Less than a day after the news that Take-Two Interactive would acquire Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment from the embattled Embracer Group, layoffs have already begun. In the hours since former Gearbox employees were made redundant, they've taken to Twitter, and while the total number of staff impacted remains hard to determine, it sounds significant.
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.
If we're going to talk in "still to be's" there still could be more studio closures from Microsoft this year as well.
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....
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.
The Outerhaven writes: With multiple gaming studios, including Tango Gameworks, closing, the editor-in-chief of The Outerhaven shares his thoughts on the matter.
Honestly I was looking back and at the launch of the Xbox 1. With Don Matrick at the helm I was disappointed but therevwas something else. That fighting spirit of Xbox at its inception was lost. They stopped innovating, I lost excitement on what the next big new surprise was, because their weren’t any. Not like Halo 2 and Gears launch. You couldn’t really brag about it anymore.
So here we are and corporate MS has ruined what was a beautiful renegade project.
Xbox do not give a crap about developers they want publishers to make money for them that is all.
Well without developers there's nothing to publish so if that's their plan it's a pretty bad one.
For everything that Xbox did, I was hopeful it would turn stuff around. Game Pass was a start, and the release of its upcoming titles was a nice way to return. I mean, I'm not going to say it was perfect, just like I wouldn't say PlayStation is perfect. Neither company is, but when Xbox goes and does this, it makes zero sense. The message of Xbox's plan had already had me frustrated, but I was like, "Maybe they'll fix this mess."
Now... yeah. Not so confident anymore.
That's how you know this is clickbait garbage. If you write about games for a living and didn't know Microsoft is a cancer on the industry until now than you are awful at your job.
"Right now"?
But not 11 years ago with the disastrous Xbox One reveal which they NEVER recovered from?
Man are you slow on the uptake.
No, Xbox never recovered, but Game Pass (which you're a fool if you deny the success of it), Xbox Cloud, the acquisitions, the reboot of Perfect Dark (which seems to be in the gutter now), the success of Forza Horizon, Sea of Thieves, and yes, Hi-Fi Rush (FFS).
Denying any sort of improvement only goes to show you don't pay any attention to the entire picture.
I think you missed the part where these things were spread years apart. Theres no consistency
Bullshit.
Perfect Dark IP was purchased along with many other games like Halo, Gears, etc. Perfect Dark needs help with Crystal Dynamics just to finish the game. That's pathetic. HiFi Rush was purchased and was probably already coming to PlayStation before the purchase.
If Game Pass was a success, these developers wouldn't be closing their doors. We told gamers it isn't profitable. It does make revenue. But revenue isn't profit. It hasn't changed Microsoft's position in the industry or increased hardware sales. If it did, they would be shouting from the rooftops like their arrogant asses always do.
Anyone can have a cloud service. And Sony's is more successful. It took buying major publishers just to increase their spreadsheet. But Xbox continues to fail even then. By having to place games on their competitors platform while still trying to compete. You don't see Nintendo putting their games on Xbox. And Sony was only forced because they don't own the MLB license. Which was forced behind the scenes by Microsoft to take away Sony's successful game and throw it on game pass to use it against gamers buying it on PlayStation. How is the acquisitions a success if they have to close companies they just bought and make many developers jobless? Are you serious? Unless you call it a success by taking away games from other platforms that made those developers more money. That's ridiculous.
Sea of Thieves took years to fix. How is that a success that you have an unfinished game for years that needs fixing? Games should be complete at launch. Just like Halo was an incomplete game that needed fixing. Forza Horizon is a good game but even that game hasn't improved Microsoft's standing at all.
Denying all that shows that you're not paying attention.
Success? They missed their own targets 3 years straight, stopped announcing numbers because they're so terrible and it's not profitable. Hence the closing 4 studios. There will be more consolidation too. Just watch the by the books garbage yearly releases too followed by more season passes and shorter games come out
I have been paying attention for past 11 years. That's why I made my fully accurate above post.
You're the one who hasn't, thus you made that completely worthless post.
- I don't care about a rental service for mid-tier (or any tier) games.
- I don't care about streaming services, I play on actual hardware.
- What is Perfect Dark at this point? Its just a name trying to have an easy win with nostalgia. The original developers and talent has long been gone once MS bought Rare in 2001. ITS JUST A NAME, nothing more.
-Don't care about Forza Horizon.
- Don't care about Sea of Thieves.
- I am interested in Hi-Fi Rush, but MS killing off Tango has pissed me off, so I don't want to reward them for their B.S. and now its guaranteed that the hard working devs won't see any benefit from me supporting them.
