Trying to Make Sense of the Xbox Studio Closures - Unlocked 644
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- Опубликовано: 7 май 2024
- Another devastating wave of Xbox layoffs results in the closure of three Bethesda studios, including the makers of last year's shadow-dropped hit Hi-Fi Rush and the decorated developers of Prey. We do our best to make sense of the move from Microsoft, a company that has spent the better part of the past decade trying to add talent and get more exclusive games on its platforms.
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Wasn’t the whole reason hifi rush was put on ps5 to increase reach and drive a sequel? 6 weeks later they close the studio … what the heck?
Thought so too, clearly it was just it didn’t make the money they wanted so get it on PS to make that money..
Nothing but lies
@@CharlieHammondx damn they couldn't give it more than 6 weeks?
tech companies don't know what thery are doing.
That was all just your assumption. The decision to cut had probably already been made and they weighed the cost of releasing a port that was already far along in development for PS5 and decided to release that first then shut down the studio so that partial development investment won't go to waste. Sad.
Any time you need to understand why a decision like this was made by a corporate entity, it's almost always financial
Starting to think that the FTC may have been right
We all told you they were back then but you people were too wrapped up in blindly cheerleading the acquisition into completion.
FTC was wrong. Microsoft Xbox is doing great.
@@504Treykeep deluding yourself
@@504Treythat why they close 4 of their studio… so much winning 😂
@@Hmonks
They closed 3 studios & merged the other studio in with other parts of Bethesda studios to work on bigger titles.. they would be losing if they kept them other 3 studios around when they aren't making any profit for the business 👌🏾💀
Ryan should rename this podcast to Rakes Unlocked or
Xbox Damage Control.
Ninja Theory is next... Hi-Fi Rush cost MS a fraction of what Senua's Sacrifice it's costing and it's gonna sell bad or poorly in the best case scenario.
Hi-Fi Rush was acclaimed for the press and players alike and yet means nothing to Phill and the corpos, Ninja Theory is next in line for the axe, and they know that.
You don't know what anything costs... Tango never made a hit game.
90s Microsoft is definitely back.
Ryan, you need to go hard on Phil on that interview.
He won’t
IGN would not allow him.
Nothing but softballs-dude is beta AF, makes Destin look like Malcom X lol. Actually Destin would a hundred times be better to handle that interview.
agreed.
He really should
“Prioritize key titles”. WHAT key titles? There isnt much there. MS has been shooting themselves in the foot for years now.
Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom 🤷
@@j_dun4830 elder scrolls is at least 5 years out from releasing. Fallout will be well after that.
Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and Minecraft. Those are the titles Sarah Bond mentioned during a recent interview
Anyway u slice it. Its a bad move tango is what really got me..
Tango never made a hit though...
Remember this when you cheer on Xbox buying more publishers.
💯 A literal $3,000,000,000,000 corporation that's more interested in pleasing their share holders NOW rather than putting in the work to assemble teams to make great games later.
@@mickael486shareholder value rests on the potential of the company. The hear and now is always a lower factor in the value.
@@Chidoro41 yes but the shareholders have been pushing for results for years.
How does one begin to explain WTH Phil is or has been doing... 🤷
@@mickael486 have been pushing for results into the darkness. LoL
You saw that..........
Microsoft is running things now. Phil is not in charge anymore. Microsoft has to please shareholders. Seventy billion buy out has changed things.
spend big boy money, get evaluated like a big boy
Totally. This reeks of senior Microsoft leadership involvement.
If true Phil should just resign 🤷🏻♂️
@@sandman8920…and have someone who is 100% corporate in his place? That would be worse
@@NoizeTank you can’t trust a word he says
Xbox as a brand might continue but the console itself is finished.
Ninja Theory, Double Fine and Machine Games must be sweating
Sweating buckets
Tomorrow you could get an email and everything you have created and worked on is now over and your fired no hand shake no thank you just an impersonal text saying goodbye
@@adamsenger4138 Same as getting fired on most jobs
Ninja Theory and Double fine for sure.
If Indie is a big hit, MG will be fine for a while longer.
At least Sony keeps their successes a float. Hell they've bankrolled Media Molecule for over decade while they messed around.
Double Fine for sure getting the axe
Gotta get their small market cap of 3 trillion dollars higher.
Shinji Mikami really dodged a bullet. He reportedly wanted to leave earlier than when he did. Then Xbox shuts down Tango.
Tango shutdown because he left and took people with him.
