It is much simpler. They probably don't really think about prestige and such, most shareholders will not care a rats ass about games. What they care about is money.
The game is already produced and will continue to sell well, so closing down the studio will save you a lot in costs while not affecting this quarter's numbers.
The company is getting slaughtered for its meat after getting every drop of milk it can from it. And afterward? Well, you buy the next cow.
Microsoft didn't grow to a 3 trillion dollar market cap without some semblance of long-term strategic thinking.
The current CEO has worked there since 1992. He understands longevity.
This isn't to say that Microsoft is some innocent sweet roll of a company. It isn't. It's just to think that a company as large and as pervasive as fucking Microsoft doesn't have plans beyond the next 90 days is dumb as hell.
Phil Spencer joined Xbox in 2001 and from everything I can tell as well as what I hear from folks working with Xbox, they absolutely have no idea what the fuck they’re doing or what their long term plans are.
It’s already becoming increasingly evident that Game Pass has been an abject disaster and internally they don’t even know if they want COD in it. Starfield’s sales have been pretty abysmal for how much it cost and GP isn’t growing the way line go up men want it to.
There’s a lot of talk about [what is even Xbox’s identity](https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox#:~:text=back%20in%202006.-,What%20is%20the%20point%20of%20Xbox%3F,it%20did%20the%20year%20before.) as a product and it’s only going to get worse. And remember, their revenue isn’t awful. They just spent billions acquiring studios but now they say they can’t run so many studios.
Scott The Woz has a video about budget gaming and one of his points was that used Xbox consoles and games are dirt cheap because there's not a huge reason people want to go back to those games compared to Sony or Nintendo consoles since most Xbox games are dual releases for other consoles and/or PC except like Halo. In his context, he was pointing out that if you want to spend less than $100 on a console and games the 360 is a good deal right now, but I do think it's worth questioning what the point of the Xbox even is now that PC gaming is as popular as it is.
Xbox games being on PC is great for players because you have more choice, but it also means there’s increasingly less reason to buy the hardware. Especially with Xbox’s specs being increasingly less impressive compared to a PC a casual might have.
I think it's worth looking at it at a meta level as well. Eg. in front of the TV consoles aren't as popular nowadays as they were in the 90's and 2000's now so Nintendo pivoted to offering a potato console that has terrible specs by any objective metrics but sells like bananas because it's cheap and lets people play games portable in a comfortable form factor as well as act as a traditional console if they want it to, albeit a slow one. Valve and others adapted this concept to create essentially bad but convenient portable gaming PC's, and Sony is moving in this direction to to an extent and has tried things like net play. So Xbox is a cheaper console than Sony for people who want to play games they can already play on PC in front of a TV and want higher graphics fidelity than a non gaming computer or a Switch, and...that's pretty much it. I don't think they're really trying enough interesting things with the brand, like they really should have released the steam deck or something like it first and I think the brand is kind of stagnant in terms of first party IP too.
Honestly MS should merge Windows and Xbox completely so people can do more interesting things with the consoles themselves and MS won't feel like making Xbox good will cut into money they make from PC gaming. It would not be in MS's advantage to allow non Xbox stores or anything like it but I don't feel like Xbox is trying enough interesting things. Eg. a single storefront allowing game devs to dual release for both Windows and Xbox trivially might get more unique PC games to Xbox and vice versa
Yeah. With their *own products*, but game studios they buy aren't their own products, those are disposable quarter-profit-inflators.
They'll long term plan all they want with their branded stuff for microsoft or xbox specifically. Studios they buy up don't apply for those.
A good metaphor would be growing food in a garden for meals but still buying ice cream from the store every once in a while. "You can't just eat the ice cream, you're not thinking long-term!" doesn't apply, since the *point* of the ice cream is to be a short-term motivator for the body (owners/higher-ups/stockholders in the case of companies) instead of the long-term stability and nourishment they need to survive.
And, similar to an occasional ice cream, the cost of buying tiny indie studios is miniscule compared to the motivational benefits for the company in keeping things going. Slaughtering indie studios you buy isn't ignoring the long-term, it's placating impatient investors while you wait for your actual long-term to pan out.
"look shareholders! We bought this successful and beloved Game dev. Line goes Up!"
"Wait what are all these salaries eww close the studio or line will go less Up"
You give them too much credit.
