That and their partially owned by Tencent, who they regularly go to for more money and investment.

People ignore all of that.

​@@jessep5280Tencent is a blessing for the gaming industry. They give you money and all they ask in return is a cut of the profits.

Irregardless, EVERY OTHER STUDIO with major publisher-backing them has this in many orders of magnitude GREATER than Larian did and yet they managed to put out last year’s GOTY. Am I saying they were completely unassisted? No, but hypothetically, everything they were able to accomplish as an INDEPENDENT studio should be JUST AS, IF NOT MORE FEASIBLE to pull off from studios under the umbrella of multi-billion-dollar publishers.

Crazy that people are okay with paid demos.

Yes, it’s a wasteland out there. It’s a relief to hear nonemotional journalism

I agree. There has been a lot of analysis based on emotion and not financial objectives. Nobody is asking the question if these studios had anything in the pipeline that was going to move the needle in any meaningful way.

It’s become easy engagement farming to punch down on Xbox at every mistake. Been this way for at least 3 years, but they are primarily responsible for handing these idiots ammo to continue doing it. lol even as a spectator I’ve seen social media make up confusion on Xbox messaging on several occasions. For example: they’ve stated 100 times that gamepass will have all of their first party games day and date. This particular topic was recycled by the media a few times with the narrative that Xbox marketing is confusing?? Then you have the 1000 fanboys specifically loving this and adding to the confusion, it’s been tiresome trying to flush out logical conversations in gaming and other media because drama is what brings in views.

On PlayStation you at least know that $150/year allows you to play the most recent COD online (game & PS+), but on Xbox this is apparently currently up for a debate, despite them having explicitly stated that ALL 1st party games would be available Day-1 on Game Pass!!!

Don't even know if Xbox knows what a good game is anymore. Look at the quality of their games you can see they're not spending enough on the budgets. Avowed gameplay killed my hype for it.

@@MrJayslayerjay well apparently they KNOW they don't want any Japanese devs content on Game Pass 😂 Telling a giant chunk of gaming community just go to Nintendo and PlayStation, don't bother here 😆 They have to do making these decisions without ANY consideration from PR/Marketing

until they go back paying $70 and realise Gamepass was better.

Sony is way worse when it comes to "sales" and the games they offer monthly. The game pass absolutely destroys the playstation and I say that as a playstation user. Switching now would be insanity.

Peter Moore was there at the start of the issues Xbox is now having. Peter made the decision to go for the big blockbuster games and drop the IP that weren't huge sellers, games like MechAssault, Crimson Skies, Perfect Dark, Kameo, and MS chased that mindset ever since. Don Mattrick then finished the job, and Phil picked up the crumbling ruins, but still ignored it's old IP that made it great. Instead chasing acquisitions of big IP.

Tough decisions they didn't have to make.. trying to compete with Sony has killed them.

Xbox has sucked so hard for 10 years bro

My goodness, when will the excuses stop ?

@@trex7115never because Phil is the savior and can talk from both sides of his mouth because Xbox fans defend him nonstop. Just read some of the comments on his social media accounts

Has sucked for 10 years....what a load of crap -- been 10 years of solid cost effective entertainment in my book "When will the excuses stop" - again what a load of naive crap.....this isn't about the fans....this is business.....this is the way projects are managed. As someone who has been involved in project management for 30 years, I HAVE SEEN IT time and time again in the corporate world. Brad was dead on accurate when he referred to the employees as assets...Microsoft is no different than any other large company in that regard. Grow up and get used to it being the way things are done. Do they need to try and keep an eye on the PR meter a little more? Probably so but at the end of the day to Microsoft executives, the Xbox community is a large group of consumers....the xbox group within Microsoft may have a slightly different viewpoint.....but the Microsoft executives do NOT. And it's the same for Sony and Nintendo executives....get over yourself if you think we are anything more than that to them

Unless they start to crank out backward compatible games that team isn’t worth sacrificing potential future IPs/the brands ability to put out a variety of games which is the issue they’ve had for years. Helping teams learn Unreal Engine is a good benefit but something I feel simply asking for Epics help could be more beneficial as they’re the designers/creators of it. Those two examples you gave are the perfect reason as to why Xbox has had such a lack of focus and not been a strong brand for years. Worried about quite frankly irrelevant things that others could probably do better or things that just aren’t needed vs things that need their attention like idk MORE GAMES and a large VARIETY of games. Less games isn’t what Xbox needs right now.

Sony has had the team red for decades now who handle engine related stuff

Sony has a similar team, but, it is made up of devs from Naughty Dog and Guerrilla as well as Mark Cerny and his people. That is the difference. They are from studios that are producing great games. They work on tools dev, engine, optimization, research, etc. Microsoft really truly has a leadership issue.

@EliteBlackSash xbox is from coalition so and they're the best with unreal engine 5 they helped do the matrix demo

@@leeg21ukNothing backs that up.

They could make evil within 3, but just under Bethesda instead

who even knows if that was ever going to happen. It's been years since the last one, and Shinji and a lot of his core team left

If they get some other part of bethesda to do evil within 3 I don't think it would be as good as the ones tango made.