@@StephenYuanthat was proven to be completely false yesterday
@@StephenYuannot true. Google Shinji Mikami and read the interview he was in from 2 weeks ago. He wanted to leave Tango 8 years ago but stayed because he wanted to assist with the projects that were in production. He didn't take anyone with him. He left because of the Bethesda/Zenimax corporate environment.
Insert "This Is Fine" dog fire
Everthing is just great
We hoped MS acquired Activision to fix them. Turns out it was to make XBox become Activision.
Xbox wishes they can become Activision.......... Kotick deserves all the hate directed at him but he is the man who turned Activision into a powerhouse. Without him it's not going to take long for Activision to turn into a mess. Now watch Microsoft buying Activision become one of the biggest waste of money ever in human history.
Stalker 2 is a 3 month Xbox exclusive. Just a heads up in case your on PS5 and want it.
Going to grab on pc
I'm going to grab it when it comes out on PS5 after Phil shuts down the studio.
As someone who loves immersive sims like Dishonored (co-developed with Arkane Austin) and Prey 2017, horror games like The Evil Within 1/2, quirky, experimental games like Hi-Fi Rush, and was incredibly excited for a new Perfect Dark (probably going to get canceled at this point), Microsoft's really giving me little to no reason to care about what they have to offer -- which, FYI, isn't much these days.
What happened to Xbox? It used to be great in the xbox 360 era, after that it has been going down hill
At this point it looks like MS is buying the competition to snuff it out, not utilize it. What a joke
Such a shame as the OG Xbox was awesome then most of the 360 was also but after that it’s just been downhill.
It’s like WCW vs WWF all over again
Exactly 💯
So many people said that was their goal
Microsoft want the IPs. They don’t care about the developers
1:19:24 come on Ryan, it is painful to see you defending him, at least the others seem to be waking up from the Kool aid induced psychosis... #firephilspencer
Lots of places refusing to blame phil incase they lose interviews and such.. no point to listening to any of these they dont wanna upset their sugar daddy phil
@@Smallville619 you might be right... Or him, "pray for Phil"... #firephilspencer
Phill Spencer is horrible at his job 🤦🏽♂️
Phil Spencer is another Don Mattrick but Xbots aren't ready to admit that.
@@PSYCHOV3N0M got some bad news, everyone who runs xbox will be a Don Mattrick. At the end of the day this is Microsoft.
Lets see if this dude gives actual interview questions or softballs
Softballs 100% he can jump on sony any day.. but moment xbox does something wrong hell clamp up reallll hard
No offense but look at him dawg, listen to the way he speaks even though xbox has been letting him down for years. 1000% softballs. Thats why they dont have dustin going up there.
It's time for Phil to fall on his sword. His tenure has been a disaster.
But he wore a cool battletoads t shirt at a xbox event 4 years ago 😩.
What does Phil have to do with studios at Bethesda making lackluster games?
@@Mathieuaccbecause Xbox owns them lmao
@@superbadisfunmy and Phil was there for less then 5% of these studio's existence. He didn't hire staff, didn't warrant projects, didn't set objectives. Culture is Bethesda, not Xbox.
@@Mathieuaccso what is his fault?
The thing is how does a game make money when you don’t have to buy it, game pass is amazing as a deal but it does not help developers in anyway, hi-fi rush is a prime example of this
And the fact they were down without Activision Blizzard. That was Xboxs thing before they acquired them, GAMEPASS. As the numbers show ITS NOT SUSTAINABLE. WHO KNEW 🙄smh
They’re trying to draw in people to their console ecosystem or a subscription service on pc/cloud. Imo , inflation and remote work has bloated dev time & doubled costs. What was once a viable strategy is now sent to the guillotine.
He didnt even mention Hellblade 2 in the memo, which comes out in a week 😂😂😂
So Redfall was 2 or 3 weeks away from an update that would have introduced an offline mode. Please Phil, tell me more about your commitment for Redfall. It isn't even the end of the quarter.
Also makes me think about the future proof preservation effort we've heard about not too long ago...
Xbox, there's no way outta this one....... You're done
What happened to Ryan wishing for Xbox to buy Capcom for their next acquisition or any other company? Doesn’t seem like they can hold onto their current acquisitions 🤔
SONY WILL BUY CAPCOM
Go figure, opinions can change as situations develop. Wow!
Wow. It so happens opinions do change, proud you recognize bud! After when Xbox lays off thousands of people and shutting down acquisitions after buying a company for 70 billion. Who knew! Should have bought up more companies eh?
@Baker6992000 Exactly, the two go hand in hand, mate.
Thankfully the acquisition talk should stop within the Xbox fandom.
Hey Ryan, it's been coined as 'Rake Stepping'. You can thank Eliot & Ricky from @Internet Today for that.
