General Games News
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yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.
Aren't the dev team behind that well established within the structure now? As opposed to the newer buys anyway.
I didn't play the first one and I'm not looking forward to this one either. Be interesting to see what happens, I honestly couldn't guess. It could flop and they stay on or it be a critical success and the axe falls -
Paul the sparky wrote:I did see that the head bloke had already left Tango, and a lot of the good devs had left the Arkane studio behind Redfall before the Bethesda acquisition. Dunno if all that is true but if it is then it makes a bit more sense I suppose
Mikami left Tango, yeah, and has since set up a new studio (Kamuy).
As for the "good" devs at Arkane...there was a lot of talent there (and still is), but many of the core peeps behind Prey, Arx Fatalis, Dishonoured, Dark Messiah etc went to a new Studio called Wolfeye, who made Weird West (an interesting, if very flawed, game). They're now teasing a spiritual successor to Prey.
The key guy that left was, arguably, Raphael Colantonio - who was Creative Director on Prey and Dark Messiah, and one of the leads of Dishonored. He's now President at Wolfeye.
Principal level designer on Weird West...former Arkane. Visual Director? Former Arkane. Many of the programmers? Former Arkane. It's not all ex-Arkane, but there were deffo a bunch of people that moved over after Prey: Mooncrash once Ralph left. -
It'll probably help to have an exclusive game that looks amazing. The first Hellblade looked incredible so I'm expecting big things from the sequel visually. The wow factor must still be a big draw for plenty of consumers, surely? Loads of YT channels focus on minute graphical details so a monstrously attractive 'only on Xbox' game should create some buzz.
The first game seemed pretty Martmitey but I liked it and I'm resubbing for HB2 if reviews are decent. -
Minnesänger wrote:Paul the sparky wrote:I did see that the head bloke had already left Tango, and a lot of the good devs had left the Arkane studio behind Redfall before the Bethesda acquisition. Dunno if all that is true but if it is then it makes a bit more sense I suppose
Mikami left Tango, yeah, and has since set up a new studio (Kamuy).
As for the "good" devs at Arkane...there was a lot of talent there (and still is), but many of the core peeps behind Prey, Arx Fatalis, Dishonoured, Dark Messiah etc went to a new Studio called Wolfeye, who made Weird West (an interesting, if very flawed, game). They're now teasing a spiritual successor to Prey.
The key guy that left was, arguably, Raphael Colantonio - who was Creative Director on Prey and Dark Messiah, and one of the leads of Dishonored. He's now President at Wolfeye.
Principal level designer on Weird West...former Arkane. Visual Director? Former Arkane. Many of the programmers? Former Arkane. It's not all ex-Arkane, but there were deffo a bunch of people that moved over after Prey: Mooncrash once Ralph left.
Good knowledge there.
Was the exodus before they got wind of the acquisition or a result of it? I can see the people with creative ambitions wanting to stay away for big corps to work on stuff like Weird West which otherwise wouldn't see the light of day -
Paul the sparky wrote:yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.
Aren't the dev team behind that well established within the structure now? As opposed to the newer buys anyway.
I didn't play the first one and I'm not looking forward to this one either. Be interesting to see what happens, I honestly couldn't guess. It could flop and they stay on or it be a critical success and the axe falls
Yeah. That’s kinda the crux of it isn’t it? We don’t know what constitutes a success internally. It could review really well but it’s just doubtful to me that it’s even going to nudge that dial on extra subs for its release so really what is it for? They were purchased right at the start of all this gp stuff and this is the first full new game they’ve put up in what, 4 years? Let’s say it gets pretty decent reviews and loads of people who have already stacked their gp play it but I don’t know what that means really? It won’t add any extra revenue, it’s a nice to have on the service and nowt more.
The whole system has never made sense to me after that initial buzz of wooo-hooo MS love us with all this free stuff they’re giving us. I just don’t get how it all hangs together. Surely they have to pivot towards charging again for their tent-pole titles? This game, properly managed through its dev, could have made its money back as a traditional release. Without that though how are all these studios able to justify their output.
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Go on then. Bet you a tenner to charity they're not
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Paul the sparky wrote:Was the exodus before they got wind of the acquisition or a result of it? I can see the people with creative ambitions wanting to stay away for big corps to work on stuff like Weird West which otherwise wouldn't see the light of day
Before, iirc.
