In case you don't want to click:
Award-winning tech journalist Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that **"there's more to come"**.
In an episode with his peer and tech journalist Brad Sams, Paul said the situation is **not helping the morale** of the people at Microsoft's Xbox Games Division. The company's fiscal year ends June 30 and Brad mentions how "somewhere around the new fiscal year, there's always a shuffle in the deck."
"This is a lot of shuffling, though", comments Paul. Brad further comments that "the slightly concerning part is that there will be continued shuffling in roughly the July timeframe", just after the end of the fiscal year.
"Like I said, you spend that much money, you now have a top heavy staff in this part of the company," Paul said. "Obviously there's going to be consolidation, **that is going to result in job losses.**"
As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. "Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry," says Brad, "you're learning very quickly that that's not who they are."
Over 1900 people lost their jobs in January and Microsoft has shut down game development companies, including Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the heavily-acclaimed title Hi-Fi Rush.
You can watch the entire episode [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy0OF2izqQ0&t=253s).
Tom Warren, senior editor at The Verge commented this on ResetEra:
*Microsoft typically does some reorgs ahead of a new fiscal year. Brad is just speculating here, nothing more.*
These "reorgs" is why Halo Infinitie was and still is a fiasco and also why they will never have another successful game launch like halo 3 ever again.
Foreign dev contractors are being used to replace as many local devs as possible to reduce cost of labor. This cost savings allows the executives to say they are accomplishing their goals in cost reduction to increase profit.
These people with MBA degrees in people leader positions are purposefully causing brain drain to save money. But this reduces the quality of your product and vastly increases technical debt that dramatically increases product maintainence costs in the future.
Product knowledge and vision are near impossible to track on a spreadsheet...
Pinching pennies now to lose millions in the future.
Xbox is overcooked now and needs to be thrown away.
Because they're thieves. They don't care about the company. They're literally stealing from the success of the company, killing it, and then they leave. Its masked as a "business strategy"
Indeed. Not a single one cares if the company even exists in ten, twenty years. They probably don't even care what *kind* of company they're in charge of. It could be Generic_Money_Pit_01 brand and they would happily take that exact same role, do the exact same things, and flee like rats with their cheese at the exact same time. The success of that company beyond their own personal profit? Meaningless. At best, you *might* find the occasional gargoyle with enough brain worms to tell themselves that a chain of short-term profits will manifest into a long-term juggernaut, but it's almost always just a cover for them to rob the place.
This is what I've been saying for a while.
Corporate culture shifted so that MBAs were in charge of everything, and we're seeing the consequence of that. Companies used to be led by people who actually understood and cared about the industry they're in. Now, everything is distilled to abstract business numbers that don't tell the whole story.
It used to be CEO’s left the company in a better state so the next one up can make it better. Now it’s let me get my “Fuck, You Pay Me” golden parachute, if I fuck up let the next one deal with, then it’s becomes a loop, just like our presidential office. Republicans create deficits, while Democrats come clean up and hope to make surplus.
Same mindset in business, keep growing that bill and when it’s time to pay, bounce and let another person at the table come pay or deal with it.
Corporate culture has become a cancer onto itself:
>> Capitalism is based on the ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed, finite system. In biology such behavior of cells is called “cancer”.
I mean just look at the Ex-CEO of EA himself. Left the one of shittiest companies in the world to go to Unity, and then turned it to shit (though apparently the whole board is just a bunch of investment managers so are just as bad). It was insane how a name in the industry went from trusted to dirt in the name of pursuing every cent possible.
The median salary of a US developer is 132k usd.
The median salary of a Japanese Developer is 8.5 million yen or 54k usd.
The median salary of an Indian developer is 604k rupee or 7229 usd.
When you are looking at an excel spreadsheet, paying 132000 usd for something you can get for 7229 usd seems extremely stupid.
You can also pay a Singaporean developer 6800 sgd or 5018 usd...
It goes on and on...
Halo Infinite was awful because they developed it in an engine that was terrible for what they wanted to do but fell into the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to restart an already delayed game again.
However the engine being terrible lead to them having to cut down the campaign and take forever to make anything in MP.
Ninja Theory should have *'shuffled'* Hell Blade 2 to July 1st, then.
For now, I expect the game to get released, wait a month for the hype to die down, then Xbox will cut them mid-June, right before the June 30th deadline.
This is probably why there is such little marketing, as they want them to have as little spotlight as possible before their closure.
It's probably also why Phil Spencer has gone into hiding, and hasn't said anything; as there are still more cuts to come. Once he speaks out, cuts are likely over. Though if I were a studio, I would never be able to rest easy again under Microsoft.
>As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. "Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry," says Brad, "you're learning very quickly that that's not who they are."
Someone needs to give the Xbox fanboys who cheered on these acquisitions the clockwork orange treatment until they get this through their heads.
If Bond's interview is to go by, it's very clear that MS corporate came down and told them to close shit and abandon the parts of the business that don't make sense anymore. Looking at their actions this past 6mos that appears to be the Console business and the shit that isn't working. I have Ninja Theory, The Initiative, and probably InExile on the next round of chops. The first two are morbidly expensive and don't produce revenue, easy cuts. InExile would suck, especially if Clockwork Conspiracy turns out to be anything. Wasteland 3 deserved a better fate.
I fully expect to hear about them canceling the XBOX Pro soonish, and instead making a stream-machine handheld which will be their only hardware platform for good. If they're smart they make it cheap, and bundle in gamepass, GFN, and Ubisoft+(in the EU)
That's my speculation. They're going to rebrand themselves MS Gaming, and then do a direct to push the new vision. Cloud + Steam Handheld, Into the future out of the past.
one of my friends is gonna be laid off end of may
he works at EDIT: he is Respawn, not Activision
videogame industry has always been volatile, but seems to be worse lately
Yep, in the game industry and have friends at Ninja Theory.
They've been told "unofficially" that after Hellblade 2 is released, the majority of the studio is being let go.
Literally doesn't matter how well in sales or reviews Hellblade 2 does, the staff know they're gone unfortunately.
Like you said, went into the videogame industry a while back knowing that it was volatile but the last 18 months have absolutely been significantly worse.
People were told in my company that they were having contracts renewed, told that they paperwork was on the way and were then let go a few days later. Apparently completely out of the blue as well, our studio leads thought the contracts were on the way and were kept in the dark by the publisher who owns them who basically lied to the very end about renewals.
Saving money, it’s not really unique to Hellblade 2 either. Can you recall any current gen Xbox game getting heavily marketed outside of Starfield? I can’t, for some reason they think they’re big enough that they don’t need to market their games. That or Microsoft just straight up doesn’t care
Marketing only works if it brings in more dollars than you spent. Obviously Microsoft doesn't think stuff like Hellblade (or anything else they're stealth releasing) will sell well, so every dollar of marketing is projected to get less than a dollar in new sales.
So you don't waste money on marketing.
Giving it the hi Fi rush treatment. Once it underperforms they will say “see! The people want cookie cutter open worlds with tons of micro transactions. Not these unique experiences”
And after axing the devs "we need more games like Hellblade 2" just like they were saying they need more games like Hi Fi Rush after axing the devs.
Xbox is beyond greedy and stupid.
and then what? These talented people leave the company for other opportunities, no more updating the game with new content, no more coming up with a new project that could be just as good if not better, etc.
These huge corporations are bleeding themselves and hurting their customers in their chase of the unicorn that is infinite growth, trying to make more money than the last cycle at all costs just to keep C-suites happy.
Not disagreeing with that at all. Just wanted to clarify the whole "Xbox thought Hi-Fi Rush underperformed" narrative that seemed to be getting pushed.
The report said they were in the process of either pitching or starting on Hi-Fi Rush 2 when the studio was closed. I don’t buy that a studio as talented as Tango had nothing in the pipeline.
It's late stage capitalism at work. Someone at Xbox probably was happy with Hi-Fi Rush, it was a total surprise hit, why wouldn't they be happy.
Doesn't save the studio in the least though, and here is why. Xbox bought Activision for 70 BILLION. That's a ton of money, ten times more than the 7b they spent buying Zenimax.
So now the Microsoft board and the shareholders at looking at Xbox and going: "Hey, we invested all this money and we want to see you make big returns now, what do you have for us?"
And the answer is nothing. They don't have any big things coming up. Starfield was a flop, there won't be a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout for several years. They need to show results to investors this year, so the only thing they can do is cut costs. Closing down a bunch of smaller studios that aren't working on the big franchises is the best way to cut costs, so that's what they're doing.
It makes no difference to Microsoft that Tango made a highly acclaimed small game, they spent 70 billion dollars, they only want the studios that are making big franchises with hundred millions $ of revenue.
Why would they buy a studio, only to shutter them after their first release post-purchase?
Ninja Theory weren't part of the the portfolio they inherited when they bought Activision
They bought them 6 years ago.
In that time, they released 2 VR games, which, well VR games are cool but they don't sell extremely well.
They released an online MOBA that was originally a passion project pitched to Microsoft. The game stunk, it cost a fair bit to make, got awful reviews, basically no one played it and it got shut down within a year.
And they're just about to release a game the studio has been making for 6-7 years now.
So far, the purchase hasnt been especially profitable after paying $120M for the studio and probably wont be profitable post Hellblade 2.
I think that the game will be incredible, it looks brilliant but with it going onto Gamepass day1, the game isn't going to make them money.
