If the competant people of the studio leaved the studio for doing thier own stuff or going on more interresing project for them. then the closure of those studio without competant people anymore make sense. Its like Konami without Kojima. thier are shit doing nothing good since thier lost thier only competent writer and lead devs. We know as fact that Tango was lacking Workforce for a sequel and also that Arkane Austin lost the majority of his devs directly after the release of prey and even more during the developpement of RedFall. when you stop thinking about the Logo and the name and what actual matter aka the People behind it. you know why these studio as been close.

@@user-Cata7sti7ma7 I very much agree with that being a possibility. Either way though xbox handled it badly. If the devs really did go of their own accord why didnt they tell us that? Corps LOVE covering their ass and shifting the blame. I sometimes wonder if they even know how to do anything else tbh.

And this was done on *zero* promotion from the company or publisher! ZERO! Same day announcement and release! That's not to say promotion makes a game *better,* it doesn't, but it pushes it into the headspace and interest of people who might otherwise miss it or be unable to plan a purchase around it. Hi-Fi Rush was so damn good it achieved *all that* without a dime spent on getting in front of people! Microsoft treated it like an indie title not worth 5 seconds on the backroll of a Nintendo Direct and it still made Game of the Year status for so many! *And they still decided to kill off Tango!*

@@Deviraux Because if they did that, then the journalists would quickly move to the "where are they now?" question, and that means coverage of Microsoft's competitors.

Doesn't matter to Microsoft if a game is good or not. They're only interested in "high impact" games. Games like Hi Hi and Hellblade don't move the needle for Microsoft's aims.

It was legitimately upsetting to listen to.

Honestly she could become a politician for that answer! Or none answer I should say.

She said more than any politician would, and some of it was from the heart even. The problem is in the information she managed to get out, while under her company restraints, that success and failure for a game company are not things you would recognize if you're looking at it from the outside, and that it could be different for each company/studio.

What that answer desperately needed was a followup question. "If it's different for every studio, let's put aside generalities and focus on Tango. What went wrong with them? What could have stopped them from being closed?" She wouldn't have answered of course, but it'd be very telling when she didn't.

My guess is “we didn’t see how we could make as much money as we want from the thing they’re working on now,” whatever that project is. It’s not about past performance. It’s about “what are you doing for me next, and what’s my confidence you’ll succeed at that?” I think it was a terrible move and the closures are upsetting, don’t get me wrong. But when trying to understand the lens through which managers making decisions, I think this is the only one they use. Which is not a good thing.

Smells like Amazon

The existence of indie games compeletely ruins that strategy though. They'd somehow need to control all publishing, rather than all development. Because you will never be able to control all development,

@@guus19900 if the rumor is true about Microsoft buying Valve, they could control publishing. But that’s unlikely for a number of reasons.

Remember Walmart Rollbacks?

Wal Mart did the same thing.

Just had a solid laugh at your post dude, incredibly cynical.

She was basically saying what the chart was showing us, just was trying to sugar coat it as much as possible, because she knows she can’t just say “we did it for money”

That cameraman is a goddamn hero.

That was a cut to a different camera, implying that the director made the call.

I can’t read the timeline but I’m pretty sure that huge boost is because they bought Activision so their profit is “Xbox’s” profit.

It was a poorly framed question. It allowed for a very general answer. What was needed was a follow-up. Something like, "Yes, but why Tango rather than any other studio? What confidence can gamers have that their favorite studios won't be closed after making a successful game?"

Interviewers are given a script they must adhere to. The "free press" has been bought and paid for, nothing more than propaganda machines and gate keepers. From the 1773 Rothschild Plan 12. Use the Press for propaganda to control all outlets of public information, while remaining in the shadows, clear of blame. 14. Create financial panics. Use hunger to control to subjugate the masses. 15. Infiltrate Freemasonry to take advantage of the Grand Orient Lodges to cloak the true nature of their work in philanthropy. Spread their atheistic-materialistic ideology amongst the "Goyim" (gentiles). 17. Use systematic deception, high-sounding phrases and popular slogans. “The opposite of what has been promised can always be done afterwards... That is of no consequence.” 19. Masquerade as political, financial and economic advisers to carry out our mandates with Diplomacy and without fear of exposing “the secret power behind national and international affairs.” 20. Ultimate world government is the goal. It will be necessary to establish huge monopolies, so even the largest fortunes of the Goyim will depend on us to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of their governments on the day after the great political smash.” 21. Use economic warfare. Rob the "Goyim" of their landed properties and industries with a combination of high taxes and unfair competition.

