Hi-Fi Rush was basically the only outright "success" Xbox Studios has had in over a decade. While not a massive money maker, I know it made well over expectations and had actual positive buzz for once.
Shutting that down in a throwaway line in the same email you shut down the retards behind Redfall shows just how fucking retarded everyone in this company is.
It's the whole Square Enix shit all over again. They just flatly don't know how to manage that product and too focused on AAA grandeur. HI-Fi was perfect for a niche rhythm beatem up franchise. But nah. That's not AAA.
It's because Microsoft spend 70 billion dollars to buy Activision-Blizzard-King and Bethesda. Microsoft wants that money now. Having medium or small sized game companies not turning much profit (either by being small successes or a little in the red) was previously not an issue because the real goal was to keep up Game Pass subscriptions.
But now Microsoft has this debt, but the market is saturated so there is no way to get a huge load of new Game Pass subscriptions. So Microsoft wants everything to be either making Call of Duty numbers, or to cut things down to the bone by closing entire game studios.
This is also why Microsoft refused to stop production of Redfall even though Arkane Austin warned that it was a mess: because IF Redfall was a success they would be making gangbusters off of a multiplayer game filled with MTX.
Redfall failed, to no one's surprise but Microsoft, so gotta make money this year some other way, so let's close down the studio. Tango, similarly, had a modest success with Hi-Fu Rush and pity that's not Call of Duty numbers, so they were put on the chopping block too.
A lot of people want this big AAA game companies to fail, but to prevent their own failure the companies will sacrifice everything below them first.
Hi-Fi Rush was basically the only outright "success" Xbox Studios has had in over a decade. While not a massive money maker, I know it made well over expectations and had actual positive buzz for once.
Shutting that down in a throwaway line in the same email you shut down the retards behind Redfall shows just how fucking retarded everyone in this company is.
It's the whole Square Enix shit all over again. They just flatly don't know how to manage that product and too focused on AAA grandeur. HI-Fi was perfect for a niche rhythm beatem up franchise. But nah. That's not AAA.
It's because Microsoft spend 70 billion dollars to buy Activision-Blizzard-King and Bethesda. Microsoft wants that money now. Having medium or small sized game companies not turning much profit (either by being small successes or a little in the red) was previously not an issue because the real goal was to keep up Game Pass subscriptions.
But now Microsoft has this debt, but the market is saturated so there is no way to get a huge load of new Game Pass subscriptions. So Microsoft wants everything to be either making Call of Duty numbers, or to cut things down to the bone by closing entire game studios.
This is also why Microsoft refused to stop production of Redfall even though Arkane Austin warned that it was a mess: because IF Redfall was a success they would be making gangbusters off of a multiplayer game filled with MTX.
Redfall failed, to no one's surprise but Microsoft, so gotta make money this year some other way, so let's close down the studio. Tango, similarly, had a modest success with Hi-Fu Rush and pity that's not Call of Duty numbers, so they were put on the chopping block too.
A lot of people want this big AAA game companies to fail, but to prevent their own failure the companies will sacrifice everything below them first.