It’s too late for Xbox to control the narrative after studio closures

The latest round of Xbox studio closures has further revealed Microsoft’s inability to be proactive and responsive in its communication.

[Lightning77]

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.

[-Foxtrot]

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

[Profchaos]

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

[Lightning77]

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.

[Skuletor]

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.

[Profchaos]

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

[lelo2play]

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.

[Skuletor]

It would be interesting to see what Apple could do but their consoles would probably be way overpriced.

[Hedstrom]

Apple would price their console 1500$ and their games 100$. But it would apparently still sell somehow!

[badz149]

did you see how much they are charging for the new iPad?

[Skuletor]

@badz149
Checkout the premium for the 2TB storage upgrade.
I can get a 13-inch iPad Pro Wi-Fi + Cellular 2TB with nano-texture glass — Space Black for the low price of $5,199.00 NZD.
Seems slightly overpriced but I'm not the target audience anyway.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I don't think Apple can really innovate any more though, their phone sales have slowed right down, it's going to be tough for them to enter the gaming market, especially if they're not smart about it.

[romulus23]

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.

[SeTTriP]

This game will not move the game pass needle.

[anast]

It's going to flop in the corporate world. If it were in independent spaces, it would do just fine.

[northpaws]

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...

[Lightning77]

Apparently there's gonna be more lay offs ro come according to Jason Shreier.

It's over ppl.

[Elda]

XB fans better buy those digital only copies of Hellblade 2 instead of renting the game through GP otherwise Ninja Theory will be next.

[Hypertension140]

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.

[Vits]

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.

[Tacoboto]

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

[anast]

They are all going mobile and/or streaming through a ROKU type box.

[Tacoboto]

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.

[anast]

They are downsizing. They don't need a ton of people to dev mobile games and run a few live service games.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Again it's a d move and did Microsoft offer these employees jobs or incentives to continue working on those branch nah there's no need to damage control here.

[badz149]

downsizing? after spending $77B on acquisitions of 2 publishers? WTF?

[anast]

Every time a company buys another company the dismantle it for profit.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

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.

[GhostScholar]

I mean studio closures are an unfortunate part of the games industry. My issue is that they closed tango which made one of the best games Microsoft has ever put out. Hi-if rush started a huge string of momentum that was going until they went multiplat and then now closed the studio. I’d close almost any studio they have before tango.

[Demetrius]

When I turn on my x360 and play saints row 2, I reminisce about those days, never thought a mf would ruin xbox this bad🤦🏾

[glenn1979]

Stupid m@ther.... what are they thinking ? Im on gamepass on pc and there rumors of raising the price they raise it 1$ Im out