Wtf Xbox?
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
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Aron Goodall: / arongoodall
Eric Ramirez: / ericramirez.mp4
0:00 Hello and Welcome
0:15 Booty crushed some studios
1:18 Everybody is real grumpy
2:12 Prepare yourself
3:13 It’s not nice.. BUT
4:14 $h*t rolls downhill
5:11 A big asterisk
6:08 Losing the middle
7:08 Money isn’t infinite
8:11 Hot-bed issue
9:05 Layoffs aren’t surprising
10:13 Not willing to have risk
11:15 Reasons to be optimistic
12:09 The emperor has no clothes
13:04 The game changed
14:08 Blood in the water - Věda a technologie
"We don't have enough good games!"
"What do we do?"
"Let's close dev studios and fire devs."
That's brilliant!"
you can't hire people and fund games when you are losing money. It's a business at the end of the day
@@newfnshow031they have plenty of money. Maybe they should stop putting games straight to gamepass!
Does good games automatically mean profitably?
@@newfnshow031cut Phil's salary
@@guadalupe8589yes, ask Nintendo
You’re telling me that monopolisation stifles innovation? Who knew
it always has been and 2024 is the worst year for gaming
Microsoft hasn't been able to release a decent game in like a decade. Every time they buy a studio, that studio is basically dead. They are actively making their products worse across the board, not just in gaming.
Well said... Microsoft is destroying the Industry
how much is MS paying Austin to white knight for them lmao.
seriously, though, if MS knew they wouldn't be able to afford these "acquisitions" without gutting entire STUDIOS, they should not have been allowed to purchase them. and don't give me the "that's just big biz" bullshit line. if we, as common folk, cannot afford a super car or w/e, we don't get to buy it. corps should be held to the same standard.
The format of this show forces a back and forth dialogue regardless of how they actually feel. It’s more for the show than anything else.
see if you can pinpoint the spot where Matt made me regret speaking words
Roughly 12:22 lol
Matt with the curveball
@@unluckypanduh curved something 😂
To the left, to the left…
I like dogs but cats can jump
The more Austin keeps talking to me like I'm a child and saying to have an adult conversation makes me wanna get the torch and pitchforks even more 😂😂😂
That's how his last place burnt down. He's gotta be more careful
Especially when he says it while still wearing his pyjama shirt. 😂
Sorry austin, but if they are unable to maintain a existing, well working game studio after purchasing, there should not be a purchase being made. This trend in the gaming industry is terrible. Utterly fucking terrible.
“That is just the way it works”
It’s not working!
I hate this line of thinking. It's not the way it works, it's not the way it is. It's how they want it to be. It's all to make money. Austin's apologizing for these companies who "have to" make money. They make millions, and want to make money at the cost of people. If something's only purpose is to make money, it does not NEED TO EXIST. Austin, quit apologizing for these stupid leeches who see talent, vision, creativity, and human potential as nothing more than a potential cash flow. Take a look at how awfully efficient phones have become in terms of ability and design, take a look at how music and adverts look and sound the same. How it's only the same ten songs on the same ten radio stations all over the place and ask yourself. Is any of that okay? No HAS to make the amount of money hedge funds and ceo and so on are leeching from us. It's all greed and it is killing our humanity. We are in the most boring dystopia. It sucks. What is the point of anything. All we do is work, to line the pockets of some guy who wants to see numbers go up.
There is no reason anyone should layoff someone, someone who did all the hard work, just so they can appease CEO's and shareholders. That is Greed 101. Neither had anything to do with any of the work involved. Everyone is taking from the cookie jar and not thinking about who is behind them.
No layoffs ever in any industry?
@@guadalupe8589 no, he was the only CEO like individual that I know of, that sacrificed his gains to keep a university operational. This was a university though. I've yet to see this in a corporation of any sort in the US.
Thats like rule 101 for CEO's. First thing to cut is staffing, they always believe you can cut staff but keep the same work level or higher, they expect those at the coal face to front up and take on more for less.
