Microsoft has closed down multiple Bethesda studios, including: Tango, Arkane Austin, etc

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EpicRandy said:

Kyuu said:

Once MS bought ABK, the likelihood of their smaller IP's and studios disappearing and shutting down got a lot higher. It's like when Sony started making multiple 20 million sellers and sort of stopped giving a shit about sub 10 million sellers, never mind sub 5 million sellers.

The context is cut-throat. Looking at the leaks of financial assessment with Spider man 2 last year you can see why that is. The title was anticipated only to start generating profits after the 10m marks. 

This is due to 2 main reasons:

1) The market has barely expanded in the last 15 years.

2) The budget of making video game more than doubled in the same time fame.

This directly cut into ROI and especially since profits from those sales are also used to support the subsidised model of console Hardware. The breathing room have grown extremely thin and created a cut-throat environment.

Covid made everyone think the above number 1 issue would be solve by driving growth in the industry and this have driven many investment, but it did not last not only resulting in entity scrambling to secure there previous investment but also forcing them to acknowledge the current reality of the market.

The industry is adjusting itself to this reality and it's not pretty.

Sadly I expect the layoffs to continue in the gaming industry through the rest of the year and likely into 2025. The industry needs the switch 2 ASAP. Its power should be around the PS4 or a little above it, which makes it easier to port AAA games to it. That gives another platform for those games to sell on.