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[kiphalfton]

Hypothetical question, but how do you spend billions in acquisitions, and then close studios.

Absolutely ridiculous.

 

[bitbydeath]

Hypothetical question, but how do you spend billions in acquisitions, and then close studios.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Imagine if they were able to buy a really good publisher like Sega…

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

The harsh reality is that Microsoft only bought Bethesda Softworks for Elder Scrolls and Fallout and only bought Activision for Call of Duty. Everything else is expendable.

 

[Jigsaah]

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.

Called it.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

What was it? 56 Billion dollars and months of governmental back and forth? I forget, it's all a blur swirling down a drain from my point of view.

"It will be beneficial to the industry"

 

[ToadMan]

Hypothetical question, but how do you spend billions in acquisitions, and then close studios.

Absolutely ridiculous.

MS has so much money, they can absorb the loss rather than fix the problem. Especially when the problem is self created by expanding too quickly with insufficient management.

These losses would be harder to sustain for Sony or Nintendo, but even they have shuttered studios and reorganised previously.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

A few people said it was too much for one company to take on all at once especially when they can't even run the ones they got and closures were inevitable, nothing good will come from it, I believe even you believe it wasn't a good idea in some capacity.
Yes the most vocal was concern was with the monopoly aspect of it all but some knew it wasn't gonna end well.
And got the whole MS has the money crap.
We believed it didn't work that way and was told we're was wrong MS could buy the whole industry with pocket change, this will secure those studios future with access to MS's warchest for future games.
Yeah that wasn't gonna happen.
I knew you, you knew it and the majority of Gaffers who have been here for over a decade knew it.
The MS going third party is just the cherry on top that I admit I didn't see coming.
I ain't happy about this, I very disappointed as we've lost some good studios that didn't need to go.

Yup ...not only that but MS has done damage to the industry with all the radical changes they've tried to bring forth: subscription models, Xbox and psx becoming multiplat (good for PC players, terrible for console owners), and creating a frenzy of consolidation. They started this whole fiasco during the pandemic which made everything worse.

All the spending both Sony and MS have done and their push to become multiplat publushers has truly spread their studios too thin! I think that all contributed to the reason why the Cross Gen hell has gone on for so long which has led to a lack of true next gem games. Because these companies have been so focused on subscription services, they stopped their back compat initiatives. The little things that would've been highly valued by gamers and would've truly made these consoles great, were traded in for money making schemes and services.

Possibly worst of all, if MS becomes 3rd party, Sony has NO competition. Phil Spencer and his cronies are the worst thing that could've happened this gen. MS was in a good position with the SX at launch too which is really rage inducing as a Series X owner.

 

[Saber]

I sincerelly hope this ends up killing Gamepass. Its one of the stupid things ever happened to the gaming industry.
It made people who buy games lazy and a mix of zombified and dumbfied. They can only have any interest in a game if it ever comes to GP. Almost as if their brain just stop working. Its like what I said way back about GP, people going for 3 type of posts - asking if its on GP, asking when it gonna ever comes to GP and if does not come to GP, they wait until it does.

 

[Buggy Loop]

 

[ProtoByte]

"Phil said it was sustainable!"
"Phil Said it was profitable!"

Maybe Xbox guys will finally realize that Game Pass has failed and Phil Spencer was doing his usual PR bullshit to hide people from the truth.

Don't forget the dumbass media who pretended like any of it made sense. It was so obviously not going to work.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Hypothetical question, but how do you spend billions in acquisitions, and then close studios.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Maybe some of the studios came bundled up with others that you actually wanted, then when those that were just along for the ride don't work out, you cut the costs and close them down. Not that ridiculous really.

 

[Power Pro]

Sell your Series consoles before it's worth no more than 10 bucks

It's already pretty pathetic. I was looking at fb marketplace just to get an idea of what people are trying to get for theirs...and there's plenty in the $200-300 range. Feel like I'd be better off just getting the $300 trade credit at gamestop while i can.

 

[ResilientBanana]

More people would subscribe to Gamepass and buy an Xbox if they had better and more compelling content.

 

[bender]

More people would subscribe to Gamepass and buy an Xbox if they had better and more compelling content.

The folly of the model is thinking people consume video games like they do movies or music.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Hypothetical question, but how do you spend billions in acquisitions, and then close studios.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Not really surprising.

A combination of overconfidence, miscalculations, and sheer incompetence always yields extraordinarily bad results.

 

[Panajev2001a]

i don’t agree with that statement as it implies that the same quantity and quality of work can be achieved in a WFH scenario, but this is incorrect.