I would have just told her that if she didn't want to answer the question to just say so.

And this is ever so much more frustrating because Microsoft could take this hit and not even flinch. These tech companies are showing growing stock value, but are doing layoffs? Make it make sense

@@MangoMotors Profit is not enough, it's about growth. If you make the same amount you made last year you are 'failing' in the eyes of investors doesn't matter if that profit is measured in the hundreds of billions, needs to be trillions to make wallstreet happy.

@@Azerkeux And that's the point. An investor is not about profits, they've *never* been about profits. They've been about *growth.* Specifically growth since they invested, since that's what makes them more money. The South Sea Trading Company bubble is a phenomenally stupid example of this, with the short form being "a company is more valuable to investors if it looks like it's making money than if it *is* making money."

Whatever impresses the shareholders at the *_next_* quarterly business call right? ... all this talk about sustainable growth is farcical.

@@Azerkeux jokes on you. they won't even be happy with trillions. I mean look at apple/ you need infinite nonstoppoing growth

Same here. Took me a while to realise Gamepass is a false economy.

I've only used gamepass as a free trial. But that's how I approach all subscription services. Like, no, photoshop, I will not be paying a recurring fee to license your program for ultimately far more than I would pay for a one-time copy of literally any editing software that allows one-time purchases. I refuse to give infinite money for finite products.

@@happyspaceinvader508 It works great if you have lots and lots of different games you want to play... but most people aren't like that. Add in the fact that more and more games are snaring people into live-service models, where one plays certain games daily to keep up with the new updates, and it means even the active gamers are getting less and less likely to branch out and play multiple games at the same time. It's just a no-win situation for GamePass.

Good on you for being this intentional, if only more ppl followed this mindset.

Sadly, in my country, the cost of a single AAA game would pay for 20 months of a Game Pass subscription. Next gen price adjustments have not been kind to countries like mine. Regional pricing seems to have gone out the window. Even with that insane value proposition though, I too let go of my Game Pass subscription. I found myself playing one Game Pass game a month, on a good month. There's a ton of games on Game Pass, but a subscription service needs a CRAP ton of options. And as big as Microsoft is, they can't offer that.

After seeing what happened to Netflix over time, it was very shocking for Microsoft to bill itself as the "Netflix for gaming."

And I bet you got called a _"hater"_ a _"fanboy"_ a _"fearmonger"_ and other silly names just because you pointed out the obvious.

This is why I've always been against the label of "content" in regards to actual art. Imo the point of the word has always been to devalue the effort required to create art and conflate it with all the slop on social media that exists only as attention-bait/rage-bait. It's intentionally dismissive language from the AI-art types who only care about aesthetics and their personal gain. It's just such a slippery slope: Is a painting in a gallery "content" if there's no pictures of it online? Is a nice meal "content"? Is every thought ever put to paper "content"? As somebody with immense respect for individuality and the human spirit, I think it's all a clear "no." But embracing the human element of art would be far too expensive of a pill for our agoraphobic tech-leaders to swallow.

@@AtillaTheSean On the contrary, I like the word "content", because anyone who uses it to describe what they put out is telling me in a single word that they don't value creative art. That's useful to me as a consumer and lets me confidently spend my money on someone else's work.

Ah I remember high school, good times

Being realistic, that's an unsustainable business model everywhere. Infinite growth in a finite market only exists in 1 place: medicine. And doctors call it cancer.

​@@twincherries6698 if you stopped thinking capitalism was bad after high school, you just got dumber as you got older.

