Perfect Dark Studio Head Issues Final Statement As He Leaves Team Xbox

That is the right way to leave a company.
Pure professional and dignified.
I salute you.

@themightyant Also, what he can blame Microsoft for? They literally gave him everything. Exciting location where huge amount of big studios are to poach devs from...
...when things went south, they gave them Certain Affinity as co-dev...
...when that went south they gave them Crystal Dynamics as co-dev...
Despite that nothing. After 8 years of funding.

The Initiative was a bad idea from the start. A new studio set up that does very little of its own development and partners with other studios who do all the work? Ask Keiji Inafune how well that goes. Now add to that numerous management shakeups, a protracted development cycle and the stress and expectations that come from developing so-called AAAA games? I'm amazed they lasted as long as they did, to be honest.

Why are so many games taking years with really drawn out progress, if any at all?

@somnambulance I feel like even Microsoft isn't stupid enough to not realise the backlash and ill sentiment it would face if it shut down Double Fine. Tim Schafer alone is just too beloved in the industry and by the people who play DF's games. If, hypothetically, Microsoft decided it didn't want Double Fine anymore, they best have a buyer lined up or set the studio up to go independent again.

I don't know if the guy holds any ill will, but this is pretty standard professional adult human behavior. At the very least if he wants to badmouth Xbox he'd do so privately, not publicly. Especially not publicly on the social media platform that Microsoft owns. That type of behavior wouldn't be helpful in searching for new job opportunities.

On another note, I thought the studio head at the iniatative changed a few times and the internal staff kept getting "rebooted"? Or was that the creative director?

@Lrapsody That's the most disappointing thing in gaming nowadays the time it takes for games to be made nowadays is far too long from AAA developers anyways its not worth it in most cases!

@somnambulance Double Fine is fine... Hehe, free pun.

But seriously Double Fine was purchased with Psychonauts 2 in hand and it did fantastically commercially and critically (all with Xbox as the publisher). And now, only four years later, they have another game coming and multiple other projects in the works.

Perfect Dark and Everwild were canceled after more than five years of development with very little progress and constant reboots. The Perfect Dark reboot devs came out and told us the trailer was fake, which isn't even that bad (most video game trailers are "doctored"). But the problem came when said dev was explaining how the team was JUST NOW making firm game design decisions, so they wouldn't be outright lying. That's insane. That was the iniatative's only game coming out (and that studio was started in 2018). If Double Fine goes 7 years without releasing ANYTHING and it looks like it'll take them longer still to get a game out, then yeah, you should be worried about them being closed. I mean yeah, it's always about money, but these studio closures also haven't been like a satanic culling.

If he was passionate about the games development, he would've been passionate about the game getting canceled, and self fired. When I read statements like this, I understand why MS did what they did now.

@Millionski
Probably but it’s the right way to do it.

What exactly is he proud of again? Wasting resources? It’s like starting a painting that took too long, never finished and has a ton of mistakes and being “well I’m proud of…. This.” And then throw it in storage unit to never be seen or heard of again. Makes no sense.

Dude literally spearheaded a project that was drawn out, likely never hit a target goal, and cost a company hundreds of millions... That's not something I'd brag about on my resume :/

"Pride in what we accomplished together"

Pride in...almost making a game? Like, the studio literally started one game that got cancelled. Not to crap on their hard work - I'm royally pissed about that cancellation - but there's not really anything that got accomplished.

@somnambulance oh, they would have got somewhere. But 8 years is a long time and there was no way either game was going to be the success they'd need to be to warrant the time and money spent on them. Like you said, incompetent management is probably what's to blame when you get down to it. Unless someone like Jason Schreier gets the skinny then we won't know for certain.

Am I the only one who thought the game looked mid as hell? Nothing about that trailer looked remotely interesting.

People need to let GoldenEye and Perfect Dark type of situations alone. That magic isn't getting recaptured.

@DonnieTACO nevermind its since been revealed that most of the trailer wasnt even actual gameplay.

Best of luck to the guy but theres probably lessons learned from this one.

