Xbox Game Studios Stupidity Hate Thread Game Pass Edition

[GetToTheChoppa]

Reading about these waves of smuggy af cunty scum getting laid off is like music to the ears.

In some cases a full decade of development work and nothing to show for it.

Look at the success of Clair Obscure EXP 33 and Stellar blade. Obviously hot Asian chicks is what gamers want. In all seriousness, get rid of the suits and let the designers actually work.

Damn straight, these fuckers KNOW what gamers want and if they're not gonna provide it, eventually others will exploit the demand for it and capitalize from the gaping lack of it.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Microsoft doesn’t need fan service projects anymore.

You will rent CoD on Gamepass™ and you will be happy.

considering it's modern cod, i'd rather not own it

 

[moocow]

Kotaku's Ethan Gach is even defending the awful Perfect Dark reboot.

lol his punk ass just got sold (via Kotaku's firesale) so with any luck he'll have to choose soon whether to keep sucking that cock for free or go work for a living.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

Ah, the Duke Nukem Forever gambit! I suppose it worked there (kinda), but then again a real product did eventually emerge from that, even if it was ultimately pretty bland.

Builds of the old DNF actually leaked, though...

 

[moocow]

Builds of the old DNF actually leaked, though...

True, but most of it was literally just made to be part of the trailer. Many assets were missing, nothing was finished, etc. There were no (to my knowledge) portions of the leaked build that weren't explicitly built for the trailer.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

True, but most of it was literally just made to be part of the trailer. Many assets were missing, nothing was finished, etc. There were no (to my knowledge) portions of the leaked build that weren't explicitly built for the trailer.

Yeah, but is this a case of were they intentionally trying to trick people or that's just how shit was done back in the day?

You have to remember, up until like 2000 video game trailers were basically just showing off vertical slices or whatever the fuck they had done for trade shows. That's why they were always so choppy and quick.

I'd argue Kojima probably created the concept of the cinematic hype trailer for the "general public" during MGS2's development, but even the original MGS2 trailer was just showing a vertical slice and was choppy due to missing assets/animations.

DNF wasn't presented as gameplay also, while Perfect Dark (to my recollection, I haven't watched that video since it first came out) was.

 

[Commander X]

Perfect Dark and its developer The Initiative have been terminated.

View attachment 7589398

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-is-closing-down-xbox-studio-the-initiative

The stuff coming out about this Perfect Dark reboot is reminding me of the Monolith Wonder Woman game: Years in development, millions of dollars, nothing tangible to show for it. Not a single playable build. What on earth is going on in the AAA sphere?

 

[Neil]

I was never the biggest Xbox fanboy but damn it's depressing to see just how badly Phil Spencer, Matt Booty and Don Mattick fucked up the brand.
>$3.75 Million for Rareware in 2001
>$7.5 Billion for Zenimax/Bethesda in 2022
>$75.4 Billion for Activision-Blizzard in 2023
>do absolutely nothing with the hundreds if not thousands of IPs you acquired
>refuse to cuck Sony out of Call of Duty or other high value IPs (something that would actually give you an edge in the market this generation)
>mass-layoff thousands of staff every year
>shutdown dozens of studios every year
>dump millions of dollars into a small handful of games that actually get greenlit for development
>mismanage the aforementioned handful of games, causing development to take anywhere from 6-10 years
>cancel the aforementioned handful of games, effectively emptying out your First Party support lineup
>DOUBLE DOWN ON THE FUCKTARDED "EVERYTHING IS AN XBOX" STRATEGY SIGNALLING THAT THERE'S NO REASON TO BUY AN XBOX SINCE NO GAME REQUIRES ONE TO PLAY

and for the icing on top, spew this verbal diharrea:

“To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end / decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility & effectiveness.”

and for the cherry on top of this shit sundae:

After 11 straight years of utter failure, "don't expect anything better!"

It's criminal how the PS5 has somehow sold twice the amount of consoles as the Xbox Series X despite having no exclusive games, $80-160 online and costing more.

