Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on May 9, 2024 8:25:06 GMT
Prey DLC was fantastic btw. One of the best value add ons to a game, that could so easily be it's own game if given the chance. Instead they got that team on a GaaS, blamed them for poor reception, apologised for it, then cut them. Tango supposedly asked for more staff for a Hi-Fi Rush sequel and the response was to get cut. And to think people wanted them to buy Sega or Capcom
Weird West is also one of those games that is flawed but fascinating, I'm glad it exists.
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Post by JuniorFE on May 9, 2024 8:26:47 GMT
Good thing sega have already said no. I just want to see Nintendo's reaction the next time Spencer gets in touch. With the way MS has been handling its acquisitions and the Switch being a money printer to the point they've never seen profits that large before it?I'd guess it would be a polite but firm "lol no" |
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Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on May 9, 2024 8:31:34 GMT
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Post by baihu1983 on May 9, 2024 8:35:19 GMT
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Post by JuniorFE on May 9, 2024 8:35:53 GMT
So the answer to your highly profitable studios being spread "too thin, like peanut butter on bread" is not to add more peanut butter (and I doubt that the jar was that empty) but rather to bin the whole slice and deny everyone their snack? |
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Post by zisssou on May 9, 2024 8:42:08 GMT
these companies shouldn't be allowed to buy all these companies and then turn around start cutting staff. MS having all these major publishers should not of been allowed as its bad for the industry. Same thing has happened at my work. They bought 3 companies over the last 4 years. Then saw a dip in profits, decided to sack a bunch of people, alongside getting rid of products. It seems fairly common practice. |
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Post by Bill in the rain on May 9, 2024 8:42:22 GMT
Prey DLC was fantastic btw. One of the best value add ons to a game, that could so easily be it's own game if given the chance. Instead they got that team on a GaaS, blamed them for poor reception, apologised for it, then cut them. Tango supposedly asked for more staff for a Hi-Fi Rush sequel and the response was to get cut. And to think people wanted them to buy Sega or Capcom Weird West is also one of those games that is flawed but fascinating, I'm glad it exists. It seems weird that they didn't release Mooncrash as a standalone expansion, especially for something like gamepass. That said, I haven't played either game so maybe it wouldn't work. But it sounded like you could play Mooncrash without needing to have played the full Prey beforehand. If so, as a lower cost / shorter standalone expansion would surely expand its appeal? |
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Post by Fake_Blood on May 9, 2024 8:45:49 GMT
Jeff Gerstmann’s podcast this week is rather good if you can stand the whole monologue thing. Ends with asking why anyone would want to work for MS if you can release a critically acclaimed game and be fired anyway.
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Post by zisssou on May 9, 2024 8:48:59 GMT
Wonder if Double Fine are on the verge of getting the chop as well? It would be a real shame for Tim to lose his body of work which he seems genuinely passionate about.
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Post by Jambowayoh on May 9, 2024 8:57:42 GMT
I would imagine every studio is on the chopping block if they're not making games which aren't massive franchises or GaaS bringing in revenue.
It's a completely weird way of doing business in this particular instance as the big games are supposed to pay for the smaller games ensuring you're giving your user base a varied selection of games to try.
Anyway I don't think this is going to be limited to MS, I think it will happen to Sony too very soon. All these shareholders and psychopathic MBA executives obsessed with arrow must go up above everything else.
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Post by zisssou on May 9, 2024 8:59:22 GMT
I nabbed this from the EG comments
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Post by Timo180 on May 9, 2024 9:09:16 GMT
I nabbed this from the EG comments Yea wouldn’t be surprised to see Turn 10 next on the chopping board, as sad as that would be. I have played a lot of the new motorsport but that’s mainly I think because I didn’t play the last couple of titles. It’s been very poorly received. |
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Post by Fake_Blood on May 9, 2024 9:17:26 GMT
Jambo makes the same point as Gerstmann did, when they launched GP they were all talk about it would allow for smaller games that didn’t make a lot of money but would offer variety on the platform, and the money would be compensated by the larger titles.
I never thought about it this way, but there’s a difference between being a publisher and being a platform holder. As a platform holder you want a large portfolio with different kinds of smaller games.
