Two of TICGN's editors try to come up with theoretical answers to an increasingly popular question: What studios should Microsoft look at acquiring?
Pocket Tactics sits down with Rematch’s creative director, Pierre Tarno, to discuss why Sloclap moved away from Sifu to chase something new.
The cuts are expected to be announced next week.
Microsoft is also planning thousands of job cuts that will impact other parts of it businesses
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MFs has been beating their chests over great quarterly results and big profits to shareholders while firing people by the thousands just like Sony.
I wonder if at the top of those rumored layoffs they´ll also cancel upcoming or unannounced games while shutting down more studios as well.
Always got to throw shade at Sony smh.
Yes we get it,
MS good Sony bad
MS bad Sony is also bad lmao
F* them both!
Just for the record, I don´t care about your victim complex crap either. Find someone else who cares.
@Blacktiger
Im not offended , that’s just his formula lol
He can’t help help himself, he needs to bring Sony down when the topic involves MS.
Whether is good news for MS or bad, it some how leads to Sony doing bad lmao.
It’s actually hilarious.
He's not wrong but im tracking what youre saying. In this case is should just be MS bad. Thats a lot of people fired
"just like Sony"
Gosh you're insufferable, not everything needs to be both-sides'd. Sony's had layoffs, but nothing like what Microsoft has been doing and is continuing to do.
I mean, no offense, but this is why you’re not some corporate business person running a major corporation. Big profits don’t mean jobs are safe. Do you understand why things like this happen:
Cutting jobs to maintain or increase profitability, especially in underperforming divisions like parts of Xbox like other gaming divisions.
Corporate restructuring and relocating resources for strategic stability in ever changing markets and consumer behaviors.
Investor expectations and optimizing operations to maintain investor confidence. Whatever boosts stock prices and improves future margins.
And there’s many other factors at play. It’s never as simple as business doing well, everyone’s safe. That’s just you not understanding at all how corporations work and have been working since the beginning. This isn’t something that’s specific to Xbox, you can bet your ass Sony and Nintendo do this and if it’s not clear by now, game development is not a stable job nor has it ever been for many. A lot of developers are contractors and guess what happens when a project is done?
Nintendo said they have no plans for layoffs, and you can't seriously claim that the scale of Sony's layoffs most of which involved Bungie which is self managed as even close to the same scale as what Microsoft has done since they purchased Zenimax. And that significantly less layoffs would have happened if those publishers had stayed independent. Keep in mind that much of these layoffs have been due to redundancies specifically related to these buyouts.
@Ganif
Nintendo:
https://gamerant.com/ninten...
Sony:
https://gamerant.com/playst...
https://techxplore.com/news...
I don’t think it’s realistic to treat Sony’s layoffs as somehow outside the norm for the industry right now. Even if Bungie is self-managed, Sony’s cuts went far beyond that like Naughty Dog, Insomniac, London Studio being shut down completely, and multiple teams across the globe took hits. These weren’t just minor adjustments.
Nintendo, I had to look up and you’re right. They seem to be an outlier, but rest assured at some point it happens. And even then there’s been layoffs, albeit a smaller amount and contractors.
Would fewer layoffs have happened if studios from acquisitions stayed independent? Maybe. But even independents have been hit hard and look at what’s happened with Embracer’s fallout, or smaller devs like Digic, Roll7, or Volition. This isn’t just a “Microsoft problem” or strictly tied to acquisitions; it’s a broader correction happening across the whole industry, and unfortunately, layoffs are a big part of that process right now.
From your article:
"According to reports, Nintendo of America restructured its testing operations, leading to layoffs of about 120 contractors, part of a strategy for global integration.
Nintendo of America, publisher of iconic franchises like Mario and Zelda, is shifting some contractors to full-time roles for better development integration."
Contractors are not employees, and even if you want to count them as that, it's 120 people vs around 7500 since Microsoft purchased Zenimax.
In an era of game industry layoffs, Nintendo is hiring more people
https://automaton-media.com...
Nintendo Announces 10 Percent Pay Raise For Devs Despite Lower Profits
https://kotaku.com/nintendo...
Nintendo CEO’s refusal to layoff staff goes viral following industry-wide cuts
"Satoru Iwata took pay cuts to ensure staff didn’t have to be let go"
https://www.nme.com/news/ga...
And as for Sony you're comparing less than 1000 total jobs to an estimated7500
Has the industry faced layoffs, yes, but that still doesn't account for the mass layoffs due to redundancies that was easily predictable, or that fact that at least 1/3 of Microsoft's layoffs and studio closures happened before the industry downturn.