Capitalism is not good for creators or their customers; it only benefits exploiters.

​@twincherries6698 theyre correct, you're just in denial to the obvious elephant in the room

It was so mealy mouthed. She should have really been grilled by the interviewer on it.

She actually did not address the question in the slightest

@@Nuthouse01 She did actually, it was just a long-winded and unspecific "No."

She did answer the question in a blustery way. The interviewer asked if critical success should ensure the future of a studio and Bond answered in a word salad version of "No."

Hence why the industry heads *loathe* big-name personalities and devs like Kojima. Some aren't as great as you'd hope outside of their original comfort zone (Inafune, Naka) but it's harder for corporate to shove out the door their developers once people know their names.

C-suite executives wouldn't know creativity if it bit them on the behind. They have little peanut brains that only know how to reduce things to arithmetic you can teach to a second-grader; anything requiring that unique spark of everything beautiful in humanity is alien to them. We keep talking about replacing jobs with AI, seems to me that we should start at the top because even a basic system any video game designer can cook up to lead troops in a single-player war game is better leadership than Corporate America's got.

*Rolls eyes That is a massive assumption there. A unique personality (which really only actually means a one-off combination of widely seen individual personality traits) of a human creator doesn't translate to having skills/ideas no one else does/will have and doesn't mean they will create a good or service that has no near-peer, competitor, or imitator. Ideas are not "unique". There's pretty much no such thing as a new idea under the sun. Just new generations of people who are encountering ideas that are novel to them. Heck, 99% of what are called "new ideas" are actually two or more well-known existing ideas being mashed together.

Game dev is probably more like a factory job than you think, but the thing about factory jobs is that you pick up a lot of practical know-how the longer you're there. It's called institutional knowledge, that's what tend to get lost in layoffs because it's a skill set that doesn't appear on spreadsheets.

@@JacksonJinn That's objectively not true. Kojima fell out with Konami and immediately went out and got a vast amount of money from Sony who new his name was free marketing. Any dev noteable enough for you to have heard of is a marketing asset, and the industry loves that.

But she is hot, though

@@JV-ll1cucasting couch hire?

I have said for years that corporate is just a universal paperclips engine. No thought, only maximization.

They’re gonna have to sell a hell of a lot of COD to pay back that $70 billion.

I hope they do port everything out. Their consoles suck now. There are some games I'd play, but nothing worth buying their obelisk over.

That's a bold move on their part. I bought Hi-Fi Rush the moment I built my gaming PC but I have never bought a Call of Duty and never will. The whole series is like a flavorless beige paste. Not to mention trends are moving AWAY from competitive multiplayer. I can't picture this playing out as well as they think; they've clearly got the wrong people making decisions, but that's typical for an American corporation.

Activision has continually made record profits year on year for decades.

Fiduciary duty makes that impossible

Just sit back, and let the well blow gold all over the place

It's illegal to not make profit for shareholders in USA, they can literally take you to court for it Plus the entire C-suite is shareholders

@@ThePlayerOfGames So eventually every business is going to commit crimes, because infinite growth is impossible?

⁠@@makoaki9071just publicly traded ones, and this isn’t a new phenomenon.

Tango was likely only moderately successful, and I doubt most of those “3 million players” were _payers._ That along with Starfield probably not being as big as Bethesda hoped, and Arlene Austin putting out two bombs, is probably what did it. MS/Xbox could’ve stepped in and at least saved Tango since they put out a recent hit that could bring in more attention in a sequel, but they take a hands-off approach to everything. Which defeats the purpose of signing up with a bigger company anyway.

If you already plan to shut it down, why spend money on marketing? I see it advertised a lot on KZfaq though.

Hellblade was never going to be successful for its budget. Pumping money into a sequel for a game that had mid range pricing and mid budget and mixed reception is the most baffling thing Xbox has done. I say this as someone who thought Hellblade was one of.the best games recently.

