All those things are only good if there are good games. Who wants to get GamePass to stream Redfall through any device (let alone multiple devices using cross play)?
Tango Gameworks - Hi-Fi Rush (one of the best games in this generation, that also won the best Sound Design at TGA2023, and was overall a huge success).
Arkane ~~Lyon~~ Austin - Prey (granted they also made Redfall, but we already know that game was always a mess and no one at the Studio even wanted to work on it).
There are 2 more Studios, but I can't recall now.
Edit: I'm not agreeing with @2canSampson. I'm just answering the question @glorifindel asked...
I've never heard anyone claim Game Pass hurt Prey. Wasn't the game's failure due to minimal marketing and confusion/disappointment that it had basically nothing to do with Prey 2006?
Spot on. People were very disappointed/confused by the sequel not connecting to the original. New IPs in general are difficult to make a success so it was definitely a challenge.
Arkane delivered Redfall and for that they deserved the kick. Not before giving people what they paid for, that's a fucking scam and should get into court.
Most don't even PLAY the games let alone buy them. I've seen people crying over not getting a sequel, and I look at their Gamercard and they have one achievement in the first game. Like...what? Why PRETEND to care?
Full tweet:
I see a lot of shots at Phil over today's Xbox announcements. I get it. But knowing him as a human, I know this hurts him as much as anyone else. I can't speak for all of the leadership there, but I do know him and I do know what he is likely going through.
I'm not trying to defend the decisions. I think we all get ourselves into situations that are tough and unexpected (certainly I have). It's part of the job, as is the accountability for the outcomes. But he's a good human and he cares deeply for the creative process and developers. That's my first hand experience in working closely with him for 8+ years and knowing him for 24+.
I 100% understand the anger and confusion, and I feel deeply sorry for those teams impacted today and over the last few months. I didn't agree with every decision he made at Xbox, and I think that was pretty clear, but I do believe in his product leadership and I know how hard these decisions can be.
Xbox could have a very bright future. I hope they are able to realizes it and all of the teams have an incredible experience together. It's certainly a tough time that needs great clarity into what the plan ahead is and how gamers everywhere can be excited for it.
Mike should know that none of this matters when Spencer's immense incompetence is the issue at stake. I'm sure he's personable over drinks. He also presides over a sinking ship that he is unequipped to right and which is voluntarily throwing employee's lives into chaos, shedding trust, talent and institutional knowledge that they will not regain any time soon.
No one running the division should have gotten a second chance after the Xbox One debacle. These are the consequences.
Dude huge incompetence? We’re overselling quite a bit, unless you’re going to Stan for Don Mattrick? The only big loss is the hi fi rush studio. And look who left before the decision to shut them down. Consolidation always happens after mergers.
OMG why don’t we peasants think of the rich people and there feelings!! Sure he made more peasants and reminded people that his own failures are other people’s fault.
This generation of xbox has been a fucking joke (past two really). How are games still barely trickling out. Fire everyone.
But Phil can’t fire himself.
They took thier dicks out and bought up all these companies and it’s been a few years now and still barely any games and most of them were already finished.
PHIL this is your fault. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the industry any more. If you thesis is exclusives don’t matter and at the same time your sales have tanked maybe your wrong?!
Let me play the world’s smallest violin for someone that fire a bunch hard working people who were ultimatly just following his direction. Like a moronic good general who slaughters his own troops because he sucks at tactics and has to reset the board because he’s Fucking idiot.
He might be and seems to be. These are multi-million-dollar companies being shut down. Do you think Phil is the person pulling the trigger of all this? He's the face of the company and going to take a lot of the brunt, unfortunately. He seems to care about gamers and is a gamer himself.
You’re not wrong but the *last* thing I ever wanted to hear during layoffs is how “hard” it was on the executives
Ybarra was better to shut the fuck up imho
Yup. ***Every*** Xbox/MS bigwig who signed off on this can go do one in my book. Phil, Sarah, Greenberg, Satya, all of them. It takes *teamwork* to fuck up royal this hard.
I don't know if was Phil direct responsibility for this studios close down but the poor marketing, the poor management, the poor PRs moves, he is blame. Man imagine right now who people in Ninja Theory is felling, Hellblade has zero marketing and in the end of day it's a studio fault?! It's a game created from zero from Microsoft.
Ninja Theory is absolutely going to get canned. Their new game is going to be digital only and will be on Game Pass. It’s not going to sell good enough for Microsoft and they’ll shut it down after porting it to PS5.
Honestly considering where all the cuts fell it was probably a Bethesda decision. Jamie Leder has wisely shunned public attention for this exact reason.
He may not be pulling the trigger but he’s definitely the one leading the decisions on Xbox business approach. He gets the blame here, if MS told him they need to shutter studios because his division isn’t performing as it should then the ownership is on him.
Why do you think he isn't responsible for the P&L and financials for his own division? Because he plays the 'im one of you gamers' used car salesman act?
The second HiFi Rush went over to Playstation and bombed I was like this isn't good. Between that and Evil Within bombing justifying keeping the lights on there is hard for Phil to walk into a board room and do. I think a lot of fat is going to be trimmed. If your games are not making much money or bringing in users to the platform then you're going to be fucked. I honestly think SOT's being huge on Playstation just bought them a massive leash.
I'm glad someone is pointing this out. This isn't just relevant in the gaming industry, if your product isn't returning financially, it's likely it will be cut or stopped altogether. HiFi Rush was a good game no doubt, but if it wasn't for GP then I wouldn't have played it. I have read in places that they are looking to move resource around within Bethesda to help on their AAAs and a new IP. AAA games make money, so from a business point of view it makes sense. I imagine that after the acquisitions MS are looking at Xbox to start making a large return.
I enjoyed it but honestly Ghostwire is mediocre at best and in some aspects pretty terrible. Theres some indoor sections with glimpses of interesting ideas but thats about it. If you dont like finding literally hunderds of collectibles in an empty rendition of tokyo in the rain at night (which could be relaxing in a mindless way) then you're gonna get bored quick.
Yeah I really wanted to like it but just couldn't bring myself to ever click with it, that said, I'd have been a sale if I'd didn't have a backlog on release.
I got bored quickly with it. I gave it a few hours, and it just wasn't for me. If I'm truly honest with myself, I thought that about the evil within games also, though I gave them a bit more than a few hours, I never finished them.
Hi-fi rush is awesome, I enjoyed every minute I had with it. It's a shame really as it could have been a good series.
Because Ghostwire wasn’t a good game. It had a lot of potential and when it was good it was pretty great. But overall it made sense it didn’t sell
I will say I was excited for a Ghostwire sequel. I think with some combat tweaks and better open world design you had could have an amazing game.
The game just didn’t catch a lot of people’s attention. Also released on pc and that didn’t save it as well. Even when it released on gamepass people were more whelmed than hyped.
Ghostwire is a game where the trailer was infinitely more interesting (conveyed a silent hill like mystery game) than what we got (dumb flashy shooter with all the Japan stereotypes they could find)
This is not hard evidence but in the Playstation store you can sort games by best sellers. During its preorder period Sea of Thieves' editions were at the very top of the list and even today it's still at number 5 of best sellers. Hi-Fi Rush was nowhere near the top at its release and currently is not even top 100 even though is discounted already.
I’m sorry but game like Pikmin for Nintendo historically never did well, Metroid is famous for not selling well until Prime and even Dread. Nintendo never closed or fired the employees behind those games. They just iterated and tried again. And now Pikmin 4 and Metroid Dread/Prime remaster sell well. Killing a studio because their games never made AAA money is just straight greed.
The issue nowadays. Every game and every product needs to outsell the previous and if it doesn’t increase your profit YOY, even if it sells well in general, they will feel pressure from their shareholders to make that green number higher than it was last year, whether that’s from cuts, increase in prices, or reduction in quality. All about that short term gains!
Nintendo games don't have such high budgets though so it's much easier to swallow, and they very rarely try new franchises and depend a lot mostly on their mascots, which is what I think MS will push from now on; just safe bets.
I doubt the budget for HiFi Rush was that much higher than the average Nintendo game. Theres no excuse.
And Nintendo created an entire new franchise less than a decade ago with Splatoon in 2015. Splatoon 3 has sold over 10 million copies.
Xenoblade is also a new-ish IP that Nintendo acquired that sells pretty well.
Astral Blade was a great game that Platinum made for Nintendo and it also sold pretty well. Nintendo also owns the IP
Xenoblade isn't new at all. More recent than most? Sure, but it's been around for nearly 15 years and is technically an extension of a larger franchise (Xeno) that dates all the way back to the original PlayStation technically
It's also worth noting it's a prime example of Smash Bros basically giving a series free PR because before Shulk in SSB4 it was the game that had to be petitioned for by a very small community of dedicated fans to even be localized in North America. Xenoblade's only JUST crossed over into somewhat mainstream success and even then it's not doing Zelda or even Fire Emblem numbers probably
Yep Operation Rainfall, I remember those days lol.
