Exactly how could MS lose you as a customer over something you really do not have all the information about.  Just wondering because its interesting how people form opinions on little piece of information.

Common sense says if you only listen to one side of a story you only get half the picture.  First stop acting as if you have received all the information concerning the project.  Think about it, most games go in with a contract of work that explicity states exactly what a certain amount of money will net for a project.  Any software company that does not have that statement of work will always come out on the wrong end of a deal.  This is just basic software development for any project.  I have a very hard time believing that this company did not state very explicityly what they would be able to accomplish with the money given for the project. Even if MS stated somewhere down the line that the game will have a campaign, that would have no barrings on the current work that was commissioned.  That would be a new contract and probably based on the success of the current contract.

Here is the thing, we are only hearing one side that will paint the picture that makes them look the best.  Probably in reality there were multiple things that cause the results we see.

In software development, you sign a contract for what you will do.  If its not in the contract then a new contract gets made for new editions.  This is the part of the story people are not getting from the developer.  So its not that MS wanted more from the project or that the company wanted more money to do the extra work, that part would just get worked out in a change order.  The part that we are not getting is if the developer reached their milestones.  Was the project already over budget for the work done.  Was MS happy with the project at its current level.  Its easy to favor the small developer but its also for small developers to bit off more than they can chew and thus be under the gun to deliver a product which they cannot complete successfully.

Microsoft is not a charity company, they might thing more then twice for games that will fit for their audience and their potential consumer, They had a team that judge games and doing some research, maybe some games had their interest and some games is not, it's not like every games is coming for their preferable platform. Some miss some hit, so i bet this is for the best.

Well if the decision was motivated by pure business, that's fine.  But they didn't have to be jerks about it.  Tasking the team with first a multiplayer only game, then upping it to a 6h singleplayer game, then a 30h singleplayer game and refusing to give them any additional budget or time and then, after lengthy budget negotiations, just dropping them?  That's not a very professional way of conducting yourself.  It may have been good business, but it was handled unprofessionally. 

250K in sales would be break even for an $8 million budget game, which would include a small but probably appropriate marketing campaign. So I very much doubt it was a money issue. It is probably more that the game was not looking like shaping up to anything decent.

A shame really since it sounds like the original was a pretty good game, which makes you wonder how somone can screw up a remake of a good game. Basically improve graphics, tweak gameplay, but not too much, and beef up the sound.

You say that as if this game would have an easy time selling more than 250k on the X1. It surely wouldn't.

Then there's also the problem of "control". Maybe MS actually was willing to spend 8M, but knew that if they were already asking for that much they'd end up needing even more. You know how it is; "We need X". Then the Y point in time is reached and "Seems like we're gonna need a bit more".. (which is exactly what already happened) and then again, possibly. For these companies, ideally, the limit of what they're willing to invest should be distant from initial projections so that incidents like this don't put the project over the budget.

Sounds to me like Darkside didn't play it very smart. Though MS are the dicks in this situation.

As soon as MS said they needed to do a SP campaign Darkside should have played hardball and demanded a budgetary increase. If MS said no Darkside should have said "no extra budget no SP campaign, do you still want the project to move forward?" Project management is all about constantly reassessing whether the project can be successfully completed, as soon as the answer is no it can't then the project must either end or alterations muct be made to the project in order for the assessment to return to a yes situation.

It is definitely shit for MS to substantially increase the scope and not allocate additional funds for it.

Let's please stay on topic and avoid accusations such as these, I really can't see this ending well at all.

No, i just read the full article.

and why? they were being assholes (thats a third time) and if sony were being assholes id call them just that, did in the past and will do it in the future. also Sony and my personal behavior have nothing to do with this thread, its about darkside, MS and phantum dust, so instead of passing on judgment about how i would and wouldnt react lets just keep this on topic, shall we?

Edit: geez, didnt see the posts above until now, wont make a comment about though, just letting the mods know i made this reply before i saw what happened.