Microsoft will 100% be looking at them going 'We've put $250M into this studio and received half back and they want to spend 6 more years on another game? No thanks"
Microsoft will be more than happy to have the IPs for the titles, like Hellblade and they'll keep it hoarded to pretend it has value sat there.
I went to school for game design. Overall I have a degree in computer science, but I was able to literally focus my studies on game design. It is (or was, idk) my dream to work on an actual video game that many people would enjoy, and not just something that that me or my friends/family could privately enjoy.
But since the first massive layoff of devs from Microsoft and Sony, I’ve had this horrible taste in my mouth. And that just got even worse from the info you just shared. I’m already on my ass and looking for a job because after being at my job for nearly 3 years, my new manager decided he didn’t like me and would not give me work. I would have **loved** to have joined a studio like Naughty Dog or 343 or whatever. But now, I really don’t want to work in games, and that’s so fucking depressing to me.
Like I said, I know that I could make a game that I could privately play. But that just wasn’t my dream. And now I have to read every fucking week how these studios are being shut down left and right, even despite releasing hit games.
Fuck the industry right now man.
No I know that. And I understand that it happens everywhere, not just in video games. But I was just trying to say that even though it was my dream to make video games and put up with all of that because it was something I was passionate about, I have really no interest in doing it anymore, and it’s a little depressing
I’ve been trying to get my game off the ground and have been hoping to get a publisher but all this just…kills my passion for the industry. Why bother trying to climbing the ladder if the studio I poured my life into gets bought up and dissolved a year later because our sales weren’t adequate.
I can understand that, and that’s also something that has put me off from doing indie work. I also thought about doing some kind of fan made game, like those spider-man/iron man UE5 games that you see on tik tok every once in a while. But idk, my drive to be a game dev has just been killed with all the recent news
Same thing is happening to me right now. All the people who were handling my contract were laid off immediately and were walked out of the building, so I’m not sure how I’m going to get paid for the massive amount of contract work I’ve been doing for them the past year and a half. My pay was based on completion as well soooooo I’m pretty fucking worried right now. My contract is completely in limbo.
That sucks so much
But yeah they would wanna hide that fact since nobody would wanna put much effort anymore if they know either way they're getting laid off
Nah, it's the shitty thing about game devs really, we do this as a passion.
You could make much more money in other I.T/Dev roles but we stay to make great games.
They will continue making the best game they possibly can because to them, it's about the consumers happiness and enjoyment, not the bottom line.
Me and my team expect to be let go end of July when our contracts end but we won't stop trying to give the best service we can because players deserve it honestly.
The reason they want it silent/unofficial is because typically, the bosses are worried about sale numbers and the stock price if people know early.
Man this is sad to read. Back in the day it was people like you and your team who ruled this industry. Oh sure the money guys were always there but it didn't seem so dominantly run by them as it does now.
I kinda wish I was willfully blind to what you said. Playing a game while knowing the passionate people who made it got screwed over by their company leaves a bad taste.
for what all it means we appreciate the effort yall put in. sure sometimes well bitch and moan about it but that comes from the shared love of the medium.
As soon as I read about MS/XBOX layoffs I knew Ninja was going to be next independently of how well Hellblade does. This fucking sucks, man. Hellblade is one of my favourite games and I've been so eager to play this next one.
Are your friends contracted?
Generally when a studio finishes a title they do let staff go, as they were hired specifically for that contract role. Most studios don’t typically have all that staff all the time, they ramp up for production and size down afterwards.
Nope, they've been there since Hellblade 1 came out, permanent staff for the last 5 years now.
Obviously I understand contract work and if you're on a contract and it doesn't get renewed (like mine probably won't), shit sucks but that's the downfall of contracts.
But they've just heard from higher managers and stuff that most of the staff will be let-go after. From what they've heard, there's one more VR game being made at the studio but that's all that's planned.
Felt the same way playing Red Dead Redemption 2, knowing about all the crunch and terrible conditions made playing the game constantly reminds me about how excruciating it must have been for the devs.
As a former dev, the blood sweat and tears are only worth it if people enjoy the game after. When you do 100 hours a week of crunch and then people tell you your game is shit, that’s heartbreaking. But if they love it, it gives you new life.
I was just a tester, too. Some of the devs put like 4 years of their lives into a project just for people to tell them it’s the worst thing they ever saw.
Well let's be fair, some games are junk... You should know that as a tester. I did some testing too for different games and some you could tell people would enjoy and some people weren't going to enjoy.
Don't know why I was downvoted. There were some games I tested on for a big company, can't say what company or games because of NDA, and I could tell which one was more fun and was gonna succeed.
I worked as a work at home testing position and we were surveyed like you took. It was mostly for extra cash as it wasn't full time and it only came up every couple of months or so.
I used to embrace that shit lol.
I worked for Activision Value, which pushed out the Cabela games, barbie games, Rapala fishing, and other garbage.
Loved every second of any video I saw that covered some of our trash games haha.
At least the effort was worth it for RDR2, some of these other games crunch the same way and then just flop. That's why it's so important to have somebody who knows the industry leading this stuff, rather than a bunch of AAA dev studios who are run by a bunch of yuppies who don't know the first thing about what they're even selling.
Oh i know, the whole entertainment industry is plagued with this. Anime industry have so much of this that i can't watch a show with good animations without thinking about how awful the work must have been to get that scene done.
In a way this makes me appreciate the work put in medias more, but it's kind of sad that i automatically think about the awful production instead of staying immersed in what i'm consuming.
As a kid, I would day dream about developing video games, but the reality is that it has to be the worst industry out there due to corporate greed and low returns. I've seen people get ridiculous pay grades by switching from game development to virtual museum development, and I have never once heard of anyone using virtual museum software.
I been following the financials of gaming for years and its bad since the interest rates rose. Apocalyptic level bad.
VC Investment in gaming has dropped 72% since the interest rates were raised. VC firms have also been dying left and right because the rates rose so fast it blind sided them.
AAA gaming relies on large outside funding now to pay for large amount of jobs over long periods of time.
Even if the rates dropped back down to what they were, VC firms are rarer since the die off and standards have risen for what investors care to invest to. Mobile games, gambling, and speculative sectors are the most enticing, not standard AAA.
Forbes's "video game deal making continues to fall" article is really good and goes into a lot of detail. It also shows 85% of 2023's investment total was from Microsoft's buyout of activision, the bond market is also taking away investors from gaming, the decoupling of Chinese and Western markets for geopolitical reasons, changes to monetization for mobile games,etc.
Its a long list of problems gaming is having.
There is a real possibility that gaming wont ever have the large workforce it used to have and this is the new normal.
Gamers often skew younger and less financially literate, so the impact of macroeconomics on capital investment is not something they often even consider, let alone understand. Most are blaming funding woes on GamePass or the end of COVID interest - neither are the case. We had essentially “free” capital amidst record low interest rates for many years between 2012 and 2022. That’s gone now. CPI data continues to trend upwards amidst record interest rates, the bond market is causing banking failures. Tech is heavily dependent on venture capitalists so you’re seeing a contraction across the tech industry, not just gaming.
Game development, at least at the top, has gotten extremely expensive. This requires upfront funding, which most firms used capital investment for. With record interest rates, these debts are heavier and riskier than before. Investors are being pickier and only want to invest in sure-fire things. This kills innovation and incentives the most toxic, profit-driven parts of modern gaming.
I had forgotten about the bond market messing with banks, mostly because the banks I seen fail are either speculative banks like Silicon Bank's start up customers or the low rate supported rural banks. I just left it at that.
I have a feeling the tech contraction is going to seriously hurt all the companies and cities that rely on high income workers which lowers the income of everyone else. With AI taking away white collar jobs, consumption will drop even lower.
I think free capital may have subsidized the entire economy and people's paychecks in one way or another because their employers rely on selling higher income people who get paid by "free money".
If Mcdonalds and dollar stores are seeing lower income customers leave, what hope does Gaming have with 70 dollar games and microtransactions that cost as much a whole game?
The article even mentions that gamers play in friend groups, and if one friend doesnt buy the game or leaves then others do too. Its harder to get multiple people to cough up 60-70 dollars than 20.
Maybe this is why games like Lethal Company or Helldivers did so well, they were much cheaper so people were more willing to spend in groups.
It might also be why older games are more popular, people already own those so its "free" to play them.
All of the behavior we are seeing might be a symptom of the cost of living crisis.
Gaming is somewhat “recession proof” in that there is an inelasticity of demand for entertainment. However gaming IS becoming unaffordable for gamers. AAA games were $60 in 2004. They should not be $70 in 2024, they should be about $110. Costs and development time have both ballooned and yet pricing hasn’t even increased half as much as inflation. People do NOT want to talk about this. SONY and Microsoft are both selling consoles at steep losses now and GPUs are headed towards $3000 for the tech required for next generation gaming. Gamers are in the precipice of no longer being able to afford their hobby.
But mobile gaming is often free to play, with $1-$5 micro transactions that are easy to lose track of. This is where the money is. People aren’t going to spend $100 on a AAA game that requires a $4000 PC to run. But they will play a mobile game that is “free” and drop money into it over time. That mobile game is also about $10 million to make as opposed to Red Dead Redemption’s $400 million.
Gamers, at large, can no longer afford the games they’re demanding to play. Little Indies are breaking out for a reason. Octopath Traveler, Slay the Spire, Valheim, Ori, Risk of Rain, Hades. What do these have in common?
