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Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, won major awards, showed off the promise of XBox Game Pass… and for their efforts their studio has been shut down. There have m

Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, won major awards, showed off the promise of XBox Game Pass… and for their efforts their studio has been shut down. There have multiple instances of this in just the past few weeks; are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? And those games either take a lot of rotating studios and a long development cycle to release. What’s going to fill the gap?

Apocryphon 2y ago
Just as with movies, it seems like we’re witnessing the death of mid-budget (AA) games.
- iLoveOncall 2y ago
  Honestly I think it might make sense. 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.
  - failuser 2y ago
    How many As does Psychonauts have?
  - ryanmcbride 2y ago
    Is Yakuza AA or AAA? Because every Yakuza game is great and I don't think they have that big of a budget.
    - ClimaxGravely 2y ago
      I've worked on some titles very similar to Yakuza and I keep espousing the way they develop their titles. I don't know for sure because I haven't worked at the studio but it really seems like they've streamlined their development to keep costs down and allow them to develop quickly via asset reuse and resisting major engine upgrades across titles in favor of a slower, more focused pace. Often in my experience in the west we tend to re-author assets, do major engine upgrades or re-implement gameplay systems across sequels when we could have iterated on existing systems and use the time we saved to work on new stuff.
  - lelandbatey 2y ago
    I think many of my most favorite games have been AA games. Though "what counts as AA" is probably a big question. 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).
    - aaomidi 2y ago
      Deep rock galactic Dave the diver Spiritfairer Frostpunk Should i keep going?
      - masklinn 2y ago
        Dave the diver is definitely not an "AA" game. It's so indie looking it was nominated for multiple indie awards (even if it's not an actual indie game). DRG is not AA either, according to its homepage GhostShip has 32 people 4 years after launching it. Same for Spiritfairer, it was built by a team of 16.
        wlesieutre 2y ago
        Wasn’t the case earlier in development since they didn’t have big financial backing, Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales > Deep Rock Galactic aired a trailer at E3 2017, then the game had a huge bump after its Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview launch in February 2018. Its Early Access didn't skyrocket the game "insanely high" like titles such as Valheim, but Pedersen said it was solid enough to know they had a success. At that time there were only 12 employees, and everyone was contracted "because we didn't know if we'd have money the next month." https://gamerant.com/deep-rock-galactic-interview-ghost-ship-history-player-growth-3-million/ https://gamerant.com/deep-rock-galactic-interview-ghost-ship...
        masklinn 2y ago
        > Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales Well yes that's what I said, I didn't find what numbers they had at the time but I indicated that they had 32 people (which generally falls short of AA in the first place) 4 years after launching a successful game, so they'd most likely have had even less before then.
  - jicea 2y ago
    Housemarque hadn't released any AAA games before launching Returnal on PS5, which is, in my opinion, still one of the best games on this platform. Smaller studios can innovate on gameplay and stories before creating a hit. 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.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Elden ring was the shitty mainstream version of dark souls. The open world was just a big forgettable grind of annoying mini dungeons that you probably had to look up and then didn’t enjoy, collectible items that you were never going to use 95% of the time, shitty quests that were difficult to engage in without external guides, and powerful buffs that were very useful but guarded by enemies that don’t scale; leading most players to follow the main quest to the first boss and then just run around the entire map exploring for the warp points/permanent buffs ignoring every enemy possible and then basically forgetting it was an open world game and just hitting the highlights. The memorable parts of the game are the bosses which are generally cool but very gimmicky, and the legacy dungeons. Which is… the dark souls bits. The open world was stinky garbage that made the game much worse.
    - gcr 2y ago
      FromSoft is putting out some really interesting experimental bangers too. If you haven't tried the new Armored Core, I highly recommend it -- it's a great bridge from a beloved-but-niche genre (mech games) toward the mainstream. It's small, focused to a point, tells the story it wants to tell and gets out of your way. I'm still thinking about it 9 months later... Sounds like this sort of risky niche title would earn a studio closure if it came from Microsoft's corner.
