Xbox Shutting Down Multiple Studios

Matt Booty email to employees obtained by IGN

Happy anniversary Redfall! And what does this mean for Blade?!

Wow… I wonder if Xbox fans are still liking the merger now.

God, f***ing DAMN IT!

Spend bilions to buy studios. Fire everyone. Close company.

Haha.

@ghostofgolden:

And what does that mean for blade?

That its still not on PlayStation? 🤣😂

Possibly merging studio's?

Anyhoo..best wait to see if its true before speculating and fanboy masturbating

Too many racehorses in the stable. ;o

Only the best will get to race. lol :P

Why are these studio closings mostly affecting Xbox and PlayStation?

Holy crap!

Can't we just roll back the 78 billion Activision purchase?

God, I wish the FTC didn't screw up the lawsuit like they did. They had the right idea beyond that.

Fire Kotick and Spencer and leave the hard working developers alone!

They are the ones making our games.

It's not. Studio closures and layoffs have happened in the industry for a few years. I think Take Two was the latest to close studios before today.

Prepping for the whole Xbox division to be shut down by 2027. Be ready.

Indeed. This is actually shocking, and if someone doesn't agree, they're in denial.

Such a breakout hit that the folks at Tango are getting some surprise time off!

“Why should we care about the financials of a multi-billion dollar corporation? Consumers should only worry about value.” This is why... Good games go away when the financials don’t work out.

Thanks Phil!

Here's a complete list of closures over the past year:

Click on tweet and see the entire thread.

Reasons I've heard for this absolutely massive amount of closures:

-gaming isn't attracting money and investors have gotten stingy post covid.

-personel costs have gone up tremendously

@saint-george said:

@SecretPolice said:

Too many racehorses in the stable. ;o

Only the best will get to race. lol :P

lol :P

It’s 100% gaming isn’t attracting money and investors have gotten stingy. We learned that in 2023, PlayStation would have made more money if they just left what they invested in the bank instead of spending it on games and hardware. That’s why they are doing things like looking at Bungies books with a magnifying glass. Spending is going to be greatly impacted in 2024 and 2025. And who has been spending the most lately? Xbox…

Investors are only interested in continuous and infinite growth. This is pretty much impossible in gaming as they've already exhausted every option:

1. Insane crunching
2. Carve a game into pieces and sell as DLC
3. Online pass, battle pass, lootboxes

So the well has dried up.

yep, i guess that's why PlayStation has like 3~4 major 1st party games releasing this year and Xbox doesn't have anything planned until sometime in 2025.. clearly, Sony has their financials worked out and Microsoft doesn't..

oh, wait..

on-topic, sucks to see Tango get shutdown after a surprise hit like HiFi Rush.. Arkane Austin's last game was RedFall 😬 so it also sucks but doesn't seem too surprising with how gaming studios across the board are perpetually at risk of closing down after one major flop.. Prey, though underrated, wasn't a clear commercial success either..

as always, hopefully the devs can land somewhere...

What a coincidence that the founder of Tango left a few months ago

Production and marketing budgets are the hot metrics right now. Profit margins go up when less money is spent. We are gonna see more studios operating like Nintendo has. Smaller teams with quicker production windows. Less money spent on Hollywood voice actors and writers. It’s just a shame we are seeing studios that did things the right way being shutdown because of the AAA gaming missteps

This sucks.

Can kinda see closing Arkane , but Tango really stings. Hopefully some of them join up with Mikami and they can have a Clover to Platinum type rebirth.

It's nice I guess to have been there during the peak of gaming budgets. We are on the way down that's for sure.

I also think we're seeing less and less emphasis on copies sold. Games are no longer being considered as products, more as storefronts or more correctly live services with recurring spending.

Though I dread the fact that the next AC game is going full live service... with battle pass and everything ... in a singleplayer game.

Sony: Having a PR nightmare with PC basement dwellers regarding Helldivers 2. "Help me bro".

Xbox: "dont worry bro I got you". Proceeds to commit sudoku by killing multiple studios including highly rated tango gameworks, releases more games on PS5 than on own system for far in 2024.

RIP Xbox. Cow for life!

Don't lie.

Xbots cheered for acquisitions and how only MS can help the industry and how workers are safe. Man, how Xbots can be truly dumb.

Xbox peeps are acting like spoiled brats whose dad has a huge amount of money and thinks they are untouchable and they can buy all things with money. No wonder why Xbox fandom is so messed up.

Suck my taint. Don't be mad because us cows have it made in the shade.

Microsoft has now touched my two favourite studios: Ensemble and Arkane.

Can't believe they were eying Valve and Nintendo as well, probably wanna close those too.

But the player counts...

Sucks they're shutting down Tango, that's probably my favorite studio they own. I guess there goes my hopes for Evil Within 3.

Aaaaand they likely will somehow use this as a tax write-off, reducing their already negligible tax bill.

lol :P

i want dabear and sealionact reaction to this. also, let us know when you two are getting a ps5, and leave the misery behind you.

Oh dear. The karens/lems here won't be happy

Don't lie, will ya. As peeps on icon truly saw who you are. Glad they've did

Not sure why you keep lying over and over! Feel free to add me to PSN: KvallyX and we can jam! Come over to the cow side with us!

Arkane well tbh I see it, Tango I thought were doing well after Hifi rush but clearly not.

Sadly, there's very little room in the industry for good games that don't sell well.

Phil Spencer and team can butter up gamers as much as they want but, at the end of the day, business is business.

That's what MS does. They haven't acquired a single studio and improved them.

Closing Tango gameworks is a travesty.

Sounds like Call of Duty needs more money.

In the email (and multiple outlets reporting) that they are investing more in Bethesda's more well-known IPs and getting them out faster

These days, any video game developer / employee could risk getting fired. Except maybe for Todd Howard, Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima.

@R4gn4r0k said:

@kvallyx said:

RIP Xbox. Cow for life!

Microsoft has now touched my two favourite studios: Ensemble and Arkane.

Can't believe they were eying Valve and Nintendo as well, probably wanna close those too.

Arkane Austin? Prey and Redfall are a must-have games for you?

@dabear said:

@R4gn4r0k said:

@kvallyx said:

RIP Xbox. Cow for life!

Microsoft has now touched my two favourite studios: Ensemble and Arkane.

Can't believe they were eying Valve and Nintendo as well, probably wanna close those too.

Arkane Austin? Prey and Redfall are a must-have games for you?

They didn't just make Redfall 🙄

Their days are numbered, 1-9.

Arkane Austin was in decline before the merger, they had issues with staffing because people wanted to work on immersive sims and the Redfall project was a departure from that.

Tango Gameworks is a little more surprising. Could be the studio fell apart after Mikami's departure, and perhaps he's setting up a new studio and now plans on taking the team with him. I doubt MS would have forced this given the success of HiFi Rush.