@@lootrat8821 evil within is lowkey one of the best games period. Its up there with the resident evil series’ best games.

because everyone left and it was a empty studio

Nothing is wrong with having successful studios, but Redfall? Sadly heads had to roll because of that and the sad part it’s not the managers who pay the price. The reality is Bethesda was badly run, very clear with their recent games. They couldn’t deliver Starfield even with a 1 year delay cuz it’s clear now they are still finishing the game! Same with 343! PS has their shit together but even they’re cutting grass off their top studios, but I am still shocked since I thought MS would be a bit patient with their newly bought studios

No one liked it when EA was doing it.. spoiling franchises like BioWare... But he doesn't seem to have seen and learned

​@@MrCarpediem6EA actually is becoming a redeeming company again .

​@@sumomaster5585frankly all the closures from Zenimax but tango game works made a lot of since. Everything they shutdown was basically a support studio. Austin was mostly a support studio and their only two games themselves IIRC were Prey 2017 (great) and Redfall (really not great... so not great that the staff WANTED Xbox to reboot it's development or cancel the project). Then one was a mobile studio. Xbox doesn't need an Arkane Austin and Lyon and only one of those have a good track record. They want to get into Mobile but I think most of those efforts are going to King now. Tango is the only loss. And I can understand shutting it down due to poor sales, but the success of their games and franchises with communities was majorly ignored. Not to mention the importance of having a first party Japanese studio when that's a major market Xbox wants to get into.

Suuure, lets shut down the studio who made the only good xbox game this generation (hifi rush), what a good idea

I think where the Fed up comes from is that like he had to buy a fan favorite companies that may be delivering small indie games that people enjoy.. just to see them shut down or drastically changed

Huh ? Why would you double the size of your company that you paid for by the way and proceed to downsize it ? Doubling in what sense ? Value, headcount, resources(including IPs and technologies). Is like paying for a whole cake and throw away 2/10 of it into the bin ?

@@trex7115no I think what he is saying is anytime there is an acquisition there are people who are let go. For example they need activision accounting when they have that already with MS and Xbox, same goes for HR and other teams

@@trex7115 headcount

@@trex7115 all companies ever after an acquisition will synergize. All of them. Every single one of them.

They need to speed up putting abk games into gamepass to see what kind of bump it gives it. Maybe they'll announce some june 9th.

Game pass should be more like what PSN is now like... Have major releases still be bought... And in a year bring it to game pass... But at least that a new release get its initial bump

@Defundthesoy i thought square enix made the power wash game. And prison architect is from paradox.

Why is MAU a metric of success? You're not getting money from those people, unless your strategy is to sell ad spaces in games or in the Xbox menus.

@@DioBrando-qr6ye there must be something to it, because sony really wanted those pc helldiver players to open ps accounts lol

I'd rather a 6 month delay for first party titles on Gamepass than a price increase. I mostly wait for games to be patched anyway (like Forza & Starfield are in way better shape now than on release day).

The studio's management left last year (I think) and set up a new studio last month ( called Kamuy). Considering how loyal Japanese can be, its possible that a lot of people left... So shutting down the studio makes a lot of sense even though it kinda hurts too lol.

He was still at the studio at the time of the announcement. He is indeed leaving to pursue his ambitions because under Zenimax/Bethesda/Microsoft he was nothing more than a file and report employee. He's only felt like a real boss of his own studio for 6 months so it was such a waste of his talent. A man with a large resume creating awesome IPs such as Resident Evil to be reduced to a mere number. However he isn't uncaring, he doesn't want to just leave the studio that he found and nurtured for years. Some employees might follow him but he knew that, he designed Hi-Fi Rush to be a learning process as well. Teaching his young developers to be independent.

Think about WHY he felt the need to leave.

@@elhazthorn918 that's just the way Japanese devs are.

Just like you and Sony.

I’m with Xbox

Did you not watch the video at all, lol. He clearly has many problems with xbox, you would know that if you watched the video instead of pandering to the dumb "my plastic box is better" idea.

Yea but how much more can you charge while producing the level of games you’ve been releasing? I’m an Xbox fan, also an accountant so I understand they’ll have to consolidate things more because they’ve created 100B in expenses buying studios and even more because they’re all spending more money to produce games that are mostly breaking even. You have to consistently produce high quality games every month in order to justify another price increase. Call of duty or not it’s not worth an increase in itself. They don’t live by their own model of worlds most powerful console, unpolished and unfinished game releases are a regular thing for Xbox. A price increase is likely needed but has to be justified with the games.