    - iLoveOncall 2y ago
      > Housemarque hadn't released any AAA games before launching Returnal on PS5, which is, in my opinion, still one of the best games on this platform. Smaller studios can innovate on gameplay and stories before creating a hit. Yeah I never said the contrary. Actually you see this quite commonly with small unknown studios that release stuff like educative or mobile games and suddenly are handed a big project. > Another example is FromSoftware. Please, they've been releasing AAA since Demon Souls. They're definitely not AA games.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    >I can't remember a single AA game that was great 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.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      As an aside of this discussion: I do not get people who like Outer Worlds. I am a huge fan of New Vegas, I was so pumped for that game, and it was so, so bland. The combat damn near put me to sleep, the writing was atrociously heavy-handed and made me think the authors thought I was a complete fucking idiot (and I agree with them!), and the moment-to-moment gameplay was just thoroughly, thoroughly unsatisfying. I know it has a loving if smaller community and man, I wanted to love it, but I just could not. I have hope for the sequel and will definitely play it if not day one, close to it, but yeah. Outer Worlds was one of my most disappointing games of all time.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Dystakruul 2y ago
        just a note for inattentive readers: Outer Wilds from GP's comment is a very different game compared to Outer Worlds which the parent comment mentions. (it doesn't help that they were both released in the same year, 2019) Outer Wilds: action-adventure, open world mystery game with puzzles Outer Worlds: action role-playing game, open world first-person-shooter (similar to the Fallout games)
        2y ago
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    It depends what type of game you like. There are a million AA RPGs, Metroidvanias, etc. that are enjoyable. Both RoboCop: Rogue City and Terminator: Resistance are good, budget games. Looking through recent games: Dead Cells, Bloodstained, anything from Bitmap Bureau, a lot of Way Forward titles, Altus, etc.
    - aamoyg 2y ago
      Robocop Rogue City was amazing. If you max out the psychology, you start giving back sassy replies to everyone and become sass cop it's great. They really built on the Terminator Engine they used earlier.
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    "I don't like this so it should stop existing"
    - iLoveOncall 2y ago
      That's absolutely not what I said though, just that it makes sense. Personally I wish for as many games as possible to exist, the more options the better, even if some are bad.
  - mrangle 2y ago
    The list of great non AAA games would be so long, here, as to be obnoxious. A lot of game greatness is found in the explicit avoidance of AAA conventions, like extended cut scenes. Many AAA games are masterpieces, and yet few to no no AAA games are 2D platformers for example. Which is one of the all time great formats for pure fun.
  - phone8675309 2y ago
    Were you gaming back in the PlayStation 2 / original Xbox days? There were a TON of AA games in that era. Most of those studios have been bought up by the big studios that peddle AAA (and in some cases, claim to peddle AAAA) garbage.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Standards change and game development standards have skyrocketed. the best AAA titles in 2005 would barely be AA in 2015, and by 2025 it gets to a point where a small (but very talented) team can achieve the same scope with better graphics. That's part of the reason I don't particularly like "AAA" as a nominer. It's a moving target with budget levels we usually have no clue of. >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.
- m12k 2y ago
  Conversely, the recently released surprise hit Helldivers 2 is a very prominent AA game has sold millions of copies and seems well poised to win a bunch of game of the year awards (recently concluded PSN account linking controversy notwithstanding).
  - ryanmcbride 2y ago
    That's been reversed this time but it won't be next time. Next time sony does this the outcry won't be as bad. It's the ratcheting effect of corporate greed.
  - sharkweek 2y ago
    Sidebar: Helldivers II is not a genre I’d normally enjoy but I have absolutely fallen in love with the very rewarding gameplay loop and grind. I have never enjoyed spreading democracy more with my friends than dropping a perfectly targeted orbital strike on a bunch of unpatriotic bugs.
    - danielbln 2y ago
      Same here, third person coop extraction shooter? Bleh, not my cup of tea. Helldivers 2 though? 70+ hours and counting, it's just so much damn fun, with friend or with randoms. It really is the sum of it parts, and every match is different in its own ways. An amazing game, is what it is.
    - highwaylights 2y ago
      Remember: If an existing inhabitant attempts diplomacy we mustn't believe their lies.
    - philipov 2y ago
      Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me to refund that game, since I can't run it on geforce now, and it has denuvo so I won't install it on my own computer.
