| John2290 said: I wonder how much they are loosing though. I hope they aren't but does anyone know if the initiative is siphoning employees out from under them with the massive pocket of MS or if even some people just got burned out through GOWs developmemt. They haven't mentioned expanding so... |
lol.. you know what?
Microsoft has been pinching the wallet near the end of the Xbox360 cycle. Sure, they spent big on Halo, Gears, Fable, Forza. But that is it. That is the full of their strategy, these 4 games are their 4 pillars. Probably because these 4 games sold very well last gen. They thought that competition was weak and nonexistent and didn't see the need to spend tens of millions to develop new ips that may or may not succeed. They do have side projects like Alan Wake and and Quantum Break, but they are far and few.
Xbox One they obviously saw the need to diversify. After seeing Halo, and Gears not dominating as they did last gen. Fabloe simply a lost investment and broke apart, and Forza, while critically acclaimed, but never sell a lot of copies. Instead of spending hundreds of millions on hiring first party studios, they half assed their diversity attempt by partnering with 3rd party developers which brought us projects like Scalebound, Recore, Phantom Dust, Crackdown3, and a bunch more you can google from their past E3 reveals. And we obviously know how this strategy went.
They were also very insecure with their hardware. They were very bitter that everyone is claiming vanilla PS4 was more powerful than Xbox One and this was the sole reason why they were losing current gen. So they went to the factory and came up with a new 6TFlops XBoxONE X and thought this would solve all their problems now that their hardware is more powerful than Sony's.
Now we move onto the final stage, where they see that hardware wasn't the problem, partnering with 3rd party studio is a lost cause. They are doing a solid strategy of buying up mid sized first party studios that aren't too big and expensive but have produced creative and potential games. Like the highly acclaimed Hellblade's studio and the very unique We very Few studio. They also invest big on one more major studio, which is the Initiative and spend big to hire away big named creative talent from Crystal Dynamics and Santa Monica. But the sentence stops here. Everyone knows Microsoft has big pockets, we do not need to be reminded every time. But are they willing to spend it every time? No.
Talent comes and goes, but the quality almost always stays with the studio. I have read about studio directors leaving, but it is always the studio that continues to produce the amazing work. Desilets left, Jade Raymond left, what have they produced after leaving? But yet here we have this year, the best Assassin's Creed game in the franchise. Amy Hennig left, did Uncharted 4 suffer? Will Amy reach the heights of UC2/3 again? Cliff B left Epic, what game is he working on now? Cory Barlog left Santa Monica for many years, what did he accomplish in other studios...? But yet he comes back to Santa Monica in 2013 and release the biggest game ever in his life. Asmussen, the GoW3 director left in 2014, what has he done? Ken Levine- what has he done? Love the guy, but 2K is still pumping out triple A titles with no problem.
Microsoft is obviously forgetting about previous battle bruises and taking the battleground to streaming. And in order to do this, they themselves need the games. If they are serious about this, they should open up at least 2-3 more studios like Initiative. But have stopped short of this because obviously it will take a couple hundred million dollars of investment. Sony is a triple A first party factory. Santa Monica, GG, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Insomniac, Quantic Dream, Japan Studios, Sony Bend, Kojima. And they have obviously already won the consumer's favor; sales say it all.