The issue with these layoffs is that in April 2023, Xbox praised HiFi Rush for its success, but Tango should have been developing another game instead. It seems they were waiting for direction from Bethesda and Xbox to shift focus to X. It's strange they didn't communicate, acknowledging the end of support for Tango's game and asking for assistance with X. Perhaps they could have reassigned some team members and moved forward from there. Additionally, there were hopes at Arcane Austin that Xbox's acquisition of Bethesda would lead to the cancellation or delay of RedFall to create a single-player game. It's disappointing that Arcane Austin was close to releasing an update to transition RedFall into a single-player experience, with some players having recently purchased DLC that is now obsolete. Tango appears to have been blindsided, thinking their game was successful, only to face these layoffs. Arcane Austin faced challenges from the start and received little support from Xbox regarding RedFall. While Xbox promoted the game and added it to GamePass, it seems they didn't ensure it met their standards. The acquisition of Bethesda likely stemmed from their underperformance. It's unfortunate that many talented individuals are now jobless.
I agree....but why are they not acknowledging this in the vid?
If they dont want to seem defensive about xbox then show us both sides of the situation
The problem with spending so much money buying studios is that it creates unrealistic expectations for return on investment. MS honestly made a bad decision buying them. Hi-Fi Rush was cool, but it was never gonna be that killer app the same way Minecraft was.
The main issue here is Austins analogy is tipped on the short side,
When MOST industries merge the result is increased productivity, for example, (and using his own stated representation) you merge two HRs or finance productivity in there ACTUALLY INCREASES. That single remaining team that looked after 1000 people now look after 2000 and doubled their productivity
Xbox strategy was to merge and actually slaughter production, instead of 4 studios making a game each merging to make 2 studios making 4 games they actually bought 100 studios, killed them and produced the SAME SINGLE game they were already making.
THAT is the real truth there, and it doesnt fly with Austins repeating “a business has to make money”, you cant “make money” by slashing product, output, availability and range. Businesses have known that since the ice age
They make moves that would take years to pay off and stop being net red, and they punish studios when these decisions arent paying off immediately and getting them out of the red...genius.
Its just corporate greed period if they can't have the studio no one can. If they never bought those studio's they'll probably would be still open. Microsoft is an oligopoly pretty much a form of a monopoly just not to the extent of it yet.
I don't think the studios would still be open, not under the old guard.
But yes, I mostly agree otherwise
Sorry, but I think Austin is missing the point here. Yes, it's a business, and sometimes companies don't do well and go out of business. The problem here is that Xbox shuttered small game studios that they bought up, not the massive ones that spend insane amounts of money and then don't return a profit. Hi-Fi Rush did really well for a small investment. The wrong people are being penalized here. They aren't shuttering Bethesda for Starfield. They are killing the little guys. Sinking vast amounts of money into games is probably going out of style at this point, and indie games are a better future.
If I was listening to Austin as my boss, I would be very afraid.
That is why Matt had to throw in that guillotine joke, just to remind Austin he is one boss with many employees
Theres no such thing as AAAA games, just terrible company management 😂
This episode feels like Austin defending his Orgs poor decisions & trying to “right the ship” as he said, in public.
Oh no, he is becoming a CEO right before our eyes!
The huge problem is, at some point you need new IP.. Before we get GTA5 we had GTA1 which was a small game created out of a bedroom in Scotland, you need this kind of ecosystem to support finding those secret hits, nobody expected Helldivers II to be as huge as it became.
Exactly the issue both gaming and Hollywood are suffering from. They try to milk known francizes because they see them as less risky since they already have a fanbase and they end not making anything new and exciting.
Just look at PlayStation. The most excited everyone got was for Helldivers and Stellar Blade instead of the other known francizes and their both basically a new thing.
And instead of being afraid to do new things because budgets are exploding just stop trying to make 50 to 100 hours big budget titles and make smaller nice looking AA titles that don't go over 100 million. Have smaller but more effective dev teams with very capable people that you don't want to lose.
They will make great games, they will be loyal if you are and there is no reason to ever fire them because they give you good results and they aren't huge teams that are a huge expense. Hiring a thousand people that debate for 3 years what direction to go and just rush making the actual game the last 2 years in a 5 year circle and in a communication mess isn't a solution.
