| hiccupthehuman said: From what I understood reading other people's analyses of the move, putting the studios under Activision or Bethesda was basically to ease the Xbox books (apparently it cost less to pay them as being a Microsoft employee was more expensive) and bypass some dumb and unproductive Microsoft corporation employee laws (like the 6 month contractors at 343/Halo Studios). xzzz |
Yeah I saw Jez talking about that last week. Here's my summary from a previous post:
"Looks like on Jez's podcast, he goes further into the reasoning why studios are being reallocated. Primarily under Activision.
Big reason is salaries. Microsoft's obsession with AI and its competition with OpenAI mean they're having to pay a large premium for engineers and tech people in general. These kinds of financials carried over to Xbox's game studios because the division is not properly separated from Microsoft. So it became financially unsustainable.
Activision is immune to these issues. It's a more efficient, gaming purpose built operation vs Microsoft.....not being that lol. Xbox had to famously use outsourcing and contractors because it couldn't hire full time employees at the same pay level as software engineering and AI jobs.
It also didn't make sense to have a separate finance and legal team for Xbox when Activision has its own finance and legal team."
So I do get the reasoning behind these moves. Along with the Coalition under Activision, I figure inXile will go under Bethesda when Clockwork Revolution ships. Playground, not entirely sure. Could go either way, but after Fable releases. What's left of Halo Studios.......who knows lol
But I can see XGS existing purely for third-party publishing, which Asha commented in the 100 day reset announcement that they wanted to not only focus on first-party exclusives, but also third-party exclusives. Which I hope she wasn't just referring to Kojima lol
You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind
