Ah man this is the worst possible outcome then, I do hope Arkane Studios are able to continue in some shape or form.
I would say this is far from the worst outcome. So far none of the studios has been shut down, and the 3200 number includes the people tha are leaving MS but going into the devested studios. Worst outcome would had been all the games getting canceled, these studios being shut down, and all 3200 jobs being simply fired.
@FraserG I asked Jez Gorden in threads if the 3200 job reductions include all the staff that will move into the 4 divested studios. He seems to think they are counted. So it's not 3200 jobs lost, just 3200 jobs no longer at MS.
Obviously there are some actual losses, especially in middle managment (or at least thats the only area specifically mentioned), and some of the divested studios might also reduce workforces, but it seems at least for now the sum of employees from those 4 studios are not "lost jobs" (yet).
At this point, if Xbox somehow sticks with disks even if they are literally Key Disks, they would one-up PlayStation big time. And he’ll, if they ever introduce that disk entitlement feature (and it also carries any associated Play Anywhere benefits) I might literally go back to buying physical games for Xbox.
If the rumor of digital entitlement from disks is true, at minimum Xbox should offer a disk device that is not only attachable to helix, but any PC.
At this point they may as well go the Nintendo Keycard route and treat the device as a “digital entitlement” redemption. Basically digital purchases we can trade.
I could use this and STILL hand a disk to a friend, permanently or temporarily. Still does not make losing access to disks in future gems any better. Hell, it might be worse! Digital purchases can’t be transferred. This can… until they take disks away.
This will make losing the option of buying a disk an even bigger loss.
Sounds they are leveraging the tech they shelved during the XBone launch fiasco.
This feature likely has been part of the developer agreement since the early alpha stages of the XBO, reason why they can likely do this for any XBO and XSX game but not for OG or 360.
It does sound this still opens ones physical library to theft, but it still sounds extremely convenient.
If one wants to make the entitlement permanent and theft proof, all one has to do is likely destroy the disk.
Been thinking about this, and if Xbox really wanted to compensate people for this price hike, they should just bundle some digital games with the purchase. I’m not saying anything big, but bundling a trip of South of Midnight, Avowed and Pentiment could go a long way. A new customer would have some games out of the box and still are likely to jump into GamePass.
@J_Mo_Money my point is not about Gears (PS5 owners didn’t really buy the Reloaded remake) but about the obsolete statements like “ps payers don’t like FPS” and “Xbox payers done buy RPGs”.
PS5 audience doesn't care for shooter games like xbox/pc. There also arent huge into multiplayer like those other audiences.
That used to be true in the p3 gen, maybe first half of ps4, but the reason Sony is so adamant on making their own service game success is precisely because they see that their players spend a largely disproportionate time playing online service games like CoD and Fortnite. PlayStation alone is 42% of CoD players.
@Banjo- I still really want to play it, but yea too many studios (not only Xbox) are taking too long to deliver gigantic games (gigantic in assets, some might still be 8 hour long games).
Studios need to go back to slimmer, more agile releases.
I read an average play through of SoM takes 12-15 hours. I wonder if they could have delivered the game earlier if it was aiming for a 7-8 hour target. That could had resulted in profitability AND they could had expanded the universe with sequels that do more asset reuse (you know, like the old days).
Not sure this is a fair take. Either way you look at this, it’s money you could have used for something else.
I have 298,716* points hoarded up and would still not use them to cover this overpriced title.
*I been hoarding these points casually since the start of the gen. Never once pursued quests intentionally because my time is not worth playing games I don’t cleave to play. I have never redeemed a penny either.
It was reported earlier that people in these studios had been given the green light to start looking for jobs while still working. Maybe some of these fall under that category. Do wonder if some have been offered an early severance package if they leave early.
@demian GTA has been the definition of “woke” from the get go. It’s literally about minorities on every single entry!
It’s always been mostly conservative grandmas that complain about the immorality of the games content because “think of the children 😭”. And sure you will find some more prudish “woke” people complain, but it’s never been them going to the news and filing literal lawsuits.
I hope they don’t just add “platinum” achievements whenever they get to it. I hope they come up with a better filtered scheme that categorizes completion. Like, work with TrueAchievements to separate things into online achievements, story achievements, challenges achievements and grant separate Mastery achievements for each of those categories in any given game.
@NishimaruX if you never lent a game, no clue why bother with physical since it also seems you never sell them either.
As for disks: advise you check all of them because optical disks rot and have nothing to do with how you treat them but luck of the draw. Manufacturing also can sometimes be cheap and not necessarily on every copy. Metal Gear Twin Snakes is infamous for very cheap pressing that resulted in high failure rate on the seal.
Funny enough: VHS was sturdy as hell. Especially given minor damage to tape just results on split second artifacts while playing back.
But hey, be condescending all you want as your disks rot in your perfect climate controlled celar.
have games I bought for $40 that now sell for over $300. I'm just saying any money I spent on digital games is gone forever. My PriceCharting acount is valued over 10k. My Steam accout is $0.
I have lost physical games to rot, theft, "lending", and more. I still see the appeal of physical media, it has advantages. Many. But pretending any option is "worthless" is extremely narrow minded.
Also: some people literally sell their steam accounts. Cant sell individual games, but can sell the entire thing. And some can fetch a nice amount if they have high sought delisted games in their libraries.
