eurogamer Xbox Struggles, Game Pass Stagnates, Studio Closures

[UltraMega]

Quote

Back to the main story. Xbox now had an abundance of studios and teams. It had a popular subscription service. It had two next-generation consoles, including the budget-priced Xbox Series S to attract a wider audience. And it was launching all its games on PC, too, to give it an even wider group of players to attract into Game Pass. But then the growth stopped. The Game Pass subscriber base stalled.
 

Microsoft had convinced as many Xbox players that it could to subscribe, so was now focused on getting PC players to sign-up. Some of this was due to the post-pandemic fall in engagement the games industry saw as people were no longer in lockdown at home. But also, there's the simple fact the subscription business may not appeal as widely as Microsoft had expected.

Why Xbox believes it must cut costs and close studios | Eurogamer.net

 

Lots of bad news for the Xbox brand lately. TLDR, Microsoft is not selling as many game pass subscriptions and games in general as it had hoped and is trying to cut costs as a result. To be fair, Sony has been doing a bit of the same lately.

 

One thing that really doesn't get brough up enough is the simple fact that Microsoft has not delivered a single game to really move the needle for Xbox/Game Pass since maybe MSFS2020. Every big budget game they have released has flopped hard due to simply being poor quality. Halo Infinite is an extremely one note Halo game with massive launch issues, Starfield was a major disappointment, The new Forza is so buggy and broken that Microsoft started dumping fake reviews onto Game Pass to hide how low it's score was. These articles blame all kinds of economic conditions and business hurdles but often fail to mention just how poorly Microsoft has delivered on just putting out a line-up of competent and functional games. I don't think they have a single current gen game that people hold in high regard outside of some smaller indie titles that get good reviews but not a lot of sales. 100 billion spent and not a single successful big budget game to show for it. From my perspective it seems like all they need to do is get their house in order to the point where they can release at least 2 successful big budget games a year. Heck, even a single game per year that actually stood out would be a huge improvement. It's crazy to me that people talk about the Xbox brand struggling without mentioning that there is not even a current gen Halo game almost 4 years into the current Xbox lifecycle. There's not even one in development as far as we know. I mean, we all probably assume there is, but nothing has been announced. That in and of itself is all you really need to know IMO when talking about the brand struggling. 

 

 

A bit of a side rant, I think this console generation has been a bit of a disaster because the hardware is just not compelling. PS5 and Xbox are so similar, they might as well be the same. Had they launched one year earlier, they wouldn't have come with half baked RT hardware that has every other developer bending over backward to try to force the feature into their games. No one would miss RT on consoles at all if it were not included. Had these consoles come out a year or two later, they could have launched with more practical RT hardware and probably some DLSS like hardware driven upscaling. But as is, these consoles really offer nothing to be excited about. The hardware is a little bit too weak to really handle UE5, but UE5 has taken over the game development industry. Close to 4 years since these consoles launched and still the most impressive tech to come out for them is the Matrix demo, with nothing else even getting close. We have games running crappy RT effects with native rendering going down as low as 540p at times, and then upscaled with FSR which was never designed to be pushed so hard. It's just a bit of a mess, and I think the failures of this gen have more to do with the hardware being badly timed and thus not able to work well with popular dev tools/UE5, and a huge lack of solid and interesting games coming out than they do with economic conditions or anything else. Perhaps when GTA6 comes out, hardware sales will start to catch up, but it seems like it's too little too late at this point, at least for current gen console hardware.  

 

/rant

Edited May 11 by UltraMega

[Slaughtahouse]

'We need smaller games,' says Xbox's Matt Booty, right after Microsoft shut down the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush—and was reportedly about to pitch a sequel | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

---

The mixed messages go up to 11.

 

I think it simply comes down to leadership needing to be held accountable for not defining a clear vision and sticking to it. You know, here's our vision for Xbox for the next 5 - 10 years, here are our goals to help us get there, and provide progress updates along the way. 

 

Seems like they're all over the place. Spend billions acquiring Zenimax/ Bethesda, Activision, and then do not provide the support and resources they really need to deliver more content at the pace Xbox needs for game pass. AAA games have 5 year+ long cycles at min.* They literally just got the ball rolling and then they kill their devs. Insane. 

 

We need more small indie, high profile games; Kills the studio that did exactly just that.

 

Nothing to do with marco economic "head winds" lol. 

Edited May 13 by Slaughtahouse
* Clarity

[UltraMega]

On 13/05/2024 at 07:38, Slaughtahouse said:

'We need smaller games,' says Xbox's Matt Booty, right after Microsoft shut down the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush—and was reportedly about to pitch a sequel | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

---

The mixed messages go up to 11.

 

I think it simply comes down to leadership needing to be held accountable for not defining a clear vision and sticking to it. You know, here's our vision for Xbox for the next 5 - 10 years, here are our goals to help us get there, and provide progress updates along the way. 