    - phone8675309 2y ago
      Helldivers II is one of the few games of its type that it feels good to mess around in. Lately my friend group has been playing on mid level difficulty to grind out common and rare samples, and there's nothing funnier than cracking a joke about something and then that person hitting you with a 500 kg bomb and making your body ragdoll across the map. There's just something about messing around in it and being goofy that feels good that doesn't in, say, Vermintide or Darktide.
- rdedev 2y ago
  A regression to the mean where mean is just whatever makes most money. I can understand if they are at the risk of going bankrupt but this seems so premature
luqtas 2y ago
what do you mean by "just"? millions if not billions of USD profit @ the 3 titles cited between the brackets? people play GTA V till these days, even Skyrim... either the way, hope it paves the way for more small studios titles...
MichaelZuo 2y ago
A single big live service game like Fortnite captures the player time that would have otherwise gone into a dozen AA games, per year. 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.
raincole 2y ago
Considering how many games are getting released each month, I am having a hard time comprehending what this "the gap" is referring to.
- filleduchaos 2y ago
  The vast majority of games that get released each month are straight-up garbage. And for the minority that aren't, I'd hope that people in a YC-affiliated forum of all places would see that a product getting released does not equal financial viability.
glenstein 2y ago
Yeah, I have a hard time understanding the push to consolidate everything into a small set of core titles. 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.
- jonhohle 2y ago
  Money? When 90% of revenue comes from yearly sports, FPS, etc. refreshes, it’s easy for middle managers to get the idea that cutting the fat will increase margins. Unwittingly, they are missing the opportunity to find that new hit franchise that needs to be tested and refined outside of the mainstream.
- pteraspidomorph 2y ago
  > consolidate everything into a small set of core titles 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.
  - dvngnt_ 2y ago
    the early 2000's was the ps2 which is the best selling console with the highest number of games shipped. 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
busterarm 2y ago
They also developed The Evil Within games and Ghostwire: Tokyo, but their founder and CEO left the company last year to found a new studio. The writing was on the wall honestly.
127 2y ago
I don't really worry about it because indies are making better games than ever.
- troupo 2y ago
  Not for XBox though. Mine has turned into an expensive paperweight we occasionally use to play the same 2-3 local co-op games we played 4 years ago.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    It's pretty easy to convert your TV to a PC console. Just grab a HDMI/DisplayPort cable and some USB cables for controllers. Wire your TV up, start Steam Big Picture mode, done. You now have a console with a zillion awesome games in the exact same place you had the console connected. 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! [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Split%20Screen https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Split%20Screen
    - SlowRobotAhead 2y ago
      I'd really love cables from my office to my livingroom.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Not sure if you're being snark, like referring to your office at work, but we did this and it works pretty well. We ran the cables along the edges of wall/floor using little cable clamps. They're pretty much out of sight and it works great. Depending on your house you could also run them through the walls/attic/etc. There's a lot of ways to make it work without going bachelor pad.
utensil4778 2y ago
Consumers have been signaling for quite some time that they're perfectly content buying Skyrim and Counterstrike every six months forever. 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?
- gizmo385 2y ago
  I get the point you’re trying to make, but Counterstrike is a free to play game. You might be thinking of Call of Duty?
  - utensil4778 2y ago
    Probably. I'm so thoroughly disinterested in this class of games that I can't be bothered to remember the difference.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Condition Zero and Source released in 2004. Global Offensive released in 2012, eight years later. Counterstrike 2 released in September 2023, eleven years later. Counterstrike isn't the game to point to for re-releasing the same thing over and over.
  - utensil4778 2y ago
    Counternite, fort of duty, whatever. I care so little for this class of game that I can't be bothered to spend the brain space to keep them separate. Not saying they're good or bad, I'm just not interested in the slightest.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      Those are all different genres of FPS