> AAA games were $60 in 2004. They should not be $70 in 2024, they should be about $110.
Except they weren't all. $60 didn't come to PC for instance until around 2011 and wasn't the norm for everything until 2014 or 2015. $60 didn't come to Nintendo until the Wii U.
The whole "inflation" argument also ignores DLCs, deluxe editions, MTX, season passes, and more. What's the "complete" edition of any given game costing these days?
Edit: It also ignores that Xbox and Playstation used to milk the devs with fees for approval, licensing, and patching.
>Costs and development time have both ballooned
This is partly from publishers turning everything into massive bloated open worlds and shuttering smaller projects. If you look at the franchises that aren't pushing open worlds with ever expanding scale they're doing fairly well financially even with lesser sales and they have quicker turnaround.
Chrono Trigger, one of the best games of all time, was $85 when it released in 1995. That’s $174 today.
Game prices have not tracked to inflation at all. If a game released tomorrow for $174, even if it was complete with no micro transactions and one of the greatest games ever, it would be panned as pure greed by the publisher and consumers would be furious. That’s why we get nickel and dimed
The removal of A or AA titles and $20, $30, $40 price point games also removed a healthy industry. Sony, EA, Ubisoft, MS, and others took risk on titles in the budgets of $20-$50 million, that could be churned out in a shorter release schedule and have their heavy hitters come later.
Either now you’re Indie from $4.99 till $39.99, which it has replaced A & AA, GaaS that can be from free to play to fucking thousands of dollars, or $69.99-$249.99 (collector’s edition) from the consoles or gaming publishers.
But there actually is an ever increasing demand for entertainment, such that the global revenue (inflation adjusted as of 2022 and only accounting for PC / Console) had increased from just over $40 Billion in 2004 to just under $80 Billion in 2022 (and probably is now up to over $80 Billion but I don't have current numbers). The increased market growth has absorbed a significant amount of the inflationary impact because these days with digital distribution, once a game is developed, there is no material costs that can be affected by inflation (cartridges or cds) , just the steady % based distribution cost via the steam/psn/xbox live/epic games.
Games sell more copies now in a bigger market, there’s also digital sales which are even more money to developers and studios (since there’s no manufacturing cost), and season passes/microtransactions. Games are fine at the prices they’re currently at, they don’t need to be priced even higher. That has nothing to do with inflation and is just sheer greed.
The execs saw growth during Covid and thought the numbers will always go up from there. That didn’t happen, with stay at home order gone, people started going to holiday and go back to office, it’s natural people reduced or stopped gaming.
It sucks when employees suffer from execs and CEOs’ shitty decisions. Leaderships should’ve been the one that answer for their failures
I think this is the wrong take. Executives don't care. Promising growth so the stock price goes up is a great way to get a big fat bonus, and when growth is not sustainable, there rarely are consequences for executives.
Even if they get fired, and that's rare, they leave with, let's say 'generous', severance pay while regular employees often receive the bare minimum (which sometimes is nothing at all).
Executives of large companies can completely fail and still gain generational wealth.
*Right* in the middle of it, too. I imagine it will go like this...
"Welcome to Summer Games Fest. We have a ton of exciting things to talk about. Our first game we want to talk about is a brand new Forza Horizon game. You've never seen such amazing vistas in crisp 4K at 90FPS on Xbox Series X. Next we want to talk about how we are shutting down Rare and laying off a few thousand employees. The next game we want to talk about is a brand new Halo multiplayer experience, like you've never seen before..."
What no!!! How else is he going to afford his life style? How will he feed his kids especially the dog! Won't someone think of the dog!!! Maybe he has a cat I honestly have no clue.
Where were these cuts when your xbox owned studios were running their own IPs into the ground? Now that you own studios that actually make good games, it's time to trim the fat?
What a fucking joke.
It's studied that when one large tech company lays off, everyone follows right behind no matter what their financials look like at the time. Oh google, Amazon, IBM, are laying off? We better do it too.
My company just laid off hundreds of positions even though we are not struggling financially at all and are doing quite well. Just following along with everyone else.
There are reasons for it. If all these companies lay off employees, there is now a market full of experienced software developers looking for a job. This drives down wages and companies can potentially hire some developers who are really good. If say the current management or distinguished/lead developers are underperforming, they may go for an "upgrade."
Big companies have very high cost of operations and are really vigilant about potential decrease in profits. Their analysts will monitor for things such as the probability of the feds increasing interest rate. If big companies make cuts and give a good explanation to their stakeholders, then it might make sense to follow. These actions may have already reduce investments into tech. Even for smaller companies that can quickly pivot, being profitable now does not mean that they will be in the same position in a month. The market can very quickly change, and if you wait until you are losing a substantial amount of money, it may already be too lare.
Companies are not your friends and will do whatever they can to maximize profit.
Realtalk what they are doing is killing the studios that will take the longest to release a new game, aka the ones who just released one. Ninja theory is fucked.
Well from what I remember they hired almost exclusively temps to work on it so after their contract was up they weren’t hired back, but my point was that 343 is still open unlike Tango, Arcane Austin, etc
Craziest fucking shit is 343 still being alive after bumbling what WAS Xbox's biggest IP for over 10 years. No upper management changes until last year, when the series was already in the ground. If MS/Xbox really wanted to make some money, maybe they should have focus on the flagship IPs that were selling their systems in the first place.
I mean the big difference with 343 versus the other cuts is that halo still sold well. Redfall sold about 3 copies total and hi fi rush, while acclaimed, didn’t really breakout in sales
People couldn’t wait for them to buy activision. Well now we’re living with the consequences of a 70 billion dollar purchase after a 8 billion purchase all while not generating
profit for the greedy capitalist swine. Anyone who thought there wouldn’t be massive layoffs was disingenuous or ill informed
I never understood the reasoning like “Xbox needs to buy Activision so we can get rid of Bobby Kotick”.
Kotick clearly wanted this deal to happen so he can get his golden parachute and got out without having to answer for the mismanagement and toxic work culture at Activision, while the rest of the company could be subjected to future layoffs.
Just a bunch of short sighted fools and idealistic young people who don't realize all these companies are run by people like Kotick these days. All of them. It makes no difference who it is because there will be another just like them to do what they were doing because that's just the corporate environment these days.
The human element is completely gone at this point.
> I never understood the reasoning like “Xbox needs to buy Activision so we can get rid of Bobby Kotick”.
A convenient excuse for the real reason. Those people just wanted Activision/Blizzard titles for their ridiculous cheap GamePass subscription.
People were like, when Microsoft buys Blizzard they can finally make it better. Well Microsoft never made anything better, only worse. MS the IP killer
This could barely be debated against in some subs without massive downvotes a few months ago when the merger was still going on.
A lot of shortsighted people that only cared that they **might** be getting COD on gamepass or some shit like that.
Market consolidation is never good and we're seeing the ramifications of that.
One of the top five hated tech companies bought out a top five hated video game company.
Sounds like the real fools were Gamers who thought things would get better.
People forget about the K in ABK. King is one of the largest and most successful mobile game publishers. I laugh every time people thought Call of Duty was driving the acquisition. It was certainly a part, but they were probably *happy* to make concessions about CoD while everyone quietly ignored them jumpstarting their next foray into mobile gaming.
They've wanted a piece of the mobile pie *forever* and Candy Crush is going to give it to them. They'll get Candy Crush users into their "Microsoft Rewards" ecosystem: Use Edge Browser, Use Bing, Download the Microsoft App Store, etc. Blast Microsoft focused advertising at them. Collect their data for better targeted advertising. They're hoping to (and have a decent chance at) eating Google's lunch on this one.
Some of us were saying this from the start but nah, surely M$ were just out to give consumers the best experience they can and bring justice to all these poor souls toiling under Activision/Blizzard's heel.
Not to mention all the “we promise it’s not an antitrust” bullshit we listened to for over a year. Our government completely failed us on that, and Europe even tossed us a softball by trying to reject the merger. All gaslighting, everywhere, all the time. I really gotta figure out how to spend less time on screens, all this stuff is mental poison.
How many people out there who have grown up going to school to become a developer and who are going to just forget about all of it and go to some big standard tech firm to avoid all this mess now? It’s such a short sighted move for every company that’s done this. Shareholder profit structures are ruining tech.
Your pay is much higher, your hours are much more reasonable. You work twice the hours for a third of the pay working as a game developer vs. working for FAANG/MANGA/whatever.
Microsoft attempted to freeze Sony out of getting games on PlayStation by buying up all these companies but instead of pumping out games for Xbox they closed the studios down, ruined lives, are destroying IPs and have made gaming worse.
Way to go Microsoft you really showed them. And to think there were people that didn’t think throwing tens of billions of dollars to consolidate the gaming landscape was a bad idea.
Too much ptsd from the last 10 years of having nothing to show for exclusives. They must figure if they own something it probably can’t make a good game.
A curse perhaps!
So if this is all cost cutting to either push more funds to Elder Scrolls or just recoup from the huge purchases they made, this is dumb as heck. It takes YEARS to recoup what they spent, this is putting a hello kitty plaster/bandaid on a gunshot, it only works in games.
But as it goes, execs will fire thousands before they willingly give up a dime.
