It's also about seniority and contractors or employees status, the western companies consider that having full time employees is not economically sound because then they would have to pay things like medical insurances and benefits, much cheaper to just hire several teams of contractors and rotate between them in order to not pay all the things normal employees normally get. This often results in a messy work environment that ends up with games releasing extremelly undercooked and needing a bunch of post release patches to be playable, but they prefeer that to actually paying benefits.
Hi-Fi rush was greatly successful. By August 2023 it sold 3 million with overwhelming positive reviews and won 5 awards. The only way this could be seen as a failure is if Microsoft had such an unrealistic expectation and expected sales like a Halo, Gears or Forza
Microsoft wants every game to sell at least 6 million copies as well as be a top Gamepass game to be considered successful. They have insanely unrealistic expectations. Shinji Mikami saw that early on and decided to get away from those tyrants as fast as possible.
@@BeyondTrash-xe1vsYes. The only places that are reporting the 3 million dollar figure are saying it includes Gamepass downloads. The original source is a tweet from @hifirush which does not make any mention of copies sold, only players reached. Players reached, of course, includes Gamepass
My lecturer explained this to the class when one of his friends had his project shut down (by EA) Turns out that unless you're making money in the billions, a lot of companies just can't see the point of keeping your studio around. The IPs are considered the valuable part of a game company because of all the potential value, but that potential value isn't considered worth risking anything for. As a result, a lot of game publishers hoard game companies to gut them for the IPs and maybe get some payout if they get private equity involved in the company's dismantling.
@@swordmaster305 not exactly like Sony knows what their customers want half the time either. They are better at it, but they seems to be having similar issues to a lesser extent
@@swordmaster305 Does it suck? If Naughty Dog and Insomniac don't want to make any more games in those series, would it really matter if Sony had the rights?
Shinji Mikami leaving Tango as abruptly as he did, his own studio by the way, soon after Hi-Fi Rush was released was a pretty dark sign in retrospect, huh?
The sinking ship is spreading across all entertainment, the corporatization of creative works has left people in charge so disconnected with their customers, not to mention the chasing of fads and algorithms rather than letting people's passion create something new. That is such a terrible place to be during a time when consumers aren't spending as much money on luxuries.
@@TheOneBoredSeems that way to me lol. But I will also add that the indie PC scene is pretty good right now too, so we’re at least not gonna be starved of good games. Just avoid live-service or AAA like the plague
If Xbox fans didn't jumped ship during the Xbox One era, for sure THIS is going to make many Xbox fans to leave. It's so disgusting what Microsoft did.
Awful fact: Due to the closure of both Arkane Austin and Roundhouse Studios, Xbox has simultaneously shut down both the developers of Prey (2017) and Prey (2006). Let me explain. Human Head Studios, the developers of the original Prey, were closed in late 2019 (my guess is that The Quiet Man had something to do with it), but Roundhouse Studios was immediately formed after with the same staff and even at the same location. It’s easy to overlook Roundhouse as websites only list that they contributed to Redfall, but in reality it’s the same people who deserved to be recognized for their history as when they were Human Head.
Arkane Austin was already dead. Zenimax forced them to make Redfall, a live service game, to look attractive to Microsoft. They never wanted to make it, and most of the good devs left during the development.
And to top it all off, allegedly they were working on online elements of prey 2 (arkane) so prey 2....got cancelled twice...its also fucked up that i was recently replaying rune and prey 2006
@@georgerockwell6124 if it makes you feel better, the creator of prey is making a spiritual successor, at wolf eye studio, and I guess they'll be accepting new hires from arkane Austin
It's amazing that we reach this point in the industry where you can get rave reviews and sell a ton of units and then still have your studio axed. Microsoft really feels like on all fronts a chicken with a Ted chopped off and I don't just mean for gaming. I kind of find funny as everyone is like surprised at all of this. But I knew Microsoft back in the early '90s as like the buttoned up brown pants. Business company that thought open source was illegal and bullied all of their competitors. So I'm like not surprised by any of ideas in gaming or anything they do now
On that point with rave reviews; people can't eat accolades, likes and retweets. Celebratory circles look nice and cordial at award ceremonies, but they don't sell games. I take that sort of thing as public face to impress stakeholders who are waiting for a ROI from AAA studios. At least for as long as that can work, which clearly now shows its limits.
@@CTomCooper The problem is that according to multiple different sources, allegedly Hi-Fi rush sold pretty well. Either Microsoft was lying or it did still really well but didn't make their unbelievable expectations. Kind of like how Square enix games in the past have sold really well but didn't meet their xpronations. Same thing with EA and these other large albatross companies. Multi-Millions and earn five times back their budget when these companies want multi-trillions.
@@jordanwhite352 Which begs the question... is this potentially a result of E3 dying and minor titles being deplatformed from an event space. I remember that around 2010-2016 era major publishing arms like Ubisoft, EA, SE, among others were putting in the money to finance a lot of indie titles. I doubt many of them sold spectacularly but I believe almost every single one sold fairly well and likely gave them a lot of talent. That said I assume it was worth having them because they helped round out their show and gave the business games to fill in the gaps and it's not like they risked people leaving for marketing it since they'd already be at the convention center. It might sound crazy but I do think the loss of these physical showcases has inadvertently hurt a lot of indie and lower budget game makers given that the only company that regularly dedicates time to them is Nintendo. Sony state of plays are nice as well but they're too infrequent and clearly don't generate the same level of buzz for them.
@@CTomCooper That's just so bizarre to me, would shutting down a small studio really look so good to a stockholder? Obviously, the games they made were only moderate successes, but the studio itself couldn't have taken many resources to sustain. Was it so wrong for it to even exist from their perspective? Are they that short-sighted? we're doomed aren't we
@@janrosa7243 I don't think that has any effect because even on a live stage different companies chose to either embrace or ignore any games. The main issue was one dumb business practices in general, but what's honestly probably compounded it is covid. Covid literally killed like the entire world's economy and because of unfettered shitty business practices every company that has lost money during covid wants to make it back immediately ASAP. Seen layoffs. That's why you seem tightening of belts. That's why you've seen prices go up in general on everything that and also because half the world is at War right now. Mainly covid and are bad reaction to it killed the economy and this has also affected video games immensely. Combined that Microsoft Also spent billions of dollars acquiring these companies. They now want an immediate return on their investment so anything that doesn't do that is going to get axed.
Shareholders and corporate suits have a hard time telling the difference between monetary cost and opportunity cost. Tango may not have made Xbox much money, but they brought a lot of positive press and eyes onto the Xbox brand. Sony made the same mistake when they shut down Japan Studio.
Exactly. People were saying Xbox was back when Hifi Rush dropped, and they lost all that good faith immediately. Although now that they won that Call of Duty cash cow, they probably don't care how shitty they look anymore.
The fact that Microsoft is still in the console industry after the Xbone is the most baffling thing to me and it proves that companies will use every opportunity to burn money rather than save it wisely.
It’s a vanity project at this point. They just want to flop their dicks on the table and brag about brand longevity and hardware power at the expense of… profit? I don’t know. I just don’t see any other reason why they can’t just go full third party and make way more money by actually selling their games on profitable platforms. Although it kinda looks like that’s the direction they’re slowly going in.
This is making life really hard for developers. My husband has been looking for work since January, over 15 years in the industry. I dont think people realize how many developers are thinking of throwing in the towel and leaving altogether. Games will never be the same if that happens.
l meann you could, but those Rare games you love are all 25~30 years old. If Nintendo buys the rights back it'd be cool for getting more of those games on NSO l guess, but l highly doubt the actual programmers/designers/visionists etcc behind Rare are still there after all this time, Especially since they werent able to continue making the games they wanted under xbox's banner
Sony's been buying publishers off of other platforms since day one. Eidos and the ENTIRE Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain and anything they published in the 5th generation were bought off of Saturn and Nintendo 64, and have acquired 4 more gaming related studios than Microsoft has. Xbox is also bad for this, but they were neither the first, nor the only to do so.
Here's the thing: if all this was still happening, but Microsoft was putting out banger Halo, Gears, Banjo Kazooie, Elder Scrolls, Fallout games... maybe the odd Viva Piñata or so. Maybe if StarField lived up to the hype... we would all still be mad at these closures, but we would still be on board with Microsoft. They're floundering and lagging on so many levels. It's just.. sad
This, they fail at every point but still make moves to screw things up. I knew we were getting into a point where we have less big budgets and smaller scales. But they killed off the studio behind their BIG win last year!? A bigger win vs Starfield even. Not only that, unless they announce more middle shelf games then they not only killed off a studio (studios, but one has more a wtf than the other) but they are just going to go back to the same bs as there's nothing to release in between their big games so the pressure is even harder to support. Our games being made is a game at this point. We are literally seeing them put all the odds against our games and lining their pockets until the well dries up. Play indie people, save yourself the heartache.
