Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks shut down by Microsoft

[Morgoth]

 

[911 Jumper]

Mike Ybarra on X

Happy Friday. People have asked me what I think about the Xbox strategy and all this press. Publications have asked me questions about Xbox.

I 100% love Xbox and think Xbox can find a path to great success for their teams and players around the world. 100%. 110%!

To answer some questions:

Xbox has always been accountable for its business. Even when it was small, or in the red, pressure exists and always will. I see some articles today with anonymous ex-Xbox'ers talking about the Board....I don't see this as "the Board" doing something different. It's not the function of a Board to be operators that dictate to business units and teams what to do day to day. Sure, pressure and stakes are always high and only get higher as you grow. I've never seen Satya dictate something top down - he questions and pushes but empowers his teams. He is a fantastic leader.

The idea of 'the market isn't growing' is a PR excuse. As a team, it's your job to drive your own growth even if the overall market isn't growing at the anticipated rate. I think it's more 'the strategy isn't working as expected'. Which is OK - strategies have to continually shift in a market that moves as fast as gaming does.

I'll say again, this all comes down to making great games. If you make great games, consumer demand will follow and your business can do well even in low market growth years. A great game is a $500M-1B+ profit generator for the business (across platforms). Given the size of Studios, you need to get to a world where a few of the teams are delivering against this at the right cadence (you don't need all your Studios doing big, huge games... and shouldn't as the risk profile is too large). After all, your install base is big right now given where we are in this console generation (and of course big on PC as well) so the opportunity exists for success.

If you aren't making great games then your hardware isn't selling, and your subscription is flatlining .... the clarity of strategy or execution is broken somewhere and needs to be fixed inclusive of ensuring leadership and team capability to drive great game development and growth. They 100% have teams who can make great games. It just isn't consistently happening.

I see two paths here: If your North Star is the Game Pass subscription, you have to take that exclusive to your services and HW and be all in across games, HW, and services in an exclusive 'go big' plan. Pumping regular 90+ rated games into this will drive consumer affinity and satisfaction. That said, it is high risk/high reward and takes a strong desire to win. If you're not willing to do that, then you're on another path: you're a Publisher across all devices and you need to embrace that 100% and be clear (likely means out of HW, I fundamentally believe if you don't have great exclusive content your HW is doomed as people won't understand 'why' they need it.). Being the world's largest publisher of games is a great spot to be in - as long as you can make great games. If you can't, you'll be right back where you started. You have the pick your lane and go hard at it for success, with clear communication to your players. If you play in the middle of these two paths, IMHO you'll hurt your teams and you'll have constant churn and chaos.

It starts and ends with a strong desire to win and making great games that exceed player expectations. That is what is fragile now and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

These are all hard decisions, it's certainly no easy task given where things stand today, and both paths have dramatic implications. But I fundamentally believe in Xbox, its fans, and the opportunity ahead for great HW, services, and games OR as a publisher of games and services across any screen. I'm cheering for Xbox and it pains me to see all the negative swirl. So for those asking, keep the faith in Xbox but ask for clarity on what the path forward is for the brand and product. Then make your own decision on what is best for you and your valuable time and money.

For those who think I'm one of the people talking to publications anonymously about Xbox, I am not. I was not a founding member of Xbox and I think by now you all know I won't be 'anonymous' if I have something to say .

These are just my opinions. This is the last I will talk about this here on X. It's easy to say what you think when you're not in the trenches living the reality of the challenges. I wish great success for Xbox now and into the future - it's good for gaming overall and I care deeply for Blizzard who is now part of the Xbox team.

 

[Odoryuk]

Mike Ybarra on X

Happy Friday. People have asked me what I think about the Xbox strategy and all this press. Publications have asked me questions about Xbox.

I 100% love Xbox and think Xbox can find a path to great success for their teams and players around the world. 100%. 110%!

To answer some questions:

Xbox has always been accountable for its business. Even when it was small, or in the red, pressure exists and always will. I see some articles today with anonymous ex-Xbox'ers talking about the Board....I don't see this as "the Board" doing something different. It's not the function of a Board to be operators that dictate to business units and teams what to do day to day. Sure, pressure and stakes are always high and only get higher as you grow. I've never seen Satya dictate something top down - he questions and pushes but empowers his teams. He is a fantastic leader.

The idea of 'the market isn't growing' is a PR excuse. As a team, it's your job to drive your own growth even if the overall market isn't growing at the anticipated rate. I think it's more 'the strategy isn't working as expected'. Which is OK - strategies have to continually shift in a market that moves as fast as gaming does.

