The free-to-play model has developed into one of the most dominant demographics in gaming, and it may be powerful enough to swallow the console industry whole if they do not change.
Insider reveals Xbox's Perfect Dark reboot struggles in development, far from ready despite ongoing efforts.
The hits just keep on coming. Will not be surprised if this gets canned. It already got rebooted and they had to bring on an outside studio to try and help developement. Some of the original creatives have left the project.
But I will say, just wait until the MS showcase. If you don't see it there, then alarm bells should start ringing.
God, please don't screw this one up Microsoft! I am keeping my expectations super low, but Perfect Dark (the original) holds such a special place in my childhood. I want this to turn out well SO bad.
Just cancel it because we know you won’t be happy with its sales performance while giving it away on GP day one. GP is the biggest issue for developers and that affects the sales. No one can deny that now. GP equals to good deal for gamers and bad deals for AAA development. Take two CEO said it and he was 100% right. There are certain games that make sense on GP but not every game. 20 million gamers playing a game on GP doesn’t mean much to MS it seems because they still want sales. Just please start releasing all games on other platforms otherwise Phil is next now. You can’t spend 80 billion and be this bad
The studio was founded in 2018. It's still not adding up in my head how it can take 6 years to develop a game, with a whole dev studio working on it.
"The sudden closure of several video-game studios at Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox division was the result of a widespread cost-cutting initiative that still isn’t finished.
This week, Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax, which it purchased in 2020 for $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Others across the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are on the way.
Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said.
Game Pass has not seen the massive growth that Xbox boss Phil Spencer may have been hoping for."
Sense it seems very few remember that human's were around before 2020 the next studio to close will be bethesda based no doubt on the history of.
Fallout 76
Elder scrolls online
elder scrolls blades mobile
fallout mobile
The vr versions of old games
Then you got starfield pissing out cash nothing to cover it.
I doubt tod's team or any sub team is making m$ cash they are no doubt on the chopping block for job cuts
If you can remember before 2020 even fallout 76 was made with over 4 studios.
"Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said"
So what you're saying is...you bought all these studios and you guys can't run them.
Jesus.
Spread thin after firing over 2000 employees a few months prior. So basically they created the problem and their solution was to just fire more people. Absolute geniuses over at Xbox, of course can we even believe this to be the reason for the closures?
Leaders can't run them hire more management create new roles don't shutter entire studios cause you can't figure out how to run them.
Unless the reality is this whole consolidation thing was really an excuse for IP harvesting
Reports are suggesting that Game Pass will be getting a price hike soon and that Call of Duty may not be added to the day one offering. I honestly have a hard time believing this but it does beg the question why exactly did GP fail? I think the answer is that it just didn't get the growth that it anticipated. Jim was right but I wish he wasn't because at the end of the day, its gamers, devs and other front-line workers who have to absorb the blow for Spencer and team's miscalculations.
I think 2022 killed the Series X.
2021 was a good year for Xbox though and maybe the best in a long long time, hardware and software and as a publisher. Halo Infinite launched to popularity, Forza Horizon 5 blew everyone away, Psychonauts 2 was so well received, Flight Simulator on console, Deathloop even on PS5 & PC.
But they followed that up with next to nothing. Then 2023 with Redfall, a disappointing Forza, Starfield, and 2024 leads with closures and layoffs. And some tweets reminding us Hellblade is days away.
The only disappointment with the PS5 is not enough Sony games. Xbox followed up no games with disappointing ones.
For all the armchair executives who were calling for Sony to release its big-budget AAA games on PS+, the same exact thing would have happened at PlayStation. Game Pass has killed Xbox. Congrats.
There's not many of of us clamoring for Sony to do this because most of us understand it would kill Playstation. I'm sure there's a few but I've not seen alot of it myself.
"the same exact thing would have happened at PlayStation"
But the same thing *has* been happening at PS. They've closed, what, 3 or 4 studios so far this gen? Laid off plenty of staff, restructured studios, etc.