They wont even give people a disk with token key in it. They want to make sure NO ONE can resell their copies once they complete this single player mode.
I just hope they haven't pulled back on the comedy in a bid to appease those "modern audiences" who have no intention of buying the game.
Irony is its the other side that whines and forces topics to be toned down in this era, because even the existence of a character like Gay Tony these days would be bashed as "woke propaganda" by certain hardcore gamers.
Honestly, it depends on when it launches. If it launches 2027 it will cost more. If it launches later, there is a chance the market stabilizes by 2028.
I think it just means the game includes autodetection for handheld devices and defaults to an optimized performance profile that works best for performance/battery as well as that the game will work flawlessly without having to bring up the windows on-screen touch keyboard for inputs.
Im going to say that nope. Gamepass was working. At least all the way till 2022 we have hard numbers proving they were doing well, even before Starfield (game they said boosted numbers just not as much as they hoped).
The Gamepas model fell to pieces when they increased the price so far it was no longer in the "keep it active even if I'm not using it" zone for absolutely anyone. THAT destroyed it because at anything over $20, you may as well only pay for the month you see something you want to really play but dont want to pay for. THAT demolishes the business model.
After Pragmata, I am intrigued with any "combat system" (if you want to call it that) that relies mostly on puzles over raw combat so Charlatan is peeking my interest.
Faeland has me curious due to the art style but nothing I saw in the video makes me feel it has anything that makes it stand out other than that. Still will keep an eye out for it.
They already explained that the 3% is because of some studios bleeding money, but some others are making a fortune. If Xbox is doomed that only would affect Xbox users, and they are not as worried.
Yea, and its precisely some service games [Sea of Thieves, FO76, and most of ABK] that are the biggest earners. Plus, games many core gamers consider "niche" like Flight Sim and Age of Empires.
It is precisely the small studios Xbox was trying to grow (and new home-grown ones) that were/are sinking MS. And honestly: they would have been "alright" had GP not been nearly murdered by the 50% price hike.
I don't think it's so black and white. Until they bought ABK Xbox were making decent profit margins (around 12%) and were heading in the right direction. But Satya and Amy Hood spearheaded the ABK acquisition, and with it around 12,500 more staff that completely upset that balance.
I honestly don't think the ABK acquisition was what did them in, in fact, I think it's the only thing that kept Xbox from becoming insolvent the last two years.
It was a perfect storm of hell, it hit many others too but Xbox felt it the most because it was going through very aggressive growth. There was some mismanagement, for sure, but:
Consolidation of gaming into very few gargantuan service games (Fortnite, Roblox, Genshin Impact, CoD, etc) means most new gamers just hop on an already huge game drastically slowing down the profitability of one-shot high-budget titles.
The Post-Pandemic gaming market contraction [this entirely pushed the breaks on GP growth] entirely messing the balance sheet.
Exec level demands for a 30% profit margin average across the board compounded forcing the price hike in GP that resulted in millions of users lost and further killing the strategy of high risk projects.
Out of control inflation, and to put a nail in the coffin on top of all that: AI driven component cost crisis.
There is a lot more, but I honestly think if they didn't own ABK, Xbox would have likely been considered insolvent by Christmas 2025.
Personally, I think it was GP price hike that doomed Xbox in a way that can't be reversed without this drastic reset.
@Banjo- Honestly I don't remember a time where financial talks were not part of the gaming fandom, likely because I first remember gaming since before the Atari driven video game crash. Even as a child without internet in the 80s, industry drama has always been a part of the gaming news cycle.
My most anticipated game from Xbox (until Elder Scrolls) is Fable. But would Xbox have even greenlighted a new Fable after so long if they were in this dire financial position 5+ years ago? Probably not. The business side of things directly impacts the games we get to play, that's just one reason why it matters.
We also got to consider lots of these titles got greenlit before ABK and before Bethesda acquisition (even if revealed after either of these). Xbox was in a content crisis, and they needed all the content they could get so they were greenlighting a ton of risky bets. Plus, at the time, GP growth seemed infinite.
There were definitively many managerial mistakes, especially giving too much freedom to too many of these studios. That resulted in AAA budgets for A and AA games. I won't ever badmouth Phil, Xbox would not even exist today without his work, but got to say I don't think he was ready to be the bad guy and as a leader of such a large organization... sometimes you got to be the bad guy. I don't mean shut down stuff, but you got to go in there and say the deadline is final because every year of development adds exponentially unrealistic sales expectations to any project.
@Skinny-Pete
Really getting sick of this whole political side of gaming to be honest I don't care anymore all these companies make decisions it is what it is I don't care about the stipulations when where who.
That's fair. Not everyone likes, nor needs, to see how the sausage is made so long they get to eat it. For many, finding out how the sausage is made just ruins the whole meal.
@TheFakulty Depends on the buyer. Sega has been all in on day one GP titles and has seen plenty of success with the program. So has Asobo.
Many see GP as a liability, but others see it as a guarantee that even if the game sells zero copies it will be making one lump sum of cash. They just need to worry about keeping the production budget under that sum to make the acquisition worth their time.
I think this explains the whole "why did they make Seuna multiplat if they doing exclusives and it was not previously announced?" thing. They did not want to let us know "case by case" basis in this context meant "because we are not keeping them and want to sell them off".