@themightyant

It's a shame as the IDEA of The Initiative was great, to have smaller teams of veteran devs working on smaller faster more agile projects (more like how game dev used to be)

Wasn't the studio conceived from day one as a AAAA mega studio? The problem was their recruitment was not successful and they never got up to critical mass, and then started haemorrhaging employees.

The real question for me is why this recruitment failed so badly. Was that on them, or is that on Microsoft?

@somnambulance
I dont feel that way at all... I feel like it shows that Xbox isn't going to fund a games development for forever... and why should they?
Because they have trillions of dollars?
How do you think Microsoft got so much money... Not by wasting it on projects that are never going to release. If you don't have most of the game finished after 5 years, and there are obvious problems where things aren't turning around so Xbox should expect to have to wait at least 2 more years before getting a product to sell from a studio they are paying for... Sounds like they probably should have canceled these projects sooner.

They should have made that deal with Take 2.. they have zero plans of using the Perfect Dark IP again now that this project fizzled out. Stupid decision to not make the deal over a old defunct IP honestly.

@somnambulance
Tango was sold after they made their pitch for Hi Fi Rush 2, and asked for an increase in the studio size by 35%-45% as well as a timeline of 4-5 years to make the game.

Hi Fi Rush was a rad game, critically it was championed. But the game didn't sell for *****. Shadow dropping it like they did for sure had a big reason for why it didn't sell on Xbox, as well as being on Game Pass day 1. But it sold horribly on PS5 too. So it sounds like when the numbers were crunched, what they wanted (tango) to do with the sequel was just way out of budget for how the game preformed financially, not critically.

@Stoned_Patrol Yeah, the ask on HFR2 might have been too much. Evil Within 1&2 and Ghostwire Tokyo all sold about the same too. Hi-Fi Rush was their best reviewed game but it was very niche, and Tango was a cult darling but they weren't massively successful.

I think the other consideration was the logistics of running a Japanese studio so far removed from the rest of their studios. We hear a lot about MS studios assisting each other, lending their expertise to polish up some area of another studio's game, for instance Coalition tutoring in UE5. That's not really possible, or not as easy, when Tango was so isolated.

As much as MS wanted to have a Japanese presence at the start of this gen, I think they realized it's just never going to happen. It doesn't help that Shinji Mikami left and now you've lost a lot of that identity with John Johanas as studio lead.

@somnambulance Don't put too much stock into what MS says as far as how a game is hitting their metrics. They like to fluff up everything to make it look like a success. It's just PR imo

Definitely agree they need to step in sometimes, during development, before Redfall gets released, and before Initiative spends 8 years doing nothing. Not every studio is Obsidian

@Millionski That's funny because I'm exactly the opposite. If it's just a pure Xbox console, I'm out after 24 years of support. Only way they can get me to buy is if they give us a PC/console hybrid that has full access to Steam, GOG, etc... but still retains access to our existing Xbox libraries as well.

With everything going multiplatform, there no incentive to stay on Xbox going forward, especially when nothing Sony publishes comes to Xbox and everything is ending up on PC now. Buying an Xbox console now and intentionally limiting access to games is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Still can't believe they just canned this altogether. What a fail by a "AAAA" dev Microsoft...

Any employer, please make note of the name, Darrell Gallagher, and tread carefully in any possibility of hire. Strong chance the individual is incapable of producing on any kind of timescale. Even after years, no stable or satisfactory, product may be shown.

@somnambulance Tango wasn't just shut down from their performance though. They were probably more accurately on the chopping block because Xbox as a video game publisher didn't have the presence in Japan (or the east at all) to make them work. I mean you have to think about all the barriers associated. Xbox leadership is still based in Washington, USA that's a minimum 10 hour flight + a 16 (or 17 based on daylight savings) time difference + a language barrier + no other studios around so Tango can't support other studio projects easily and vice versa + it's not big ENOUGH to be the ONLY small Japanese studio they own + all the different regional challenges that'd come up + whatever else I'm missing cuz I'm not the business room when these decisions are being made. Ultimately the studio was sold to a South Korean publisher, and it's one Xbox has a great relationship with. And Microsoft even sold the IP for Hi-Fi Rush, and the new publisher is super interested in supporting that IP (to the point that they didn't even ask for Evil Within at the risk of it complicating the Hi Fi Rush deal). It is hard to say (we don't know), but Microsoft is a for profit business that will do what is best for its business. As consumers as gamers who enjoy games, we're directly against that. It's not really good or bad, it's just capitalism. Now there are publishers like Embracer who just make straight up bad business decisions and screw their owned studios over, and we just can't control that either. All that's to say, I think studios that don't cost more than they contribute are fine. The initiative contributed nothing and costs a ton, so they were closed. Tango contributed a lot, but just didn't work out for other reasons, and so they were sold to a good partner that could make better use of them.

