K, I'm going to stop talking about or predicting what studios may or may not close, or may be safe or may not be safe, it's too much doom and gloom, it's not fair to the studios and it's 100s of peoples livelihoods and jobs being casually spoken about. I got wrapped up in that discussion but now I'm realising it's pretty weird.

Moving on. Some more Fallout 4. Maybe take another break from gaming news again, Idk, Lol.

I don't think a full crash is happening. The AAA-industry may very well crashing, but it will not leave again scorched earth as it did in the past. There are parts of gaming (I actually hate the term gaming industry, gaming is more than just industry, it is also art) that will be mostly unaffected. Mobile for instance probably will survive big AAAs crashing. But most importantly we have a thriving indie scene, that will not go away. This also leads to stronger internationalization than ever and in result to more diversity than any corporate guidelines will ever achieve. Gaming will be fine, although the companies currently leading the market may not be.

Larian, Fromsoft, Nier, Persona, Yakuza, etc all took a long time to reach the level of success they have today.
Their games didn't sell much, but they knew fans loved them, so they kept going.

Insane to shut down BAFTA and Game Awards winning Hi-Fi Rush.

Would like to hear what Greenberg has to say about this statement he made a year ago.

Nah. The Oscars take their subject seriously and act accordingly. The Oscars don't have ads, they don't give awards in quick fire succession and they let the award winners shine and talk. The Game Awards is a horrible award show.

Contrast this with the BAFTAs. They are an show for movies, but they have started a separate event for games. For starters they present the awards in the new year, so they can actually consider all games. Then they show off the nominees, they let the award winners talk and they present it properly.

EDIT: If you want to compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ogPnmZ9z6Q

Personally I am not to much interested in the other studios closures outside of Arkane and Tango. Even then, I am really only interested in Tango because I highly doubt the closure has anything to do with the sales. I am still pretty much not convinced that both Arkane and Tango were closed because of sales but there are multiple factors going on but hopefully we get some real inside info instead of knee jerk reactions. While MS in my book has never been shy about their direction or their ability to just switch up their direction, there is a lot of key information that is lacking.

I never liked Greenberg and once again I see why. He's one of the biggest shit talkers in the industry. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't even know how to use a controller lol

I would also say that its the cost of AAA that is the biggest problem.  If you think about what it cost to make AAA games today and the cost of a miss.  Hell, even if you do not miss but do not recoup the cost of development it can still be a huge hit.  So what we do see is that AAA for established IP is going to remain and we see that shift with a lot of companies who can afford it.  Any independant dev looking for huge sums of money on new IP that is where the money is going to dry up quick and actually it already has.  We still see smaller A/AA games getting money and they are thriving on PC because of the price.  70 bones is a lot of cash that none of the big publishers are willing to risk huge money on unless its an established IP.  

So what we will see if more focused from the big publishers on their established IP and we will see the PC become the playground for independent smaller games with more innovation and risk but very cost effective where they thrive the most.  Consoles games will be more consolidated with less risk and a lot of independent devs will need to really have a great pitch to get any of their games funded.  No there will not be a crash but there is definitely a big shift that is going to happen.

I don't think this is copium at all and this was my first thought after reading dat Booty statement. It would kind a make sense too. 

There seems to be lots of overreaction to these closures anyway. For me the news of Xbox possibly going full multiplat were much more worrying as it would almost certainly lead to destruction of most smaller studios.

The more I think about it the more I think Tango was just the victim of a situation were there were no right or good choice.

I think Bethesda was specifically targeted by MS with costing cost & increase revenue, Arkane Austin, Roundhouse, Alpha dog were all target I can understand for one reason or another, but they just did not satisfy the new mandate and considering all of Bethesda remaining studios there were simply no good option to be taken and Tango fell victim.

IMO this is all due to MS identifying opportunity with better ROI than video game, just like the rest of the industry also realised early 2023 and after MS purchase both Bethesda and ABK. So Xbox went from what MS identified as a great investment opportunity to again being one division that need to prove itself worthwhile of it.

What I find most bizarre is how over the last couple of years all western publishers have doubled down on AAA titles despite underperformance from them consistently then we had Square Enix say the same despite all their recent AAA games massively underperforming and we had Sony do it as well despite thin margins and super high budgets and risk of them and now Microsoft going down the same road whilst all the good stuff is coming from A/AA teams these days.