The problem in most big companies (and organisations or countries) is that leaders promote people who think like themselves or at least are very agreeable. And as time passes they end up surrounding themselves with yes-people; every bad idea is cheered on, because all the critics have been fired or are way down in the hierarchy.
And in that environment, everyone who actually understands how things work quits or gets quit. It’s my understanding that there are large sections of code bases that MS just doesn’t touch, because everyone who understood how they function is gone. Continuity of institutional knowledge is difficult in the best cases and impossible under leaders that discourage dissenting perspectives.
/gestures about wildly
Eighteen months ago, I was an advocate for Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, because I didn’t think anybody could have done a worse job than Bobby Kotick.
Phil Spencer has proven me wrong. This arsehole tried to shut down Tango Gameworks after they literally shadowdropped a critically acclaimed GOTY contender.
Bizarre Creations had the misfortune of being owned by both of them before being shut down.
It really shows that something is fucked up in businessland that they’re so bad at managing studios, when managing studios is literally all they fucking do.
Same with EA. It’s just a wasteland of dead companies. The list of studios they’ve closed is bigger than the list of ones they still own.
Yeah, remember when we had a proper alternative to twitch that had a better & faster Streaming Protocol called Mixer. Which was actually focussed on Gaming ??
Yeah it was run by Microsoft & then they killed it.
Then Glimesh revived it in a way& now it’s dead too. Shame, it was OpenSource too
I 100% believe the claim that Microsoft executives mistakenly thought they’ve just nabbed the Donkey Kong IP by acquiring Rare. Definitely seems like something some c-suite ghouls who are totally out of touch with the games industry would believe.
Also, I’m not sure how much of Rare’s downfall was due to Microsoft’s mismanagement or their core talent leaving to form other studios. Maybe a bit of both.
I assume a lot of the top level staff stick about until their contractually obliged period for getting a massive payday is over, and then look very closely at whether they actually want to be told what to do by a bunch of suits all day long.
Realistically they’re working to make somebody else richer at that point, and there’s only so much enthusiasm anyone can have for that. Certainly not enough for the long hours needed in the games industry.
I couldn’t believe it when they shut down the studio that did Hi-Fi Rush. They put out a great game that received universal praise, then shut them down like a few months later. Infuriating.
To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.
Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.
Yes, it did eliminate competition. They’re no longer competition once Microsoft buys them. They’re employees, possibly if a subsidiary, who contribute to Microsoft’s profits.
Excluding steam because even playstation release exclusives on steam now, Starfield is (was? I don’t know if it released on ps later on) xbox exclusive. Out of Zenimax’s library, that is probably the game that you would want the least as an exclusive but at least it is something (they needed something after spending US$7.5 billion on them)
You don’t spend 8 billion dollars on a company to then shrink their market. Microsoft was never planning on making any of these properties they bought fully exclusive. The transition to third party you’re seeing now has been in the making for 5+ years at this point. Youre all just looking at this through the old console war lense when they’ve been over that ever since Gamepass released and they realized they make more money putting that on everything (larger market) than playing the exclusives game (smaller market)
I’m not really all that bothered. Unlike movies, new start ups for making games happen a lot. When the greedy giants topple, like a forest something grows in the new patch of sunlight.
I wish that was true, but funding has dried up across the entire sector and that affects the viability of smaller studios more than it does the mega corps with bottomless warchests.
i don’t believe the next video game collapse is going to be very pretty for anyone. also, most independent studios and developers make little to no money at all
Tell that to all the smaller studios that have already been decimated and forced to close because of their publishing/funding deals falling through over the last couple of years.
You don’t hear much about it because they’re smaller and/or working on things that hadn’t released yet, vs the occasional big media splashes from companies like MS doing more layoffs, but indies and AA are being gutted too.
It’s comforting to believe that only the biggest companies are struggling, but the industry as a whole is currently in active collapse from the inside out.
i know it’s not the important part of your comment, but I must point out that indies will be fine because indies do not have publishing deals. If your studio is beholden to a publisher, then you are by definition not independent.