Wolfeye were announced around 2019, Zenimax aquisition was 2021. Ralph spoke a bit at the time after Prey that he was kinda burnt out on AAA and he seemed unhappy at Zenimax and with Bethesda in general (the latter is what I took from it, not his statement. He was one of the ones who talked about how the Prey IP was forced on them from above and I think he felt the game was dealt a bad hand by the higher ups (it was) despite the quality (it was amazing). -
@Cinty yeah I'm forgetting that they were already part of the Bethesda machine. Probably saw that the next project was Redfall and didn't fancy working on an online shooter type thing
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Paul the sparky wrote:Go on then. Bet you a tenner to charity they're not
*shake* -
I don't see how Microsoft can't afford to let these smaller satellite teams just do their own creative things. Surely the Game Pass subs can allow for more smaller risks with the odd gem breaking through. Seems like they'd prefer all their eggs in fewer baskets
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For the removal of ambiguity, I do wanna say that I think these are bad closures of perfectly viable studios that could turn a reasonable profit and make great games, that have arisen from awful mismanagement and changes in strategy that the people laid off are in no way responsible for.
I just...know a bit about these studios and want to avoid misinfo, as I've seen the "most of the devs have left" narrative about a bit in relation to both Tango (not proven, we have no idea who if anyone has gone to Kamuy) and Arkane (somewhat true, but there was a LOT of talent left and Redfall was likely more a result of bad management at Zenimax and later MS than Arkane themselves). Not that i think the good/bad dev thing is overly useful as a metric of whether a team should be shuttered anyway.
Like Roll7, this seems cruel and unnecessary. -
Tameem quietly left/was pushed a while back. Question now is if they're better without him or not.afgavinstan wrote:Hellblade devs will be shut this time next year, bookmark this post. -
I have no idea. I figure it's best not to judge people on rumours.
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Yeah, the "all the talent had left" takes were getting a suspicious squint from me. Undoubtedly loads going into the decision and trying to work the puzzle out from only a handful of pieces is folly.
Definitely sucks that it's happened, definitely not the fault of the devs who have lost their jobs -
Fair. Feels dirty speculating such a thing and I apologise for that. Closure included.
Just all feels a bit grim just now. -
Aye, very grim. More and more devs finding out what happens when you're a line-item on a large corps budget sheet. Sucks.
Hopefully a bunch of new studios/small outfits get set up from it - but the execs and owners are all bailing with their golden parachutes. Kudos to any studio owner who resisted the bags of cash buyout offers from corps with an eye on continuing building their studio for steady employment, instead of cashing out for their own retirement. Also huge kudos to Nintendo, who are still setting the example. -
I saw the Moon head guy patting himself on the back last night, which I sort of get but I also thought it was a bit of a shitty thing to do at that time. Hopefully they take on a few of the cut staff. Their new game looks great and again isn't the type of thing you'd expect to come from the bigger corps
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djchump wrote:Aye, very grim. More and more devs finding out what happens when you're a line-item on a large corps budget sheet.
I think this is a big part of the problem.
A decent bit of profit for an indie or smaller publishing group becomes a blip on a spreadsheet of the mega corps. -
LivDiv wrote:djchump wrote:Aye, very grim. More and more devs finding out what happens when you're a line-item on a large corps budget sheet.
I think this is a big part of the problem.
A decent bit of profit for an indie or smaller publishing group becomes a blip on a spreadsheet of the mega corps.
Ideally trying something different which doesn't sell as much as you want should be a similarly sized blip, covered by more or less guaranteed profits elsewhere. But it doesn't seem to be about that and it's only about increasing those profits by all means necessary, including chopping off promising potential revenue streams of the future by binning off small studios.
Taken to extremes, they'd want us all subbed to the one Video Game and they can laser focus and trim costs to suit that, churning out content on a regular, balance sheet friendly interval. In reality, people want new shit, new experiences, a splash of creativity and variety.
The almost guaranteed earners of today (CoD and whatever mobile games are doing gangbusters) won't be around forever, then what are you going to do? -
Its all about the next boardroom meeting unfortunately.
The chart must always go up! -
Presumably this largely comes down to Game Pass not hitting its growth targets. Buy all these studios up with the idea that you'll have X million subs by the time they release a game, and when you don't, chop them off again.
It's not only a Microsoft issue, though. Industry targets are predicated on the notion of constant growth, because that's what capitalism and shareholders require, yet the industry is no longer expanding the way it has done for the last couple of decades.
And even when there's an unexpected growth spurt like there was under Covid, there's no room for realism that things will shrink again afterwards. Instead, corporations invest as if the growth would continue post-Covid, when that was clearly unlikely, and now it's cutback time.
If it was OK for corporations to just make a profit, none of this would be necessary. But it always has to be growing profit, regardless of the conditions, to satisfy shareholders. And development costs are so large now that triple-A budgets are only worthwhile if they lead to the next big thing, with all the GaaS/microtransaction potential that entails.
