Xbox Series X / S

Are we watching Xbox fall apart in real-time?

- Price increase to 25% more than the competition.

- Memory crisis will make Project Helix the most expensive launch Xbox ever

- Ninja Theory (Senua), Double Fine Productions (new IP), Compulsion Games (new IP), Undead Labs (State of Decay 2), and Arkane Lyon (Blade) all being closed/gutted next week. Project with Hitman devs IO cancelled.

- Gamepass 3rd party acquisitions frozen until further notice

- After Forza Horizon 6, the Doom Expansion, Infinity Ward's MW4, Gears, Fable and Clockwork Revolution, those studios won't have anything for years again.

- Their only big games next are the far-off Kojima OD (starring trans celebrity Hunter Schafer) and Elder Scrolls 6.
That makes it more likely they have to milk live service stuff like COD, Sea of Thieves and Elder Scrolls Online into the next generation.

So layoffs, big load of games then shooting blanks, live service trash continued and high-cost low-return Gamepass driving subscriber exodus before MS decides to cut their losses completely?
 
 
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NR7 said:
Are we watching Xbox fall apart in real-time?

- Price increase to 25% more than the competition.

- Memory crisis will make Project Helix the most expensive launch Xbox ever

- Ninja Theory (Senua), Double Fine Productions (new IP), Compulsion Games (new IP), Undead Labs (State of Decay 2), and Arkane Lyon (Blade) all being closed/gutted next week. Project with Hitman devs IO cancelled.

- Gamepass 3rd party acquisitions frozen until further notice

- After Forza Horizon 6, the Doom Expansion, Infinity Ward's MW4, Gears, Fable and Clockwork Revolution, those studios won't have anything for years again.

- Their only big games next are the far-off Kojima OD (starring trans celebrity Hunter Schafer) and Elder Scrolls 6.
That makes it more likely they have to milk live service stuff like COD, Sea of Thieves and Elder Scrolls Online into the next generation.

So layoffs, big load of games then shooting blanks, live service trash continued and high-cost low-return Gamepass driving subscriber exodus before MS decides to cut their losses completely?
Click to expand...

Ironically this is exactly what everyone said was gonna happen and Microsoft swore they wont do in Acti/Blizz buyout. re Closing Studio's and mass layoff's

To be fair, if FTC/UK and Euro courts did not force them to share IP it could have gone the other way.

Edit: Was a lose/lose deal from every angle.
 
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Definitely not looking good for them. Pressure will be on Bathesda to deliver big time with ES6 and soon. Fable needs to be a hit(not sure it will). Bathesda is a moerse headache for them. Massive studio with looooooong development times. How long ago was ES6 announced? 8 years?

The Activision/Blizzard buyout was the worse thing they could have done. Blizzard has not brought out anything besides Overwatch 2 since being bought and that was not the hit they wanted.

Sony has established studios with established IP's, although they also have been hit and miss lately, but at least they can bank on the 3-4 titles a year that will drive sales and keep people in the eco system.

I honestly can't say I know how they can bounce back.. but letting go of all these shopping spree studios they acquired seems to be the only way they feel they can keep going. Gamepass has made these studios produce mid products due to the safe bubble and not worried about sales. Keep 3-4 in house studios to look after your IP's such as Halo, Gears, Forza etc and try and make Gamepass a service for 6 month old + titles. I am sure studios will be happier and more productive if they still need the initial sales and then push a title on Gamepass for the additional funding from MS.
 
They need to go back to simpler games with reasonable budgets. Expedition 33 proved that people just want good games, and they will buy them. Can even sell them at a lower price to drive sales. It doesn't need to have hundreds of hours of gameplay either.

We don't need anymore live service games that costs $200 million to make and takes 7 years to make and then get cancelled 2 weeks later.

It's an industry problem, not just Xbox, although Xbox do seem to be deeper in it.
 
Goosfrabba said:
They need to go back to simpler games with reasonable budgets.
Click to expand...

They have/had those, Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight, Hellblade come to mind. All smaller studios in cheaper countries. Those games don't do well on Steam and Xbox players play it on GP for next to nothing, how are they supposed to recoup costs?

Goosfrabba said:
It's an industry problem, not just Xbox, although Xbox do seem to be deeper in it.
Click to expand...

While this is true, Xbox, sorry XBOX is the only platform holder that's running in the red. Nintendo and PlayStation are doing fine and have decently healthy financials. Steam is a different beast all together.