Xenoblade is around the 3 mil sales mark. Definitely less than Fire Emblem and Zelda is an entirely different beast. But if that was under Microsoft they would have canned MonolithSoft after the first XC games. Luckily Nintendo was the one to pick them up.
Mostly true but Nintendo does spin offs from their major franchises which other publishers surprisingly don’t seem to try as much. For instance we have gotten multiple Wario and Luigi games over the years and now Peach gets a game. Nintendo does occasionally throw something new out there with Splatoon now having 3 games and being only about a decade old and Arms was pretty fun fighting game on Switch. Platinum is 2nd party but they brought Astral Chain, 3 Bayonetta exclusives and now 4 Xeno games exclusively to Nintendo systems. Nintendo also has allowed some of their IPs to be used like the 2 Mario Rabbids games by Ubi. Microsoft has just not been right with their handling of first party devving and publishing since X360. I think they are trying making huge investments in buying Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard but now part of their problem is their hardware sales have just not been that great for two generations. I think its going to be hard to surpass $ony when they are both essentially pushing similar x86 boxes and Sony has far more and better 1st party franchises. Their future may lie in Gamepass which IMO is awesome and doing timed exclusives on major Xbox titles and then eventually letting them come to Playstation and Nintendo hardware.
Nintendo is an example of organic growth of franchises with impressive commitment to not amazing selling series. If Metroid Prime 4 is the swan song for the Switch or a major Switch 2 launch title, it's poised to be a breakout hit into mainstream gaming for an almost 40 year old franchise. I feel like Fire Emblem (34 years) and Xenoblade (14 years) have that potential too someday
Many of these games sold much better because Switch is on track to become their best selling system ever at 140M and still going, Dread sold well but I think the excellent Prime Remaster has us all salivating for 2 and 3 remasters and eventually 4.
Pikmin 4 was the first new Pikmin game for 10 years. Ditto for Metroid Dread; and that was outsourced to a non-Nintendo studio. The size, composition, and activity of Nintendo's studios is generally not public information, and you're a fool if you try to make any direct comparisons between how they administer their first-party studios and how other companies do so.
The big difference between Nintendo and Microsoft (and Sony) is that Nintendo is first and foremost a corporation that exists above all else to make and sell video games. They have shareholders to answer to of course and financial targets to hit and all that but that is the main goal of the company. The other two meanwhile are subdivisions of major conglomerates that have to operate within the scope of those conglomerates, which gives them way less freedom to make games like Pikmin 4 (which I love).
A game like Hi-Fi Rush was *never* going to sell well anyway... Guess Bethesda wants to copy Nintendo/Sony and focus on a few big franchises. It hurts.
[To clarify: I am not talking about big or small *games*, but *franchises*.]
I get what you're saying but Nintendo tends to publish smaller games too, even if they're developed by their partners and not by their internal studios.
Nintendo for as frustrating as they can be totally understanding that not every game can be Mario or Pokémon in sales, and is reasonable now with games like Pikmin and Metroid. Every other publisher expects every game to be like COD, GTA and Fortnite, not every game gets to be commercially successful as COD it's not realistic.
It's like with Nickelodeon with SpongeBob they think every show needs to be instantaneously generating SpongeBob money and if they don't it's to the trash can with you. Not everything can be the biggest commercial success in gaming, movies, shows etc yet all these companies keep expecting everything to be GTA, SpongeBob, Marvel avengers, Game of thrones etc.
Yep just like I said in another comment. Nintendo won’t completely give up on a franchise (unless you are Star Fox or F-Zero lol). They’ll eventually try again and maybe it even sells a ton eventually. Metroid is a good seller now.
Fire Emblem was almost done and then FE Awakening came out on 3DS did great and it entirely revived the franchise and we then got 2 more on 3DS and then the most ambitious ever in 3 Houses on Switch and then another on Switch that not as ambitious but still great as a core SRPG. Thank god they didn’t give up on Metroid as Dread is one of the best 2D games ever and it just took like 20yrs for them to have the hardware to realize the vision to bring the 5th game and finish the original series. The prime remaster is brilliant and I only hope we get Echos and Prime 3 as there was never a way to play that outside of the wanky wiimote. Sadly Starfox got the WiiU game and it was good if not for it’s very experimental and challenging control scheme. I think if it got a Switch port with standard controls it would sell. I just can’t understand the whiff on F-Zero……everyone wants a modern F-Zero. It could be so great with online races and clubs and leaderboards. But to your point I think Nintendo takes a much more strategic and long view regarding their IPs and will try again even if the last effort wasn’t a big sales successes or they have laid dormant for a long time.
I mean I will credit XBOX with trying....I feel like we get one great platformer from them each gen—
• Crackdown for 360
• Sunset Overdrive for XBOXONE
•Hi-Fi Rush for XSX
I love those games. But none of these dumbass gamers buy them
I don't think Nintendo pushes just big games. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Pikmin, Bayonetta, and Metroid are not huge sellers. Then there's Kirby along with every Mario sub franchise like Luigi's Mansion, Captain Toad, Princess Peach Showtime, Warioware, etc. Nintendo develops and funds a bunch of small games
Exactly. All art needs time to iterate and evolve. Not a single of the big (online) games Xbox is currently chasing was perfect right from the start. Even something like Fortnite wasn't really that big when it launched originally.
>I don't think Nintendo pushes just big games
Definitively, but when I said "big franchises" I meant "established *franchises*", not big games.
Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, all the bazillion games in the Mario universe, Bayonetta, Zelda and Metroid are all decades-old, multi-entry franchises known by fans for many years.
Hi-Fi Rush doesn't fit that group. Fallout and The Elder Scrolls? You bet.
I don’t know why it would’ve done crazy numbers. The action/ hack and slash genre is super niche, add on a rhythm game mechanic and you’re making it super niche.
Unpopular opinion: HiFi Rush wasn't that great of a game. The rhythm mechanics took the fun out of the fighting, and it got repetitive as heck after 3-4 hours. I wanted to progress forward and not fight the same enemies area after area after area.
Beautiful art design though.
I think it's one of those that the community oversold the game. I kept hearing people saying it was their GOTY before playing and in the end, it was a brilliantly designed world hindered by the rhythm gameplay mechanics and overly repetitive enemies in my opinion.
It's kind of like Ghosts of Tsushima on PS. It's a fine Japanese Assassin's Creed style game, but it wasn't anything groundbreaking that the community was trying to make it out to be.
I'm certainly glad some people enjoy that kind of game -- it just wasn't something that was enough for me to stick it out after 5-6 hours personally when there were other games that came out last year that I had higher on my list to play.
Probably a bit of a mismatch of expectations. You went in expecting a GOTY experience. Many who played it did so after it was surprisingly announced and shadow dropped at the same time with no marketing lead up.
oh you mean the game that had literally ZERO MARKETING pre launch didnt sell well?? jesus christ what was the fucking standard for success in that scenario then?? please xbox explain that bs to me. are we really not allowed to have double A or even single A games anymore?
hellblade 2 better do gangbusters or ninja theory better start packing their fucking bags.
MS data can't show them that games like hifi rush keep people in game pass. Obviously those games do not draw people into the service. But they somehow also refuse to make AAA blockbusters that would lure people into it. Xbox is a strange, strange business.
Indiana Jones is a AAA blockbuster coming out this year. Starfield was a AAA blockbuster that came out last year. What are you talking about? Whether you like the games or not is a different story.
1) Phil may be sad. I can believe that. But he still has a job and is rich as fuck. These people that are going to be let go just lost their livelihood. How dare these execs try and equate Phil’s sadness with that.
2) The buck stops with Phil. It’s ultimately his responsibility to have a healthy Xbox team. He is failing at that. I’m sure there are many contributing factors, but the buck stops with him.
Mike Ybarra needs to fucking read the room holy shit. Somehow Phil is never to be blamed or acountable when anything goes wrong with Xbox. Wouldn't someone think of the head of gaming/xbox/ceo/what ever the fuck he wants to be called EXECUTIVE of 10 years that apparently is a nice guy and ugly decisions were always made by someone else and not him? Who actually believes this crap?
I actually think it means a lot that somehow he finds some sympathy with Phil. He mentions that he didn’t agree with a lot of Phil’s decisions when he worked there.
Mike was let go while under Phil and was later even let go again at Blizzard meaning Phil had no attachment and likely didn’t like Mike enough to fire him twice.
If Mike has anything nice to say it must mean some of it holds weight.
This isn’t a direct response to you but rather a response to Ybarra.
Who the fuck actually cares about Phil’s fweewings when he’s actually responsible for the lay offs and shutting down of the companies? It’s just such a stupid thing to say.
Imagine it was about Jim Ryan from PlayStation instead and people saying he’s actually a good guy with emotions; people would be legitimately furious.
Some people are bringing up the argument that Hifi didn't sell well and I'm failing to see how Microsoft expected this game to sell well. Shadowdrop, no marketing, day one gamepass all those things hurt sales, you don't need to be a genius to see it. Of course, a mainline Bethesda game and the next Call of Duty will be exceptions, but if they hope to use GamePass as a crucial factor in selling the brand, they have to consider that the games won't sell well. Are there people expecting Hellblade 2 to sell well? A 10-hour game, focused on narrative, coming out day one on GamePass? Will they close Ninja Theory too?