The definition of indie is always contentious, but there are definitely studios out there who are independent (as in not owned by a larger company) but work with a publisher for funding, marketing, and other support.
Even beyond that bit of semantics, many indies rely on funding from investors of one sort or another, be that angel investors, startup funds, or even just small business loans.
Many of those investors have lost their appetite for games, making it extremely difficult to pay the bills unless you’ve already got a sizeable cash reserve to cover costs.
Personally I agree. I’ve seen way more startups kicking off with these waves of layoffs. It’s a silver lining, not much more, but I’m happy to see people finally realizing they don’t want the big tech solutions anymore.
I mean sure but just like with movies, the rights dont change hands very often, even if they’re not being actively used or the rights holder goes out of business. This means a ton of promising franchises either suffer by getting terrible sequels or no sequels at all.
Even Halo 5 had redeeming qualities. I legit wish Infinite would be treated like a fan made game and ignored so they can make a Halo 6 that concludes the Promethean saga.
Infinite came out 3 years ago and though they’ve done updates and general live service garbage there haven’t been any major releases since. Halo isn’t a yearly release schedule, charging full price for the same game every year like sports games, so i’m not seeing the slop…
Ever since 545 take over from Bungie, halo fans hasn’t been eating good. 4 is really bad, 5 is subpar, infinite is just ok. Not to mention the spinoff and tv series.
Halo 4 was mostly good, especially the story, but they listened too closely to the complainers and scrapped the story line. They haven’t been able to commit to villain. Didact? Killed off at the end of 4, and then resurrected and killed off in a comic. Jul 'Mdama? Introduced and explored in Spartan Ops and books/comics. Killed off in the beginning of Halo 5. Cortana? Resurrected/Introduced as a villain in Halo 5 and killed off between 5 and 6(Infinite). Atriox? Introduced in Halo Wars 2 “killed off” between the opening cutscene of Halo 6 and the first level. Escharum(Atriox lite), Introduced in 6 and killed off in 6. Harbinger? Introduced in 6 and killed off in 6. But wait, Atriox isn’t really dead and he’s totally going to come back in Halo 7 and be a long term villain. For real this time.
Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.
The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.
Well, the Gravemind is definitely not dead as it’s mind resides in either the Domain or an adjacent dimension. Hell, the Flood aren’t even sterilized from known infection locations. But like you said, the factions all have a clear purpose. Even the Flood in Halo 1, before the Gravemind was even introduced, were working towards a goal though consuming the minds of the species it encountered and fixing the Covenant ship. Hearing Cortana say that the Flood were fixing that ship was chilling. Zombies repairing an FLT capable spacecraft?!
A lot of my disappointment in 5 was how irrelevant and misleading the advertisement was. Nothing even remotely similar to this happens in the game. Hunt the Truth had so much better writing then 5 did. Let those people write a spinoff game.
For the longest time I refused to watch the Halo show because I heard that Master Chief takes off his helmet. But then I gave it a shot and it’s a really really good show, and they did the adaptation solid justice.
They made changes where it (mostly) made sense and were truthful to everything else.
They set up a back story that explains how we got a John-117 in the games. Someone who is socially reserved, doesn’t talk much, never takes off his helmet, and prefers to work alone. The ending of the second season was a setup for season 3 to start exactly where Halo 1 started.
The music was phenomenal, cinematography was on point, acting was great, story line was compelling.
I’m normally the person who’s a stickler for not changing a story at all, but the Halo universe was originally told through a game that was more about story beats than actual literary writing. So there’s a ton of room for the in-between conversations and events.
I think the show got an undeserved bad rap. If more people gave it a chance they may have actually liked it.
Halo fans got an actually decent show. Whereas Wheel of Time and Tolkien fans got the abominations of a show we got.
The first few were really good on console. I played the first one on PC as well and there was definitely something missing with mouse and keyboard controls. The vehicles especially.
You have to remember that most FPS on consoles were pretty terrible back then (e.g. Medal of Honor series), and there was a lot of experimentation to try and find a control scheme that didn’t completely suck, along with just the right amount of aim assist. Other devs were still wrestling with that into the Xbox 360 era. Sony put so much effort and money into Killzone, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Halo.