@fatpunkslim
Honestly, I don’t believe any of these rumors. Maybe it was considered at some point, but I really don’t think it’s relevant anymore. The game has already been announced for Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere.
I actually think that makes even more sense. It's a selling pitch. The studio can use that as one of it's selling points. Whomever buys them will have to fund the remainder of the development, but they already got a guaranteed paycheck from the Game Pass deal so long they willing to take the risk the game takes longer to finish than expected or, worst case, is canceled. Also: it's already had a big marketting drop creating public awareness.
Hell, I would say that this lines it up perfectly to make Sega [one of Xbox bigest GP day one partner's] it's most likely buyer.
@ILuvGames If there was any actual facts behind those claims, you can bet Capcom, Sega, and Asobo (among many others) would not keep working with Xbox to launch games like Path of the Goddess, Persona and Plague Tale on the service day one.
Forza is selling that well simply because it's a game people wanted and a region people begged forever.
If GP was able to hurt it, it would have, especially given the price of GP dropped a month earlier (been 2 months already since the price drop, Forza came out last month)
@ILuvGames I think I only ever seen a couple dev ever said gamepass was bad for their business, and I don't think either had games in game pass.
GP literally was sustaining the overbudgeted studio developments. The $30 price hike caused so many subscription losses that it literally destroyed the entire internal finances that allowed those studios to exist at all.
Look at Forza Horizon. 6+ million sales. Launching on GPU day 1.
As for Halo, it's just the campaign. PS5 has become a service game console. Even their first party exclusives are disappointing Sony. Just like Gears Reloaded didnt really sell well on PS5, I expect Halo to sell most of it's copies on Xbox and Steam.
Maybe now that they have the content they can drop the Gamepass and start to build up their platform again
Maybe I missed something (didnt read everything) but why would they drop GP? I still have to see anyone prove its doing poorly as a program for MS.
Stop making niche games and making games that will actually sell hardware and turn heads.
Niche games should not go away, they just need to be budgeted accordingly. With the time they spent developing Kilm (assuming since the release of Psychonauts 2) there is no way that game was absurdly over-budget. Grounded is one of their biggest recent hits and it's one of the most niche games. Same goes for Flight Simulator.
Hellblade 1 was successful with a shoestring budget, why would they allow the sequel such a ridiculously long development time? It seems that studio had finally streamlined their pipelne, though... sad that it seems they wont get to see the payoff. If they managed to ship Seuna at such a quick turnaround, its likely they would had managed to get back on the green.
I'll be the first to critisize Xbox when it needs it, but far from a hater. I really think GP is key to xbox's future, and that niche titles are also essential. They just need to be controlled. Every studio should be given some freedom to engage in side projects like Grounded or a Pentiment, they just cant be the things eating their full budget.
Only reason I feel GPU should likely go away is the price is too high. Past $20, the sticker shock just becomes a deterent to the whole service, and I honestly think even lower tiers suffer due to the induced perception. If the monthly fee cant go down, maybe they would be better just with the $14 premium tier. Just my take, though.
Going to put my armchair analyst sunhat for a second here:
GamePass is not an issue, I would not be shocked if they eventually shuttered day one and only keep the Premium tier (games 6-12 months after launch) but really doubt that's the issue.
I think many of us seen the Windows Central article (if no, link here) on what the real issue was: some studios were running up to 40% profit margins but others at a loss. Too many, likely.
This issue, sadly, is a management one. Too many studios were allowed to run experimental games, many of them A or AA games but eating up AAA budgets. There were also too many bets that never even made it out, and those canselations are recent. Those cancelations means losses that wont ever be monetized in any way, and contribute hard into that drastic drop in profit margin. Too many risky bets at the same time. Many of them likely greenlit before the ABK or Bethesda aquisitions when MS was desperate for content. Most of these should had been canceled earlier, one by one, instead of eating so many writeoffs at once.
If it was not for grounded (a game that was made with a skeleton crew) Obsidian would be in the list of potential closures. Greenlighting not one but two AA games from them at AAA budgets (Avowed and Outer Worlds 2) was also a mistake in hindsight. Then again: it was sort of needed at the time.
As for the exclusivity thing, I seen a lot of fanboys [and editors, you know who] pretending no PS5 sales will doom these titles. PS5 did not save Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight and didn't even boost the Gears Reloaded release. All it has done is cannibalize Xbox sales, attention and reputation. Only games that have benefitted from PS5 audiences have been service games: Forza, Grounded, Sea of Thieves and Elder Scrolls Online being added to PS+ library.
PlayStation just does not have the audience to save an over-budgeted game. Console exclusives should work for them, but they need to get their budgets back under control.
@themightyant No corporation should be taken extremely to heart. Let's not ignore that Sony too has done tons of shifts, they just dont talk as much. But we seen them, via actions, destroy their first party studio output in search for mythical game service gold mines, we seen them jump in and out of pc game ports, we seen them cold bloodly shut down studios, we seen thems swear they would not need to increase costs for a year only to do so in months or just weeks after such statements.
Market changes, and all corporations react to those changes. Often in stupid ways. MS execs just like to talk too much, and that seems to be the one thing Asha has decided not to change among all this chaos.
