Fall Damage: It took 6 co-hosts, three and a half years, and 150 episodes to reach this moment. As Adam, Ban, and Pete convene for the last episode of Fall Damage, we take a look at our Fallie award winners for the year (Best Story, Best Gameplay, Best Online/Multiplayer Experience, Best Soundtrack, Best Character, Best New IP, and Game of the Year.) We get a little drunk, a lot nostalgic, and close the podcast out with our longest episode ever.
Marie Dealessandri speaks to Borislav Slavov and Gustavo Santaolalla about “the new golden age of games music”.
While on stage with Dina Bass at The Bloomberg Technology Summit the President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, was asked about the Xbox studio closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios
Of course she did. She's part of the problem and will just tow the company line.
Bloomberg’s Dina Bass could barely read her scripted question without looking at her notes, whilst Sarah Bond who WAS expecting the question spoke without saying anything of substance or answering the question in any meaningful way. Clearly she’s had the same expert PR training as Phil, but this avoidance was disrespectful. In time the short-sighted decision to shut down Tango Gameworks will be seen as of the most notorious examples why Phil Spencer messed up his tenure in charge of Xbox. That’s a fully built out talented team that could’ve been put to work on any project.
Additionally, Phil Spencer should not be using Sarah Bond as a patsy for his mistakes- he should be answering that question.
I think you are all really overselling Tangos value. Hi-Fi rush was a lot of fun. Ghostwire was incredibly dull. Evil within 1 and 2 were just okay.
Evil within 2 was incredibly under rated. I thought that game was surprisingly good
Someone else said it best. I don't think it was a Phil decision. It was most likely a Satya decision. I think Microsoft is done giving out free money to Xbox.
people please boycott Activision Bethesda next release and support Hellblade.
these people mus understand that they cannot treat their fans and employees that way.
scumbags.
She's playing her role. There's absolutely nothing any of them can say other than the truth, this is about profit margins and not quality, so they just don't answer anything and wait for gamers to forget.
I always wondered why xbox had multiple leaders with similar titles like Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and Sarah Bond, like, how many heads do you actually need?
Seems to me it would be more cost efficient to cut 2 of them instead of all those studios.
Frankly, I suspect she is the most competent of them. I don't mean that I like her more, I mean that she's the best at articulating herself and giving the talking points MS wants to give. The others are starting to sound more like her than her sounding like any of them.
Are any of these people "responsible" for what's happening? No. This reeks of Nadella. But that being said, I don't see any of the Xbox heads stepping down in protest.
"Don't shoot the messenger", sure, but at the same time, the messengers don't seem to take umbrage with the message. Not enough to remove themselves from it, anyway.
Dude, 100%, forgot Major Nelson and Aaron Greenberg, like what is the point for all these suits? They have more C-level executives than games released in a generation.
This is just so they can all pass along the hot potato one at a time and in between all of them can say a lot without actually saying anything, misinformation at its finest.
While many gaming layoffs are cruel, Tango Gameworks being culled after Hi-Fi Rush doesn't even make sense.
Good read. I think the point is important. Cuz the message it sends is, make a bad game? Well shut you down. Make a good game? We still might shut you down. How the fuck are you supposed to feel any sense of job security under those conditions. The level of core incompetence at play in the upper levels of this industry is staggering. This is common sense shit. You can’t chase trends on a 2 year cycle when games take fucking 6-8 years to make. Just let artists fucking art for gods sake. They don’t understand the basic principle that they’re all haggling for the same slice of fucking pie and the market will not bear it. Find a different fucking pie.
Might be a great game but it clearly did not make enough money to justify having the team make another game (under the MS umbrella).
It's never been just about whether your game is good or bad. The industry is full of great/underrated games that have a cult following or critical acclaim, but that fail to make great sales. Sad but true. It's a high stakes game, and at the end of the day, companies have to be profitable and make profitable investments. At the very least, there has to be the expectation of a long-term profit even if not profitable today. That goes for anything, no matter if the company is gigantic or a tiny mom-and-pop. We don't have to like it, but our buying habits played a hand in creating this monster.
I will keep harping that the industry has overreached its actual market and that it will implode. That implosion is already starting.
I partially agree with what you're saying in that companies need to sell well to make it in the industry. Something I've said again and again. Sony and Nintendo understand this about gaming by selling the game for as long as you can, then drop it on a service for additional revenue. It's why you won't see Sony and Nintendo expensively developed games on a service day one. It doesn't make business sense to do so.
The thing is about Tango is that they weren't given a chance after the acquisition when their game was shadow dropped on a console where gamers are told to not buy games but to rent them on a service for pennies. That kills day one sales even for small indie like developers who have big budgets for their company size.
Microsoft destroyed them in favor of pushing their services over investing in these developers futures or their games they created.
“…make a bad game? Well shut you down. Make a good game? We still might shut you down.”
I got chills. It shouldn’t have come to this.