They put their eggs in one basket, Starfield. They acquired Activision Blizzard for zillions... I really don't care, and I don't care about exclusives. As a casual gamer, my enjoyment comes from playing the game and not from not seeing other people play it. To think that exclusives are the way to success is dumb. They should have not chased that and instead pursued something like putting more games on game pass (Without purchasing the studio), made it possible to stream more games on their cloud service, and just been over all consumer friendly. They're not SONY, and that's not inherently bad. They can counter program SONY. It's like watching every dumb TV and streaming service try to make "The next game of thrones" when they should have been counter programming thrones with something different. Jesus
I can see an argument that Arkane Austin being shut down isn't on Microsoft. Redfall was something that Bethesda told them to make well before the acquisition and it caused a lot of talent to leave the studio. The studio is a shell of what it once was and honestly it's probably for the best that it got shut down. The other alternative is to go out and aggressively attract talent and that's not cheap. Given the current economic climate, I get the decision to drop it. Now shuttering Tango, I got nothing for that. Bad move Microsoft.
Xbox is one of those Michelin star restaurants that definitely paid somebody to get on the list. They pretend to be first class and fancy, but all they serve is Kraft Mac and Cheese and cut up hot dogs and meanwhile you can hear the manager verbally abusing the employees in the back. When you ask where your steak is they say “we just need a little more time,” but it never actually gets served because the chefs are always being worked to the bone. And the few steaks they have managed to make… get the cooks fired. I’ve been subscribed to Game Pass for a couple years now, but haven’t used it for 80% of that time because it’s not actually all that practical. I think I’m done. Check please, Mr. Spencer.
I get what you're trying to say but this strikes me as a really, really poor analogy since fine dining establishments have a completely different set of unrelated problems. You don't get Michelin stars if you're not serving your food on time lol. You also definitely do not get stars for serving Kraft Mac and Cheese There are some goofy fine dining dunk videos people have made but by and large single star and bib gourmand restaurants are relatively grounded and have a high standard for service and food quality even if some of the 3 stars are stupid expensive and esoteric.
Yup. Even the Windows developers are a revolving door of contractors. They waste so much time and money in training that actual dev time is just not worth it. It's why they want to shove ads in Windows 11 so bad. They don't know how to run the business and studios anymore, so they fall back on the scummy monetization practices you see on mobile.
I think it's more ingorance and short-sighted rather than "evil", but it absolutely makes zero sense. They just purchased Activision-Blizzard-King-probably more for $68 billion; they clearly have the money to support their already existing studios if they can purchase another for that much. It makes zero sense.
Yeah, I earnestly don't think dev and AAA company relations are going to much hold up. Movies as an industry have been monopolized by big studios, and while I see these big game companies trying to do the same thing Movie studios get away with... I'm just like... What are you doing? Indies are a booming market in their own right, not every dev is going to accept this cycle of work, get laid off, and make little profit of the sales of their games. The indie scene allows them to tackle personal passion projects, AND potentially get money from that. The video game industry is NOT the movie industry, Indie games have a much better chance at success than indie movies. Some devs will literally just not come back, because AAA game development isn't sustainable like this. I would NOT be surprised if we get ANOTHER indie game boom in the future.
I think I'm actually done with Microsoft. I know that sounds over dramatic but I'm telling you, I've loved the Xbox brand for so long, but since the Xbox One days It's just been shattered hope after shattered hope. Microsoft has been in a sorry state for so long, and their ONE glimmer of tangible hope has been destroyed. I loved Hi-Fi Rush so much, I was begging Microsoft to foster Tango...And they get axed. Look, Sony and Nintendo have their awful moments, but they give us reasons to stick around, reasons to support the brand....Xbox has legitimately done NOTHING but burn bridges. Hi-Fi Rush was EXACTLY what they needed! It was an acclaimed, creative IP that was all their own and so different from Tango's other games. Tango proved they are exactly what Microsoft needed, talented developers with tons of diverse ideas, and they were axed. I'm seriously annoyed, I don't see how I, as a consumer should have any faith in this brand anymore.
If you sell your Xbox, maybe you could buy a mid-range PC... you'll get to play a HELL of a lot more and you lose nothing since all Microsoft games are on PC at this point. Seriously, consider it if you haven't already, you'll even get to play with a controller like you have before
@@WretchedRedoran Wrong, I built a PC for £410 with specs above the Series X. (RTX 3060 vs XSX 2070 S equivalent and PS5's RX 5700 equivalent) It IS possible, you don't need to use Linus Tech Tips as a tutorial. (Also if the monitor counts in the "PC" price, then the TV counts in the consoles price too, and TVs these days cost 10x as much as those. (All my homies hate Smart TVs)
@@BlueEyedVibeChecker You can't sell an Xbox, one X or series X, for 600 dollars. No one's gonna buy that. That's almost as much as a brand-new series X. Don't even get me started on building a PC with that money if you could even get it in the first place. An RTX 3060 is nearly half of that at the absolute lowest, and that's not accounting every other thing, most of which are over a hundred dollars Canadian at the minimum. And personally, second hand isn't an option where I'm from, as I live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
Arkane Austin are the ones being shut down. They made prey and redfall (and technically used to be part of Arkane Lyon back with Dishonored 1. But arkane Lyon did the Dishonored series and Deathloop
I really think in the next 10-20 years, small studios are going to stop selling themselves to these giant companies. Every single employee in tech has been burned by layoffs, and I just don't see the next batch of studio founders trusting corporations.
As The Commander always says, the problem is that a system that rewards competition but does not adequately enforce fair competition (through anti-trust laws and the like) leads to a scenario where the goal of these megacorps is not to make money, but to make every conceivable possible dollar. The courts recently ruled that boards can sue companies for NOT adequately maximizing profits, thus legally enshrining that it is not enough for companies to profit, they must make higher profit, year after year, forever, or be eaten by a bigger fish. Boy, I sure hope infinite growth is possible in a closed system of finite resources, otherwise we could be in real trouble!
"Okay carpentry staff... Make a jumbo jet" "you what?" "well that failed. guess that's your fault not ours. You lot were supposed to make this work" "we literally can't, we're bloody carpenters!"
Arkane wasn't shut down, Arkane Austin was. The Arkane everybody loves who made Dishonored and everything is based in France and they're still around working on a Blade game. Still sucks hard because Austin made that great Prey game but it's slightly less crushing.
@lightdarksoul2097 I'm not even sure I would buy it if the Switch port actually gets made and I've been wanting to try it. It would just feel so dirty buying it when the studio can't profit from it.
Can we all finally please be on the same page that gamepass--while being consumer friendly--creates one of the most unhealthy ecosystems ever for games and consoles? It's pretty objective at this point
Gamepass is to Xbox what Disney+ is to Disney. They jumped at getting a streaming service up and functional in order to get their share of pandemic money, but now C-Suite idiots don't understand why their movies aren't doing well in theaters: because the movies come out on Disney+ right after their theater runs. Everyone who got Disney+ now doesn't have any reason to give Disney *extra* money by going to see a movie in the theater-- and a *lot* of people have Disney+. You can have a subscription service, or you can let people buy things a la cart, but you can't have both.
GamePass is complete underpants gnome logic. Step 1: Make a service that disincentivizes people to buy games at full price when they come out Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit Microsoft just blindly sought to have the "Netflix of games" without understanding the economics of how the streaming model would affect games. A AAA video game is much more expensive than a movie DVD, and there's no "definitive" setting to play a game in like with a movie theater. GamePass being so cheap relative to the product that it's a service for means that people won't buy games outright, which tends to have higher profit margins than GamePass (and we don't even know if GamePass as a whole is profitable or not). GamePass has stopped being a compelling feature for Xbox and has started to become a cancer; ever expanding, taking more and more resources, and giving them nothing in return, but with the added delusions of MS execs hoping that if they can just funnel a bit more money into it, then it’ll finally make a profit, just ignore the opportunity cost of all those lost sales.
@@ironicdivinemandatestan4262 to be fair, I feel like most companies want to do streaming without any logic to that either. Someone sold the idea to them as essentially “free money” but it turns out it requires quite a lot of resources to make it work. I agree with your point about it being even more blatantly stupid for games and the reasons you stated, but I think plenty of “streaming services” have been hurting companies and consumers way more than anyone wants to admit or can even find out since we have almost no access to any of that data.
The last little bit of love I had for Microsoft has disappeared after hearing about Tango. They better not try take away what few games they made from the people who bought them too. I wouldn't be surprised if I suddenly lost access to The Evil Within 1 and 2 out of nowhere.
Hi-Fi RUSH was one of my favorite games of all time. Gave it my money through literally every avenue I could. I fell in love with the gameplay along with its cast of characters, and I was really looking forward to seeing them again someday. I, a grown ass man, _wept_ at the news of Tango's closure!
Absolutely loving the channel! I wouldn't have known about most of these stories without your videos on them, and they are really entertaining. Really glad to get some more Arlo vids, keep up the awesome work!!
To be fair, Bethesda are the ones who wanted Arcane Austin to make Redfall (in fact the devs are on record as saying that they hoped during Microsoft's acquisition would force them to cancel the game), but your point stands.
actually it does not stand , one of the few good things Msoft has done is let developers make the games they want. They're just really bad at managing and planning things.