 

Seems like they're all over the place. Spend billions acquiring Zenimax/ Bethesda, Activision, and then do not provide the support and resources they really need to deliver more content at the pace Xbox needs for game pass. AAA games have 5 year+ long cycles at min.* They literally just got the ball rolling and then they kill their devs. Insane. 

 

We need more small indie, high profile games; Kills the studio that did exactly just that.

 

Nothing to do with marco economic "head winds" lol. 

 

I agree that their leadership on Xbox is poor, but their leadership wouldn't really matter if they had good games. People only need to talk about execs setting up a good vision for the brand when the games aren't there to do that on their own. 

 

Sony missed their most recent sales target as well. 

 

Just can't have a good gaming market without good games. Nintendo is doing well, and Nintendo has a healthy stream of good games. 

 

 

Just a note on the Hi-Fi Rush thing, according to a report I read the other day Hi-Fi Rush was developed by a small group within the dev team that made Ghostwire Tokyo. It wasn't a big project at all, John on Digital Foundry said the other day that Hi-Fi Rush had 1400 people work on it for 5 years, and that is wrong. It was a small project by a small group within a larger dev team. It seems entirely possible that Microsoft closed the studio but kept the 4-5 people that made Hi-Fi Rush. 

 

While it does seem confusing that they closed down a dev that made a highly acclaimed game, personally I played Ghostwire Tokyo and I tried Hi-Fi Rush. Ghostwire was a very "meh" game that didn't have a lot going on. The world was very copy paste and the gameplay was very simple and underwhelming. Hi-Fi Rush I just didn't like at all. I appreciate the visual design and how it did a good job nailing the comic book vibe, but I think it was seen as a hit mostly because it was a surprise release. It's not actually very fun to play IMO, and it's not a game that attracts many buyers. 

 

There was definitely a better way for Microsoft to handle this, but based on the two games the studio released recently, it doesn't really surprise me that they would get the axe. 

Edited May 15 by UltraMega

[Slaughtahouse]

On 14/05/2024 at 12:18, UltraMega said:

 

I agree that their leadership on Xbox is poor, but their leadership wouldn't really matter if they had good games. 

 

Yes but is it the chicken or the egg? The developers / studios are responsible for those games, but they typically get their funding from their partners. Those partners (publishers, sponsors etc.) have their own goals ($). That's usually where the execs jump in, clarify the vision to help the publishers, investors etc. know how the money will come. As they're the ones that are accountable at the end of the day. And its up to them to communicate that to the developers so they can pitch their games and show how they will meet those objectives ($, engagement, quality etc.). 

 

An example: I'm fairly confident the majority of the developers would have not wanted to make Halo Infinite a live service game. That's a game IMO that wasn't good enough to be released, as core features to the Halo brand, co-op, forge etc., were incomplete, but it was pushed out because it's the result (risk) Microsoft was willing to accept. 

 

Good games take time, money, and usually, clear direction. If there is constant change and no means of managing that effectively, the result is usually less than desirable. 

 

Either way, no matter what we think about it, what they could have done, should have done, what they're doing right, wrong... the trust with MS is severely damaged. It will take consistent, great games, to be released to bring back Xbox and they need to stop pivoting...

[UltraMega]

10 hours ago, Slaughtahouse said:

 

Yes but is it the chicken or the egg? The developers / studios are responsible for those games, but they typically get their funding from their partners. Those partners (publishers, sponsors etc.) have their own goals ($). That's usually where the execs jump in, clarify the vision to help the publishers, investors etc. know how the money will come. As they're the ones that are accountable at the end of the day. And its up to them to communicate that to the developers so they can pitch their games and show how they will meet those objectives ($, engagement, quality etc.). 

 

An example: I'm fairly confident the majority of the developers would have not wanted to make Halo Infinite a live service game. That's a game IMO that wasn't good enough to be released, as core features to the Halo brand, co-op, forge etc., were incomplete, but it was pushed out because it's the result (risk) Microsoft was willing to accept. 

 

Good games take time, money, and usually, clear direction. If there is constant change and no means of managing that effectively, the result is usually less than desirable. 

 

Either way, no matter what we think about it, what they could have done, should have done, what they're doing right, wrong... the trust with MS is severely damaged. It will take consistent, great games, to be released to bring back Xbox and they need to stop pivoting...

 

I definitely agree with your comments about halo infinite getting messed up by the higher ups. Counter point, I don't think that was the case with forza but the most recent forza game is still a disaster. 

 

Its definitely both. Lack of good games, and perhaps the management has contributed to that to some degree, maybe a large degree, but at the end of the day Microsoft wouldn't be in this position if they had enough good game to satisfy their customers, and there not just a little bit behind... their not even on the board right now. Trust would be irrelevant if the proof were there in the form of games. But I agree that given the lack of games currently, all there is to fall back on is trust and they are screwing that up spectacularly.