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Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda (www.ign.com)

submitted 6 months ago by Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Affected devs:

Arkane Austin (closed)
Tango Gameworks (closed)
Alpha Dog Studios (closed)
Roundhouse Games (absorbed into ZeniMax Online Studios)

These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 19 points 6 months ago

If you ever wonder why gamers buy Playstation and not Xbox, here is your reason.

MS have no idea what they're doing with gaming. There will be no The Last of Us or God of War coming from them. They don't want to sell you games. They want to sell you GamePass. They don't want you to have a great time. They want you to have a time that is just about acceptable enough to keep paying for it.

The only one of their games I've heard people get excited about is Hi-Fi Rush, and you can see here what they think of that. Clearly it didn't maintain enough Monthly Active Users, or have a short enough Time To Purchase or whatever other bullshit mobile-era metric determines whether a studio lives or dies.

[-] Ilflish@lemm.ee 8 points 6 months ago

This is such a fanboy opinion. Sony killed basically their entire Japanese Development, had 13 GaaS in development at the same time and actively are holding back the standard of Cross Save. They give plenty of reasons to not be the 'gamer' console. Especially now when they are also beginning to drop games on gamepass.

Ironically we still know of more single player games coming to Xbox then games coming to Sony outside of Spider-Man Leaks.

Fallout is currently the hottest game on the market thanks to the Show on top of this.

This really fucking sucks but damn stop trying to use this as a way to promote your team

[-] paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

What are you talking about?

Sony's Japan studio's own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it's kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they've always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1's launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.

I'm struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It's even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90's, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.

A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.

I don't mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it's not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.

I'm also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all... I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn't been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP's from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that's a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you're trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that's pretty far from the truth.

[-] shani66@ani.social 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah sony hasn't been the gaming juggernaut that guy remembers in a very long time.

[-] Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

If anything, Nintendo is likely the company about to make lightning strike twice with the Switch successor due to be announced this year. Will be interesting to see what it's like, but no matter the case, it is going to sell like hotcakes.

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

And this is WHY the smaller studios are on the chopping block and not core Bethesda.

Because smaller games that are incredibly solid don't matter. What matters are AAA tentpoles. And Tango's A/AA games were "lukewarm" at best. They had an AMAZING B/A game but fuck 'em. Same with Arkane Austin

And... probably same with Obsidian this fall (?) when their Elder Pillars game comes out and people decide it isn't Skyrim so it is bad. Ignore that Pentiment was amazing or their long legacy as one of the best studios in CRPGs. People will just talk doom and gloom because it isn't The Last Of Us.

Which will lead to MS continuing to try to be Sony rather than take advantage of the studios they actually have. And people will continue to talk about how they can't compete with Sony because they don't have a Horizon Zero Dawn.

I've been saying it ever since MS started buying every studio they could. They have an AMAZING roster and can basically dominate the market by "flooding" it with high production value "indie" games. But... people want their AAA tentpoles.