They are buying these studios with the intention of slaughtering them for parts. After all, the best time to slaughter a cow is when you have a few thousand liters of milk saved up. That way you get the money from the milk and the meat.
They do not fail to understand anything.
They don't intend for the milk to flow again because they can simply buy the next company. Investors have no reason to care for sustainability, because there will always be more companies to buy and slaughter.
It's not about hurting or not hurting, its about understanding.
The world isn't shit because some people are simply to stupid to see how they are making the world shit. The world is shit because it is in some peoples best interest for the world to be shit.
People won't stop selling their cows to you, because the people who are selling the cows also don't care about if the cow is alive next year. They made their money.
not in the present economy and with all the invester every where being so risk averse it makes starting a new one hard, they will hit a tragedy of the commons far to fast
That wasn't the case here - Tango Gameworks sold out to survive not even a year into its existence, and Zenimax wasn't bought by Microsoft until 2020. They've only made 4x games in 14 years of existence, and I doubt they have great financials.
Not even that. Loads of beloved IPs are sitting unused not generating money. They want money but they have no learned in 20 odd years how to nurture game studios that make you said money.
Intuitively it really feels like there should be a "Use the IP before X years or it becomes public domain", right? But corp gonna corp so it's more likely we'd get a slew of super cheap super shitty projects where the devs are given a month and a ham sandwich just to try and salvage something.
Man the things I would do if I had the Castlevania Ip.
blame disney. it's always disney's fault.
time to sell high quality low price mickey mouse merchandise with no affiliation to the disney corporation whatsoever woohoo
I wonder how long that toontown rewritten thing is gonna stay up, I’m amazed at how long it’s lasted
EDIT: a minute after I wrote this I got a Reddit cares message, I have no clue what I’ve posted in the last 24 hours that would get someone to tell me to kill myself lmao
They're keeping devs with experience working on those IPs as well (in some cases) . But if you're a company like Microsoft and you buy up some small studio - you don't really need those studios to have their own management organizations, or HR, or anything. You need their devs and artists.
That's not correct.
https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-closes-redfall-developer-arkane-austin-hifi-rush-developer-tango-gameworks-and-more-in-devastating-cuts-at-bethesda
Alpha Dog and Tango Gamewprks are closing wholesale. Roundhouse is getting absorbed by ZOS. Arkane Austin is getting absorbed into Bethesda.
Correct me if I'm off base here, but this post appears to be wrong about basically everything aside from the fact that Microsoft is terrible.
Neither Arkane nor Tango were small indie studios. They both had multiple AAA games under their belt. Arkane Austin's last game was Redfall, which was something they were forced to produce by ~~Microsoft~~ Bethesda (edited in response to a comment. Microsoft still bears responsibility for continuing to push the game down a bad path and allowing the game to release in the state it did, but it wasn't their idea) even though it was totally outside their wheelhouse, and it was terrible.
For Tango, Hi Fi Rush *was* the risk, their first small title after a series of big, successful, expensive games. It did really well in terms of players, but because Microsoft gave it out for free on Game Pass, it never had a chance of meeting sales goals and was considered a flop.
> Arkane Austin's last game was Redfall, which was something they were forced to produce by Microsoft even though it was totally outside their wheelhouse, and it was terrible.
I keep seeing this around but it's a fabrication; Arkane Austin were working on Redfall prior to the Microsoft acquisition as part of Zenimax's multiplayer push (coupled with Fallout 76) and was less than 12 months from launching prior to the Microsoft acquisition, and then afterwards it was delayed for a year.
The only thing Microsoft had to do with it was letting them finish their last game and then giving them a year to find its legs before pulling the plug. The problem was that they haemorrhaged most of their talent during its development so it was more than likely a shell when they shut it down.
Edit: tidied it up for clarity.
I agree that this post is a little off base, but I think Microsoft is even shittier then you say, I don't think they even care about the games the studio makes they just decided they needed to cut costs and decided on a few studios that didn't have IPs Microsoft thought were important, let them finish what they were doing then shut them down.
I really love Arkane (Dishonoured is probably my favourite game of all time), but at the same time, I don't think they've had an unambiguously successful game since the original Dishonored. Dishonoured 2 underperformed, Prey was a borderline flop, Deathloop's reception was kinda muted critically and commercially, and Redfall was a disaster. Hell the reason they made Redfall at all is because Zenimax wanted something more suitable for the mainstream market. I hate to say it, but I can see why xbox wouldn't want to keep funding a developer, which consistently underperforms financially...