Nintendo releasing their fiscal year numbers the same day that this happened, it makes you wonder what the heck these studios are doing to fail so badly
I imagine Shinji Mikami is hard at work trying to get as many of the employees from Tango as he can into his new studio. If he has a new studio right now.
4:40 That's quite possibly the most jarring thing of this whole situation because hi-fi rush *was* a massive success from what I've seen. This all is completely baffling.
Microsoft expected 3 things: 1. Zenimax to make back the 7.5 billion dollars they spent on them. This is the absolute highest priority, especially since they also spent almost 70 billion on Activision as well. Xbox was able to get by in the past by not making much money, but also not spending much either. It was basically invisible. If you can't make big money, least you can do is not lose any, or you're in trouble. 2. Gamepass to keep growing. They had the very unreasonable expectation, that Gamepass would reach 110 million subscribers by 2030. 3. Games to still make money despite being on Gamepass. When the managment says they are fostering and supporting creative gamedesign, what they mean is creative ways of making more money. Corporate has and never will care about the people or the product. They care about making profits. You don't make profits, you're gone. Simple as that. And then your last line about Bethesda. They are also on a deadline. Zenimax still has that nice 7.5 billion target on their backs. There are a lot of jobs relying on TES6 to be successful. If Elder Scrolls can't do it, we'll see more closed studios. Activision also has a nice 70 billion target on their backs. This has only just begun. Guess people really should've trusted the FTC and all the regulators who tried to stop the merger. But hey, what can go wrong right....
I suppose the silver lining here is that the FTC just banned non-compete agreements. So eventually, if all goes well, we could potentially see some of these studios turn themselves into indies. I'm not fully articulated in my knowledge about these discussions though. All I know right now is that non-competes are said to be phased out completely in roughly 120 days. Maybe it's unknown if this will end up going through.
I'm very happy I didn't buy a Xbox Series X and got the Playstation 5 instead. Hi-Fi Rush, which was once the best reviewed Xbox Series X/S console exclusive, gets ported to PS5 and now they shutdown the studio, which means no sequel. Redfall, which was suppose to be one of their big 2023 Xbox Series X/S console exclusives, gets very poor reviews and now the studio shuts down, resulting in the promised DLC (which they PRE-sold the game on) getting cancelled and the offline mode never coming (so once servers shutdown, the game is gone). Meanwhile, rumors that Starfield (which was the biggest Xbox Series X/S console exclusive) will be heading to the Playstation 5 as early as this holiday season. To say that this is NOT going well for Xbox Series X/S owners is an understatement. Meanwhile, In the first few months of 2024 alone, the Playstation 5 has already received THREE huge Playstation 5 exclusives (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which will win game of the year, Rise of the Ronin, which is an awesome game, and Stellar Blade, which will be nominated for game of the year). And for this holiday season, there are rumors of a huge PS5 exclusive Astro Bot sequel (which I will buy on day 1 since I loved Astro's other games) and other PS5 exclusive games like Silent Hill 2 Remake and some others. Great time to be a Playstation 5 owner, but not so much if you only own a Xbox Series X/S.
You know, it says a lot when one of the gaming companies that hasn't even announced anything this year, (Nintendo) is one of the only ones that seem to be doing well.
Arcane Austin had a 70% turnover rate during redfall development. So basically there was no veteran talent left not really so lost honestly. Though sucks for people that got fired but the writing was on the wall for arcane Austin. It wasn’t the same studio that made prey and dishonored.
"We need to focus on what *really matters.* And what *really matters* is making sure we keep up the illusion of infinite growth and ensuring we can put more money in our bank accounts by indulging in ludicrous amounts of layoffs. This isn't a reflection of your ability or creativity, this is a reflection of our greed."
I do wanna clarify Arkane Austin didn’t start Redfall under Xbox so they weren’t forced to make that, but they could have cut it off as rumors suggest the devs hoped they did. It also makes the issue tho that these studios may have been “too free” (Pentiment) and the ROI hasn’t been pleasing the peeps upstairs. Especially after they gave 70B
Honestly I've been wanting to make a video talking about how I don't think Microsoft has EVER understood gaming and has constantly done nothing but flounder in the industry, and this might be the final straw that pushes me to make that video
Including gamepass, Hifi Rush made 3 million in sales. That is amazing for a mid-size game. There's genuinely no valid reason to demolish most of these studios.
Also right after closing tango they said "we need smaller games that get us awards" MY BROTHER IN CHRIST you just fired the people who made a smaller game that netted you awards
I will give Square Enix 1 thing... they fired no one and just canceled games. They know that they have some of the best devs and need to rethink how to manage them so as not to make 50 indie games that no one cares about and they wonr market.
From what i've read, redfall was already a good amount into development when microsoft acquired Arkane Austin. They didnt seem to push them into any direction. I dont think one bad game should have been the end for them though
lol as much as that makes my inner Nintendo fanboy giggle, I really hope the others get their act together. Having Nintendo as the only mainstream console manufacturer sounds like a recipe for disaster. They would be unchallenged and who knows what sort of random crap they'd subject us to.
@@ridgenyan-botxv367 I mean PC gaming is only getting more and more accessible with stuff like the Steam Deck (and hardware being viable for much much longer), in 10 years PC and Console will very much be in direct competition with each other so I dont think Nintendo would get too nutty with it. The will probably try to go scorched earth with emulators though.
That would suck. Nintendo is already lazy, they'll get more lazy with out competition. As for pc it might get flooded with bad companies. Microsoft and Sony need to get their act right
The last time they did anything with Banjo & Kazooie was putting them in Smash Bros. They capitalised on all the hype that generated by... Not making a new game and keeping Rare on full time duty for Sea of Garbage.
Let's get two things straight: -Hifi Rush was stated by MS itself to be an overperformance, and a great success. Makes it burn so much more how they come out to beat on drums of how proud they are, and then murder it. Its so insanely unfair when put beside Starfield... -Austin Arkane was already dead. Opposed to the 1st point, there was already barely a thread of hope left for them. The horrible direction and demand for Redfall created a company exodus, and they weren't even shy that 70% of the sort of people that worked with Prey, and came eager to join the oddball team that played a huge role in the great Dishonored 1, quit and left at the very stupid demands around Redfall. All MS did here was confirm what I feared: Its dead, goodbye. Arkane is still actually alive from their very start in the french studio, but this is more likely for budget reasons (cheaper production) than talent, as they've been the guys slowly dragging down Dishonored's quality and have last done the very mixed Deathloop. I respect their effort, but I don't have the highest hopes for them, especially since they started Austin out of a desire to expand and work with more diverse help and talent that helped make something as great as the 1st Dishonored. They got divided and now essentially handicapped.
Not defending Microsoft, shutting down Tango especially was bad. However, Redfall was almost certainly greenlit by Bethesda before the acquisition. They had a CG trailer ready for their June showcase mere months after the buyout, one that likely was planned for a Bethesda show before the acquisition went through.
Don't make excuses for Phil Spencer, Arlo. Anyone willing to tank teams for their own greed is heinous and evil. Don't let him adopt the "can do no wrong" the fact that nothing changes is people making excuses for CEOs shitty behavior. If we want progress at all, it's on us. Because they won't change
Im so sad about tango, evil within is really good but hi-fi rush is my favorite game in years and i was so excited to see more from tango but nooo fuck the studio that made a unique, fun, goofy game with great art direction apparently. Screw off microsoft
This has been Microsoft's MO forever. They buy up small and medium size studios to try and pump up their exclusive library, let them make a single game, and then close them. You can't name a single studio that has survived to release a 2nd title after the early 90's.
@@LuckyTheReviewer Darn!!! I thought I could finally have my very own list……I’ll go wait in the corner for someone to one day notice and listen to me enough for me to get my own list……….😔
Dev team makes fantastic game(s) and outstanding artistic achievements. "SHUT THEM DOWN!!!" Dev team makes the single worst chat/meeting app of all time (MS Teams). "Let's keep them a little longer, eventually they will fix all the issues teehee"
@@mystraunt2705 Deepnest isn't too large, as long as you can find an exit, do it, there is so much game ahead that you'd lose the chance to give a try!
@@mystraunt2705 give it another try man. Look up a map of deepnest and get the heck out of there. Go to the right of the mushroom area next time rather than the left (remember the mantis boss is optional). The game starts to really get good right after the mushroom area, so I'm sure you won't regret giving it another try! I'm rooting for you.
There are two kinds of capitalists. Both are always vying for a larger piece of the pie chart, but one knows to make the overall pie keep growing larger while the other keeps doing whatever they want regardless of whether they improve the market or not .
