4 ms·

Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio

59 points by rolph 3y ago

KittenInABox 3y ago
IMO, this is continued evidence that large gaming companies are broadly dumbheaded. Are there any non-shitty non-indie studios worth really investing in anymore? I even think larger IP like Halo, Team Fortress, DOTA, etc. could really benefit from being sold off to smaller, passionate, hungry teams.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  That's been my thought too. All the big studios are competing for an incredible amount of money each game. Isn't there a decent formula for producing hi-fi rush games "cheaply"? How many people are needed?
  - causi 3y ago
    How many people are needed? If Google is addicted to reduction in personnel through automation, Microsoft is addicted to disposability. Almost all the work done on Microsoft-developed titles like Halo Infinite is performed by temporary workers who are employed for a period of months and then terminated. Microsoft thinks creative success is a commodity to be bought and sold, and it isn't.
  - alstonite 3y ago
    I wonder if there's room for some kind of 'video game YC', where a company would shotgun invest in a bunch of promising indie titles in the hopes of finding the next Stardew Valley / Factorio?
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      I don't know, but I wish it was a reality. I always end up having more fun with indie games (with some very rare AAA exceptions)
    - Shish2k 3y ago
      Given how reliably VC investment leads into the cycle of enshittification, I’m not sure games like stardew / factorio would survive investment :(
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      Historically, Valve has acquihired promising mod makers or smaller game companies and told them to take their ideas and make a full game out of that. Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, TF2, Alien Swarm, DotA, I might not even know of them all.
- chowells 3y ago
  No video game company is worth investing in... ... Except in the rare case that the returns you want are in the form of good games, rather than cash. Then invest all you want in companies that don't constantly make excuses about why they need to exploit their workers and customers.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  High budget video games are not a good market. Your best bet is Nintendo, but even they aren't super high budget.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Small/hungry teams make great games, but they don't make great money. Games from small teams will develop massive fanbases (KSP, Factorio, subnautica, early minecraft) and people will buy their games. But that doesn't matter. Those small teams do not have the corporate power to capitalize on the microtransactions and subscription services that pull the real money. I bought Factorio long long ago. I still play it occasionally. If the developers asked me for money, say for an updated version, I would send money without question. But they haven't asked. Good game. Bad at making money.
  - GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
    According to vginsights, Factorio made $123 million on Steam. Maybe they didn't make the maximum amount of money possible, but they are good a making money. https://vginsights.com/game/427520 https://vginsights.com/game/427520 Edit: The gross revenue is in the top 0.01% of all Steam games.
    - dwallin 3y ago
      Placement within all steam games is not really a useful metric, there is an extremely long tail of games on steam that make basically nothing.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      Factorio is a massive success and only made $123M. For a company funding a lot of things, you are going to be putting out mostly flops that lose money, and then hoping to get it back on the successes. But it doesn't look like the successes are good enough to fund all the failures. Unless you mostly take super boring safe options.
  - Teever 3y ago
    I think you have that wrong. Maybe the kind of people who are drawn to those different kinds of games from smaller studios are not the kinds of people who will go for bullshit like microtransactions and subscriptions and the developers of those games know that. Prior to the release of Subnautica, Unknown Worlds spent years developing and promoting Natural Selection 2, an innovative RTS/FPS hybrid that was the sequel to their crowd hit mod for Half Life. They anticipated yuge money from turning the game into a frantic but predictable eSports thing meant for mass consumption with flashy paid skins and the like. It was a failure. The fanbase rejected it and it ultimately killed the game. They learned from that experience and delivered a totally different game which was based on the traditional business model of making a good single player game, selling it as a complete product and then if it's successful making and selling a sequel. That game was called Subnautica and it's probably the only reason you ever heard of Unknown Worlds. There's no way I'm subscribing to Factorio, and I doubt there was ever a path to success for a game like Factorio that involved subscriptions just like there was ever a path to success for an incredible game like NS2 through eSports.
ado__dev 3y ago
Microsoft never really got gaming like Sony and Nintendo. Yes, at the end of the day all 3 exist to make as much money as possible, but Microsoft has been the most consistent in pushing the shittiest stuff into the gaming landscape. Paid online, DLC, live service games, even their dashboard since the 360 era has been all about how they can extract the most amount of money from gamers. Sony and Nintendo have done their fair share of crappy things, but they also have just as many awesome games that "respect" gaming. I can't think of a single recent MS game that hasn't been an absolute flop in terms of just providing a great experience.
- Spartan-S63 3y ago
  Yeah, I really miss the old 360 Blade UI rather than the New Xbox Experience UI. From then on, it just sort of got worse. It's ironic since Microsoft also has Windows and DirectX and corners the PC gaming market in this regard.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    This is the time to switch to Linux for PC gaming. Seriously. Steam on Linux with Proton is really good. I've even played Halo on it. The anti-cheat stuff is even coming around, though there's still work on that front.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    The Windows UI is also terrible: 5 s for notepad to start on Win 10, redesign of the Explorer's context menu in Win11.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  All my experience with Microsoft in gaming in the last 5-10 years felt like the "corporate gaming" experience. The Minecraft migration, logging into games using Microsoft accounts, and various small intricacies, all give a corporate user experience compared to others in the (PC) gaming space.
  - ado__dev 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Hopefully this serves as a wake-up call to small and mid-sized studios to stop letting themselves be acquired. I get that it must be grueling to be an independent studio constantly jumping from one project to the next, worrying that a single misstep could mean people don't get paid. I've read the history of Obsidian studios. But the alternative of not being under someone else's thumb is that it is less likely you are told, "Your team delivered everything we asked for--a stellar game, well-received, and it hit sales targets; but someone upstairs wanted more, so you're all fired."
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  A lot of people see being acquired as an exit opportunity, they're not thinking about the employees. Unless you're able to make use of the increased capital, or expertise of the people buying you to great effect, being bought will pretty much always mean that life will get worse.
bastard_op 3y ago
I loved the original xbox and 360, but Microsoft has mostly lost its way when it comes to gaming, and since losing the console wars these days, is left as only a publisher for all the game companies they've acquired to whatever ruin is happening now, even selling to competing hardware platforms. Microsoft still seems to have a habit of ruining everything they touch, this looks like a tailspin for xbox and the game studios acquired they can't even figure out what to do with. Most high-profile games have been disgustingly bad for years, particularly looking at like Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft that puts out crippled AAA(A) titles laden with micro-transactions, game passes, and DRM as invasive as malware if released to PC. People are sick of getting poor value from expensive games. Since Valve has been involved with Proton in Steam, finally making Linux gaming a real possibility, I find I buy and play lots of smaller indie games with a $5-10 price point that I would never have considered playing on a console. I laugh at games selling for $70-100 now, but I'll gladly spend $70 for 10 smaller games that will bring me far more joy overall. Most expensive AAA titles also don't tend to work under Linux at all due to DRM, MTX integrations, etc that only serve to anger and frustrate me, whereas smaller games work almost universally, and increasingly more offer native Linux clients as well that we'd simply never see from EA, Ubisoft, and particularly Microsoft. Usually they have problems even working natively under Windoze well enough, asking for or expecting Linux support just makes them laugh. I feel a lot better about supporting indie studios than the mega game and media cartels, and Valve/Steam always for their Linux support. Sony and Microsoft can feel free to die off already.

