Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks shut down by Microsoft

[Hell Swarm]

Microsoft's CEO [Nadella] wanted to shut the Xbox division down in 2014. If things don't work out I can see Microsoft pulling the plug on Xbox completely. Xbox is just another tech division to Microsoft.
If I am right, Xbox has a showcase in early June. It's gonna be interesting to see how they are going to present their future plans in a way that inspires confidence in the Xbox brand.
Already seeing people saying that they are done with Xbox, cancelling Game Pass, etc in response to these closures. That now deleted Sarah Bond tweet will have undoubtedly also done more damage.

Phil's next genius plan to save his job is turning Xbox into a handheld/hybrid type of thing. I don't know. Maybe Nadella will eventually run out of patience with Xbox.

I'm of the view that all this is all a form of managed decline hence why Spencer still has a job. I don't think Microsoft entered this generation with the intention of winning the console battle. Main goal was getting into a position where MS could acquire Activision Blizzard.

You're retarded, even by 911 Jumper standards.

Microsoft weren't interested in winning a console war because they wanted to be the new Netflix. They thought Game pass would be extremely profitable and they could corner the market before any one else did. Eventually rolling out cloud gaming to turn every device with internet access into an Xbox console. It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable and now they're having to restructure around it. They've said as much in interviews over the last 6 months. So these studio closes are likely because they didn't get enough game pass subscribers/people playing them and didn't sell enough copies off of game pass mixed with an extremely bloated industry facing problems. Remember entertainment is one of the few industries that do well in a recession. Game pass should in theory be a home run for people looking to save money on entertainment. Get it and you get 3 new games every week or 2. It's a great deal if you look at it that way. But it's leaving so much money on the table that it's choking MS's studios out of existence. Niche products are the first to be cut and as much as people are crying over Arkane and Tango.. Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke) and Evil within (shit the bed twice) deserve to be making high budget games any more?

 

[Tehdagah]

Microsoft's CEO [Nadella] wanted to shut the Xbox division down in 2014. If things don't work out I can see Microsoft pulling the plug on Xbox completely. Xbox is just another tech division to Microsoft.
If I am right, Xbox has a showcase in early June. It's gonna be interesting to see how they are going to present their future plans in a way that inspires confidence in the Xbox brand.
Already seeing people saying that they are done with Xbox, cancelling Game Pass, etc in response to these closures. That now deleted Sarah Bond tweet will have undoubtedly also done more damage.

Phil's next genius plan to save his job is turning Xbox into a handheld/hybrid type of thing. I don't know. Maybe Nadella will eventually run out of patience with Xbox.

I'm of the view that all this is all a form of managed decline hence why Spencer still has a job. I don't think Microsoft entered this generation with the intention of winning the console battle. Main goal was getting into a position where MS could acquire Activision Blizzard.

You're retarded, even by 911 Jumper standards.

Microsoft weren't interested in winning a console war because they wanted to be the new Netflix. They thought Game pass would be extremely profitable and they could corner the market before any one else did. Eventually rolling out cloud gaming to turn every device with internet access into an Xbox console. It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable and now they're having to restructure around it. They've said as much in interviews over the last 6 months. So these studio closes are likely because they didn't get enough game pass subscribers/people playing them and didn't sell enough copies off of game pass mixed with an extremely bloated industry facing problems. Remember entertainment is one of the few industries that do well in a recession. Game pass should in theory be a home run for people looking to save money on entertainment. Get it and you get 3 new games every week or 2. It's a great deal if you look at it that way. But it's leaving so much money on the table that it's choking MS's studios out of existence. Niche products are the first to be cut and as much as people are crying over Arkane and Tango.. Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke) and Evil within (shit the bed twice) deserve to be making high budget games any more?

"It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable"

Which is really sad because it's great for consumers, especially the ones who live in third-world countries where the price of a new game is 1/5 of a minimum wage.

 

[Don Peste]

Aces Game Studio — Microsoft Flight Simulator series — Closed

BigPark — Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Sports: Season Two, Joy Ride Turbo — Consolidated

Carbonated Games — Closed

Digital Anvil — Brute Force, Freelancer — Consolidated

Ensemble Studios — Age of Empires series, Age of Mythology series, Halo Wars — Closed

FASA Studio — MechWarrior series, Shadowrun, Crimson Skies series — Closed

Good Science Studio — Kinect Adventures, Kinect Fun Labs, Kinect Star Wars — Consolidated

Hired Gun — Halo 2 PC port — Consolidated

Lionhead Studios — Fable series, Black & White series — Closed

Microsoft Studios Japan — Phantom Dust — Closed

Microsoft Studios Victoria — Closed

Press Play — Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, Kalimba — Closed

Team Dakota — Project Spark — Consolidated

Xbox Entertainment Studios — Closed

Xbox Live Productions — Consolidated

 

[DemonKing]

Tango's closure is probably the most surprising as while none of its releases were stellar, they were all at least competent. No issues with the Redfall developers closing as the metrics on that must have been truly terrible, although it's probably not entirely the devs fault it was shoved out the door early.

