To me, that just reinforces the notion that these layoffs are mostly about sending a message to workers and Wall St more than anything else.
What message?
The value of we probably differs a lot from company to company. But it sure doesn't include workers.
Indie games are awesome right now, but they don't have the budgets to produce AAA games. So there is a huge gap. Innovative indie games with cool, new gameplay concepts, but always simple or retro graphics, and AAA games with shiny graphics on the other end but gameplay that hasn't changed in over a decade.
I'm just waiting for any AAA studio to provide something new with the AAA games. Maybe AI to improve NPCs in an open world game? Anything besides the same old gameplay with new skins on it.
That said, I don't really think the stereotypes of indie games are very valid anymore. Valheim looks great, has a massive open world, and is multiplayer. [1] It also started entirely as a result of one guy's pet project, until he grabbed a coworker and then set off to make it what it became. The graphics are stylized, but I think in a broadly aesthetically appealing way, as opposed to e.g. pixel graphics which are very off-putting to many people, myself among them. Pixel graphics came from an era of CRTs with interlaced scanning, and various other visual artifacts, that naturally blurred, antialiased, and blended them. Sharp jaggy edges never really existed, and I fail to understand why that's a popular style now.
But otherwise very true, true innovation happens in the indie world and the maximal complexity of these type of games is steadily rising due to better tools and maybe soon AI support.
For people like me who play games just a couple of hours a week, I have no interest in playing an unfinished game. I have a library of games bigger than I could ever play and I will always skip the EA stuff.
That mostly shows the realities of indie development. These games have less staff and need less sales to succeed, but they take much longer as indies lack the time (some do development on the side to a full time gig), manpower, or (sometimes) talent to get things done quickly.
>I have a library of games bigger than I could ever play
Well that proves the point. we also get more indies than ever. I don't think EA would give us more finished games. We'd just get less released games full stop. Even if you never play them I'm not sure if I'd call that a good thing.
People have been saying this for decades at this point. I'm not seeing it.
Innovation is largely overrated. It can be a good thing, but the vast majority of games, whether AAA or indie, can't be truly innovative. And innovative doesn't translate directly to a game being enjoyable. Conversely, a game being "derivative" doesn't automatically make the game not fun to play.
Ditto for Forza Horizon 6 and the next installment of The Witcher.
Everyone keeps suggesting AI NPCs. I'm sure someone's gonna take a crack at it and it'll go about as well the Humane AI pin or the Rabbit R1 before everyone realized how horrible of an idea it is. If anything it'll make for a silly novelty like the VR games where you clumsily try to perform basic tasks with VR motion controls. But in this case you argue with an in-game LLM and see how quickly you can make it get defensive or start gaslighting you with made up facts about household cleaners you can combine to make a delicious cocktail.
Honestly even some of the indie games are getting pretty incredible graphics these days thanks to Unreal Engine.
This is what game publishers do, and many of them are struggling too. It’s harder than it seems to pick winning horses. (Though in this case, it may be partially because more and more skilled teams are opting to self-publish.)
Big publishers tried and did not succeed much. EA, Square Enix, T2 with Private Division and so on.
Some independant studio or publishers have their fans base : Amanita Design, Playdead, Zachtronics, Devolver Digital, Annapurna Interractive are for me the folk to watch.
I have never enjoyed spreading democracy more with my friends than dropping a perfectly targeted orbital strike on a bunch of unpatriotic bugs.
I can't remember a single AA game that was great. Actually, I can't remember a single AA game other than the ones I remember because of how bad they were.
I think AA in games has, for a long time, meant "We want to do a AAA but don't have the money or time" and this can only end in disaster.
I'm always skeptical of "I can't remember ____" as an assessment of any given historical record because, well, the average person just doesn't remember anything. Which is all well and good, you have no obligation to be ready for a pop-quiz, but snapshot moment of free-association is just not a reliable stand in for the actual record.
I actually couldn't think of any AA titles off the top of my head either, but after Googling and GPT'ing a bit I came up with: Hellblade, Plague Tale, Hades, Outer Wilds, Control, Metro, Outer Worlds, Shadow Warrior 2, etc. plus the numerous others listed by other commenters.
My point though is that it's fine not to remember, but that should never be our acid test for what does or doesn't exist in the historical record.