Especially when you have to fire half of them after the game is mediocre at best.
You are better having 150 people with clear simple vision that get to it immediately and start putting out games.
Doing that will have less firing and be profitable but this corporations are so greedy that when they see a 50 million game made them 50 mullion profit they get upset they didn't make more and stat sicking the big budget blockbuster that will make them a billion in profits forgetting that is much more risky chasing that.
I remember when Xbox emphasized wanting to focus on more indie developer games a few years ago, why and when did that ideal change for them??
Because all the indies went to gamepass and no one bought them
When they saw live service and GaaS games making money hand-over-fist for their respective companies.
I think publicly traded corporations, especially in tech, need a fundamental overhaul in how the C-level people operate in relation to their investors. Chasing linear growth over many years just isn’t sustainable. It comes at a cost to either the consumer or the workers
“He can bring his driving shoes” 😂
There are far less talented studios under Microsoft's umbrella that have produced zero hits and only make coming of age artsy life drama games that are still employed. Tango is basically a Capcom derived company and the only Japanese company under Microsoft's fold, that also has a built in following. They should have be near last on Microsoft's chopping block, not first.
The only question that matters, is if Xbox hadn’t bought these companies, would arcane, and tango game works still exist today? I could be wrong, but I think they would. Hifi rush would have been multi plat to begin with, and would have probably made more money than whatever they got for releasing it on gamepass. Just really sad that the people that made some of the best games of the past couple decades, dishonored, the evil within, hifi rush, deathloop, are just unemployed now. At a time when less and less games are getting made, and other than the indie scene nobody can innovate and try something different. Not just Microsoft, but the whole gaming industry has to figure out how to keep making triple A games without playing russian roulette with hundreds or thousands of people’s livelihood. Also what Matt said wasn’t a completely crazy idea, they couldn’t have taken a large portion of the people from these studios and just moved them to different studios/projects? Microsoft has had such a hard time getting games out, well here were a bunch of talented people that could’ve maybe helped speed some other already in development projects along. I definitely don’t have all the answers, and we all know the only thing that matters is the shareholders line on the graph keeps going up, but this was just a really crappy thing for Xbox to do so soon after acquiring these companies. I really feel for the devs that now have to find new employment, and I truly wish them the best of luck, because the whole gaming industry is just a nightmare to try and make a career out of right now, but thank you to all the people that made the games that brought joy to the millions of people that enjoyed them.
I actually loved this video, its nice to hear different sides of this discussion. I think this opened my eyes in understanding the depts to the situation.
I personally feel that companies only focus on what makes them money in the short term. I understand that that's what businesses do and how they need to please the share holders, but it negatively effects the games we love. I agree with Matt on his point of saying the "chance was not given". I feel like often in the industry there is so much potential for growth and possibly monumental additions that everyone would like. Heck, fans of different franchises come up with awesome ideas all the time! What sucks and I feel is stupid is not giving these ideas a chance. It might take time for these things to blossom and grow, but it can have big returns in the future. One point Matt made about Pokémon is that they can create awesome Pokémon games if they really wanted to. I feel instead of them hurting their fans by shutting down fan made projects that make no money, they focus there efforts on recruiting these people to work in their company. This allows them to make good and better games that can potentially make tons of money. TLDR I feel its commonsense to focus on the consumer and not what the board says, but I understand Austin's argument of saying that's how business are. I also feel if companies try to make a good product that's fun and that the fans enjoy, they will get their investments and more tenfold. People are willing to pay for something that is good!
They are focused on short term appearances, not even profits. Basically excuses and things to say in the investors meeting.
Just to have something to say "See we did something" .
Xbox wasted a lot of money to empower Game Pass but the things is growing anymore. They can't convince everyone that services like that are the best things since sliced bread and that made lot's of their investments not produce the road to big profits they were hoping for and forced to start thinking of alternative strategies like releasing on other platforms etc.
the problem is that the investors and shareholders meeting will happen and those people will demand explanations while the big Game Pass plans aren't making money and increasing share value.
