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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

#191

Post by ambichook »

masklinn wrote: post #100
ang_cire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, people use indie to mean small, rather than it's actual meaning of "independent of a publisher", and it's one of those things that I've nearly given up on fighting. It's even more sad because the only reason that change happened was big publishers wanting in on the success of indie games as a label and concept, but by definition being excluded, so they pushed their own definition, and people gobbled up their c…

> Sadly, people use indie to mean small, rather than it's actual meaning of "independent of a publisher" That is way too imprecise a description for it to possibly be considered correct. Indie is about financial and creative independence aka the publisher does not drive the game. Many indies still go through publishers because they don't have the means or knowledge to handle distribution. This was even more so back w…

indie is literally a shortening of independent though, the term i believe originated from musicians who would release their music without a label to publish them

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#192

Post by ProfMeowsworth »

phone8675309 wrote: post #143
hbn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'd rather see studios make 100 games that each cost $2 million to make than one $200 million game.

We have both of that, right now.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#193

Post by Gazoche »

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 don't understand it either. Maybe there's more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, but on the face of it seems like a really poor decision.

Large publishers keep reiterating the importance of successful IPs these days, and Hi-Fi Rush was like lightning in a bottle. Here Microsoft had a new IP with critical acclaim, suitable for a large audience, and ripe for a sequel. You'd think they would cling to it for dear life, especially given how their other IPs are doing (Halo, Redfall, Starfield...)

Closing the studio doesn't necessarily mean they're ditching the IP, but it doesn't bode well.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#194

Post by magnetowasright »

fidotron wrote: post #27
ajmurmann wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

Give them some credit - Forza Horizon 5 was extremely buggy on release and for months after! Many non-race goals/activities, a significant part of gameplay were totally broken. I don't know if it ever got better? It could have been a quality game but I gave up.

You're spot on. It's just funny to me that the lone quality release was also botched imo.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#195

Post by hackernewds »

willis936 wrote: post #128
nercury wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mortal Kombat and FIFA sell less but general more profit. Profit margins

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#196

Post by badsectoracula »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #78
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…

The current tech meta seems to be coalescing around this notion of "even high-performance isn't enough to spare you from layoffs, be afraid!" It wasn't that high-performance always guaranteed your job would continue, but at least there'd be the idea that you'd get moved to a new team if you were a great performer. To me, that just reinforces the notion that these layoffs are mostly about sending a message to workers…

> To me, that just reinforces the notion that these layoffs are mostly about sending a message to workers and Wall St more than anything else.

What message?

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#197

Post by badsectoracula »

_mlbt wrote: post #132
Goronmon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If past history is any indication, TES6 will be to Skyrim fans what Skyrim was to Oblivion fans which was what Oblivion was to Morrowind fans. Daggerfall fans are split about Morrowind though and i'm not sure there are any Arena fans.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#198

Post by ClimaxGravely »

masklinn wrote: post #165
ClimaxGravely wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would consider 10-40 person teams to potentially qualify as AA. Often we also outsource code/art so the team size can sometimes be misleading. I suppose I would go by the budget. Maybe 5-10million+ IMO. It also kind of depends how they spend the money. EDIT : After some further reflection, From personal experience I'd consider a AA game one where everyone on the dev team knows each other fairly well. AAA…

> I suppose I would go by the budget. Maybe 5-10million+ IMO. Which is not really useful, because we usually don't have budgets. Team size x development time might be an approximation for it, but if you assume an average salary of 80k and a development time of 30 months, by your reckoning AA is a team of 50... which is basically the low end of what's normally considered an AA team size. > From personal experience I'd…

> Which is not really useful, because we usually don't have budgets.

The majority of the AAA/AA projects I've worked on have budgets. I'm struggling to think of a project that didn't have a budget.

> Team Meat is just two people, four if you include the producer and the composer, I would very much assume they knew each other fairly well, but there's no meaningful interpretation of AA where Super Meat Boy is an AA game.

Of course you would expect a small indie team of 2-4 to know each other. I'm saying that once you hit AAA size teams that no longer becomes feasible.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#199

Post by iLoveOncall »

everforward wrote: post #65
iLoveOncall wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that "indie" is often viewed as the 3rd option alongside AAA and AA but I don't think that's the right definition. For me AAA and AA is about scope of the project. The 3rd option is "small", not "indie". Hades (I don't know Hi-Fi Rush) is by all means a small game, regardless of how many developers worked on it. Same for Minecraft, or many of the games that other commentors posted. You want a good measure? Chec…

Isn’t AAA vs AA about the funding of the project, and AA vs indie is about the publisher? I don’t care for scope as part of this because scope is so heavily influenced by the type of game. Eg Call of Duty is the poster child for AAA games and has a pretty unimpressive scope compared to virtually any RPG. Even indie RPGs tend to have a broader scope; CoD has basically nothing outside of combat mechanics. Then there’s…

I specifically said scope of the "project" instead of the "game".

You're right that CoD is simple, but it's still a massive project where most areas (graphics, networking, game engine, etc.) are infinitely more developed than a game like Stardew Valley which is a much broader experience _as a player_.

Re: Microsoft closes several large Bethesda affiliated game studios

#200

Post by raxxorraxor »

somenameforme wrote: post #137
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…

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 f…

Some game concepts are fairly well developed. A shooter like Call Of Duty is such a concept, so making a competitor is far more difficult. Sure, you can make up with setting and presentation.

But otherwise very true, true innovation happens in the indie world and the maximal complexity of these type of games is steadily rising due to better tools and maybe soon AI support.

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