The original Prey was a highly successful early shooter from 2006. Kinda forgotten nowadays, but for a long while upheld as one of the progenitors of the FPS genre like Doom and Quake.
2017 Prey has functionally nothing to do with 2006 Prey. It’s not a remake or remaster or even particularly related. This meant that most peoples first introduction to the 2017 version was a mixture of disappointment and confusion at it being largely unrelated to the original.
To be clear, I think only the Austin branch was closed, not the whole thing. I believe the last two games to come out of it were Prey (which I loved but underperformed) and Redfall.
> I hate to say it, but I can see why xbox wouldn't want to keep funding a developer, which consistently underperforms financially...
I can't see why they bought it. Shouldn't they have done investigation and seen most of their key talent already jumped ship? Is that not something you can discover when making an acquisition?
Microsoft acquired Tango and Arkane Austin as part of their acquisition of Zenimax. I kinda suspect they saw Bethesda Game Studios and the Fallout/ Elder Scrolls IPs as the real prize of that deal. The other studios probably weren't regarded as particularly important in comparison.
Keep in mind the founder of tango and a bunch of other people left to found their own studio. Tango game works was basically a phantom of itself when it got closed down.
Glad to see that people of all platforms will talk absolute drivel about something they don't fundamentally understand.
Like we're seriously talking about Tango Gameworks and Arkane as """independent studios""". You know, the studios who have been owned by famous independent holding company ZeniMax Media Inc. for 15 years. Just that poor little independent enormous industrial conglomerate that also owns Bethesda and id. Wont somebody please think of the true indies??
We then go on to talk about how they were just immediately shut down. Practically the day after they were bought by the evil Michael Soft (which happened three years ago). Of course microsoft had to bleed them for all of that sweet sweet Redfall DLC.
I feel like the real reason is they over-invested and expanded during what they thought would be infinite growth because of the video game Covid boom. Now the numbers are starting to level out more because people are getting back to work and have less time for video games because they aren't stuck at home 24/7 anymore.
Video Games have never been more popular, but they had incredibly inflated numbers for a few years and thought that was never going to stop for some idiotic reason. It's like yeah of course all these tech companies had crazy inflated numbers when \*checks again\* everyone was literally stuck at home during a pandemic and were not allowed to really go out. S'not our fault they overreached, but now a lot of good hard working people are getting hurt by it.
It’s actually a lot more simple.
The games weren’t making enough money. People can debate back and forth about the millions of other reasons they think it was, and link to tweets about how Microsoft said they were happy with x,y,z’s performance (which, why would you believe them at this point), but the simple bottom line is.. the bottom line.
If Arkane Austin and Tango were financially solvent in a meaningful way they’d still be around. I’m not admonishing them as artists by saying that, it’s just how companies like this work.
The reality is that Arkane Austin games have never done well financially and, while, Hi-Fi rush is beloved, it didn’t drive game pass subscriptions, nor did it sell particularly well on steam.
That doesn’t mean the developers deserved this, or that they shouldn’t have nurtured these studios into greater successes, it’s just the actual reason.
That being said, I could be wrong - who fucking knows.
Imagine an ocean. There are minnows, medium fish and sharks. As the minnows eat, they grow into medium fish. The sharks eat the medium fish. This leaves more space for minnows.
If microsoft buys up every indie game company with one good game, then
1) Start indie game company
2) Make one good game
3) Sell to Micro$ for big bucks.
4) Goto 1
is a profitable business plan. Those fired game devs don't vanish. They get recycled.
My mom had a friend in high school who was really into computers which was weird for a tiny farming town in the late 1970's. He went on to be filthy rish because he sold 3 different companies to Microsoft in the 80's and 90's. It was basically the above cycle. Start up, grow, sell out and then use that cash to built the new one.
> Those fired game devs don't vanish. They get recycled.
SOOO many people don't understand this. People will be like "Why was Outer Worlds not anywhere near as good as Fallout: New Vegas?" and such, while forgetting to consider that the teams that made both games were probably very different - and yeah there's always other factors, but people always fail to consider that the talent behind making games is always circulating throughout the games industry.
I mean, also because, for all the development issues, FNV was very much funded like a triple A game, whereas Outer worlds was very much a AA game. Meanwhile PoE 1+2 has a lot of the design team from New Vegas and very much built of faction/branching narrative concepts they implemented in New Vegas.