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Fortnite has had a single release and is a free to play game. Once again, if you're going to point out games that just come out with a new version to sell it again, you're failing to show accurate examples.
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
The current tech meta seems to be coalescing around this notion of "even high-performance isn't enough to spare you from layoffs, be afraid!" It wasn't that high-performance always guaranteed your job would continue, but at least there'd be the idea that you'd get moved to a new team if you were a great performer. 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.
- badsectoracula 2y ago
  > 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?
  - mattgreenrocks 2y ago
    The message seems clear: "we call the shots" The value of we probably differs a lot from company to company. But it sure doesn't include workers.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      We call the shots... to our own feet. Seems like studios are forgetting that you can't just drag some random person off the street and get them working on the next "Quadruple A" experience. Even a talented new grad would struggle with that scale. This is really going to come back to bite the industry long term.
maxrecursion 2y ago
Game development is in a really weird place. Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics 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.
- Goronmon 2y ago
  Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics... 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.
  - _mlbt 2y ago
    Spot on. I want Elder Scrolls 6 to basically be Skyrim in a stunning new location, with better graphics. Ditto for Forza Horizon 6 and the next installment of The Witcher.
    - dvngnt_ 2y ago
      the morrowind fans are turning in their graves
      - margorczynski 2y ago
        Well it got dumbed down and casualized. Don't even get me started what they did to Fallout...
jarsin 2y ago
Haven't you heard and seen the latest VC craze? AI is going to autogenerate millions of games, movies, and books all with the click of a button.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm hoping to find some type of image AI service that can produce passable art assets for 2D game development. Just good enough to do POC work. I have started a few gaming projects over the years and always ran into a brick wall needing assets.
willis936 2y ago
I really don't understand why they would shutter Tango, a small / low cost house producing influential art that people actually want, while behemoths that burn cash and produce soulless products that no one wants survive. Shut down Bethesda, they're the ones with awful gameplay and writing. Don't shut down the darlings.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  “Influential art” vs “soulless products” tends to map pretty well to “niche products that return poorly compared to costs to produce while earning critical accolades” vs. “reliable cookie-cutter moneymakers”, and Microsoft isn't in the business to win critical awards for stockholders, but to make money for them.
  - willis936 2y ago
    I'm not arguing philanthropy. Bethesda makes a bad product that that costs a fortune to generate. It's shrunk the size of its market and its time is limited. Tango's business model is sustainable, Bethesda's is not.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    ehh, the correlation is off. MS apparently lied that Hi-Fi Rush "succeeded on all metrics" and meanwhille, Redfall couldn't have been more cookie cutter if you try. It all feels like a crapshoot at this point. 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.
kkukshtel 2y ago
The economics of traditional AAA game development just don't make sense, and the market conditions right now are just acting as a forcing function to expedite their (current) collapse. You have insanely high development costs (50-100m on the low end to 200m+ on the high end) where the _only_ opportunity for return is to release a hit or polish the game to a hit (read, more $$$), but even being able to predict what will or won't be a hit is near impossible. So you have high burn on teams for long dev cycles (2-3 years+) that can't even really time the market because of their slow releases, with audience expectations for what a title means also insanely high, and also that their are both very good free options like Fortnite and large discounted backlogs of "really good games" that you're also fighting against. You also have weird calculus now where you're fighting against your own bets on live service games — spending 100m on expanding GTAV some more is likely a better return than working on GTA6. In the email announcing this from Microsoft's own words, you can see this: "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.
Gazoche 2y ago
I don't understand it either. Maybe there's more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, but on the face of it seems like a really poor decision. 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.
supermatt 2y ago
> Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, Its part of this months "choice" offering on humblebundle.com
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? 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.