AI should become a big factor in reducing production costs. But either way, it feels like the industry is too big to succeed in its current form because it doesn't have space to grow into, and overall retraction feels inevitable. -
Thread from Harvey Smith on Arkane
https://twitter.com/Harvey1966/status/1787854732398145821?s=19
Bittersweet. -
JonB wrote:Presumably this largely comes down to Game Pass not hitting its growth targets. Buy all these studios up with the idea that you'll have X million subs by the time they release a game, and when you don't, chop them off again.
Said as much earlier, but it's deeper than that, because the problem isn't just linked to internal studios and the success of their projects.
If you scroll through the Recently Added tab on Game Pass, there's roughly 30 games, one of which was published by Microsoft (well, actually it was Blizzard). If the majority of games on the platform are not made by the platform holder, then the majority of the money is not going to the platform holder, it's going out the door in licensing fees.
I'm sure there's a reason I've not got big Phil's job, but i just can't see how something like this works and the more that Microsoft behaves this way, the more I believe my thinking on this is right. -
Syph79 wrote:If the majority of games on the platform are not made by the platform holder, then the majority of the money is not going to the platform holder, it's going out the door in licensing fees.
None of the dev costs are going out the door either though. Just that licensing fee.
I’m guessing that licensing content is much lower risk, but obviously also lower reward if it’s a hit.
It makes sense to have a mix of both, as demonstrated by most of the big TV streaming services. -
poprock wrote:
None of the dev costs are going out the door either though. Just that licensing fee. I’m guessing that licensing content is much lower risk, but obviously also lower reward if it’s a hit. It makes sense to have a mix of both, as demonstrated by most of the big TV streaming services.If the majority of games on the platform are not made by the platform holder, then the majority of the money is not going to the platform holder, it's going out the door in licensing fees.
That's fair enough, but there's also the internal dev costs to meet on a month to month basis. It's obviously not going to be 1:1, but some napkin calculations as food for thought (I'm doing this for me, as much as anyone else):
Game Pass ultimate is £13 per month. It includes EA Play, which is £7 per month to buy separately. Let's assume MS are getting it at a lower/reseller rate, so maybe £5 per month. That leaves £8 per subscriber, per month, to cover the licensing costs of those 30 new games (which includes EA titles), all the rest of the licensed content, plus the cost of any internal development for new titles for the platform.
Netflix is just reaching the point where it is spending over half of it outlay on its own content, rather than licensing it. So despite the fact that it's just 1/30 games that Microsoft are responsible for being added to Game Pass, let's be generous and take it that £4 of the remaining £8 is going to Microsoft directly - that's roughly £136m per month, or £1.6b for the year.
We can look at that and say, 'wow, that's £136m pounds per month'. But we also know that AAA games are regularly being developed at a cost of £200-300m and Microsoft has reportedly got 23 studios to maintain (albeit, 2 fewer now). Let's say each one is producing one £200m title (some will be more, some will be less), that is £4.6b in potential costs, over a 3 year period.
With those figures, the model is roughly breaking even. However, we're not taking into account the costs of running the service itself, or that if the calculation changed from £4 to Microsoft per month per subscriber, changed to £3, you'd be looking at a near £1bn loss over the same period. £2 per subscriber would be double that loss.
This is why they are aiming for 100m subscribers. -
Nathan Brown talking clearly and concisely about this, as usual.
https://newsletter.hitpoints.co/261-dishonoured/
Two good quotes
So: how did we get here? This cannot be ascribed merely to capitalism, to the growth-at-all-costs rot economy on which the majority of recent game-industry layoffs have rightly been blamed. These studios are tiny relative to an organisation of Microsoft’s bulk. They do not even qualify as a rounding error at a company that, in the first three months of this year, made almost $30m an hour in revenue. This cannot even be counted as virtue signalling to the Wall Street set, because it is simply not meaningful enough. You’ve got to lay off in the five figures to turn heads these days; only cruelty on the grandest of scales is enough to move the needle, and of course Microsoft, and the Xbox division, have already done that this year.With Hi-Fi Rush, the team at Tango Gameworks did everything right. They made a very good game, in a genre and an aesthetic that people do not readily associate with Xbox. It reviewed wonderfully, was received warmly by players, was a fixture in games-media end-of-year lists, won a GDC Award and took home a Bafta. It was one of a vanishingly small number of games to have given Game Pass what it needs to succeed. Its makers should be lionised; instead they have been Lionheaded. For Microsoft to admit it does not see a future role in the Xbox operation for a studio like Tango, and a game like Hi-Fi Rush, is ominous indeed, and staggeringly depressing for those of us who are in this thing for the games, rather than the money. -
I was just coming to post this. For those that don’t sub to him, you should.
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Grubb saying Perfect Dark is a mess.
Forgot that was something that was being worked on if I'm honest. The announcement trailer was 2020.
Bad luck if you've got that on your E3 not E3 bingo card.
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