Random video game news... Bring me a bucket, and I'll show you a bucket!

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, mkreku said:

Xbox shuts down a bunch of game studios: https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-shuts-slew-of-bethesda-studios-including-redfall-hi-fi-rush-developers

So.. how long do you think Obsidian and inXile will last? Not exactly the cashcows Microsofts shareholders demand from them..

I never like to hear news about any gaming company closing down. But technically the way listed  companies are structured its not shareholders who make the decisions about who gets fired, retrenched or a company within the main business gets restructured\shutdown 

Its the board who decides this and its normally about the overall sustainability and profitability of the business unit. Microsoft would have millions of different shareholders and  almost all  shareholders have an expectation of a positive return on the share price which is understandable. No one would buy shares if they didnt increase in value because whats the point if they dont ?

And the board of every company manages the shareholder relationship which means they have to ensure that every business unit  performs and makes its target 

Its not unreasonable this type of structure and relationship  and Redfall was a bad game. So the main difference between  a small development company making a bad game and that same company being part of the larger company like Microsoft is there less appetite for making a bad game because you are expected to deliver on results in the latter example

But I also imagine the board would have to consider reputational damage, so you dont just shutdown iconic and prestigious studios like Obsidian or Bethesda over one bad game or one initially badly received game 

They would balance these things 

 

Edited May 8 by BruceVC

[BruceVC]

14 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

This is probably wishful thinking, but Microsoft probably bought Bethesda for the Bethesda, not necessarily all of the other developer's Bethesda owned. They wanted the big IP's that Bethesda has.

Obsidian and inXile are separate deals. It looks a lot worse if they go in and shutter them. But yeah, if Avowed or Outer Worlds 2 doesn't hit sales expectations, it could be very bad. So make sure to buy a copy and leave it running all day long to help them out.  

Hurlshot is 100% correct, the best way to ensure Obsidian doesn't get restructured or shutdown is for everyone to buy a copy of any game released by Obsidian 

We can add it to our Steam\GOG list of  " games still to be played " 

 

[uuuhhii]

11 hours ago, Sven_ said:

I'll bite. 

Avowed underperforming = realistic.
The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic.

Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. 

In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter?  If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart.   

 

didn't outer world perform pretty well by obsidian standard

even come out with some enhance edition nonsense later

what is the expectation of outer world 2

[sorophx]

at this point only performing well by Microsoft standards matters, and probably even that isn't enough (see Hi-Fi Rush)

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, sorophx said:

at this point only performing well by Microsoft standards matters, and probably even that isn't enough (see Hi-Fi Rush)

All business units and companies  owned by Microsoft would have an individual yearly target within Microsoft's  main financial target they announce at the beginning of the financial year 

Thats what all listed companies do and that is what is expected they must achieve for investors and shareholders 

So Bethesda and Obsidian would have a revenue  goal they have to achieve and in gaming that would align with revenue sales once a new game is released 

I cant imagine it would work any other way? So its not really " Microsoft standards " but an expected agreement how all  listed companies function and how smaller companies within the group need to deliver on 

 

 

 

 

[HoonDing]

Only Alpha Prololol 2 can save Obsidian now

[Wormerine]

5 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

didn't outer world perform pretty well by obsidian standard

It did, but it was also caught in „screw Bethesda” train after Fallout76. I am not quite sure how much interest there will still be in Outer Worlds2. 

[uuuhhii]

58 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

It did, but it was also caught in „screw Bethesda” train after Fallout76. I am not quite sure how much interest there will still be in Outer Worlds2. 

 

pretty sure outer world would do better if come out now

anti bethesda sentiment are as high as it ever was

no need to worry about that dying down anytime soon

Edited May 8 by uuuhhii

[uuuhhii]

speaking of bethesda 

https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-closes-redfall-developer-arkane-austin-hifi-rush-developer-tango-gameworks-and-more-in-devastating-cuts-at-bethesda

 

[Sven_]

23 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Heh, kind of an interesting theory to think that if Obsidian struggles to make it with their own IP's, they will just end up churning out Fallout side games. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'd feel bad for Obsidian, but I would love to have more of their Fallouts too. 

Problem is they would probably lose their writing talent that separates them from the chuff. Tim Cain already seems to be semi-retired as he develops his youtube following.