Publishers will learn the hard way:
"50% of something is better than 100% of nothing."
We're definitely overdue for a big gaming industry CRASH. 😬
Following this developers are going to refuse to work for xbox, can't see how xbox can survive.
This puts a big dent on Xbox because Xbox could promise a lot to the developers they are trying to buy but the developer would decline because of their recent closures and head with Nintendo or PlayStation or steam wich ever fits them in depending on developer
I’m betting they are reallocating resources to Gears, Halo, Skyrim and Fallout. These should be their bread and butter and be MASSIVE. Make sure these get launched flawlessly with extra features and next gen console abilities.
MS has 100 billions to buy studios but no knowledge or money to manage them. Since 10 years of course.
It's like giving a kid a million dollars to run a toy company lol
Companies don’t tend to acquire studios like that if they weren’t struggling in some way to begin with. It just didn’t go the way they though. But also to some degree part of this may have been about removing competition not improving quality right? Why fix what is broken if you can buy and close potential competition? That’s the corporate model and it’s cheaper to hostile takeover
@@jessmelgar219 MS already admitted that they bought these studios because they had exclusive deals with Sony in the past and feared that there will be more deals. So these deals were their death sentence by MS basically. MS destroys what they can't own.
MS is doing great & u just don't understand business because u can only see from a consumer point of view..
@@504Trey ms is doing great. Not Xbox.
Phil can go ask Don Mattrick for a job, like old times. 😂
Very naive for Ryan to think Sony has nothing coming later this year. The PS5 Pro is coming out this year and their First party studios delayed games last year so as to showcase it with the PS5 Pro.
Ninja Theory is next. Notice Microsoft is not advertising Hellblade 2 at all. Would not surprise me if
they shut them down soon after the release.
Ninja Theory is my favorite...I wish they'd gone to Sony....they're the ones that love story driven games.
Wasn't there an Evil Within 3 teaser in Hi-Fi Rush? TF?
We need to go back to ps2 era and just make small budget games and see what sticks. If they hit, cool, if not oh well, didn't spend that much, let's try again because it wasn't that expensive.
You waste $70b on the McDonald's, Coco Cola, Marvel like game studio, this is the outcome..
Their next rake: when they announce the next COD won’t launch into gamepass.
Next rake is MS sacking Ninja Theory after Hellblade 2 sells horribly.
Next rake is Phil announcing they cancelled all future fallout, elder scrolls and COD titles to concentrate on a new exciting IP made by the newly acquired studio no one's ever heard of.
If it launched on gamepass they are throwing away millions😂
It’s time that we start talking about how Phil Spencer might need to be fired
After closing Tango not one more dollar of mine is going to Xbox. I’m out after it being my main console.
Playstations off year so far.
Helldivers 2
Rebirth
Ronin
Stellar Blade
Pacific Drive.
All really great games
Gran blue fantasy relink
Xbox played it safe with starfield and it was a crappie game yet when a game takes chances like hi-fi rush and its a fantastic game they closed their studio... wtf
Neither games was made by Xbox. They were develop long before Microsoft acquire them.
@startraffick both games where released by Xbox. It's there studios. You can spin your fan boy ways but closing these studios so the shareholders and bosses make more money that's it.
The game is far from crappy, still play till this day, great game that runs on old tech.
@RedMisfit then you must love all the Bethesda bugs and Jang that comes with it. There's nothing to do. Unless you like building ships
@@djew67 plenty to do. It’s literally no different from playing fallout, elder scrolls or any other BGS game. Lots of quests with numerous locations to explore, loot, and discover embedded stories. It’s a Bethesda game at the end of the day.
Shinji recently explained in an interview why he left Tango. Just google his name and read the various articles that covered it. IGN should know better than to voice theories when the info is readily available. 🤦
Shocked to see Destin not making defensive excuses
They need to clean house on all Xbox Top positions they have been terrible
Let Xbox CFO Tim Stewart run it and make it worse. Satya and Amy Hood are calling the shots. They want studios that make money.
Hey guys, did you forget about wolfenstein young blood? They missed big time with that one
So these studios were purchased to build Game Pass then closed because they didnt sell enough. This is going to end well.
These are small studios..
@@startraffick Tango Game works was Microsoft’s only Japanese first party Studio also that happened to give them one of their only critical hits last year. So that’s them done in Japan.
So Ninja Theory should close after Hellblade that’s a small studio.
Step 1...Start a subscription game service.
Step 2...Put all your first party games on it to encourage gamers to subscribe.
Step 3...Close the studios because gamers played the game on your subscription service instead of buying it.