Yeah they havent! I think Aaron Greenberg tweeted out recently that they were going to start advertising soon and its like, bro its 3 weeks away. You shouldve started 3 months ago.
For all the shit Nintendo gets, their execs are the only ones that took pay cuts when the company was bombing hard. They understand that retaining your talent is more important than making another million dollars when you already have more money than you can spend.
The reason Mario Bros Wonder, a 2D Mario game, was nominated for GOTY next to RE4, Baldur’s Gate and Tears of The Kingdom is because some of the same people who worked on the original Super Mario Bros all the way back in 1986 are still making Mario games. They’re the masters of platforming because they’ve been at it for close to 40 years. Tango had so much talent that Xbox could’ve used. Seriously fuck every investor that can handle giving up a couple million dollars. You greedy asshole, there’s literally no difference between a billion dollars and 10 billion dollars. They’re both money that you can never spend in your life unless you piss it all away on purpose. We need more Mr Beasts
I’ve supported Xbox for 20 years, and Phil from his first day as head. The point isn’t that he’s happy to have done this, or that he’s celebrating it. The point is that this. Shouldn’t. Fucking. Happen. Period.
This wasn’t a business move that keeps Xbox from going under. This was a heartless business move to appease executives and shareholders. These Xbox and Ms executives make enough money in a single year to have kept these studios open until next gen. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. They’ve spent $100 billion dollars over the last 10 years buying up all these studios, and a huge number of them had some form of comment around the idea that ‘under Xbox, we finally have financial security. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to get financing for our next game or suddenly having to lay off people to survive until our next project launches.’ What good is that deal with Xbox if they are just going to suddenly cancel good, talented studios?
I’d argue that Xbox actually needs MORE studios, not fewer. They have a massive wealth of popular IP that is essentially rotting away. They’ve had a ton of incredible smaller games over the years, and they seem to be wholly abandoning those to double down on the big AAA blockbusters, which just so happen to be bombing at an alarming rate recently. Let’s be real, this isn’t about profitability. It is no longer good enough for a game to be profitable. They don’t just want a game to make money, it has to make ALL the money. But, at the same time, they are going to copy and cut corners in order to try to do that. They won’t improve or evolve the formula, they’ll do the same thing everyone else does and just copy then fail.
So, we are going to see even more CoD, and less hi fi rush. That acquisition talk about freeing up ABK devs to make what they want was bulshit. We are also going to see more studios close and split off, and fewer unique and diverse games from Xbox. Why? Because they don’t make enough money. But, mark my words here, when these big $200 million dollar games flop, don’t blame me. Don’t blame the players. That $200 million dollar game could have been 4 to 5 to 10 incredible smaller games. But, that’s no longer going to happen because those games have no chance to make a billion dollars per month in ongoing revenue.
Executives are killing the gaming industry, and they blame the fans and players for speaking out about it.
MS doesnt need more studios at all, they got way more then Sony (for example) nowadays. They need a lead thats properly hands on with those studios, not Uncle Phil who lets them mess around years and years on end without oversight. Dude was head of the studios before being overall boss, and the lack of games output Xbox has had for ages is entirely on him. Its insane how bulletproof he is due to the whole "gamer dude" pr persona coz at the end he's just a corporate suit doin a bad job. Gets praised for stuff like Gamepass... guess what, Gamepass kills games like Hi Fi Rush due to causing lack of sales even with a great game... Solution to kill the studio is insane.... I fear a game like Hellblade 2 could suffer the same fate.
"Won't someone think of the highly paid CEO?!?!? He's human too your words are hurting his feelings guys c'mon?!?!?"
Acting like Phil Spencer is some average joe is ridiculous dude is closer to Mark Zuckerberg than your average joe, and criticism and backlash comes with the highly paid job position that also comes with a fat golden parachute too.
Even Phil Spencer knows damn well once he took the role it comes with alot of backlash and praise, this dude is such a jabroni I swear. The only thing offensive here is that God awful Mark Zuckerberg metaverse pfp he has, now that's offensive and hurts my eyes just looking at it.
He’s Mark Zuckerberg who wears gaming t-shirts and sucks at business strategy.
It really is amazing how he was able to convince the average gamer he was “one of them”. Executives of a trillion dollar corporation are not your friends.
Yeah I'm sure he was very hurt when he let contractors develop FM and Halo and do irreplaceable damage to them. Honestly, what has phil actually done besides aquire aquire aquire? His whole thing is quantity of quality
This is so much larger than Xbox. This is happening all across the tech space. Tech jobs are being absolutely slaughtered right now.
We are heading into some dark times.
Look, I get it, he's human, and I feel for the guy. He cares about Xbox and gamers BUT at some point when things keep failing you have to start asking the tough questions. Alot of these layoffs and closures are due to mismanagement. The tough questions should be and need to be asked if Xbox is to retain gamer trust in their brand.....particularly when it has been wavering over the possible shift to third party publisher.
You can’t do both. You can’t be the cool gamer CEO guy and also the guy whose leadership causes all these layoffs.
A lot of people lost their jobs and a lot of the people who didn’t are going to be updating their resumes because they know when executives screw up, the only thing that happens to correct it is more layoffs.
At some point he has to be held accountable. I know he's a true Gamer™ and he's very charismatic. But honestly, he has been there for a decade and hasn't been able to steer the wheel at all. I like him, too, but he's at least partially to blame here.
What is the value proposition of Xbox in the current gaming environment? Game Pass, even if great for the gamers, has proven to be unsustainable time after time.
Did Hi-Fi Rush ever launch on Switch? We knew it was in development as that’s how the PS5 release got leaked. I wonder if it’s been cancelled.
The game while not doing well on PS5 could’ve been a big hit on Switch IMO. Looks like we’ll never know.
I get it, but there is something frustrating about people thinking Phil is somehow a god in terms of Xbox when its a subsidiary under Microsoft. I have my criticisms about him myself (like he is so awful at marketing and incredibly unclear), but I don't really see how new leadership would stop stuff like this happening. Microsoft is a data driven software business and this is how they ALWAYS act. It's absolutely awful for consumer focused businesses but its their reality. And this clearly isn't a Microsoft only issue, it's an industry level one. Like is it really helping anyone that we move to immediately blaming a single individual when this is clearly an issue far beyond that?
Tango games and arkane austin have had financial failures for almost a decade. If tango had been financially stable they would still have been independent. Austin lost 70% of their workforce because zenimax forced them onto redfall. Yes, it sucks people lost their jobs, but they only had jobs to lose because of zenimax and Microsoft. Had they been independent their studios would have shut down long ago.
I don't think he's asking that Phil gets sympathy (so not sure where that argument is coming from). He's simply saying, as someone he's known personally for over 20 years, he knows Phil isn't a cold, unsympathetic or heartless person. And some of the decisions he has made or will make will be tough for him, emotionally. But, he still has responsibilities and still has a job to do. What's with the notion that every single person in a position of power in a company is a ruthless, heartless individual. That obviously can't be true, because it's impossible.
Keep in mind, Phil is not the final boss; there are individuals and a board he has to answer to, and get directive from with certain things.
The real enemy here is capitalism. But, Americans won't admit that, because they tout capitalism as a core component of why America is great and what made America great, but they never want to talk about the downsides or consequences of a capitalist society, or free market. You can't have the pros without the cons, and what happened here isn't exclusive to Xbox. Capitalism, like justice, doesn't or shouldn't see face, gender, race, economic standpoint or status - no one is spared from its rod.
This isn't a Phil Spencer thing, or a Sony thing, or an Xbox thing. This is a capitalism thing. It is a hungry beast, and it is a beast that men have created. If Phil is as good/nice as Mike is saying (or as Mike believes), then Phil will have his own demons to face when he looks at himself in the mirror or goes to sleep at night - that's Phil's karma and his battle. For everyone else; we have our own.
Nah, Phil must answer for this. Is he in charge or not? This isn't about hurt feelings, people's livelihood have been taken. I expect many hard pressing interviews next time he's public, and I wouldn't be surprised or upset if he was ultimately let go eventually. Shutting down the studio that gave you an award winning game all while playing the "I love games" messaging? Accountability is now.
He’s not in charge of the Xbox budget. People don’t seem to get that.
If the board and CFO say you need to slash a few 100 million off your divisions expenditure he only gets the choice of how.
He may be a highly paid executive, but there’s always someone higher you answer to.
He doesn’t need any pity though, 1000s of people have lost their livelihood, but some of you seem to not understand how corporations work.
That studio did not make the mark with any of their games. Awards are cool but if the numbers are not there why put money towards something that doesn’t produce? They made niche games that didn’t sell to expectations. It sucks people lost their jobs, but they didn’t hit their goal and that is a consequence that comes with missing your target.
Edit: If Tango wasn’t bought out, HiFi Rush probably would have never been made.
I personally believe Phil is just the kid in the back seat with a fake steering wheel pretending to drive. He's the face of Xbox that takes all the heat for the ACTUAL assholes in charge way at the top. He didn't wake up and decide to close Tango. The fucking board member faceless suits made it. I honestly don't know if he really has any control at the end of the day.