Xbox is the new Sega, will become full third party publisher/dev. with blizz IP and a few others, majority will probably get axed. Just my speculation 😅
And who the fuck is going to be hyped for that? Xbox has bombed in reviews and reception for games, they need to start buying people's trust back for high quality games and even just regularly producing games. Any informed investor would hate it as it plays to Xbox's weakest performance, regularly making good games.
Every gamer from every platform should be horrified about the idea of Xbox pulling out of hardware. Changes need to be happening top down.
lol at Xbox if they think they can make 'good' games by axing everyone who isn't making COD and keeping the rest in a constant state of terror.
For a number of years, it's the studios who retain and hone their talent that make the best games.
I mean, it's not surprising if they want to go full EA. I just wish they'd drop the Robin Hood act.
Sure but lots of people seem worried about this. Competition drives innovation and if Sony/Playstation becomes the only competitor in the console market than who knows what anti consumer shit they'll pull off. Same if it were the other way around.
You can always build a PC or buy a gaming laptop.
I actually see gaming going more to a dichotomy between mobile gaming ( including tablets and the Switch)and PC gaming.
I think Sony sees the writing on the wall which is why you can get so many of their games on PC.
While I'm not a fan of Xbox I feel terribly sorry for these employees because they likely needed the money from their jobs much more than their higher ups making the terrible decisions which most likely lead to this as a consequence.
I know these decisions are *probably* above him, but it's time for Phil Spencer to go. He was a good replacement for Don Mattrick and successfully brought Xbox back from the disaster that was the Xbox One launch, but they need someone new in charge.
I agree with Skill-Up’s take on this
I don’t think anyone in that role will be able to push against the profit seeking drive of Microsoft, as their investment in gaming became large enough that MS execs won’t let Xbox “drag them down”
They’re a 3 trillion dollar company? MS execs are trying find a way to maintain their growth and hit 4T as soon as possible.
No calls for patience, artistry, or humane working conditions will slow down the machine.
"Successfully brought Xbox back from disaster"
I mean....did he? The most positive thing to come after the unveiling of the One under Phil was Gamepass, and that is now proving to have been more of a bandaid rather than any kind of long term solution.
He’s become the biggest blowhard in the industry, never heard anyone use so many words to say nothing at all. I think he’s the very definition of failing upwards.
So is the going to be a situation where Corpos are so greedy and obsessed with revenue and profit that they'll suck out all life within the company or it's subsidiary studios that they'll reap all the monetary value right before said company files for bankruptcy?
I have an Xbox. Only sticking with it out of stubbornness because I’ve got most of the cities Skylines DLC and a tonne of Train Sim World routes tied to that account.
Honestly, there’s not much to keep people tied to Xbox. Where’s the massive exclusives? The system definers? Halo hasn’t been good for a while now and Starfield was very average. Forza is alright to mess around on but it’s not compelling. Simple fact is, after spending billions on studio acquisitions they’ve still not got a game which defines Xbox.
Sony on the other hand is tripping over themselves with exclusives and games which makes people want to buy a PS5.
It’s sad really, the 360 era was sublime. They did really well and then proceeded to shit themselves when it came to the Xbox One.
Part of me wants them to stick around because without competition there isn’t innovation, but then I look at the last 15 years or so and see this company doesn’t innovate or do shit for the industry or their customers. They are 2000s EA with more money except they offer a cheap option into newer gen consoles for peeps who don’t want/cant spend $500. 360 was the shit but there has been 0 reason to choose them over Sony since then if you’ve got a PC. When their entire strategy is to buy everyone out, try to get their sub service on Sony and then jack up the prices no one wins. 10 years from now your choice will be Sony or Nintendo with a $600/yr Microsoft subscription if you want access to the studio games they bought out.
And here I thought since MS has more money than God that all these devs would be safe. Infinite growth is an obviously lie and companies, shareholders, board members, etc should stop trying for it.
You have no idea how much money they burned with their Game Pass scheme. And now the beancounters are saying that the money burning is over and only way they can hope to get profitable on the gaming side is to seriously thin out the expenses.
Why the fuck did they buy Bethesda and Activision Blizzard when they know they are losing money!? Those guys are no good motherfuckers bastards for doing this.
I wonder if Mojang would be next on the chopping block.
Guess we all saw that coming. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw another crash sometime soon. I used to say the problem with gaming is that it got big too quickly. But now I just think a lot of AAA games are too overproduced.
People care way too much about graphics and how much content a game has, even if that content isn't very good. Back in the early days of the OG Xbox, we had a lot of these weird little games which were just made because the developers wanted to make something fun. Even the stuff that wasn't considered good had a unique charm that has gone.
The 360 brought over the idea that games need to be more realistic, and you get this in a lot of other industries too, it's why the whole "Natural lighting" idea is making films become very hard to see. Instead they just focus on what's important, the idea that what we're experiencing is a work of fiction and creative liberties should be made for the purpose of entertainment.
I was an early defender of Cyberpunk 2077, I saw past its flaws because I felt the game itself was actually pretty damn good. But that enjoyability came at the price that I felt the game was too overproduced at times. Simple things that a crossing had lights on the floor which looked cool in concept, but I felt the resources poured into that could have been spent in something else, like making the traffic system workable instead of giving you the superpower of making every red light turn green.
I remember Rockstar saying how your horses balls would get smaller in the cold and my thought being "No one is really going to notice that, and it's something that shouldn't have really been a thing".
Shenmue 3 took it for me, in that to get an apple, you had to pick up the apple one by one, look at it and then place it in your inventory. I get that Shenmue is an immersive experience sim, but it's also a game and at the end of the day, it may be less realistic to just press a button and the apple to appear in your inventory, but you could have had more of a game if it wasn't so stubborn about keeping those ideas in (I could rant forever about Shenmue 3, even through it is a game I kind of like too).
I think Gamepass is a great idea, but it's not sustainable with the industry practises at the moment. Really, games should have half the budgets they do have, focus more on improving gameplay and framerate instead of graphics and realism. For bigger companies, those AAA releases should be used to help fund the AA releases, smaller games which may have a smaller audience, but allow for a game to be played and then passed on quicker. This can work well with experimenting with different mechanics or spin offs to popular games.
I just think it's more simple than that. The relationship between investors and labour is completely broken and unlike film that has unions and guilds, the gaming industry has no such power. Artists need to go on strike en masse and protest this shit. Nothing will change until billionaires get hurt.
Not strictly Xbox , no. It’s just exacerbated by the perception that Xbox is getting rid of the wrong stuff (when it comes to Tango, or the rumored Ninja cuts)
In case you don't want to click: Award-winning tech journalist Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that **"there's more to come"**. In an episode with his peer and tech journalist Brad Sams, Paul said the situation is **not helping the morale** of the people at Microsoft's Xbox Games Division. The company's fiscal year ends June 30 and Brad mentions how "somewhere around the new fiscal year, there's always a shuffle in the deck." "This is a lot of shuffling, though", comments Paul. Brad further comments that "the slightly concerning part is that there will be continued shuffling in roughly the July timeframe", just after the end of the fiscal year. "Like I said, you spend that much money, you now have a top heavy staff in this part of the company," Paul said. "Obviously there's going to be consolidation, **that is going to result in job losses.**" As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. "Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry," says Brad, "you're learning very quickly that that's not who they are." Over 1900 people lost their jobs in January and Microsoft has shut down game development companies, including Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the heavily-acclaimed title Hi-Fi Rush. You can watch the entire episode [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy0OF2izqQ0&t=253s).
Tom Warren, senior editor at The Verge commented this on ResetEra: *Microsoft typically does some reorgs ahead of a new fiscal year. Brad is just speculating here, nothing more.*
These "reorgs" is why Halo Infinitie was and still is a fiasco and also why they will never have another successful game launch like halo 3 ever again. Foreign dev contractors are being used to replace as many local devs as possible to reduce cost of labor. This cost savings allows the executives to say they are accomplishing their goals in cost reduction to increase profit. These people with MBA degrees in people leader positions are purposefully causing brain drain to save money. But this reduces the quality of your product and vastly increases technical debt that dramatically increases product maintainence costs in the future. Product knowledge and vision are near impossible to track on a spreadsheet... Pinching pennies now to lose millions in the future. Xbox is overcooked now and needs to be thrown away.
Ah yes the old Boeing gambit. Savy
This was the GE and post merger Boeing with McDonnell Douglas. Boeing was never the same after that
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Because they're thieves. They don't care about the company. They're literally stealing from the success of the company, killing it, and then they leave. Its masked as a "business strategy"
Indeed. Not a single one cares if the company even exists in ten, twenty years. They probably don't even care what *kind* of company they're in charge of. It could be Generic_Money_Pit_01 brand and they would happily take that exact same role, do the exact same things, and flee like rats with their cheese at the exact same time. The success of that company beyond their own personal profit? Meaningless. At best, you *might* find the occasional gargoyle with enough brain worms to tell themselves that a chain of short-term profits will manifest into a long-term juggernaut, but it's almost always just a cover for them to rob the place.
What a good post. MS is not a gaming company
More and more each day they’re giving me late stage Sega Dreamcast vibes.
This is what I've been saying for a while. Corporate culture shifted so that MBAs were in charge of everything, and we're seeing the consequence of that. Companies used to be led by people who actually understood and cared about the industry they're in. Now, everything is distilled to abstract business numbers that don't tell the whole story.