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on May 9, 2024 9:19:51 GMT
It seems weird that they didn't release Mooncrash as a standalone expansion, especially for something like gamepass. That said, I haven't played either game so maybe it wouldn't work. But it sounded like you could play Mooncrash without needing to have played the full Prey beforehand. If so, as a lower cost / shorter standalone expansion would surely expand its appeal?
I would definitely have bought Mooncrash had it been available as a standalone expansion, a la Death of the Outsider, even though Prey itself wasn't particularly interesting to me.
As a time-loop game, Mooncrash seems to have set the stage for what Arkane Lyon would later do (to critical acclaim) with Deathloop, and it's a crying shame that Arkane Austin got saddled with Redfall before being unceremoniously disbanded.
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Post by Bill in the rain on May 9, 2024 9:34:03 GMT
Jambo makes the same point as Gerstmann did, when they launched GP they were all talk about it would allow for smaller games that didn’t make a lot of money but would offer variety on the platform, and the money would be compensated by the larger titles. I never thought about it this way, but there’s a difference between being a publisher and being a platform holder. As a platform holder you want a large portfolio with different kinds of smaller games. You'd want a steady stream of nice looking smaller games that keep people subscribed and attract new subscribers. I wonder if they're looking at all the indie devs out there and thinking it's just cheaper to make deals with a bunch of those. I'm not sure how the payment to developers works with subscription services. That has the possibility to impact the kinds of games that are likely to be successful. Do they get a fixed fee? Or is it based on the number of people who install it? Or based on minutes played? That'd all impact freedom to make what you want, vs making a visually appealing short game, vs making something longer. |
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Post by Duffking on May 9, 2024 9:54:29 GMT
I think MS are in the Netflix problem where they want infinite growth and money, and also that licensing games for GP to keep the library big is expensive so they'd rather have a bunch of stuff they published on there instead, so that they don't need to pay ongoing license money to have a lot of stuff on the platform.
Sadly they're probably realising about now you can't bang out games of any kind like the way Netflix can just drop 12 cheapo christmas movies every year.
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Post by Jambowayoh on May 9, 2024 10:00:28 GMT
I think MS are in the Netflix problem where they want infinite growth and money, and also that licensing games for GP to keep the library big is expensive so they'd rather have a bunch of stuff they published on there instead, so that they don't need to pay ongoing license money to have a lot of stuff on the platform. Sadly they're probably realising about now you can't bang out games of any kind like the way Netflix can just drop 12 cheapo christmas movies every year. Closing studios who are making the kind of stuff you want on Gamepass doesn't really track with that particular observation. |
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Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on May 9, 2024 10:08:21 GMT
Worth mentioning that people can make every case in the world for MS decision to be financially sound and makes business sense because of low player count or whatever, but it's still OK to be upset by the decision to close them. Hi-Fi Rush, Ghostwire Tokyo, Prey were all good games, it's a shame we won't ever see sequels.
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Post by Duffking on May 9, 2024 10:13:03 GMT
I think MS are in the Netflix problem where they want infinite growth and money, and also that licensing games for GP to keep the library big is expensive so they'd rather have a bunch of stuff they published on there instead, so that they don't need to pay ongoing license money to have a lot of stuff on the platform. Sadly they're probably realising about now you can't bang out games of any kind like the way Netflix can just drop 12 cheapo christmas movies every year. Closing studios who are making the kind of stuff you want on Gamepass doesn't really track with that particular observation. Well, it kinda does. They've realised that what they were trying to do (more cheaper games) isn't actually going to work with their profit demands because even cheap games are expensive as fuck and take years to make. I had assumed the point of stuff like Hi-Fi Rush and Gamepass was that they could make those sorts of games to have things to point out "look, we do all sorts of stuff" as there's value to games beyond sales. Either that was never their plan and they literally only go by quarter to quarter profit, or it was and they've suddenly realised it's not going to be sustainable. |
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Post by Jambowayoh on May 9, 2024 10:21:12 GMT
I think it was more things were fine until they went out to purchase Activision and the money men at MS started paying attention at what was going on at Xbox a bit more closely. So basically they still want those hi-fi rush games but with fewer resources based on existing IP, because new IP is dangerous to people who are obsessed with infinite growth.