59 points by rolph 3y ago

IMO, this is continued evidence that large gaming companies are broadly dumbheaded. Are there any non-shitty non-indie studios worth really investing in anymore? I even think larger IP like Halo, Team Fortress, DOTA, etc. could really benefit from being sold off to smaller, passionate, hungry teams.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
That's been my thought too. All the big studios are competing for an incredible amount of money each game. Isn't there a decent formula for producing hi-fi rush games "cheaply"? How many people are needed?
- causi 3y ago
  How many people are needed? If Google is addicted to reduction in personnel through automation, Microsoft is addicted to disposability. Almost all the work done on Microsoft-developed titles like Halo Infinite is performed by temporary workers who are employed for a period of months and then terminated. Microsoft thinks creative success is a commodity to be bought and sold, and it isn't.
- alstonite 3y ago
  I wonder if there's room for some kind of 'video game YC', where a company would shotgun invest in a bunch of promising indie titles in the hopes of finding the next Stardew Valley / Factorio?
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    I don't know, but I wish it was a reality. I always end up having more fun with indie games (with some very rare AAA exceptions)
  - Shish2k 3y ago
    Given how reliably VC investment leads into the cycle of enshittification, I’m not sure games like stardew / factorio would survive investment :(
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    Historically, Valve has acquihired promising mod makers or smaller game companies and told them to take their ideas and make a full game out of that. Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, TF2, Alien Swarm, DotA, I might not even know of them all.
chowells 3y ago
No video game company is worth investing in... ... Except in the rare case that the returns you want are in the form of good games, rather than cash. Then invest all you want in companies that don't constantly make excuses about why they need to exploit their workers and customers.
zeroCalories 3y ago
High budget video games are not a good market. Your best bet is Nintendo, but even they aren't super high budget.
sandworm101 3y ago
Small/hungry teams make great games, but they don't make great money. Games from small teams will develop massive fanbases (KSP, Factorio, subnautica, early minecraft) and people will buy their games. But that doesn't matter. Those small teams do not have the corporate power to capitalize on the microtransactions and subscription services that pull the real money. I bought Factorio long long ago. I still play it occasionally. If the developers asked me for money, say for an updated version, I would send money without question. But they haven't asked. Good game. Bad at making money.
- GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
  According to vginsights, Factorio made $123 million on Steam. Maybe they didn't make the maximum amount of money possible, but they are good a making money. https://vginsights.com/game/427520 https://vginsights.com/game/427520 Edit: The gross revenue is in the top 0.01% of all Steam games.
  - dwallin 3y ago
    Placement within all steam games is not really a useful metric, there is an extremely long tail of games on steam that make basically nothing.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Factorio is a massive success and only made $123M. For a company funding a lot of things, you are going to be putting out mostly flops that lose money, and then hoping to get it back on the successes. But it doesn't look like the successes are good enough to fund all the failures. Unless you mostly take super boring safe options.
- Teever 3y ago
  I think you have that wrong. Maybe the kind of people who are drawn to those different kinds of games from smaller studios are not the kinds of people who will go for bullshit like microtransactions and subscriptions and the developers of those games know that. Prior to the release of Subnautica, Unknown Worlds spent years developing and promoting Natural Selection 2, an innovative RTS/FPS hybrid that was the sequel to their crowd hit mod for Half Life. They anticipated yuge money from turning the game into a frantic but predictable eSports thing meant for mass consumption with flashy paid skins and the like. It was a failure. The fanbase rejected it and it ultimately killed the game. They learned from that experience and delivered a totally different game which was based on the traditional business model of making a good single player game, selling it as a complete product and then if it's successful making and selling a sequel. That game was called Subnautica and it's probably the only reason you ever heard of Unknown Worlds. There's no way I'm subscribing to Factorio, and I doubt there was ever a path to success for a game like Factorio that involved subscriptions just like there was ever a path to success for an incredible game like NS2 through eSports.