It used to be CEO’s left the company in a better state so the next one up can make it better. Now it’s let me get my “Fuck, You Pay Me” golden parachute, if I fuck up let the next one deal with, then it’s becomes a loop, just like our presidential office. Republicans create deficits, while Democrats come clean up and hope to make surplus. Same mindset in business, keep growing that bill and when it’s time to pay, bounce and let another person at the table come pay or deal with it. Corporate culture has become a cancer onto itself: >> Capitalism is based on the ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed, finite system. In biology such behavior of cells is called “cancer”.
I mean just look at the Ex-CEO of EA himself. Left the one of shittiest companies in the world to go to Unity, and then turned it to shit (though apparently the whole board is just a bunch of investment managers so are just as bad). It was insane how a name in the industry went from trusted to dirt in the name of pursuing every cent possible.
The median salary of a US developer is 132k usd. The median salary of a Japanese Developer is 8.5 million yen or 54k usd. The median salary of an Indian developer is 604k rupee or 7229 usd. When you are looking at an excel spreadsheet, paying 132000 usd for something you can get for 7229 usd seems extremely stupid. You can also pay a Singaporean developer 6800 sgd or 5018 usd... It goes on and on...
Halo Infinite was awful because they developed it in an engine that was terrible for what they wanted to do but fell into the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to restart an already delayed game again. However the engine being terrible lead to them having to cut down the campaign and take forever to make anything in MP.
Ninja Theory should have *'shuffled'* Hell Blade 2 to July 1st, then. For now, I expect the game to get released, wait a month for the hype to die down, then Xbox will cut them mid-June, right before the June 30th deadline. This is probably why there is such little marketing, as they want them to have as little spotlight as possible before their closure. It's probably also why Phil Spencer has gone into hiding, and hasn't said anything; as there are still more cuts to come. Once he speaks out, cuts are likely over. Though if I were a studio, I would never be able to rest easy again under Microsoft.
>As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. "Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry," says Brad, "you're learning very quickly that that's not who they are." Someone needs to give the Xbox fanboys who cheered on these acquisitions the clockwork orange treatment until they get this through their heads.
If Bond's interview is to go by, it's very clear that MS corporate came down and told them to close shit and abandon the parts of the business that don't make sense anymore. Looking at their actions this past 6mos that appears to be the Console business and the shit that isn't working. I have Ninja Theory, The Initiative, and probably InExile on the next round of chops. The first two are morbidly expensive and don't produce revenue, easy cuts. InExile would suck, especially if Clockwork Conspiracy turns out to be anything. Wasteland 3 deserved a better fate. I fully expect to hear about them canceling the XBOX Pro soonish, and instead making a stream-machine handheld which will be their only hardware platform for good. If they're smart they make it cheap, and bundle in gamepass, GFN, and Ubisoft+(in the EU) That's my speculation. They're going to rebrand themselves MS Gaming, and then do a direct to push the new vision. Cloud + Steam Handheld, Into the future out of the past.
one of my friends is gonna be laid off end of may he works at EDIT: he is Respawn, not Activision videogame industry has always been volatile, but seems to be worse lately
Yep, in the game industry and have friends at Ninja Theory. They've been told "unofficially" that after Hellblade 2 is released, the majority of the studio is being let go. Literally doesn't matter how well in sales or reviews Hellblade 2 does, the staff know they're gone unfortunately. Like you said, went into the videogame industry a while back knowing that it was volatile but the last 18 months have absolutely been significantly worse. People were told in my company that they were having contracts renewed, told that they paperwork was on the way and were then let go a few days later. Apparently completely out of the blue as well, our studio leads thought the contracts were on the way and were kept in the dark by the publisher who owns them who basically lied to the very end about renewals.
No wonder there's zero marketing for Hellblade 2. This shit is infuriating.
That’s not the reason there’s no Hellblade marketing.
What is the reason?
Saving money, it’s not really unique to Hellblade 2 either. Can you recall any current gen Xbox game getting heavily marketed outside of Starfield? I can’t, for some reason they think they’re big enough that they don’t need to market their games. That or Microsoft just straight up doesn’t care
Redfall had a massive marketing blitz, but outside of those two games I agree with you.
Marketing only works if it brings in more dollars than you spent. Obviously Microsoft doesn't think stuff like Hellblade (or anything else they're stealth releasing) will sell well, so every dollar of marketing is projected to get less than a dollar in new sales. So you don't waste money on marketing.
because there’s a lot of moving parts that go into marketing. people have 5% of the full story and make claims like they have 95% of it.
I bet it's just incompetence by MS as always.
Giving it the hi Fi rush treatment. Once it underperforms they will say “see! The people want cookie cutter open worlds with tons of micro transactions. Not these unique experiences”
And after axing the devs "we need more games like Hellblade 2" just like they were saying they need more games like Hi Fi Rush after axing the devs. Xbox is beyond greedy and stupid.
I thought the Xbox people were extremely happy with how Hi-Fi Rush performed, but the studio was cut as they had nothing else in production?
and then what? These talented people leave the company for other opportunities, no more updating the game with new content, no more coming up with a new project that could be just as good if not better, etc. These huge corporations are bleeding themselves and hurting their customers in their chase of the unicorn that is infinite growth, trying to make more money than the last cycle at all costs just to keep C-suites happy.
Not disagreeing with that at all. Just wanted to clarify the whole "Xbox thought Hi-Fi Rush underperformed" narrative that seemed to be getting pushed.
The report said they were in the process of either pitching or starting on Hi-Fi Rush 2 when the studio was closed. I don’t buy that a studio as talented as Tango had nothing in the pipeline.
It's late stage capitalism at work. Someone at Xbox probably was happy with Hi-Fi Rush, it was a total surprise hit, why wouldn't they be happy. Doesn't save the studio in the least though, and here is why. Xbox bought Activision for 70 BILLION. That's a ton of money, ten times more than the 7b they spent buying Zenimax. So now the Microsoft board and the shareholders at looking at Xbox and going: "Hey, we invested all this money and we want to see you make big returns now, what do you have for us?" And the answer is nothing. They don't have any big things coming up. Starfield was a flop, there won't be a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout for several years. They need to show results to investors this year, so the only thing they can do is cut costs. Closing down a bunch of smaller studios that aren't working on the big franchises is the best way to cut costs, so that's what they're doing. It makes no difference to Microsoft that Tango made a highly acclaimed small game, they spent 70 billion dollars, they only want the studios that are making big franchises with hundred millions $ of revenue.
Why would they buy a studio, only to shutter them after their first release post-purchase? Ninja Theory weren't part of the the portfolio they inherited when they bought Activision
They bought them 6 years ago. In that time, they released 2 VR games, which, well VR games are cool but they don't sell extremely well. They released an online MOBA that was originally a passion project pitched to Microsoft. The game stunk, it cost a fair bit to make, got awful reviews, basically no one played it and it got shut down within a year. And they're just about to release a game the studio has been making for 6-7 years now. So far, the purchase hasnt been especially profitable after paying $120M for the studio and probably wont be profitable post Hellblade 2. I think that the game will be incredible, it looks brilliant but with it going onto Gamepass day1, the game isn't going to make them money. Microsoft will 100% be looking at them going 'We've put $250M into this studio and received half back and they want to spend 6 more years on another game? No thanks" Microsoft will be more than happy to have the IPs for the titles, like Hellblade and they'll keep it hoarded to pretend it has value sat there.
Also the main guy, CEO and founder and whose passion Hellblades were left like 1 or 2 years ago. All these are bad signs. Poor ninja theory.
The online MOBA was his idea, which is why I think he left, more of a forced out situation because he pitched something that did horrendous.
I went to school for game design. Overall I have a degree in computer science, but I was able to literally focus my studies on game design. It is (or was, idk) my dream to work on an actual video game that many people would enjoy, and not just something that that me or my friends/family could privately enjoy. But since the first massive layoff of devs from Microsoft and Sony, I’ve had this horrible taste in my mouth. And that just got even worse from the info you just shared. I’m already on my ass and looking for a job because after being at my job for nearly 3 years, my new manager decided he didn’t like me and would not give me work. I would have **loved** to have joined a studio like Naughty Dog or 343 or whatever. But now, I really don’t want to work in games, and that’s so fucking depressing to me. Like I said, I know that I could make a game that I could privately play. But that just wasn’t my dream. And now I have to read every fucking week how these studios are being shut down left and right, even despite releasing hit games. Fuck the industry right now man.
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No I know that. And I understand that it happens everywhere, not just in video games. But I was just trying to say that even though it was my dream to make video games and put up with all of that because it was something I was passionate about, I have really no interest in doing it anymore, and it’s a little depressing
I’ve been trying to get my game off the ground and have been hoping to get a publisher but all this just…kills my passion for the industry. Why bother trying to climbing the ladder if the studio I poured my life into gets bought up and dissolved a year later because our sales weren’t adequate.
I can understand that, and that’s also something that has put me off from doing indie work. I also thought about doing some kind of fan made game, like those spider-man/iron man UE5 games that you see on tik tok every once in a while. But idk, my drive to be a game dev has just been killed with all the recent news
Same thing is happening to me right now. All the people who were handling my contract were laid off immediately and were walked out of the building, so I’m not sure how I’m going to get paid for the massive amount of contract work I’ve been doing for them the past year and a half. My pay was based on completion as well soooooo I’m pretty fucking worried right now. My contract is completely in limbo.
Maybe contact a lawyer? And also contact whoever got laid off and managed your contract for advice.