Gamepass not working out is a shame as it's very consumer friendly (although of course most subscription services start off that way...).

 

[ferratilis]

This is the guy who, just a few weeks ago, said that gamers should pay tips to developers on top of paying full price for the games. He's a moron, through and through.

 

[Elttharion]

Do we have a betting thread about which studio ends up in shallow grave first; Obsidian or InXile?

Spoiler

My hunch is InXile.

Ninja Theory will probably close when Hellblade 2 underperforms. The Initiative is developing Perfect Dark but that game is in dev hell so they are also probably in the cutting block. Compulsion is developing a DEI/SBI infested game that will probably flop:

Spoiler

Rare has Sea of Thieves but their other projects are also in dev hell. MachineGames and Double Fine are also probably in their crosshairs.

Well, it's over. The Evil Within 3 will never happen.

Even if it did happen, it would be shit. Mikami left last year and took some of the developers with him. Now he has a new studio, so I guess you should look forward to whatever he's working on. He must've sensed something like this would happen, which is probably why he left.

Mikami was real hands on only with EW1.

Tango getting cut is brutal, didn't really expect it given how Hi-Fi Rush got universal praise and considering the studio wasn't even that large. I would have expected 343 to get the axe first, not fucking Tango.
Buying a bunch of studios only to then shut them down after one release is really just peak Microsoft.

My hypothesis: Zenimax maybe not been doing well enough on hitting corporate metrics to justify the acquisition price. Wouldn't even be surprised if also because Starfield was a disappointment. Tango was unfortunately part of this corporate group, so when the message gets sent that Zenimax has to get shit in order, Tango doesn't really fit the picture. Even if Tango can do 3xROI on their projects, it isn't worth in terms of volume against potential Bethesda project that does 2xROI but 5x the volume for a company like MS. So basically purely a victim of being acquired as part of Zenimax.

The Fallout show was insanely popular and MS mostly failed to capitalize on the opportunity. Its pretty easy to see that some execs looked at Zenimax and realized it would be much more profitable to close the other studios and focus on their big properties. Imagine if they had a Fallout 5 or even a new major DLC for Fallout 4 to tie in the games and the show. Instead they had 4 studios faffing about with underperfoming games. They probably decided that the zenimax budget was wasted on these games and with the same amount of money they could pump out sequels to blockbuster AAA games. Its a shame for Tango since they had a good-ish track record, I liked all their games. Otoh cant fault them for putting Arkane out of its misery. Of course I am talking purely from a business point of view, IMO Bethesda's Fallout is a dumpsterfire and Starfield was a terrible game so I have zero faith they could develop something worth playing.

 

[911 Jumper]

I'm of the view that all this is all a form of managed decline hence why Spencer still has a job. I don't think Microsoft entered this generation with the intention of winning the console battle. Main goal was getting into a position where MS could acquire Activision Blizzard.

You're retarded, even by 911 Jumper standards.

Microsoft weren't interested in winning a console war because they wanted to be the new Netflix. They thought Game pass would be extremely profitable and they could corner the market before any one else did. Eventually rolling out cloud gaming to turn every device with internet access into an Xbox console. It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable and now they're having to restructure around it. They've said as much in interviews over the last 6 months. So these studio closes are likely because they didn't get enough game pass subscribers/people playing them and didn't sell enough copies off of game pass mixed with an extremely bloated industry facing problems. Remember entertainment is one of the few industries that do well in a recession. Game pass should in theory be a home run for people looking to save money on entertainment. Get it and you get 3 new games every week or 2. It's a great deal if you look at it that way. But it's leaving so much money on the table that it's choking MS's studios out of existence. Niche products are the first to be cut and as much as people are crying over Arkane and Tango.. Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke) and Evil within (shit the bed twice) deserve to be making high budget games any more?

I don't know why you're calling me retarded. Your post doesn't reject what I said. Expanding Game Pass and turning every capable device into an “Xbox” via XCloud inevitably diminishes the value of the Xbox console itself since it [the Xbox console] is no longer the only way to access the Xbox ecosystem to play Xbox games. There was never going to be a scenario where the Xbox console dominates the console space while millions of compatible non-Xbox devices are turned into Xboxes. The decline of the Xbox console platform is an unavoidable part of Xbox's Game Pass / XCloud / “every capable device is an Xbox” strategy, which Microsoft, it appears, is happy to accept. That's why I called it managed decline.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke)

I had to look these studios up when I heard about this, and ran across Redfall. Wow. There's some heavy box checking going on with that.