Hi-Fi Rush, was a delightful game that earned every $ I spent, but didn't feel like a AAA title.
Hades is a delightful game that earned every penny but which wasn't a "AAA" title.
I wouldn't call either games "indie", as they both had dozens of people on the teams that made them. But I'd also guess that both games were still made by very different size teams (e.g. 2 dozen vs 5 dozen).
Another example is FromSoftware. They kept iterating on their games going from KingFields to Demon Souls, Dark Souls, etc...You can't have Elden Ring without all this earned experience.
>I think AA in games has, for a long time, meant "We want to do a AAA but don't have the money or time" and this can only end in disaster.
I don't know, because we have even less idea what "AA" means. Would Demons' Souls 2009 be AA?
That the thing, a lot of the biggest AAA titles didn't knock it out of the park day one. Overwatch in 2016 may have been the last new IP that was AAA from the get go and truly nailed it in one. IDK why companies keep trying to do it that way.
Why even bother producing anything at all when you can just put a fresh coat of lipstick on the same pig and sell it all over again?
Not saying they're good or bad, I'm just not interested in the slightest.
Here's [1] the Steam page for split screen games. Currently there are 934. Can't go wrong with Earth Defense Force! And no you don't need a "gaming PC." That term doesn't even make any sense in modern times, because if you have a computer from within the past decade or so, you can run the overwhelming majority of games with no problem. And I mean that literally - for instance GTA V requires an AMD HD 4870 card. That card was released in 2008!
Microsoft has been consistently failing to support and engage game developers since early in the 360 cycle, then the doublespeak crook Spencer took over, and it got even worse.
This whole shitting on AA was bound to happen with Xbox fanboys saying that “it is good that Microsoft is buying studios to give Sony a taste of their own medicine!”
Except MS is still not giving Xbox gamers a taste of Sony medicine, because Sony gets out there and gives games chances, funds loads of “trial” titles, supports developers and studios, etc.
I don’t like that Sony just does this better, as I am a PC gamer and Sonys PC game is awful.
Shut down Bethesda, they're the ones with awful gameplay and writing. Don't shut down the darlings.
I will remember this closure very well in a year or two when MS tries for the dozenth time to "expand our reach to the Asian market". Because they pulled out. Again.
either the way, hope it paves the way for more small studios titles...
"In 2024 alone we have Starfield Shattered Space, Fallout 76 Skyline Valley, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, and The Elder Scrolls Online’s Golden Road. "
3/4 of those titles are old games that are live services, where it's a better investment and dev cost to pump engaged players than build new audiences. It's VERY hard to beat a 5% (even more for an MS-sized deposit) return on a savings account, so closing studios that made Good Games isn't about the games at all, it's just looking at the balance sheet. Everyone always knew they were creating on borrowed time, and now that time is unfortunately up.
The solution of this is to not let private companies dictate cultural production for a nation, but the US is piss poor at arts funding and all our billionaires want to squirrel away wealth overseas rather than building libraries, museums, or cultural production funds.
I guess so. I don't fully understand it either. An indie-ish scoped game won GOTY in 2022, Helldivers costs half as much as a AAA title and is probably selling better than any of the other dozen GaaS Sony was trying to break into, Take Two has (had) several breakout hits under their wing. But they seem so hellbent on being the Fortnite, instead of just "really damn good (and presumably making money)"
It's strange that we know super successful "indies" can sell millions and be just as acclaimed as any AAA title but those metrics don't matter to a company that should be trying to foster a full portfolio.
>What’s going to fill the gap?
GTA has shark cards and COD us a yearly releases rotating around 4 or more studios now. Those will be fine. Halo? No idea, I don't think the battle pass format can sustain these levels of budget. it juse seems to all be a mess.
Large publishers keep reiterating the importance of successful IPs these days, and Hi-Fi Rush was like lightning in a bottle. Here Microsoft had a new IP with critical acclaim, suitable for a large audience, and ripe for a sequel. You'd think they would cling to it for dear life, especially given how their other IPs are doing (Halo, Redfall, Starfield...)
Closing the studio doesn't necessarily mean they're ditching the IP, but it doesn't bode well.
So there is no gap in available player time, as it's impossible for there to be more than 24 hours of demand per day.
