I think Deanâs article is poorly worded. Jez goes directly at it but I do not get the feeling from those Iâve talked to that Undead Labs is a âgonnerâ like others. Just that they are being looked at in general.
That would be one of the stupidest moves from Xbox, a guaranteed hit and you close the studio. Theyâre making it harder and harder to like to be honest, they keep stabbing themselves in the back.
I came here to post WC articleâŚ
This is getting ridiculous. Why are you doing this to yourself Xbox ? It feels like most of these blunders were preventables.
State of Decay is also a sure fire! One of the few franchises that has the community built around it, which is getting rarer by the day.
At this point I just want the bomb to go off. Every five seconds a new studio, department, game, or initiative is âat riskâ. Itâs so tiresome. And this after years and years of this. Itâs ironic to call it a âresetâ when everyone in the industry has just gotten to understand yearly huge July layoffs and studio closures and game cancelations as the norm.
Agreed.
It goes without saying that all these closures and cuts are gonna suck. Personally iâve been looking forward to SOD3 for a while. I thought number 2 had a lot of potential to build on and when Undead were bought by Microsoft it seemed (like we all hopedâŚ) itâd be another example of a game/team being able to get a bigger budget to come out with an even better game. While it seems there may have been dev issues i just donât understand the logic of showing off what is essentially a service gameâŚthen the devs being shut down. What even happens to SOD3 if Undead do get closed? Is the game cancelled or if it does come out is it essentially released and done? SOD2 got a lot of praise for the continued support and updates, I imagine theyâll be some consumers thinking âwhy bother buying this live service games when the devs probably wonât even be aroundâ
Like I said before,
XBOX will close this studio & also fear for the Fable line. Unless both games selling millions they arenât paying back their development budgets & for AMY⌠thatâs you fired !!!
Nah, if they close UL, Iâll be truly pissed. Despite the jank, SoD is a great franchise that finally had the backing it needed to take it to the next level, and itâll be super-disappointing if it ends like this.
Couple that with it sounding like Project Helix wonât end up being the console-PC hybrid I was hyped for, I canât say Iâm enthused about the future of Xbox.
What are you even talking about. They already announced that it plays Console and PC games.
OD3 will easily make back what it cost imo, itâs insanity not to release that game. Maybe they need to monetize it more afterwards if it needs to support itself financially though.
Like, people say stuff like FH6 and Grounded are GAAS, but really GAAS has in game stores where you can spend money. No dev can support a game for 4-5 years afterwards for free, so some form of income should help support that new content. Like Forza has car passes I guess, but thatâs it. SOT has the Blunder Pass. I think those other games need to same as a way to bring in more revenue, even if I know some people online donât like it, the reality is devs need to get paid and Iâm sure MS in their crazy minds are factoring this when looking at the cost of releasing SOD3 and how much itâll cost them over time.
Have they confirmed which stores yet? No, they are still being vague about what PC games itâll play, and the last comment from Matthew Ball suggests things can change as long as prices remain crazy:
However, moving over to what Ball had to say about Project Helix, things get a bit more complicated:
âWe are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping⌠We are very cognizant of the ways in which we need the change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that itâs flexible, we are working hard to rethinking what that console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way, so that as we take a look at this crisis, which may have acute effects for 2-2.5 years.â
None of that means what you seem to think it does. They are talking about business models/hardware costs.
Their entire GDC presentation was about the consolidation of PC and Xbox development and the future GDK. None of that is changing.
Iâm taking it as nothing is set in stone until they lay it out as plain as the light of day. Which, for me, is the ability to play my EGS and Steam games on Helix. They are obviously in talks with them, and things could well be going smoothly on that part, but until we actually see it, whoâs to say that it wonât end up just being games from their own PC stores?
Your original comment was that they are backtracking from supporting PC games. Which stores are supported doesnât change what it is or what it does. No one is going to buy a 1000+ piece of hardware, that plays PC games, that doesnât play PC games they own.
This has been discussed in circles before, but the thing that makes the most sense is that the console-like UI will default to the xbox store. You will likely be able to link your libraries (think how you link your discord account) and play games you already own. But not purchase from those stores directly.
If it boots to a windows desktop, then you can buy what you want where you want. They can support other libraries and still take measures to try and direct people to their store instead.
Balls comments are clearly directed at hardware costs because they have ballooned since the hardware was designed. There is no world where they release the most expensive console that has ever existed and neuter what it was designed to do.
No, I said: âCouple that with it sounding like Project Helix wonât end up being the console-PC hybrid I was hyped forâ.
It sounds like itâll end up being pretty similar to how they work in Xbox mode on PC today, which is fine, but not what I was hoping for. I want to be able to install, uninstall, and browse those libraries without needing to switch between the different stores, or touch the normal Windows desktop. At that point, barring losing Quick Resume, a normal PC would be the better option for me.
Thereâs Youtubers posting hour long videos about this game right now and there is a chance that it never comes out⌠this is a huge mess, just let the game come out on all platforms and maybe itâs a hit and there isnât a need to close the studio, theyâve been developing this for 8 years now, whatâs another year?
This brand sucks ass wtf, this is nonsensical.
I think the game should come out & if they really have fixed & got rid of the teather, then co-op could be a world of fun
I donât see what adding this team to the In-House studios has really added. It doesnât look much better than SOD 2, even with the 1st party funding. XBOX could have just done what it did with that game & become the exclusive publisher without the need to buy the team outright.
This nonsense of games in development for 7 years or more needs to stop
Time to admit Phil Spencerâs management of game studios was a total failure, a game like Fable taking nearly a decade makes sense, Hellblade 2, SOD3 and SOM donât, the guy acquired al bunch of studios and didnât think to actually manage them and make sure they did an efficient job 
I can give Phil & Matt a little pass on Fable since the line was set up from scratch, but even then Fable should have been out by now