Rare restructures

[badgenome]

Fumanchu said:

badgenome said:

Euphoria14 said:

Why does Microsoft keep cutting jobs in their gaming department?

Edit - It says "could" but it sounds like it is almost sure to happen. I just do not understand why MS is cutting though while I haven't heard about Sony cutting any and they aren't doing as well right now in sales like MS is.

Poor devs.

I assume Ensemble and ACES were dropped because Microsoft doesn't see them as very important for their console, which obviously is a much higher priority than Games for Windows. Bungie weren't cut, but were rather let go. Very literally. They wanted out to keep from being absorbed by Microsoft Games Studio and losing their identity.

I think it's because Microsoft has ambitions of turning MGS into a powerhouse publisher, judging from their actions and also from things that Kudo Tsunoda has said. They seem to think it's more desirable to work closely with third parties to make their "first party" games than to go through all the expense of keeping up a bunch of studios.

I'm not sure I understand the strategy as their actions seem to contradict their intentions. How do you get to be a big 'powerhouse' publisher without owning lots of studios? I think there's a dimishing number of quality third-party developers that aren't publishers themselves or in some way affilitated with another large 'powerhouse' publisher, and the ones that are available MS runs the risk of them being snatched up. I'm not sure a lot of developers would want to partner with MS as their publisher as obviously it means exclusivity, for if they were to partner with EA, Sega or Activision for example they could presumably double their profits through benefitting from a multi-platform release. Who do you see MS turning to for 'first party' games?

It's a strategy that has some definite pitfalls (particularly studios being acquired by other publishers, as Bioware was), and I'm not at all sure that it's the best way to go. However, the more they talk about MGS, the more it seems to me that this is the direction in which they want to go. Of course, I could be way off base, and maybe all this talk about "restructuring around Microsoft Games Studio" will result in more in-house development.

One thing that does make sense to me is the idea that instead of having to pay upkeep on a bunch of first party studios, they can keep assets free with which to approach somebody and say, "Let's make a game." I don't know that it really matters to a studio whether a game is multiplatform or exclusive as long as they're getting compensated. And if Microsoft offers to shoulder the financial risk, that is probably incentive enough for smaller developers (ones like From Software and tri-Ace).

Edit: Maybe even in the case of a sizeable developer with a monster franchise like Gears. Epic doesn't seem too keen on taking it multiplatform (if they even can, legally). They sound plenty happy to have Microsoft doing the heavy lifting in terms of promoting the hell out of the games.