So Xbox just fired a ton of people to reduce some short term expenses and having to say at those meetings "Yeah some mistakes happened but as you see we are taking measures". Closing those studios is their way of appearing like they are on it.
I think they didn't give enough time, games take 4+ years to make. Most of the acquisitions haven't happened long enough ago for Microsoft to even see what these studios can do under their banner. They've only seen what they were doing as they were purchased. IMO it's far to early for MS to be doing this.
Pony Austin is going hard on console warring. Lmao.
Pony?
I have always thought he was an xbot ?
I guess he is sending mix signals and doesnt want to be enemyes with anyone...cuz if he does he might get blacklisted
@@Danilo_5809 If you want to call xomeone an xbot that would be Matt, Austin hates on xbox in lots of videos.
disagree this a huge xbot channel, This video boot licking and making excuses for xbox.
I love how you guys need to make a console war everywhere you go.
And YES, that was your attempt. You don't call the users "Xbot", unless you want them to engage in a console war.
you both make excellent points but where some issues may have been lost in translation, is that lay offs & bonuses/cost of business compensation are included in the pre merger agreements. It's a very well kept, yet dirty secret that companies AND UNIONS use to reach a deal that benefits those invested.
I think its more of "If we dont buy it, someone else will". Microsoft didnt want Sony to get this content and they spent money to beat them to it. It happens in every industry.
Sony layoff where way higher just 3 months ago.... but sure.
@@TheAx37 Content is king now. Layoffs happen in any industry.
@@TheAx37 Layoffs and shutting down a studio are two different things y'know?
The sad part is so many talented people being laid off are currently jobless. The job market is already terrible. Now there will be more competition to get into game industry jobs. And many companies are not hiring or posing ghost jobs that will never hire everyone, it’s just there to collect resumes. It takes several months to even secure another job.
Austin is trying really hard to defend Xbox
"I am not gonna take my bonus"
Wasn't bonus supposed to be a reward for good performance? And today executives get like 50% on top of their salary even if profit or the stock price crashes - 50%.
so what happens if Linus acquires overclock
And there it is… Matt gets called into the HR office! 😂
The issue with businesses is that they expect infinite growth from finite resources/ideas and people have to suffer
Austin showing his CEO side 💪
It’s funny because Austin is pretty much the owner of these channels and Matt is very much an employee. There opinions speak for themselves
does anyone else want to go back to 2002 in gaming?
Unless your infinity ward… releasing the same game two years in a row
Oh wow. The first pro Microsoft upload ive seen since thoses studios got shut down. Wonder how much four eyes is being paid for his soul?
Nothing. You have no actual reason to believe it.
That's like me asking you "Wonder how much you got paid for saying something negative about Microsoft".
So... How much did you get paid?
@@appleleptiker Nothing. Probably because I didn't say anything about Microsoft. Read again & take your time.
This channel is so good. It reminds me of the good ol' G4 days.
No worries. Some devs used to say that the problem is hardware. It is about their work. They have become lazy and they want more money for nearly the same level as in past 10 years. And it is not about Ray Tracing. RT is not a huge problem with FSR 3.1. Not even mentioning advanced Mesh Shading techniques and Unreal Engine 5.4 (opens more frames and improves NANITE). There are ways to make graphics superb even without RT but it is up to them. They should definitely start using AI to make games 10 times faster. I have seen work of machine learning method based on GTA 5. They have made some photos of the city and machine learning (AI) has turned basic GTA 5 graphics into photorealistic. The tools are there and are waiting. Will devs start asking for them and using them? It is up to them if they even want to work on something unique or not. But this is they key element. To start using them properly, not lying to boss that Series X is too weak. This is insane. XSX is 4x more powerful than Xbox One X (that is what Jason Ronald's crew says in Project SCARLETT = Xbox Series X). Can you imagine this? Graphics designer tells you that there is not enough memory to play game at 60fps. Come on! It is a shame that some games even look like Half-life 2 and there is no power. They must be controled from time to time. Inside job. And it is not about native 4K if not possible.
We gamers need to see improvement. This is not last gen platform. Sorry for my English. I'm not an Englishman. Have a good one.