Plus, split screen co-op made it very popular. It’s one of the few games to keep that into the modern era as well.
Oh, then Battlefield 1942 then. People here were saying 2005 so I went with the one I knew from 2005. Also, first isn’t always best, the BF games made Halo look like a school project imo
I did miss the “on consoles” part of your quote though as I was referring to playing on PC so my bad.
From Crosspoint I heard that they even cancelled and shut down the studio making a game (forget the name off the top of my head) that Phil Spencer himself was said to have liked so much, they had to force him to quit playing their demo in a meeting about it. Not to mention the absolute waste of time and money on nearly finished projects that were probably going to sell well.
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Freelancer 2. Will not forget.
The problem in most big companies (and organisations or countries) is that leaders promote people who think like themselves or at least are very agreeable. And as time passes they end up surrounding themselves with yes-people; every bad idea is cheered on, because all the critics have been fired or are way down in the hierarchy.
And in that environment, everyone who actually understands how things work quits or gets quit. It’s my understanding that there are large sections of code bases that MS just doesn’t touch, because everyone who understood how they function is gone. Continuity of institutional knowledge is difficult in the best cases and impossible under leaders that discourage dissenting perspectives.
/gestures about wildly
So true. All those suck ups are at the top and the bosses overestimate themselves. What we need more smaller studios.
Eighteen months ago, I was an advocate for Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, because I didn’t think anybody could have done a worse job than Bobby Kotick.
Phil Spencer has proven me wrong. This arsehole tried to shut down Tango Gameworks after they literally shadowdropped a critically acclaimed GOTY contender.
Bizarre Creations had the misfortune of being owned by both of them before being shut down.
It really shows that something is fucked up in businessland that they’re so bad at managing studios, when managing studios is literally all they fucking do.
Same with EA. It’s just a wasteland of dead companies. The list of studios they’ve closed is bigger than the list of ones they still own.
I still kinda want Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard, but not for altruistic reasons.
But Microsoft already bought Activision Blizzard.
Shows how much I care about the output of either company.
Yeah, remember when we had a proper alternative to twitch that had a better & faster Streaming Protocol called Mixer. Which was actually focussed on Gaming ??
Yeah it was run by Microsoft & then they killed it.
Then Glimesh revived it in a way& now it’s dead too. Shame, it was OpenSource too
They’re really good at killing them though. I’ll never forgive the death of Ensemble.
Don’t forget they also murdered Rare.
I 100% believe the claim that Microsoft executives mistakenly thought they’ve just nabbed the Donkey Kong IP by acquiring Rare. Definitely seems like something some c-suite ghouls who are totally out of touch with the games industry would believe.
Also, I’m not sure how much of Rare’s downfall was due to Microsoft’s mismanagement or their core talent leaving to form other studios. Maybe a bit of both.
Given how Microsoft handled the Conker’s Bad Furday remake I think you’re not far off accusing them like that here.
I assume a lot of the top level staff stick about until their contractually obliged period for getting a massive payday is over, and then look very closely at whether they actually want to be told what to do by a bunch of suits all day long.
Realistically they’re working to make somebody else richer at that point, and there’s only so much enthusiasm anyone can have for that. Certainly not enough for the long hours needed in the games industry.
I couldn’t believe it when they shut down the studio that did Hi-Fi Rush. They put out a great game that received universal praise, then shut them down like a few months later. Infuriating.
Hot take, but I did not like hi fi rush
It’s not a hot take, it’s fine to dislike popular games for personal reasons. You’re not calling it a horrible game, it just didn’t click for you.
To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.
Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.
A Halo MMO could have been cool.
Speaking of MMOs or open world games, I wish that Stargate MMO game got off the ground. That would have so much potential.
But that is the whole point. You don’t buy studios to make games, you buy them to get rid of competitors.
Obligatory.
And for Microsoft, to get a back catalogue to ensure your subscription service remains attractive.
not always true, they clearly bought zenimax to make exclusive xbox games.
