Multiple Xbox Studios Reportedly In Active Negotiations With Microsoft To Avoid Closure

Seems like every time Microsoft has good press, it is immediately followed by something awful. This is horrible. Hope they are able to negotiate something.

Guys I'm starting to think they don't really know what they are doing over there anymore.

I kind of understand from a financial POV, none of these studios put out games that will have a strong ROI. Compulsion took forever to release a game and I was never going to be a strong seller.

My hope from this is
Sony buy Ninja Theory.
Nintendo put a strong stake in Double Fine
arkane find independance

I'm just waiting for the day that Rare follows suit. All heck well break loose at that point.

What is the logic behind companies buying up successful studios just to shut them down shortly after? It feels like they are deliberately throwing away money and burning decades of goodwill.

If this turns out to be the bloodbath it looks like, I am done. Why invest anything into an ecosystem that treats creative talent and loyal players as entirely disposable? This is the last time I give them a chance.

😂

P.S. mods, regarding "your comment is too short, please be more consttructive with your message" how about no

I've kept meaning to pick up South of Midnight but it's kind of just never been a convenient time for it. Too late to really mean anything I guess but this news makes me want to go ahead and take the plunge on it.

How are they going to shut down Ninja Theory when they just revealed Senua? This makes no sense to me

Xbox is killing it!

The fun in gaming I mean.

@Thesharkfromjaws Easy for you to say, you're a dolphin! Er, a shark? Definitely a marine species!

@Mz3player Ninja Theory did the development work, and now Xbox will publish and promote it. They'll collect the revenue and distribute it according to whatever their contract said.

@Friendly I see what you did there.

@Hammerbro Intellectual property. That's the real value these companies care about.

@Hammerbro They do it to kill off the competition. Back in the 2000s and 2010s before streaming become popular Channel 7 and 9 here used to buy the Australian broadcasting rights for multiple popular American shows and refused to air them until long after the seasons had finished or the shows had been cancelled late at night because they didn't like the shows but they didn't want other networks purchasing the rights and getting ratings with them and we would have to import the shows on DVD from America to see them and a lot of them didn't come out for months. Channel 9 aired the first half of the first season of 'Gotham' but the people in charge of the network didn't like the show so rather than sell the rights to another network or Foxtel (Pay TV) which wanted it they stopped airing it and it ended up becoming the most illegally downloaded show in Australia that year and by the time Channel 9 finally decided they were going to air it which was when the show was up to Season 3 in America they put it on late at night and it got next to no ratings because by that point everybody had either bought it on DVD or watched it illegally online.

Around the same time Sony Music and Univeral brought out a lot of popular record labels to wipe out their competition and they kept multiple Artists and Bands they didn't like under contract for years but wouldn't let them release any new singles or albums but they used their original deals with the previous management to keep them under contract so they couldn't go to another record label and have success and it killed most of their momentum.

This really ***** sucks man. Especially after the game has won so many awards.

Will break my heart if Compulsion goes under. I love South of Midnight. Was hoping for an eventual sequel. As much as I love gaming, it has for me gotten stagnant in many ways and seeing good studios go under or not get to make sequels, only exacerbates that feeling.

If Double Fine goes under, I will do something not nice.

@Mz3player
They don’t care they simply just don’t care, the current regime isn’t there to bring about some return to console dominance or whatever it is the wackjobs think far from it but it’s very easy to distract them so they feed that idea to them anyway while they crave that whole division up.

This breaks my heart. They deserve so much better than Microsoft. 😞

XBOX doesn't have their exclusive kids games on their machines anymore like during Kinect era.
XBOX soon will be melted away like Wicked Witch of the West. (Metaphor of XBOX being black and green color, like Wicked Witch of the West)

Now everyone says how bad Microsoft is.

But many studios were smaller before the pandemic. And with home entertainment booming (Animal Crossing as the most prominent example for video games), the number of employees in the industry grew. At the same time, AAA and AA games became more expensive to make. And now, international politics and the AI boom create price shocks, which sour the customers‘ buying mood.

The conclusion: There are too many studios and staff in this business, compared to what customers are willing to pay. The reduction in personnel is not finished yet.

But Microsoft on the other hand demonstrates how not to close studios, just a week after the announcement with trailer and all of the next, now probably dead game. „Selling“ studios in this climate are merely a (vidible) figleaf.