Some clarifications on Arkane and Redfall. Redfall was in development well before the Bethesda buyout. It was a project spearheaded by the leads at Arkane Austin. The development was tumultuous the entire time as the leads were sure that live service was a good bet but none of their talent had experience making an online coop game and the leads were wishy washy on direction. MOST of the talent left DURING development (so I mean the original team was gone well before the closure) and work got more and more stressful for those that remained as they pushed for release. Now that doesn't absolve Phil and Microsoft. Their hands of direction absolutely failed saving the project, with Phil reportedly having tested the game and seeing nothing wrong with it. As another note, Arkane Austin isn't the primary Dishonored devs, they are a side studio that mostly did support for the main studio in Lyon up until Prey (2016) started development. Of course Prey was an absolute masterpiece so it's a shame we only got to see one true immersive first person adventure from them before the directors squandered all their talent and shot themselves in the foot.
"Dumb mistakes they have maken, wrong steps they have taken"
FYI this was on purpose because this whole thing was supposed to be a diss track
Okay but now we need the full track.
You can't let Hey Kirby be your bit of bars!
THEY NOT LIKE US THEY NOT LIKE US THEY NOT LIKE US 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Arlo bars.... Barlo?
Kendrick Lamarlo
@@0_Cardboard_0Kendrick Olimar
“Going in hard on a mega-corp Arlo” is my favorite Arlo.
He’s my favourite as well. When he rips Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft a new one, I am overjoyed.
Different strokes for Different Folks
Agreed, always appreciate the guts it takes for him to speak up as harshly as he does.
Along with Pikmin and Paper Mario loving Arlo.
I told them that releasing the Protopets too early was a bad idea.
toys for bob going indie has to be the best decision they ever made, cuz microsoft is out here spending billions on all these studios just to shut them down
i genuinely feel like they wouldve been next
I really hope that more studios are willing to do the same. I imagine the main concern would be funding. And downsizing would be a necessity for most, but I think it would be the needed action to survive a potential collapse.
Good for them.
they had layoffs a couple months before they separated from microsoft
Agreed Honestly I was hoping tango would just buy back the rights to Hi fi rush from them and after that go indie honestly though should have done it the moment the game dropped on PS5. I hope john the and rest of the team can salvage something out of this. And if so maybe We'll get a spiritual sequel in the future?
Hope Double Fine follow them back to the indies once they complete whatever project they have in the works
They look at Nintendo's success with first party support and says:
"Naw".
And indies as well. I think indies thrive more on switch than gamepass.
@JONATHANP1619 indies definitely thrive more on gamepass objectively but Nintendo has done a great job all around... their executives are najotly out of touch but otherwise it's like Nintendo has no real console competition for the next console launch I swear lol
@JONATHANP1619 I think indies are thriving a bit too much on Switch. The e-shop is filled with shovel ware garbage. I feel like part of that can be blamed on how successful indie games have been on the Switch so now every hack in the industry is flooding the store with their nonsense and Nintendo doesn't enforce it at all.
@@MetalizationerI mean the switch has shown that the casual audience doesn't need 90 fps 1080p 4k blow it out your butt performance, we just need fun unique games and a convenient console to play them on. There's a reason its still outselling the other 2 consoles by and large (in addition to being cheaper too which is nice).
Don't get me wrong Id like to have those things in a switch 2 like everyone else, but at the end of the day what I NEED is for games to be playable, stable, and fun. Look at vampire survivors, it looks like it'd run on a calculator but its so absurdly fun and addicting that its spawned a new category of gaming.
*facepalm. nintendo aren't even in the top 5. Nintendo 2022 earnings 3.9 billion (7th in the industry). Tencent 80 billion (1st). A Hugely successful console with amazing exclusive don't mean anything anymore. Gamers still think it's the 90's. Todays market is driven by engagement. Not exclusives, not consoles numbers, not even good games. Just engagement of the masses.
Shutting down Tango is especially sad, Hi-Fi Rush was so good.
So good no one bought it. I blame gamers for this one. A lot of people refused to give this game a chance just because it was an xbox title at first
People just want to play cod and buy skins. That's just what gaming is and will be in the future
@@bugsnax4145Nobody refused to buy it for being a Xbox title, you're making shit up lol.
@@BeyondTrash-xe1vs right.. lmao
@@bugsnax4145 It definitely sold a decent amount, Microsoft just wasnt happy
The very idea that Square Enix would say "we are focusing on what we know works" is hilarious. They're always coming out saying their games performed "below expectations." They don't know "what works."
The way Japanese businesses are run has a lot to do with why Sony, Squeenix and the like are in freefall-- the people who run the company are on average twice the age of people actually making the games, and back when they first got to their position in the company, Japan was still in the Boom Years, where throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck was a massive advantage-- even if they didn't 100% understand the technology, they could have it explained to them in a way that made sense. That's not true anymore. The tech has gotten so advanced, it's harder and harder to explain to these 70-80+ year old men who are, behind closed doors very self conscious about the fact that they don't understand it. Despite that, the over all culture means they can't/refuse to admit they don't understand any of it anymore-- so they throw themselves behind any new thing that sounds cool: the Metaverse, NFTs, hoping that bravado will make up for the painful and very personal reality that they're too old to understand the tech anymore. Saying things are "below expectations" is code for "But this always worked before! I don't understand what changed!"
meanwhile they are milking final fantasy 7 likes nobodys business
@@MoonLitChildYou do realize both of those studios are more western now, right? Sony has backstabbed its jpn devs and is litetally home in cali now. Other long running japanese studios like nintendo or atlus do have their issues but they are still consistently making overall good decisions. How in the world isthis a japanese issue lol
What worked was them having the balls to take chances and make unique experiences
We know what works... we also are still in support of NFTs
The focusing on "blockbuster" games is what bothers me the most. Just means that we will keep getting live services, the same first and third person shooters and safe and generic AAA games instead of more riskier and interesting AA games. These companies just don't get it
100% this!!! The smaller projects made with heart and unique stories and design choices are what I love most about gaming. This “safe” game development where they keep puking out remakes and remasters or live service looter shooters is disgusting and takes the “art” out of game development.
Society doesn't get it. The companies know exactly what they're doing; they're pandering to the lowest common denominator while cutting all corners possible to please the executives' bank accounts.
Then don’t buy games from them.
Those smaller games don't sell, the blockbusters do
Preach.
I'm just surprised anyone took a trillion dollar company's claims of "caring about the art of video games" seriously.
Step by step plan on how to start a societal revolution against yourself, Step 1: Be a soulless, artless, multi-billion dollar megacorporation. 👍
People also believed that the act blizzard + xbox deal was a good thing for the industry
You mean it's exactly as bad as Sony? Because yes.
Yeah, not the same buddy. But nice try! @@Allyouknow5820
Is it really so bad to want to be optimistic and trust that someone wants what’s best for consumers? Sure take everything with a pinch of salt but otherwise it’s just kinda sad, we have to have something to believe in or you’d have given up on the industry long ago!
Especially sorry for Tango Gameworks. They were the one studio that put out a good game for Xbox’s first party lineup in 2023 (in my opinion). And they got shafted
Calling any modern studios talented is strong language. If modern games is what we had in the PS2 era, gaming wouldnt exist today. The industry needs a purge and reset
@@chiquita683You’re opinion is more jaded than mine. Therefore, your argument holds more validity than mine.
@@chiquita683It's not the fault of the ground floor workers.
@@chiquita683 Ah yes people should lose their jobs because they don't meet my standard.
grow the fuck up and touch some grass
@@chiquita683 So having hundreds of poorly-made licensed games is "peak gaming" to you, huh? Doesn't bother me much, just expect people to bombard you with questions
*Correction: Bethesda made Arkane Austin make Redfall. It was in production for years before MS acquired them
That was a long "microsoft bad" section that was pure misinformation. In know Arlo is not a Microsoft/Xbox expert but that needed more research on his part.
@@pheww81 To be fair, they say the same about Starfield which was also being made before the acquisition, Xbox is just the easiest scapegoat now SEGA isn't there to take a fall.
This is indefensible.
Xbox speedrunning their downfall
What makes the Tengo shut down especially said is that by the admission of the Xbox Marketing VP, Hi Fi Rush was a huge success for them in every factor so it makes 0 sense to shut it down when a studio actually does deliver success everyone is happy with. Microsoft has actually just gone insane when even performing well won't save you from the axe
Doesn't help this was there only japanese studio. And closing it down effectively ruined any chance of them being in that market
That was obviously a lie.
I know Arlo is a family friendly content creator, but when looking at this situation for what it is… *cough* DEI hiring and corporate climbing practices *cough* Microsoft’s new head in charge has no idea what she’s doing. Successes or failures don’t matter; just reorganize the company and downsize anyways while making a public statement that everything is fine.
@@CTomCooper Exactly. Critical and commercial performance doesn't matter, all they care about is the appearance of "fiscal responsibility". Every single dev under Xbox/Microsoft could have made a game as successfull as Minecraft, but we'd still be seeing massive layoffs and shutdowns because that's what you're supposed to do to please investors. Everything has gone downhill for western devs/publishers ever since they adopted the tech industry model.
@@CTomCooperit’s not DEI, it’s the Microsoft execs. Which I guarantee you care more about money than DEI
I am baffled that they would close the studio behind Hi-fi Rush. Easily one of the best games from last year in a year with some of the best games of all time.
