Xbox Exec Provides Reasoning Behind Bethesda Studio Closures

"These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades."

Then close down BGS. Honestly, I'll miss Tango Gameworks' output more than Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield. Give development of those IPs to studios that know how to reel in development to make something more cohesive and focused.

Sounds like the average low-effort PR response.

What a surprise...

Basically, we're only making Doom and Elder Scrolls from here on out. Goodbye originality, sayonara creativity and tschüs to decency.

@GamingFan4Lyf As someone who just bought a Series X a month ago as his first Xbox ever (PS and Nintendo baby!) I heartily agree with this statement. I’ve had more fun playing Hi-Fi Rush and Ghostwire (the latter on my PS5) than Skyrim, Fallout and Starfield combined.

Sony or Nintendo or whatever company with loads of money, please save Tango Gameworks team and also buy the Hi-Fi Rush IP. I don't care if that game became exclusive to whatever platform, Hi-Fi Rush IP and original team behind it needs to be saved.

@dskatter I don't like Bethesda RPGs one bit.

They have a 20-hour forgettable story that is nothing more than a super-sized tutorial to their game world that has so many useless gameplay mechanics all for the sake of living in this world and generating your own fun for thousands of hours.

"we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP" Umm. New IPs are released, they don't meet whatever unrealistic internal numbers are set by Microsoft and the studios are then shut down.

I don't understand Microsoft at all. They say they want to compete with Sony's portfolio of single player, story driven games, but then they shut down Tango Gameworks, one of their only studios that released some of their better single player focused games. It doesn't make any sense. If I was MachineGames, I would be sweating bullets over the upcoming release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

The games didnt sell despite being good Prey was great so was evil within 2 both didnt sell even a million and were commercial failures.

new IP is dead they will just make sequels to games that sell

1) This is so upsettingly classic 90s Microsoft: spend an insane amount of money, buy a company, then gut it out of all the good things.

2) Why is it still so hard for Xbox to effectively communicate and stop providing these non-answers? Larry Hyrb was right in his recent tweet — when he was here he believed comms were key.

they should have just got those studios to make a new fallout game. that would be a guaranteed seller

I hate executives. They aren’t good for anything.

Nonsense. Everything is always about "building great games in the future", but nothing is ever actually produced but promises. Meanwhile, Hi Fi Rush is easily the best game to come from any of these acquisitions (yes including Starfield), so yea let's close the studio lol.

@themightyant Exactly. He was towing the company line but he also felt like a genuine guy and understood that great communication is the most important thing with a customer base --- even when it's bad news.

Matt Booty, Phil Spencer, and the rest of the current exec team just don't strike that same chord for me despite them really trying to be front-and-center.

Why not just shutdown 343 instead? Halo has been long dead anyway yet they keep throwing away money to that studio for what???

@endlessleep Very true the same with the coalition and gears both them and 343 ruined the franchises and do nothing for years

@thefly0810 But Microsoft are releasing Single player AAA games, they have at least 3 coming for this year already 'Indiana Jones and the Great Circle', 'Avowed' and Hellblade 2.
Sony on the other hand only released one AAA First Party title in 2023 and don't have another until who knows when.

It's comical of Xbox trying to restructure Bethesda when their own gaming output has been a mess for a decade. I'm not calling for other studios to be shut but 343 have buried Halo and Turn 10 put out the farce that is is Forza Motorsport.

We need games like Hi-Fi Rush and the creativity shown in Prey, focusing only on the so called biggest games will not be of benefit to anyone, look at Sony who have very little announced after doing something similar with the likes of Japan Studio

It's only gonna get worse. They got way too big. I wouldn't be surprised to see Compulsion, InExile, DoubleFine, and a couple Activision studios close by the end of next year.

@LX_FENIX nooooo, not inexile! i just became a fan with wasteland 3.

@dskatter I've had my series X for a few years. My first Xbox too. I have Game Pass and have played a fair few games. I even bought Starfield. But totally agree, hi-fi rush gave me more enjoyment than these other games. Such a shame.

All those clowns who cheered this acquisition on in order to "own" Sony. How's that working out for them?

@rustyduck I'm just making guesses, at this point i think the only safe studios are Mojang and the Call of Duty teams.

all those years of phil saying how he loves having a japanese studio and flying over to japan all the time to meet with the team. all for nothing.