@Enriesto you obviously didn’t ask me but I see 3 paths with option c being highly unlikely:
A) studio heads (former owners many of them) buy the studios back B) Xbox lets them go independent but on contractual hooks they must deliver certain number of games for Xbox. They might be allowed to pitch but more likely it would be assignments. Think this is what happened with Toys for Bob. C) MS spins them off independently but keeps ownership. No more funding so they need to figure how to fund themselves and own nothing they make.
I'm going to join the Double Fine prediction but will throw an unexpected second: Turn 10 Studios. I expect it to be shuttered and a skeleton team (the team specifically working on the engine) being absorbed into either Playground Games (to maintain the engine) or World's Edge because they are in the same city (Redmond, Washington) and would be minimal disruption to the employees they keep.
Compulsion games is also likely on risky waters unless they manage to turn on a dime and make a South of Midnight sequel fast enough that its budget is minuscule.
Sad not to see Bullet Witch on the list, so few fans of that one. I agree on every transformers and Spider-Man game and also cross my fingers on all Wolverine/X-Men/Marvel games (Deadpool included, even if there is a delisted XBO version that of course I own physically).
Surprised about Skylanders but I guess they were loved by many (reason they were so big) so makes sense. I do think these need more of a remaster approach that no longer requires plastic toys and can work with just some drop down menu (or dlc if they greedy).
Really agree with most the non-franchize stuff, although dont care much for any game that alredy got remasters like Lolipop Chainsaw (I realize the hypocrisy since I want two versions of Deadpool).
@Millionski I’m not defending a move to close down studios but let’s not pretend this is only Xbox. PlayStation has been muttering decades of legacy via studio closures. Ubisoft just announced studio closures. EA basically does it for sport!
The economy is bad, and it’s highlighting the unsustainable nature of modern game development budgets. For its size, I got to admit Xbox has been relatively restrained, but they could learn a thing or two from how Nintendo manages their budgets.
Profit margins at the Xbox gaming division have been between 10 percent and 20 percent over the past six years. Court documents revealed Xbox had a 12 percent profit margin through the first nine months of the 2022 fiscal year
Personally I believe the recent profitability drop is dual sourced:
Hardware costs have demolished the entire console business models of selling hardware at razor sharp margins with hopes of late-cycle margin boosts and store 30% shares
Dev costs skyrocketing
And no, Sony didn’t actually plan for this. Maybe they bought themselves a few extra months, but not the year many daydreamingly parroted, as proven by the insane PS5 hardware and subscription price hikes.
Even Nintendo is being hit, despite them being likely the only developer that seems to not allow their game budgets to hyper-inflate in search of photorealism.
At minimum, all devs (not only first party ones) need to become more agile. 6-8 year dev cycles is unsustainable. A flagship title or two, sure, but all publishers need to stop the pursuit of 40+ hour campaigns, massive service games, and photorealistic fidelity in every damned game.
Not to mention the constant 100% world rebuilding! Not every coffee mug needs to be remodeled from scratch every sequel!
I have hopes on Xbox mostly due to Senua coming so soon after Hellblade 2 means at least one studio is learning to practice asset reuse.
@Banjo- the acquisition took place two months after everyone was given their firing notices. Even if we were to accept that they still were still working for two while months and operations ongoing, this still does not change the fact that Xbox management didn’t go out of their way to find them a new owner. The new owner jumped in to try convince them to sell after the fact.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Or maybe that some people just have different tastes?
I never played Redfall (mostly because of its launch form, I might play it someday since they eventually released an offline mode) but I played plenty of games people love to insist "suck" and I still honestly love (like every single Assassin's Creed game.)
Comments 4,223
Re: Xbox Announces 3,200 Job Losses And Four Studio Departures
@PartyMarty
I would say this is far from the worst outcome. So far none of the studios has been shut down, and the 3200 number includes the people tha are leaving MS but going into the devested studios. Worst outcome would had been all the games getting canceled, these studios being shut down, and all 3200 jobs being simply fired.
Re: Xbox Announces 3,200 Job Losses And Four Studio Departures
@FraserG I asked Jez Gorden in threads if the 3200 job reductions include all the staff that will move into the 4 divested studios. He seems to think they are counted. So it's not 3200 jobs lost, just 3200 jobs no longer at MS.
Obviously there are some actual losses, especially in middle managment (or at least thats the only area specifically mentioned), and some of the divested studios might also reduce workforces, but it seems at least for now the sum of employees from those 4 studios are not "lost jobs" (yet).
Re: Halo Studios Makes A Point Of Highlighting 'Physical Discs' For Campaign Evolved
At this point, if Xbox somehow sticks with disks even if they are literally Key Disks, they would one-up PlayStation big time. And he’ll, if they ever introduce that disk entitlement feature (and it also carries any associated Play Anywhere benefits) I might literally go back to buying physical games for Xbox.
Re: 'Xbox, Now's Your Chance' - Fans Debate Whether Microsoft Should 'Take Advantage' Of Physical Games
If the rumor of digital entitlement from disks is true, at minimum Xbox should offer a disk device that is not only attachable to helix, but any PC.
At this point they may as well go the Nintendo Keycard route and treat the device as a “digital entitlement” redemption. Basically digital purchases we can trade.
Re: Report: Xbox Disc-To-Digital Feature Will Allow You To Digitise Your Physical Collection
@oopsiezz this is not the same as “all digital”.
I could use this and STILL hand a disk to a friend, permanently or temporarily. Still does not make losing access to disks in future gems any better. Hell, it might be worse! Digital purchases can’t be transferred. This can… until they take disks away.