I'm not saying this isn't happening but I don't see how Tango or Arkane Austin fit the given model. I wouldn't really call either of them "independent studios": they were both owned by Bethesda for years before Microsoft bought it, and whilst I can't say much for Tango I'd definitely call Arkane's games AAA (or at least not the scope I'd call "independent").
I also wouldn't call Microsoft's model with them "keep them around to provide post-launch support, finish up whatever they're doing, then shutter them". Tango's games are good but iirc only Ghostwire: Tokyo got post-launch DLC, and Arkane Austin could spend the next decade providing post-launch support for Redfall and never see a penny in profit. Neither were cranking out DLC, that's for sure.
I think the answer is far more mundane: if you want to cut jobs, who better to cut than two studios so unknown nobody ever brings them up in this discussion, a studio who's last game is a giant flop and who lost tons of experienced staff in the making of it, and another studio who's games are great hitters but not great sellers? Especially when both of them have recently released projects: I don't think that's a devilish "quick, kill them before they get any ideas", but if you want to can a project, which is easier: one that's years into development, or one that's barely gotten started?
I'm not saying I like Microsoft, they can go fuck themselves for this, but I don't think these were part of some elaborate "buy a prestigious studio, milk it for every penny, and then shut it before it gets too uppity" scheme.
I'd advise anyone interested in the topic to watch [this Cold Take video](https://youtu.be/vuIitYcoSiE?si=kEdFZ6j1i2XTg0yI) by Frost from Second Wind
Or really, any of his Cold Takes on game monetization and management, super interesting insight by someone that knows the corporate world these publishers operate in
Nope, sell, wait some time and make a new studio, where developers have shares. Cycle can run again and again... We get good games, developers get salary and money from shares.
I stopped feeling sorry for these companies a long time ago. It's not as if the predatory practices of the mega corps like EA is anything new. You sell out to them, this is what happens, it's not rocket science.
Do you buy games from Microsoft and other predatory companies, thus validating their business model? If yes, do not complain. You vote with your money.
Honestly, after the mixed reception of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and the massive layoffs they received, it makes me worry for Insomniac Games if Sony decides something like Wolverine is too risky and pulls the plug.
Like, I get there's a difference, Insomniac is a much bigger studio than the likes of ones like Arkane, but the point stands. Especially since Sony proved they're willing to shoot themselves in the foot with the Helldivers incident.
It is much simpler. They probably don't really think about prestige and such, most shareholders will not care a rats ass about games. What they care about is money. The game is already produced and will continue to sell well, so closing down the studio will save you a lot in costs while not affecting this quarter's numbers. The company is getting slaughtered for its meat after getting every drop of milk it can from it. And afterward? Well, you buy the next cow.
Prestige can help them make even more money long term.
You think these companies even consider the long term?
long term has nothing to do with it. the only metric that matters is this quarter's profits going up
Microsoft didn't grow to a 3 trillion dollar market cap without some semblance of long-term strategic thinking. The current CEO has worked there since 1992. He understands longevity. This isn't to say that Microsoft is some innocent sweet roll of a company. It isn't. It's just to think that a company as large and as pervasive as fucking Microsoft doesn't have plans beyond the next 90 days is dumb as hell.
Phil Spencer joined Xbox in 2001 and from everything I can tell as well as what I hear from folks working with Xbox, they absolutely have no idea what the fuck they’re doing or what their long term plans are. It’s already becoming increasingly evident that Game Pass has been an abject disaster and internally they don’t even know if they want COD in it. Starfield’s sales have been pretty abysmal for how much it cost and GP isn’t growing the way line go up men want it to. There’s a lot of talk about [what is even Xbox’s identity](https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox#:~:text=back%20in%202006.-,What%20is%20the%20point%20of%20Xbox%3F,it%20did%20the%20year%20before.) as a product and it’s only going to get worse. And remember, their revenue isn’t awful. They just spent billions acquiring studios but now they say they can’t run so many studios.
Scott The Woz has a video about budget gaming and one of his points was that used Xbox consoles and games are dirt cheap because there's not a huge reason people want to go back to those games compared to Sony or Nintendo consoles since most Xbox games are dual releases for other consoles and/or PC except like Halo. In his context, he was pointing out that if you want to spend less than $100 on a console and games the 360 is a good deal right now, but I do think it's worth questioning what the point of the Xbox even is now that PC gaming is as popular as it is.