I'll say again, this all comes down to making great games. If you make great games, consumer demand will follow and your business can do well even in low market growth years. A great game is a $500M-1B+ profit generator for the business (across platforms). Given the size of Studios, you need to get to a world where a few of the teams are delivering against this at the right cadence (you don't need all your Studios doing big, huge games... and shouldn't as the risk profile is too large). After all, your install base is big right now given where we are in this console generation (and of course big on PC as well) so the opportunity exists for success.

If you aren't making great games then your hardware isn't selling, and your subscription is flatlining .... the clarity of strategy or execution is broken somewhere and needs to be fixed inclusive of ensuring leadership and team capability to drive great game development and growth. They 100% have teams who can make great games. It just isn't consistently happening.

I see two paths here: If your North Star is the Game Pass subscription, you have to take that exclusive to your services and HW and be all in across games, HW, and services in an exclusive 'go big' plan. Pumping regular 90+ rated games into this will drive consumer affinity and satisfaction. That said, it is high risk/high reward and takes a strong desire to win. If you're not willing to do that, then you're on another path: you're a Publisher across all devices and you need to embrace that 100% and be clear (likely means out of HW, I fundamentally believe if you don't have great exclusive content your HW is doomed as people won't understand 'why' they need it.). Being the world's largest publisher of games is a great spot to be in - as long as you can make great games. If you can't, you'll be right back where you started. You have the pick your lane and go hard at it for success, with clear communication to your players. If you play in the middle of these two paths, IMHO you'll hurt your teams and you'll have constant churn and chaos.

It starts and ends with a strong desire to win and making great games that exceed player expectations. That is what is fragile now and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

These are all hard decisions, it's certainly no easy task given where things stand today, and both paths have dramatic implications. But I fundamentally believe in Xbox, its fans, and the opportunity ahead for great HW, services, and games OR as a publisher of games and services across any screen. I'm cheering for Xbox and it pains me to see all the negative swirl. So for those asking, keep the faith in Xbox but ask for clarity on what the path forward is for the brand and product. Then make your own decision on what is best for you and your valuable time and money.

For those who think I'm one of the people talking to publications anonymously about Xbox, I am not. I was not a founding member of Xbox and I think by now you all know I won't be 'anonymous' if I have something to say .

These are just my opinions. This is the last I will talk about this here on X. It's easy to say what you think when you're not in the trenches living the reality of the challenges. I wish great success for Xbox now and into the future - it's good for gaming overall and I care deeply for Blizzard who is now part of the Xbox team.

So many words, Mike, yet you fail to explain why your company disbanded a company that made a small-mid budget game that did very well, and after that said that XBox needs companies that make small-mid budget games that sell well.

 

[ferratilis]

One of Tango's devs:

 

[911 Jumper]

It's the same old “Xbox just need to make great games” stuff that critics have been saying for at least the last 15 years. If after all these years, Microsoft/Xbox still needs to be told it needs to make great games, then it means either the people running the show are spectacularly stupid and incompetent or all this is intentional (which is what I'm leaning towards).

 

[Elttharion]

New vid from Alanah Pearce of Santa Monica Studios:



Summary of the main points from the video

1. "If a studio doesn't want layoffs or to shut down, they should just make good games." Her response: the quality of a game no longer matters. You can have a Hogwarts Legacy that sells gangbusters, but all Warner Bros. sees is a potential risk if it fails. Live service games can also fail, they often do, but the overall cost-benefit analysis actually makes them less risky.

2. As an addendum to 1, the biggest focus right now for most entertainment companies isn't even necessarily money, it's time. Because the more time you spend on a platform, the more you're likely to spend money, view ads, and have all your info mined and sold. A one-and-done experience is fundamentally not aligned with that goal.

3. "More studios should just go indie so they aren't beholden to these awful practices." Her response: the indie space is just as volatile and doing pretty bad right now, studios are closing all the time, they just aren't all big news like a AAA studio closing. Indies are having increasing trouble getting publishing support or just funding for projects in general, specifically because they're often more niche, less focused on monetization, and therefore more risky, even if they're generally smaller scale. But whereas a flop at a big studio might result in layoffs or maybe a closure at worst, an indie flop is probably just going to tank the whole company immediately and it might not even release if the stars don't align.

Now, there are still big games, Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk. But she feels these will increasingly become the exception in the industry, not the rule. Companies like Fromsoft and Nintendo will become the go-to companies you go to for your single-player experiences, while 90% of the rest of the industry chases what they see as the bigger cheese, and even if 10+ more live services fail, a company is going to keep trying because the cost-benefit is still conceivably more attractive than any single player game could ever be. If that crashes a company, pull your losses and move on to the next company and hope they succeed.