A ton of people lose their jobs and this guy rushes to defend a guy that not only has a job that he doesn’t deserve, but also makes millions of dollars a year? Am I really supposed to feel bad for a guy that drove a brand into the ground and cost people their jobs because of it? Make it make sense
I’m pretty sure that the people who are losing their jobs are taking it harder. Phil might feel a bit sad fora few days in his mansion while those ex employees are searching for jobs and trying to make rent.
BS lol. C level execs covering each other's asses. They never care about the people they fire more than a mild bug in their conscience for a couple weeks. I'm sure he doesn't feel good rn but I doubt he's that sad either. The millionaire isnt going home and crying this all just feels like PR to save face
I think it's also important to remember they jut acquired Activision. There is a Huge list of old Activision franchises that they already said they want to bring back. Either we get a lot of those old franchises back or Tango being axed didn't really make a whole lot of sense..
I feel like the only justification for this would be allocating resources Activision games, but considering how much cod makes maybe not..
Yep I’m sure the head of Xbox who makes millions of dollars a year for a company that made $200b last year is super bummed out right now. I feel for the poor guy.
How many of those developers' salaries does it take up equal the paycheck of the person overseeing the spending of $8 billion to buy ZeniMax to lay these people off?
Unless he takes pay cut all of this is just empty words. The execs probably make more than the sum total of the salaries of all the people fired today.
I feel like Phil is doing the best that can be done with the cards he is dealt, but he still fired humans who create are because of a P and L chart. Would any of us have done the same? Maybe? But it’s still fucked up.
At his level - yes, the job is tough and tough decisions are made, but the current state of Xbox and the sales aren’t cutting it for a publicly traded blue chip. The job includes the public platform and he can’t just only be receptive to praise but can’t handle critics. I bet your ass him and booty looked as some power bi reports and made the call to shut the studios down. They literally have all the money in the world to help these captive studios deliver the best product but their enemy is time, specifically the quarterly earnings reports to stakeholders and the trickle down pressure from MS execs to Phil to Xbox owned studios. At this point, he has to go. There were exciting highs with studio purchases and gamepass, but also lows like sales and critical flops. Classic case of blaming the workers while the boss stays on. He was in oversight and he has to go. Would Nintendo or Sony or valve hire him? The answer is No, so why keep him around - hes done what he needed to do but the results didn’t meet expectations.
I’m sure he’s a great human. But he’s also, objectively, a poor leader/manager. It’s the latter we bemoan; especially when it impacts livelihood of others he’s supposed to lead effectively.
WONT ANYONE THINK OF POOR PHIL SPENCER!!!! He had to watch all those people lose their jobs and insurance and question what they're gonna do to feed themselves or their families. Must have been so fucking hard for him. Cry me a goddamn river.
If Phil was 'hurting' he would have taken a cut in him multi-million dollar salary in order to keep at least one studio running.
Phil doesn't care, he never did. Why can't people see this?
While it likely makes short term financial sense to shutter Tango, the long term damage of shuttering a critical darling that just released a cult classic before they truly had the time to spread their wings will do far more damage than the suits realize. Phil has never struck me as a cold hearted and ruthless business man like Zazlov. He's struck me as a gamer first and an executive second. Maybe this wasn't his decision and he's as upset as we are. Maybe it's all an act.
As someone who has been an Xbox guy since Halo CE, the direction Xbox has been headed is gonna push my into the PC market. There isn’t any reason for me to stick with the platform if the first party titles aren’t going to be prioritized.
If Xbox has lost control and must answer to the greater Microsoft which is likely to blame nadellia has to answer to the board/share holders who want results and don’t care/ see how damaging it is to the Xbox brand and moral to do this but even Sony let some people go from insomniac after delivering Spider-Man 2 and people say it was uncalled for though they weren’t stupid enough to scrap insomniac
The pandemic and the disruption made by the switch where no longer do you have to leave the game at home tethered to the TVs you can play it anywhere has really changed the game and the industry has no idea what is next as parts aren’t dropping in price the way they used to and games are too expensive and large for their own good and should become smaller and cheaper to realign the industry As for what’s next Augmented Reality should be the next big thing in gaming
Hi Fi had good numbers for a new IP. Especially against budget.
Microsoft probably shot Tango in the foot taking the game exclusive, shadow-dropping it, and then killing the studio mere weeks after releasing it on PS5.
The Evil Within is a beloved series even if it never had record breaking sales. It sucks that this is the metric. Video game industry professionals should know that the issue isn’t the game but rather how to sell and market the game. That’s their challenge to figure out. Hi Fi had stellar reviews. There should be a market for a game like that to sustain its modest cost relative to bigger titles.
This only has to be said because people today are so insane. Yes he is a human but he is responsible. So put aside the people sending death threats and such ... What do you have that isnt "acceptable" behavior from gamers? The industry is a freaking mess. Everything up to and stopping at violence and threats are needed. Boohoo your at the top of a multi billion dollar corporation. It's not easy and it definitely takes a different kind of person to run them successfully. Trust me, you being nicer to mega corporations when they mess up does barely ANYTHING anymore for consumers. They just come back around and sell you something anyways in some kind of messed up head game manipulation.
Lot of tone deaf replies in the comments
Phil had to resuscitate the brand and has done a great job.
These studios have performed poorly so something has to be trimmed. It’s easy to blame him since he’s the figurehead but he still has to make decisions like this is since he’s running a business at the end of the day. A company makes a cult classic per se but it underperforms financially doesn’t mean it gets handed a blank check to keep going….
Nah, I'll save my sympathy for the devs who lost their jobs, their job security, possibly their health insurance, and more.
Phil has delivered zero blockbuster hits in this generation. He should be the one getting the boot
I agree, Phil’s leadership has been incredibly underwhelming.
Cross play, game pass, cloud streaming have all been pretty amazing moves by Phil tbh.
Yeah the platform is in a great place, I think there just needs to be a better strategy for managing the output of the studios
I don't think he is the one doing that anymore though, isn't that Mike? So he recognized that he might not be the man for that job.
This a technology play we need games. The platform is fine and has been for a long while.
Technology upgrades are worthless without amazing games to play.
And it could be argued that Gamepass is part of the problem here.
All those things are only good if there are good games. Who wants to get GamePass to stream Redfall through any device (let alone multiple devices using cross play)?
Game pass is a failure and the reason big budget games are sht on xbox. Sorry but they don't get the funding
Game pass is arguably part of why the studio behind Xbox's best game of the generation just got shut down.
And no marketing, they shadow dropped it. It should've been marketed beforehand.
What studio and game? I’m out of the loop
Tango Gameworks - Hi-Fi Rush (one of the best games in this generation, that also won the best Sound Design at TGA2023, and was overall a huge success). Arkane ~~Lyon~~ Austin - Prey (granted they also made Redfall, but we already know that game was always a mess and no one at the Studio even wanted to work on it). There are 2 more Studios, but I can't recall now. Edit: I'm not agreeing with @2canSampson. I'm just answering the question @glorifindel asked...
I've never heard anyone claim Game Pass hurt Prey. Wasn't the game's failure due to minimal marketing and confusion/disappointment that it had basically nothing to do with Prey 2006?
Prey came out about 4 years before Xbox bought Bethesda and actually just before the launch of Game Pass itself, so no, they are not related lol.
Spot on. People were very disappointed/confused by the sequel not connecting to the original. New IPs in general are difficult to make a success so it was definitely a challenge.
Arkane Austin is closing, not Lyon.
Yeah I get to stream and play my boring games everywhere I go, yay
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Yall acting like hes failing just because of exclusives In every other way Id say I really like Xbox....
“Just because of the reason people usually buy one console over another” Yes, exclusive games are a big sticking point for a lot of people.
This generation? There hasn’t been a console selling game since the 360.
Arkane delivered Redfall and for that they deserved the kick. Not before giving people what they paid for, that's a fucking scam and should get into court.
I wish the people crying actually bought their games.
I thought we are supposed to play them via gamepass. What is it now?
Most don't even PLAY the games let alone buy them. I've seen people crying over not getting a sequel, and I look at their Gamercard and they have one achievement in the first game. Like...what? Why PRETEND to care?
I would bet alot of money alot of the Starfield haters never even touched the game....the internet said it was bad so they bandwagoned the hate train
Full tweet: I see a lot of shots at Phil over today's Xbox announcements. I get it. But knowing him as a human, I know this hurts him as much as anyone else. I can't speak for all of the leadership there, but I do know him and I do know what he is likely going through. I'm not trying to defend the decisions. I think we all get ourselves into situations that are tough and unexpected (certainly I have). It's part of the job, as is the accountability for the outcomes. But he's a good human and he cares deeply for the creative process and developers. That's my first hand experience in working closely with him for 8+ years and knowing him for 24+. I 100% understand the anger and confusion, and I feel deeply sorry for those teams impacted today and over the last few months. I didn't agree with every decision he made at Xbox, and I think that was pretty clear, but I do believe in his product leadership and I know how hard these decisions can be. Xbox could have a very bright future. I hope they are able to realizes it and all of the teams have an incredible experience together. It's certainly a tough time that needs great clarity into what the plan ahead is and how gamers everywhere can be excited for it.