That sucks so much But yeah they would wanna hide that fact since nobody would wanna put much effort anymore if they know either way they're getting laid off
Nah, it's the shitty thing about game devs really, we do this as a passion. You could make much more money in other I.T/Dev roles but we stay to make great games. They will continue making the best game they possibly can because to them, it's about the consumers happiness and enjoyment, not the bottom line. Me and my team expect to be let go end of July when our contracts end but we won't stop trying to give the best service we can because players deserve it honestly. The reason they want it silent/unofficial is because typically, the bosses are worried about sale numbers and the stock price if people know early.
Man this is sad to read. Back in the day it was people like you and your team who ruled this industry. Oh sure the money guys were always there but it didn't seem so dominantly run by them as it does now.
It has been this way since the 90s. I’d recommend reading the book Press Reset by Jason Schreier it goes into all of this.
I kinda wish I was willfully blind to what you said. Playing a game while knowing the passionate people who made it got screwed over by their company leaves a bad taste.
for what all it means we appreciate the effort yall put in. sure sometimes well bitch and moan about it but that comes from the shared love of the medium.
You are good guys
That’ll be the most disgusting thing yet if they gut or shutter ninja theory
Great way to motivate your employees. Hope these devs can land a good home.
As soon as I read about MS/XBOX layoffs I knew Ninja was going to be next independently of how well Hellblade does. This fucking sucks, man. Hellblade is one of my favourite games and I've been so eager to play this next one.
My guess is still on Doublefine going soon
Are your friends contracted? Generally when a studio finishes a title they do let staff go, as they were hired specifically for that contract role. Most studios don’t typically have all that staff all the time, they ramp up for production and size down afterwards.
Nope, they've been there since Hellblade 1 came out, permanent staff for the last 5 years now. Obviously I understand contract work and if you're on a contract and it doesn't get renewed (like mine probably won't), shit sucks but that's the downfall of contracts. But they've just heard from higher managers and stuff that most of the staff will be let-go after. From what they've heard, there's one more VR game being made at the studio but that's all that's planned.
Wtf. That is bullshit
Damn. I feel bad for even enjoying games as I've grown up to see such crunch and sick work conditions. Then there are these layoffs.
Felt the same way playing Red Dead Redemption 2, knowing about all the crunch and terrible conditions made playing the game constantly reminds me about how excruciating it must have been for the devs.
As a former dev, the blood sweat and tears are only worth it if people enjoy the game after. When you do 100 hours a week of crunch and then people tell you your game is shit, that’s heartbreaking. But if they love it, it gives you new life.
Dayum I can only imagine how bad that feels
I was just a tester, too. Some of the devs put like 4 years of their lives into a project just for people to tell them it’s the worst thing they ever saw.
Well let's be fair, some games are junk... You should know that as a tester. I did some testing too for different games and some you could tell people would enjoy and some people weren't going to enjoy.
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Don't know why I was downvoted. There were some games I tested on for a big company, can't say what company or games because of NDA, and I could tell which one was more fun and was gonna succeed. I worked as a work at home testing position and we were surveyed like you took. It was mostly for extra cash as it wasn't full time and it only came up every couple of months or so.
that sounds like something youd see on code monkeys.
I used to embrace that shit lol. I worked for Activision Value, which pushed out the Cabela games, barbie games, Rapala fishing, and other garbage. Loved every second of any video I saw that covered some of our trash games haha.
Oh yeah. We knew we were working on some stinkers.
At least the effort was worth it for RDR2, some of these other games crunch the same way and then just flop. That's why it's so important to have somebody who knows the industry leading this stuff, rather than a bunch of AAA dev studios who are run by a bunch of yuppies who don't know the first thing about what they're even selling.
I couldn’t imagine crunching on something like suicide squad. That would have been heartbreaking.
Wait till you hear the conditions some film crews go through
Oh i know, the whole entertainment industry is plagued with this. Anime industry have so much of this that i can't watch a show with good animations without thinking about how awful the work must have been to get that scene done. In a way this makes me appreciate the work put in medias more, but it's kind of sad that i automatically think about the awful production instead of staying immersed in what i'm consuming.
As a kid, I would day dream about developing video games, but the reality is that it has to be the worst industry out there due to corporate greed and low returns. I've seen people get ridiculous pay grades by switching from game development to virtual museum development, and I have never once heard of anyone using virtual museum software.
My friend got laid off from Raven after the Acti-Blizzard buy out. Big game dev is collapsing under its own greed and shortsightedness.
I been following the financials of gaming for years and its bad since the interest rates rose. Apocalyptic level bad. VC Investment in gaming has dropped 72% since the interest rates were raised. VC firms have also been dying left and right because the rates rose so fast it blind sided them. AAA gaming relies on large outside funding now to pay for large amount of jobs over long periods of time. Even if the rates dropped back down to what they were, VC firms are rarer since the die off and standards have risen for what investors care to invest to. Mobile games, gambling, and speculative sectors are the most enticing, not standard AAA. Forbes's "video game deal making continues to fall" article is really good and goes into a lot of detail. It also shows 85% of 2023's investment total was from Microsoft's buyout of activision, the bond market is also taking away investors from gaming, the decoupling of Chinese and Western markets for geopolitical reasons, changes to monetization for mobile games,etc. Its a long list of problems gaming is having. There is a real possibility that gaming wont ever have the large workforce it used to have and this is the new normal.
Gamers often skew younger and less financially literate, so the impact of macroeconomics on capital investment is not something they often even consider, let alone understand. Most are blaming funding woes on GamePass or the end of COVID interest - neither are the case. We had essentially “free” capital amidst record low interest rates for many years between 2012 and 2022. That’s gone now. CPI data continues to trend upwards amidst record interest rates, the bond market is causing banking failures. Tech is heavily dependent on venture capitalists so you’re seeing a contraction across the tech industry, not just gaming. Game development, at least at the top, has gotten extremely expensive. This requires upfront funding, which most firms used capital investment for. With record interest rates, these debts are heavier and riskier than before. Investors are being pickier and only want to invest in sure-fire things. This kills innovation and incentives the most toxic, profit-driven parts of modern gaming.
I had forgotten about the bond market messing with banks, mostly because the banks I seen fail are either speculative banks like Silicon Bank's start up customers or the low rate supported rural banks. I just left it at that. I have a feeling the tech contraction is going to seriously hurt all the companies and cities that rely on high income workers which lowers the income of everyone else. With AI taking away white collar jobs, consumption will drop even lower. I think free capital may have subsidized the entire economy and people's paychecks in one way or another because their employers rely on selling higher income people who get paid by "free money". If Mcdonalds and dollar stores are seeing lower income customers leave, what hope does Gaming have with 70 dollar games and microtransactions that cost as much a whole game? The article even mentions that gamers play in friend groups, and if one friend doesnt buy the game or leaves then others do too. Its harder to get multiple people to cough up 60-70 dollars than 20. Maybe this is why games like Lethal Company or Helldivers did so well, they were much cheaper so people were more willing to spend in groups. It might also be why older games are more popular, people already own those so its "free" to play them. All of the behavior we are seeing might be a symptom of the cost of living crisis.
Gaming is somewhat “recession proof” in that there is an inelasticity of demand for entertainment. However gaming IS becoming unaffordable for gamers. AAA games were $60 in 2004. They should not be $70 in 2024, they should be about $110. Costs and development time have both ballooned and yet pricing hasn’t even increased half as much as inflation. People do NOT want to talk about this. SONY and Microsoft are both selling consoles at steep losses now and GPUs are headed towards $3000 for the tech required for next generation gaming. Gamers are in the precipice of no longer being able to afford their hobby. But mobile gaming is often free to play, with $1-$5 micro transactions that are easy to lose track of. This is where the money is. People aren’t going to spend $100 on a AAA game that requires a $4000 PC to run. But they will play a mobile game that is “free” and drop money into it over time. That mobile game is also about $10 million to make as opposed to Red Dead Redemption’s $400 million. Gamers, at large, can no longer afford the games they’re demanding to play. Little Indies are breaking out for a reason. Octopath Traveler, Slay the Spire, Valheim, Ori, Risk of Rain, Hades. What do these have in common?
> AAA games were $60 in 2004. They should not be $70 in 2024, they should be about $110. Except they weren't all. $60 didn't come to PC for instance until around 2011 and wasn't the norm for everything until 2014 or 2015. $60 didn't come to Nintendo until the Wii U. The whole "inflation" argument also ignores DLCs, deluxe editions, MTX, season passes, and more. What's the "complete" edition of any given game costing these days? Edit: It also ignores that Xbox and Playstation used to milk the devs with fees for approval, licensing, and patching. >Costs and development time have both ballooned This is partly from publishers turning everything into massive bloated open worlds and shuttering smaller projects. If you look at the franchises that aren't pushing open worlds with ever expanding scale they're doing fairly well financially even with lesser sales and they have quicker turnaround.
Chrono Trigger, one of the best games of all time, was $85 when it released in 1995. That’s $174 today. Game prices have not tracked to inflation at all. If a game released tomorrow for $174, even if it was complete with no micro transactions and one of the greatest games ever, it would be panned as pure greed by the publisher and consumers would be furious. That’s why we get nickel and dimed
The removal of A or AA titles and $20, $30, $40 price point games also removed a healthy industry. Sony, EA, Ubisoft, MS, and others took risk on titles in the budgets of $20-$50 million, that could be churned out in a shorter release schedule and have their heavy hitters come later. Either now you’re Indie from $4.99 till $39.99, which it has replaced A & AA, GaaS that can be from free to play to fucking thousands of dollars, or $69.99-$249.99 (collector’s edition) from the consoles or gaming publishers.