Phil Spencer laments Xbox's current status as being the fault of "losing the worst generation to lose", meanwhile Nintendo lost the 8th Generation of consoles the hardest by shitting out the Wii U, a console that barely sold more than the Dreamcast, then produced the 2nd best selling console of all time just three years before the PS5/XBX launched, and (unfortunately) released yet another best-seller off of the goodwill built from their previous console.

Xbox had a real chance to become a version of Nintendo that wasn't held back by shitty low-end hardware, if only they greenlit the projects fans wanted. Revive Banjo for the 90s kids, keep Crash and Spyro alive to rival Astro Bot and give the younger Xbox players something to look forward to that isn't a gritty realistic shooter game or boring cinematic experience, actually commit to releasing your damn games.

 

[moocow]

Yeah, but is this a case of were they intentionally trying to trick people or that's just how shit was done back in the day?

That's a fair point. And to their credit, more was playable than whatever nonsense this Perfect Dark project produced, i.e. nothing.

 

[whatever I feel like]

$3.75 Million for Rareware in 2001

It was actually 375 million. 3.75 million wouldn't have even covered salaries for a year.

 

[Cod of War]

I though Xbox were originally going to go the exclusive route with Bethesda and Activision games but Sayta Nutella said no

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

It was actually 375 million. 3.75 million wouldn't have even covered salaries for a year.

But that included the Donkey Kong license!


Thread tax:

 

[whatever I feel like]

But that included the Donkey Kong license!
View attachment 7592512

Thread tax:
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This has been discussed this several times on this forum, likely even in this very thread. The MS exec involved in that wasn't the person who brought Rare, showed up to do whatever his actual job was shortly after the purchase, saw the DK poster and made an honest comment about it. Upon learning that his company did not own Donkey Kong his response was "oh, okay," and the work day continued.

edit: Bear in mind, Rare was one of the biggest and most successful studios of the 90s, 375 million was a lot of money but viewed as a very fair price at the time. That they went on to never have a bonafide hit under Microsoft until Sea of Thieves is... well.... it sucks but it was as much that Rare didn't adapt to 2000s video game development as it is that Microsoft failed to run them well. And, of course, consider that the runner up bidder (Activision,) surely would have been even worse for them. There's no way that Activision Rare survives the PS2 to PS3 transition.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

They did fuck all. Nintendo should have bought Rare. They bought Monolithsoft after all.

 

[regalterry]

In all seriousness, get rid of the suits and let the designers actually work.

That's no solution, MS tried the hands-off approach and what happened is that the creatives just iterated on their projects forever. You need an adult in the room that knows when to put his foot down and shift gears towards releasing the product.

Not to say the suits are blameless, or even beneficial in a lot of cases, but you need someone to tard wrangle the gamedevs and force them to ship something out within a reasonable timeframe.

What on earth is going on in the AAA sphere?

Competency crisis.

Gaming was never the most competitive IT sector - the hours are long, there's a lot of crunch, the pay is much smaller than in other industries and job stability is questionable at best.

Top talent only worked on games because they were passionate about the medium and willing to suffer the crunch and pay cut because they wanted to make games.

The industry has chased out that kind of talent - too male, too heterosexual, too White - and replaced them with brown blobs of lard with garishly colored hair that lack the intelligence, passion and drive to make anything worthwhile.

It's also why it now takes developers close to a decade to make a single game, with a workforce numbering in the triple/quadruple digits, and the end product is still inferior, more buggy and with less content, than something 20 White guys made in a shed 30 years ago.

After 11 straight years of utter failure, "don't expect anything better!"

Don't forget that they effectively destroyed one of the most popular IPs in gaming history, Halo, by handing it over to a bunch of clowns that are on record saying they hate Halo, guns and the gamer culture it fostered.

343 proceeded to spend more than a decade releasing flop after flop until even the most hardcore fan stopped giving a shit, without MS ever bothering to step in and put people in charge who actually cared, or had a modicum of talent.