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Post by Fake_Blood on May 9, 2024 10:32:20 GMT
GP never seemed sustainable to me. I mean you get all these games for not a lot of money, but the price for making those games didn’t go down, so something had to give sooner or later. I just wonder where the sustainability point lays in terms or number of subscribers. I have a feeling it’s an astronomical figure like 100 million, and they currently have what, 35 million?
It’s like they invested a lot of money to make a deal that’s too good to pass up, in the hopes to get to a sustainable point, but now realised it’s nowhere in sight, and now the house is on fire.
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Post by Duffking on May 9, 2024 10:32:52 GMT
I'm not really convinced Xbox have/had much of a plan in general, half the time it seems MS just operates by having departments spending shedloads of money to justify their existence, so Phil put all their into acquiring bigger and bigger companies without any idea of what to actually do with them.
Their push toward publishing is laughable as their track record over the last decade is absolute shite. Absolutely zero idea on how to get the studios they own to ship games.
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Post by zisssou on May 9, 2024 10:39:33 GMT
Considering I've paid maybe ÂŁ200-250 since getting Game Pass Ultimate in 2019.. that's fairly crazy. I abused the hell out of the stacking.
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Post by Vandelay on May 9, 2024 10:43:57 GMT
GP never seemed sustainable to me. I mean you get all these games for not a lot of money, but the price for making those games didn’t go down, so something had to give sooner or later. I just wonder where the sustainability point lays in terms or number of subscribers. I have a feeling it’s an astronomical figure like 100 million, and they currently have what, 35 million? It’s like they invested a lot of money to make a deal that’s too good to pass up, in the hopes to get to a sustainable point, but now realised it’s nowhere in sight, and now the house is on fire. I've always felt the only way GP would work in the long run was for them to move to making games with up-sale potential; the games inevitably would need to contain lots of DLC and microtransactions. It is in some ways welcome that they don't seem to have made that much of change in that direction, but they haven't moved in the other direction either. The other option was to have lots of small scale, cheaply made games that you play for an evening or two before moving onto the next. Nor are they using the big catalogue they now have to encourage more subs. They seem to have decided to continue to trudge along the same path in the hope that maybe they will suddenly get a boat load more subs. |
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Post by Jambowayoh on May 9, 2024 10:44:18 GMT
I'm not really convinced Xbox have/had much of a plan in general, half the time it seems MS just operates by having departments spending shedloads of money to justify their existence, so Phil put all their into acquiring bigger and bigger companies without any idea of what to actually do with them. Their push toward publishing is laughable as their track record over the last decade is absolute shite. Absolutely zero idea on how to get the studios they own to ship games. I completely agree with that. They appear absolutely averse to starting a studio from scratch and nurturing them or even managing them properly. |
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Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on May 9, 2024 10:56:00 GMT
Supposed internal discussion about whether to put Call of Duty games on game pass or not, as they fear it would be lost revenue if it is. I'd argue that's something that maybe they should have agreed on before buying the company for $69 billion.
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Post by Fake_Blood on May 9, 2024 11:00:25 GMT
So is it a corporate culture thing that Sony has and MS doesn’t?
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Post by baihu1983 on May 9, 2024 11:03:27 GMT
Always felt day 1 on game pass was a big mistake. Should have been 3-6 months.
Would also like to think the team at Double Fine would have it on place so they could go Indi again rather than be closed.
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Post by Whizzo on May 9, 2024 11:03:55 GMT
There's no way that Game Pass subs money can offset the loss that would be incurred from "giving away" CoD day one, it was Activision's cash cow for years for a reason. Even with PlayStation and non-PC Game Pass players buying it it's still a huge chunk of money that's gone if Xbox gamers don't buy it.
There's the money to be had from skin sales that the Xbox audience may be more inclined to buy if they didn't pay for the game but then that's the same already for Warzone only players so they know the numbers on that.
At best I'd expect CoD will turn up on GP 12 months after release, launch day just isn't happening. They may soften this news by putting loads of the older games on it.
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Post by baihu1983 on May 9, 2024 11:04:26 GMT
So is it a corporate culture thing that Sony has and MS doesn’t? Only if you ignore all the studio closures and job losses at Sony's studios. |
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