It won 5 awards too. Even if it wasn't a financial success, who cares? It's a lower budget game. If they need to cut Tango's budget to make up for the financial issues then whatever, Tango can clearly make a low budget work but to outright fire everybody and shutdown the studio is baffling.
How is it that Forza Motorsport can come out unfinished and lose more than half of it's playerbase, thus lose money because it's a live service games with undoubtedly expensive servers to keep it running, yet Turn 10 doesn't face any of the repercussions from Microsoft that other studios do? Make it make sense. Forza cost at least quadruple the amount that Hi-Fi Rush did and I doubt it's managed to make its money back.
Because most of them are independent contractors... They were gone when the project was done
Microsoft doesn't want good games, it wants microtransaction filled gambling machines like FIFA.
Hence their focus on Gamepass, they want to get as many users as possible in their platforms, with the lowest possible investment, to then milk those people using microtransactions and gambling like strategies.
It's also about seniority and contractors or employees status, the western companies consider that having full time employees is not economically sound because then they would have to pay things like medical insurances and benefits, much cheaper to just hire several teams of contractors and rotate between them in order to not pay all the things normal employees normally get. This often results in a messy work environment that ends up with games releasing extremelly undercooked and needing a bunch of post release patches to be playable, but they prefeer that to actually paying benefits.
The founder left and talent was being poached. Not shocking at all.
Also Hi-Fi Rush was an expensive game to develop according to the developer at Tango Gameworks.
Hi-Fi rush was greatly successful. By August 2023 it sold 3 million with overwhelming positive reviews and won 5 awards. The only way this could be seen as a failure is if Microsoft had such an unrealistic expectation and expected sales like a Halo, Gears or Forza
“Sold” 3 million units (they’re counting Gamepass member downloads in that figure)
@@extremepayneDo you know that for a fact?
Microsoft wants every game to sell at least 6 million copies as well as be a top Gamepass game to be considered successful. They have insanely unrealistic expectations. Shinji Mikami saw that early on and decided to get away from those tyrants as fast as possible.
@@BeyondTrash-xe1vsyes
@@BeyondTrash-xe1vsYes. The only places that are reporting the 3 million dollar figure are saying it includes Gamepass downloads. The original source is a tweet from @hifirush which does not make any mention of copies sold, only players reached. Players reached, of course, includes Gamepass
My lecturer explained this to the class when one of his friends had his project shut down (by EA) Turns out that unless you're making money in the billions, a lot of companies just can't see the point of keeping your studio around. The IPs are considered the valuable part of a game company because of all the potential value, but that potential value isn't considered worth risking anything for. As a result, a lot of game publishers hoard game companies to gut them for the IPs and maybe get some payout if they get private equity involved in the company's dismantling.
Man, no wonder Toys for Bob wanted to go independent
Just sucks that they technically own Spyro and Crash now. I kind of blame Sony for at least not trying to fight for those IP's.
@@swordmaster305 not exactly like Sony knows what their customers want half the time either.
They are better at it, but they seems to be having similar issues to a lesser extent
@@swordmaster305 Does it suck? If Naughty Dog and Insomniac don't want to make any more games in those series, would it really matter if Sony had the rights?
It can't always be helped, but i think these days being independent is usually the best course of action for these indie developers.
I've said before, I'll say again, "Xbox is the console you get when all your friends have Xbox....and none of my friends do. so I'm not getting it."
Pretty much. They hardly have any exclusives you can't get on Steam/PS/Switch
@@mysticdigital5936steam is the best. Even PlayStation puts stuff on it now. Maybe one day Nintendo will too
When it started, the main selling point was xbox live and peer pressure.
You didn’t say this Dunkey did
Yup, I am an Xbox guy but that's because everyone I know has Xbox. If it weren't for friends, I still would've been on Playstation.
Shutting down Tango is so baffling after Microsoft did everything in their power to fuck up HiFi Rush’s launch. What a waste of amazing talent.
Shinji Mikami leaving Tango as abruptly as he did, his own studio by the way, soon after Hi-Fi Rush was released was a pretty dark sign in retrospect, huh?
Mikami left for his own reasons. It had nothing to do with the studio getting shut down.
The sinking ship is spreading across all entertainment, the corporatization of creative works has left people in charge so disconnected with their customers, not to mention the chasing of fads and algorithms rather than letting people's passion create something new. That is such a terrible place to be during a time when consumers aren't spending as much money on luxuries.
Speak for yourself, Nintendo is thriving and they’re the only one that’s thriving.
@Adamtendo_player_1 ....theyre the only ones...which means you agree with me that the rest are sinking?
@@TheOneBoredSeems that way to me lol. But I will also add that the indie PC scene is pretty good right now too, so we’re at least not gonna be starved of good games. Just avoid live-service or AAA like the plague
If Xbox fans didn't jumped ship during the Xbox One era, for sure THIS is going to make many Xbox fans to leave.
It's so disgusting what Microsoft did.
Awful fact: Due to the closure of both Arkane Austin and Roundhouse Studios, Xbox has simultaneously shut down both the developers of Prey (2017) and Prey (2006). Let me explain.
Human Head Studios, the developers of the original Prey, were closed in late 2019 (my guess is that The Quiet Man had something to do with it), but Roundhouse Studios was immediately formed after with the same staff and even at the same location. It’s easy to overlook Roundhouse as websites only list that they contributed to Redfall, but in reality it’s the same people who deserved to be recognized for their history as when they were Human Head.
Arkane Austin was already dead. Zenimax forced them to make Redfall, a live service game, to look attractive to Microsoft. They never wanted to make it, and most of the good devs left during the development.
And to top it all off, allegedly they were working on online elements of prey 2 (arkane) so prey 2....got cancelled twice...its also fucked up that i was recently replaying rune and prey 2006
@@uberbyte7467I wanted prey 2017 sequel so fucking bad man
@@georgerockwell6124 if it makes you feel better, the creator of prey is making a spiritual successor, at wolf eye studio, and I guess they'll be accepting new hires from arkane Austin
You mean to refer to the "development studios". Technically the actual developers of those games are either retired or working elsewhere.
It's amazing that we reach this point in the industry where you can get rave reviews and sell a ton of units and then still have your studio axed. Microsoft really feels like on all fronts a chicken with a Ted chopped off and I don't just mean for gaming. I kind of find funny as everyone is like surprised at all of this. But I knew Microsoft back in the early '90s as like the buttoned up brown pants. Business company that thought open source was illegal and bullied all of their competitors. So I'm like not surprised by any of ideas in gaming or anything they do now
On that point with rave reviews; people can't eat accolades, likes and retweets. Celebratory circles look nice and cordial at award ceremonies, but they don't sell games. I take that sort of thing as public face to impress stakeholders who are waiting for a ROI from AAA studios. At least for as long as that can work, which clearly now shows its limits.
@@CTomCooper The problem is that according to multiple different sources, allegedly Hi-Fi rush sold pretty well. Either Microsoft was lying or it did still really well but didn't make their unbelievable expectations. Kind of like how Square enix games in the past have sold really well but didn't meet their xpronations. Same thing with EA and these other large albatross companies. Multi-Millions and earn five times back their budget when these companies want multi-trillions.
@@jordanwhite352 Which begs the question... is this potentially a result of E3 dying and minor titles being deplatformed from an event space. I remember that around 2010-2016 era major publishing arms like Ubisoft, EA, SE, among others were putting in the money to finance a lot of indie titles. I doubt many of them sold spectacularly but I believe almost every single one sold fairly well and likely gave them a lot of talent. That said I assume it was worth having them because they helped round out their show and gave the business games to fill in the gaps and it's not like they risked people leaving for marketing it since they'd already be at the convention center. It might sound crazy but I do think the loss of these physical showcases has inadvertently hurt a lot of indie and lower budget game makers given that the only company that regularly dedicates time to them is Nintendo. Sony state of plays are nice as well but they're too infrequent and clearly don't generate the same level of buzz for them.
@@CTomCooper That's just so bizarre to me, would shutting down a small studio really look so good to a stockholder? Obviously, the games they made were only moderate successes, but the studio itself couldn't have taken many resources to sustain. Was it so wrong for it to even exist from their perspective? Are they that short-sighted?
we're doomed aren't we
@@janrosa7243 I don't think that has any effect because even on a live stage different companies chose to either embrace or ignore any games. The main issue was one dumb business practices in general, but what's honestly probably compounded it is covid. Covid literally killed like the entire world's economy and because of unfettered shitty business practices every company that has lost money during covid wants to make it back immediately ASAP. Seen layoffs. That's why you seem tightening of belts. That's why you've seen prices go up in general on everything that and also because half the world is at War right now. Mainly covid and are bad reaction to it killed the economy and this has also affected video games immensely. Combined that Microsoft Also spent billions of dollars acquiring these companies. They now want an immediate return on their investment so anything that doesn't do that is going to get axed.
Shareholders and corporate suits have a hard time telling the difference between monetary cost and opportunity cost. Tango may not have made Xbox much money, but they brought a lot of positive press and eyes onto the Xbox brand.