MS has done squat over the past 11 years. Nothing but the embarrassing stink of failure. I know this because I have been paying attention.
I never played hi-fi rush, even though I would have loved it from all I can see, but as it never came to playstation... Now it comes to playstation and I have no intention to buy it because they closed the developer and the money will only go to poor phil and his poor suits. Well I mean, what else is there to say.
Gamepass brought them into this position so you would be a fool to see it as a success lol
It's also foolish to deny the negatives gamepass is having on the industry as that is part of the entire picture as well.
I imagine smaller ABK studios like toys for bob and beenox are now feeling uncertain about their futures
Thankfully Toys for Bob managed to safely separate from Xbox and are independent now.
Beenox has been in danger for years now with Activision. Microsoft may act more ruthlessly to them unfortunately.
It was announced today that Tango Gameworks, the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush, will be shut down, which casts doubt on the future of the game.
I’m sure the support and franchise will live on due to its success. They may even keep some ppl and roll them into other studios. There are layoffs across the map tho in the game/tech industries in general tho including Sony, Facebook and more. My personal family has been affected by them.
No excuses for MS. I guess Hi Fi didn't do as well as we all thought. So Much the for fun Little experiences that MS has been wanting games of all sizes. The thing is MS are so predictable this year they say "oh we want to prioritize bigger games." Next year they'll have more shut downs and say oh well these ballooning budgets of AAA blah, blah, blah. Even though a year prior they said they want more bigger games. When are gonna admit MS can't do or won't do gaming right? It's always waiting for this and that. String you along while destroying ppls jobs. Year in and year out.
MS’ aren’t gamers they are businessmen.. they prefer a terrible game that sells and makes money to a great game with potential and can be used to grow a wider fanbase.. a bunch of crooks 🤮
this MS employee goes around every posts about MS studio closure and made deflecting comments in all of them lmao
Yet MS made a company-wide profit of $22 billion.
In my eyes releasing this on gamepass was a double edged sword approach, received extremely well, but didn't hit w.e batshit insane sales target MS had In mind
Nothing will sell well when they have trained their fanbase to rely on GamePass. (There could be a unicorn every decade or something like that) The price has to go up a lot or more than likely they close a lot of studios to get upkeep way down and have few studios handle all of the IP and still raise gamepass price just not as much as necessary to keep those doors open for all of the devs that created the IPs MS now owns.
The problem is it did seem to hit their targets
https://x.com/aarongreenber...
have all the people saying m$ buying all those companies, been proved correct yet,
they said more games, more choice, but ended up
less choice, less games, in reality... we were right
It sucks to be right sometimes. Love tango works games with evil within. Also huge fan of prey...if redfall had been a single player story driven title I bet your ass they could've done wonders with freaking vampires.
They developed the highest rated game Xbox has had as a exclusive in years and they shut them down? Doesn't make much sense.
That just shows how backwards their philosophy is. Studios are the ones creating the magic, you can't just chop and change them on a dime.
It does when it was a nice Indy time that didn’t make money. Unlike you, they think as a business and if the studio made enough money it would have been safe. One of the biggest companies in the world knows not then you, me, or any other random no matter what you abt to believe.
"Unlike you, they think as a busines"
Yeah a very poorly ran business, the brand has been going down the toilet for over a decade. With all the dumb decision making, it's not suprising why they're going 3rd party.
You can't give your games away for free and then shut down studios when they don't sell. Extremely idiotic thinking
Funny we buy art though, we don’t buy money.
So they should start “thinking” more like creators of art l, rather than creators of money, and as a side bonus, guess what, they might get more money
I get what your saying though, even any scraped some projects recently
I am glad to see Gearbox under Take Two. But lay offs I am not surprised they aren't the only company cutting staff and they won't be the last. And I have a feeling the Borderlands movie honestly will tank when it comes out. The cast is just wow a complete mess Lilith is too old Roland is to small and scrawny. They are missing Brick and Mordecai and I don't think Tiny Tina will be as bat shit nuts as she is in the games.
Pfft, literally said yesterday how it must be nerve wracking for the devs and then this shite. People aren't looking to get fired, and these companies don't care in the slightest.
Inflation post 1/20/2020 is really causing pain to everyone. The cherry on top was companies waiting post 11/8/2022 to start doing layoffs. Hmm, I wonder why they waited past that date... Staring with Google in January 2023 and everyone following suit there after.
Companies that over-hire should be fined heavily and the CEO loses his/her bonus during layoffs, and that money can go to the workers that they laid off.
I hope Pitchford got let go for the sake of employee safty. The man is a walking grease fire waiting to happen.