Source: https://www.resetera.com/threads/al...d-why-it-will-probably-get-even-worse.866469/

Show tits or GTFO

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

It's revealing that he says "A great game is a $500M-1B+ profit generator" - his definition of a great game is one that makes a lot of money. That means his argument reduces to "Xbox will be profitable when it makes games that sell well". Truly brilliant insight there... to make money, you have to make money.

 

[Itoh]

Although Xbox now had an abundance of developers, that wasn't quite translating to a huge number of major games - something likely down to Microsoft's relatively hands-off approach to working with newly acquired companies. Microsoft likes to adopt a 'limited integration strategy' when it comes to buying things. What that means is it leaves the company it's just bought to operate how it would have done, and only coming in and helping when asked.

We've come full circle. Back in a day people would blame shitty games on too much interference from suits, now apparently games suck because suits are not interfering enough.

As consumers we tend to side with creatives and blame poor decisions on unreasonable and incompetent executives, and this is true a lot of the time. But there are certainly plenty of cases where studios receive a fortune on good faith from publishers, only to waste time, attempt to drag the development process out as long as possible for additional funding, and release a turd that doesn't justify half the time or resources spent. The Lamplighter's League is one recent example of this; the shitcanned VTMB sequel is another. Avowed will likely be a third, and if/when that flops I honestly wouldn't blame Microsoft suits for being furious that tens of millions of their dollars were pissed away. It takes two to tango, and it's not like publishers are automatically the bad guys every single time.

 

[911 Jumper]

“Here's to many more”

 

[mediocrepoet]

Huh. Thread merge?

Anyway...

Really sad about this one, had so much fun with Hi-Fi Rush, even bought it via Xbox app...

Yeah, I picked this up too despite not being into rhythm games. The presentation is inspired and the way the music and animations run together. Good stuff. But it was a small enough project that these people will likely find success wherever they go, even if they did their own startup.

Obsidian sweating bullets right now.

No, first Avowed will come out, no one will care about it, and THEN they will kill Obsidian.

It will be fun to see what desperate measures Obsidian will resort to if they think it will stop Microsoft from shutting them down.

Codex fund raiser when? Together, we can secure Feargus and Soyer a one way trip to the Sun!

This is the guy who, just a few weeks ago, said that gamers should pay tips to developers on top of paying full price for the games. He's a moron, through and through.

He's not a moron, it's his, "Hello fellow gamers" moment.

There was an article I read a few days ago saying that devs just want to survive until 2025 and that 2024 will be a bloodbath in the industry, huge layoffs, that no one is funding games, etc. They are certain that 2025 will be a much better year. My question is, why do they believe this? I dont see any signs of the economy improving in a significant way. The only thing that could save the gaming industry would be a new pandemic forcing people to stay at home for months. Otherwise I think we will soon experience another crash.

Nah, there won't be a crash. During the crash, gaming dried up in a significant way for years. There are far too many indies and varied interests that aren't hacking in this way for that to happen in the same way. This is just a normal market contraction after being in a bubble for a few years.

Anyway, if they keep their jobs until 2025 or later, they'll have survived the market contraction and will have less competition to make viable products.

The big problem with the GameCube was that it didn't offer any experience beyond what it's competition had. They reworked the GameCube in to the Wii and it was their best selling home console ever. It sold five times the amount that the GameCube did because it offered something that the competition didn't have.

Sort of. The Wii was successful but too gimmicky, as someone else had mentioned. The Switch was where this really came to fruition where they combined that sort of blue sea strategy alongside their expertise in the portable market. And they have had great success with that. The question is what will happen when they launch the Switch 2 because they went from having almost no competition to proving the viability of the sector and now having a variety of competition in the realm of portable PCs and if Microsoft and/or Sony puts something out.

I suspect the next console generation will be a far different space for Nintendo, as right now, the indie shit I might have picked up for the Switch is more something I look at thinking about how it'll run on a Steam Deck.

Still though, they've done incredibly well managing their first party IPs. They're probably screwed once Miyamoto retires or dies though. If they ever figure out how to keep a viable brain in a jar, you know what's happening to him...

So many words, Mike, yet you fail to explain why your company disbanded a company that made a small-mid budget game that did very well, and after that said that XBox needs companies that make small-mid budget games that sell well.

Depends. XBox is showing signs of significantly changing their market strategy and trajectory.

If they intend to continue going with Game Pass in some format like it currently has, then yeah, they need smaller developers and smaller projects.

