Maybe I'm still annoyed, maybe I'm reading too many tweets like above, but I am now leaning towards doomed side. Not just their model, their whole bubble. It's gonna blow and they're gonna want out, I can see it.

Seventy billion on Acti. Fucking hell warra play, Phil

They've taken out the "feel the burn" comment now. Fucking fuck me.

My friend was at Lionhead when that happened. He was one of the artists working on the Fable franchise. He’s doing fine now, but was genuinely shocked that a marque studio under MS would get closed so quickly. I believe he thought he was there for life.

I’ve said it before on here, but the economics of Game Pass do not and cannot work, especially without the growth that was projected, and even with that I’m still not sure. The mistake was committing to day and date first party launches - it cannibalises the traditional sales pipeline in an unsustainable way.

The overall picture is more complex, but put simply if someone buys one month of Game Pass for c. £15 to play Starfield, they’ve taken in less revenue than a boxed game sale, while also needing to pay for third-party license deals and the development costs of other first party games. It doesn’t add up.

Then add in the costs of acquiring studios to theoretically lower overall development costs, while satisfying the shareholders….

LivDiv wrote:

I'm not sure they are doomed entirely but I'm going mega-pub. CoD, King, Blizzard staples, Todd-bortions, maybe id survive. Multi-plat with a year on Xbox first, becomes multi-plat day one, becomes GP just being Ubisoft+/EA Play rebranded as Xbox.

Ubisoft+/EA Play doesn't have day and date though, right?

Going down that route solves only some of the structural issues with this business model.

Oh good, it's Xbox doomed o'clock again!

When Xbox stop doing shit things the doomed cycle will stop.
They arent exactly flourishing are they?

Syph79 wrote:

That's interesting about Ubi+ Premium. I never really look at their games, so didn't know about that. Pricing model is similar to Game Pass, but there's no third parties to license, so I could see how that could work - albeit we don't yet know if it *is* working. From the outside, Ubi looks in a slump.

I only found out when looking into Star Wars Outlaws, so very recently.

Why arent we allowed to talk about it though? Weird.

I'm not stopping anyone. You are talking about it. Like you did a few weeks ago. Like you did a few weeks before that. And a few weeks before that

Paul the sparky wrote:

I'm not stopping anyone. You are talking about it. Like you did a few weeks ago. Like you did a few weeks before that. And a few weeks before that

They've literally just shuttered multiple studios though? Like in the past day or two.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Paul the sparky wrote:

I'm not stopping anyone. You are talking about it. Like you did a few weeks ago. Like you did a few weeks before that. And a few weeks before that

They've literally just shuttered multiple studios though? Like in the past day or two.

Which is shite from our perspective. But I'm sure from theirs it makes business sense. Unless you think more Redfalls are a better business strategy?

I said it yesterday that it's HiFi Rush which puzzles me. I'm not sure what the expectations were for that the way it was stealth released. Maybe it didn't sell well on PlayStation? It was one of the games ported over right?

monkey wrote:

Just modern global mega-capitalism now innit. If something isn't producing double digit growth, chuck it in the bin. Critical darlings, indie bollocks and near-misses all out. It's got to be the next Fortnite or get fucked.

I think by that logic we could expect them to keep investing new stuff across the board, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. The issue being that when something doesn’t stick, it goes straight in the bin. No second chances.

So if we’re doing modern global mega-capitalism we might get loads of interesting stuff from new devcos funded, but 99% of those devcos will get shut down before putting out a second or third game.

monkey wrote:

Just modern global mega-capitalism now innit. If something isn't producing double digit growth, chuck it in the bin. Critical darlings, indie bollocks and near-misses all out. It's got to be the next Fortnite or get fucked.

Aye. But the next Fortnite is an impossible job. And those B tier critical darlings look good in the Game Pass buffet.

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

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.

2 weeks time

regmcfly wrote:

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.

2 weeks time