It's not the pricing it's the marketing. Game Pass won't take off until the game industry stops being niche. It works for movies, TV, and music because those are all massive markets with billions of users around the world. For gaming this is only a thing on the mobile side. In reality console and PC gaming has just kinda failed (like not really failed but the growth hasn't achieved what it's needed to for the ballooning costs). The iPhone has the Minority share of smartphones globally (only about 20% compared to android) and still a new iPhone (like the 15) sells 200 million ish in one year. The current best selling console (Nintendo switch) is near the end of its lifespan and hasn't even broke 150 million sales. That's really bad. Sony should be thankful the rest of the industry doesn't believe in generations like they do because then they'd only be serving about 60 to 70 million users on PS5. Xbox has always been the smallest and they're lucky enough to still see some growth because of this but that growth is really minimal and only because they've done a lot to keep One users in the loop. PC gaming isn't much better. It's a little smaller than all three consoles users combined and that could have changed but the people with a gaming laptop that can actually run and buy AAA games is still sub 500 million. It's why they've been so desperate to grow to the cloud and mobile. That's AAA console gaming's last real chance. And I blame a lot of this on consoles. Sony, Nintendo, Xbox, Atari, and Sega insisted on a fragmented mess of a market. They weaponized their users against each other and pushed for exclusivity deals on a hardware level. Now the ones left standing have to deal with the consequences and their taking the whole industry down with them. It's not just xbox. Sony gaming revenue overall fell about 30% in their earnings call. Growth is stagnating. People aren't buying new consoles and most are spending time in games available everywhere for free with live service. Meanwhile dev costs have gotten insane.

All these subscribtions services are only attractive in the initial growth phase, where the investor basically pays the user to use the service so it can grow and scale. Once this phase is over and the harvest phase starts this when all the annoyances come in: huge price increases, ads, less content and quality... It is always the same with every service.

@@vullord666 Game pass wont ever work, and its nothing caused by marketing. You cannot fiscally charge a flat rate and fund the development of good games. Why would I pay $150 a year to play a game I can buy for $60 then play til I am bored ?

It's like if Nintendo just sold off HAL, instead of building them into something great and reaping the rewards. Anyways, this analysis is a shallow little trickle. Microsoft forced a talented developer out of their comfort zone, and firing them all for the failure of Redfall? That's an idiot tantrum, not a sign the adults are in control.

Highly likely this is the case. I feel like it will be the same with Tango's leader's next studio (I think its called Kamuy).

@zerohbeat that would be a great welcome if this happened, and also, stop the "Xbox is falling to pieces" lot. We'll see what happens.

That was a divestiture, not a flat out closure though. TfB still exists, Tango has been knifed and now lies dead in a gutter.

@@zybch I think they would have done the same with Tango if it was feasible. But even if you allow a studio to become independent, there still needs to be someone to take the lead and someone that pays the bills. I think in the case of Tango there was no one to do that, so closure was the only option.

Tango was closed.

K.K slider / totakeke

But that would be lying if they don't actually do that.

This.

​@@ohmnesia Not really. PR is also about good communication. That's something they lack badly.

@@ohmnesia Like saying they need smaller GP suitable games, then garotting Tango...

@@zybch Yeah... That was beyond any logic.

Axing Tango after Hi Fi Rush was criminal.

Microsoft gaming is up over 49%. It's likely these studio closures were already in the works under Zenimax this is why many devs are being allocated elsewhere within Bethesda

This is why so many people were against the acquisitions. When a few companies own a lot of studios you are in fact shrinking the gaming industry.

@@DioBrando-qr6ye The "shrinking" was going to happen regardless.

Exactly, business sense 101

Microsoft is learning and making moves and looking 3-4 steps ahead. Folks they are a trillion $ industry for a reason

There's always Next week for that happen.

@taeallred after 2-3 months on the market I'm sure it was doing better than they were expecting a game with zero marketing to do, but looking at every chart its engagement flatlined after that. I'm sure that bombing on the PS5 was the last straw. 1.7m unit sales and 3m total lifetime players for a game that took 5 years to make isn't going to keep a studio open. Then you had Ghostwire that didn't seem to do well commercially and definitely didn't do well critically.

HiFi rush was a flop? How? Over 3 million people have played that game. Where are you getting this information from? 😂😂😂😂 all of Microsoft executives proclaimed the game as being one of their biggest successes in years and said they would reinvest in the studio. So were they lying? And how do you prove that?

A flop? If that’s the case that is purely the fault of Microsoft by sticking it on Game Pass only.

in the era of game pass, everything is necessarily going to be a commercial flop

@@XGiveMeLibertyX 3m players on Xbox, PC, and PS5 is a flop, let alone the 1.7m sales it had. Max concordant steam player count was 6100, and the past year its averaged only around 200/day. On Xbox it debuted as only 11th most played game on Xbox and after 5 weeks it was off the top 40 chart all together. Which other Xbox exec said it was a success besides for Greenberg? MS never publicly stated it was reinvesting into Tango, that was rumor by Jeff Grub.

Ff7 rebirth bombed 😂😂😂😂😂 on what planet.. you are absolutely deluded ,Xbox tried to compete with Sony and it killed them 😂😂😂

No is not. Lmao

@@JunlugoPR Dude, the earnings numbers state clearly that GP is "sustainable and profitable" (MS's words).

⁠@@zybchhow so? Just yesterday they said that they are rethinking the overall Gamepass strategy… probably not including CoD in the service and raising the prices of it…does that sound “ sustainable and profitable” ? Numbers are stuck.

@@zybch if GP was sustainable, we wouldn't be in this situation

How do you know? It doesn’t look like they have the management for that right now

I don't think they want to spend billions of dollars again.

There is no such thing as organically grown businesses. They all brought up studios to be first party.