Sony made the same mistake when they shut down Japan Studio.
Exactly. People were saying Xbox was back when Hifi Rush dropped, and they lost all that good faith immediately. Although now that they won that Call of Duty cash cow, they probably don't care how shitty they look anymore.
Just Microsoft being Microsoft.
I'm not surprised. What an utterly despicable corporation.
The fact that Microsoft is still in the console industry after the Xbone is the most baffling thing to me and it proves that companies will use every opportunity to burn money rather than save it wisely.
It’s a vanity project at this point. They just want to flop their dicks on the table and brag about brand longevity and hardware power at the expense of… profit? I don’t know. I just don’t see any other reason why they can’t just go full third party and make way more money by actually selling their games on profitable platforms. Although it kinda looks like that’s the direction they’re slowly going in.
I read X bone on that hehe
@@Ericbuddysquishytoad Well, the company is boned
MBA cancer
It had the potential to be turned around. Should Nintendo have quit after releasing the Wii U?
This is making life really hard for developers. My husband has been looking for work since January, over 15 years in the industry. I dont think people realize how many developers are thinking of throwing in the towel and leaving altogether. Games will never be the same if that happens.
To be fair there is always the indie route, but even then that is a very large pool of competition now.
Can Nintendo have Rare back before it close?
Dude I wish. Microsoft please dont kill rare
l meann you could, but those Rare games you love are all 25~30 years old. If Nintendo buys the rights back it'd be cool for getting more of those games on NSO l guess, but l highly doubt the actual programmers/designers/visionists etcc behind Rare are still there after all this time, Especially since they werent able to continue making the games they wanted under xbox's banner
If only. A Nintendo-made Banjo game would be awesome.
@@Sponsie1000 its more so for nostalga purposes. the "rare" name holds value even if the og crew has long since passed away.
@@johnmarkson1998 you make it sound like they died. Pretty sure most went to playtonic or just left
Xbox 360: *We have games*
Xbox One: *We have some games*
Xbox series X: *We buy other studios and their games*
PS5: You have games?
Future Xbox: We shut down all games except Hallo & COD.
Xbox 360: i have games
Xbox one: am dead since start
Xbox series: why am still alive tho
Sony's been buying publishers off of other platforms since day one. Eidos and the ENTIRE Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain and anything they published in the 5th generation were bought off of Saturn and Nintendo 64, and have acquired 4 more gaming related studios than Microsoft has. Xbox is also bad for this, but they were neither the first, nor the only to do so.
@@BlueEyedVibeChecker studios not publishers smart guy plus they support them like and make them better unlike Microsoft
Here's the thing: if all this was still happening, but Microsoft was putting out banger Halo, Gears, Banjo Kazooie, Elder Scrolls, Fallout games... maybe the odd Viva Piñata or so. Maybe if StarField lived up to the hype... we would all still be mad at these closures, but we would still be on board with Microsoft.
They're floundering and lagging on so many levels.
It's just.. sad
This, they fail at every point but still make moves to screw things up. I knew we were getting into a point where we have less big budgets and smaller scales.
But they killed off the studio behind their BIG win last year!? A bigger win vs Starfield even. Not only that, unless they announce more middle shelf games then they not only killed off a studio (studios, but one has more a wtf than the other) but they are just going to go back to the same bs as there's nothing to release in between their big games so the pressure is even harder to support.
Our games being made is a game at this point. We are literally seeing them put all the odds against our games and lining their pockets until the well dries up.
Play indie people, save yourself the heartache.
They put their eggs in one basket, Starfield.
They acquired Activision Blizzard for zillions...
I really don't care, and I don't care about exclusives. As a casual gamer, my enjoyment comes from playing the game and not from not seeing other people play it.
To think that exclusives are the way to success is dumb.
They should have not chased that and instead pursued something like putting more games on game pass (Without purchasing the studio), made it possible to stream more games on their cloud service, and just been over all consumer friendly.
They're not SONY, and that's not inherently bad. They can counter program SONY.
It's like watching every dumb TV and streaming service try to make "The next game of thrones" when they should have been counter programming thrones with something different.
Jesus
I work(ed?) for one of the companies Microsoft acquired last year and was coincidentally let go today as well. Sad to see the state of this industry.
Sorry to hear that. I wish you the best of luck in finding new work.
@Lutgerion I'm sorry to hear that. Praying you find another (and better) job quickly.
Praying for you, hopefully you find a secure job and find lots of success,
This is why Xbox is never getting helldivers
I can see an argument that Arkane Austin being shut down isn't on Microsoft. Redfall was something that Bethesda told them to make well before the acquisition and it caused a lot of talent to leave the studio. The studio is a shell of what it once was and honestly it's probably for the best that it got shut down. The other alternative is to go out and aggressively attract talent and that's not cheap. Given the current economic climate, I get the decision to drop it.
Now shuttering Tango, I got nothing for that. Bad move Microsoft.
Xbox is one of those Michelin star restaurants that definitely paid somebody to get on the list. They pretend to be first class and fancy, but all they serve is Kraft Mac and Cheese and cut up hot dogs and meanwhile you can hear the manager verbally abusing the employees in the back. When you ask where your steak is they say “we just need a little more time,” but it never actually gets served because the chefs are always being worked to the bone. And the few steaks they have managed to make… get the cooks fired. I’ve been subscribed to Game Pass for a couple years now, but haven’t used it for 80% of that time because it’s not actually all that practical. I think I’m done. Check please, Mr. Spencer.
Good to know
PC all the way
No need for a check, you paid already.
I get what you're trying to say but this strikes me as a really, really poor analogy since fine dining establishments have a completely different set of unrelated problems. You don't get Michelin stars if you're not serving your food on time lol.
You also definitely do not get stars for serving Kraft Mac and Cheese There are some goofy fine dining dunk videos people have made but by and large single star and bib gourmand restaurants are relatively grounded and have a high standard for service and food quality even if some of the 3 stars are stupid expensive and esoteric.
Yup. Even the Windows developers are a revolving door of contractors. They waste so much time and money in training that actual dev time is just not worth it. It's why they want to shove ads in Windows 11 so bad. They don't know how to run the business and studios anymore, so they fall back on the scummy monetization practices you see on mobile.
When people say Playstation has no games: it's all memes and shit
When people say Xbox has no games:....... it's so depressing.
I think it's more ingorance and short-sighted rather than "evil", but it absolutely makes zero sense. They just purchased Activision-Blizzard-King-probably more for $68 billion; they clearly have the money to support their already existing studios if they can purchase another for that much. It makes zero sense.
It absolutely is evil.
For the IPs I guess
This Channel is a great thing. I am SO glad this exists. A LOT happened today, and i’m glad to see your opinion in a timely fashion.
Ditto. Arlo's take is so valuable. I want more of it
It's an good thing I grew up with Nintendo & Playstation and my only Xbox experience was the 360. Otherwise, these guys sucks.
Yeah, I earnestly don't think dev and AAA company relations are going to much hold up. Movies as an industry have been monopolized by big studios, and while I see these big game companies trying to do the same thing Movie studios get away with... I'm just like... What are you doing? Indies are a booming market in their own right, not every dev is going to accept this cycle of work, get laid off, and make little profit of the sales of their games. The indie scene allows them to tackle personal passion projects, AND potentially get money from that. The video game industry is NOT the movie industry, Indie games have a much better chance at success than indie movies. Some devs will literally just not come back, because AAA game development isn't sustainable like this. I would NOT be surprised if we get ANOTHER indie game boom in the future.
It feels like Microsoft and Sony are in a race to see who can crash and burn out of the gaming industry first.
I think I'm actually done with Microsoft. I know that sounds over dramatic but I'm telling you, I've loved the Xbox brand for so long, but since the Xbox One days It's just been shattered hope after shattered hope. Microsoft has been in a sorry state for so long, and their ONE glimmer of tangible hope has been destroyed. I loved Hi-Fi Rush so much, I was begging Microsoft to foster Tango...And they get axed. Look, Sony and Nintendo have their awful moments, but they give us reasons to stick around, reasons to support the brand....Xbox has legitimately done NOTHING but burn bridges.
Hi-Fi Rush was EXACTLY what they needed! It was an acclaimed, creative IP that was all their own and so different from Tango's other games. Tango proved they are exactly what Microsoft needed, talented developers with tons of diverse ideas, and they were axed. I'm seriously annoyed, I don't see how I, as a consumer should have any faith in this brand anymore.
If you sell your Xbox, maybe you could buy a mid-range PC... you'll get to play a HELL of a lot more and you lose nothing since all Microsoft games are on PC at this point. Seriously, consider it if you haven't already, you'll even get to play with a controller like you have before
@@NotTheGaslighter You're deluded. The money earned from selling an xbox is nowhere near enough to run the majority of games releasing these days.
@@WretchedRedoran Wrong, I built a PC for £410 with specs above the Series X. (RTX 3060 vs XSX 2070 S equivalent and PS5's RX 5700 equivalent)
It IS possible, you don't need to use Linus Tech Tips as a tutorial.
