Xbox Empire

[Zippy6]

gtotheunit91 said:

Zippy6 said:

I can't imagine a drop that radical, if it is the case, is from that alone though. But I wonder what could have happened over the past 4 years or so if MS had focused on restructuring their studios instead of acquiring new ones. There's no denying that the quality and speed for their developers is subpar and most of them need some kind of overhaul. Other than the consistent quality and output of Forza content it's been bad. Their studios are bloated and have been poorly managed.

343 should never have been allowed to balloon to over 750 employees, then they had the help of 5/6 support studios and Halo Infinite still didn't come out in a timely manner or in a complete state when a game like that should have been achievable with a much smaller studio. Halo Infinite really isn't that ambitious of a title, it's not a sprawling 100 hour open world game.

Microsoft's studios are really not living up to their potential and I'm sure the blame lies fairly high up on the chain. 

As nice as it sounds that Xbox is very hands-off when it comes to intervening their studios, it clearly doesn't work as they hope. Half the studios operate just fine whereas the other half struggle. 

You never hear issues with Double Fine, inXile, Obsidian, World's Edge, Turn 10, or Compulsion, but there's obvious issues with 343, The Initiative, and Undead Labs that only in more recent times has Xbox tried to resolve. 343 has been completely gutted as a studio finally and good leadership has been put in place, but that's what I meant that Xbox hasn't really found their identity or footing. Some studios are fine, some aren't, it's not unified in the way you would hope, and rather than focusing on those problems to unify the Xbox platform, they're working on a $70 billion acquisition lol.

Undead Labs. I forgot State of Decay 3 even got announced. Geeees.

Edit: Had to remind myself of what was actually in the pipeline after that sudden realisation SoD3 existed.

Everwild - TBA (Announced November 2019)
Hellblade 2 - TBA (announced December 2019)
Avowed - TBA (Announced July 2020)
Fable - TBA (Announced July 2020)
State of Decay 3 - TBA (announced July 2020)
Perfect Dark - TBA (Announced December 2020)
Contraband - TBA (Announced June 2021)
Outerworlds 2 - TBA (Announced June 2021)

So we'll soon hit the mark where we have 5 games that were announced over 3 years ago and still haven't come out. If that isn't a wakeup call you are managing studios wrong I don't know what is.

Last edited by Zippy6 - on 20 March 2023