Has Zenimax even released any xbox exclusives? As far as I know they’ve all been cross platform.
i figured it was going to be a transition over time for less shocking optics.
anyway, the main point is microsoft wants them to make games, exclusive or not. buying them didn’t eliminate any competition.
Yes, it did eliminate competition. They’re no longer competition once Microsoft buys them. They’re employees, possibly if a subsidiary, who contribute to Microsoft’s profits.
Excluding steam because even playstation release exclusives on steam now, Starfield is (was? I don’t know if it released on ps later on) xbox exclusive. Out of Zenimax’s library, that is probably the game that you would want the least as an exclusive but at least it is something (they needed something after spending US$7.5 billion on them)
You don’t spend 8 billion dollars on a company to then shrink their market. Microsoft was never planning on making any of these properties they bought fully exclusive. The transition to third party you’re seeing now has been in the making for 5+ years at this point. Youre all just looking at this through the old console war lense when they’ve been over that ever since Gamepass released and they realized they make more money putting that on everything (larger market) than playing the exclusives game (smaller market)
I’m not really all that bothered. Unlike movies, new start ups for making games happen a lot. When the greedy giants topple, like a forest something grows in the new patch of sunlight.
I wish that was true, but funding has dried up across the entire sector and that affects the viability of smaller studios more than it does the mega corps with bottomless warchests.
We probably wouldn’t have expedition 33 if Ubisoft gave people a reason to stay
i don’t believe the next video game collapse is going to be very pretty for anyone. also, most independent studios and developers make little to no money at all
its only the big publishers that are going to crash, so nothing of value will be lost.
Tell that to all the smaller studios that have already been decimated and forced to close because of their publishing/funding deals falling through over the last couple of years.
You don’t hear much about it because they’re smaller and/or working on things that hadn’t released yet, vs the occasional big media splashes from companies like MS doing more layoffs, but indies and AA are being gutted too.
It’s comforting to believe that only the biggest companies are struggling, but the industry as a whole is currently in active collapse from the inside out.
i know it’s not the important part of your comment, but I must point out that indies will be fine because indies do not have publishing deals. If your studio is beholden to a publisher, then you are by definition not independent.
The definition of indie is always contentious, but there are definitely studios out there who are independent (as in not owned by a larger company) but work with a publisher for funding, marketing, and other support.
Even beyond that bit of semantics, many indies rely on funding from investors of one sort or another, be that angel investors, startup funds, or even just small business loans.
Many of those investors have lost their appetite for games, making it extremely difficult to pay the bills unless you’ve already got a sizeable cash reserve to cover costs.
“I’m sick of investing in video games. They’re always so unreliable.”
“You literally only ever invested in two companies.”
Still bugs me that Microsoft owns the rights to the King’s Quest series, though.
Personally I agree. I’ve seen way more startups kicking off with these waves of layoffs. It’s a silver lining, not much more, but I’m happy to see people finally realizing they don’t want the big tech solutions anymore.
I mean sure but just like with movies, the rights dont change hands very often, even if they’re not being actively used or the rights holder goes out of business. This means a ton of promising franchises either suffer by getting terrible sequels or no sequels at all.
Honestly no sequel is better. Dishonored is great, but i don’t want any sequel under the current Arkane.
There are 2 sequels lol
All this to feed 545 insatiable hunger for another halo slop.
RIP halo, my favorite competitive shooter ever 😭 infinite is such an absolute botch.
Even Halo 5 had redeeming qualities. I legit wish Infinite would be treated like a fan made game and ignored so they can make a Halo 6 that concludes the Promethean saga.
Maybe I’m missing context on this, but halo slop?
Infinite came out 3 years ago and though they’ve done updates and general live service garbage there haven’t been any major releases since. Halo isn’t a yearly release schedule, charging full price for the same game every year like sports games, so i’m not seeing the slop…
Ever since 545 take over from Bungie, halo fans hasn’t been eating good. 4 is really bad, 5 is subpar, infinite is just ok. Not to mention the spinoff and tv series.