ado__dev 3y ago

Microsoft never really got gaming like Sony and Nintendo. Yes, at the end of the day all 3 exist to make as much money as possible, but Microsoft has been the most consistent in pushing the shittiest stuff into the gaming landscape. Paid online, DLC, live service games, even their dashboard since the 360 era has been all about how they can extract the most amount of money from gamers. Sony and Nintendo have done their fair share of crappy things, but they also have just as many awesome games that "respect" gaming. I can't think of a single recent MS game that hasn't been an absolute flop in terms of just providing a great experience.

Spartan-S63 3y ago
Yeah, I really miss the old 360 Blade UI rather than the New Xbox Experience UI. From then on, it just sort of got worse. It's ironic since Microsoft also has Windows and DirectX and corners the PC gaming market in this regard.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  This is the time to switch to Linux for PC gaming. Seriously. Steam on Linux with Proton is really good. I've even played Halo on it. The anti-cheat stuff is even coming around, though there's still work on that front.
- hulitu 2y ago
  The Windows UI is also terrible: 5 s for notepad to start on Win 10, redesign of the Explorer's context menu in Win11.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
All my experience with Microsoft in gaming in the last 5-10 years felt like the "corporate gaming" experience. The Minecraft migration, logging into games using Microsoft accounts, and various small intricacies, all give a corporate user experience compared to others in the (PC) gaming space.
- ado__dev 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Hopefully this serves as a wake-up call to small and mid-sized studios to stop letting themselves be acquired. I get that it must be grueling to be an independent studio constantly jumping from one project to the next, worrying that a single misstep could mean people don't get paid. I've read the history of Obsidian studios. But the alternative of not being under someone else's thumb is that it is less likely you are told, "Your team delivered everything we asked for--a stellar game, well-received, and it hit sales targets; but someone upstairs wanted more, so you're all fired."

zeroCalories 3y ago
A lot of people see being acquired as an exit opportunity, they're not thinking about the employees. Unless you're able to make use of the increased capital, or expertise of the people buying you to great effect, being bought will pretty much always mean that life will get worse.

bastard_op 3y ago

I loved the original xbox and 360, but Microsoft has mostly lost its way when it comes to gaming, and since losing the console wars these days, is left as only a publisher for all the game companies they've acquired to whatever ruin is happening now, even selling to competing hardware platforms. Microsoft still seems to have a habit of ruining everything they touch, this looks like a tailspin for xbox and the game studios acquired they can't even figure out what to do with. Most high-profile games have been disgustingly bad for years, particularly looking at like Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft that puts out crippled AAA(A) titles laden with micro-transactions, game passes, and DRM as invasive as malware if released to PC. People are sick of getting poor value from expensive games. Since Valve has been involved with Proton in Steam, finally making Linux gaming a real possibility, I find I buy and play lots of smaller indie games with a $5-10 price point that I would never have considered playing on a console. I laugh at games selling for $70-100 now, but I'll gladly spend $70 for 10 smaller games that will bring me far more joy overall. Most expensive AAA titles also don't tend to work under Linux at all due to DRM, MTX integrations, etc that only serve to anger and frustrate me, whereas smaller games work almost universally, and increasingly more offer native Linux clients as well that we'd simply never see from EA, Ubisoft, and particularly Microsoft. Usually they have problems even working natively under Windoze well enough, asking for or expecting Linux support just makes them laugh. I feel a lot better about supporting indie studios than the mega game and media cartels, and Valve/Steam always for their Linux support. Sony and Microsoft can feel free to die off already.