As part of the mass Xbox layoffs this week, news has also emerged about the company's physical games being impacted, with Microsoft reportedly shutting down key departments.
While there's no evidence just yet Microsoft is necessarily withdrawing completely from this space, it has raised questions about the future of physical support within this ecosystem - with speculation Xbox could outsource and might be consolidating.
Now, in response to this development, the CEO of physical distributor Limited Run Games, Josh Fairhurst, has chimed in on social media. mentioning how his company would "continue to support Xbox" hard copy releases "whenever possible":
Nirav from GL writes: "If the makers of a GOTY competitor that outdid sales and Game Pass expectations and owned by the richest company in the world cannot stay open - what hope is there for everyone else?"
***If the makers of a GOTY competitor that outdid sales and Game Pass expectations and owned by the richest company in the world cannot stay open - what hope is there for everyone else?***
None if you stay in an arena of corporate driven metrics. And this is what happens when you allow publishers to buy up massive amounts of studios and IPs. There's only so much internal competition and the focus in the end will remain on those who look best on a spreadsheet.
Players can be so driven by what is best for them and only see what is put right in front of them. But that's not what is best for them. They are being lied to constantly, as seen by Microsoft's ridiculous praise for Hi-Fi Rush and Phil's lies about Redfall prior to release and how big of a supporter of both studios he has been. But, instead of thinking "wait, this corporation wants me to think this way, should I be listening to them and believing them?" players eat it up and go "OMG, did you hear what they said! They're just like us and they know what's best for the industry."
And because of this single-mindedness of the majority of gamers, we are where we are now. Massive layoffs. Massive studio closures. Games that we were told were representative of the core values of said corporations shelved and studios behind them shuttered. The truth is coming to bear because the truth all along was only what the numbers in an excel spreadsheet told the corporate suits.
If you truly want what is best for the industry, what is best for developers, then you need to support Indie games, support developers that maintain control over their IPs and direction, support boutique publishers who only exist to help Indies make it out the door and don't own the IP. Stop supporting major corporations with your money or you devotion. Stop playing their games, and I don't mean video games, but their marketing, their double speak, their guy without a tie who says things you want to hear PR, their future of video gaming concepts as if we were hurting for new ways to play games other than installing/downloading and playing them, and especially any slogan from them that gives the impression that they are for you, the consumer. They are not. You're merely a value on a spreadsheet.
Sure, I'm the one drinking the koolaid. Keep believing in the corporations. They definitely have your best interests in mind. All hail the Big Green, For You Blue, and Nostalgia Red! All praise big corporations buying up other publishers. All praise the inevitable spreadsheet adjustments. For greed, not the players.
This should not be surprising to any of you. We have been saying for MONTHS that Game Pass is not sustainable and that these acquisitions will come at a massive cost to the industry. People refused to grasp the difference between buying and investing in a developer like Insomniac or Housemarque, and buying the entire publisher. People refused to accept that spending billions to acquire the biggest publishers in gaming means you have to RECOUP those costs, and you aren't going to do it without consolidation, focusing on core IP that sells, creating revenue streams via ownership and releasing on other platforms, and closing down studios that are superfluous to the budget requirements. You will not recoup those costs by investing in risky new IP or creative new games and studios.
No, people cheered Microsoft on like they were delivering GOTY titles to their door and pouring money into the industry to grow Indies and triple A projects.
You are getting what you deserve. You take the consequences of the practices you supported.
Layoffs happen. Some games don't succeed. Everyone has seen it happen. Happens even to the winners.
This, however, is goddamn shambolic and if you can't see it now then there's no helping you and you should keep enjoying the "value" of Game Pass while contributing nothing to this industry.
I've never seen the developer of one of the best games of the year get axed before.
Ninja Theory is next after Hellblade 2, I can see them going independent again. There's more to come from MS.
This is exactly it. There is more of this coming. MS runs from one bad idea to the next, and GamePass is an unsustainable train wreck that we get to watch in real time.
GamePass is stalled for subscriber growth, and all that they can hope for is to either A) Reduce the quantity of games (i.e. shutter game studios), B) Reduce the quality of games (to make more mediocre but lower budget offerings), or C) Raise prices on existing customers. Or some combination of those.
MS does not have a passion for the industry. The XBox project, from the beginning, was sparked from the fear that someone else would eat their PC market lunch by making a games machine that replaced the PC. THAT was the entire motivation for getting into the games industry.
I saw it from the outset of day 1 on Xbox it's unsustainable no one was buying their games and a noticeable decline in quality and a push to live service elements to keep subscriptions active was obvious.
I saw it every time I'd go to a physical game shop for a Multi plat pre order no one was there for the Xbox version.
