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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - [Soft-locked DO NOT POST] Is MS focusing too much on quantity over quality with their 1st party games?

LudicrousSpeed on 08 April 2020

Huh, I was wrong, he still found some way to ignore all of that and goop all over your post.

And that’s another post speculating that MS wants to just poop out small GamePass filler with zero explanation of how they’re supposed to sell that service to people 😆

I also gotta ask how it’s a good thing that it took GG three+ years with a staff over 400 to make a game like Horizon, which had little content or replay factor? And before that they spent years to make Killzone 7? Wow.



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goopy20 on 08 April 2020
shikamaru317 said:
goopy20 said:

That's one very detailed post but you're pretty much proving my point. Most of MS's studios have a team of like 100 developers and they're split over multiple projects... Compare that to something like Guerilla Games who have a 400 staff and spend 3 years making 1 single game. To me it just seems like MS is not focusing on those type of AAA projects and seem to care more about filling up GP with loads of AA games that most people on a gaming forum would never play. Unless, of course, they're giving them away for free and you might as well give it a try. Hell, I did the same thing and played almost all of MS's exclusives. It's just that expect for Gears 4/ 5, none of them were really worth playing imo. Now I cancelled my GP subscription and I will probably sign up again when Halo Infinite comes out. I just don't see how this is gonna work out for MS as I'm sure I'm not the only one who's using GP just to play the few AAA exclusives. 

MS has larger studios and are building more. 343 has 567 devs and the vast majority of those are on Halo Infinite right now as far as we know, with smaller teams working on updating Halo MCC, particularly on PC. Mojang has 400+. The Coalition has 200+ devs, mostly on Gears. Playground Games is building towards having two 200+ dev teams for Forza Horizon and their RPG respectively. While we don't know what size The Initiative is building towards, considering that MS has described them as AAA or AAAA, it is likely they are building towards 200+ eventually. 

Guerrilla Games does not have 400 devs currently, they have 335 and are building towards 400+ split between two different studios, and as far as we know the plan is to make them a 2 team studio, not to have all 400+ working on a single game. Guerrilla had 250 devs when their last game, Horizon Zero Dawn, released. 

Here are some of the other Sony studio sizes:

Insomniac- 309 devs currently, split across at least three teams as far as we know. 

Polyphony- 170 devs at last count, barely bigger than Microsoft's racing sim developer, Turn 10, which has 132 devs currently and 10 open job listings (and also contracts out alot of work instead of having a large team of permanent devs).

Bend Studio- 139 devs at last official count

London Studio- Exact size isn't known, they have 34 devs on LinkedIn, but are listed as being 50+

Media Molecule- Last official number was 50 devs in 2017.

Naughty Dog- Official size isn't known, but there are 447 devs listed on their LinkedIn

PixelOpus- Last official count was 12 devs, LinkedIn shows 11 currently.

San Diego Studio- Last official count was 90+, the studio doesn't have a seperate LinkedIn page, so I can't check current dev count

Santa Monica Studio- 248 devs on LinkedIn

Sucker Punch- Last official count was 200+, but it seems like there may have been some layoffs after Infamous Second Son released, as the studio is currently listed as having less than 200 devs on LinkedIn with 182 LinkedIn profiles. 

I know MS has large studios too but they're mostly build to keep Halo and Gears alive after Epic and Bungie moved on. Even though I still enjoy those games, you have to admit that people are growing tired of them and are craving for new exclusive ip's of similar caliber, not games like Ori or Gears Tactics. Don't get me wrong they are cool games and all but not exactly the type of games that would make people rush out and buy a Series X for.  

Guerilla games spend 6,5 years making HZD with a 250 man team. They're expanding to 400+ so they can release a game every 2 to 3 years (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-19-guerrilla-games-to-nearly-double-its-staff-with-planned-office-move). In any case, we can compare the number of employees all day but the truth is that most of Sony's studios have a proven track record with some of the highest rated games this gen. From all the studios MS has acquired, can you name me 1 game that was a smash hit? Almost all of their studios are still very unproven and I just don't think its smart to spread these studios out over a bunch of smaller projects. Unless, of course, quantity is more important than quality for MS. I mean Bleeding Edge is sitting on a 61 metactitic score but it's apparently one of the most popular games on GP right now. So maybe it did work out for MS after all. As a gamer who enjoys quality AAA games, I just don't know what to think of it, though.    

