Bummer but not surprised, writing was on the wall when he got laid off at 343.
He was a veteran at Xbox, especially when counting during Bungie stay in the company, so its very possible that he just decided to make his own business, like the three you mentioned. But the layoffs at 343i probably cemented this idea.
I don’t think that the company has a talent retention problem, 343 became the black sheep whose former leadership was the opposite of the Xbox heads.
It would be interesting to see what’s so different with american studios in turnover rates, i’ve noticed that only few studios like Bethesda you have many people with 15+ years of career there, Japanese studios have people who got there as their first or second job and stay there, I wonder if its the same in Europe.
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Talent retention might have to do with lifestyle. I think Bethesda was able to have long retention because the company pays really well and the studios located in a very desirable east coast location. Maryland is utterly beautiful and the studios located near tons of interesting locations, it’s a wonderful place to raise a family. They’ve got really nice parks, museums, restaurants, it’s close to Washington DC and the houses in the area are really nice. The vibe is really different compared to living in California.
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Unpopular opinion, but as much as I love the original halo trilogy and even halo infinite to an extent(Halo 2 was my absolute favorite, imma miss Joe for real), a new perspective and new blood might be what is needed to revitalize the franchise. Kind of how God of War was revitalized when Sony rebooted the franchise on 2018. Curious to see where the franchise is heading.
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Might be, I think its a multitude of factors, normally japanese studios have multiple projects running and smaller projects are made with new people to prepare them for bigger ones, that’s why Mikami reinforced that notion with Hi-Fi Rush. Western studios are always about the key veterans ruling everything and little to no space for anyone else, even for mid timers, no wonder why most of the time replaced leaderships are composed of outsiders rather than existing employees.
I think you’re spot on and I think the recent stuff at 343i is Microsoft thinking the same way, I think Microsoft thought it’s gone on long enough time to hit the big red reset button. I also don’t think Halo is an IP that can/will just die because of a bad game or showing. I know people will jump up and say halo ded because MP doesn’t have 400K players on steam or it’s not a 98 on MC or its only number 20 on Xbox but the fact it’s even spoken about still with the big failures is testament to it’s staying power.
Was he even laid off? I got the impression he simply chose to leave, which wasn’t all that surprising considering he was running the single player team which got cut substancially and likely involved some change in the plans he’d been working on. All in all though, yeah, the writing was definitely on the wall with this one.
If you’re head of the division that got impacted the hardest in terms of lay offs also you left with them, that kinda paints the story for me lol.
It’s semantics though, this all just felt like the inevitable outcome of that incident.
Very respected with tons of experiences, I’m sure he’s got something cooking up.
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I think it’s more on the different culture within studios. As an example the leadership team of Rare and Mojang are pretty much the same for years.
And it’s okay when people want a new challenge.
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What talent exactly?
Shinji Mikami hasnt directed a game since TEW1 nearly a decade ago
People want Bonnie Ross gone for the longest time
Joe Staten didnt direct games
Joe and Shinji are losses but them leaving isnt exactly affecting game development
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Speaking of Halo
343 cannot do this free to play crap again unless its the Certain Affinity Battle Royal
And they cannot do this “will patch it in later” and “wont be at launch” garbage again
Next Halo game
Amazing campaign
Full retail game…you dont need F2P when the game would be on Game Pass
Forge, Co op, Big Team Battle, Infection, Fire Fight ALL have to be there AT LAUNCH
No more of this BS, make the game right or dont make it at all, if you need to delay then delay the game
Think people need to accept that Xbox first party is massive now, and you are already in an industry where people move around a lot, so we will always hear about people moving.
I also do question what some of you do in your working life, as in my experience seeing people come and go is the norm. Developers are just regular people at the end of the day.
In regards to Joe, it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to stay on at 343 but the new direction for the studio made that unfeasible, so he might have done some thinking and decided to try something new.
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It’s tricky because you need free to play for PC crowd, but PC crowd is quick to move on from Halo if it’s not perfect. I think the major issue with Halo F2P is they tackled it wrong and weren’t prepared to have continuous worthwhile updates every 3 months like most FPS games. Also, I think greed got the best of them because there was no need to squeeze every penny the way they’ve done with cosmetics. However, I do love there’s not FOMO with the battle pass.
the dream of Crackdown 4 is dead 
every developer who’s worked on Crackdown has had a difficult time trying to evolve it into something more. I’m happy the franchise has had 3 takes on the open world game. I kind of wish a crackdown collection could come to Steam, Crackdown 3 is still only available on the Microsoft Store for PC.
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Honestly, he went back to the publishing side, probably didn’t have a project lined up to help with. Was the perfect time to leave if he was in limbo.
Sad he is gone, but he has been with Xbox most of his career. First with Bungie, and the last 9 part of XGP.
Wish him the best on his next thing.
I just wanna post some thoughts
Xbox should return to Crimson Skies and make it their red dead redemption. Basically make red dead redemption in crimson skies. I feel like Crimson Skies could be a unique IP to return to, it has unique qualities that no other console exclusive currently offers on any of the big 3 platforms. As we’re currently seeing with Perfect Dark, it’s a really difficult and expensive time sink to reboot dormant IP.
Halo is done this generation, we have infinite and we might get a battle royal free to play game that won’t include a singleplayer. But by in large, Halos story mode will be sidelined for the foreseeable future until next generation consoles.
I don’t see what’s so special about Redfall. It doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention from Bethesdas own marketing campaign and I think it’s more of a holdover title from zenimax’s final days as an independent company. I think the project was delayed a year because they want to make a mediocre game something that is pretty good, but I just get the vibe that Arkane nor Bethesda Softworks PR is pushing this one hard. It’s going to be a good game to play for a month but I don’t expect it to get a sequel or have much fanfare, we’re lucky that we’re getting a polished version of Redfall.
Microsoft has moved on from Ryse son of rome as has Crytek. Talk about Ryse from the CEO of Crytek is just to keep good face, Crytek has faced a lot of scrutiny in the past for mistreatment of employees and they’ve made some awful business decisions and acquisitions, along with not paying employees.
Rebooting Perfect Dark is probably the biggest project within Xbox Global Publishing at the moment. While they’ve been silent to the public, I’m sure this is a project that Microsoft has far more say and fingers on than Avowed, Hellblade 2, InXiles next game, playground Games, and Compulsion Games. I think The Initiative is a bit more like an extension of Xbox Global Publishing, only they have a hardcore development side to it. I got a feeling that Matt Booty has been overlooking this project far more than any other Xbox Game Studios project at the moment. I’m expecting this project to be quite an expensive and stressful one for whoever is working on it, and I feel like they’ve been intentionally silent and unwilling to show gameplay or trailers because they don’t want to add extra stress to the team or give off ridiculous expectations to the public that could eventually land them in some sort of media dunking contest like we see with so many modern AAA titles that fail to live up to expectations. I think Microsoft has higher ambitions with Perfect Dark and they expect it to be a flagship game that has not only an ambitious single player with a great story, but I also expect there to be multiplayer and coop modes. Would not be surprised if one of the Activision studios lends a hand on this one.
ok
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List Wars!
These videos are so cringe
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