@fizban3332 It was probably costing him loads in plane tickets to Japan

I remember when it was being preached that xbox was a safe haven for these smaller and creative titles. That too was a lie lol

Honestly, Xbox just keeps digging themselves deeper and keeps burning the goodwill they built up during the last half of the One generation. Just empty promises and corporate speak day in and day out. I'd really like the community to put pressure on them the way people did for the Helldivers backlash but asides from the stupid price hike they tried on Gold/Gamepass a few years ago, the Xbox base and press seem to give them a pass. I just want a return to the competitive team green we had during the 360 gen!

In other words: we rather spend our development budget on Triple A high fidelity games with inflated budgets over original and innovative game experiences.

I am calling this now: South of Midnight will be a great game, but it will not perform "to expectations". Compulsion Games will be shut down soon after.

This wouldn’t have happened if they stayed 3rd party, this acquisition did more harm than good

@LaurenceJ1987 I actually bought Starfield as well, in physical form no less! Heck, I even picked up the 360 discs of FF13, 13-2 and Lightning Returns because the experience with backwards compatibility is supposedly better than on PS3.

But this move by MS just…baffles me. Especially right now when they’re porting games to PS and other platforms, then nuking the devs behind said games.

Sigh.

@thefly0810 “ If I was MachineGames, I would be sweating bullets over the upcoming release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.”

Machine Games at least have wolfenstein to fall back to.

Buying two publishers was never going to end well Bethesda alone was fine but when you buy one of the largest ones in Activision-Blizzard then the previous acquisition becomes less valuable unless it only produces big sellers. You would think with all these extra studios they could have dozens of games in development all at once but instead they somehow will be making less. No wonder they seem to think all games should be multiple platform it's because they don't plan on making any exclusives themselves anymore.

@endlessleep @Ricky-Spanish 343 isn’t just responsible for the halo games. They are responsible for any and all relationships with 3rd party companies… Aka they handle halo merchandise, books, tv shows… etc. And while the games haven’t been up to par. They still push a lot of sales.

Tango just didn’t have any value… Unless they planned to make action figure using the HiFi Rush ip.

@AverageGamer Games should come before toys tango obviously created something unique the people liked it's not nice

@Sifi My point is not the amount, it's Sony already has an established portfolio of single player focused games and studios with Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, Insomniac, Sucker Punch and Santa Monica Studios. Microsoft has stated in the past that they want that too but then they just shut down Tango with Evil Within 1 & 2, Hi Fi Rush, and Ghostwire: Tokyo. Sure, Redfall stunk up the joint, but Arkane Lyon also made Deathloop, Prey and Dishonored too. These games may not have been top sellers but they are very well made and have a their own fan bases. Maybe these games wouldn't get sequels but these studios could have made new single player IPs.
What are the expectations for 'Indiana Jones and the Great Circle', 'Avowed' and Hellblade 2? If they're not runaway hits, what happens to these studios?
Don't get me wrong. Sony's just as guilty shutting down Japan Studio, Liverpool, Evolution, Zipper or Incognito. Heck, a game like Days Gone had decent enough sales for a new IP but Sony wouldn't allow Bend Studios to make a sequel since it didn't hit their Metacritic quota.

@Ricky-Spanish True… But games only make profit once every couple of years. Merchandise is an endless profit machine especially if you release a highly popular TV show.

@thefly0810 “ Sure, Redfall stunk up the joint, but Arkane Lyon also made Deathloop, Prey and Dishonored too.”

Arkane Lyon only made Deathloop and Dishonored. Working on the upcoming Blades game.

Arkane Austin made Prey and Redfall… Austin is the studio that closing

@Randinator123 As much as I hate this, ZeniMax was not doing well and its very likely many of the studios would have had shut down.

ZeniMax was going to sell, regardless. And any potential owner would had shut down things left and right.

I just expected so much more from MS on this front.

@GamingFan4Lyf Come on. This news is unfortunate, but let's be serious.

The expenditure for ABK will take years to recoup (and then profit) and I think those financial types are impatient. I imagine if the PalWorld devs were owned by a large publisher and put out one more miss before Palworld, they would have been canned, too.

Cowardly company can't even send out the main guy.