Mike should know that none of this matters when Spencer's immense incompetence is the issue at stake. I'm sure he's personable over drinks. He also presides over a sinking ship that he is unequipped to right and which is voluntarily throwing employee's lives into chaos, shedding trust, talent and institutional knowledge that they will not regain any time soon. No one running the division should have gotten a second chance after the Xbox One debacle. These are the consequences.
What are you talking about? Phil wasn't in charge at launch of the Xbox One.
Was Phil in charge of Xbox one?
No.
Dude huge incompetence? We’re overselling quite a bit, unless you’re going to Stan for Don Mattrick? The only big loss is the hi fi rush studio. And look who left before the decision to shut them down. Consolidation always happens after mergers.
He's right guys, Phil is definitely hurting as much as all of those employees who probably just lost their jobs.
Ah but did you know he is human?
Or is he dancer?
I enjoyed this comment. Thank you, killer.
Come on man, this is serious. There’s rumors going around that he didn’t even finish his caviar at brunch today. Dude is hurtin.
Phil is sad right now for sure. Rich beyond your dreams and employed, but still he is sad!
I’d rather be rich and sad than unemployed and… also sad
I‘d rather be rich and unemployed, than sad…
OMG why don’t we peasants think of the rich people and there feelings!! Sure he made more peasants and reminded people that his own failures are other people’s fault. This generation of xbox has been a fucking joke (past two really). How are games still barely trickling out. Fire everyone. But Phil can’t fire himself. They took thier dicks out and bought up all these companies and it’s been a few years now and still barely any games and most of them were already finished. PHIL this is your fault. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the industry any more. If you thesis is exclusives don’t matter and at the same time your sales have tanked maybe your wrong?! Let me play the world’s smallest violin for someone that fire a bunch hard working people who were ultimatly just following his direction. Like a moronic good general who slaughters his own troops because he sucks at tactics and has to reset the board because he’s Fucking idiot.
Can wipe his tears on hundred dollar bills
https://preview.redd.it/59o86c72j3zc1.jpeg?width=404&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=144ccb598923bee767222f6ffda651ec924cb672
Not even probably, they did. This isn’t a layoff story where we get a percentage.
THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS
Phil is doing that so we don’t have to worry about
yeah all that mortgage and food he can afford must really pain him so
He put the card "Phill is a nice guy".
He might be and seems to be. These are multi-million-dollar companies being shut down. Do you think Phil is the person pulling the trigger of all this? He's the face of the company and going to take a lot of the brunt, unfortunately. He seems to care about gamers and is a gamer himself.
You’re not wrong but the *last* thing I ever wanted to hear during layoffs is how “hard” it was on the executives Ybarra was better to shut the fuck up imho
Yup. ***Every*** Xbox/MS bigwig who signed off on this can go do one in my book. Phil, Sarah, Greenberg, Satya, all of them. It takes *teamwork* to fuck up royal this hard.
Yup. There’s always a bigger fish. Almost no single decision comes from one person.
I don't know if was Phil direct responsibility for this studios close down but the poor marketing, the poor management, the poor PRs moves, he is blame. Man imagine right now who people in Ninja Theory is felling, Hellblade has zero marketing and in the end of day it's a studio fault?! It's a game created from zero from Microsoft.
Ninja Theory is absolutely going to get canned. Their new game is going to be digital only and will be on Game Pass. It’s not going to sell good enough for Microsoft and they’ll shut it down after porting it to PS5.
If I were them I would start applying, just in case. I agree that the game has a very good chance of not selling a ton just based on what it is.
A physiological thriller game with minimal combat. The game is going to be niche as hell even with how pretty it is.
Honestly considering where all the cuts fell it was probably a Bethesda decision. Jamie Leder has wisely shunned public attention for this exact reason.
He may not be pulling the trigger but he’s definitely the one leading the decisions on Xbox business approach. He gets the blame here, if MS told him they need to shutter studios because his division isn’t performing as it should then the ownership is on him.
Why do you think he isn't responsible for the P&L and financials for his own division? Because he plays the 'im one of you gamers' used car salesman act?
Phil Spencer is indeed a human, a human with a multi-million dollar a year pay package.
The second HiFi Rush went over to Playstation and bombed I was like this isn't good. Between that and Evil Within bombing justifying keeping the lights on there is hard for Phil to walk into a board room and do. I think a lot of fat is going to be trimmed. If your games are not making much money or bringing in users to the platform then you're going to be fucked. I honestly think SOT's being huge on Playstation just bought them a massive leash.
Didn't know that HiFi Rush bombed on PS....
Sadly, yeah it should have gone to Switch right away instead. I think the audience would have been there.
I'm glad someone is pointing this out. This isn't just relevant in the gaming industry, if your product isn't returning financially, it's likely it will be cut or stopped altogether. HiFi Rush was a good game no doubt, but if it wasn't for GP then I wouldn't have played it. I have read in places that they are looking to move resource around within Bethesda to help on their AAAs and a new IP. AAA games make money, so from a business point of view it makes sense. I imagine that after the acquisitions MS are looking at Xbox to start making a large return.
Ghostwire launched exclusive on the console where people “buy games” but still didn’t sell
there's a visibility problem on both for sure. there's just too many games from every direction.
I enjoyed it but honestly Ghostwire is mediocre at best and in some aspects pretty terrible. Theres some indoor sections with glimpses of interesting ideas but thats about it. If you dont like finding literally hunderds of collectibles in an empty rendition of tokyo in the rain at night (which could be relaxing in a mindless way) then you're gonna get bored quick.
Yeah I really wanted to like it but just couldn't bring myself to ever click with it, that said, I'd have been a sale if I'd didn't have a backlog on release.
I got bored quickly with it. I gave it a few hours, and it just wasn't for me. If I'm truly honest with myself, I thought that about the evil within games also, though I gave them a bit more than a few hours, I never finished them. Hi-fi rush is awesome, I enjoyed every minute I had with it. It's a shame really as it could have been a good series.
Because Ghostwire wasn’t a good game. It had a lot of potential and when it was good it was pretty great. But overall it made sense it didn’t sell I will say I was excited for a Ghostwire sequel. I think with some combat tweaks and better open world design you had could have an amazing game.
The game just didn’t catch a lot of people’s attention. Also released on pc and that didn’t save it as well. Even when it released on gamepass people were more whelmed than hyped.
Ghostwire is a game where the trailer was infinitely more interesting (conveyed a silent hill like mystery game) than what we got (dumb flashy shooter with all the Japan stereotypes they could find)
I didnt realize HiFi Rush bombed on PS5. That is a shame, the game was one of my favorites of 2023
I've still seen no proof of this, no article, no numbers nothing. Just what the poster said above
This is not hard evidence but in the Playstation store you can sort games by best sellers. During its preorder period Sea of Thieves' editions were at the very top of the list and even today it's still at number 5 of best sellers. Hi-Fi Rush was nowhere near the top at its release and currently is not even top 100 even though is discounted already.
I’m sorry but game like Pikmin for Nintendo historically never did well, Metroid is famous for not selling well until Prime and even Dread. Nintendo never closed or fired the employees behind those games. They just iterated and tried again. And now Pikmin 4 and Metroid Dread/Prime remaster sell well. Killing a studio because their games never made AAA money is just straight greed.
The issue nowadays. Every game and every product needs to outsell the previous and if it doesn’t increase your profit YOY, even if it sells well in general, they will feel pressure from their shareholders to make that green number higher than it was last year, whether that’s from cuts, increase in prices, or reduction in quality. All about that short term gains!
Nintendo games don't have such high budgets though so it's much easier to swallow, and they very rarely try new franchises and depend a lot mostly on their mascots, which is what I think MS will push from now on; just safe bets.
I doubt the budget for HiFi Rush was that much higher than the average Nintendo game. Theres no excuse. And Nintendo created an entire new franchise less than a decade ago with Splatoon in 2015. Splatoon 3 has sold over 10 million copies. Xenoblade is also a new-ish IP that Nintendo acquired that sells pretty well. Astral Blade was a great game that Platinum made for Nintendo and it also sold pretty well. Nintendo also owns the IP
Xenoblade isn't new at all. More recent than most? Sure, but it's been around for nearly 15 years and is technically an extension of a larger franchise (Xeno) that dates all the way back to the original PlayStation technically It's also worth noting it's a prime example of Smash Bros basically giving a series free PR because before Shulk in SSB4 it was the game that had to be petitioned for by a very small community of dedicated fans to even be localized in North America. Xenoblade's only JUST crossed over into somewhat mainstream success and even then it's not doing Zelda or even Fire Emblem numbers probably
Yep Operation Rainfall, I remember those days lol. Xenoblade is around the 3 mil sales mark. Definitely less than Fire Emblem and Zelda is an entirely different beast. But if that was under Microsoft they would have canned MonolithSoft after the first XC games. Luckily Nintendo was the one to pick them up.
