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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

#131

Post by loldk »

utensil4778 wrote: post #61
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…

Consumers have been signaling for quite some time that they're perfectly content buying Skyrim and Counterstrike every six months forever. Why even bother producing anything at all when you can just put a fresh coat of lipstick on the same pig and sell it all over again?

[dead]

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#132

Post by _mlbt »

Goronmon wrote: post #118
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…

Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics... People have been saying this for decades at this point. I'm not seeing it. Innovation is largely overrated. It can be a good thing, but the vast majority of games, whether AAA or indie, can't be truly innovative. And innovative doesn't translate directly to a game being enjoyable. Conversely…

Spot on. I want Elder Scrolls 6 to basically be Skyrim in a stunning new location, with better graphics.

Ditto for Forza Horizon 6 and the next installment of The Witcher.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#133

Post by willis936 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #126
willis936 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not arguing philanthropy. Bethesda makes a bad product that that costs a fortune to generate. It's shrunk the size of its market and its time is limited. Tango's business model is sustainable, Bethesda's is not.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#134

Post by filleduchaos »

raincole wrote: post #25
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…

Considering how many games are getting released each month, I am having a hard time comprehending what this "the gap" is referring to.

The vast majority of games that get released each month are straight-up garbage. And for the minority that aren't, I'd hope that people in a YC-affiliated forum of all places would see that a product getting released does not equal financial viability.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#135

Post by _mlbt »

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…

It’s nice graphics, but it’s also voice acting, and robust storytelling that sets a good AAA game apart from indie games for me.

Honestly even some of the indie games are getting pretty incredible graphics these days thanks to Unreal Engine.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#137

Post by somenameforme »

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…

It's just risk aversion. Companies want to turn video games into a factory line golden goose, but struggle to reconcile that each iteration through that factory line makes the final product relatively worse and worse, even if it continues to look better and better. Now even Call of Duty can't find a Call of Duty killer. But these same companies are terrified of trying anything new because new things do, on occasion flop. It would also entail scrapping the factory line, because creating a new game, instead of reskinning and old with a few new tweaks, is a way different beast.

That said, I don't really think the stereotypes of indie games are very valid anymore. Valheim looks great, has a massive open world, and is multiplayer. [1] It also started entirely as a result of one guy's pet project, until he grabbed a coworker and then set off to make it what it became. The graphics are stylized, but I think in a broadly aesthetically appealing way, as opposed to e.g. pixel graphics which are very off-putting to many people, myself among them. Pixel graphics came from an era of CRTs with interlaced scanning, and various other visual artifacts, that naturally blurred, antialiased, and blended them. Sharp jaggy edges never really existed, and I fail to understand why that's a popular style now.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSVbXgBJIuI

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#138

Post by masklinn »

wlesieutre wrote: post #109
masklinn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dave the diver is definitely not an "AA" game. It's so indie looking it was nominated for multiple indie awards (even if it's not an actual indie game). DRG is not AA either, according to its homepage GhostShip has 32 people 4 years after launching it . Same for Spiritfairer, it was built by a team of 16.

Wasn’t the case earlier in development since they didn’t have big financial backing, Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales > Deep Rock Galactic aired a trailer at E3 2017, then the game had a huge bump after its Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview launch in February 2018. Its Early Access didn't skyrocket the game "insanely high" like titles such as Valheim, but Pedersen said it was solid enough to know they…

> Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales

Well yes that's what I said, I didn't find what numbers they had at the time but I indicated that they had 32 people (which generally falls short of AA in the first place) 4 years after launching a successful game, so they'd most likely have had even less before then.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#139

Post by chownie »

utensil4778 wrote: post #84
vel0city wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condition Zero and Source released in 2004. Global Offensive released in 2012, eight years later. Counterstrike 2 released in September 2023, eleven years later . Counterstrike isn't the game to point to for re-releasing the same thing over and over.

Counternite, fort of duty, whatever. I care so little for this class of game that I can't be bothered to spend the brain space to keep them separate. Not saying they're good or bad, I'm just not interested in the slightest.

The classic description for this is "being out of touch" with the given media. Not sure if it's something to be proud of.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#140

Post by kaibee »

guipsp wrote: post #74
fidotron wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually worked at a high enough level in the games industry to know about the non-public dynamics, and that includes working with some of the people involved in this story. > 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? By…

Both Sony and Nintendo have expanded outside their traditional exclusive hardware. I don't think the parent is saying that doing hardware is useless, but rather that the writing is on the wall to some extent for pure console exclusivity.

It ain't the PS3 era where consoles are some radically different hardware stack. The latest gen, except for nintendo, are basically just x86-64 gaming PCs.
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