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Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

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Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#121

Post by hbn »

maxrecursion wrote: post #81
DannyPage wrote: post #3

Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, won major awards, showed off the promise of XBox Game Pass… and for their efforts their studio has been shut down. There have multiple instances of this in just the past few weeks; are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? And those games either take a lot of rotating studios and a long development cycle to rele…

Game development is in a really weird place. Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics Indie games are awesome right now, but they don't have the budgets to produce AAA games. So there is a huge gap. Innovative indie games with cool, new gameplay concepts, but always simple or retro graphics, and AAA games with shiny graphics on the ot…

AAA basically just means nice graphics at this point. You can't dump more money into a piece of art to make it better, that's why all the innovation comes from indie games. Look at Balatro, a guy made a poker roguelike and became a millionaire overnight. I think if big game studios, rather than dumping their copious amounts of money into single, giant-scope games, dealt it out amongst a variety of smaller teams for smaller-scoped projects, they'd be way better off.

Everyone keeps suggesting AI NPCs. I'm sure someone's gonna take a crack at it and it'll go about as well the Humane AI pin or the Rabbit R1 before everyone realized how horrible of an idea it is. If anything it'll make for a silly novelty like the VR games where you clumsily try to perform basic tasks with VR motion controls. But in this case you argue with an in-game LLM and see how quickly you can make it get defensive or start gaslighting you with made up facts about household cleaners you can combine to make a delicious cocktail.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#122

Post by willis936 »

DannyPage wrote: post #3

Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, won major awards, showed off the promise of XBox Game Pass… and for their efforts their studio has been shut down. There have multiple instances of this in just the past few weeks; are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? And those games either take a lot of rotating studios and a long development cycle to rele…

I really don't understand why they would shutter Tango, a small / low cost house producing influential art that people actually want, while behemoths that burn cash and produce soulless products that no one wants survive.

Shut down Bethesda, they're the ones with awful gameplay and writing. Don't shut down the darlings.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#123

Post by rrix2 »

coffeeindex wrote: post #93
fidotron wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gamepass was a failure? I'm amazed that this is a question. Gamepass is essentially so low cost as to be an incredibly costly giveaway, only it has proven that this devalues everything that touches it. For context, Hifi Rush had 3 million players on Gamepass last August, and today they shut the studio. So even when they get a break out hit they cannot justify keeping the studios around to try and do another; that's…

Until I see actual numbers on Gamepass I won’t believe that it was a failure. It isn’t a direct comparison of “gamers are spending $10 instead of $70”. People who would not buy a game that just came out will willingly pay for Gamepass every month. Gamepass also exists on PC, so Xbox is dipping into a user base which otherwise might not buy many products from them. Yes they almost definitely make less money from some…

And yet here we are where a fantastically successful mid budget game published on to gamepass by a first party studio leading to huge excitement in gamepass is not enough to justify the continued existence of the studio which produced it.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#124

Post by monetus »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #63
fidotron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer to my other answer about gamepass. For the Xbox brand they have failed to release quality versions of every major Xbox franchise bar Forza Horizon (Halo Infinite, for example), and this mismanagement has been ongoing for so long the sales figures of the Series consoles are dire. (And the Series X is not bad by any stretch). Now they are having to release their games on their major competitor, the PS5, making…

They’ve already expressly said they’re shifting from a hardware-focused business to a software-focused one. Did you miss that and think they’re just bad at business? Hardware has always been a loss leader used to sell games, nothing more. If they can sell the games just as well on their “competitiors platforms” then why bother spending time and exorbitant amounts of money building your own hardware? Exiting the hardw…

RIP SEGA - can't say that sticking with their arcade minded strategy paid off more than if they had stuck with hardware, but I am skeptical.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#125

Post by etempleton »

ajmurmann wrote: post #14
fidotron wrote: post #9

What is extraordinary about the Microsoft games unit and Xbox is how immune their senior staff are to the repercussions of their bad decisions. They're certainly not taking responsibility for the failed gamepass experiment, trashing the Xbox brand, or the acquisitions they now regret since successfully closing Activision. Failing upwards has never been so conspicuously obvious as it is in modern corporate America tha…

In what regard has gamepass failed? I keep hearing nothing but excitement about it? Does it lose a lot of money? Similarly, how did they trash the Xbox brand? I've always been a PlayStation or Nintendo user so my view is quite tainted here.

I think it is popular but not growing as fast as Microsoft would have hoped. When I talk to some of my friends about it they don't seem to realize how deep the catalog is and just buy games that they could have played on GamePass, but most of those games are third party games that happen to be on GamePass.

The Xbox brand issue at this point is a lack of quality first party games. They can never seem to nail a release. Even when a game is pretty good there is a caveat.