@somnambulance On Perfect Dark and Everwild: I 100% agree that Xbox's fault here was in lying about the progress of the game and allowing work on it to continue for as long as it did. Everwild was mostly radio silent, so I'm not sure what was going on behind the scenes there; but Perfect Dark literally never sounded good. There were constant insider reports about the game being internally rebooted and creative directions changing and the like ENTIRE DEV STAFF being replaced. Despite all of that you constantly had Phil and Co saying, "Perfect Dark/Everwild/Whatever else is looking great and we're really excited to show you more later." every single time.

I think it's fair to say that Xbox is still learning how to properly manage studios. After the Xbox One era and all those studio closures they got much better at being supportive managers that try to positively cultivate studios. But they seem scared of being the whip and even more scared of just publicly letting out that games had to get canceled mid development. Part of it was also probably that Xbox only recently got a consistent pipeline, so they felt the need to drop all these games early (trailers) and for a long time they didn't have much but hopium.

Hopefully that's changing now. Xbox's statement with these cancelations was that they had 40 projects ongoing and as a publisher in terms of first party they're massive now. We're seeing games get announced within a year of release now (like Doom, Keeper, and Ninja Gaiden). This is all great. Hopefully they also learn that they need to be a whip sometimes and that managing studios means finding a balance between micromanaging and laissez-faire. I heard Matt Booty described as the "rich uncle" whose willing to support studios with more resources, but isn't good at managing and leading them to release quality games on time. That sure sounds like the exact issue that got Perfect Dark canceled and the studio closed. Had Xbox just said "This isn't working. Let's try something else. How about we shelve this game and you guys make a AA game FIRST to get a product out the door and figure out your game design style." like 2 or 3 years then something could've been salvaged. Heck, they could've even closed the iniatative earlier and moved those resources to other games like Fable or even Everwild (like maybe they could've killed one game earlier and figured out how to make the other work). It's something Xbox does need to learn.

@somnambulance Not much of a narrative, I'm saying with Tango that sales were probably "fine" if not "good" for Hi-Fi Rush as a AA game with critical success. They probably hit similar numbers to games like Pentiment and Hellblade 2. But the latter studios all have something else going for them revenue wise. Obsidian is doing fantastic releasing a variety of games (in size and genre) and Ninja Theory is making money off of their high tech facilities (like renting it out). And these studios also are able to support other studios around them and are easier to manage.

Companies are multinational, but supporting such a strategy still requires commiting resources and it has associated costs. I mean we've seen companies like Microsoft push for the return to office work, so clearly remote work tools aren't ideal for them. Xbox has like no management in Japan and barely any brand presence. This is in addition to language barriers and regional barriers. All of these are challenges that can be overcome by committing enough resources and building up the infrastructure, but that's the issue. For Microsoft it cost more to keep Tango running than they were getting out of Tango. That's all I'm saying.

Hi-Fi Rush WAS a critical success (that's not in question), and I don't think they lied about sales being "good". I think the problem is that sales weren't "good enough" for Tango specifically even after a multiplatform launch. Tango was a studio that for whatever reasons, Microsoft decided cost more to support than it was worth to them. We don't know exactly why, but I think based on what's out there it's not a stretch to say that the location added additional costs for Xbox specifically to manage. All other Xbox studios are western studios and many within reasonable traveling distance of one another, so they can support each other. Tango was a very different case. I'm not trying to make up a narrative, because we already know the answer: costs exceeded contributions to profit. I'm just suggesting some reasons why.

I'll take over development and help work on and fund the project someday, contact me at [email protected].