@@mrECisMEIt’s funny because the team/director said they were proud of how they were able to make the original modest/cheap for a AA-AAA game. Now the budget is inflated at least x2 or x3 and not a whole lot to show. Looks better? Sure, but at what cost? Probably a lot of staff or maybe the studio. Watched someone stream it a bit and he said they dumbed it down from the original. Beating you over the head with “hints”, taking away control too frequently, even simpler combat, and apparently they’ll make you miss counters on purpose just to keep up tension. Could’ve been a modest feather in their cap, but now it’s an inflated mistake.

Xbox was never the good guys. Remember the Red Ring of Death?

Gonna be playing a hater act here _-Or Phil was in it from the start and people just wanted to cling on something so he gave them the sweet words they wanna hear-_

Stop pretending like the current state of Xbox is not Phil's fault and things would be better if only they listened to him. He's been there for 10 years. He's a liar and has no idea what he's doing.

Phil pushed for the actiblizz deal. Stop cheerleading corporate PR people

If I could get one piece of legislation passed today it would be to ban this exact scam of building services with unsustainable business models until your competition starves out, then you switch to a more predatory model once people have no other options. It's becoming the norm and it always ruins any industry it's done in: ride-sharing, streaming, and online dating are all completely fucked right now because of this exact grift. Worst of all is they're bleeding money too, and would instantly cease to exist without their inflated market share.

Xbox One was marred with tons of failures under his watch: Lionhead Studios (closed), Scalebound (cancelled), Phantom Dust reboot (cancelled), Crackdown 3 (broken, bad/mediocre, didn’t really use the cloud as advertised), Sea of Thieves launched with little content, Halo Master Chief Collection buggy for years, and that’s just off the top of my head. It’s why a buyout makes little to no impact on the studio, because they don’t manage and do quality control, and he’s said as much (letting the studio manage itself). It’s why they keep “apologizing” so much, only to repeat the same mistakes. Heck, the lady who runs Halo said after 5, they wouldn’t launch another game without split screen co-op. Infinite not only launched without it, it wasn’t even going to release as a year 1 feature, and they ended up cancelling it anyway. They’ve learned nothing. It’s why they’ve been on a buying spree. They can’t manage/develop talent on their own so they buy studios with big, established IP to draw people in. That Perfect Dark reboot studio is just another example. Made a new studio, with solid people behind it, and have nothing to show with lots of people leaving (especially key people), and now hired _another_ studio to help them make it. What’s even the point of the original studio? Might as well close it if you’re contracting Crystal Dynamics for “co” development. They’re probably doing the majority of it.

The everything bubble is about to burst

On the upside, this is exactly why I _advocate_ for higher interest rates. It throws the brakes on rampant devil-may-care speculation and requires businesses to stick closer to the fundamentals if they're going to be successful. Of course, this is going to be _painful_ for a lot of people while it shakes out, but it will ultimately be a societal equalizer in the end.

MS isn't borrowing.

@@Uebelkraehe oh man, even if they have tons of assets they're doing lots of borrowing. That's how finances work at that level

​@@Uebelkraehe They absolutely borrow constantly. The majority of company value is in stock shares. Selling those shares to cover a billion dollar investment all at once would hurt the stock price. But using them as collateral for a low interest loan is a tax-free way to suddenly have the money for investments. This is also how private super-wealthy individuals use their stock portfolios to fund their lifestyles while making a "salary" of $1 per year.

they're still around? That's actually a relief

Id say Obsidian is one of the studios that still has a chance, they can always put em to work in the Fallout mines But Double Fine, inXile and Ninja Theory? Yikes, its so over

Working for Microsoft almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter

@@joseaca1010 No they're done after the next game flops. It's looking like Redfall at the moment with massive development difficulties.

I hope Josh Sawyer would be able to find a new studio, Pentiment is so underrated

@@joseaca1010 Maybe. The Fallout mines is what I (and they) wanted a decade ago. But we all know Avowed isn't gonna do anywhere near Skyrim numbers and they're gonna get shafted.

It also depends on your age. If you where around when Xbox 360 was king then it has more prevalence in you mind. Though I went PC Gamer after that generation so I only care about what games in general come out.