- Halo Infinite was pretty good, but buggy and they struggled to release new content. - Starfield is Bethesda's most ambitious game yet with the best combat, graphics and polish from the studio to date, but the exploration loop that defines their games is broken by interplanetary travel. It is still pretty good, but just not what it should have been. - Forza Motorsport launched buggy and while technically proficient is perhaps of the most joyless games I have ever played. - Redfall was hyped as a first party release and is absolutely mid

I do think that both the Xbox and PlayStation brands have put themselves in strange positions strategically. People buy consoles to play certain games and if you know that you can play those games on PC (eventually) why would you ever buy a PlayStation or Xbox?

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

willis936 wrote: post #122
DannyPage wrote: post #3

Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, won major awards, showed off the promise of XBox Game Pass… and for their efforts their studio has been shut down. There have multiple instances of this in just the past few weeks; are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? And those games either take a lot of rotating studios and a long development cycle to rele…

I really don't understand why they would shutter Tango, a small / low cost house producing influential art that people actually want, while behemoths that burn cash and produce soulless products that no one wants survive. Shut down Bethesda, they're the ones with awful gameplay and writing. Don't shut down the darlings.

“Influential art” vs “soulless products” tends to map pretty well to “niche products that return poorly compared to costs to produce while earning critical accolades” vs. “reliable cookie-cutter moneymakers”, and Microsoft isn't in the business to win critical awards for stockholders, but to make money for them.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#127

Post by etempleton »

lupusreal wrote: post #113
etempleton wrote: post #111

My guess is that because of the success of Fallout show Microsoft is trying to spin up resources to make another Fallout game as soon as possible while also keeping Elder Scrolls moving forward. Bethesda has always been a one game studio, but perhaps they will try to hire up to become a two game studio or they could go beef up Obsidian to pivot into a Fallout New Vegas to or other non-numbered Fallout game. The casua…

If Microsoft plans to bring a lot of new people into a Bethesda game, I hope they invest in new engine tech and QA. Old Bethesda fans know what to expect by now, but newcomers with any modern game experience are going to be in for a rude surprise if the next Fallout game ships with typical Bethesda quality. They've had this problem with their last several releases too, but I think the TV show will make it a lot worse…

Starfield was much better than past Bethesda releases, but I agree.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#128

Post by willis936 »

nercury wrote: post #13
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #4

"Thanks for the widely acclaimed mid-budget surprise hit, Tango. Now polish up your resumes, pack up your stuff, and get out." It's like AAA publishers have no notion of a game studio as an organic thing that can grow. It's all just pieces on a board.

It's like destroying a factory when the chips it produces do not sell.

But Hi-Fi Rush did well and invigorated the market. Starfield cost an order of magnitude more and only had the opposite effect. It's like shutting down your successful competitor for your screwup because you're their boss. Almost like the result of an anticompetitive practice.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#129

Post by Dystakruul »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #58
glenstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't remember a single AA game that was great I'm always skeptical of "I can't remember ____" as an assessment of any given historical record because, well, the average person just doesn't remember anything. Which is all well and good, you have no obligation to be ready for a pop-quiz, but snapshot moment of free-association is just not a reliable stand in for the actual record. I actually couldn't think of any A…

As an aside of this discussion: I do not get people who like Outer Worlds. I am a huge fan of New Vegas, I was so pumped for that game, and it was so, so bland. The combat damn near put me to sleep, the writing was atrociously heavy-handed and made me think the authors thought I was a complete fucking idiot (and I agree with them!), and the moment-to-moment gameplay was just thoroughly, thoroughly unsatisfying. I kno…

just a note for inattentive readers: Outer Wilds from GP's comment is a very different game compared to Outer Worlds which the parent comment mentions. (it doesn't help that they were both released in the same year, 2019)

Outer Wilds: action-adventure, open world mystery game with puzzles

Outer Worlds: action role-playing game, open world first-person-shooter (similar to the Fallout games)

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#130

Post by npinsker »

hbn wrote: post #121
maxrecursion wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development is in a really weird place. Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics Indie games are awesome right now, but they don't have the budgets to produce AAA games. So there is a huge gap. Innovative indie games with cool, new gameplay concepts, but always simple or retro graphics, and AAA games with shiny graphics on the ot…

AAA basically just means nice graphics at this point. You can't dump more money into a piece of art to make it better, that's why all the innovation comes from indie games. Look at Balatro, a guy made a poker roguelike and became a millionaire overnight. I think if big game studios, rather than dumping their copious amounts of money into single, giant-scope games, dealt it out amongst a variety of smaller teams for s…

> I think if big game studios, rather than dumping their copious amounts of money into single, giant-scope games, dealt it out amongst a variety of smaller teams for smaller-scoped projects, they'd be way better off.

This is what game publishers do, and many of them are struggling too. It’s harder than it seems to pick winning horses. (Though in this case, it may be partially because more and more skilled teams are opting to self-publish.)

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