Nirav from GL writes: "If the makers of a GOTY competitor that outdid sales and Game Pass expectations and owned by the richest company in the world cannot stay open - what hope is there for everyone else?"
***If the makers of a GOTY competitor that outdid sales and Game Pass expectations and owned by the richest company in the world cannot stay open - what hope is there for everyone else?***
None if you stay in an arena of corporate driven metrics. And this is what happens when you allow publishers to buy up massive amounts of studios and IPs. There's only so much internal competition and the focus in the end will remain on those who look best on a spreadsheet.
Players can be so driven by what is best for them and only see what is put right in front of them. But that's not what is best for them. They are being lied to constantly, as seen by Microsoft's ridiculous praise for Hi-Fi Rush and Phil's lies about Redfall prior to release and how big of a supporter of both studios he has been. But, instead of thinking "wait, this corporation wants me to think this way, should I be listening to them and believing them?" players eat it up and go "OMG, did you hear what they said! They're just like us and they know what's best for the industry."
And because of this single-mindedness of the majority of gamers, we are where we are now. Massive layoffs. Massive studio closures. Games that we were told were representative of the core values of said corporations shelved and studios behind them shuttered. The truth is coming to bear because the truth all along was only what the numbers in an excel spreadsheet told the corporate suits.
If you truly want what is best for the industry, what is best for developers, then you need to support Indie games, support developers that maintain control over their IPs and direction, support boutique publishers who only exist to help Indies make it out the door and don't own the IP. Stop supporting major corporations with your money or you devotion. Stop playing their games, and I don't mean video games, but their marketing, their double speak, their guy without a tie who says things you want to hear PR, their future of video gaming concepts as if we were hurting for new ways to play games other than installing/downloading and playing them, and especially any slogan from them that gives the impression that they are for you, the consumer. They are not. You're merely a value on a spreadsheet.
Sure, I'm the one drinking the koolaid. Keep believing in the corporations. They definitely have your best interests in mind. All hail the Big Green, For You Blue, and Nostalgia Red! All praise big corporations buying up other publishers. All praise the inevitable spreadsheet adjustments. For greed, not the players.
I don’t always agree with you. But you are correct and well said. It amazes me on what used to be a pretty straightforward industry has turned into such a greedy mess. Layoffs galore across the industry and corporates pushing/firing whatever is going to move the bean counters. With no regard for the people making the games. I’m tired of hearing these rich companies saying it’s just business, or an adjustment needed to be made, but it’s not personal. Then on top of it they have to inject corporate inclusivity into every game. On top of releasing broken games and expect people to pay top dollar.
But again well said and we as the consumer need to not only speak up but vote with our wallets.
This should not be surprising to any of you. We have been saying for MONTHS that Game Pass is not sustainable and that these acquisitions will come at a massive cost to the industry. People refused to grasp the difference between buying and investing in a developer like Insomniac or Housemarque, and buying the entire publisher. People refused to accept that spending billions to acquire the biggest publishers in gaming means you have to RECOUP those costs, and you aren't going to do it without consolidation, focusing on core IP that sells, creating revenue streams via ownership and releasing on other platforms, and closing down studios that are superfluous to the budget requirements. You will not recoup those costs by investing in risky new IP or creative new games and studios.
No, people cheered Microsoft on like they were delivering GOTY titles to their door and pouring money into the industry to grow Indies and triple A projects.
You are getting what you deserve. You take the consequences of the practices you supported.
Layoffs happen. Some games don't succeed. Everyone has seen it happen. Happens even to the winners.
This, however, is goddamn shambolic and if you can't see it now then there's no helping you and you should keep enjoying the "value" of Game Pass while contributing nothing to this industry.
I've never seen the developer of one of the best games of the year get axed before.
Ninja Theory is next after Hellblade 2, I can see them going independent again. There's more to come from MS.
This is exactly it. There is more of this coming. MS runs from one bad idea to the next, and GamePass is an unsustainable train wreck that we get to watch in real time.