Last edited by goopy20 - on 08 April 2020

sales2099 on 08 April 2020
goopy20 said:
shikamaru317 said:

remember, that MS is rumored to be aiming for at least 3 years of development across all of those studios and teams.

That's one very detailed post but you're pretty much proving my point. Most of MS's studios have a team of like 100 developers and they're split over multiple projects... Compare that to something like Guerilla Games who have a 400 staff and spend 3 years making 1 single game. To me it just seems like MS is not focusing on those type of AAA projects and seem to care more about filling up GP with loads of AA games that most people on a gaming forum would never play. Unless, of course, they're giving them away for free and you might as well give it a try. Hell, I did the same thing and played almost all of MS's exclusives. It's just that expect for Gears 4/ 5, none of them were really worth playing imo. Now I cancelled my GP subscription and I will probably sign up again when Halo Infinite comes out. I just don't see how this is gonna work out for MS as I'm sure I'm not the only one who's using GP just to play the few AAA exclusives. 

The irony is that you clearly don’t like Xbox yet admit to subscribing to them and thus giving your time and money. Even if you think you are cheating them out by playing their games for dirt cheap and quitting that’s time you are still investing that otherwise people with your bias wouldn’t even touch Xbox traditionally before MSs recent initiatives. 

Xbox went from only repeating 3 IPs over and over with duds in between to having the same studios as Sony with several A-AAA games in the pipeline. That’s amazing progress. And you have the notion to complain they aren’t on Sony’s exact level? It’s been 2 years and it is astounding how far Xbox Studios has come. 

Ultimately you have convinced me this is a “putting Xbox in their place” thread. Very shallow and petty. Sorry but you can’t stop the hype these studios are creating. 

(And your topic title is still redundant because Ori scored a 90)

Last edited by sales2099 - on 08 April 2020

Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

sales2099 on 08 April 2020
LudicrousSpeed said:

Huh, I was wrong, he still found some way to ignore all of that and goop all over your post.

And that’s another post speculating that MS wants to just poop out small GamePass filler with zero explanation of how they’re supposed to sell that service to people 😆

I also gotta ask how it’s a good thing that it took GG three+ years with a staff over 400 to make a game like Horizon, which had little content or replay factor? And before that they spent years to make Killzone 7? Wow.

Horizon Zero Dawn didn’t even hit 90 on metacritic...but little Ori did ;)



Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

PotentHerbs on 08 April 2020
sales2099 said:
LudicrousSpeed said:

Huh, I was wrong, he still found some way to ignore all of that and goop all over your post.

And that’s another post speculating that MS wants to just poop out small GamePass filler with zero explanation of how they’re supposed to sell that service to people 😆

I also gotta ask how it’s a good thing that it took GG three+ years with a staff over 400 to make a game like Horizon, which had little content or replay factor? And before that they spent years to make Killzone 7? Wow.

Horizon Zero Dawn didn’t even hit 90 on metacritic...but little Ori did ;)

Lol with that logic...



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LudicrousSpeed on 08 April 2020

TIL Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), Obsidian (New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Outer Worlds, Stick of Truth, NN2, Pillars of Eternity), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, DmC, Hellblade), and Playground (GOAT racer Forza Horizon 4) are unproven studios LOL

Even the others for the most part have given us good games in the past just nothing at the level of the other ones

I honestly think gooper has no idea who these studios are and maybe hasn’t been gaming very long.



goopy20 on 09 April 2020
sales2099 said:
goopy20 said:

That's one very detailed post but you're pretty much proving my point. Most of MS's studios have a team of like 100 developers and they're split over multiple projects... Compare that to something like Guerilla Games who have a 400 staff and spend 3 years making 1 single game. To me it just seems like MS is not focusing on those type of AAA projects and seem to care more about filling up GP with loads of AA games that most people on a gaming forum would never play. Unless, of course, they're giving them away for free and you might as well give it a try. Hell, I did the same thing and played almost all of MS's exclusives. It's just that expect for Gears 4/ 5, none of them were really worth playing imo. Now I cancelled my GP subscription and I will probably sign up again when Halo Infinite comes out. I just don't see how this is gonna work out for MS as I'm sure I'm not the only one who's using GP just to play the few AAA exclusives. 