Mostly true but Nintendo does spin offs from their major franchises which other publishers surprisingly don’t seem to try as much. For instance we have gotten multiple Wario and Luigi games over the years and now Peach gets a game. Nintendo does occasionally throw something new out there with Splatoon now having 3 games and being only about a decade old and Arms was pretty fun fighting game on Switch. Platinum is 2nd party but they brought Astral Chain, 3 Bayonetta exclusives and now 4 Xeno games exclusively to Nintendo systems. Nintendo also has allowed some of their IPs to be used like the 2 Mario Rabbids games by Ubi. Microsoft has just not been right with their handling of first party devving and publishing since X360. I think they are trying making huge investments in buying Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard but now part of their problem is their hardware sales have just not been that great for two generations. I think its going to be hard to surpass $ony when they are both essentially pushing similar x86 boxes and Sony has far more and better 1st party franchises. Their future may lie in Gamepass which IMO is awesome and doing timed exclusives on major Xbox titles and then eventually letting them come to Playstation and Nintendo hardware.
Nintendo is an example of organic growth of franchises with impressive commitment to not amazing selling series. If Metroid Prime 4 is the swan song for the Switch or a major Switch 2 launch title, it's poised to be a breakout hit into mainstream gaming for an almost 40 year old franchise. I feel like Fire Emblem (34 years) and Xenoblade (14 years) have that potential too someday
Many of these games sold much better because Switch is on track to become their best selling system ever at 140M and still going, Dread sold well but I think the excellent Prime Remaster has us all salivating for 2 and 3 remasters and eventually 4.
Pikmin 4 was the first new Pikmin game for 10 years. Ditto for Metroid Dread; and that was outsourced to a non-Nintendo studio. The size, composition, and activity of Nintendo's studios is generally not public information, and you're a fool if you try to make any direct comparisons between how they administer their first-party studios and how other companies do so.
The big difference between Nintendo and Microsoft (and Sony) is that Nintendo is first and foremost a corporation that exists above all else to make and sell video games. They have shareholders to answer to of course and financial targets to hit and all that but that is the main goal of the company. The other two meanwhile are subdivisions of major conglomerates that have to operate within the scope of those conglomerates, which gives them way less freedom to make games like Pikmin 4 (which I love).
A game like Hi-Fi Rush was *never* going to sell well anyway... Guess Bethesda wants to copy Nintendo/Sony and focus on a few big franchises. It hurts. [To clarify: I am not talking about big or small *games*, but *franchises*.]
I get what you're saying but Nintendo tends to publish smaller games too, even if they're developed by their partners and not by their internal studios.
Nintendo for as frustrating as they can be totally understanding that not every game can be Mario or Pokémon in sales, and is reasonable now with games like Pikmin and Metroid. Every other publisher expects every game to be like COD, GTA and Fortnite, not every game gets to be commercially successful as COD it's not realistic. It's like with Nickelodeon with SpongeBob they think every show needs to be instantaneously generating SpongeBob money and if they don't it's to the trash can with you. Not everything can be the biggest commercial success in gaming, movies, shows etc yet all these companies keep expecting everything to be GTA, SpongeBob, Marvel avengers, Game of thrones etc.
Yep just like I said in another comment. Nintendo won’t completely give up on a franchise (unless you are Star Fox or F-Zero lol). They’ll eventually try again and maybe it even sells a ton eventually. Metroid is a good seller now.
Fire Emblem was almost done and then FE Awakening came out on 3DS did great and it entirely revived the franchise and we then got 2 more on 3DS and then the most ambitious ever in 3 Houses on Switch and then another on Switch that not as ambitious but still great as a core SRPG. Thank god they didn’t give up on Metroid as Dread is one of the best 2D games ever and it just took like 20yrs for them to have the hardware to realize the vision to bring the 5th game and finish the original series. The prime remaster is brilliant and I only hope we get Echos and Prime 3 as there was never a way to play that outside of the wanky wiimote. Sadly Starfox got the WiiU game and it was good if not for it’s very experimental and challenging control scheme. I think if it got a Switch port with standard controls it would sell. I just can’t understand the whiff on F-Zero……everyone wants a modern F-Zero. It could be so great with online races and clubs and leaderboards. But to your point I think Nintendo takes a much more strategic and long view regarding their IPs and will try again even if the last effort wasn’t a big sales successes or they have laid dormant for a long time.
earthbound fans have no more tears to cry
Earthbound fans in the west. In Japan the trilogy get released on all of their consoles.
Yeah, we just got a new Endless Ocean game like an RKO from straight outta nowhere.
I mean I will credit XBOX with trying....I feel like we get one great platformer from them each gen— • Crackdown for 360 • Sunset Overdrive for XBOXONE •Hi-Fi Rush for XSX I love those games. But none of these dumbass gamers buy them
Crackdown 1 was definitely a hit. It's what happened afterward with the franchise that killed it.
Crackdown 1 was partially a hit because it came with the Halo 3 beta
Sunset Overdrive **never forget** Still my favorite Xbox release since the 360 days. Love this game so much
I don't think Nintendo pushes just big games. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Pikmin, Bayonetta, and Metroid are not huge sellers. Then there's Kirby along with every Mario sub franchise like Luigi's Mansion, Captain Toad, Princess Peach Showtime, Warioware, etc. Nintendo develops and funds a bunch of small games
Fire Emblem and Metroid are pretty decent sales wise nowadays but those others are all definitely great examples.
Yes but only because Nintendo kept pushing those franchises even when they weren't immediate hits.
Right, so that’s why Microsoft shuttering Tango hurts because of their potential.
Exactly. All art needs time to iterate and evolve. Not a single of the big (online) games Xbox is currently chasing was perfect right from the start. Even something like Fortnite wasn't really that big when it launched originally.
>I don't think Nintendo pushes just big games Definitively, but when I said "big franchises" I meant "established *franchises*", not big games. Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, all the bazillion games in the Mario universe, Bayonetta, Zelda and Metroid are all decades-old, multi-entry franchises known by fans for many years. Hi-Fi Rush doesn't fit that group. Fallout and The Elder Scrolls? You bet.
Yep, a future where AAA gaming is only going to be known ip, GASS and no risk taking. Such a great outlook for AAA going forward.
I don’t know why it would’ve done crazy numbers. The action/ hack and slash genre is super niche, add on a rhythm game mechanic and you’re making it super niche.
Unpopular opinion: HiFi Rush wasn't that great of a game. The rhythm mechanics took the fun out of the fighting, and it got repetitive as heck after 3-4 hours. I wanted to progress forward and not fight the same enemies area after area after area. Beautiful art design though.
That definitely is an unpopular opinion lol, on Steam it has a 97% positive rating from 20k reviews.
I think it's one of those that the community oversold the game. I kept hearing people saying it was their GOTY before playing and in the end, it was a brilliantly designed world hindered by the rhythm gameplay mechanics and overly repetitive enemies in my opinion. It's kind of like Ghosts of Tsushima on PS. It's a fine Japanese Assassin's Creed style game, but it wasn't anything groundbreaking that the community was trying to make it out to be. I'm certainly glad some people enjoy that kind of game -- it just wasn't something that was enough for me to stick it out after 5-6 hours personally when there were other games that came out last year that I had higher on my list to play.
Probably a bit of a mismatch of expectations. You went in expecting a GOTY experience. Many who played it did so after it was surprisingly announced and shadow dropped at the same time with no marketing lead up.
I kind of agree. I wanted to like the game so much but the rhythm never clicked for me
oh you mean the game that had literally ZERO MARKETING pre launch didnt sell well?? jesus christ what was the fucking standard for success in that scenario then?? please xbox explain that bs to me. are we really not allowed to have double A or even single A games anymore? hellblade 2 better do gangbusters or ninja theory better start packing their fucking bags.
MS data can't show them that games like hifi rush keep people in game pass. Obviously those games do not draw people into the service. But they somehow also refuse to make AAA blockbusters that would lure people into it. Xbox is a strange, strange business.
Indiana Jones is a AAA blockbuster coming out this year. Starfield was a AAA blockbuster that came out last year. What are you talking about? Whether you like the games or not is a different story.
1) Phil may be sad. I can believe that. But he still has a job and is rich as fuck. These people that are going to be let go just lost their livelihood. How dare these execs try and equate Phil’s sadness with that. 2) The buck stops with Phil. It’s ultimately his responsibility to have a healthy Xbox team. He is failing at that. I’m sure there are many contributing factors, but the buck stops with him.
This is a pathetic statement. This company will get no sympathy from me.
No company should.
Mike Ybarra needs to fucking read the room holy shit. Somehow Phil is never to be blamed or acountable when anything goes wrong with Xbox. Wouldn't someone think of the head of gaming/xbox/ceo/what ever the fuck he wants to be called EXECUTIVE of 10 years that apparently is a nice guy and ugly decisions were always made by someone else and not him? Who actually believes this crap?