Apocryphon 2y ago

Just as with movies, it seems like we’re witnessing the death of mid-budget (AA) games.

iLoveOncall 2y ago
Honestly I think it might make sense. 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.
- failuser 2y ago
  How many As does Psychonauts have?
- ryanmcbride 2y ago
  Is Yakuza AA or AAA? Because every Yakuza game is great and I don't think they have that big of a budget.
  - ClimaxGravely 2y ago
    I've worked on some titles very similar to Yakuza and I keep espousing the way they develop their titles. I don't know for sure because I haven't worked at the studio but it really seems like they've streamlined their development to keep costs down and allow them to develop quickly via asset reuse and resisting major engine upgrades across titles in favor of a slower, more focused pace. Often in my experience in the west we tend to re-author assets, do major engine upgrades or re-implement gameplay systems across sequels when we could have iterated on existing systems and use the time we saved to work on new stuff.
- lelandbatey 2y ago
  I think many of my most favorite games have been AA games. Though "what counts as AA" is probably a big question. 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).
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Deep rock galactic Dave the diver Spiritfairer Frostpunk Should i keep going?
    - masklinn 2y ago
      Dave the diver is definitely not an "AA" game. It's so indie looking it was nominated for multiple indie awards (even if it's not an actual indie game). DRG is not AA either, according to its homepage GhostShip has 32 people 4 years after launching it. Same for Spiritfairer, it was built by a team of 16.
      - wlesieutre 2y ago
        Wasn’t the case earlier in development since they didn’t have big financial backing, Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales > Deep Rock Galactic aired a trailer at E3 2017, then the game had a huge bump after its Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview launch in February 2018. Its Early Access didn't skyrocket the game "insanely high" like titles such as Valheim, but Pedersen said it was solid enough to know they had a success. At that time there were only 12 employees, and everyone was contracted "because we didn't know if we'd have money the next month." https://gamerant.com/deep-rock-galactic-interview-ghost-ship-history-player-growth-3-million/ https://gamerant.com/deep-rock-galactic-interview-ghost-ship...
        masklinn 2y ago
        > Ghost Ship only grew after DRG had sales Well yes that's what I said, I didn't find what numbers they had at the time but I indicated that they had 32 people (which generally falls short of AA in the first place) 4 years after launching a successful game, so they'd most likely have had even less before then.
- jicea 2y ago
  Housemarque hadn't released any AAA games before launching Returnal on PS5, which is, in my opinion, still one of the best games on this platform. Smaller studios can innovate on gameplay and stories before creating a hit. 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.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Elden ring was the shitty mainstream version of dark souls. The open world was just a big forgettable grind of annoying mini dungeons that you probably had to look up and then didn’t enjoy, collectible items that you were never going to use 95% of the time, shitty quests that were difficult to engage in without external guides, and powerful buffs that were very useful but guarded by enemies that don’t scale; leading most players to follow the main quest to the first boss and then just run around the entire map exploring for the warp points/permanent buffs ignoring every enemy possible and then basically forgetting it was an open world game and just hitting the highlights. The memorable parts of the game are the bosses which are generally cool but very gimmicky, and the legacy dungeons. Which is… the dark souls bits. The open world was stinky garbage that made the game much worse.
  - gcr 2y ago
    FromSoft is putting out some really interesting experimental bangers too. If you haven't tried the new Armored Core, I highly recommend it -- it's a great bridge from a beloved-but-niche genre (mech games) toward the mainstream. It's small, focused to a point, tells the story it wants to tell and gets out of your way. I'm still thinking about it 9 months later... Sounds like this sort of risky niche title would earn a studio closure if it came from Microsoft's corner.
  - iLoveOncall 2y ago
    > Housemarque hadn't released any AAA games before launching Returnal on PS5, which is, in my opinion, still one of the best games on this platform. Smaller studios can innovate on gameplay and stories before creating a hit. Yeah I never said the contrary. Actually you see this quite commonly with small unknown studios that release stuff like educative or mobile games and suddenly are handed a big project. > Another example is FromSoftware. Please, they've been releasing AAA since Demon Souls. They're definitely not AA games.
- glenstein 2y ago