The irony is that you clearly don’t like Xbox yet admit to subscribing to them and thus giving your time and money. Even if you think you are cheating them out by playing their games for dirt cheap and quitting that’s time you are still investing that otherwise people with your bias wouldn’t even touch Xbox traditionally before MSs recent initiatives. 

Xbox went from only repeating 3 IPs over and over with duds in between to having the same studios as Sony with several A-AAA games in the pipeline. That’s amazing progress. And you have the notion to complain they aren’t on Sony’s exact level? It’s been 2 years and it is astounding how far Xbox Studios has come. 

Ultimately you have convinced me this is a “putting Xbox in their place” thread. Very shallow and petty. Sorry but you can’t stop the hype these studios are creating. 

(And your topic title is still redundant because Ori scored a 90)

What makes you think I clearly don't like Xbox? Except for the Xone, I owned all of MS's consoles and did enjoy them. Besides a ps4, I also have a pc and a Switch, so I'm really not loyal to any particular console brand. However, I don't blindly agree or get excited about everything a platform holder does. I loved the 360 until they went all crazy on us with Kinect. As a consumer, I lost faith in the Xbox brand and it caused me to not buy the Xone. That doesn't mean I want Series X to fail, though. The specs are amazing and I would love MS to come out of the gate with loads of AAA ip's that'll give the ps5 games a run for their money. I will just end up buying both, just like I did with the 360 and ps3.

All gamers have their specific taste in games and somehow I doubt you would have cared at all about Ori if it was a Switch exclusive. I saw you were trying to grasp the concept of what a AAA game really is. And sure, budget, time spend developing and the size of the team usually are a part of it. But in the end a AAA game is simply a game that is a must play title and that people end up buying a specific console for. For example, I bought a Switch just to play BOTW and a Xbox/360 mainly for Halo. Now, lets say Ori, or any of the other games we're seeing from MS were exclusives on the ps5 or Switch instead, would you then consider buying any one of those consoles? Sony and Nintendo have those kind of games and MS used to have them with Gears and Halo. But now that they don't have the mass appeal of 10 years ago, Ms simply needs some new AAA titles that could really persuade people to go with the Series X instead of a Sony or Nintendo console. Last edited by goopy20 - on 09 April 2020

KratosLives on 09 April 2020

Something major besides gears, halo and forza would be great. Like a big invest into something/s that could be in the same league.



goopy20 on 09 April 2020
LudicrousSpeed said:
TIL Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), Obsidian (New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Outer Worlds, Stick of Truth, NN2, Pillars of Eternity), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, DmC, Hellblade), and Playground (GOAT racer Forza Horizon 4) are unproven studios LOL

Even the others for the most part have given us good games in the past just nothing at the level of the other ones

I honestly think gooper has no idea who these studios are and maybe hasn’t been gaming very long.

Ok, I was being optimistic when I said they're unproven. Lets get real for a second here and look at the actual track records of these new studios...

Double Fine They made Phychonauts and Brutal Legends, both games are considered as some of the biggest flops in gaming history. Psychonauts ended up selling 100k copies and caused its CEO to resign. Brutal Legends ended up selling around 200k copies and ended up in a counter lawsuit between Double Fine and Activision.

Compulsion games They made Contrast and We Happy Few sitting on a 57% and a 62% Metacrtitic

InXile Their last games were Bard's Tale 4 (71% Metacritic) and Wasteland 2 (77% Metacritic). Not bad games but point and click strategy games historically don't do great on consoles.

Undead Labs State of Decay 2 69% Metacritic

Ninja Theory Made good games like Heavenly Sword (79%), Enslaved (80%) and Hellblade (88%) but they don't tend to sell great. Hellblade sold only 1m copies for example and they just released Bleeding Edge with a 61% metacritic score.