I think if any company in the world can afford to play the long game and allow developers/studios to find their feet it's the one valued at over a trillion dollars.
Matt making a stand for the normal people out here +1 for Matt
Austin shut up
Wow, huge argument you have there lmfao
Where can I get Matts shirt?
There is a lot of layoffs this year cause back when covid was a thing companies hired to many employees and now they don’t need them
Why is it always "in the future" with Xbox. For the past half decade all we've been hearing is: Microsoft is developing games. Microsoft is acquiring studios to develop games. Microsoft has All these IPS to develop games from. Oh I know. Microsoft will have all of the great games in 2025, or 2026, or their next generation console. the future is bright for Microsoft games.
I am sorry to tell you but is the whole decade and more. Xbox One released more than 10 years ago and they have been promising since then.
Zero vision. The leadership team needs to set a plan of moving forward but it doesn't seem like they have a plan or vision.
They should've let those studios go independent or be sold off. Closing them was such a stupid decision.
It theoretically would've been nice if Microsoft just took the developers and went "now you work on x game" instead of firing them, but that ignores that developers are people with specialized skillsets and preferences for _what_ they work on; the reason Redfall was such a disaster was because the suits went "now you work on a co-op live service looter shooter game" to devs who cut their teeth making narrative-focused single player games, which lead to an exodus of the original team that made the studio good, and hoodwinked all the new devs who joined expecting to make the next Prey.
Maybe the better solution would've been to let them volunteer being transferred to projects they want to work on, but then that ignores if said projects are actually hiring, what positions are available, what engine they want experience in, etc. Also feels like that would lead to a lot of stagnation by robbing potential new talents from outside the company of their opportunities.
That said, I agree 100% that when the bosses make mistakes that threaten hundreds of jobs, they should be the ones to take the haircut to save jobs.
The way I see it, this is a case of them biting off way more than they could chew with the ABK merger, and are now struggling to digest and integrate all these studios inteo what they already had. It particularly hurt because Tango and Arkane Austin were super beloved studios, and their closure tells both other studios and the players that if if your game doesn`t perform excellantly both critically and financially, than you are at risk of being sacrificed to the shareholders. MS are faced with a huge dilemma because apparantly every game has missed it`s sales goals pretty badly, but because of gamepass that was bound to happen. On top of that you have alot of people who aren`t GP users, but when a new Xbox game comes out they either et their hands on a free trial or otherwise buy a month of GP ultimate, play whatever game they wanted for that month, and than bounce. I`m a GP user and supporter because of what it offers, but even I recognise that it is increasingly hurting their bottom line, and they will have to either double down and increase the price/add a more expensive tier that also includes Call of Duty, fully embrace going multi platform, or shelve GP altogether (which would be the worse timeline IMO)
Also, regardless of if everybody was fired or the core teams were folded into other studios (which was kind of implied from the announcement), it`s a bad look, and they are burning their customers`s good will at an alarming pace this year... The PS and switch releases` shitstorm was way overblown, but this on is much more indicative of major issues in need of an urgent resolution at MS, and they really need to get their shit together, and also hire a PR team to better communicate with us because damn they suck at it, both with us, and internally as well
I believe we need to consider the wider picture in this situation; both Microsoft and Sony have had a dubious week. The soaring expenses associated with game development are absolutely absurd. purchasing studios one after the other without considering the status of the gaming sector.
Microsoft's framing of the situation is concerning, questioning whether the layoff was the sole solution or if it was part of a business plan or strategy. And adding to that is what Sony did with the PC gamers and PSN network situation. The gaming industry is evolving, but not in the way that is desirable. The next week will be much worse for gaming, and if the industry can't take a step back and assess the situation, I don't think there will be any stable gaming in the coming years.
Welcome to matts show
I think companies need to think about their layoff situations better. The only person that I know of that has actually taken a pay cut and gave back his bonus. I don't know his name, but he ran University of Washington back in 2008. That was during the giant "pop" of the real estate bubble that affected just about everyone. He did what he did for a few years until everything got back to somewhat normal. People got to keep their jobs. He actually SHOWED feelings instead of regurgitating them.