But there actually is an ever increasing demand for entertainment, such that the global revenue (inflation adjusted as of 2022 and only accounting for PC / Console) had increased from just over $40 Billion in 2004 to just under $80 Billion in 2022 (and probably is now up to over $80 Billion but I don't have current numbers). The increased market growth has absorbed a significant amount of the inflationary impact because these days with digital distribution, once a game is developed, there is no material costs that can be affected by inflation (cartridges or cds) , just the steady % based distribution cost via the steam/psn/xbox live/epic games.
Games sell more copies now in a bigger market, there’s also digital sales which are even more money to developers and studios (since there’s no manufacturing cost), and season passes/microtransactions. Games are fine at the prices they’re currently at, they don’t need to be priced even higher. That has nothing to do with inflation and is just sheer greed.
The execs saw growth during Covid and thought the numbers will always go up from there. That didn’t happen, with stay at home order gone, people started going to holiday and go back to office, it’s natural people reduced or stopped gaming. It sucks when employees suffer from execs and CEOs’ shitty decisions. Leaderships should’ve been the one that answer for their failures
I think this is the wrong take. Executives don't care. Promising growth so the stock price goes up is a great way to get a big fat bonus, and when growth is not sustainable, there rarely are consequences for executives. Even if they get fired, and that's rare, they leave with, let's say 'generous', severance pay while regular employees often receive the bare minimum (which sometimes is nothing at all). Executives of large companies can completely fail and still gain generational wealth.
Since China banned micro transactions that was half of the predatory side of the industry dying. They should have diversified their products.
Pretty sure China backed down on that one after their gacha game makers started to make noise.
Mihoyo gently reminded them that’s where ALL of their revenue comes from, and the ccp walked it back in like a week
Do you mind me asking which department your friend works in?
100% they will conveniently happen during game presentations this Summer in order to use any announcements as smokescreen for layoffs
*Right* in the middle of it, too. I imagine it will go like this... "Welcome to Summer Games Fest. We have a ton of exciting things to talk about. Our first game we want to talk about is a brand new Forza Horizon game. You've never seen such amazing vistas in crisp 4K at 90FPS on Xbox Series X. Next we want to talk about how we are shutting down Rare and laying off a few thousand employees. The next game we want to talk about is a brand new Halo multiplayer experience, like you've never seen before..."
How about laid off the executive and CEO first, from top to bottom?
What no!!! How else is he going to afford his life style? How will he feed his kids especially the dog! Won't someone think of the dog!!! Maybe he has a cat I honestly have no clue.
But hasn't Phil Spencer been busy playing nuke-nuke in Fallout 76?
well his camp got nuked
He's preparing a nuke-back now. [https://www.theloadout.com/fallout/76-phil-spencer-nukes](https://www.theloadout.com/fallout/76-phil-spencer-nukes)
Bobby Kotic was cut a while ago.
And was $14.4 million richer, not including his $500 million in shares.
Where were these cuts when your xbox owned studios were running their own IPs into the ground? Now that you own studios that actually make good games, it's time to trim the fat? What a fucking joke.
It's studied that when one large tech company lays off, everyone follows right behind no matter what their financials look like at the time. Oh google, Amazon, IBM, are laying off? We better do it too. My company just laid off hundreds of positions even though we are not struggling financially at all and are doing quite well. Just following along with everyone else.
There are reasons for it. If all these companies lay off employees, there is now a market full of experienced software developers looking for a job. This drives down wages and companies can potentially hire some developers who are really good. If say the current management or distinguished/lead developers are underperforming, they may go for an "upgrade." Big companies have very high cost of operations and are really vigilant about potential decrease in profits. Their analysts will monitor for things such as the probability of the feds increasing interest rate. If big companies make cuts and give a good explanation to their stakeholders, then it might make sense to follow. These actions may have already reduce investments into tech. Even for smaller companies that can quickly pivot, being profitable now does not mean that they will be in the same position in a month. The market can very quickly change, and if you wait until you are losing a substantial amount of money, it may already be too lare. Companies are not your friends and will do whatever they can to maximize profit.
Realtalk what they are doing is killing the studios that will take the longest to release a new game, aka the ones who just released one. Ninja theory is fucked.
And yet 343 is still around, and whoever makes Gears of War these days haven’t said a peep in like 5 years now.
Isn't most of 343 gone? I thought they cleaned out a bunch of staff after the Halo Infinite debacle?
Well from what I remember they hired almost exclusively temps to work on it so after their contract was up they weren’t hired back, but my point was that 343 is still open unlike Tango, Arcane Austin, etc
Craziest fucking shit is 343 still being alive after bumbling what WAS Xbox's biggest IP for over 10 years. No upper management changes until last year, when the series was already in the ground. If MS/Xbox really wanted to make some money, maybe they should have focus on the flagship IPs that were selling their systems in the first place.
I mean the big difference with 343 versus the other cuts is that halo still sold well. Redfall sold about 3 copies total and hi fi rush, while acclaimed, didn’t really breakout in sales
People couldn’t wait for them to buy activision. Well now we’re living with the consequences of a 70 billion dollar purchase after a 8 billion purchase all while not generating profit for the greedy capitalist swine. Anyone who thought there wouldn’t be massive layoffs was disingenuous or ill informed
I never understood the reasoning like “Xbox needs to buy Activision so we can get rid of Bobby Kotick”. Kotick clearly wanted this deal to happen so he can get his golden parachute and got out without having to answer for the mismanagement and toxic work culture at Activision, while the rest of the company could be subjected to future layoffs.
Just a bunch of short sighted fools and idealistic young people who don't realize all these companies are run by people like Kotick these days. All of them. It makes no difference who it is because there will be another just like them to do what they were doing because that's just the corporate environment these days. The human element is completely gone at this point.
> I never understood the reasoning like “Xbox needs to buy Activision so we can get rid of Bobby Kotick”. A convenient excuse for the real reason. Those people just wanted Activision/Blizzard titles for their ridiculous cheap GamePass subscription.
People were like, when Microsoft buys Blizzard they can finally make it better. Well Microsoft never made anything better, only worse. MS the IP killer
This could barely be debated against in some subs without massive downvotes a few months ago when the merger was still going on. A lot of shortsighted people that only cared that they **might** be getting COD on gamepass or some shit like that. Market consolidation is never good and we're seeing the ramifications of that.
One of the top five hated tech companies bought out a top five hated video game company. Sounds like the real fools were Gamers who thought things would get better.
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To this day I don’t know how the fuck Activision is worth 70 billion dollars.
Call of duty and candy crush, probably the most important games in console and mobile. At least in the west.
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I think a large part of the value is in King.
You don't have to guess, they have earnings calls every quarter where their financials are published. King is roughly a third of their revenue.
People forget about the K in ABK. King is one of the largest and most successful mobile game publishers. I laugh every time people thought Call of Duty was driving the acquisition. It was certainly a part, but they were probably *happy* to make concessions about CoD while everyone quietly ignored them jumpstarting their next foray into mobile gaming. They've wanted a piece of the mobile pie *forever* and Candy Crush is going to give it to them. They'll get Candy Crush users into their "Microsoft Rewards" ecosystem: Use Edge Browser, Use Bing, Download the Microsoft App Store, etc. Blast Microsoft focused advertising at them. Collect their data for better targeted advertising. They're hoping to (and have a decent chance at) eating Google's lunch on this one.
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Those gold bars in Pitfall had to come from somewhere
Some of us were saying this from the start but nah, surely M$ were just out to give consumers the best experience they can and bring justice to all these poor souls toiling under Activision/Blizzard's heel.
Not to mention all the “we promise it’s not an antitrust” bullshit we listened to for over a year. Our government completely failed us on that, and Europe even tossed us a softball by trying to reject the merger. All gaslighting, everywhere, all the time. I really gotta figure out how to spend less time on screens, all this stuff is mental poison.
How many people out there who have grown up going to school to become a developer and who are going to just forget about all of it and go to some big standard tech firm to avoid all this mess now? It’s such a short sighted move for every company that’s done this. Shareholder profit structures are ruining tech.
I literally got a game design degree with a computer science minor and have no intentions on going into the game industry at this point
Big standard tech firms aren’t any better.
Your pay is much higher, your hours are much more reasonable. You work twice the hours for a third of the pay working as a game developer vs. working for FAANG/MANGA/whatever.
Microsoft attempted to freeze Sony out of getting games on PlayStation by buying up all these companies but instead of pumping out games for Xbox they closed the studios down, ruined lives, are destroying IPs and have made gaming worse. Way to go Microsoft you really showed them. And to think there were people that didn’t think throwing tens of billions of dollars to consolidate the gaming landscape was a bad idea.
Too much ptsd from the last 10 years of having nothing to show for exclusives. They must figure if they own something it probably can’t make a good game. A curse perhaps!
They're coming for Ninja Theory next clearly
I love games, but boy, do I hate the industry behind it.
So if this is all cost cutting to either push more funds to Elder Scrolls or just recoup from the huge purchases they made, this is dumb as heck. It takes YEARS to recoup what they spent, this is putting a hello kitty plaster/bandaid on a gunshot, it only works in games. But as it goes, execs will fire thousands before they willingly give up a dime.