Halo 4 was mostly good, especially the story, but they listened too closely to the complainers and scrapped the story line. They haven’t been able to commit to villain. Didact? Killed off at the end of 4, and then resurrected and killed off in a comic. Jul 'Mdama? Introduced and explored in Spartan Ops and books/comics. Killed off in the beginning of Halo 5. Cortana? Resurrected/Introduced as a villain in Halo 5 and killed off between 5 and 6(Infinite). Atriox? Introduced in Halo Wars 2 “killed off” between the opening cutscene of Halo 6 and the first level. Escharum(Atriox lite), Introduced in 6 and killed off in 6. Harbinger? Introduced in 6 and killed off in 6. But wait, Atriox isn’t really dead and he’s totally going to come back in Halo 7 and be a long term villain. For real this time.
Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.
The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.
Well, the Gravemind is definitely not dead as it’s mind resides in either the Domain or an adjacent dimension. Hell, the Flood aren’t even sterilized from known infection locations. But like you said, the factions all have a clear purpose. Even the Flood in Halo 1, before the Gravemind was even introduced, were working towards a goal though consuming the minds of the species it encountered and fixing the Covenant ship. Hearing Cortana say that the Flood were fixing that ship was chilling. Zombies repairing an FLT capable spacecraft?!
A lot of my disappointment in 5 was how irrelevant and misleading the advertisement was. Nothing even remotely similar to this happens in the game. Hunt the Truth had so much better writing then 5 did. Let those people write a spinoff game.
Do you mean 343/Halo Studios or is 545 some sort of reference I’m missing?
Yes that 3 digits number.
Maybe calling them 545 is an insult?
For the longest time I refused to watch the Halo show because I heard that Master Chief takes off his helmet. But then I gave it a shot and it’s a really really good show, and they did the adaptation solid justice.
They made changes where it (mostly) made sense and were truthful to everything else.
They set up a back story that explains how we got a John-117 in the games. Someone who is socially reserved, doesn’t talk much, never takes off his helmet, and prefers to work alone. The ending of the second season was a setup for season 3 to start exactly where Halo 1 started.
The music was phenomenal, cinematography was on point, acting was great, story line was compelling.
I’m normally the person who’s a stickler for not changing a story at all, but the Halo universe was originally told through a game that was more about story beats than actual literary writing. So there’s a ton of room for the in-between conversations and events.
I think the show got an undeserved bad rap. If more people gave it a chance they may have actually liked it.
Halo fans got an actually decent show. Whereas Wheel of Time and Tolkien fans got the abominations of a show we got.
The reality is that Halo has never really been anything more than a mediocre fps when compared to what had already been coming out for years on PC.
The first few were really good on console. I played the first one on PC as well and there was definitely something missing with mouse and keyboard controls. The vehicles especially.
You have to remember that most FPS on consoles were pretty terrible back then (e.g. Medal of Honor series), and there was a lot of experimentation to try and find a control scheme that didn’t completely suck, along with just the right amount of aim assist. Other devs were still wrestling with that into the Xbox 360 era. Sony put so much effort and money into Killzone, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Halo.
Plus, split screen co-op made it very popular. It’s one of the few games to keep that into the modern era as well.
As someone who was busy playing Battlefield 2, I beg to differ.
Halo predates BF2 by nearly four years.
Oh, then Battlefield 1942 then. People here were saying 2005 so I went with the one I knew from 2005. Also, first isn’t always best, the BF games made Halo look like a school project imo
I did miss the “on consoles” part of your quote though as I was referring to playing on PC so my bad.
“You’ll have GaaS and you’ll like it.”
Microsoft owns taco bell?
Why cancel Freelancer 2, Microsoft? Why?
From Crosspoint I heard that they even cancelled and shut down the studio making a game (forget the name off the top of my head) that Phil Spencer himself was said to have liked so much, they had to force him to quit playing their demo in a meeting about it. Not to mention the absolute waste of time and money on nearly finished projects that were probably going to sell well.
Quarterly profits.
They would have been fine if they just gave them budget and left them to it, but it was never about producing good games.