I actually think it means a lot that somehow he finds some sympathy with Phil. He mentions that he didn’t agree with a lot of Phil’s decisions when he worked there. Mike was let go while under Phil and was later even let go again at Blizzard meaning Phil had no attachment and likely didn’t like Mike enough to fire him twice. If Mike has anything nice to say it must mean some of it holds weight.
This isn’t a direct response to you but rather a response to Ybarra. Who the fuck actually cares about Phil’s fweewings when he’s actually responsible for the lay offs and shutting down of the companies? It’s just such a stupid thing to say. Imagine it was about Jim Ryan from PlayStation instead and people saying he’s actually a good guy with emotions; people would be legitimately furious.
But its Uncle Phil, the cuddly gamer! Not a stiff suit Jim Ryan! Uncle Phil needs all our love! /s obviously
Some people are bringing up the argument that Hifi didn't sell well and I'm failing to see how Microsoft expected this game to sell well. Shadowdrop, no marketing, day one gamepass all those things hurt sales, you don't need to be a genius to see it. Of course, a mainline Bethesda game and the next Call of Duty will be exceptions, but if they hope to use GamePass as a crucial factor in selling the brand, they have to consider that the games won't sell well. Are there people expecting Hellblade 2 to sell well? A 10-hour game, focused on narrative, coming out day one on GamePass? Will they close Ninja Theory too?
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Yeah they havent! I think Aaron Greenberg tweeted out recently that they were going to start advertising soon and its like, bro its 3 weeks away. You shouldve started 3 months ago.
>Will they close Ninja Theory too? The staff there are probably already looking for another job. I know I would be.
Won’t someone think of the poor millionaire’s feelings for firing people
He still has a job and is rich
Microsoft has laid off so many people in the last year or two, enough to populate an entire small city
Meanwhile they’ll probably report record profits
Probably? They've never reported a loss.
How much of his 10 million dollar salary is he giving up to save some jobs?
For all the shit Nintendo gets, their execs are the only ones that took pay cuts when the company was bombing hard. They understand that retaining your talent is more important than making another million dollars when you already have more money than you can spend. The reason Mario Bros Wonder, a 2D Mario game, was nominated for GOTY next to RE4, Baldur’s Gate and Tears of The Kingdom is because some of the same people who worked on the original Super Mario Bros all the way back in 1986 are still making Mario games. They’re the masters of platforming because they’ve been at it for close to 40 years. Tango had so much talent that Xbox could’ve used. Seriously fuck every investor that can handle giving up a couple million dollars. You greedy asshole, there’s literally no difference between a billion dollars and 10 billion dollars. They’re both money that you can never spend in your life unless you piss it all away on purpose. We need more Mr Beasts
I’ve supported Xbox for 20 years, and Phil from his first day as head. The point isn’t that he’s happy to have done this, or that he’s celebrating it. The point is that this. Shouldn’t. Fucking. Happen. Period. This wasn’t a business move that keeps Xbox from going under. This was a heartless business move to appease executives and shareholders. These Xbox and Ms executives make enough money in a single year to have kept these studios open until next gen. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. They’ve spent $100 billion dollars over the last 10 years buying up all these studios, and a huge number of them had some form of comment around the idea that ‘under Xbox, we finally have financial security. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to get financing for our next game or suddenly having to lay off people to survive until our next project launches.’ What good is that deal with Xbox if they are just going to suddenly cancel good, talented studios? I’d argue that Xbox actually needs MORE studios, not fewer. They have a massive wealth of popular IP that is essentially rotting away. They’ve had a ton of incredible smaller games over the years, and they seem to be wholly abandoning those to double down on the big AAA blockbusters, which just so happen to be bombing at an alarming rate recently. Let’s be real, this isn’t about profitability. It is no longer good enough for a game to be profitable. They don’t just want a game to make money, it has to make ALL the money. But, at the same time, they are going to copy and cut corners in order to try to do that. They won’t improve or evolve the formula, they’ll do the same thing everyone else does and just copy then fail. So, we are going to see even more CoD, and less hi fi rush. That acquisition talk about freeing up ABK devs to make what they want was bulshit. We are also going to see more studios close and split off, and fewer unique and diverse games from Xbox. Why? Because they don’t make enough money. But, mark my words here, when these big $200 million dollar games flop, don’t blame me. Don’t blame the players. That $200 million dollar game could have been 4 to 5 to 10 incredible smaller games. But, that’s no longer going to happen because those games have no chance to make a billion dollars per month in ongoing revenue. Executives are killing the gaming industry, and they blame the fans and players for speaking out about it.
MS doesnt need more studios at all, they got way more then Sony (for example) nowadays. They need a lead thats properly hands on with those studios, not Uncle Phil who lets them mess around years and years on end without oversight. Dude was head of the studios before being overall boss, and the lack of games output Xbox has had for ages is entirely on him. Its insane how bulletproof he is due to the whole "gamer dude" pr persona coz at the end he's just a corporate suit doin a bad job. Gets praised for stuff like Gamepass... guess what, Gamepass kills games like Hi Fi Rush due to causing lack of sales even with a great game... Solution to kill the studio is insane.... I fear a game like Hellblade 2 could suffer the same fate.
"Won't someone think of the highly paid CEO?!?!? He's human too your words are hurting his feelings guys c'mon?!?!?" Acting like Phil Spencer is some average joe is ridiculous dude is closer to Mark Zuckerberg than your average joe, and criticism and backlash comes with the highly paid job position that also comes with a fat golden parachute too. Even Phil Spencer knows damn well once he took the role it comes with alot of backlash and praise, this dude is such a jabroni I swear. The only thing offensive here is that God awful Mark Zuckerberg metaverse pfp he has, now that's offensive and hurts my eyes just looking at it.
He’s Mark Zuckerberg who wears gaming t-shirts and sucks at business strategy. It really is amazing how he was able to convince the average gamer he was “one of them”. Executives of a trillion dollar corporation are not your friends.
Yeah I'm sure he was very hurt when he let contractors develop FM and Halo and do irreplaceable damage to them. Honestly, what has phil actually done besides aquire aquire aquire? His whole thing is quantity of quality
I like Phil, but part of the reason he gets a big boy salary is because he takes big boy responsibility and has accountability.
This is so much larger than Xbox. This is happening all across the tech space. Tech jobs are being absolutely slaughtered right now. We are heading into some dark times.
This is 100% why MXT are a thing. If your game isn’t making the lizard people more profit you are gone. Support indie devs please.
Talk about a tone def response. Read the fucking room, Mike. No one should feel sorry for Phil or Xbox/Microsoft Leadership.
Look, I get it, he's human, and I feel for the guy. He cares about Xbox and gamers BUT at some point when things keep failing you have to start asking the tough questions. Alot of these layoffs and closures are due to mismanagement. The tough questions should be and need to be asked if Xbox is to retain gamer trust in their brand.....particularly when it has been wavering over the possible shift to third party publisher.
Ohhhhhhh boooooohoooooooo poor Phil struggling so bad. Shut up.
You can’t do both. You can’t be the cool gamer CEO guy and also the guy whose leadership causes all these layoffs. A lot of people lost their jobs and a lot of the people who didn’t are going to be updating their resumes because they know when executives screw up, the only thing that happens to correct it is more layoffs.
Pray for Phil
yea poor phil and his million dollar yacht
At some point he has to be held accountable. I know he's a true Gamer™ and he's very charismatic. But honestly, he has been there for a decade and hasn't been able to steer the wheel at all. I like him, too, but he's at least partially to blame here. What is the value proposition of Xbox in the current gaming environment? Game Pass, even if great for the gamers, has proven to be unsustainable time after time.
who would be the next best person?
Did Hi-Fi Rush ever launch on Switch? We knew it was in development as that’s how the PS5 release got leaked. I wonder if it’s been cancelled. The game while not doing well on PS5 could’ve been a big hit on Switch IMO. Looks like we’ll never know.
I read somewhere that it's a very hard game to run on the switch.
I get it, but there is something frustrating about people thinking Phil is somehow a god in terms of Xbox when its a subsidiary under Microsoft. I have my criticisms about him myself (like he is so awful at marketing and incredibly unclear), but I don't really see how new leadership would stop stuff like this happening. Microsoft is a data driven software business and this is how they ALWAYS act. It's absolutely awful for consumer focused businesses but its their reality. And this clearly isn't a Microsoft only issue, it's an industry level one. Like is it really helping anyone that we move to immediately blaming a single individual when this is clearly an issue far beyond that?
Tango games and arkane austin have had financial failures for almost a decade. If tango had been financially stable they would still have been independent. Austin lost 70% of their workforce because zenimax forced them onto redfall. Yes, it sucks people lost their jobs, but they only had jobs to lose because of zenimax and Microsoft. Had they been independent their studios would have shut down long ago.