A 3% "accountability margin" which is not profit margin mind you, is disastrous when you have CoD and Bethesda in your arsenal. No other way to put it.
 
Goosfrabba said:
They need to go back to simpler games with reasonable budgets. Expedition 33 proved that people just want good games, and they will buy them. Can even sell them at a lower price to drive sales. It doesn't need to have hundreds of hours of gameplay either.
Click to expand...

Also know your target audience.

No use making games like Hellblade 2, South of Midnight and Hi-Fi rush that target niche markets. Even if they are good games if you don't have enough people playing them shrink the budget.
 
prod said:
While this is true, Xbox, sorry XBOX is the only platform holder that's running in the red. Nintendo and PlayStation are doing fine and have decently healthy financials. Steam is a different beast all together.
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Sony is also having their own issues.

They lost large sums to Live service push. Sure they not in free fall but they not singing to the bank either.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Sony is also having their own issues.

They lost large sums to Live service push. Sure they not in free fall but they not singing to the bank either.
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PlayStation made $3.1b profit last year, and are expecting to make more this year. Some live service flops are not going to hurt them as much as you think
 
AlphaJohn said:
Also know your target audience.

No use making games like Hellblade 2, South of Midnight and Hi-Fi rush that target niche markets. Even if they are good games if you don't have enough people playing them shrink the budget.
Click to expand...

These are the exact types of games that would work for Game Pass. Hi-Fi Rush shouldn't need a crazy budget to make so the monthly subscription should cover the cost.

I used to have Game Pass subscribed, even for months i didn't use the Xbox much because it was affordable and I liked the option to play a game should i decide to. But I have cancelled and sure millions of others have as well. They have lost a lot of Game Pass revenue trying to be everything to everyone.

At least they have seen the light and removed Call of Duty...what a stupid decision that was.
 
prod said:
PlayStation made $3.1b profit last year, and are expecting to make more this year.
Click to expand...

Thats only cause loads of Xbox fans bought PS5's. Xbox did great marketing for PlayStation by porting all their games to it, even worse some ran better on PlayStation than they did on Xbox :D

prod said:
Some live service flops are not going to hurt them as much as you think
Click to expand...

$0.7 Billion loss hurts, doesn't matter how you try and spin it.
 
Many of these studios are still stuck in the Covid-work-from-home-laziness mode.

And badly managed by Xbox. I have a feeling they never had strict internal deadlines and supervision and constant monitoring from Big Brother at Xbox. Heck, they even bragged about this in some videos back then during Phil's time. Free to do what they want. Indy games. They could do what they want, whenever they want and as little as possible.

Closing down a whole studio seems a bit drastic though. They should have had performance contracts with them and fired studio heads when they didn't deliver the goods and on time.

Overall some really bad management on behalf of XBOX. And no matter how nice Phil Spencer was, he was way out of his depth managing all of this.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Thats only cause loads of Xbox fans bought PS5's. Xbox did great marketing for PlayStation by porting all their games to it, even worse some ran better on PlayStation than they did on Xbox :D
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There's no evidence of that since PS5 sales are closely aligned to PS4 sales. If that did happen like you suggest then there would have been a noticeable increase along the curve. Most Xbox users probably switched to PC.

AlphaJohn said:
$0.7 Billion loss hurts, doesn't matter how you try and spin it.
Click to expand...

Yea you can literally go see on their income statement how much it hurts lol, not sure what you are trying to say.

My point was that of the console makers XBOX is the only one in the red, the other two are not, no matter how you try and spin it.
 
prod said:
They have/had those, Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight, Hellblade come to mind. All smaller studios in cheaper countries. Those games don't do well on Steam and Xbox players play it on GP for next to nothing, how are they supposed to recoup costs?
Click to expand...

I was shocked to hear how much South of Midnight cost to develop. (estimated to be around $100 million. 7 years development).

I'm not surprised that it was closed down.

Hi-Fi rush had a 5 to 6 year development cycle.

But man it sucks to see these companies being closed.
 
Solitude said:
I was shocked to hear how much South of Midnight cost to develop. (estimated to be around $100 million. 7 years development).

I'm not surprised that it was closed down.

Hi-Fi rush had a 5 to 6 year development cycle.

But man it sucks to see these companies being closed.
Click to expand...

I wonder how much of that cost and time was spent on Sweet Baby...
And no doubt their involvement also scared away some potential sales and made some headlines back then. Nowadays you keep any divisive activist crap and politics out of your movies/tv-shows or games otherwise you stand a good chance of getting shunned by the actual real consumers and buyers.
 
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