I would have to assume that MicroSoft is lighting a fire under Bethesda in light of that story a few days ago about MicroSoft wanting them to make Fallout 5 in light of the popularity of the TV show.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The Fallout show was insanely popular and MS mostly failed to capitalize on the opportunity. Its pretty easy to see that some execs looked at Zenimax and realized it would be much more profitable to close the other studios and focus on their big properties. Imagine if they had a Fallout 5 or even a new major DLC for Fallout 4 to tie in the games and the show.

They should have done a 76 tie in event. MMOs generally do well off these sort of things and are easy to tie into the monthly content update. I think everyone expected Fallout to bomb like Halo did.

Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke)

I had to look these studios up when I heard about this, and ran across Redfall. Wow. There's some heavy box checking going on with that.

I would have to assume that MicroSoft is lighting a fire under Bethesda in light of that story a few days ago about MicroSoft wanting them to make Fallout 5 in light of the popularity of the TV show.

Redfall didn't just tick boxes it tried to offend people. You free up a fire station to use as your hub and the leader there is a female priest covered in tattoos and piercings. She even has the side shave if I recall. It's a direct "Hey Boomer, this is what religion looks like now" style slap to the face. And the couple running the gun shop are pregnant and she's totally the hard working one. It was pozzed all the way down. I tried to play it because the opening is pretty cool but it's too bad to even enjoy the jank. It didn't need extra time, it needed the studio to die in a fire.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Arkane Austin Was Working on a Big Redfall Update for May Before Microsoft Ditched the Game and Closed the Studio

https://www.ign.com/articles/arkane-austin-redfall-update-closure-xbox

...game director Harvey Smith said: “We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into — I'm not supposed to promise anything — but we're looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”

However, the offline mode failed to materialize. IGN understands Redfall’s May update would have added the ability to play offline, which in turn would have helped with keeping the game alive in the future. Unfortunately for players, it will never see the light of day.

Redfall is one of the highest-profile disasters in Xbox history. The game was widely panned by critics and players at launch and reportedly had a deeply troubled development.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Ex-Blizzard boss says Phil Spencer will be ‘hurting as much as anyone else’ over Xbox studio closures
Mike Ybarra launches defence of former colleague as Xbox faces wave of criticism

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...uch-as-anyone-else-over-xbox-studio-closures/

Former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra has claimed that Xbox head Phil Spencer will be hurting “as much as anyone else” following the closure of four first-party studios.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Tango's closure is probably the most surprising as while none of its releases were stellar, they were all at least competent. No issues with the Redfall developers closing as the metrics on that must have been truly terrible, although it's probably not entirely the devs fault it was shoved out the door early.

Gamepass not working out is a shame as it's very consumer friendly (although of course most subscription services start off that way...).

It’s not exactly all that surprising. Tango Gameworks whole thing was being Shinji Mikami‘s studio, and Shinji Mikami left around the start of last year.

Hi-Fi Rush was popular online, but the last numbers they gave of it were 3 million players, (some kind of combination of sales and people playing on Game Pass) so I’m not exactly sure how much of a hit it was despite word being they were happy with how it was doing at the start. Like if that 3 million was just Game Pass players, that’d mean around only eight to nine percent of Game Pass member played the game on there. When 34 million people have the ability to download something with no other fee other than the subscription they’re already paying, they may have been expecting more people to play the thing.

Hi-Fi Rush was also a smaller budget title, with a fairly small team. If that’s the direction Tango was going to go, it probably wouldn’t have been sustainable for the studio at the size it was. I am a bit surprised they didn’t trim the studio down, refocus them to doing multiple smaller project. But it’s not much of a surprise to see them go now that Shinji Mikami is gone. And with Shinji Mikami starting a new studio, I wonder if Tango had lost some people ahead of them announcement. It does look like the writer and director of Ghostwire: Tokyo had already left since he’s got a credit on Tekken 8...was surprised to see he worked on a bunch of AKI wrestling games.

It is kind of funny to see people pretending to give a shit that Arkane Austin is getting closed

 

[Azdul]

I'm of the view that all this is all a form of managed decline hence why Spencer still has a job. I don't think Microsoft entered this generation with the intention of winning the console battle. Main goal was getting into a position where MS could acquire Activision Blizzard.

You're retarded, even by 911 Jumper standards.