There are some jobs that can be effective in this manner but I would say based of my experience a large majority of creative roles that require collaborative work suffer in a WFH envoronment.

It does not suffer as badly, especially developers / programmers, and is nowhere near the studio killer as some people want it to be. Hybrid can work a treat for example too.

Very noisy open offices are also very unproductive but cheaper so they stay… there is a lot about control you want to have on employees and the fact that you tend to have a culture that will wage their time a lot (tons of unnecessary meetings, lots of distractions, which hurt more in a remote setting than in person but are wrong and wasteful regardless, etc…).

 

[Neff]

At this rate Xbox won't be Xbox, it'll just be Activision/Blizzard.

Kinect changed the entire architecture of Xbox One. No way Game Pass did more damage.

They could have pulled it back, no matter what Spencer says. Their greatest success was the OG Xbox/360, which essentially channeled what Sony/Nintendo/Sega were already doing. And they gave up on that business model way, way too quickly. The problem with Microsoft is that, unlike Sony or Nintendo, it doesn't have respect, pride or reverence for how the industry works, and they insist on competing by attempting to outthink established industry norms. There's a reason the console industry has mostly stayed the same since the '80s- people just want fun, well-made video games for their box.

The problem with Xbox is Microsoft.

 

[[Sigma]]

FTC right now:

 

[Hawking Radiation]

It's all fun and games until you spend 75 billion and earn a new level of scrutiny. Remember those emails stating that Microsoft is in the unique position to spend PlayStation out of business?

Now let's laugh at all the console warring fools who championed the acquisition.

 

[DavidGzz]

Phil cleaning house, trimming the fat(hopefully purple-haired), and he can't catch a break lol

 

[Klayzer]

Phil cleaning house, trimming the fat(hopefully purple-haired), and he can't catch a break lol

 

[DavidGzz]

^ Hi-Fi didn't sell. Plain and simple. Are they closing Turn 10? Exactly.

 

[clarky]

Here the thing what Microsoft doesn't seem to understand and why they will never succeed in this business.

This isn't like culling office365 dev's or the surface team to save a few bucks. Studio's and the games they produce have communities and fans. Moves like these over the last few days will cost them a lot more than a bit of outrage on the internet. There's a hell of a lot of good will been lost here, well what little the videogame community had left for them. And that is worth a hell of a lot more than the 1000 or so salaries they just saved short term.

Shameful.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, and Double Fine:

 

[Klayzer]

^ Hi-Fi didn't sell. Plain and simple. Are they closing Turn 10? Exactly.

Yeah, studios never get any better/s. By your logic, Turn 10 should have been closed after the first Forza. After all, it wasn't until Forza 2 when it sold over 3 mil. The first sold around a million. My point is, patience is needed with devs with potential.

 

[Starbuck2907]

When you spend $68 billion to buy Activision, you gotta cut things to the bone to make it look like a worthwhile, instantly profitable investment for shareholders.

Sad, but that’s what’s going on. This is typical post-acquisition behavior across most industries, not just gaming.

The writing was in the wall as soon as the takeover went through.

The gaming division as a whole cut jobs. This is just the most recent bunch.

As an aside, I read that Mikami left Tango because he didn’t want to be forced to work on another survival horror game. He probably saw this coming, too.

 

[SHA]

They have more studios than Sony, what're they thinking? Shifting priorities? It feels like every step they walk is based on acquisitions, they just can't step away from that mentality.

 

[Zheph]

More scrutiny? who could have tho

 

[cormack12]

 

[Laptop1991]

This is Microsoft all over, promises of top games and product's that don't materialize or work as well as they should, then they just shut things down right left and centre, apart from their OS and Office software, it's how they've always been.

 

[DavidGzz]

Yeah, studios never get any better/s. By your logic, Turn 10 should have been closed after the first Forza. After all, it wasn't until Forza 2 when it sold over 3 mil. The first sold around a million. My point is, patience is needed with devs with potential.

I agree but business is business. These companies don't care about us and Nadella prob doesn't care too much about closing some studios when they have dozens of better ones.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Their greatest success was the OG Xbox/360, which essentially channeled what Sony/Nintendo/Sega were already doing.

They had an industry heavy hitter like Peter Moore helming the division. Peter had previous hands on experience in a company that made and sold videogame consoles.

 

[ToneyJ]

Hopefully the people who cheered on the acquisition and claimed gamepass is sustainable are realizing how retarded they were/are.

 

[Lupin25]

They have more studios than Sony, what're they thinking? Shifting priorities? It feels like every step they walk is based on acquisitions, they just can't step away from that mentality.