Take the L, Crimson.
People hate Nintendo, but Ganif proved why they deserve support.
It's like banging your head off a wall, he just can't help himself.
Microsoft can do no wrong, Sony sucks at everything and Nintendo is bigged up because it's less hassle than trying to defend Microsoft all the time
What's going to happen when Microsoft finally turn completely third party, then what?
Did you know that the first n4g was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.
I wouldn't be surprised at this point if anast and osbcure were both alts for the Admin.
We know how Obscure especially drums up additional comments and clicks with his spam-worthy remarks that somehow never get moderated
Thats business present a strong front to your shareholders while your company burns around you.
Keep shareholders happy at all costs andnif not happy keep them numb to the reality of you organisation
" Just for the record, I don´t care about your victim complex crap either. Find someone else who cares. "
Just for the record, you clearly you do if you have to vent this hard.
Basically you think like kids when it come to choose between candy or chocolate.
Mass Damage & Consumer Foundation in the Netherlands has filed a class action against Sony for inflating PlayStation Store prices.
My personal opinion:
Manufacturers and publishers have indeed inflated the industry.
From $700 million development costs for games like Call of Duty, to digital (store) prices for games and DLCs, online multiplayer fees on consoles (why can you play Helldivers 2 online for free on PC but not consoles?) or still preventing sell/lend digitally purchased games.
Sometime in the future, this bubble will collapse.
They should know better, but they just can't help themselves and suck even the last penny out of our wallets.
Because Sony knows people will be forced to pay those prices for single player and multiplayer games, not everyone prefers PC gaming. Sony also has a monopoly on PlayStation digital games. In 2019, they stopped allowing retailers and game key sellers to sell PlayStation digital games, making them available only through the official PlayStation Store
They should be suing the individual publishers increasing the prices to $80 instead of suing the store. There are plenty of publishers still selling game for like $50 with much success (like E33). But this proves that the publishers are the ones setting the prices.... so again nothing changes because they aren't even going after the main offender. How is suing Sony going to make Microsoft not charge $80 for the next COD? Sony being the number one store in the market doesn't mean that publisher have to charge us an arm and a leg. Again the industry is laughing at us because consumers never get real representation. Just these fake platitudes that are meaningless.
"How is suing Sony going to make Microsoft not charge $80 for the next COD"
Because Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly, I can purchase Call of Duty at a huge discount from CDKeys or other gaming retailers. The only way to purchase digital PlayStation games is through the PlayStation Store.
Weird, I swore GoW, Stellar Blade, Horizon Zero Dawn, TLoU, etc. were on the steam store....uh.....
@djI3485
I'm talking about PlayStation games that you can only purchase on PlayStation. I can purchase Steam and Epic games from 3rd party retailers and key stores.
"Sony to stop selling full-game download codes at retailers"
https://www.videogamer.com/...
About time. There is zero fair reason why digitally distributed products that you cannot recoup any value when you want to dispose of them, should be priced higher than that of physical copies that entail all of the costs and the benefits of owning.
Playground Games is the studio Microsoft should most logically purchase. Playground is a proven developer, I am very interested to see how the studios non-racing project (likely Fable). However,we don’t know if Playground wants to be bought. I would rather Microsoft enlarge the Coalition, 343i and Turn 10, and give creative freedom to the 3 studios.
Additionally, looking at how Sea of Thieves is being received. Rare need some new management or restructuring. It is unacceptable for Rare to be so inefficient when compared 343i, the Coalition and Turn 10. The latter studios make AAA games in 2-3 years and thier titles have a good amount of content and review well. Meanwhile, Rare over the cross of 3-4 years made a title with marginal content and a lower reception. Rare may have affectively killed their game from release....
I have high hopes for Ori 2 this year. I also have some interest in Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2. However, if the rumours of ‘Fable 4’ and the rebooted Perfect Dark aren’t true. The only true high production quality AAA games one could expect from MS would be Halo 6, Gears 5 and more Forza.
They should be investing in the ones they have, and supporting brand new IPs from those studios.
Microsoft needs to purchase platinum games because MS needs some fast-paced action game like Nier, devil man's cry, etc. The next studio MS should purchase is sega because they have the franchises that I think will grab many gamers attention, including the Japanese gamers. Third devs MS should purchase is playground because they have proven themselves to be a good fit for MS. Last but not least, MS should purchase From software because they have showcased some of the best action horrors in gaming and FS would be a great addition to MS's line up of studios.
The ones that they are getting game previews from.