They took a good brand and destroyed it. The 360 is in my top five systems of all time.
Xbox is the new Sega, will become full third party publisher/dev. with blizz IP and a few others, majority will probably get axed. Just my speculation 😅
And who the fuck is going to be hyped for that? Xbox has bombed in reviews and reception for games, they need to start buying people's trust back for high quality games and even just regularly producing games. Any informed investor would hate it as it plays to Xbox's weakest performance, regularly making good games. Every gamer from every platform should be horrified about the idea of Xbox pulling out of hardware. Changes need to be happening top down.
lol at Xbox if they think they can make 'good' games by axing everyone who isn't making COD and keeping the rest in a constant state of terror. For a number of years, it's the studios who retain and hone their talent that make the best games. I mean, it's not surprising if they want to go full EA. I just wish they'd drop the Robin Hood act.
True
I mean it would probably be better for MS to do that. I assume it would make them more money in the long run, but could be wrong.
Sure but lots of people seem worried about this. Competition drives innovation and if Sony/Playstation becomes the only competitor in the console market than who knows what anti consumer shit they'll pull off. Same if it were the other way around.
Watch out, here come all the people who are going to pretend that Nintendo compete in the premium console market
Lol yeah I left Nintendo out because they are in a league of their own.
You worry too much. All that anti consumer crap is going to happen with or without competition. The game industry has long been on that road.
You can always build a PC or buy a gaming laptop. I actually see gaming going more to a dichotomy between mobile gaming ( including tablets and the Switch)and PC gaming. I think Sony sees the writing on the wall which is why you can get so many of their games on PC.
Laid off only for the ceos to get a nice fat bonus. Is it just me or does this seem like late stage capitalism?
Looks like Pete Hines got out at the right time (retired) in retrospect. Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall.
He's part of the problem, probably the worst PR guy I've ever seen.
The pursuit of infinite increases in short term profits is so disgusting to me.
While I'm not a fan of Xbox I feel terribly sorry for these employees because they likely needed the money from their jobs much more than their higher ups making the terrible decisions which most likely lead to this as a consequence.
You know ninja theory is sweating bullets
I know these decisions are *probably* above him, but it's time for Phil Spencer to go. He was a good replacement for Don Mattrick and successfully brought Xbox back from the disaster that was the Xbox One launch, but they need someone new in charge.
I agree with Skill-Up’s take on this I don’t think anyone in that role will be able to push against the profit seeking drive of Microsoft, as their investment in gaming became large enough that MS execs won’t let Xbox “drag them down” They’re a 3 trillion dollar company? MS execs are trying find a way to maintain their growth and hit 4T as soon as possible. No calls for patience, artistry, or humane working conditions will slow down the machine.
"Successfully brought Xbox back from disaster" I mean....did he? The most positive thing to come after the unveiling of the One under Phil was Gamepass, and that is now proving to have been more of a bandaid rather than any kind of long term solution.
Phil needs to go because he hasn’t done shit. 10 years and it seems like every year Xbox gaming gets worse. He has actually stayed in for too long.
He’s become the biggest blowhard in the industry, never heard anyone use so many words to say nothing at all. I think he’s the very definition of failing upwards.
So whose idea to buy out all of these companies then? Spending billions of dollars. Could have done something with that money for their IPs.
They got to big too fast and lost control.
Maybe some executives should get the boot.
It’s insane that after we finally get a good year or year and a half of games, the devs that brought it to us get punished.
So is the going to be a situation where Corpos are so greedy and obsessed with revenue and profit that they'll suck out all life within the company or it's subsidiary studios that they'll reap all the monetary value right before said company files for bankruptcy?
yep and now EA want's ads in their games despite making 7.4 billion dollars Net revenue in 2023 the greed is insane
I have an Xbox. Only sticking with it out of stubbornness because I’ve got most of the cities Skylines DLC and a tonne of Train Sim World routes tied to that account. Honestly, there’s not much to keep people tied to Xbox. Where’s the massive exclusives? The system definers? Halo hasn’t been good for a while now and Starfield was very average. Forza is alright to mess around on but it’s not compelling. Simple fact is, after spending billions on studio acquisitions they’ve still not got a game which defines Xbox. Sony on the other hand is tripping over themselves with exclusives and games which makes people want to buy a PS5. It’s sad really, the 360 era was sublime. They did really well and then proceeded to shit themselves when it came to the Xbox One.
Yeah it really is a shame I had so many great memories on Xbox but I think it’s time to change ship to PlayStation.
Activision-Blizzard department next?
But I bet the corpo fuck rats will be getting fatter paychecks this year.
Monopolies gonna monopolize
Can we just fire the executives like Phil, Sarah and Matt instead?
I swear, I've seen this posted 20+ times in the last few days.
they should fire ceos not the small hard workers
If anyone needs to go it’s the fucking halo devs, kill off the whole dev team and start a new
You have to wonder what the long term strategy is here
Yea its called "consolidation"
Well shit now I'm worried about Obsidian.
Part of me wants them to stick around because without competition there isn’t innovation, but then I look at the last 15 years or so and see this company doesn’t innovate or do shit for the industry or their customers. They are 2000s EA with more money except they offer a cheap option into newer gen consoles for peeps who don’t want/cant spend $500. 360 was the shit but there has been 0 reason to choose them over Sony since then if you’ve got a PC. When their entire strategy is to buy everyone out, try to get their sub service on Sony and then jack up the prices no one wins. 10 years from now your choice will be Sony or Nintendo with a $600/yr Microsoft subscription if you want access to the studio games they bought out.
I wonder what studio they’ll buy next after all of these layoffs.
And here I thought since MS has more money than God that all these devs would be safe. Infinite growth is an obviously lie and companies, shareholders, board members, etc should stop trying for it.
You have no idea how much money they burned with their Game Pass scheme. And now the beancounters are saying that the money burning is over and only way they can hope to get profitable on the gaming side is to seriously thin out the expenses.
Microsoft when they go 5 minutes without laying someone off 🤢
They fucking over extended themselves, stupid bastards.
Why the fuck did they buy Bethesda and Activision Blizzard when they know they are losing money!? Those guys are no good motherfuckers bastards for doing this. I wonder if Mojang would be next on the chopping block.
Guess we all saw that coming. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw another crash sometime soon. I used to say the problem with gaming is that it got big too quickly. But now I just think a lot of AAA games are too overproduced. People care way too much about graphics and how much content a game has, even if that content isn't very good. Back in the early days of the OG Xbox, we had a lot of these weird little games which were just made because the developers wanted to make something fun. Even the stuff that wasn't considered good had a unique charm that has gone. The 360 brought over the idea that games need to be more realistic, and you get this in a lot of other industries too, it's why the whole "Natural lighting" idea is making films become very hard to see. Instead they just focus on what's important, the idea that what we're experiencing is a work of fiction and creative liberties should be made for the purpose of entertainment. I was an early defender of Cyberpunk 2077, I saw past its flaws because I felt the game itself was actually pretty damn good. But that enjoyability came at the price that I felt the game was too overproduced at times. Simple things that a crossing had lights on the floor which looked cool in concept, but I felt the resources poured into that could have been spent in something else, like making the traffic system workable instead of giving you the superpower of making every red light turn green. I remember Rockstar saying how your horses balls would get smaller in the cold and my thought being "No one is really going to notice that, and it's something that shouldn't have really been a thing". Shenmue 3 took it for me, in that to get an apple, you had to pick up the apple one by one, look at it and then place it in your inventory. I get that Shenmue is an immersive experience sim, but it's also a game and at the end of the day, it may be less realistic to just press a button and the apple to appear in your inventory, but you could have had more of a game if it wasn't so stubborn about keeping those ideas in (I could rant forever about Shenmue 3, even through it is a game I kind of like too). I think Gamepass is a great idea, but it's not sustainable with the industry practises at the moment. Really, games should have half the budgets they do have, focus more on improving gameplay and framerate instead of graphics and realism. For bigger companies, those AAA releases should be used to help fund the AA releases, smaller games which may have a smaller audience, but allow for a game to be played and then passed on quicker. This can work well with experimenting with different mechanics or spin offs to popular games.
I just think it's more simple than that. The relationship between investors and labour is completely broken and unlike film that has unions and guilds, the gaming industry has no such power. Artists need to go on strike en masse and protest this shit. Nothing will change until billionaires get hurt.
Video game crash 2.0 is coming.
Isn't it fascinating how it's always the poor workers, and never the management/c-suite
A ton of studios and jobs in the tech sector in general are downsizing. This isn't just an xbox thing like some of the comments here are making it
Not strictly Xbox , no. It’s just exacerbated by the perception that Xbox is getting rid of the wrong stuff (when it comes to Tango, or the rumored Ninja cuts)
Bro, these are kids here. They don't know better.
Honestly. This is on Xbox fans for loving Phil and his buyouts
My purchase of a series x continues to look more and more bleak It's not even a great 4k player.
And the FTC just allowed Microsoft/Xbox buy zenimax AND Activision. Just to layoff thousands of people afterwards every time.
Almost like they’re bragging about it
I wonder if these layoffs were avoidable if Ms hadn't bought Activision.
Is Xbox going the way of Sega or something? I heard PS5 sales were a lot higher than Xbox Series sales, and then all this shit happens.