Consider private label brands on Amazon, which at least maintain numerous distinct brand identites focusing on different categories.
Having a portfolio of actually distinct companies with unique personalities and signature approaches to design and gameplay is exactly what you want if you are trying to maintain a thriving ecosystem.
This already happened in the early 2000s. If you were around back then, you might remember how everything was sequels and rehashes for a while. Diversity of ideas returned to the industry only after it became practicable to publish and monetize indie games (post-Braid).
Microsoft and Embracer recently bought the whole industry. Now they might be about to light a match and set fire to the whole thing. OK, but fortunately, all the talented passionate people with the ideas and drive to create new things still exist in the world. I believe many players will find their way back to them, no matter how sufficent "garbage" is for the majority of people. If milking the uncaring baseline consumer was all that mattered to videogame creatives, they'd all be making ad-driven smartphone shovelware.
i can't remember a time when there was so many different games or high quality releasing so often.
there were sequels, but they was dropping every year while being improvements. we got 3 GTA games on the ps2; gta v got three playstation consoles
Its part of this months "choice" offering on humblebundle.com
Failing upwards has never been so conspicuously obvious as it is in modern corporate America thanks to the pervasive use of social media.
Similarly, how did they trash the Xbox brand? I've always been a PlayStation or Nintendo user so my view is quite tainted here.
For the Xbox brand they have failed to release quality versions of every major Xbox franchise bar Forza Horizon (Halo Infinite, for example), and this mismanagement has been ongoing for so long the sales figures of the Series consoles are dire. (And the Series X is not bad by any stretch). Now they are having to release their games on their major competitor, the PS5, making the point of buying into the Xbox ecosystem . . . what exactly?
And to emphasise here Sony are not exactly doing stupidly well with PS5 software and support, they just aren't actively screwing it up completely.
They did also release Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2020, which while also available on PC was in my opinion a massive win for Xbox
You're spot on. It's just funny to me that the lone quality release was also botched imo.
Hardware has always been a loss leader used to sell games, nothing more. If they can sell the games just as well on their “competitiors platforms” then why bother spending time and exorbitant amounts of money building your own hardware?
Exiting the hardware space looks like a loss only if you don’t understand the dynamics of the game industry.
The Xbox brand issue at this point is a lack of quality first party games. They can never seem to nail a release. Even when a game is pretty good there is a caveat.
- Halo Infinite was pretty good, but buggy and they struggled to release new content. - Starfield is Bethesda's most ambitious game yet with the best combat, graphics and polish from the studio to date, but the exploration loop that defines their games is broken by interplanetary travel. It is still pretty good, but just not what it should have been. - Forza Motorsport launched buggy and while technically proficient is perhaps of the most joyless games I have ever played. - Redfall was hyped as a first party release and is absolutely mid
I do think that both the Xbox and PlayStation brands have put themselves in strange positions strategically. People buy consoles to play certain games and if you know that you can play those games on PC (eventually) why would you ever buy a PlayStation or Xbox?
Argument is still valid, since I’ve not bought AAA games for more than two years now, only indies or AA, even if I already beat them with Game Pass.
1. Too many game choices without having to think about spending money for each one is very expensive when the currency is time.
2. Video games will never be Microsoft’s primary business, while video game players and makers are Valve’s. This is why Steam is so much better than Xbox/PC Game Pass.
3. It’s bloody difficult to take screenshots!
Seems they are now seriously considering becoming a third party publisher and release all their games or at least most on PlayStation and Switch, which honestly makes sense considering the amount of new development studios they acquired that used to release their games for every platform available, there are not enough Xbox consoles with paying customer to sustain all those studios I think.
I have friends at Microsoft who worked on it and they all seemed to think it was going well last I checked (about a year ago).
I'm amazed that this is a question. Gamepass is essentially so low cost as to be an incredibly costly giveaway, only it has proven that this devalues everything that touches it.
For context, Hifi Rush had 3 million players on Gamepass last August, and today they shut the studio. So even when they get a break out hit they cannot justify keeping the studios around to try and do another; that's not a success.
It is current high value for consumers, but that’s all it is, and in cases where MA is just a third party vendor to the publishers, high value for consumers is bad for the publishers. If it is ever deemed a success, that value will diminish extremely fast.