(Also if the monitor counts in the "PC" price, then the TV counts in the consoles price too, and TVs these days cost 10x as much as those. (All my homies hate Smart TVs)
@@BlueEyedVibeChecker You can't sell an Xbox, one X or series X, for 600 dollars. No one's gonna buy that. That's almost as much as a brand-new series X.
Don't even get me started on building a PC with that money if you could even get it in the first place.
An RTX 3060 is nearly half of that at the absolute lowest, and that's not accounting every other thing, most of which are over a hundred dollars Canadian at the minimum.
And personally, second hand isn't an option where I'm from, as I live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
ok uninstall windows then
Arkane Austin are the ones being shut down. They made prey and redfall (and technically used to be part of Arkane Lyon back with Dishonored 1. But arkane Lyon did the Dishonored series and Deathloop
3:13 maken is my new favorite word
I really think in the next 10-20 years, small studios are going to stop selling themselves to these giant companies. Every single employee in tech has been burned by layoffs, and I just don't see the next batch of studio founders trusting corporations.
As The Commander always says, the problem is that a system that rewards competition but does not adequately enforce fair competition (through anti-trust laws and the like) leads to a scenario where the goal of these megacorps is not to make money, but to make every conceivable possible dollar. The courts recently ruled that boards can sue companies for NOT adequately maximizing profits, thus legally enshrining that it is not enough for companies to profit, they must make higher profit, year after year, forever, or be eaten by a bigger fish.
Boy, I sure hope infinite growth is possible in a closed system of finite resources, otherwise we could be in real trouble!
"Okay carpentry staff... Make a jumbo jet"
"you what?"
"well that failed. guess that's your fault not ours. You lot were supposed to make this work"
"we literally can't, we're bloody carpenters!"
I don't know, I mean Mario went from carpenter to plumber to Mushroom Jesus in 4 years flat
Arkane wasn't shut down, Arkane Austin was. The Arkane everybody loves who made Dishonored and everything is based in France and they're still around working on a Blade game. Still sucks hard because Austin made that great Prey game but it's slightly less crushing.
Welp. Say goodbye to Hi-Fi rush being on Switch/Switch 2 and a sequel...
i think they could still resell it on other things but I think that would be a veeery bad look
@lightdarksoul2097 I'm not even sure I would buy it if the Switch port actually gets made and I've been wanting to try it. It would just feel so dirty buying it when the studio can't profit from it.
@@coltonwilkie241 I have wanted it too it would be weird I'm not sure either
Can we all finally please be on the same page that gamepass--while being consumer friendly--creates one of the most unhealthy ecosystems ever for games and consoles? It's pretty objective at this point
Exactly. Gamepass is a straight up scam when you get right down to it.
Gamepass is to Xbox what Disney+ is to Disney. They jumped at getting a streaming service up and functional in order to get their share of pandemic money, but now C-Suite idiots don't understand why their movies aren't doing well in theaters: because the movies come out on Disney+ right after their theater runs. Everyone who got Disney+ now doesn't have any reason to give Disney *extra* money by going to see a movie in the theater-- and a *lot* of people have Disney+. You can have a subscription service, or you can let people buy things a la cart, but you can't have both.
A great idea on paper once again ruined by kinda just... doing nothing with it.
GamePass is complete underpants gnome logic.
Step 1: Make a service that disincentivizes people to buy games at full price when they come out
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit
Microsoft just blindly sought to have the "Netflix of games" without understanding the economics of how the streaming model would affect games. A AAA video game is much more expensive than a movie DVD, and there's no "definitive" setting to play a game in like with a movie theater. GamePass being so cheap relative to the product that it's a service for means that people won't buy games outright, which tends to have higher profit margins than GamePass (and we don't even know if GamePass as a whole is profitable or not). GamePass has stopped being a compelling feature for Xbox and has started to become a cancer; ever expanding, taking more and more resources, and giving them nothing in return, but with the added delusions of MS execs hoping that if they can just funnel a bit more money into it, then it’ll finally make a profit, just ignore the opportunity cost of all those lost sales.
@@ironicdivinemandatestan4262 to be fair, I feel like most companies want to do streaming without any logic to that either. Someone sold the idea to them as essentially “free money” but it turns out it requires quite a lot of resources to make it work. I agree with your point about it being even more blatantly stupid for games and the reasons you stated, but I think plenty of “streaming services” have been hurting companies and consumers way more than anyone wants to admit or can even find out since we have almost no access to any of that data.
Dang not Tango 😔
The last little bit of love I had for Microsoft has disappeared after hearing about Tango. They better not try take away what few games they made from the people who bought them too. I wouldn't be surprised if I suddenly lost access to The Evil Within 1 and 2 out of nowhere.
@@coltonwilkie241 :(
Hi-Fi RUSH was one of my favorite games of all time. Gave it my money through literally every avenue I could. I fell in love with the gameplay along with its cast of characters, and I was really looking forward to seeing them again someday. I, a grown ass man, _wept_ at the news of Tango's closure!
For me, Phil Spencer seems like all the other executives, mainly after that email leaked where he said that he wanted to buy up Nintendo.
Absolutely loving the channel! I wouldn't have known about most of these stories without your videos on them, and they are really entertaining. Really glad to get some more Arlo vids, keep up the awesome work!!
Spending billions on studios just to close them a few years later looks like a dumb decision.
The one goddamn time they make a great AAA game in hi fi rush they close the studio that made it because of fu**ing course they would do that
calling hi fi rush a AAA game is hillarious
It's an amazing game for sure but it's more of AA rather than AAA.
This is so sad, Hi fi rush was such a well developed game and Phil Spencer needs to go already!
To be fair, Bethesda are the ones who wanted Arcane Austin to make Redfall (in fact the devs are on record as saying that they hoped during Microsoft's acquisition would force them to cancel the game), but your point stands.
actually it does not stand , one of the few good things Msoft has done is let developers make the games they want. They're just really bad at managing and planning things.
Nintendo releasing their fiscal year numbers the same day that this happened, it makes you wonder what the heck these studios are doing to fail so badly
Petition for Nintendo to save Tango and buy Hi Fi Rush
Would be cool.
I imagine Shinji Mikami is hard at work trying to get as many of the employees from Tango as he can into his new studio. If he has a new studio right now.
4:40 That's quite possibly the most jarring thing of this whole situation because hi-fi rush *was* a massive success from what I've seen. This all is completely baffling.
I was hoping Hi-Fi Rush would come to Switch or Switch 2 so I could play it. Doesn't seem like that'll be happening now.
Microsoft expected 3 things:
1. Zenimax to make back the 7.5 billion dollars they spent on them. This is the absolute highest priority, especially since they also spent almost 70 billion on Activision as well. Xbox was able to get by in the past by not making much money, but also not spending much either. It was basically invisible. If you can't make big money, least you can do is not lose any, or you're in trouble.
2. Gamepass to keep growing. They had the very unreasonable expectation, that Gamepass would reach 110 million subscribers by 2030.
3. Games to still make money despite being on Gamepass. When the managment says they are fostering and supporting creative gamedesign, what they mean is creative ways of making more money. Corporate has and never will care about the people or the product. They care about making profits. You don't make profits, you're gone. Simple as that.
And then your last line about Bethesda. They are also on a deadline. Zenimax still has that nice 7.5 billion target on their backs.
There are a lot of jobs relying on TES6 to be successful. If Elder Scrolls can't do it, we'll see more closed studios.
Activision also has a nice 70 billion target on their backs. This has only just begun. Guess people really should've trusted the FTC and all the regulators who tried to stop the merger. But hey, what can go wrong right....
The US needs better labour laws and protections for employees.
What really baffles me is how they let go of Tango Games but not 343i
Right? 343 should've been first to go.
I suppose the silver lining here is that the FTC just banned non-compete agreements. So eventually, if all goes well, we could potentially see some of these studios turn themselves into indies.
I'm not fully articulated in my knowledge about these discussions though. All I know right now is that non-competes are said to be phased out completely in roughly 120 days. Maybe it's unknown if this will end up going through.
I'm very happy I didn't buy a Xbox Series X and got the Playstation 5 instead. Hi-Fi Rush, which was once the best reviewed Xbox Series X/S console exclusive, gets ported to PS5 and now they shutdown the studio, which means no sequel. Redfall, which was suppose to be one of their big 2023 Xbox Series X/S console exclusives, gets very poor reviews and now the studio shuts down, resulting in the promised DLC (which they PRE-sold the game on) getting cancelled and the offline mode never coming (so once servers shutdown, the game is gone). Meanwhile, rumors that Starfield (which was the biggest Xbox Series X/S console exclusive) will be heading to the Playstation 5 as early as this holiday season. To say that this is NOT going well for Xbox Series X/S owners is an understatement.
Meanwhile,
In the first few months of 2024 alone, the Playstation 5 has already received THREE huge Playstation 5 exclusives (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which will win game of the year, Rise of the Ronin, which is an awesome game, and Stellar Blade, which will be nominated for game of the year). And for this holiday season, there are rumors of a huge PS5 exclusive Astro Bot sequel (which I will buy on day 1 since I loved Astro's other games) and other PS5 exclusive games like Silent Hill 2 Remake and some others. Great time to be a Playstation 5 owner, but not so much if you only own a Xbox Series X/S.