This will make losing the option of buying a disk an even bigger loss.
Re: Report: Xbox Disc-To-Digital Feature Will Allow You To Digitise Your Physical Collection
Sounds they are leveraging the tech they shelved during the XBone launch fiasco.
This feature likely has been part of the developer agreement since the early alpha stages of the XBO, reason why they can likely do this for any XBO and XSX game but not for OG or 360.
It does sound this still opens ones physical library to theft, but it still sounds extremely convenient.
If one wants to make the entitlement permanent and theft proof, all one has to do is likely destroy the disk.
Re: As PlayStation Announces The End Of Disc-Based Releases, Will Xbox Follow Suit?
Will Xbox do the same? Yes, they will.
It’s not as bad for Xbox as they have a slightly better track record for game preservation and respecting our purchases.
Still a frustrating thing that second hand markets will be entirely terminated.
Re: Poll: How Much Did You Pay For Your Xbox Series X|S Console?
I have 3.
First one was at launch and paid MSRP 499 for it.
I later got a Series S on a wild Target Christmas sale for 200 and it came with a 50 gift card I think, so technically 150.
The last one was. series X Diablo bundle that I got on sale for 399 I think.
Re: Xbox Announces Worldwide Price Increases For Series X|S Consoles
Been thinking about this, and if Xbox really wanted to compensate people for this price hike, they should just bundle some digital games with the purchase. I’m not saying anything big, but bundling a trip of South of Midnight, Avowed and Pentiment could go a long way. A new customer would have some games out of the box and still are likely to jump into GamePass.
Re: Xbox Announces Worldwide Price Increases For Series X|S Consoles
@J_Mo_Money my point is not about Gears (PS5 owners didn’t really buy the Reloaded remake) but about the obsolete statements like “ps payers don’t like FPS” and “Xbox payers done buy RPGs”.
It’s all legacy data from the PS3/360 generation.
Re: Xbox Announces Worldwide Price Increases For Series X|S Consoles
@J_Mo_Money
That used to be true in the p3 gen, maybe first half of ps4, but the reason Sony is so adamant on making their own service game success is precisely because they see that their players spend a largely disproportionate time playing online service games like CoD and Fortnite. PlayStation alone is 42% of CoD players.
Re: Xbox Announces Worldwide Price Increases For Series X|S Consoles
Pack your stuff, gaming is over.
Re: Xbox Layoffs Seemingly Begin As Devs Reveal They're 'Open To Work'
@Banjo- I still really want to play it, but yea too many studios (not only Xbox) are taking too long to deliver gigantic games (gigantic in assets, some might still be 8 hour long games).
Studios need to go back to slimmer, more agile releases.
I read an average play through of SoM takes 12-15 hours. I wonder if they could have delivered the game earlier if it was aiming for a 7-8 hour target. That could had resulted in profitability AND they could had expanded the universe with sequels that do more asset reuse (you know, like the old days).
Re: PSA: Xbox Rewards Allows You To Reduce The Price Of GTA 6
Not sure this is a fair take. Either way you look at this, it’s money you could have used for something else.
I have 298,716* points hoarded up and would still not use them to cover this overpriced title.
*I been hoarding these points casually since the start of the gen. Never once pursued quests intentionally because my time is not worth playing games I don’t cleave to play. I have never redeemed a penny either.
Re: Xbox Layoffs Seemingly Begin As Devs Reveal They're 'Open To Work'
It was reported earlier that people in these studios had been given the green light to start looking for jobs while still working. Maybe some of these fall under that category. Do wonder if some have been offered an early severance package if they leave early.
Re: GTA 6 Costs $80, Described As A 'Single-Player Experience'
@demian GTA has been the definition of “woke” from the get go. It’s literally about minorities on every single entry!
It’s always been mostly conservative grandmas that complain about the immorality of the games content because “think of the children 😭”. And sure you will find some more prudish “woke” people complain, but it’s never been them going to the news and filing literal lawsuits.
Re: Four New Console Features Begin Rolling Out Today For Xbox Insiders (June 24)
I hope they don’t just add “platinum” achievements whenever they get to it. I hope they come up with a better filtered scheme that categorizes completion. Like, work with TrueAchievements to separate things into online achievements, story achievements, challenges achievements and grant separate Mastery achievements for each of those categories in any given game.
Re: Eek, GTA 6's 'Physical Edition' Is A Download Code In A Box
@NishimaruX if you never lent a game, no clue why bother with physical since it also seems you never sell them either.
As for disks: advise you check all of them because optical disks rot and have nothing to do with how you treat them but luck of the draw. Manufacturing also can sometimes be cheap and not necessarily on every copy. Metal Gear Twin Snakes is infamous for very cheap pressing that resulted in high failure rate on the seal.
Funny enough: VHS was sturdy as hell. Especially given minor damage to tape just results on split second artifacts while playing back.
But hey, be condescending all you want as your disks rot in your perfect climate controlled celar.
Re: Eek, GTA 6's 'Physical Edition' Is A Download Code In A Box
@M20B25
I have lost physical games to rot, theft, "lending", and more. I still see the appeal of physical media, it has advantages. Many. But pretending any option is "worthless" is extremely narrow minded.
Also: some people literally sell their steam accounts. Cant sell individual games, but can sell the entire thing. And some can fetch a nice amount if they have high sought delisted games in their libraries.