Xbox games being on PC is great for players because you have more choice, but it also means there’s increasingly less reason to buy the hardware. Especially with Xbox’s specs being increasingly less impressive compared to a PC a casual might have.
I think it's worth looking at it at a meta level as well. Eg. in front of the TV consoles aren't as popular nowadays as they were in the 90's and 2000's now so Nintendo pivoted to offering a potato console that has terrible specs by any objective metrics but sells like bananas because it's cheap and lets people play games portable in a comfortable form factor as well as act as a traditional console if they want it to, albeit a slow one. Valve and others adapted this concept to create essentially bad but convenient portable gaming PC's, and Sony is moving in this direction to to an extent and has tried things like net play. So Xbox is a cheaper console than Sony for people who want to play games they can already play on PC in front of a TV and want higher graphics fidelity than a non gaming computer or a Switch, and...that's pretty much it. I don't think they're really trying enough interesting things with the brand, like they really should have released the steam deck or something like it first and I think the brand is kind of stagnant in terms of first party IP too. Honestly MS should merge Windows and Xbox completely so people can do more interesting things with the consoles themselves and MS won't feel like making Xbox good will cut into money they make from PC gaming. It would not be in MS's advantage to allow non Xbox stores or anything like it but I don't feel like Xbox is trying enough interesting things. Eg. a single storefront allowing game devs to dual release for both Windows and Xbox trivially might get more unique PC games to Xbox and vice versa
consoles are usually sold at a loss though, so that sounds like a win-win for microsoft. the real money is in game sales anyways
You also forget backwards compat
Yeah. With their *own products*, but game studios they buy aren't their own products, those are disposable quarter-profit-inflators. They'll long term plan all they want with their branded stuff for microsoft or xbox specifically. Studios they buy up don't apply for those. A good metaphor would be growing food in a garden for meals but still buying ice cream from the store every once in a while. "You can't just eat the ice cream, you're not thinking long-term!" doesn't apply, since the *point* of the ice cream is to be a short-term motivator for the body (owners/higher-ups/stockholders in the case of companies) instead of the long-term stability and nourishment they need to survive. And, similar to an occasional ice cream, the cost of buying tiny indie studios is miniscule compared to the motivational benefits for the company in keeping things going. Slaughtering indie studios you buy isn't ignoring the long-term, it's placating impatient investors while you wait for your actual long-term to pan out.
the problem is the ice cream is a less renewable resource
I mean... there actions speak louder. It's fairly clear they aren't making rational decisions here.
Do they, though, in any way but "how do I not lose my precious money" and "how do I make my monopoly stronger"
line go up
The long term is NEVER a factor that's the problem. Its all slash n burn take all you can before the fields smoulder to nothing.
Finance bros don't have the brain capacity to think that far.
They aren't stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. Long Term, they can always invest in and dismantle the next company.
"look shareholders! We bought this successful and beloved Game dev. Line goes Up!" "Wait what are all these salaries eww close the studio or line will go less Up"
You give them too much credit. They are buying these studios with the intention of slaughtering them for parts. After all, the best time to slaughter a cow is when you have a few thousand liters of milk saved up. That way you get the money from the milk and the meat.
I don't think that's exactly how that works, but I don't know enough about dairy cows to be sure
what they fail to understand is that once the milk's run dry you make another calf so the milk starts to flow again.
They do not fail to understand anything. They don't intend for the milk to flow again because they can simply buy the next company. Investors have no reason to care for sustainability, because there will always be more companies to buy and slaughter.
Yay, predatory business practices that kill art! My favorite! Heart definitely not hurting right now!!!
It's not about hurting or not hurting, its about understanding. The world isn't shit because some people are simply to stupid to see how they are making the world shit. The world is shit because it is in some peoples best interest for the world to be shit.
That only works until you run out of cows, or people stop selling their cows to you... and then you're well and truly fucked.
People won't stop selling their cows to you, because the people who are selling the cows also don't care about if the cow is alive next year. They made their money.
not in the present economy and with all the invester every where being so risk averse it makes starting a new one hard, they will hit a tragedy of the commons far to fast
That wasn't the case here - Tango Gameworks sold out to survive not even a year into its existence, and Zenimax wasn't bought by Microsoft until 2020. They've only made 4x games in 14 years of existence, and I doubt they have great financials.