That’s the thing,

Xbox mismanaged all of those studios to the point they’ve forgotten how to put out quality AAA games. Fable, Perfect Dark, Everwild, State of Decay. They’ve lost the ability to release any heavy hitters.

Oh, and buying Bethesda was a mistake.

They probably seen the writing on the wall before Redfall came out, just to expedite the process to acquire Acti-Blizz, which actually has saved them… for now.

With that said, the new Black Ops shouldn’t come out on game pass day 1. Maybe MS will attempt it, to rack up subscription numbers, but that just completely undermines how well CoD sells annually.

 

[kiphalfton]

Not really surprising.

A combination of overconfidence, miscalculations, and sheer incompetence always yields extraordinarily bad results.

Ah yes, the MC Hammer approach.

 

[DryvBy]

The folly of the model is thinking people consume video games like they do movies or music.

"The Netflix of gaming", as if that sounds appealing at all. Netflix is what we used to called "direct-to-DVD" so I guess what GP did was mission accomplished.

 

[Shifty1897]

The weirdest part of this is seeing all these mergers and acquisitions by Embracer and Microsoft, all these billions of dollars being thrown around like it was nothing, and the average person like me thinking "Wow, this makes no business sense to me but they must be operating on a completely different level and I'm just too dumb to understand."

And now it's all blown up in their faces and I realize I'm not so stupid after all.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

What’s with this dumb talking point that without activision blizzard they’d be down revenue wise. That’s like saying without the house I bought I’ll be homeless.

Can you count? They admitted themselves without ABK they would have been down 1% on software revenue. It’s all in their financial statements.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

The weirdest part of this is seeing all these mergers and acquisitions by Embracer and Microsoft, all these billions of dollars being thrown around like it was nothing, and the average person like me thinking "Wow, this makes no business sense to me but they must be operating on a completely different level and I'm just too dumb to understand."

And now it's all blown up in their faces and I realize I'm not so stupid after all.

As Steve Jobs said: “People higher than you are not smarter than you”.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

The harsh reality is that Microsoft only bought Bethesda Softworks for Elder Scrolls and Fallout and only bought Activision for Call of Duty. Everything else is expendable.

 

[stickkidsam]

Normally the candle has to burn twice as bright to last this long.

 

[Klayzer]

Hopefully the people who cheered on the acquisition and claimed gamepass is sustainable are realizing how retarded they were/are.

 

[Heisenberg007]

The weirdest part of this is seeing all these mergers and acquisitions by Embracer and Microsoft, all these billions of dollars being thrown around like it was nothing, and the average person like me thinking "Wow, this makes no business sense to me but they must be operating on a completely different level and I'm just too dumb to understand."

And now it's all blown up in their faces and I realize I'm not so stupid after all.

Well said. And wasn't this the exact argument used against us when we warned of the dangers of such aggressive consolidation?

"So the executives of a $3 trillion company do not know how to run their business, but you, a random person on a video game forum, know what is and isn't best for them, and how they should run Xbox? Cool story, bro!"

Well, I'm not too mad now after being validated.

 

[DJ12]

Would you give the Redfall guys 150M+ to give it another shot?

I would if I knew it was my fault for forcing them to release the game unfinished.

 

[rkofan87]

MS having internal debates about putting CoD on Gamepass and about a potential increase.

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox turmoil

Xbox employees are bracing for what follows more layoffs.

www.theverge.com

old cods yes new cod day 1 on gp no.

 

[eerik9000]

The harsh reality is that Microsoft only bought Bethesda Softworks for Elder Scrolls and Fallout and only bought Activision for Call of Duty. Everything else is expendable.

Starfield, too. They panicked when they learned Sony was going around signing exclusivity deals with Zenimax.

 

[rkofan87]

Would you give the Redfall guys 150M+ to give it another shot?

for pray 2017 2 hell yes

 

[Spank_Magnet]

What if they are already dead?

Although it was recently reported Tameem had left, in reality he was gone (from what I’ve heard) over a year ago. Nina, the other remaining founder has also been absent from the company for quite a while or so I’m told.

 

[FewRope]

Although it was recently reported Tameem had left, in reality he was gone (from what I’ve heard) over a year ago. Nina, the other remaining founder has also been absent from the company for quite a while or so I’m told.

I truly believe Ninja Theory is going to last till the PS5 port, they are done. If Tango was close just because they were pitching after releasing a great game and they work kinda fast, imagine waiting 7 years for Hellblade 3 or whatever. They are dead, it is done already

 

[Heisenberg007]

Starfield, too. They panicked when they learned Sony was going around signing exclusivity deals with Zenimax.

This was confirmed fake by Bethesda. It was just a lie by Phil Spencer to look like Sony's victim and a "good guy."