We got "CEO Austin" today.
I think it’s telling. MS is showing their true hand, they’re acquiring studios not to improve gamepass offerings but to eventually shut them down.
I think, perhaps as much or more than any other industry though, gaming is so goodwill based that these monoliths really need to better factor in goodwill, managing expectations, and the cost of ‘tactical errors’, bad looks, and ruthless corporate profit-making or course-correcting. My two cents.
It's all about consolidating their properties, they will shuffle their employees between different studios to be working on the projects that need the support.. shut down the studios that are no longer relevant, don't really have major projects ongoing and that will cause excess employees that ultimately will need to be let go.. in the end it will allow the stacked studios with plenty of staff to power through projects and produce what needs to be done.. it's a business and sometimes you need to evaluate your departments, shuffle staff to make the most out of your business
I'm just angry that the studios didn't even get a chance to go thru the process of making a whole game under Microsoft. Maybe, if given a chance, they would make that money by making a good game. But Microsoft and Xbox leaders threw away that chance, because they need money sooner than that. It's sad, but at least we have a bunch of great indie games coming out.
Bet if this was Sony he wouldn't hold back and say "this is a business" bet.
I am nervous for what microsoft is going to do with World of Warcraft as I have been a player for nearly 20 years.
Time to reel in Tom Kalinske. I really wanted to buy gamespass for pc and xbox but its too damn expensive. i'd happily pay $10AUD per month for both, not $29AUD per month.
I've been on Xbox since the OG box, picked up PlayStation either for kids games in PS3 or well after price drops and single player like PS4 Slim Spiderman edition black Friday sale, but primarily gamed on Xbox. Dropped PC back in early 2000s with crappy performance and chasing upgrades too often.
Now with the worst generation in console gaming upon us, I think it's time to move back. No PS+ or ultimate, just my Deck OLED and likely a 4070 Super rig in the near future. They clipped Phil's wings at the worst possible time, Sony is going day and date and no day 1 for any PS+ level, lots of deals on Steam and Fanatical. I guess I'll leave large digital libraries behind but honestly when was I going to play all that anyway?
I think the most important part of this whole thing is that I had hibachi noodles for lunch today 😮mmmmm
They don't know what to do when they gave up on console war a long time ago what's the point of buying studios if you're going to close them down 👎
When did Austin get replaced by a whiney lobbyist for the big companies. It's not even devils advocate anymore.
sony guys having cocktail right now having fun seeing xbox sinking
Who do you think is making all the noise the ponies while Sony share price down 25%
You forgot Sony 900 employees layoff just 3 months ago. 8% of their global workforce.
Anyone who says our curren dystopia is just how it works is out of touch with reality
yall care way too much about what multi billion dollar corporations do, they do not care what we think
The fact is, someone from Xbox leadership needs to take some accountability for what’s happened, but so far the only one paying the price are the employees working for the individual teams.
If they couldn’t have managed the company in the first place they shouldn’t have taken the plunge and bought the companies in the first place.
Super disappointing take from Austin. Good job on Matt and Kinsey for speaking the truth.
Nobody should be having sympathy for the multi billion dollar company who will be just perfectly fine.
“They need to make money.” Is a pathetic argument, Austin. What about the fact that employees who poured their heart and soul into a project for nearly half a decade just got the axe after they put out a critically acclaimed work of art?