...based on what?
It's like AAA publishers have no notion of a game studio as an organic thing that can grow. It's all just pieces on a board.
If you sell chips but charge people $1 for two weeks for unlimited chips, then just $10/mo for unlimited chips, you might be disappointed with direct chip sales.
https://www.polygon.com/24065269/ftc-microsoft-activision-de...
My company just laid off 35 people (150ish employees) and gave them a whopping 2 weeks severance for each year that they worked there. Most of the people let go had only worked here for 1-2 years. Engineers and QA.
I was shocked when I heard that because I've always seen it as a great place to work and very forward thinking. That wasn't publicly disclosed, of course, I heard it from a manager coworker/friend.
Now I'm petrified.
Company #1, nothing.
Company #2, this.
Company #3, 1 month (TBF I was only there a year, so I guess it was as good as #2).
#2 only wins out because I had partially vested stock. But otherwise, my severance history is paltry.
Not sure why this is not a more common point in AI doomsaying discussions.
[0] Why you would go hard on data-driven design in a creative field instead of trusting the instincts of creators I will never know.
The casualties of this are two financially under performing studios.
They've had this problem with their last several releases too, but I think the TV show will make it a lot worse.
At least fallout 3 and NV had some great RPG elements.
Fallout 4 and Starfield were not great.
The graphics engine was dated 10 years ago, it's now comically underwhelming.
Right now they're in an ugly place where they're still awfully large for an indie or AA studio, but an AAA studio still largely won't make anything that doesn't drive to the limit of modern graphics.
As to graphics, my favorite games of the past 5 years were average graphics at best. (Subnautica, Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight, Hades... Red Dead 2 ok not that one)
Personally I've nearly entirely bowed out of AAA gaming. The harder they push the graphics the more everything else ends up trashed. It isn't even a lack of effort per se. It's just that if literally everything has to have pristine animations and perfect voice acting and physics-based interactions with its environments, you get less than when all you needed was a 5 frame pixel animation and a funny sound effect for some particular interaction. AI can only cut into the problem there but not solve it until it is essentially not only human-capable, but human-capable in realtime, which is literally getting to holodeck levels of computation.
Immersive sims meanwhile, seem to be expected to be a smaller scoped (often single player) game, bringing about choice in repeating the same playthrough in its world. Not giving the player a huge toolbox and letting them go wild.
Nintendo on the other hand seems have a good balance of putting out quality games of various ambition with a good frequency
And you see how vehemently the gaming community reacts everytime a Switch exclusive game has some slight frame dip despite running on 2016 hardware. Part of that demand does in fact come from the consumers who don't understand how much work goes into those fancy graphics. And what it sacrifices.
I can't believe these studio acquisitions still aren't being blocked. At what point will they finally acknowledge the blatant anti-competition Microsoft regularly demonstrates by buying any studio that gets too big, letting them rot, and then killing them off?
Seeing the reactions on Reddit or Twitter really show how either young or ignorant the average video game commenter is on how the industry works. just instant gratification at any cost, and if it's denied it's war. Just look at how ballistic they went for needing an extra account for Helldivers, then read up on the news for these layoffs for a game they loved and see the slight murmur in comparison.
HN has some of that too, but there's at least some professionals here that will sympathize with the developers.
Nintendo sends a ton of C&D letters to smaller developers, and are pretty anti-emulation. Games never go on sale. Remakes are expensive ($60 for Super Mario RPG for example).
Sony just had the whole "You need a PSN account to play a PC game" thing. But also, you can't create a PSN account in some countries, so sorry you can't play the PC game you bought anymore. They ended up walking it back though. You also need to pay to play online, which is a thing on xbox as well. But I think that's usually drowned out by the "PC Gamers" who don't need to pay for something like that.
But as with any shitty corporation like MS, it's not charity. It's an investment to distract everyone from the fact that they're a shitty corporation. And it works apparently!
- Procedural worlds
- Realistic NPC conversations
- Dynamic and unpredictable encounters
Essentially the studio was forced to make a game very different from what they were known for (not just as Arkane but even people who worked there) and wanted to make for reasons outside the game's own merits, which in turn introduced a lot of production issues (they did not have the staff or know-how and had to expand in size) and predictably ended up a mess.