Prey might be the best game of that generation, Redfall is one of the worst from the current generation. A strange track record for Arkane Austin. The founder left after making Prey so perhaps there is a leadership issue. Hopefully Lyon keeps things together.

Tango seemed like a talented studio. What’s the justification to keep Double Fine going but not the maker of Hi-Fi Rush?

I don't know how this f***King asswipe is still in his job. Absolute snake.

@GamingFan4Lyf I mean... how? Tango has only done evil within and tokyo ghostwhire which are all super meh. Hi Fi Rush was great but only done by a small part of the team. Of all of these Tango can go. So can Arkane Austin as redfall was abysmally ran from start to finish.

In other words, "We're gutting Bethesda to be like Activision and only focus on 3 things, so don't expect any good change from us buying Activision either."

Microsoft really making their Booty take all this punishment huh?

The work of the money men pulling the strings. Removing the fat, slimming down. Cutting wage bills, closing down premises and trying to create their vision of eventually concentrating on the high draw games only. Minimize the risks, maximise the profits.

@AverageGamer whoops. Thanks 👍

This was inevitable and most likely not the only cuts coming across the entire portfolio. What is surprising is that people are surprised.

Every little bit counts. So as someone into smaller games yeah they aren't getting my money for their blockbuster ones that already sell without me contributing to them anyway due to their direction or sequels I already had no interest in.

Glad Toys for Bob moved from ABK if they were to be next of options ever for 'creative titles we don't want because they aren't blockbuster enough' or more COD support.

Whichever over at Bethesda to not be suffering next either.

So without many of us they aren't getting higher sales/users. They are from some new people sure but forget other platforms sales, or user numbers.

The financial reports matter.

It's a bull crap excuse and I'm being kind. The 'beloved, high-impact' Bethesda franchises still would've been on Xbox had it not purchased the entire company and Tango Gameworks would likely still be around.

I moved to Xbox in 2022 for a change of scenery but In that time I can't say I've seen anything positive about the brand. I'm genuinely thinking of selling up and moving back to PlayStation not that they are much better.

So booty and Spencer an co, I take it I missed the part of the press release that stated you all are donating your bonuses this year to the affected devs seeing as you appreciated them so much?

At the end of the day Microsoft is a business, and businesses exist to make money. Hifi Rush was moderately successful but not a big money maker while Redfall was an absolute disaster. With the gaming market the way it is today it's hardly surprising that they are trimming the fat so to speak. It's unfortunate, but it's reality. I agree with others that there are other problematic studios under Microsoft that need restructuring or closure as well, such as 343 who have repeatedly dropped the ball with Halo.

@GamingFan4Lyf I'm pretty sure the late resurgence of Fallout 4 in 2024 had more players in a month than the entire run of Hi-Fi Rush.

@Faruko That doesn't mean I think BGS is a good developer. The Creation Engine is hot garbage and the gameplay loop of their games is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

The problem with BGS is that their ambition outweighs good game design. What gameplay purpose does putting tens of thousands of potatoes in a cockpit serve when you have to have loading screens at every corner and your CPU is screaming for room to breath? It's immersive in that you can do these things at the expense of breaking immersion for the rest of the game!

Sure, it's great that you can grab and move and persist every little item in the game...but not if that means you have to save on animation cycles and talk to mannequins who can move their lips.

I guess my point is, BGS focuses on a lot of the wrong things that make games interesting in an effort to make the game "real".

Oh, cool, you can read every book in the game? I wish the writers had spent that much time on the actual Main Campaign to make it interesting rather than writing books that most players will probably ignore!

I'm not saying that those things aren't neat - it's definitely impressive - but it all comes at a significant cost to other more interesting things. BGS RPGs are the very definition of "too much" and I'd much rather see the IPs made by someone else who actually knows how to make fun games.

Tango made fun games - even if they weren't necessarily technically ambitious.

But, alas, as always, bean counting wins over fun.

Fking furious right now. People have lost their jobs We might never see another Evil Within to go alongside Dead Space (thanks to the fking fkwits at EA) and I'm pretty certain Hellblade 2 is run like garbage because let's face it if I was one of the developers making that game I'd be thinking "what's the point in putting all that effort we're just going to get the sack at the end" and I wouldn't blame them after seeing Microsoft without warning pull this steaming ***** out of their hat. I was defending them during the Sony Activision trial but now they can get fkd for this horrible move