I believe enough data on the subject exists already to know that the way game development is structured is no longer compatible with the scope and budgets required nowadays.
Mass Effect Andromeda should have been a case study, i.e. they spent years prototyping various game designs (including using procedurally generated planets) and eventually landed on something half baked that was quite rushed despite taking 5 years to make. The bulk of the actual game we played was made in 18 months. The rest was just wasted time and money chasing dead ends.
So the point here within the broader context of the industry is there needs to be some sort of control in place whereby ācreativesā donāt just shoot in the dark for years whilst trying to find a foundation to build on when the actual game or its theme might not resonate with enough potential customers to justify its budget in the first place.
I unfortunately think they might be finally sorting the management out and this is the consequence - brutal and without compassion, evaluating each game to see how much more itāll need to release and whether itāll ever make it back.
It sucks and Iāve often felt in the past Xbox needed to get a grip sometimes and be as ruthless as Sony, but then you remember just how harsh that can be on devs and studios.
It sucks, but I do kind of see the logic in todayās stuff (which I couldnāt so much for Tango as Iād thought HiFi Rush had done well) - just a shame thereās layoffs rather than everyone keeping their jobs and getting to go again with something newā¦
Of everything that has come to light so far, Turn 10 is the only one that I find a bit egregious. I get it that the game didnt hit like they wanted and it took a long time, but they at least produced a really good game.
The other three are things that have been in development for 5+ years minimum and we have barely seen anything of. So not terribly surprising.
Came back from doing a killer meal and am meet with all sorts of back up info holy s@@@.
I mean i knew pd and ew was in development hell but i did not imagine one studio would get the stake, geez. I hope for those layed off find their footing cause this is just depressing to see.
Also, in regards to pd, i wonāt lie: I had a hunch in a while that things were not looking good for this game no matter how much i did not wish to see it. Zero talk of it from basically anyone, the amount of people who came and went from the studio and the amount of support studios that ended up having to help in this did not make things better whatsover.
However, i do feel like Xbox shoot themselves in the foot in a way that shjould be studied, how could they make a gameplay trailer for the game that is do be cancelled within one year. This screams Scalebound all over the place once more and that makes things worse.
Like, how to they think they come back from this? Am genuiely asking myself that.
The problem is it needed to come out stellar, rather than just being good. Its had its thunder stolen from it by the Horizon series, and even in its present state, itās still short of being a must-play title in my opinion.
Canāt help but think are the other projects in good shape or did they survive to have something to cut in the next round of layoffs. Did you make it because they believe in the project or because cutting The Initiativeās Santa Monica salaries was the most effective way to meet the quota.
This sucks and hurts even though I donāt work for Xbox. It almost seems like Xbox had been taken too many breaks and then comes Daddy Microsoft to inspect and Xbox turns out wanting,
I think they could have spaced this out instead of the mass layoffs.
Yeah itās unfortunate but I love racing games and found Forza Motorsport a little sterile at launch.
Itās got better, but the problem is when FH5 comes screaming out of the gate in an opener that has me grinning like a child, they needed more polish and more to do - plus a bit more fun.
Itās stuck between the more-fun Horizon and the more-serious sims like Assetto etc - so I was hoping for a little more fun even if it was just a great soundtrack (I know, less of a sim thing), and Horizon unfortunately shows fun sells more
Donāt forget itās 9000 layoffs across all of MS, not just Xbox.
I feel like what happened is MS gave each divisions target layoffs numbers and said: āāfigure it outāā!
At the end of the day I doubt anyone in Xbox management wanted to do the cuts, but you have to look at who you can cut who will affect the bottom line the least in order to get higher profit margins and hopefully lower future layoffs and make the company heads happy.
If MS is really chasing that 30% profit margins across all divisions, itāll be hard to hi no matter what they do.
That one seems so brutal because it felt too much what have you done for me lately . I know the game flopped but the other entries performed well, so why not trust them to bounce back ? I guess with multiplatform push they mightāve felt they canāt compete against gran turismo
I think the market for simcade console racers is drying up. Sim racers have gone into the sim racing genre with force feedback wheels etc. and arcade fans prefer Horizon. Itās not just Forza thatās struggled. Codemastersā F1 series isnāt doing so well either and its WRC rally game has been canned by EA.
Yep and the sims that are left are often the more hardcore ones from smaller dev teams and with players who yep buy the full kit, just like the flight sim lot
Theyāre making more money than ever, as I understand it, and have hardware plans front and centre. This is not it, this is an expression of what this is: chasing the biggest piece of pie with as little fat as possible.
FM has gone in a weird direction since the 360 days. It just feels so boring. Super dry British narrator, showroom piano music when they used to have like dnb music. No music while racing. The forced practice laps were nuts to me, complete waste of the average players time. They need to get back to the 360 era and make the series fun again
The issue with Turn 10 is that their games are basically non existent due to licensing rights. Thereās virtually 0 money coming to them from their backlog and with the latest FM being a flop.. just kinda really makes you vulnerable.