Microsoft’s Xbox Is Planning More Cuts After Studio Closings
Microsoft’s Xbox Is Planning More Cuts After Studio Closings
Without paywall: https://archive.ph/e7Fgt
What in the hell is the point of buying up a bunch of studios just to close them all. Microsoft turning into EA over here…
Money. They are buying up IP instead of making it on their own merit.
For what? They can't even use a lot of these IPs anymore. Fallout is now associated with 76 unless you're thinking of Obsidian. Bethesda as a whole is not trusted for big RPGs after Starfield. Blizzard is a shell of its old self, cutting interest in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. Id has been doing okay, but has had a lot of brain drain, and they definitely don't produce the "live service hits" MS appears to be looking for - just things people would love to see on Game Pass and discard. There's rumors even Call of Duty is struggling to retain relevance in new releases.
...We about to see Crash vs Spyro Autobattle Royale?
The reason is simply getting rid of competition.
C-suite bonuses ain't gonna pay themselves, you know?!
Mat Piscatella, executive director of analysis firm Circana, said that monthly, non-mobile, video-game subscription spending in the US “has been flat to low single-digit growth” since the middle of 2021.
Good. Now that we've established that the subscription-based videogame market is pretty much saturated with very little potential for growth, can we please stop shoveling out all this live service crap? It didn't work for Bioware, it didn't work for Rocksteady Studios and it didn't work for Arkane Austin. Stop it.
Some interesting info in this article. If game pass hasn't really paid off (in maintaining growth of new or recurring users), this may be an indication that they will make some changes to it.