I'd go to CeX or other used game stores and be able to pick up the full range of Xbox studios first party games for 20 bucks and change while on the PlayStation side 20 bucks might get me two PS4 launch games and wouldn't even get me a single Nintendo first party game.
"Ninja Theory is next after Hellblade 2"
Anyone think it's weird it comes out in 2 weeks and there's hardly anything on it
They know what they are doing. If 'you' treat them like "good 'ol simple minded folk", then 'you' are relieving them from blame via ignorance. They knew that they were going all live service, streaming and mobile a long time ago, The Oracle tends to see the obvious. While companies patronize gamers like they are children, which most of them are, may be confused for stupidity, they are also not so stupid they don't understand the decisions that they are making toward the overall direction of their company.
*None of their games were even close to competing for GOTY. They paid for names to be mentioned.
Xbox survived it's first gen by pure luck halo became a hit and it was huge followed up by halo 2 which had one of the biggest marketing campaigns I can remember seeing in the early 00s we had guys in master chief outfits on the sidelines of state of origin as a promo it blew my mind.
Then the 360 fell under the excellent leadership of Peter Moore and outpaced the PS3 for the first three quarters of that generation the only time anyone has ever done that.
Since losing Peter Moore it's been a rapid decline and buying up the industry stank of a desperate move along with the idea of gamepass itself stank of desperation to me no one was buying the X1 they needed something to get people interested and here we are.
I would happily lose gamepass if Xbox could go back to the 360 era style of focused heavy hitters and solid games.
The championing of consolidation they did was disgusting and what's happened as a result is proof they never had gamers or the industry at heart they need their ROI and that's all they cared about big daddy ms has signed a number of blank checks getting them here and it's coming to collect on their debts
The latest round of Xbox studio closures has further revealed Microsoft’s inability to be proactive and responsive in its communication.
There's a pattern. It seems like in May every year there's some blunder. Last year Phil was crying and mad at ABK possibly not going through and how Redfall sucked. Year before that Redfall and Sf getting delayed.
Next months all will be forgiven by Xbox fanboys because they put on a great show or whatever. Then come next year MS creates more fires in their house rinse and repeat. This happens every year don't fall for this trap this year.
The shows are an issue when they seem to promise things that either eventually dissapoint or never see the light of day
Apparently Perfect Dark is having a lot of trouble, Fable 4 is still nowhere to be seen, Everwild, State of Decay so on
Maybe the studios are delaying their games internally so they don't get shut down.
Phil walks into playground games hey is fable ready yet.
Turn 10 guys no please we have families we have to delay it
I think Perfect Dark will finally be shown off. Fable was shown in engine last year. I'm not so much worried about the releases necessarily I'm more worried about if they do release the games, it won't hit their unrealistic metrics of success therefore closure.
Maybe it's all a scheme to drop share prices, buy up a bunch of them, then sell them when their value rises, probably not but I wouldn't put it past them.
This sort of news doesn't hurt Microsoft share prices at all Xbox is just to small it's a single tiny arm in a multi arm beast.
Xbox could. Lose tomorrow and the shareholders would be like oh ok so how's our ai
Microsoft have no idea what they are doing in gaming. It's time for them to just leave the gaming scene.
It would be better if some other company took their place as the third console developer, beside Sony and Nintendo.
Mark my words... If Hellblade 2 flops in sales, Ninja Theory will be killed off.
It would be interesting to see what Apple could do but their consoles would probably be way overpriced.
Apple would price their console 1500$ and their games 100$. But it would apparently still sell somehow!
Since HB2 will be going directly to gamepass sales will most assuredly be low. If it's low enough to shutter NT remains to be seen but that would be disastrous for MS if that happened.
It's going to flop in the corporate world. If it were in independent spaces, it would do just fine.
And the problem is, it won't do well in sales. It is too short to be sold at full price, and it is also available day one for all game pass subscribers, and now some of their games are on PS, so if PS gamers want to try it, they will also wait.
MS is just setting their studios for failure and then close them down when it happens.
Look at Hi Fi Rush... they shadow drop it so no hype could be built... And then releasing on PS too late... And then before it gives them time to sell the game, they closed the studio...
Apparently there's gonna be more lay offs ro come according to Jason Shreier.
It's over ppl.
XB fans better buy those digital only copies of Hellblade 2 instead of renting the game through GP otherwise Ninja Theory will be next.
I also feel like Turn 10 and the forza motorsport series is on its last legs.
The newest game in the series completely killed off most of its fanbase.
At this point, it's hard to find a single studio that isn't in danger. Tango has created their most well-regarded new IP of the last 10 years and was likely Xbox best entry point to Japan. However, it has been shut down, so now all bets are off.
I know, right?