Evil Within 1 and 2. Were the Best, better then resident Evil. Spencers FIRED
You know, it says a lot when one of the gaming companies that hasn't even announced anything this year, (Nintendo) is one of the only ones that seem to be doing well.
Arcane Austin had a 70% turnover rate during redfall development. So basically there was no veteran talent left not really so lost honestly. Though sucks for people that got fired but the writing was on the wall for arcane Austin. It wasn’t the same studio that made prey and dishonored.
"We need to focus on what *really matters.* And what *really matters* is making sure we keep up the illusion of infinite growth and ensuring we can put more money in our bank accounts by indulging in ludicrous amounts of layoffs. This isn't a reflection of your ability or creativity, this is a reflection of our greed."
Losing Tango Gameworks hurts, man.
Everyday I'm more happy that Sega has said they're not for Sale to anyone.
I do wanna clarify Arkane Austin didn’t start Redfall under Xbox so they weren’t forced to make that, but they could have cut it off as rumors suggest the devs hoped they did.
It also makes the issue tho that these studios may have been “too free” (Pentiment) and the ROI hasn’t been pleasing the peeps upstairs. Especially after they gave 70B
While I'm mainly a PS4/Switch guy, I do feel terrible for the studios under Microsofts(XBOX) umbrella.
they say focus on priority games ? which ones lol ? besides the ones they bought i mean lol
Honestly I've been wanting to make a video talking about how I don't think Microsoft has EVER understood gaming and has constantly done nothing but flounder in the industry, and this might be the final straw that pushes me to make that video
Including gamepass, Hifi Rush made 3 million in sales. That is amazing for a mid-size game. There's genuinely no valid reason to demolish most of these studios.
Also right after closing tango they said "we need smaller games that get us awards"
MY BROTHER IN CHRIST you just fired the people who made a smaller game that netted you awards
I will give Square Enix 1 thing... they fired no one and just canceled games. They know that they have some of the best devs and need to rethink how to manage them so as not to make 50 indie games that no one cares about and they wonr market.
From what i've read, redfall was already a good amount into development when microsoft acquired Arkane Austin. They didnt seem to push them into any direction. I dont think one bad game should have been the end for them though
Also, just an FYI, Arkane Austin did not get forced by Microsoft to make Redfall. Zenimax did, long before the merger.
Saw someone on Twitter say in 10-years, providing the Switch Successor doesn't flop, it'll just be Nintendo and Steam. And honestly? Good.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you openly hope that people lose their jobs and that they fail? Touch some grass dude.
lol as much as that makes my inner Nintendo fanboy giggle, I really hope the others get their act together. Having Nintendo as the only mainstream console manufacturer sounds like a recipe for disaster. They would be unchallenged and who knows what sort of random crap they'd subject us to.
No. NOT good! You want a duopoly that behaves like Nintendo? That would be utterly disastrous.
@@ridgenyan-botxv367 I mean PC gaming is only getting more and more accessible with stuff like the Steam Deck (and hardware being viable for much much longer), in 10 years PC and Console will very much be in direct competition with each other so I dont think Nintendo would get too nutty with it.
The will probably try to go scorched earth with emulators though.
That would suck. Nintendo is already lazy, they'll get more lazy with out competition. As for pc it might get flooded with bad companies. Microsoft and Sony need to get their act right
Let me mention that they still don’t utilize Banjo Kazooie.
I don't want the corpse desecrated. Just let them rest.
The last time they did anything with Banjo & Kazooie was putting them in Smash Bros. They capitalised on all the hype that generated by... Not making a new game and keeping Rare on full time duty for Sea of Garbage.
Let's get two things straight:
-Hifi Rush was stated by MS itself to be an overperformance, and a great success. Makes it burn so much more how they come out to beat on drums of how proud they are, and then murder it. Its so insanely unfair when put beside Starfield...
-Austin Arkane was already dead. Opposed to the 1st point, there was already barely a thread of hope left for them. The horrible direction and demand for Redfall created a company exodus, and they weren't even shy that 70% of the sort of people that worked with Prey, and came eager to join the oddball team that played a huge role in the great Dishonored 1, quit and left at the very stupid demands around Redfall. All MS did here was confirm what I feared: Its dead, goodbye. Arkane is still actually alive from their very start in the french studio, but this is more likely for budget reasons (cheaper production) than talent, as they've been the guys slowly dragging down Dishonored's quality and have last done the very mixed Deathloop. I respect their effort, but I don't have the highest hopes for them, especially since they started Austin out of a desire to expand and work with more diverse help and talent that helped make something as great as the 1st Dishonored. They got divided and now essentially handicapped.
Not defending Microsoft, shutting down Tango especially was bad. However, Redfall was almost certainly greenlit by Bethesda before the acquisition. They had a CG trailer ready for their June showcase mere months after the buyout, one that likely was planned for a Bethesda show before the acquisition went through.
Don't make excuses for Phil Spencer, Arlo. Anyone willing to tank teams for their own greed is heinous and evil. Don't let him adopt the "can do no wrong" the fact that nothing changes is people making excuses for CEOs shitty behavior. If we want progress at all, it's on us. Because they won't change
Im so sad about tango, evil within is really good but hi-fi rush is my favorite game in years and i was so excited to see more from tango but nooo fuck the studio that made a unique, fun, goofy game with great art direction apparently. Screw off microsoft
And no less than 10 hours ago, they finally "matketed" Hellblade 2 with a tweet. What a time to do that huh.
With that and it being on Gamepass day 2 I foresee this game bombing and Ninja Theory being next
Closing businesses is how corpos avoid paying the cost of bad mistakes.
Microsoft has way too much money to be shutting down studios!
switch 2 mention by nintendo is arlo video material
This has been Microsoft's MO forever. They buy up small and medium size studios to try and pump up their exclusive library, let them make a single game, and then close them. You can't name a single studio that has survived to release a 2nd title after the early 90's.
Sony: Damn, everyone hates us because of the Hell Divers 2 fiasco.
Microsoft: You think you're hated? Watch this
Welp, this is definitely going on Josh’s list.
I have my own list? 😋
@@xeveemon He probably means the FireyJoker who does top 10 gaming industry fails of the year at the start of each year.
@@LuckyTheReviewer Darn!!! I thought I could finally have my very own list……I’ll go wait in the corner for someone to one day notice and listen to me enough for me to get my own list……….😔
@@LuckyTheRevieweryes, that is what I’m referring to.
Dev team makes fantastic game(s) and outstanding artistic achievements.
"SHUT THEM DOWN!!!"
Dev team makes the single worst chat/meeting app of all time (MS Teams).
"Let's keep them a little longer, eventually they will fix all the issues teehee"
Loving the new channel topic arlo, loving the bonus content
*coming from Fukuwara’s announcement* I wonder if the video will be on Topic or the main channel-oh man, that was today too? Big news day
Completely unrelated:
You’ve got to play Hollow Knight before Silk Song comes out because EVERYONE will appreciate your take on Silk Song.
Ngl, i fell into the deep nest or whatever its called early, and stopped playing entirely because getting out was so frustrating.
@@mystraunt2705 oh wow. I would have done the same thing, hahaha. That’s best explored mid-to-late game, for sure.
@@mystraunt2705 Deepnest isn't too large, as long as you can find an exit, do it, there is so much game ahead that you'd lose the chance to give a try!
@@mystraunt2705 give it another try man. Look up a map of deepnest and get the heck out of there. Go to the right of the mushroom area next time rather than the left (remember the mantis boss is optional). The game starts to really get good right after the mushroom area, so I'm sure you won't regret giving it another try! I'm rooting for you.
So in other words, he can play it anytime at his leisure.
Sony and Microsoft sucks. Nintendo is where it's at and I wish SEGA would make a comeback.
There are two kinds of capitalists. Both are always vying for a larger piece of the pie chart, but one knows to make the overall pie keep growing larger while the other keeps doing whatever they want regardless of whether they improve the market or not .
Some clarifications on Arkane and Redfall. Redfall was in development well before the Bethesda buyout. It was a project spearheaded by the leads at Arkane Austin. The development was tumultuous the entire time as the leads were sure that live service was a good bet but none of their talent had experience making an online coop game and the leads were wishy washy on direction. MOST of the talent left DURING development (so I mean the original team was gone well before the closure) and work got more and more stressful for those that remained as they pushed for release. Now that doesn't absolve Phil and Microsoft. Their hands of direction absolutely failed saving the project, with Phil reportedly having tested the game and seeing nothing wrong with it.
As another note, Arkane Austin isn't the primary Dishonored devs, they are a side studio that mostly did support for the main studio in Lyon up until Prey (2016) started development. Of course Prey was an absolute masterpiece so it's a shame we only got to see one true immersive first person adventure from them before the directors squandered all their talent and shot themselves in the foot.