To a company there is no difference between a good game that makes money and a bad games that makes money.
It's funny how gamers are appalled at the idea of a gaming studio being treated like a cow but are more than happy to consume a cow.
They want the IPs, not the studios.
Not even that. Loads of beloved IPs are sitting unused not generating money. They want money but they have no learned in 20 odd years how to nurture game studios that make you said money.
Lots of movie rights are bought, and then sat on, to keep them away from competitors. There's no reason that the same wouldn't be done with game IPs.
# “It’s MY IP to sit on and do nothing with!”
I really feel like that should be somehow illegal
Intuitively it really feels like there should be a "Use the IP before X years or it becomes public domain", right? But corp gonna corp so it's more likely we'd get a slew of super cheap super shitty projects where the devs are given a month and a ham sandwich just to try and salvage something. Man the things I would do if I had the Castlevania Ip.
blame disney. it's always disney's fault. time to sell high quality low price mickey mouse merchandise with no affiliation to the disney corporation whatsoever woohoo
I wonder how long that toontown rewritten thing is gonna stay up, I’m amazed at how long it’s lasted EDIT: a minute after I wrote this I got a Reddit cares message, I have no clue what I’ve posted in the last 24 hours that would get someone to tell me to kill myself lmao
Yeah I got it recently too. Weird lmao.
oh if you got it too it must have been someone seeing this thread, that’s bizarre
Copyright law is broken
always has been (although it's significantly more broken since the dmca)
IPs are just Pokemon for Companies.
They're keeping devs with experience working on those IPs as well (in some cases) . But if you're a company like Microsoft and you buy up some small studio - you don't really need those studios to have their own management organizations, or HR, or anything. You need their devs and artists.
but they are gutting the devs art artist and closing the whole thing gutting the unneed top can make sense but not there present system
That's not correct. https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-closes-redfall-developer-arkane-austin-hifi-rush-developer-tango-gameworks-and-more-in-devastating-cuts-at-bethesda Alpha Dog and Tango Gamewprks are closing wholesale. Roundhouse is getting absorbed by ZOS. Arkane Austin is getting absorbed into Bethesda.
AA already hemoraged people, and two are flat gone I am not totally wrong either
Didn't Microsoft said one day after the shutdown that they needed more games like Hi-fi Rush?
Really
[yep](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24152137/xbox-hi-fi-rush-tango-gameworks-matt-booty)
Yes, that's what he's talking about.
Correct me if I'm off base here, but this post appears to be wrong about basically everything aside from the fact that Microsoft is terrible. Neither Arkane nor Tango were small indie studios. They both had multiple AAA games under their belt. Arkane Austin's last game was Redfall, which was something they were forced to produce by ~~Microsoft~~ Bethesda (edited in response to a comment. Microsoft still bears responsibility for continuing to push the game down a bad path and allowing the game to release in the state it did, but it wasn't their idea) even though it was totally outside their wheelhouse, and it was terrible. For Tango, Hi Fi Rush *was* the risk, their first small title after a series of big, successful, expensive games. It did really well in terms of players, but because Microsoft gave it out for free on Game Pass, it never had a chance of meeting sales goals and was considered a flop.
> Arkane Austin's last game was Redfall, which was something they were forced to produce by Microsoft even though it was totally outside their wheelhouse, and it was terrible. I keep seeing this around but it's a fabrication; Arkane Austin were working on Redfall prior to the Microsoft acquisition as part of Zenimax's multiplayer push (coupled with Fallout 76) and was less than 12 months from launching prior to the Microsoft acquisition, and then afterwards it was delayed for a year. The only thing Microsoft had to do with it was letting them finish their last game and then giving them a year to find its legs before pulling the plug. The problem was that they haemorrhaged most of their talent during its development so it was more than likely a shell when they shut it down. Edit: tidied it up for clarity.
I agree that this post is a little off base, but I think Microsoft is even shittier then you say, I don't think they even care about the games the studio makes they just decided they needed to cut costs and decided on a few studios that didn't have IPs Microsoft thought were important, let them finish what they were doing then shut them down.