Same here on both counts, as a European the trend is more towards Japanese machines but yeah, OG Xbox was popular and 360 but now it's all Playstation and Nintendo again. The PS3 put me off consoles for life tho when every new game needed an OS update followed by multiple game patches and I thought "why am I not using my PC to do this?"

I am an european and Xbox Series X is my only gaming machine at the moment and I'm also a Game Pass subscriber.

fwiw that's part of Xbox's problem. It's pretty much an American console and that lack of global sales is holding them back more than they realize. And now that they've shut down a perfect opportunity to break into the Japanese market, idk if they're even trying

As a polish person, literally nobody here has a Nintendo console. It’s still pretty much Xbox and PlayStation, but the vast majority just has pc’s

Infinite growth IS possible. Infinite growth within a short timescale, however, isn't.

@@OzixiThrill no, my friend, it is not possible. It is exactly the opposite: in a short timescale, you may have (apparent) exponential growth, but it is just the first phase of a logistic curve; sooner or later, the limits (number of new consumers, feedstock, whatever) WILL become relevant and hinder/halt the growth.

This is a lesson that business is incapable of learning.

@@Luanmm Why are you using exponential and infinite interchangably? They are not even remotely the same. The original comment, the one I was replying to, was talking about ininite growth. Your points about exponential growth, while not incorrect, are therefore irrelevant.

@@OzixiThrill in business they are usually talking about exponential growth. Not only they eager to grow their profit, but grow it at accelerating rates, each year growing more than the previous one (from that, the exponential) But whatever, my argument stands regardless of the growth being exponential, linear etc: in a shortsight, it may appear as infinite, but in the end there are limitation that will prevail

As somebody who always does their best to support the artist services like gamepass always give me major pause. If it looks too good to be true, it always is. It's all the Spotify model of preying on small artists by asking them to give their work away for pennies in exchange for wider accessibility, which seems like it could be fair. Unfortunately this all subsidizes the company doing the fleecing as they buy more market share and kill competition, harming all future artists going forwards. There's no clean solution as a consumer or artist, we really just need regulation in the U.S. but the same companies I talked about are the ones currently paying for our "public servants" lavish lifestyles.

If they keep raising the price it will just not be worth it anymore for people. It's unsustainable, period.

Sounds like Sega Channel back during the time when the Genesis was relevant. Heck, the whole of Microsoft feels like what would happen if Sega continued on as a hardware manufacturer.

they should just stop offering it for 1$ to people

@@JulesNekro The problem is that then you have less people trying out game pass. Microsoft aims to have more, more, more paying users paying users every month. And that's stupid, of course. Sooner or later you can't go up any further, in fact game pass *has* hit its ceiling quite a while ago. And now they're cutting costs to maintain the illusion of growth.

It was never sustainable. Making it all worse is that it should have been obvious from the start that it wasn't sustainable, but Microsoft did it anyway. I don't know if they were caught up in the typical corporate trap of focusing on short term profits or the other corporate trap of chasing infinite growth, either approach brings you to the same result.

If the past has taught me anything the devs can still reunite 15 years down the road if there's enough interest and make the legally distinct "the darkness inside." You gotta hope the paycheck when they got bought out was worth losing their IP but it rarely is in the long-term. It's like selling a family antique when you're strapped for cash

The way to stop a big company is to not rely on a big company. We should know by now, publishers aren't worth it. They'll steal your IP and sit on it forever and never let you have it back even if they do nothing with it ever again.

The independent-AAA space is also quite exciting. So much of the talent that built a lot of these big-name studios have left and formed their own studios again. Remember, A's are just a budget moniker, nothing more.

To be fair if Microsoft was so concerned about sales they could've got their head out of their ass and made a PlayStation port. I wanted to play it since launch but only got it a few months back after building a PC, I'm sure there's a lot of people in the same camp.

​@@AtillaTheSeanThey're starting with PS ports, Sea of Thieves has just released there

@@AtillaTheSean The game is available on Ps5 right now.