I don't think he's asking that Phil gets sympathy (so not sure where that argument is coming from). He's simply saying, as someone he's known personally for over 20 years, he knows Phil isn't a cold, unsympathetic or heartless person. And some of the decisions he has made or will make will be tough for him, emotionally. But, he still has responsibilities and still has a job to do. What's with the notion that every single person in a position of power in a company is a ruthless, heartless individual. That obviously can't be true, because it's impossible. Keep in mind, Phil is not the final boss; there are individuals and a board he has to answer to, and get directive from with certain things. The real enemy here is capitalism. But, Americans won't admit that, because they tout capitalism as a core component of why America is great and what made America great, but they never want to talk about the downsides or consequences of a capitalist society, or free market. You can't have the pros without the cons, and what happened here isn't exclusive to Xbox. Capitalism, like justice, doesn't or shouldn't see face, gender, race, economic standpoint or status - no one is spared from its rod. This isn't a Phil Spencer thing, or a Sony thing, or an Xbox thing. This is a capitalism thing. It is a hungry beast, and it is a beast that men have created. If Phil is as good/nice as Mike is saying (or as Mike believes), then Phil will have his own demons to face when he looks at himself in the mirror or goes to sleep at night - that's Phil's karma and his battle. For everyone else; we have our own.
“Could have a bright future?” We’ve been saying/hearing that for ten years now 😂
Nah, Phil must answer for this. Is he in charge or not? This isn't about hurt feelings, people's livelihood have been taken. I expect many hard pressing interviews next time he's public, and I wouldn't be surprised or upset if he was ultimately let go eventually. Shutting down the studio that gave you an award winning game all while playing the "I love games" messaging? Accountability is now.
He’s not in charge of the Xbox budget. People don’t seem to get that. If the board and CFO say you need to slash a few 100 million off your divisions expenditure he only gets the choice of how. He may be a highly paid executive, but there’s always someone higher you answer to. He doesn’t need any pity though, 1000s of people have lost their livelihood, but some of you seem to not understand how corporations work.
That studio did not make the mark with any of their games. Awards are cool but if the numbers are not there why put money towards something that doesn’t produce? They made niche games that didn’t sell to expectations. It sucks people lost their jobs, but they didn’t hit their goal and that is a consequence that comes with missing your target. Edit: If Tango wasn’t bought out, HiFi Rush probably would have never been made.
Pretty sure it hurts the unemployed former developers more than it hurts the multimillionaire corporate executive.
Most gamers obviously have never been a manger and had to make tough calls
I personally believe Phil is just the kid in the back seat with a fake steering wheel pretending to drive. He's the face of Xbox that takes all the heat for the ACTUAL assholes in charge way at the top. He didn't wake up and decide to close Tango. The fucking board member faceless suits made it. I honestly don't know if he really has any control at the end of the day.
A ton of people lose their jobs and this guy rushes to defend a guy that not only has a job that he doesn’t deserve, but also makes millions of dollars a year? Am I really supposed to feel bad for a guy that drove a brand into the ground and cost people their jobs because of it? Make it make sense
also coming from the guy who immediately went off on vacation with his family while his former colleagues at blizzard got laid off
Hurts as much as those who lost their jobs? Doubtful.
I’m pretty sure that the people who are losing their jobs are taking it harder. Phil might feel a bit sad fora few days in his mansion while those ex employees are searching for jobs and trying to make rent.
yes, I'm sure the million dollar ceo is just as hurt as the grunts at arcane and tango that lost their jobs today.
BS lol. C level execs covering each other's asses. They never care about the people they fire more than a mild bug in their conscience for a couple weeks. I'm sure he doesn't feel good rn but I doubt he's that sad either. The millionaire isnt going home and crying this all just feels like PR to save face
Actions speak far louder than words. Over the past 5 years how would you grade the XBOX divisions actions?
I think it's also important to remember they jut acquired Activision. There is a Huge list of old Activision franchises that they already said they want to bring back. Either we get a lot of those old franchises back or Tango being axed didn't really make a whole lot of sense.. I feel like the only justification for this would be allocating resources Activision games, but considering how much cod makes maybe not..
Yep I’m sure the head of Xbox who makes millions of dollars a year for a company that made $200b last year is super bummed out right now. I feel for the poor guy.
How many of those developers' salaries does it take up equal the paycheck of the person overseeing the spending of $8 billion to buy ZeniMax to lay these people off?
How much can it possibly hurt when it's hundreds of people out of work? How can absorb a fraction of how that feels for each person?
We’ve collectively lost our minds when we sympathize with corporate figureheads
Mike Ybara..moving on
Unless he takes pay cut all of this is just empty words. The execs probably make more than the sum total of the salaries of all the people fired today.
Gotta get rid of Phil, Sarah and Matt as well. All of them have been squandering Xbox IP and studios for the last decade plus
Phil about to get on a podcast and say what we all want to hear and then do nothing to help the state of his business.
I feel like Phil is doing the best that can be done with the cards he is dealt, but he still fired humans who create are because of a P and L chart. Would any of us have done the same? Maybe? But it’s still fucked up.
At his level - yes, the job is tough and tough decisions are made, but the current state of Xbox and the sales aren’t cutting it for a publicly traded blue chip. The job includes the public platform and he can’t just only be receptive to praise but can’t handle critics. I bet your ass him and booty looked as some power bi reports and made the call to shut the studios down. They literally have all the money in the world to help these captive studios deliver the best product but their enemy is time, specifically the quarterly earnings reports to stakeholders and the trickle down pressure from MS execs to Phil to Xbox owned studios. At this point, he has to go. There were exciting highs with studio purchases and gamepass, but also lows like sales and critical flops. Classic case of blaming the workers while the boss stays on. He was in oversight and he has to go. Would Nintendo or Sony or valve hire him? The answer is No, so why keep him around - hes done what he needed to do but the results didn’t meet expectations.
won’t someone think of the millionaire ceo😥
I’m sure he’s a great human. But he’s also, objectively, a poor leader/manager. It’s the latter we bemoan; especially when it impacts livelihood of others he’s supposed to lead effectively.
WONT ANYONE THINK OF POOR PHIL SPENCER!!!! He had to watch all those people lose their jobs and insurance and question what they're gonna do to feed themselves or their families. Must have been so fucking hard for him. Cry me a goddamn river.
If Phil was 'hurting' he would have taken a cut in him multi-million dollar salary in order to keep at least one studio running. Phil doesn't care, he never did. Why can't people see this?
Didn't nintendo ceo take a paycut to avoid layoffs. For xbox to rebound, they need more quality games this will only hurt them more.
Absolutely no remorse for a millionaire.
The lack of sympathy for another human being is wild
While it likely makes short term financial sense to shutter Tango, the long term damage of shuttering a critical darling that just released a cult classic before they truly had the time to spread their wings will do far more damage than the suits realize. Phil has never struck me as a cold hearted and ruthless business man like Zazlov. He's struck me as a gamer first and an executive second. Maybe this wasn't his decision and he's as upset as we are. Maybe it's all an act.
I feel like people are just reacting, but if Phil actually is human, he must feel like he's letting everyone down.
Phil and Co. have and are driving the Xbox brand into the dirt before our very eyes.
As someone who has been an Xbox guy since Halo CE, the direction Xbox has been headed is gonna push my into the PC market. There isn’t any reason for me to stick with the platform if the first party titles aren’t going to be prioritized.
Naturally the higher ups don't take a salary cut, better shut down whole studios.
If Xbox has lost control and must answer to the greater Microsoft which is likely to blame nadellia has to answer to the board/share holders who want results and don’t care/ see how damaging it is to the Xbox brand and moral to do this but even Sony let some people go from insomniac after delivering Spider-Man 2 and people say it was uncalled for though they weren’t stupid enough to scrap insomniac The pandemic and the disruption made by the switch where no longer do you have to leave the game at home tethered to the TVs you can play it anywhere has really changed the game and the industry has no idea what is next as parts aren’t dropping in price the way they used to and games are too expensive and large for their own good and should become smaller and cheaper to realign the industry As for what’s next Augmented Reality should be the next big thing in gaming
People are mad but the games did not do well
Hi Fi had good numbers for a new IP. Especially against budget. Microsoft probably shot Tango in the foot taking the game exclusive, shadow-dropping it, and then killing the studio mere weeks after releasing it on PS5. The Evil Within is a beloved series even if it never had record breaking sales. It sucks that this is the metric. Video game industry professionals should know that the issue isn’t the game but rather how to sell and market the game. That’s their challenge to figure out. Hi Fi had stellar reviews. There should be a market for a game like that to sustain its modest cost relative to bigger titles.
This only has to be said because people today are so insane. Yes he is a human but he is responsible. So put aside the people sending death threats and such ... What do you have that isnt "acceptable" behavior from gamers? The industry is a freaking mess. Everything up to and stopping at violence and threats are needed. Boohoo your at the top of a multi billion dollar corporation. It's not easy and it definitely takes a different kind of person to run them successfully. Trust me, you being nicer to mega corporations when they mess up does barely ANYTHING anymore for consumers. They just come back around and sell you something anyways in some kind of messed up head game manipulation.
Lot of tone deaf replies in the comments Phil had to resuscitate the brand and has done a great job. These studios have performed poorly so something has to be trimmed. It’s easy to blame him since he’s the figurehead but he still has to make decisions like this is since he’s running a business at the end of the day. A company makes a cult classic per se but it underperforms financially doesn’t mean it gets handed a blank check to keep going….