Re: Eek, GTA 6's 'Physical Edition' Is A Download Code In A Box
They wont even give people a disk with token key in it. They want to make sure NO ONE can resell their copies once they complete this single player mode.
Re: 'Scottish Dynasty Warriors' Tears Of Metal Is Marching To Xbox Game Pass Next Month
Sounds interesting but ping me up when it actually launches.
Re: GTA 6 Costs $80, Described As A 'Single-Player Experience'
@NishimaruX
Irony is its the other side that whines and forces topics to be toned down in this era, because even the existence of a character like Gay Tony these days would be bashed as "woke propaganda" by certain hardcore gamers.
Re: What Does A $1049 Steam Machine Mean For Xbox's Project Helix?
Honestly, it depends on when it launches. If it launches 2027 it will cost more. If it launches later, there is a chance the market stabilizes by 2028.
Re: Microsoft Adds "Xbox Handheld" Logo To Xbox Store Pages, But What Does It Mean?
I think it just means the game includes autodetection for handheld devices and defaults to an optimized performance profile that works best for performance/battery as well as that the game will work flawlessly without having to bring up the windows on-screen touch keyboard for inputs.
Re: "The Catalogue Was Just Nowhere Near Good Enough" - Ori Creator Likens Xbox Game Pass To A "Slop Factory"
@J_Mo_Money These people likely would had sheered on Nintendo when it was suing Blockbuster to ban video game rentals back in the day had they seen it hit the news in their lifetime.
At this pont I'm just hitting ignore on anyone parroting this "gamepass is killing the industry" nonsense.
Re: "The Catalogue Was Just Nowhere Near Good Enough" - Ori Creator Likens Xbox Game Pass To A "Slop Factory"
Im going to say that nope. Gamepass was working. At least all the way till 2022 we have hard numbers proving they were doing well, even before Starfield (game they said boosted numbers just not as much as they hoped).
The Gamepas model fell to pieces when they increased the price so far it was no longer in the "keep it active even if I'm not using it" zone for absolutely anyone. THAT destroyed it because at anything over $20, you may as well only pay for the month you see something you want to really play but dont want to pay for. THAT demolishes the business model.
Re: These Are The 10 Most Popular Games In The Xbox Demo Fest 2026
After Pragmata, I am intrigued with any "combat system" (if you want to call it that) that relies mostly on puzles over raw combat so Charlatan is peeking my interest.
Faeland has me curious due to the art style but nothing I saw in the video makes me feel it has anything that makes it stand out other than that. Still will keep an eye out for it.
Re: 'It's Going To Be Pretty Brutal' - Jason Schreier Reveals More On Upcoming Xbox Layoffs
@Banjo-
Yea, and its precisely some service games [Sea of Thieves, FO76, and most of ABK] that are the biggest earners. Plus, games many core gamers consider "niche" like Flight Sim and Age of Empires.
It is precisely the small studios Xbox was trying to grow (and new home-grown ones) that were/are sinking MS. And honestly: they would have been "alright" had GP not been nearly murdered by the 50% price hike.
Re: 'It's Going To Be Pretty Brutal' - Jason Schreier Reveals More On Upcoming Xbox Layoffs
@themightyant
I honestly don't think the ABK acquisition was what did them in, in fact, I think it's the only thing that kept Xbox from becoming insolvent the last two years.
It was a perfect storm of hell, it hit many others too but Xbox felt it the most because it was going through very aggressive growth. There was some mismanagement, for sure, but:
There is a lot more, but I honestly think if they didn't own ABK, Xbox would have likely been considered insolvent by Christmas 2025.
Personally, I think it was GP price hike that doomed Xbox in a way that can't be reversed without this drastic reset.
Re: Impressive New Xbox Game Loses Its Entire Dev Team After A Month
@Boogaloo_Jenkins did this game take 7 years to make!?
Re: Report: Xbox Already Planned To 'Sunset Or Split With' Ninja Theory Before Senua Reveal
@Banjo- Honestly I don't remember a time where financial talks were not part of the gaming fandom, likely because I first remember gaming since before the Atari driven video game crash. Even as a child without internet in the 80s, industry drama has always been a part of the gaming news cycle.
Re: Impressive New Xbox Game Loses Its Entire Dev Team After A Month
I did not even know this game existed until now, but queue up the "see, proof GamePass kills games" posters.
I do wonder how bad a game must do to be disapointing if the team was just 19 devs, though (if I read the above correctly).
Re: Report: Xbox Already Planned To 'Sunset Or Split With' Ninja Theory Before Senua Reveal
@themightyant
We also got to consider lots of these titles got greenlit before ABK and before Bethesda acquisition (even if revealed after either of these). Xbox was in a content crisis, and they needed all the content they could get so they were greenlighting a ton of risky bets. Plus, at the time, GP growth seemed infinite.
There were definitively many managerial mistakes, especially giving too much freedom to too many of these studios. That resulted in AAA budgets for A and AA games. I won't ever badmouth Phil, Xbox would not even exist today without his work, but got to say I don't think he was ready to be the bad guy and as a leader of such a large organization... sometimes you got to be the bad guy. I don't mean shut down stuff, but you got to go in there and say the deadline is final because every year of development adds exponentially unrealistic sales expectations to any project.