Obsidian For me this is the only new studio to get excited about as they did make some good games in the past like New vegas and Kotor. However, that was a while back and they've also made a lot of duds since like Tyranny, Skyforge and had 4 games cancelled between 2005 and 2017. Outer Worlds was not bad, though. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Playground/ Turn 10 They've only made the Forza series. Great racing games, no doubt, but we have yet to see what they can do in other genres. I mean could Polyphonic make an amazing RPG? Who knows but I would assume their 1st try isn't going to be as good as something that a developer like Bethesda would make.

The initiative Big question mark here. They started 2 years ago and still have only 40 people working there. We only hear about top talent joining them but Tom Shepherd left the Initiative after just 1 year.

Not saying none of these studios are capable of making a AAA system seller but their track records aren't exactly encouraging. That's why MS should put them to work on 1 big project at a time and hope some of them strike gold so MS has some brand new AAA ip's to work with in the future. It's risky, of course, when you consider that it took GG 6,5 years to make HZD and that's likely the problem with MS. It seems they're not willing to take those kind of risks and build new AAA ip's. Instead they've been playing it save for 2 console generations now and spend the bulk of their 1st party resources to desperately try to keep Halo and Gears alive.

KiigelHeart on 09 April 2020
goopy20 said:
LudicrousSpeed said:
TIL Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), Obsidian (New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Outer Worlds, Stick of Truth, NN2, Pillars of Eternity), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, DmC, Hellblade), and Playground (GOAT racer Forza Horizon 4) are unproven studios LOL

Even the others for the most part have given us good games in the past just nothing at the level of the other ones

I honestly think gooper has no idea who these studios are and maybe hasn’t been gaming very long.

Ok, I was being optimistic when I said they're unproven. Lets get real for a second here and look at the actual track records of these new studios...

Double Fine They made Phychonauts and Brutal Legends, both games are considered as some of the biggest flops in gaming history. Psychonauts ended up selling 100k copies and caused its CEO to resign. Brutal Legends ended up selling around 200k copies and ended up in a counter lawsuit between Double Fine and Activision.

Compulsion games They made Contrast and We Happy Few sitting on a 57% and a 62% Metacrtitic

InXile Their last games were Bard's Tale 4 (71% Metacritic) and Wasteland 2 (77% Metacritic). Not bad games but point and click strategy games historically don't do great on consoles.

Undead Labs State of Decay 2 69% Metacritic

Ninja Theory Made good games like Heavenly Sword (79%), Enslaved (80%) and Hellblade (88%) but they don't tend to sell great. Hellblade sold only 1m copies for example and they just released Bleeding Edge with a 61% metacritic score.

Obsidian For me this is the only new studio to get excited about as they did make some good games in the past like New vegas and Kotor. However, that was a while back and they've also made a lot of duds since like Tyranny, Skyforge and had 4 games cancelled between 2005 and 2017. Outer Worlds was not bad, though. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Playground/ Turn 10 They've only made the Forza series. Great racing games, no doubt, but we have yet to see what they can do in other genres. I mean could Polyphonic make an amazing RPG? Who knows but I would assume their 1st try isn't going to be as good as something that a developer like Bethesda would make.

The initiative Big question mark here. They started 2 years ago and still have only 40 people working there. We only hear about top talent joining them but Tom Shepherd left the Initiative after just 1 year.

Not saying none of these studios are capable of making a AAA system seller but their track records aren't exactly encouraging. That's why MS should put them to work on 1 big project at a time and hope some of them strike gold so MS has some brand new AAA ip's to work with in the future. It's risky, of course, when you consider that it took GG 6,5 years to make HZD and that's likely the problem with MS. It seems they're not willing to take those kind of risks and build new AAA ip's. Instead they've been playing it save for 2 console generations now and spend the bulk of their 1st party resources to desperately try to keep Halo and Gears alive.

Since when is Brutal Legend considered as one of the biggest flops in gaming history? It didn't sell that well but it ended up selling around 1,2 million copies. It reviewed well too and it's a good game. Great game even if you're into rock music. Also what does that lawsuit have to do with anything? Do you even know what it was about? You shouldn't write "let's get real" and then come up with posts like this. Not cool, gooby.