  >I can't remember a single AA game that was great 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.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    As an aside of this discussion: I do not get people who like Outer Worlds. I am a huge fan of New Vegas, I was so pumped for that game, and it was so, so bland. The combat damn near put me to sleep, the writing was atrociously heavy-handed and made me think the authors thought I was a complete fucking idiot (and I agree with them!), and the moment-to-moment gameplay was just thoroughly, thoroughly unsatisfying. I know it has a loving if smaller community and man, I wanted to love it, but I just could not. I have hope for the sequel and will definitely play it if not day one, close to it, but yeah. Outer Worlds was one of my most disappointing games of all time.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dystakruul 2y ago
      just a note for inattentive readers: Outer Wilds from GP's comment is a very different game compared to Outer Worlds which the parent comment mentions. (it doesn't help that they were both released in the same year, 2019) Outer Wilds: action-adventure, open world mystery game with puzzles Outer Worlds: action role-playing game, open world first-person-shooter (similar to the Fallout games)
      - 2y ago
- jonhohle 2y ago
  It depends what type of game you like. There are a million AA RPGs, Metroidvanias, etc. that are enjoyable. Both RoboCop: Rogue City and Terminator: Resistance are good, budget games. Looking through recent games: Dead Cells, Bloodstained, anything from Bitmap Bureau, a lot of Way Forward titles, Altus, etc.
  - aamoyg 2y ago
    Robocop Rogue City was amazing. If you max out the psychology, you start giving back sassy replies to everyone and become sass cop it's great. They really built on the Terminator Engine they used earlier.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  "I don't like this so it should stop existing"
  - iLoveOncall 2y ago
    That's absolutely not what I said though, just that it makes sense. Personally I wish for as many games as possible to exist, the more options the better, even if some are bad.
- mrangle 2y ago
  The list of great non AAA games would be so long, here, as to be obnoxious. A lot of game greatness is found in the explicit avoidance of AAA conventions, like extended cut scenes. Many AAA games are masterpieces, and yet few to no no AAA games are 2D platformers for example. Which is one of the all time great formats for pure fun.
- phone8675309 2y ago
  Were you gaming back in the PlayStation 2 / original Xbox days? There were a TON of AA games in that era. Most of those studios have been bought up by the big studios that peddle AAA (and in some cases, claim to peddle AAAA) garbage.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Standards change and game development standards have skyrocketed. the best AAA titles in 2005 would barely be AA in 2015, and by 2025 it gets to a point where a small (but very talented) team can achieve the same scope with better graphics. That's part of the reason I don't particularly like "AAA" as a nominer. It's a moving target with budget levels we usually have no clue of. >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.
m12k 2y ago
Conversely, the recently released surprise hit Helldivers 2 is a very prominent AA game has sold millions of copies and seems well poised to win a bunch of game of the year awards (recently concluded PSN account linking controversy notwithstanding).
- ryanmcbride 2y ago
  That's been reversed this time but it won't be next time. Next time sony does this the outcry won't be as bad. It's the ratcheting effect of corporate greed.
- sharkweek 2y ago
  Sidebar: Helldivers II is not a genre I’d normally enjoy but I have absolutely fallen in love with the very rewarding gameplay loop and grind. I have never enjoyed spreading democracy more with my friends than dropping a perfectly targeted orbital strike on a bunch of unpatriotic bugs.
  - danielbln 2y ago
    Same here, third person coop extraction shooter? Bleh, not my cup of tea. Helldivers 2 though? 70+ hours and counting, it's just so much damn fun, with friend or with randoms. It really is the sum of it parts, and every match is different in its own ways. An amazing game, is what it is.
  - highwaylights 2y ago
    Remember: If an existing inhabitant attempts diplomacy we mustn't believe their lies.
  - philipov 2y ago
    Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me to refund that game, since I can't run it on geforce now, and it has denuvo so I won't install it on my own computer.
  - phone8675309 2y ago
    Helldivers II is one of the few games of its type that it feels good to mess around in. Lately my friend group has been playing on mid level difficulty to grind out common and rare samples, and there's nothing funnier than cracking a joke about something and then that person hitting you with a 500 kg bomb and making your body ragdoll across the map. There's just something about messing around in it and being goofy that feels good that doesn't in, say, Vermintide or Darktide.
rdedev 2y ago
A regression to the mean where mean is just whatever makes most money. I can understand if they are at the risk of going bankrupt but this seems so premature