@Skinny-Pete
That's fair. Not everyone likes, nor needs, to see how the sausage is made so long they get to eat it. For many, finding out how the sausage is made just ruins the whole meal.
Re: Report: Xbox Already Planned To 'Sunset Or Split With' Ninja Theory Before Senua Reveal
@TheFakulty Depends on the buyer. Sega has been all in on day one GP titles and has seen plenty of success with the program. So has Asobo.
Many see GP as a liability, but others see it as a guarantee that even if the game sells zero copies it will be making one lump sum of cash. They just need to worry about keeping the production budget under that sum to make the acquisition worth their time.
Re: Report: Xbox Already Planned To 'Sunset Or Split With' Ninja Theory Before Senua Reveal
I think this explains the whole "why did they make Seuna multiplat if they doing exclusives and it was not previously announced?" thing. They did not want to let us know "case by case" basis in this context meant "because we are not keeping them and want to sell them off".
@fatpunkslim
I actually think that makes even more sense. It's a selling pitch. The studio can use that as one of it's selling points. Whomever buys them will have to fund the remainder of the development, but they already got a guaranteed paycheck from the Game Pass deal so long they willing to take the risk the game takes longer to finish than expected or, worst case, is canceled. Also: it's already had a big marketting drop creating public awareness.
Hell, I would say that this lines it up perfectly to make Sega [one of Xbox bigest GP day one partner's] it's most likely buyer.
Re: Xbox CSO Shuts Down Rumour About Exclusives, Insists They'll Happen Every Year
@ILuvGames If there was any actual facts behind those claims, you can bet Capcom, Sega, and Asobo (among many others) would not keep working with Xbox to launch games like Path of the Goddess, Persona and Plague Tale on the service day one.
Forza is selling that well simply because it's a game people wanted and a region people begged forever.
If GP was able to hurt it, it would have, especially given the price of GP dropped a month earlier (been 2 months already since the price drop, Forza came out last month)
Re: Xbox CSO Shuts Down Rumour About Exclusives, Insists They'll Happen Every Year
@ILuvGames I think I only ever seen a couple dev ever said gamepass was bad for their business, and I don't think either had games in game pass.
GP literally was sustaining the overbudgeted studio developments. The $30 price hike caused so many subscription losses that it literally destroyed the entire internal finances that allowed those studios to exist at all.
Look at Forza Horizon. 6+ million sales. Launching on GPU day 1.
As for Halo, it's just the campaign. PS5 has become a service game console. Even their first party exclusives are disappointing Sony. Just like Gears Reloaded didnt really sell well on PS5, I expect Halo to sell most of it's copies on Xbox and Steam.
Re: Xbox CSO Shuts Down Rumour About Exclusives, Insists They'll Happen Every Year
@ILuvGames
Maybe I missed something (didnt read everything) but why would they drop GP? I still have to see anyone prove its doing poorly as a program for MS.
Niche games should not go away, they just need to be budgeted accordingly. With the time they spent developing Kilm (assuming since the release of Psychonauts 2) there is no way that game was absurdly over-budget. Grounded is one of their biggest recent hits and it's one of the most niche games. Same goes for Flight Simulator.
Hellblade 1 was successful with a shoestring budget, why would they allow the sequel such a ridiculously long development time? It seems that studio had finally streamlined their pipelne, though... sad that it seems they wont get to see the payoff. If they managed to ship Seuna at such a quick turnaround, its likely they would had managed to get back on the green.
I'll be the first to critisize Xbox when it needs it, but far from a hater. I really think GP is key to xbox's future, and that niche titles are also essential. They just need to be controlled. Every studio should be given some freedom to engage in side projects like Grounded or a Pentiment, they just cant be the things eating their full budget.
Only reason I feel GPU should likely go away is the price is too high. Past $20, the sticker shock just becomes a deterent to the whole service, and I honestly think even lower tiers suffer due to the induced perception. If the monthly fee cant go down, maybe they would be better just with the $14 premium tier. Just my take, though.
Re: Xbox CSO Shuts Down Rumour About Exclusives, Insists They'll Happen Every Year
Going to put my armchair analyst sunhat for a second here:
GamePass is not an issue, I would not be shocked if they eventually shuttered day one and only keep the Premium tier (games 6-12 months after launch) but really doubt that's the issue.
I think many of us seen the Windows Central article (if no, link here) on what the real issue was: some studios were running up to 40% profit margins but others at a loss. Too many, likely.
This issue, sadly, is a management one. Too many studios were allowed to run experimental games, many of them A or AA games but eating up AAA budgets. There were also too many bets that never even made it out, and those canselations are recent. Those cancelations means losses that wont ever be monetized in any way, and contribute hard into that drastic drop in profit margin. Too many risky bets at the same time. Many of them likely greenlit before the ABK or Bethesda aquisitions when MS was desperate for content. Most of these should had been canceled earlier, one by one, instead of eating so many writeoffs at once.
If it was not for grounded (a game that was made with a skeleton crew) Obsidian would be in the list of potential closures. Greenlighting not one but two AA games from them at AAA budgets (Avowed and Outer Worlds 2) was also a mistake in hindsight. Then again: it was sort of needed at the time.