Age of the indies.
ABK was the biggest monkeys paw
Would be far more interesting to have Destin interview Phil.
You know what? Hellblade 2 is releasing this May and you know what's coming to Ninja Theory they will be next in the chopping block!
Not sure why everyone conflate the successes of an Office, cloud, and AI predominant company with money that can just flow into all of the other divisions of the company. Just because those 3 drivers make a ton of profit doesn't mean that every underperforming division gets a pass.
Welcome to the second Gilged Age everyone, the rich get richer, and it gets harder to make them richer.
ope, just got my first hellblade commercial here during this video!
If you have a lemonade stand in your neighborhood selling lemonade & another neighbor selling cookies & another neighbor selling Chocolate 3 different stands with different different Merchandise, 5 days passed & you only had 3 customers throughout those days bought your lemonade, 10 customers throughout the same 5 days bought Cookies & 50 customers throughout the same given days bought Chocolate. What do you do? Do you still try to produce lemonade? Do you still try to bake cookies? Or do you invest & contribute towards the Chocolate stand? The choice is yours. Everyday in life we are bound to make decisions & choices.
This is the longest and most confusing analogy ever.
@@stinkyham9050 😂😂😂 how
Double Fine and Ninja Theory are next
Yup, snipers are already taking rooftop positions for that HB2 May 21st launch as we speak.
The Initiative too
@@captaincrunch1707 Nah. Like 343 that was created by the execs so their ego won;t let them go under.
This all boils down to optimal shareholder value, expanding market share, & copyright laws. Until all those elements are revolutionized or eliminated entirely, nothing will fundamentally change. Soon enough, every publisher will consolidate all their studios into one big entity to work on the likes of ESO, WoW, COD/Warzone, or mobile games, maximizing MTX output, retention rates, and corporate profit margins. The games industry is being bastardized for a casino, and every industry is likewise suffering under the shareholder economy at an accelerated rate.
Why and how are Microsoft are even still in gaming?
What are the reasons for this. My guesses include
$80billion + spent in gaming division and there needs to be quick return in terms of both revenue and PROFIT.
Gamepass seems to be only generating revenue and NO PROFIT. This is due to there not being enough subscriptions and the number is not increasing fast enough.
They keep on losing launch window money on all of their releases because gamepass subscriptions are supposed to make up the income for giving the games for basically free and they are not.
Why are the subscriptions not increasing? Because they don't seem to have enough BIG games to keep people subscribed for longer than the month a new big game is released.
Plus their console is not selling well and when it sells it does it at a loss too probably.
Firstly, that;s almost 22 Billion profit this QUARTER, but hey, Redfall was a stone cold dud. Shut the game down, but let Arkane Lyon make the games they wanted to, like a sequel to Prey. But closing Tango makes no sense whatsoever at all......
That video of Sarah bond doing the rounds being asked about tango closer and she hasn't a clue lol gives a corporate dodging answer meaningless garbage
Xbox is the DC universe movies of the gaming world
the Yamcha of gaming.
Since the ABK deal,Microsoft sees how much money u can bring in,with that said,if any studio isn't doing gangbusters, closed. So just be prepared for Ninja Theory will be next,if Hellblade 2 doesn't do gangbusters. And High scores don't mean money,so HiFi could of been the best game ever made,it doesn't matter if its not making money.
Damn full course meal right here. All the xbox d riders are assembled. Wasn't gamepass so successful that it doesn't affect devs? Wasn't papa Phil supposed to be the savior of gaming? Huh? What happened?
I’ve supported Xbox for 20 years, and Phil Spencer since the day he got promoted to head of Xbox. That support ended yesterday. Phil Spencer needs to resign in shame for what he allowed to happen. A trillion dollar company that spent a hundred billion over the last few years acquiring studios and pays its executives hundreds of millions ANNUALLY has no reason to close 4 studios. This industry needs unions and sweeping legislation/regulation to protect workers, so don’t forget to vote this fall. One party wants to give tax cuts to billionaires and trillion dollar corporations, and the other wants to restore a balance of power to the workers. Choose workers!
LOVE this comment, except the duopoly point at the ends. Dems fail unions as much as Republicans, just ask the railroad workers. Dems only show surface level support to unions but pass nothing to bolster union rights or coop union leaders. IMO, people should focus on unionizing their workplace instead of supporting corrupt political parties and leaders.
Yes bunch of greedy people to put it politely. I’d argue everything they have got their hands on over the years they have ruined. Fable,halo gears of war and probably worst of all rare!