Microsoft is going around cutting heads off of their studios while also wishing they had someone who could make a Fallout game right now. It's so stupid. You have a major IP sitting on the shelf and a big mothership studio unable to handle the 3 IP's they have. You don't kill off studios when you desperately need more studios. Those studios were already part of Bethesda so put them to work supporting mainline Bethesda. Tell your investors how hot Fallout is right now and you're moving full steam ahead on a new Fallout game right now to cash in on that hype. There's no reason Arkane could not work on a Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas remake so it could be out in 2-3 years for Fallout Season 2. Microsoft would have dump trucks full of money backing up to their door if they pulled that off. When Activision acquired smaller studios, they didn't kill them off just because they weren't going to use the IP those studios were known for. They put those studios to work supporting the cash cow, Call of Duty. Microsoft needs support studios for Bethesda and Halo (likely the next Halo at this point). Microsoft is not a good publisher. They haven't been in 10+ years. The executives in charge of studio management, game development schedules, software support, etc are fucking awful at their jobs. Hell, at this point I think Microsoft should do whatever it takes to bring Jim Ryan in and I hate Jim Ryan, but the dude was able to put the right people into the right roles to keep Playstation running smoothly. It's obvious Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and Sarah Bond have no idea how to do that. Just look at all the games that Microsoft had announced and were supposed release by now that have disappeared or have been delayed to unknown dates. They can't ship games, they can't parent their studios, and they can't handle to work load.
Xbox just set a precedent. Good job making that good game. You’re fired. Basically Tango.
The issue with the industry now is that there is no room for any failure or you’re chopped. Or at this point make a game that is shadow dropped(no marketing) but it does very well and praised by their boss, and yet they still aren’t safe from being axed.
I get that they are a business and need to make money. This is a fundamental problem with the game pass service they offer. I’ve anticipated this to be a problem. The issue with game pass is it does directly affect software sales. Why buy a smaller lesser known game like Hifi Rush when you can play it for free if you are subbed to game pass. Big AAA games will still sell. People who don’t sub to game pass will still buy it, heck even people who are subbed but don’t keep a consistently active subscription may buy it just to be sure they always have access to it, but for a smaller game like this you need to not have it day one on game pass in order to get sales, but now they cannot do that as they already stated every Microsoft published game will be on game pass day one. This service is shooting them in the foot and really just bad for the industry as a whole since it directly affects new software sales
These huge companies inflate the number of employees they have. You do not need so many to make a great game. But they won’t get tons of money if they don’t show their company is growing.
Studios being closed... but does that also mean the IP's are dead ?
If an IP is utilized as a tax write-off, then yes. However, if they aren't, then the company can hold on to the IP for future use for another studio to pick up in the future. But considering this is Microsoft, I'm not holding my breath that they'll consider a HI Fi rush 2 or Prey 2.
If it always happens give us examples of it happening Austin! Do other companies that acquire companies not have a plan in place and then have to fire loads and loads of people to fix their mistake?? If it happens all the time give me examples of it happening?
This is more about bobby getting 400 million instead of arkane getting shut down.
If they didn't have anything in the pipeline, it wouldn't make sense to keep them around. But shift the personnel to a different studio
Game devs gotta unionize
10000%
Microsoft owning activision is legit the best infinite money glitch, they have enough money
I think AI will probably do a lot of the heavy lifting in the near future.
Well...
Microsoft is working together with Sony on some AI projects.
growth is never forever sometimes its ok to dip its natural
The entire profit incentives/stock price valuation system is completely messed up and unsynchornized.
Every studio that closed, released talent back into the wild to make new game studios and more games. Microsoft just wasted a bunch of money for IP that they don't even have the teams to produce and maintain.
This is why MS and Sony buying up all these game studios was just a massively bad choice on their ends.
next target is hellblade studio
LOL I’ve never even heard of redfall, and I like to keep up to date on this kind of stuff
So in other words, they bought studio in order to ruin them, got it. Problem that pisses people off is SINGLE PLAYER GAMES that REQUIRE and ONLINE CONNECTION! The Crew is an example of this. Services like Game Pass, the developers don't get a piece of the pie. CEO and Shareholders do. And inserting the "message" in our games is another issue too, community managers ATTACKING gamers on social media.
After seeing that memo to their developers about being careful not making too strong or manly men and making women look good etc etc i lost all hope for Microsoft of ever making a decent release.
Can you imagine the next Doom release were the Doom guy talks about his trauma of killing demons and crying like a baby about it while some strong black women takes the role of stopping the demons while he cries in the corner and expressing his feelings to the player?
@@SIPEROTH Or the next Duke Nukem game? "non-binary"? lol
@@RAM_845 Don't forget the next big halo release. "Halo: The path to transition."
