Xbox Apparently Still Needs Smaller Games For 'Prestige And Awards'

"We need smaller games"

Shuts down 4 studios that could have made smaller games

I confess this decision perplexes me. I'm like...wtf?

This literally makes no sense.

No surprise, coming from Matt Booty.

Matt Booty is an idiot but i also feel like he's been thrown to the slaughter. Where's Phil Spencer? Where's Sarah Bond? Why is Matt Booty doing all of this while they maintain radio silence?

What is this insanity? What the frick is going on with Microsoft’s messaging? My head hurts.

He needs to shut that booty hole he calls a mouth.

So why close a studio that gave you just that last year?

xbox says things but microsoft does things.

Booty man here says one thing and does the opposite it seems. Surely the more small studios you have the greater amount of smaller games can be made. It's starting to look like the only games they want are first person RPGs or shooters that have massive budgets everything else is deemed unable to make them money.

Hot air.

They know everyone working on games that are not “high impact” saw the writing in the wall and are panicking, likely already submitting resumes and getting ready to run before they get fired.

This is just an attempt at placating those developers to stick around “because we need you for awards… and we will fire you after we get those awards!”

They want the talented smaller devs to stick their heads out so they can remove them, can't have people outshining Fallout, TES, & CoD!

I'm sure if they kept the now closed studios, they could have made multiple small games at once. There is still no xbox first party games that I actually like. I kinda like Ghostwire Tokyo, but it's not really for me as I don't like first person. I thought maybe after acquiring Activision, they'd be able to make games I might like. But I highly doubt it now.

They need smaller games, yet they shut down Tango...that's not how it works, Microsoft!

What the hell are these idiots even doing?

This is like a Manx chasing it's tail.

How do you say you still need smaller games the day after you close the only one that's actually been a hit? It's like there's two heads talking at the same time with opposing orders. This man is appropriately named.

@LX_FENIX Sarah gets a free pass on this. She's not in charge of software, booty is, she's in charge of platforms. Lucky her. For today.

But where's Phil?

@rustyduck +1

@CutchuSlow to be fair, the studio that made ghostwire is tango, the one they closed....

@NEStalgia yep, I know it was tango that made Ghostwire Tokyo, hi-fi rush and evil within. Not sure what else they made tho, only know these 3 games from them.

It’s common knowledge that awards are more important than happy customers.

@CutchuSlow That's it, but Shinji Mikami was a Capcom guy and directed the original RE and lots of famous games, so his studio had a lot of experience and talent baked in.

Lol poor guy must be getting Alzheimer's early 😔is that or he has no idea what games these 4 studios made or any Xbox Studio really

To play devils advocate it may be that HiFi Rush just didn’t do very well at all from an engagement perspective.

So Sony shoot themselves in the foot last weekend, this week MS seem to be shooting themselves in both feet.

I hope Ninja Theory is safe. Despite that screen ratio thing I love their work.

That said, Hi-Fi Rush has been one of the most annoying games I've ever played. Best thing about it was its short length, 6 hours to finish it. Uninteresting story and characters, uninteresting locations repeated again and again, basic structure verse chorus verse repeated ad nauseam, and then some of the worst QTE to ever grace the medium. The worst thing for me is that it acted like it was a superstar and many believed it while in fact it was not. Felt like the devs thought too much of themselves and this is probably why ultimately they didn't align with Microsoft, but this is a very personal opinion without any direct knowledge.

The evil within as a series, while it has its cool moments, I certainly liked the first one, just couldn't reach Resident Evil levels of greatness and polish, which was probably what Mikami set out to do. Ghostwire Tokyo is, together with the first Evil within, my favorite game from Tango, but again it's around a 75 game, not that kind of 90 that justifies keeping lesser(in terms of sales) projects alive.

Just another perspective. Remember, way better studies have been closed in the past.

They are all over the place at the minute. Too many cooks and the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

It's a total mess with no clear vision.

They dont put their money where they talk.

The chain of command is very obviously not talking to each other all that well.

@RadioHedgeFund According to Xbox it was a success in all areas.

What he means is cheap games, those closed studios apparently wanted to make new games like a HIFi Rush sequel, but also that would mean hiring more staff for a bigger team. And obviously MS doesn’t like that idea, so it closes them down and will use other small teams to make small games. And if any of them dare suggest they hire more staff no doubt the firing axe will heavily fall onto them too.

Imagine being a studio at Xbox, getting proposed by stakeholders you should take on a "smaller game" project next.. You can't win. You do good (like Tango) you get axed. You do poorly (like Austin), you get axed.
The dev studio dream at Xbox seems to be basically playing politics to get yourself in a CoD support team position for job security.

The level of incompetence within Microsoft is almost impressive. They have no idea what the plan is. They're making it up as they go along. Phil hasn't said anything (does he even still work there?). Oh, and why do this a month BEFORE the June showcase? Did they really not realize that people would be angry? Are they THAT tone deaf? I hate to say this, but I'm not sure if anyone from Phil and down should keep their jobs.

Matt Booty is talking absolute nonsense. They want smaller games but have closed studios that can do just that.

This is yet another example of Xbox execs just taking the utter p133 out of gamers.

Lies , lies and more lies. They’ve spent so much time lying I don’t think they can actually tell the difference anymore.

I think he is just reiterating that the closures do not mean they will be a AAA only publishers like a lot of people latched on to after the closures.

Sure sure. I mean Sony isn't they killed many of those or we stopped seeing certain ones like a VR horror one I remember and went huh that's cool. Here they Lie I think it was. But I'm fine with smaller games or assistance studios helping smaller teams.

Even seeing PS Minis I for years never knew what they were but eventually did but then again I didn't know what Ad hoc was either. Nintenndo made Wiiware/DSiware or Download play more clear to me.

AAA small teams or whatever other studios to make a small game/already are small teams anyway.

Insomniac did Song of the Deep in 2016 (PS4 and Xbox One) with Gamestop and that didn't get noticed much as too early I think (probably like Tourist Trophy people that follow the dev know, people that don't, don't know any different) but Xbox's like Pentiment got noticed years later. Sigh timing does hurt some games until the right time and people come around to them.

I'm all for smaller games but if the design lacks I still won't praise them. I'll be just as disappointed as I would AAA, nostaglia bait or fan/clone level type games more so.

How you use your budget/skills is up to you but if your worlds/characters suck to play in and eh licensing if it's a racing game and the modes/event types are generic with nothing new to add no thanks.

Have some fair ideas, put a spin on it. Not make a generic product. Make one stand out just enough even if a little bit. Not trend following or safe and just make me gloss over/ignore your game.