And the former head of Turn10 became the head of Xbox Game Studios only back in November. What a load of pride and accomplishment
I pre-ordered the game on Sunday on Steam before all this madness. Having it through Game Pass, I know I'll install it on Xbox to compare console vs Ultrawide on PC, but PC is where I want to play and I was compelled to buy it for how astounding of an experience the first one was to me.
Considering the time they were allowed to work on something only 8 hours long, I'm highly hoping that these are going to be some of the most well-polished 8 hours of the generation so far.
... Not that it matters though. Remember HiFi Rush hit their metrics and expectations. Even if they tell us it's successful, fans and employees alike can't expect that to mean the studio's safe or secure.
We'll only know it's successful if they get to live to see a PS5 port through. If a PS5 port isn't in the rumor mill, we know they'll go under like Arkane Austin and the oh-so-close offline Redfall patch.
They are downsizing. They don't need a ton of people to dev mobile games and run a few live service games.
Who cares about a narrative at this point. They did what they did. They've been barreling towards this point for years, everyone without green shades on called it, and now we're gonna wait for Lord Spencer to do another round of interviews? It's just the same thing over and over. Scrooge McDuck doesn't care about the health of the industry. It's just buy buy buy. And the judges in the FTC trial don't have clean hands either, but they rarely understand anything if it isn't fed to them with a baby bib. This is like Embracer Group, except it's actual house money they're playing with, so they get away with it time and time again. For God's sakes, instead of making games, they bought Zenimax just to keep Starfield away from PlayStation. C'mon man this is a joke.
Twisted Voxel writes: "We've almost reached the end of the 1st half of 2024, and Xbox has had more studio closures than first party game releases in the year so far."
Hellblade 2, Indiana Jones, Avowed, Towerborne, and Call of Duty are still to be released this year. Marcus Fenix collection to be added to the list with the Xbox showcase, hopefully.
"Xbox Has Had More Studio Closures Than First Party Game Releases So Far In 2024"
they kept the IPs though. they'll be making them under the MS brand i'm guessing. like minecraft all those years ago.
If we're going to talk in "still to be's" there still could be more studio closures from Microsoft this year as well.
How much confidence do people have in these games being good though? I hope they will be (especially Avowed) but from what we know of them so far, it's hardly a guarantee, is it?
And even if they do turn out to be good, how much of that will be down to Xbox and its leadership? Most of these games were either sequels to games made before being acquired or started development before being acquired.
And just a note on Hellblade II - it is out in two weeks and unless I'm missing something, I don't see much in the way of previews or advertising from Microsoft. Not ideal for a niche game that looks like it probably cost a lot of money to make. It genuinely feels like another game being sent out to die and then have the studio shut down.
To me...Avowed graphics look cheap, the game looks generic as well as boring.
I find it interesting that people have to resort to praising how they were randomly born in a certain location to say they're not weird. But, I'm not sure this kind of stupidity can be generalized over an entire group of people, at least, I'm being optimistic here.
Sony doesn't have to bother fighting the next Microsoft acquisition. The massive layoff by themselves should be enough to get the next big buy blocked.
Vindicates Jim Ryan. Don't know who didnt see this coming except those frothing pro acquisition fanboys who are not commenting here for some reason....
Let’s not pretend Sony is setting the world on fire with its first party either….it’s been crickets from them as well. In fact they even said not to expect any at all this year.
MS is a dumpster fire and Sony isn’t fighting anymore and it shows. I fail to see how this is a good thing.
Wasn't it no new existing IP entries? That would still leave room for new IPs, maybe we'll see one or more of those this year.
So if MS hadn't spent $80 billion consolidating the industry just think of all the games and jobs that would have saved.
MS is a drain on gaming and have been nothing but a negative.
not exactly like the studios were putting out good games anyway. Industry needs to restart from the ground up; if games like battlebit or manor lords can be made by teams with 10 people - then there's something fundamentally wrong with having 500 man teams put out glitchy overmonetized crap.
Interesting. Prey was a good game, evil within was dope, and hi fi was the best Xbox game that Xbox has had in so many years. That's according to the base.
HiFi Rush was a really good game actually so that's hardly the reason for shutting down Tango.
Why isn't MS PR getting in front of this messaging and making an official statement? All of this speculation is based on that Windows Central guy's tweet that he's since backed off of a bit.
Yeah going digital only Microsoft this is bad for gamers and limits gamers, Physical > Digital.
What will keep retailers from pulling consoles? Wasn't this always the threat? I get that xbox isn't really about the console anymore, but it's too soon to drop it completely.
Idk why is this such a shock. Xbox owners didn't buy physical games. Retailers started to return the disks back to it's publishers. Than retailers stopped to order new ones. Than publishers decided to only release PS and Switch physical.
Than MS said: -You know what Phil? We need to fire some people.