Microsoft weren't interested in winning a console war because they wanted to be the new Netflix. They thought Game pass would be extremely profitable and they could corner the market before any one else did. Eventually rolling out cloud gaming to turn every device with internet access into an Xbox console. It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable and now they're having to restructure around it. They've said as much in interviews over the last 6 months. So these studio closes are likely because they didn't get enough game pass subscribers/people playing them and didn't sell enough copies off of game pass mixed with an extremely bloated industry facing problems. Remember entertainment is one of the few industries that do well in a recession. Game pass should in theory be a home run for people looking to save money on entertainment. Get it and you get 3 new games every week or 2. It's a great deal if you look at it that way. But it's leaving so much money on the table that it's choking MS's studios out of existence. Niche products are the first to be cut and as much as people are crying over Arkane and Tango.. Who the fuck actually thinks the devs behind Red fall (intentionally offensively woke) and Evil within (shit the bed twice) deserve to be making high budget games any more?

"It turns out paying the same cost as 1 new game for a years worth of new games isn't very profitable"

Which is really sad because it's great for consumers, especially the ones who live in third-world countries where the price of a new game is 1/5 of a minimum wage.

People in 3rd world countries get the games free on EGS, during Steam sales for 50c or - most likely - just pirate them.

GamePass is for parents in rich countries that do not know any better - and want to buy console 'with games included' for their kids. If Microsoft could get it bundled with cable TV, Internet service, staying in the specific hotel, Netflix or Amazon Prime - it could have succeeded.

It supposed to save money for Microsoft on marketing, If few millions of people have access to the game for no additional cost and they like it - it should generate buzz on social media about the game.

I've got free few months PC GamePass with new notebook - and I've never tried it. Large number of mods explicitely stated that they don't work with GamePass version - as DRM is insanely invasive. If it was a model like Amazon Prime - when you get DRM-free (GOG) games for subscribing - I would be tempted to at least give it a try.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I genuinely feel like Obsidian has like, 18 months to live at best so better hurry up with the Avowed developement like they used to.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Do we have a betting thread about which studio ends up in shallow grave first; Obsidian or InXile?

Before they're axing any of those outright, they're going to turn them into Bethsoft junior -- and make them develop Fallout franchise product for eternity.

In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process, much to the frustration of 'em. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter? If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

I think the last Dragon Age game is slated to come out later this year. I'll be very surprised if there's another.

 

[DeepOcean]

RIP Immersive sims. I knew it would end this way since the collapse of Eidos Montreal.

Now it will be mods, Thief missions or the once in a full moon good indie release. The immersive sim genre is in a worse state than cRPGs in the Xbox 360 era.

 

[lycanwarrior]

No comment lmao!

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

RIP Immersive sims

Well, Judas is still in development and I've seen few indie imsim being developed. Let's not too hurry to burry it just yet.

Also, not surprised by this shit at all, lmao. Thankfully Arcane Lyon is untouched? They really need to develop another Dishonored instead of Marvel slag which nobody are going to buy.

 

[Odoryuk]

Sony needs to buy FromSoftware before M$ gets their filthy hands on them. Say what you want about Songay but atleast they don't ruthlessly kill off their first party studios.

FS is stable enough to not be completelly bought by anyone. Getting sold to any major corporation, yet alone Western one, as Sony, is a death sentence for a good game developer.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I genuinely feel like Obsidian has like, 18 months to live at best so better hurry up with the Avowed developement like they used to.

There’s a huge difference between these two companies and Obsidian. Obsidian is a company Microsoft specifically went after. Arkane Austin and Tango Workshop are a couple companies that came with buying Bethesda.

That Grounded game Obsidian make also seems to have been a good size hit for them. 15 million player by December 2022. It doesn’t seem like either Arkane Austin (or Arkane at all) or Tango have had a hit of that size before.

I’d also guess that post Baldur's Gate 3 they put them to work on something in line with Baldur’s Gate 3.

 

[purupuru]

It seems to me now that Microsoft has lost all patience and just want big titles that are guaranteed to sell regardless of reviews (halo cod and tes). Obsidian is not doing too bad now but I wouldn't be surprised if they are next on the chopping block.

 

[Ol' Willy]

If the studio system is so awful, why do people not just form their own game development coops and produce quality content that they share all the profits of?

You can do this if you do an indie game. Styg, VD and Brian Lancaster can confirm.

But being indie limits the scope resource wise. You work with what you can handle, not more

So some devs chose to make the deal with the devil and subject to bigger dev firms and publishers to have more resources.

Those, in return, demand more goyslop in the coming game product

 

[Ol' Willy]

Because just like all CEOs, Aaron Greenberg is a professional liar.

Another slimy kike

 

[Zlaja]