@@SIPEROTH renamed Whorelo lol
Ok so I’m a HUGE Xbox fangirl, been with them since launch of the OG Xbox. Never had a PlayStation and never really cared about it, except for last year when I got the PS5 to go along with my Xbox Series X. I actually find myself playing my ps5 way more and is now my go to for games and entertainment. I’m always gonna love Xbox but PlayStation has definitely won me over
Austin sounds like he is just trying to have Xbox send them stuff lol
I think they do actually have friends at Xbox.
But I don't think that this is the reason. He talked bad about Xbox in the past too.
Austin argument is good... Ms was always waiting to collect earnings. The reason i think Austin is defending more than he needs is.... Why Ms gave us a different Speach. We all believe Ms was trying to become less corporate and more gaming hehe, "Ms Good guy" was an illusion all along.
Austin is missing the point when Microsoft is possibly the biggest company in the world and doesn’t want to take miniscule hits to their revenue. iirc, someone like Meta is actively losing money selling their headsets but Zuckerberg believes in the product and how the business will eventually take off once it’s normalized.
If what Austin is saying that company has to keep growing and make a profit. Why 343 still hasn't been closed after all ?
The only thing you gain from fence sitting is holes in your pants.
All this is not new. We have more games to play than ever before. As consumers it is the best time to be a gamer.
Unfortunately that is the nature of the beast. Unfortunately that is the industry standard now.
I don’t know what people were expecting from these mergers and buyouts, every single other industry has shown time and time again the same behaviour, it’s part of restructuring.
This happens. It sucks but this is how business is run. All areas in the world of business will deal with this. People don't mesh and it sucks.
I mean I think Austin is ignoring the big issue. Microsoft just should’ve never bought Bethesda. Yes it’s a business but a lot of this stuff is the cause of mistakes on their end. They buy all these studios but never support them, just looks how little big games they release despite how many studios they have. Also I think this just points out that gamepass really isn’t that great that everyone thinks it is on terms of money making.
This simple an admission that Game Pass failed. Actually it was an admission when they said they will release titles on other consoles. Is basically saying Game Pass isn't making the money we hoped, it has stagnated and we need sales from other platforms to manage.
the whole point of throwing so many billions buying those studios was to make Game Pass an offer you can't miss type of thing where everyone needs to have it to play many the big games across the industry on release etc.
They wanted to make gamers feel like they have to have it otherwise they will miss too much. But it didn't work out.
Many gamers aren't interested on becoming live service consumers and they are fine buying their games. The Game Pass growth didn't come and they are left with the billions they wasted buying all those studios. So now they started closing the studios.
The solution is easy:
1. Stop prioritizing third-party, AAA games for day one release on Game Pass. The greater cost over securing third-party, AAA games a year or two after their release doesn't justify it.
2. Strengthen relationships with indie developers, making Game Pass and Xbox in general the ideal avenue for indie releases.
3. Wherever possible prioritize first-party projects that don't directly compete with the most popular third-party, AAA games, effectively using first-party titles to fill in overall genre and gameplay gaps on Xbox.
4. Capitalize on unused IPs under Microsoft's umbrella, if not directly then by licensing them out to third-parties.
Game Pass is really harsh for Indie games. Hi-Fi Rush not doing enough to save the studio that made it is basically because of Game Pass.
Is Hi-Fi Rush an indie title? Really, though? It was developed by a Microsoft subsidiary and while it surely had a fraction of the budget of any AAA title, it probably had a much larger budget than most indie titles and access to technical resources that only an AAA company could provide.
At any rate, the point is Game Pass needs to change. Paying for day one AAA titles is unsustainable, but (better) supporting indie titles is not -- especially since by some accounts Game Pass has (sometimes) managed to do exactly that. The dev of Citizen Sleeper said "Game Pass is keeping a lot of indie studios going," and that's something Microsoft should run with.
Austin is turning into a HR himself… shilling for any corporate is wild.
My man said: oh it is not good but it is a business. It is only tactical error!
No bro, they didn’t have to go around and buy studios just to sell them.
Keep shilling for corporations, history have shown how much they return the favor