That’s according to GamesIndustry.biz head Chris Dring, who said his takeaway from GDC last week was that he thinks “Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer”.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 launched last week to solid reviews from both fans and players. But its playercount? That's another story.
That's awful. This combined with the really low Steam numbers paint a disastrous picture imo. Really bad timing too because Tango was closed down for a similar thing. Great reviewed game, and low sales and/or player count. Hi-Fi Rush reviewed a hell of a lot better and it was widely loved by everyone, Hellblade 2 nowhere near that.
I know the rumor is that the studio has their next game already green-lit, but if I worked at Tango, I would be furious. "Why do they survive while we get binned?" I'd be telling myself.
But the suit woman will have you believe "Oh we have different metrics for the success of one studio compared to another studio. We judge each studio and game on their own set criteria" or something like that, I'm paraphrasing here but you get the idea. But no one who works there knows what the hell that even means. I mean the DLC for Redfall was getting worked on days before they even got the news their studio was getting dumped in the trash. So what are these mysterious metrics to let studios survive and others perish? I bet this is all hogwash, I bet MS don't even really know. They just had to make cuts and certain studios just found their way on the chopping block. Someone had to bite the dust, why not you?
Well I bet all this does nothing for the confidence of other employees in other studios. The truth is you have no idea where your career will be in a year from now working at one of their studios that aren't the mega big ones. MS just have too many studios to manage efficiently. "We'll just throw money at them and buy them and worry about the details later on. I mean we can do it, we're Microsoft."
If this game cost more and took longer to develop than Hi-Fi Rush, then I would worry if I were Ninja Theory. Projects may have been greenlit, but the increased scrutiny over at MS may very well put them on the chopping block. The incredible irony here is that it was PlayStation players that pushed the original game passed its 1 million copies sold milestone. With that purchasing power cut out, and the Game Pass effect having trained Xbox players to not purchase games, it seems that the sequel may have been set-up for failure.
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Xbox Wire: “We're excited to confirm that Game Pass members will be able to jump into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on day one.”
Here's hoping for a drop of all 19 of the other cod games on gamepass. That would be a wild trip down memory lane.
After being burnt with MW3 (really enjoyed mw2019 and MW2 (2022) as well as cold war). Guess I can give it ago on pc GP for a month. If I like it buy it on PS5 or PC or don't if I don't like it. I may dislike gamepass. But since it's Microsoft who potentially looses out on my money I don't mind.
Nice!
All those rumors were dead wrong and COD fans will be able to play Black Ops 6 day one on Gamepass!
So Microsoft is willing to take a financial hit? Could have done that with Tango. This was the correct move. Any other move would have piled on what happened recently whether it be, price increase, new tier, or not releasing it on GP at all.
Hmmm, I think they will announce a price hike in between now and BO6 coming out.
PlayStation will be MS's biggest console platform to publish games on. They tried the buy-up and mass ban of multiplatform games and it's just ended up with them needing Sony for sales.
Probably sooner rather than later at this rate...
LMAO!! Why did MS/XB even bother in the first place. Just wasted money.
They should like 2 years later like Sony does with PCX games.
They're slowly becoming a 3rd party publisher.