GamePass is stalled for subscriber growth, and all that they can hope for is to either A) Reduce the quantity of games (i.e. shutter game studios), B) Reduce the quality of games (to make more mediocre but lower budget offerings), or C) Raise prices on existing customers. Or some combination of those.
MS does not have a passion for the industry. The XBox project, from the beginning, was sparked from the fear that someone else would eat their PC market lunch by making a games machine that replaced the PC. THAT was the entire motivation for getting into the games industry.
I saw it from the outset of day 1 on Xbox it's unsustainable no one was buying their games and a noticeable decline in quality and a push to live service elements to keep subscriptions active was obvious.
I saw it every time I'd go to a physical game shop for a Multi plat pre order no one was there for the Xbox version.
I'd go to CeX or other used game stores and be able to pick up the full range of Xbox studios first party games for 20 bucks and change while on the PlayStation side 20 bucks might get me two PS4 launch games and wouldn't even get me a single Nintendo first party game.
"Ninja Theory is next after Hellblade 2"
Anyone think it's weird it comes out in 2 weeks and there's hardly anything on it
Actually Foxtrot, I don't find it weird. When last has Microsoft thrown advertising weight behind one of their releases? Long gone are the days where their games had the sheer presence of Halo 3 or Gears of War 2. It's all been replaced with "play it day one on Games Pass."
Why spend millions on marketing a product when you aren't SELLING it? The Xbox faithful aren't going to buy it, they're just going to see it on the splash page of Game Pass.
They know what they are doing. If 'you' treat them like "good 'ol simple minded folk", then 'you' are relieving them from blame via ignorance. They knew that they were going all live service, streaming and mobile a long time ago, The Oracle tends to see the obvious. While companies patronize gamers like they are children, which most of them are, may be confused for stupidity, they are also not so stupid they don't understand the decisions that they are making toward the overall direction of their company.
*None of their games were even close to competing for GOTY. They paid for names to be mentioned.
Xbox survived it's first gen by pure luck halo became a hit and it was huge followed up by halo 2 which had one of the biggest marketing campaigns I can remember seeing in the early 00s we had guys in master chief outfits on the sidelines of state of origin as a promo it blew my mind.
Then the 360 fell under the excellent leadership of Peter Moore and outpaced the PS3 for the first three quarters of that generation the only time anyone has ever done that.
Since losing Peter Moore it's been a rapid decline and buying up the industry stank of a desperate move along with the idea of gamepass itself stank of desperation to me no one was buying the X1 they needed something to get people interested and here we are.
I would happily lose gamepass if Xbox could go back to the 360 era style of focused heavy hitters and solid games.
The championing of consolidation they did was disgusting and what's happened as a result is proof they never had gamers or the industry at heart they need their ROI and that's all they cared about big daddy ms has signed a number of blank checks getting them here and it's coming to collect on their debts
Well, MS bought Bungie to get Halo (and shut down the Mac version), which is a big reason they were as successful as they were. And the PS3 actually outpaced the 360, which is why it eventually outsold it despite releasing more than a year later. So really, not much has changed if you think about it.
"The free-to-play model has developed into one of the most dominant demographics in gaming..."
LOLOLOLOLOL Oh Examiner! Where's the money to be made in free-to-play? In microtransactions? In advertisement?
Free-to-play doesn't even dominate on PC gaming (where it originated), so why in the would would it be essential for console gaming?
If this were the last generation it wouldn't be due to Free to play. It would be because of the high cost of AAA games and the rate of which developers and publishers are closing their doors.
why would anyone want cloud gaming,????!! we work too hard to be settled with cloud merchandise we cant touch and value, ?? thats just dumb, i and the rest of the world want pysyical copies we can touch and keep for years and years, consoles will never go away, never.
I've been playing the beta for dust 514 the new FTP game on ps3. The menus and how to buy things for your epuiptment are very confusing and you have to spend real money to use voice chat. Its actually kind of annoying because you have to replenish inventory items and dropsuits and all kinds of stuff. Most can be done with in game credit but I would rather just play socom or call of duty i think.
Free to play has been happening for years now. I don't see it replacing consoles.