I think there is nothing xbox can do to double fine. Even if they shut it down Schafer has enough of a following to keep going. They can just do another kickstarter campain for a new studio. Because unlike most other studios Double Fine has a personality, and that personality will remain even if xbox does something stupid.

Good luck with that.

@@gutsmasterson2488 thanks I'll try, it'll be hard but I was already looking at switching over to Linux before this shitshow.

@@gutsmasterson2488 It's really not hard..? I don't have an Xbox or a Windows computer, and I'm happy enough.

@@johnmarstall The problem is of work related programs. I don’t know what Linux has, but I know Microsoft Office and Google Drive for work stuff. I also don’t know how someone could do certain jobs without Office, Google Drive or an internal system.

Then studios like Tango will definitely fail. Your statement is counterproductive to what you want.

Then instead of closing good studios, why not shut down the failing Gamepass model? Why close branches that may bring in money in the future instead of continuing a system that clearly doesnt bring in as much as expected. Again, a sign of corporates looking 2 feet in front of their noses instead of investing in the future.

​@infinitenex8165 MS can't admit the Gamepass model isn't working. They think the PR of that would be far worse for them. They've been playing up how it's an "amazing value for players" for years, if they axe it its going to be bad pr for years. They value their image more than they value anything else. They won't admit the center of their business model for the past half decade doesn't work.

@@infinitenex8165 Game Pass brings in $500M+ a month according to Jez Corden. It's just not "enough".

I still get gamepass through MS rewards. Haven't paid for it in over a year at this point. Not sure if I'd keep using it if I had to actually pay for it.

I’m hoping that MS has the rights and the insight to allow another studio to take over the IP, and perhaps bring in some of the creatives who worked on the original game. It sucks that they shut down Tango, but just because a studio dies doesn’t necessarily mean their IP dies with them. Granted, if this was the case MS would probably tell us, just to spin the negative PR a little better. But who knows?

​@@chloemchll3774 eff that, eff the IP :( I'd rather follow the developers and see what *they* come up with next. I just hope they find a way to fall on their feet :(

@@essneyallen6777 I see no reason why that’s mutually exclusive- follow the developers and hope an IP I like gets a chance to survive the closing of the studio responsible for creating it both feel within my capabilities. Also, I see no reason to be angry toward the IP for a decision made by the current board at MS (not Xbox, higher up the chain) which seems to be both much more short term focused than previous iterations AND much more prone to micromanaging Xbox rather than leaving the division alone to do its thing.

Death

@@essneyallen6777 I fail to see any reason to root for the IP to fail, especially if you liked the IP and especially if the creative team behind the original comes to whatever new studio ends up with the IP (or if they spin off and form their own new studio, this time away from MS’s direct control.) I also don’t see why you can’t both root for the IP to get a second life AND follow and support the creative team behind the original should they work on some other new project next; I know I can and am doing both.

I don't think Valve needs them though. They already make bank with Steam.

@@RaxusXeronos I'm glad Steam is a private company, because i doubt many public companies would be able to resist "Big ol Microsoft wants to purchase me? I'm honored!"

Valve won't sell. So long as it remain privately owned, they have no reason too.

If Gabe Newell ever sells Steam I will eat every shoe I own

Yea steam is safe It is the biggest PC game marketplace Microsoft and sony come to them to sell games on pc while epic store barely hits the radar of most

I keep hearing this repeated over and over again in the comments , but I really don't think it resembles reality like you're convinced it does. I have never sold any of my stocks. I bought them and I've kept them. I don't intend to sell them for another twenty, thirty years. There are plenty of people like me. Corporations too; Berkshire Hathaway operates like that. Obviously pump-and-dump shareholders exist, but what percentage of shareholders actually are they? It might be surprisingly small.

That is Avowed, the upcoming game from Obsidian Entertainment

As a former COD player, yes lol

Lol! Yea, might be a good suggestion to put our names with the show titles in the intro.

They only way someone can have stock in your company is if you give it to them. Calling that situation rape is hyperbolic edgy nonsense.