 

It's also a natural evolution of kinds. Similar to how Call Of Duty has seen sequels developed by various studios since forever -- and their games released in turns. That's why they can serve the COD crowd regularly, while it's a TV series currently keeping the Fallout name alive in popular culture. Studios under the MS/Bethesda umbrella have already helped each other too, or co-developed -- id helping out Arkane on Redfall, Arkane co-developing Wolfenstein Youngblood with MachineGames. So having multiple studios working on projects of the most popular IP is one next logical step for bigger corps. Wouldn't say the only one. But it is one.

Even if tools improve and AI will offer helping hands, the development time of blockbuster games isn't going to come down. The tech is getting ever more advanced, expectations go up accordingly. People entering the blockbuster gaming industry may eventually help developing but a couple of games in their entire career. It's crazy to think that even the core team of Doom³ still consisted of ~20 people 20 years ago... and that game was seen as the most bleeding edge thing ever -- on a technical level, anyhow.
 

8 hours ago, Wormerine said:

It did, but it was also caught in „screw Bethesda” train after Fallout76. I am not quite sure how much interest there will still be in Outer Worlds2. 

Similar to the first Pillars Of Eternity, relative for their type of game, The Outer Worlds was also a rather modest budgeted game with modest expectations behind. The sequel, just like Deadfire, seems to ramp it up quite a notch. I think expectations are much higher on TOW2 than 1.

Edited May 8 by Sven_

[the_dog_days]

Let's be honest, Arkane's last commercially successfully was the first Dishonored. Everything they've made for more than the last decade has flopped. Not sure why everyone's surprised.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, the_dog_days said:

Let's be honest, Arkane's last commercially successfully was the first Dishonored. Everything they've made for more than the last decade has flopped. Not sure why everyone's surprised.

I am not surprised. This is Arkane Austin - they have done Prey and its DLC and Redfall. Prey is an acclaimed, if not particularly profitable, and Redfall is a flop, that allegiedly drove away about 70% of staff that made Prey. So it's not even the case of "abandon Refall and work on something else", as the folks who made Prey are mostly gone and you have a live service oriented studio, that clearly didn't come together very well (not aiming on judging individual devs of course - **** happens).

Tango is what surprised me. Sure, it probably didn't break the bank, but they made THE game that delivered some positive buzz for XBOX. Even if it somehow a perfectly sensible move (like keeping the talented devs and putting them to work elsewere, but shutting down the studio now when the founder is gone) it is still a terrible look.

Edited May 8 by Wormerine

[Gorth]

Split off from previous thread...

 

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Tango is what surprised me. Sure, it probably didn't break the bank, but they made THE game that delivered some positive buzz for XBOX. Even if it somehow a perfectly sensible move (like keeping the talented devs and putting them to work elsewere, but shutting down the studio now when the founder is gone) it is still a terrible look.

Very similar situation there to Arkane I would have thought, they made games that review well, generally, but didn't sell well. Hi Fi Rush had great word of mouth, but it still took 5 years to develop and didn't sell (or 'sell', for gamepass) as well as its reviews or word of mouth implied.

The main difference seems to be that Tango got chopped off earlier in the process, before making a Redfall but after the founder left.

Edited May 9 by Zoraptor

[Gorth]

I mentioned elsewhere, Grounded being Obsidians most successful game to date... Not sure why, but I seem to remember it started out as a "small thing" with a limited team and then sort of exploded in scope with growing popularity. If not already, I hope some day we get a post mortem on the game with its history

These are Steam numbers only, not including GamePass/XBox

https://vginsights.com/game/962130

4,381 active players (42 min ago)
7,841 active players (24h peak)
88.9% positive reviews
$55.8m gross revenue
2.2m units sold
49 hours avg play time
22.5 hours median play time

While they (Obsidian) usually know how to make crpgs, survival games and base building is not what they're known for.

 

Edit: Scratch that part about XBox... no idea if Steam also sells XBox games

Edit2: Adding GamePass players, it had 10 million players in 2022 https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/02/10/grounded-reaches-10-million-players/

[Sven_]

7 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I am not surprised. This is Arkane Austin - they have done Prey and its DLC and Redfall.

This is a bit simplified. They only really "split" by the time Dishonored 2 and Prey were being developed in tandem. But even then, people switched places (I mean, Colantonio is from France himself). Also, even Redfall lists almost two dozen people from Lyon in the credits.

Or, to let Raf Colantonio do the talking (note his huge follow-up post to this also).  

But in general, what happened in Austin is a good example of destroying studio culture. Arkane have been a very specialized company since their very inception. This naturally included what people they at all hired. And now they were tasked to do a multiplayer, open world CoOp shooter kind of game. It's akin to Hollywood encouraging Sofia Coppola to do the next Furious movie. Why? Becuz popular. In fairness, this started under ZeniMax.