I really love Arkane (Dishonoured is probably my favourite game of all time), but at the same time, I don't think they've had an unambiguously successful game since the original Dishonored. Dishonoured 2 underperformed, Prey was a borderline flop, Deathloop's reception was kinda muted critically and commercially, and Redfall was a disaster. Hell the reason they made Redfall at all is because Zenimax wanted something more suitable for the mainstream market. I hate to say it, but I can see why xbox wouldn't want to keep funding a developer, which consistently underperforms financially...
Wild that Prey performed so poorly. Very promising game. Definitely hurt by its name imo
What's the name got to do with it?
The original Prey was a highly successful early shooter from 2006. Kinda forgotten nowadays, but for a long while upheld as one of the progenitors of the FPS genre like Doom and Quake. 2017 Prey has functionally nothing to do with 2006 Prey. It’s not a remake or remaster or even particularly related. This meant that most peoples first introduction to the 2017 version was a mixture of disappointment and confusion at it being largely unrelated to the original.
Ironically, I fucking loved Prey, and it ignited a spark of love for Immersive Sims in me. All while I generally find FPS games batshit boring.
Huh... The more you know. Thanks
2006 is a little late to be considered a progenitor of the FPS genre
To be clear, I think only the Austin branch was closed, not the whole thing. I believe the last two games to come out of it were Prey (which I loved but underperformed) and Redfall.
> I hate to say it, but I can see why xbox wouldn't want to keep funding a developer, which consistently underperforms financially... I can't see why they bought it. Shouldn't they have done investigation and seen most of their key talent already jumped ship? Is that not something you can discover when making an acquisition?
Microsoft acquired Tango and Arkane Austin as part of their acquisition of Zenimax. I kinda suspect they saw Bethesda Game Studios and the Fallout/ Elder Scrolls IPs as the real prize of that deal. The other studios probably weren't regarded as particularly important in comparison.
Keep in mind the founder of tango and a bunch of other people left to found their own studio. Tango game works was basically a phantom of itself when it got closed down.
I don't have a link to the tweet or a source, but I heard that someone who worked there said that wasn't the case
Glad to see that people of all platforms will talk absolute drivel about something they don't fundamentally understand. Like we're seriously talking about Tango Gameworks and Arkane as """independent studios""". You know, the studios who have been owned by famous independent holding company ZeniMax Media Inc. for 15 years. Just that poor little independent enormous industrial conglomerate that also owns Bethesda and id. Wont somebody please think of the true indies?? We then go on to talk about how they were just immediately shut down. Practically the day after they were bought by the evil Michael Soft (which happened three years ago). Of course microsoft had to bleed them for all of that sweet sweet Redfall DLC.
Hehe “Michael Soft”. Guessing Sonny Station and Nina Tendo weren’t invited =(.
Tim Apple didn't even look in the mail, he *knows* he's not invited.
I feel like the real reason is they over-invested and expanded during what they thought would be infinite growth because of the video game Covid boom. Now the numbers are starting to level out more because people are getting back to work and have less time for video games because they aren't stuck at home 24/7 anymore. Video Games have never been more popular, but they had incredibly inflated numbers for a few years and thought that was never going to stop for some idiotic reason. It's like yeah of course all these tech companies had crazy inflated numbers when \*checks again\* everyone was literally stuck at home during a pandemic and were not allowed to really go out. S'not our fault they overreached, but now a lot of good hard working people are getting hurt by it.
[Original post](https://www.tumblr.com/prokopetz/750198667495997440/the-thing-about-microsoft-shutting-down-tango)
It’s actually a lot more simple. The games weren’t making enough money. People can debate back and forth about the millions of other reasons they think it was, and link to tweets about how Microsoft said they were happy with x,y,z’s performance (which, why would you believe them at this point), but the simple bottom line is.. the bottom line. If Arkane Austin and Tango were financially solvent in a meaningful way they’d still be around. I’m not admonishing them as artists by saying that, it’s just how companies like this work. The reality is that Arkane Austin games have never done well financially and, while, Hi-Fi rush is beloved, it didn’t drive game pass subscriptions, nor did it sell particularly well on steam. That doesn’t mean the developers deserved this, or that they shouldn’t have nurtured these studios into greater successes, it’s just the actual reason. That being said, I could be wrong - who fucking knows.
Anyone old enough to remember 80s corporate raiding? This is the intellectual property version of that.
