Nine days after Ninja Theory appeared on stage at the Xbox Games Showcase to announce Senua, the third entry in the Hellblade franchise, the Cambridge studio’s employees were called into a meeting and told they were done.
None of those studios made "best" of anything, and certainly not video games that gamers want to play.
Game Pass hurt them in a different kind of way, it concealed just how awful the true numbers would have been without players desperately trying to find the value proposition in Game Pass.
There are many examples of non Game Pass games posting abysmal player numbers and falling flat on their faces.
What these studios are selling, we're not buying.
Game Pass should have worked. It was an idea whose time had come, but Microsoft paid studios exorbitant money to make awful games no one wanted to play, and very few of those at that.
A lean, efficient, and responsive pipeline pumping out mid and indie tier games left and right with responsible budgets will hit gold frequently enough to send the service into the stratosphere.
How many huge hits over the past fifteen years have been made by a tiny team, or even just one person?
Minecraft, Slay the Spire, Hollow Knight, Cup Head, Balatro, Vampire Survivors, Undertale, Cult of the Lamb, Sea of Stars, Hades, Warhammer Boltgun, and so on and so on.
Many of those games I listed were big enough to create entirely new genres: survival/crafting, card battler, bullet heaven, and boomer shooter.
Imagine a service not just releasing those, but dozens and dozens and dozens of others that never did or will exist because they didn't get the hundreds of thousands of funding they needed while Microsoft burned hundreds of millions on worthless studios.
I don't think you can put the blame at Game Pass's feet. These studios were built by the old regime to create not games, but to make critically acclaimed games. Things that were strange, offbeat, and visually striking compared to the rest of what was out there. Then they invited in the DEI/ESG teams, which tanked at least South of Midnight but also infected every studio in the MS stable watering down the narrative and adding compliance requirements to games in the worst ways.
No one expects Oscar bait movies to make money. They are made for the critical acclaim. That's the same thing with these studios. In a way they were engineered to fail if they ever had to rely on generating revenue.
The industry as a whole is suffering. Already this year 5% of the global Game Industry workforce has been laid off and if the predictions of what MS is about to do come to pass it could rise to 10% - 15% of all industry workers out of a job.
While I am not exactly the biggest fan of Unions, the decision makers should be facing accountability to, and that seems to be a rare thing. A couple departures from the higher ranks of Xbox does not reek of holding the senior leadership teams of the studio and publisher to account.
Fresh news from Bloomberg: Xbox slated to reduce its Xbox staff by 3200. The first half coming up this Monday, then more dribbles over the year.
Confirmed that Ninja Theory and Undead Labs (Dead by Daylight 3) are going away, but being bought by a 3rd party.
Tim Shaffer is taking Double Fine, along with all the IP it has ever created. Fortunately, Psychonauts was the only thing arguably worth anything so no loss there. Let's see how long DF lasts in the cost of living blackhole that is San Francisco before they either shut down or relocate considering they tripled their staff since they joined Xbox. Since they screwed people in their final Kickstarter I'm not sure they'll have the same public support this time around when the need it.
Compulsion is getting the same deal. Both will get some money from Auntie Sharma to soften the blow when they have to do their own layoffs because they will inevitably have to reduce staff.
Arcane Lyon, working on Blade, is also going the way of the dodo. They say "we're working out how to move forward" or whatever but it really means "Damn those French labor laws, it is going to take FOREVER to close this studio!"
No word yet on which studios will lose parts of their staff.
As an aside, Laura Fryer was in the thick of it when Microsoft started games 3 decades ago. She got up to the highest levels of the industry at Microsoft, Warner Games, Epic, and then games adjacent with Oculus. She has a great breakdown: https://youtu.be/2BZBoBAZGsc
I love the Dishonored series. Sad to see it go. Woke/DEI crap has killed these studios!
None of those studios made "best" of anything, and certainly not video games that gamers want to play.
Game Pass hurt them in a different kind of way, it concealed just how awful the true numbers would have been without players desperately trying to find the value proposition in Game Pass.
There are many examples of non Game Pass games posting abysmal player numbers and falling flat on their faces.
What these studios are selling, we're not buying.
Game Pass should have worked. It was an idea whose time had come, but Microsoft paid studios exorbitant money to make awful games no one wanted to play, and very few of those at that.
A lean, efficient, and responsive pipeline pumping out mid and indie tier games left and right with responsible budgets will hit gold frequently enough to send the service into the stratosphere.
How many huge hits over the past fifteen years have been made by a tiny team, or even just one person?
Minecraft, Slay the Spire, Hollow Knight, Cup Head, Balatro, Vampire Survivors, Undertale, Cult of the Lamb, Sea of Stars, Hades, Warhammer Boltgun, and so on and so on.
Many of those games I listed were big enough to create entirely new genres: survival/crafting, card battler, bullet heaven, and boomer shooter.
Imagine a service not just releasing those, but dozens and dozens and dozens of others that never did or will exist because they didn't get the hundreds of thousands of funding they needed while Microsoft burned hundreds of millions on worthless studios.
Hey Microsoft, NO REFUNDS!
Bummer. Oh well.
I don't think you can put the blame at Game Pass's feet. These studios were built by the old regime to create not games, but to make critically acclaimed games. Things that were strange, offbeat, and visually striking compared to the rest of what was out there. Then they invited in the DEI/ESG teams, which tanked at least South of Midnight but also infected every studio in the MS stable watering down the narrative and adding compliance requirements to games in the worst ways.
No one expects Oscar bait movies to make money. They are made for the critical acclaim. That's the same thing with these studios. In a way they were engineered to fail if they ever had to rely on generating revenue.
The industry as a whole is suffering. Already this year 5% of the global Game Industry workforce has been laid off and if the predictions of what MS is about to do come to pass it could rise to 10% - 15% of all industry workers out of a job.
While I am not exactly the biggest fan of Unions, the decision makers should be facing accountability to, and that seems to be a rare thing. A couple departures from the higher ranks of Xbox does not reek of holding the senior leadership teams of the studio and publisher to account.
Fresh news from Bloomberg: Xbox slated to reduce its Xbox staff by 3200. The first half coming up this Monday, then more dribbles over the year.
Confirmed that Ninja Theory and Undead Labs (Dead by Daylight 3) are going away, but being bought by a 3rd party.
Tim Shaffer is taking Double Fine, along with all the IP it has ever created. Fortunately, Psychonauts was the only thing arguably worth anything so no loss there. Let's see how long DF lasts in the cost of living blackhole that is San Francisco before they either shut down or relocate considering they tripled their staff since they joined Xbox. Since they screwed people in their final Kickstarter I'm not sure they'll have the same public support this time around when the need it.
Compulsion is getting the same deal. Both will get some money from Auntie Sharma to soften the blow when they have to do their own layoffs because they will inevitably have to reduce staff.
Arcane Lyon, working on Blade, is also going the way of the dodo. They say "we're working out how to move forward" or whatever but it really means "Damn those French labor laws, it is going to take FOREVER to close this studio!"
No word yet on which studios will lose parts of their staff.
As an aside, Laura Fryer was in the thick of it when Microsoft started games 3 decades ago. She got up to the highest levels of the industry at Microsoft, Warner Games, Epic, and then games adjacent with Oculus. She has a great breakdown: https://youtu.be/2BZBoBAZGsc