If they intend to ditch their hardware altogether and possibly either ditch or significantly restructure Game Pass, then possibly not. Given their massive acquisitions and that they're now actively pursuing other console markets, I wouldn't be surprised to see them opt out of the first-party console market altogether and focus on their company strength which is 100% software development, whether or not that includes continuing with Game Pass. They might instead opt for all AAA all the time and focus on big $$$ deals with Sony, et al.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Huh. Thread merge?

Anyway...

Really sad about this one, had so much fun with Hi-Fi Rush, even bought it via Xbox app...

Yeah, I picked this up too despite not being into rhythm games. The presentation is inspired and the way the music and animations run together. Good stuff. But it was a small enough project that these people will likely find success wherever they go, even if they did their own startup.

Obsidian sweating bullets right now.

No, first Avowed will come out, no one will care about it, and THEN they will kill Obsidian.

It will be fun to see what desperate measures Obsidian will resort to if they think it will stop Microsoft from shutting them down.

Codex fund raiser when? Together, we can secure Feargus and Soyer a one way trip to the Sun!

Assuming Microsoft/Obsidian would even be able to accept funds from the Codex.

Probably now typecast as being too "far/radical-right" or some such nonsense!

 

[lycanwarrior]

 

[mediocrepoet]

Codex fund raiser when? Together, we can secure Feargus and Soyer a one way trip to the Sun!

Assuming Microsoft/Obsidian would even be able to accept funds from the Codex.

Probably now typecast as being too "far/radical-right" or some such nonsense!

I didn't say it had to be a consensual trip.

I was thinking more like a white van, bunch of guys in ski masks, a rocket slapped together in someone's back yard...

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Mike Ybarra on X

"and this is why we need to be able to tip game developers past the $70 AAAA price point + Microtransactions."

Really what we're witnessing here is that the publisher model has failed. They're sacrificing developers to keep the publisher alive. Which is the opposite of what they should be doing, instead of closing studios they should be offering the studio the chance to buy back the studio in order to recoup their investments. Straight up they bought these studios in Malice, they just wanted their IPs and back catalogues.

Tango would have returned a profit in the event of a buy back and they still could have sold Hi Fi 2 on Gamepass. Just an absolute brain dead decision in closing an acclaimed studio down.

 

[Morgoth]

Mike Ybarra on X

110% liar.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

110% liar.

^how he sounded in my head. Even down to the DIABLO!

 

[lycanwarrior]

Battlefield/Dice developer just FYI:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/al...probably-get-even-worse.866469/post-122790237

[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]elenarie​

Game Developer​

Verified

• Yesterday at 10:04 AM

• 
  
• #379

Not to be that gatekeeping idiot, but maybe, maybe making it possible to release 100 games on a daily basis is not all that nice.

How many bakeries can a single street support, if the amount of people living on that street is roughly the same.

Sounds like a snipe at a particularly popular digital storefront...

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Battlefield/Dice developer just FYI:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/al...probably-get-even-worse.866469/post-122790237

[/HEADING][/HEADING]
[HEADING=3][HEADING=3]elenarie​

Game Developer​

Verified

• Yesterday at 10:04 AM
• 
  
• #379

Not to be that gatekeeping idiot, but maybe, maybe making it possible to release 100 games on a daily basis is not all that nice.

How many bakeries can a single street support, if the amount of people living on that street is roughly the same.

Sounds like a snipe at a particularly popular digital storefront...

X-box going down is a sacrifice I can live with.

 

[lycanwarrior]

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Not to be that gatekeeping idiot, but maybe, maybe making it possible to release 100 games on a daily basis is not all that nice.

How many bakeries can a single street support, if the amount of people living on that street is roughly the same.

I mean, the same scenario happened to music industry. Everybody used to bitch about the big label system and how they were exploiting artists. Then changes in technology revolutionized recording and distribution allowing people to self-publish easily, but instead of expected explosion of unbounded creativity, it quickly turned out that those greedy capitalists labels were actually providing a necessarily service.

 

[Tyranicon]

Man I don't care about any of this shit.

Imagine 20-30 years ago if I told you gaming would be about supporting a whole ecosystem of corporate sycophants, parasites, "journo" bottom feeders and streamer shills.

I suppose that's why they called it a golden age.

 

[Elttharion]

beloved developers of successful games

Citation needed

 

[Baron Dupek]

 

[mediocrepoet]

Well I for one am bummed we won't be getting any new games like Redsux or The Stunning Adventures of Sir Kicksy Kicksalot.

I've been thinking about it and I think I've thought every single one of Arkane's releases that I've played was overrated crap.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Based asf.