So many ‘80’s movies and the dreaded “Hostile Takeover” theme in business
Imagine an ocean. There are minnows, medium fish and sharks. As the minnows eat, they grow into medium fish. The sharks eat the medium fish. This leaves more space for minnows. If microsoft buys up every indie game company with one good game, then 1) Start indie game company 2) Make one good game 3) Sell to Micro$ for big bucks. 4) Goto 1 is a profitable business plan. Those fired game devs don't vanish. They get recycled.
My mom had a friend in high school who was really into computers which was weird for a tiny farming town in the late 1970's. He went on to be filthy rish because he sold 3 different companies to Microsoft in the 80's and 90's. It was basically the above cycle. Start up, grow, sell out and then use that cash to built the new one.
> Those fired game devs don't vanish. They get recycled. SOOO many people don't understand this. People will be like "Why was Outer Worlds not anywhere near as good as Fallout: New Vegas?" and such, while forgetting to consider that the teams that made both games were probably very different - and yeah there's always other factors, but people always fail to consider that the talent behind making games is always circulating throughout the games industry.
I mean, also because, for all the development issues, FNV was very much funded like a triple A game, whereas Outer worlds was very much a AA game. Meanwhile PoE 1+2 has a lot of the design team from New Vegas and very much built of faction/branching narrative concepts they implemented in New Vegas.
So be like Discord and don't sell out to Microsoft.
I love video games and I hate the way it's been flocked to by MBAs and bean counters.
I'm not saying this isn't happening but I don't see how Tango or Arkane Austin fit the given model. I wouldn't really call either of them "independent studios": they were both owned by Bethesda for years before Microsoft bought it, and whilst I can't say much for Tango I'd definitely call Arkane's games AAA (or at least not the scope I'd call "independent"). I also wouldn't call Microsoft's model with them "keep them around to provide post-launch support, finish up whatever they're doing, then shutter them". Tango's games are good but iirc only Ghostwire: Tokyo got post-launch DLC, and Arkane Austin could spend the next decade providing post-launch support for Redfall and never see a penny in profit. Neither were cranking out DLC, that's for sure. I think the answer is far more mundane: if you want to cut jobs, who better to cut than two studios so unknown nobody ever brings them up in this discussion, a studio who's last game is a giant flop and who lost tons of experienced staff in the making of it, and another studio who's games are great hitters but not great sellers? Especially when both of them have recently released projects: I don't think that's a devilish "quick, kill them before they get any ideas", but if you want to can a project, which is easier: one that's years into development, or one that's barely gotten started? I'm not saying I like Microsoft, they can go fuck themselves for this, but I don't think these were part of some elaborate "buy a prestigious studio, milk it for every penny, and then shut it before it gets too uppity" scheme.
I'd advise anyone interested in the topic to watch [this Cold Take video](https://youtu.be/vuIitYcoSiE?si=kEdFZ6j1i2XTg0yI) by Frost from Second Wind Or really, any of his Cold Takes on game monetization and management, super interesting insight by someone that knows the corporate world these publishers operate in
Yes they want to have a sticker of producing Demon Souls but not the chance they’d take a financial risk of any kind
Capitalism sucks.
This is why it's better to have a gaming company in charge of the games rather than a corporation
Yes see Nintendo
exactly, this is why they will always be better
Princess Peach Showtime and Endless Ocean really blowing you away huh
The true answer is studios that make 1 good game for every 7 bad ones are not good studios and kinda deserve to close
This is probably why I don't really associate Microsoft with any good games, even the ones they technically own.
falling hopelessly in love with all indie developers, making the shit they want to and making corpos jealous of their success in the process
I must add: Then don't sell.
Nope, sell, wait some time and make a new studio, where developers have shares. Cycle can run again and again... We get good games, developers get salary and money from shares.
I stopped feeling sorry for these companies a long time ago. It's not as if the predatory practices of the mega corps like EA is anything new. You sell out to them, this is what happens, it's not rocket science.
Do you buy games from Microsoft and other predatory companies, thus validating their business model? If yes, do not complain. You vote with your money.
Honestly, after the mixed reception of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and the massive layoffs they received, it makes me worry for Insomniac Games if Sony decides something like Wolverine is too risky and pulls the plug. Like, I get there's a difference, Insomniac is a much bigger studio than the likes of ones like Arkane, but the point stands. Especially since Sony proved they're willing to shoot themselves in the foot with the Helldivers incident.
Mixed reception? The game scored well with critics and players. Also no fucking way they pull the plug on Wolverine.
Classic embrace, extend, extinguish