luqtas 2y ago

what do you mean by "just"? millions if not billions of USD profit @ the 3 titles cited between the brackets? people play GTA V till these days, even Skyrim... either the way, hope it paves the way for more small studios titles...

MichaelZuo 2y ago

A single big live service game like Fortnite captures the player time that would have otherwise gone into a dozen AA games, per year. 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.

raincole 2y ago

Considering how many games are getting released each month, I am having a hard time comprehending what this "the gap" is referring to.

filleduchaos 2y ago
The vast majority of games that get released each month are straight-up garbage. And for the minority that aren't, I'd hope that people in a YC-affiliated forum of all places would see that a product getting released does not equal financial viability.

glenstein 2y ago

Yeah, I have a hard time understanding the push to consolidate everything into a small set of core titles. 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.

jonhohle 2y ago
Money? When 90% of revenue comes from yearly sports, FPS, etc. refreshes, it’s easy for middle managers to get the idea that cutting the fat will increase margins. Unwittingly, they are missing the opportunity to find that new hit franchise that needs to be tested and refined outside of the mainstream.
pteraspidomorph 2y ago
> consolidate everything into a small set of core titles 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.
- dvngnt_ 2y ago
  the early 2000's was the ps2 which is the best selling console with the highest number of games shipped. 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

busterarm 2y ago

They also developed The Evil Within games and Ghostwire: Tokyo, but their founder and CEO left the company last year to found a new studio. The writing was on the wall honestly.

127 2y ago

I don't really worry about it because indies are making better games than ever.

troupo 2y ago
Not for XBox though. Mine has turned into an expensive paperweight we occasionally use to play the same 2-3 local co-op games we played 4 years ago.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  It's pretty easy to convert your TV to a PC console. Just grab a HDMI/DisplayPort cable and some USB cables for controllers. Wire your TV up, start Steam Big Picture mode, done. You now have a console with a zillion awesome games in the exact same place you had the console connected. 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! [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Split%20Screen https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Split%20Screen
  - SlowRobotAhead 2y ago
    I'd really love cables from my office to my livingroom.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Not sure if you're being snark, like referring to your office at work, but we did this and it works pretty well. We ran the cables along the edges of wall/floor using little cable clamps. They're pretty much out of sight and it works great. Depending on your house you could also run them through the walls/attic/etc. There's a lot of ways to make it work without going bachelor pad.

utensil4778 2y ago

Consumers have been signaling for quite some time that they're perfectly content buying Skyrim and Counterstrike every six months forever. 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?

gizmo385 2y ago
I get the point you’re trying to make, but Counterstrike is a free to play game. You might be thinking of Call of Duty?
- utensil4778 2y ago
  Probably. I'm so thoroughly disinterested in this class of games that I can't be bothered to remember the difference.
vel0city 2y ago
Condition Zero and Source released in 2004. Global Offensive released in 2012, eight years later. Counterstrike 2 released in September 2023, eleven years later. Counterstrike isn't the game to point to for re-releasing the same thing over and over.
- utensil4778 2y ago
  Counternite, fort of duty, whatever. I care so little for this class of game that I can't be bothered to spend the brain space to keep them separate. Not saying they're good or bad, I'm just not interested in the slightest.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    Those are all different genres of FPS
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Fortnite has had a single release and is a free to play game. Once again, if you're going to point out games that just come out with a new version to sell it again, you're failing to show accurate examples.