 

[marvlouslie]

Instead of reviving older IPs and working on games in house and spreading the wealth around and promoting indies, Microsoft thought it was a good idea to spend a fuckton of money and acquire things instead of working on the shit they already have. Any progress on the new Perfect Dark.... oh wait. That got cancelled. What about Fable? Virtually nothing but that shit alpha footage has been shown. Forza Motorsport is such a shitshow (compared to Forza 7), and nothing new about Gears E-Day, but you have time to remaster the original Gears of War again. Oh, and you also found time to remaster the original Halo....FUCKING AGAIN AS WELL. WHAT THE GODDAMN FUCK.

What the fuck are you doing, Microsoft?

 

[JuanLee]

What on earth is going on in the AAA sphere?

When you're in a world where you are paying an autistic troon to be a 'foliage director', you're not going to end up with anything good.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

considering it's modern cod, i'd rather not own it

COD should be free2play game by now, since it have all these season passes and microtransactions, its been an always online live service game since MW2019. There is no reason for it to be a yearly 80 dollar game, its competition is Fortnite.

In some cases a full decade of development work and nothing to show for it.

That is what happen when you have DEI hires, that is not qualified to get the job done, they only meet up to get a pay check. While the few people that is qualified scramble to get the basic stuff done to keep the project afloat.

I was never the biggest Xbox fanboy but damn it's depressing to see just how badly Phil Spencer, Matt Booty and Don Mattick fucked up the brand.

You forgot to add Satya Nadella and Sarah Bond to that list.

 

[Fcret]

They did fuck all. Nintendo should have bought Rare. They bought Monolithsoft after all.

Nah, I think Rare was already cooked by then. Their late N64 games had a noticeable dip in quality and their titles on the Xbox were also not that impressive. I think Nintendo smelled weakness at Rare and wisely passed on them.

That is what happen when you have DEI hires, that is not qualified to get the job done, they only meet up to get a pay check. While the few people that is qualified scramble to get the basic stuff done to keep the project afloat.

Nigger, everyone shows up to work to get a paycheck. The problems in the game industry are an issue of retarded product managers and retarded execs who prioritize stupid shit instead of shipping an actual working end product.

That and the absolute rock-bottom pay - you can immediately 2x your quality of life by leaving this shitheap and getting a job slinging enterprise slop at a normal company. You'll probably be paid twice as much, only work 9 to 5, and get real benefits along with regular vacations.

On the actual rank-and-file developer side, there's very few people in this industry who are in it for anything other than love because there are way easier development gigs where you just clock in, write maybe 100 lines of code a week, and collect a six figure paycheck.

 

[RandomGibberish]

Nah, I think Rare was already cooked by then. Their late N64 games had a noticeable dip in quality and their titles on the Xbox were also not that impressive. I think Nintendo smelled weakness at Rare and wisely passed on them.


Nigger, everyone shows up to work to get a paycheck. The problems in the game industry are an issue of retarded product managers and retarded execs who prioritize stupid shit instead of shipping an actual working end product.

That and the absolute rock-bottom pay - you can immediately 2x your quality of life by leaving this shitheap and getting a job slinging enterprise slop at a normal company. You'll probably be paid twice as much, only work 9 to 5, and get real benefits along with regular vacations.

On the actual rank-and-file developer side, there's very few people in this industry who are in it for anything other than love because there are way easier development gigs where you just clock in, write maybe 100 lines of code a week, and collect a six figure paycheck.

Exactly this.

The IT industry has grown so massively from the 2000s to the 2020s that it's hard to justify becoming a game developer anymore.

Back then, IT was something only the nerdy kids at school were into. That was it.

Now? There are coding bootcamps designed for complete beginners — they’ll pay you to attend and line up a job for you once you’re done.

In other words, there are way more appealing and stable career paths in tech now than there were 20 years ago.

So why would anyone who actually knows their stuff choose a job that pays less, has a notoriously toxic work culture, and offers zero stability — where your livelihood depends on unpredictable sales, and you’re out the door if the game flops?