Right , the party whose cities are overrun with crime. People are fleeing Democrat run cities/states for red areas. No doubt Republicans have their share of problems but at least they try to incarcerate carjacking, muggers & thieves.
That’s one way to get a stranglehold on the market. Buy every studio and close them one by one. ‘All your base are belong to us’ eh Microsoft?
EA did that already.... there used to be so many great studios. And other big publishers have also done that.
I'm getting Scalebound feelings!
AAA games will remain too expensive to develop and boring to play, nothing new. Would love to see heavily capitalized studios only fund smaller projects initiated by their creative employees. Hi Fi seemed like that. Japanese studios seem like they more frequently fund medium budget games eith stylized graphics, simple animation, limited voice acting, etc. And you get more varied experiences from that industry tbh.
When Microsoft bought all these studios, interest rates were near zero and inflation was rising. That means any cash on their balance sheet was losing value. Now interest rates are at 5% and inflation had gone down. That means they could have made millions just by holding treasuries and not buying these studios. So there's just a lot of macro-economic factors playing out.
Microsoft has done absolutely nothing for Hellblade 2. Sony would hype that game up so much but MS has treated it like an afterthought. It’s frustrating to see a company so lost and incompetent. The developers are suffering as a result
Game pass was a mistake. Should’ve focused time and money into actually making games
Why do people keep saying this? Game pass is clearly working for Microsoft.
@@ProtossHyrdalisk for MS specifically as a company, yea probably. But for all of these other studios etc, evidently not.
@@CharlieHammondx3 trillion dollar evaluation does not suggest they’re losing money at all.
Yes, the shot themselves in the foot, and the worst thing is they can't take it back now. Game pass' fate is now tied to the xbox console. They will sink together sooner or later.
Tell Sony to put their money into making games as well instead of trying to buy Paramount.. Playstation is looking pretty dry for a while
The statement has me wondering what would happen for game turn around times if every studio in the company worked on one property at a time? Could a six year development get cut down to one?
We're cooked
Hold him accountable in that interview and don’t hold back. We know he can take it after Kinda Funny
The overhyping of Hifi rush is jarring, it wasn't a top teir game
The beginning just feels like a eulogy
Priority games = gears, halo, fallout, doom, minecraft, sea of theives, call of duty, shareholders pockets
We’d love to see Miranda back on this show!
DAMN IT. We need Miranda back on the podcast, especially during these moments!!!
it's official. Microsoft is the greediest, most creatively bankrupt corporation to ever enter the gaming community.
If any other company failed half as much as Microsoft has, they would have left the gaming business years ago.
Exactly, they are only survived because of a rich parent.
They might be true if PlayStation wasn't around but let's not forget that they bought pretty much every studio that they now own and not that long ago that has several big studio closures and layoffs at the end of the day they're all companies trying to make money
and they performed a fusion dance with several more creatively bankrupt companies.
Xbox is not the problem Microsoft is.
@@startraffick...? What's the difference?
Quit absolving Phil Spencer of this. You guys are embarassing.
WTF was that sound at 1:20:00 ish from Destin's phone.
starting @1:19:55 is somebody crying in the background?
Hi Everyone !
Hi!
bye
I'll be Watching the new "Planet Of Apes" this Friday with my wife & kids looking forward to that 😊
Axing staff and studios on the back of a 20% profit result is disgusting ... what % would they be happy with??!!
Toys for Bob must be relieved now they've gone independent
There is no legitimate reason to close Arkane Austin or Tango, they should be working on a new single player immersive sim and a new Evil Within even if they were to be multiplatform games
They want more fallout that’s what this is about
Toys for bob smart they move away
With these studios and Toys for Bob going indie this is ridiculous
Next week on Xbox, more studios to shut down and rumours of a Game-pass price increases
Would have loved to hear more personal input and reflection on these decisions. IGN went through multiple rounds of layoffs not too recently, structure felt unprepared and conversation felt lacking. A lot of the humanity was missing from this, for me. Really disappointed in this episode as a long time fan. Felt Kinda Funny really nailed it and the situation's nuance in their conversation, didn't love this. Excited to tune in next week, but this week felt like a swing and a miss for me.
You have to remember the PS5 has more consoles in the market which is why the PS5 is usually the lead platform for developers. This is more than likely the reason the PS5 outperforms the Xbox series X.
Phil needs to resign.
Step down.
It's been long due.
The problem is that there no one at Microsoft capable enough to run Xbox division.
NO ONE !
Is this a podcast or a monologue from the presenter. He goes on and on
What's the point of tuning in to a damage control interview?
To listen to Spencer gaslight everyone again?!?😅
Think I'll spend that time cancelling gamepass instead 👋🏻