As for the exclusivity thing, I seen a lot of fanboys [and editors, you know who] pretending no PS5 sales will doom these titles. PS5 did not save Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight and didn't even boost the Gears Reloaded release. All it has done is cannibalize Xbox sales, attention and reputation. Only games that have benefitted from PS5 audiences have been service games: Forza, Grounded, Sea of Thieves and Elder Scrolls Online being added to PS+ library.
PlayStation just does not have the audience to save an over-budgeted game. Console exclusives should work for them, but they need to get their budgets back under control.
Re: Xbox CSO Shuts Down Rumour About Exclusives, Insists They'll Happen Every Year
@themightyant No corporation should be taken extremely to heart. Let's not ignore that Sony too has done tons of shifts, they just dont talk as much. But we seen them, via actions, destroy their first party studio output in search for mythical game service gold mines, we seen them jump in and out of pc game ports, we seen them cold bloodly shut down studios, we seen thems swear they would not need to increase costs for a year only to do so in months or just weeks after such statements.
Market changes, and all corporations react to those changes. Often in stupid ways. MS execs just like to talk too much, and that seems to be the one thing Asha has decided not to change among all this chaos.
Re: Report: Multiple Xbox Studios In 'Active Negotiations' With Microsoft To Avoid Closure
@Enriesto you obviously didn’t ask me but I see 3 paths with option c being highly unlikely:
A) studio heads (former owners many of them) buy the studios back
B) Xbox lets them go independent but on contractual hooks they must deliver certain number of games for Xbox. They might be allowed to pitch but more likely it would be assignments. Think this is what happened with Toys for Bob.
C) MS spins them off independently but keeps ownership. No more funding so they need to figure how to fund themselves and own nothing they make.
Re: Rumour: Journalist Suggests Two Xbox Studios Are 'At Risk Of Being Closed' In 2026
I'm going to join the Double Fine prediction but will throw an unexpected second: Turn 10 Studios. I expect it to be shuttered and a skeleton team (the team specifically working on the engine) being absorbed into either Playground Games (to maintain the engine) or World's Edge because they are in the same city (Redmond, Washington) and would be minimal disruption to the employees they keep.
Compulsion games is also likely on risky waters unless they manage to turn on a dime and make a South of Midnight sequel fast enough that its budget is minuscule.
Re: These Are The Top 10 Xbox Backwards Compatibility Requests After 750,000 Votes
Sad not to see Bullet Witch on the list, so few fans of that one. I agree on every transformers and Spider-Man game and also cross my fingers on all Wolverine/X-Men/Marvel games (Deadpool included, even if there is a delisted XBO version that of course I own physically).
Surprised about Skylanders but I guess they were loved by many (reason they were so big) so makes sense. I do think these need more of a remaster approach that no longer requires plastic toys and can work with just some drop down menu (or dlc if they greedy).
Really agree with most the non-franchize stuff, although dont care much for any game that alredy got remasters like Lolipop Chainsaw (I realize the hypocrisy since I want two versions of Deadpool).
Re: Xbox Employee Responds To New Trailer Showing PS5 Logo For Gears Of War E-Day
@cragis0001 gears is a ST campaign first with a multiplayer mode after, not unlike Ghost of Yotei (although multiplayer mode available at launch).
State of Decay is 100% focused on MP. You can play it solo, but that’s for the anti-socials like me.
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@CallMeDuraSouka
You might want to check Push Squares article on how porky Soros seems to be doing.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/06/fascinating-ps5-sales-estimates-peg-ghost-of-yotei-as-a-triumph
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@Millionski I’m not defending a move to close down studios but let’s not pretend this is only Xbox. PlayStation has been muttering decades of legacy via studio closures. Ubisoft just announced studio closures. EA basically does it for sport!
The economy is bad, and it’s highlighting the unsustainable nature of modern game development budgets. For its size, I got to admit Xbox has been relatively restrained, but they could learn a thing or two from how Nintendo manages their budgets.
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@Fiendish-Beaver 2022
Source
Personally I believe the recent profitability drop is dual sourced:
And no, Sony didn’t actually plan for this. Maybe they bought themselves a few extra months, but not the year many daydreamingly parroted, as proven by the insane PS5 hardware and subscription price hikes.
Even Nintendo is being hit, despite them being likely the only developer that seems to not allow their game budgets to hyper-inflate in search of photorealism.
At minimum, all devs (not only first party ones) need to become more agile. 6-8 year dev cycles is unsustainable. A flagship title or two, sure, but all publishers need to stop the pursuit of 40+ hour campaigns, massive service games, and photorealistic fidelity in every damned game.
Not to mention the constant 100% world rebuilding! Not every coffee mug needs to be remodeled from scratch every sequel!
I have hopes on Xbox mostly due to Senua coming so soon after Hellblade 2 means at least one studio is learning to practice asset reuse.
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@Banjo- the acquisition took place two months after everyone was given their firing notices. Even if we were to accept that they still were still working for two while months and operations ongoing, this still does not change the fact that Xbox management didn’t go out of their way to find them a new owner. The new owner jumped in to try convince them to sell after the fact.
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Or maybe that some people just have different tastes?
I never played Redfall (mostly because of its launch form, I might play it someday since they eventually released an offline mode) but I played plenty of games people love to insist "suck" and I still honestly love (like every single Assassin's Creed game.)
Re: Report: Xbox Set For Major Job Cuts, Studio Closure Or 'Lineup Changes' Could Be Involved
@Banjo- It's all listed with references in their company history on their wiki page.