I personally didn't get much Arkane vibes upons Redfall's release. And had looked up the game's credits before it became public what happened. By watching the credits as well as checking people on Linkedln, it was apparent that a lot of people were brought in from all over the open world gaming action industry. This included Anthem's OW lead designer, and numerous other people who prior worked on Mafia, Destiny, Saint's Row et all. Some of those joined as late as a year prior to Redfall's release. So Arkane lost people that were hired specifically for the type of games they were specializing in, those people quit and left. To hire new ones just for Redfall.

However, if it weren't for people working on a Marvel IP in Lyon, they may be in trouble now as well. Not sure if posted already. But  'd love if Arkane had gotten a chance at that announced Indiana Jones game rather than MachineGames. For a start, perfect fit for their type. See Thief's grave robbery missions, with fantastic in-universe maps for all your archeological needs. 

Secondly, Indy is still strong enough an IP, even if the last movie disappointed. Is it really the CORE of their very type of game that's not blockbuster worthy? Or is it rather their package? Until Baldur's Gate 3 came around, party-based tactical RPGs were seen as a niche as well. Turn-based ones even moreso. The notion was: No matter the rest of the game or what you're aiming for as an OVERALL EXPERIENCE: If you include THIS feature, you're going to go niche.

Edited May 9 by Sven_

[the_dog_days]

Not only did Arkane's fall start under Bethesda, but Zenimax covered up how bad things were in the Austin studio so Microsoft would focus more resources on Starfield.

[Katphood]

 

[Wormerine]

 

[Hawke64]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-witcher-3s-redkit-mod-tools-launch-may-21st-enabling-a-new-era-of-ambitious-overhauls

Quote

After a month or so of testing, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's offiical mod tools REDkit will launch on May 21st. It'll make it easier for players to make new quests, items, weapons and so on for the nearly nine-year-old RPG.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/animal-well-review

Quote

A gorgeous and immensely absorbing metroidvania platformer that is both easy to get into and dense with secrets.

Steam discussions mention the controls not being possible to rebind, which is a deal-breaker for anything that is not a visual novel with 1 button controls.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/orpheus-may-be-missing-from-hades-2-but-hes-returning-to-role-playing-musical-stray-gods

Quote

Role-playing musical Stray Gods is getting DLC in which you'll play as sorrowful ghostly rocker Orpheus.

---

About the petition, it was initiated due to Ubisoft pulling The Crew, which had a single-player yet server-reliant mode, from the players' libraries. It is not the first time they are doing this, but before that it was "just" DLC for the older AC games. I would strongly prefer the publishers to be legally encouraged to respect their customers purchases. If the publishers in their wisdom, made the DRM in a single-player game to rely on the servers, surely they can spend work-hours on untangling the dependency. The smaller developers are usually nice enough not to try doing this.

[Wormerine]

Former Microsoft senior PR manager Brad Hilderbrand on recent studio shutdowns:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bradhilderbrand_there-are-two-reasons-why-all-those-bethesda-activity-7193668143305670657-wUSw?utm_source=li_share&utm_content=feedcontent&utm_medium=g_dt_web&utm_campaign=copy

Gosh, I wish the Activision-Blizzard deal would have fell through, if that means the smaller, more interesting studios will get their heads chopped.

[Azdeus]

11 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

---

About the petition, it was initiated due to Ubisoft pulling The Crew, which had a single-player yet server-reliant mode, from the players' libraries. It is not the first time they are doing this, but before that it was "just" DLC for the older AC games. I would strongly prefer the publishers to be legally encouraged to respect their customers purchases. If the publishers in their wisdom, made the DRM in a single-player game to rely on the servers, surely they can spend work-hours on untangling the dependency. The smaller developers are usually nice enough not to try doing this.

I actually forgot that I even owned The Crew, I guess that it's been a while since I used Ubisofts launcher. I hope that the campaign gets some traction, there are active petitions going on now in the UK, Australia and Canada while there is a lawsuit going on in Brazil. I'm hoping to hear about options in the EU as Swedish authorities are useless here.

[Mamoulian War]

Has anyone noticed or followed this Kickstarter? Do you have anu impressions of it already?

 

[MrBrown]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/05/13/square-enix-is-done-with-playstation-exclusivity-after-profit-drop/

[Mamoulian War]

While they are cutting off results of ****ty decisions, they should get rid of the focus on NFT nonsense as well