mattgreenrocks 2y ago

The current tech meta seems to be coalescing around this notion of "even high-performance isn't enough to spare you from layoffs, be afraid!" It wasn't that high-performance always guaranteed your job would continue, but at least there'd be the idea that you'd get moved to a new team if you were a great performer. 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.

badsectoracula 2y ago
> 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?
- mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  The message seems clear: "we call the shots" The value of we probably differs a lot from company to company. But it sure doesn't include workers.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    We call the shots... to our own feet. Seems like studios are forgetting that you can't just drag some random person off the street and get them working on the next "Quadruple A" experience. Even a talented new grad would struggle with that scale. This is really going to come back to bite the industry long term.

maxrecursion 2y ago

Game development is in a really weird place. Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics 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.

Goronmon 2y ago
Insanely over-saturated but almost all AAA games are extremely derivative, stale, bland games with a coat of pretty graphics... 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.
- _mlbt 2y ago
  Spot on. I want Elder Scrolls 6 to basically be Skyrim in a stunning new location, with better graphics. Ditto for Forza Horizon 6 and the next installment of The Witcher.
  - dvngnt_ 2y ago
    the morrowind fans are turning in their graves
    - margorczynski 2y ago
      Well it got dumbed down and casualized. Don't even get me started what they did to Fallout...

jarsin 2y ago

Haven't you heard and seen the latest VC craze? AI is going to autogenerate millions of games, movies, and books all with the click of a button.

datavirtue 2y ago
Yeah, I'm hoping to find some type of image AI service that can produce passable art assets for 2D game development. Just good enough to do POC work. I have started a few gaming projects over the years and always ran into a brick wall needing assets.

willis936 2y ago

I really don't understand why they would shutter Tango, a small / low cost house producing influential art that people actually want, while behemoths that burn cash and produce soulless products that no one wants survive. Shut down Bethesda, they're the ones with awful gameplay and writing. Don't shut down the darlings.

dragonwriter 2y ago
“Influential art” vs “soulless products” tends to map pretty well to “niche products that return poorly compared to costs to produce while earning critical accolades” vs. “reliable cookie-cutter moneymakers”, and Microsoft isn't in the business to win critical awards for stockholders, but to make money for them.
- willis936 2y ago
  I'm not arguing philanthropy. Bethesda makes a bad product that that costs a fortune to generate. It's shrunk the size of its market and its time is limited. Tango's business model is sustainable, Bethesda's is not.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  ehh, the correlation is off. MS apparently lied that Hi-Fi Rush "succeeded on all metrics" and meanwhille, Redfall couldn't have been more cookie cutter if you try. It all feels like a crapshoot at this point. 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.

kkukshtel 2y ago

The economics of traditional AAA game development just don't make sense, and the market conditions right now are just acting as a forcing function to expedite their (current) collapse. You have insanely high development costs (50-100m on the low end to 200m+ on the high end) where the _only_ opportunity for return is to release a hit or polish the game to a hit (read, more $$$), but even being able to predict what will or won't be a hit is near impossible. So you have high burn on teams for long dev cycles (2-3 years+) that can't even really time the market because of their slow releases, with audience expectations for what a title means also insanely high, and also that their are both very good free options like Fortnite and large discounted backlogs of "really good games" that you're also fighting against. You also have weird calculus now where you're fighting against your own bets on live service games — spending 100m on expanding GTAV some more is likely a better return than working on GTA6. In the email announcing this from Microsoft's own words, you can see this: "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.

Gazoche 2y ago

I don't understand it either. Maybe there's more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, but on the face of it seems like a really poor decision. 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.

supermatt 2y ago

> Hi-Fi Rush was a fantastic game, Its part of this months "choice" offering on humblebundle.com

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>are publishers really going to just bet on their prime AAA titles (Call of Duty, Halo, GTA6, etc) and nothing else? 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.