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Ryuu96 on 28 February 2024
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Mnementh said:
Ryuu96 said:

With recent events, Microsoft needs to stick to focusing on modest budgeted AAAs, I don't care if Avowed doesn't have the best graphics ever, I don't care if Hellblade II isn't 20+ hours long. Industry needs to bring back smaller, shorter experiences, most non-RPGs don't need to be over 30 hours long, or sometimes even 20, not every game needs the absolute best graphics, art-style is more important.

I hope Microsoft keeps the smaller experiences too, the unique titles, the Double Fine's of the world, the Pentiment and Grounded-like experiences, allowing developers to work on multiple projects, the reason why Obsidian and InXile aren't huge AAA studios is likely cause of them both being based in California which is insanely expensive.

We need to think about the health of the studios, I expect more layoffs from Sony and Microsoft this year alongside everyone else, I think Ubisoft will be hit soon. Thus far I don't believe any of the XGS acquired after 2018 were hit, Zenimax was minorly hit, it has largely been 343i and ABK, I think we'll see more layoffs to ABK before the year is over.

Just hope they realise the smaller games are important too, important to filling gaps, while the AAAs take years and they can become hits out of nowhere like Grounded for a relatively low investment or something crazy like Palworld. It'd be a mistake Imo to focus largely on the bigger projects and not allow some smaller experiences to flourish and try to breakout.

I fully agree (although I wouldn't call Pentiment or Psychonauts smaller AAA, I would call them AA or simply smaller games).

The advantages go beyond what you listed. Yes, these smaller games are faster done and with lower resources, so they can help fill up gaps in the library. With their lower risk they are also great to take some risks and do something different (I think Pentiment and also HiFi-Rush are good examples for games that simply wouldn't exist on a big budget). And they are a good learning tool for new developers, as they can see what they do much better in the final product, instead of big productions where their contribution is dwarfed and they lose sight of the whole.

Funnily enough, Xbox is not the only who needs this and you are not the only one recognizing this. This tweet happened recently:

And then some random guy named Shawn Layden agreed:

Lol, I didn't mean to imply Pentiment/Psychonauts/Grounded, etc, are "smaller AAA" I meant they're just smaller experiences, we have big experience and small experiences, they're 100% A-AA size but I think these A-AA size projects can be important in their own ways. Not only cause they provide diversity, appealing to a broader range of gamers but they also help fill line-ups while the AAAs take years, they also can be low risk/high reward sometimes.

On top of all of that, they most importantly keep a studio healthy, they help employee retention, they provide a studio with a constant focus, who knows if Josh Sawyer would still be at Obsidian for example if he was forced to make another large project when he clearly didn't want to at that time and you're right about all that stuff too, alongside that, developers get burnt out spending 5-6+ years on a single project, it must be fucking draining to go from one 6+ year project straight onto another 6+ year project managing hundreds of employees.

I do actually think Xbox is doing good in this regard, they have studios of various different sizes, they've multiple studios with multiple teams, studios big and small, they've released a bunch of smaller scale projects of a variety of genres and they have even more in development, it needs to be balance with the AAAs that people want too though, I think they need to live in harmony, if anything Xbox has excelled in smaller quality experiences but lacked in AAA releases but that looks to be fixed starting May onwards. But these AAAs should have modest budgets too and not go overboard, I think more lower-end AAA projects would be good too, things like Hivebusters (which should have been a standalone release).

It's mostly me saying, I hope Xbox sticks to what they are doing right now and doesn't pivot to being like "we need big titles now! Double Fine is useless to us! Everyone at Obsidian get on the same project!" Lol. Which I don't have any reason to believe they will but looking at how many of the smaller scale studios that Sony is shutting down and MM may be next, feels like a mistake to me, one I hope MS doesn't follow.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 28 February 2024