The only interesting thing here is Sony is actually publishing it, with MLB despite owning the studio they avoided taking on publishing responsibilities for Xbox, likewise with Marathon, that may have been to avoid some negative backlash, now it seems like they don't care about the "optics" considering they're outright publishing Helldivers 2. Wonder if we'll see MLB change to Sony publishing for the next one.

But as I've always said, all GaaS titles should be available on all devices, it makes zero sense to limit your player-pool and the trolling of "But Xbox has so few players!" is just trolling, it's still a potential pool of millions to give your GaaS a boost and spread WoM and any boost is vital in this market of blackhole GaaS titles just fucking destroying everything in their path.

You want to compete with the big boys, you need to be everywhere.

Always someone looking for a reason to pirate something.  If you truly not going to support them then go 100%.  Pirating their games just says you really not in it to win it, you just found a reason not to spend your money but forget that people still produce those games.  So are you really saying you care or is this just an opportunity to support pirating while sitting on a high horse.

Moving forward, I will likely just pick a device where I can just play a few MMOs and some Free to Plays. I believe I'm done heavily investing into the big 3 eco-systems and building huge libraries.

I'll probably go with whichever device is going to be the most versatile.

Probably the reason why the Initiative got canned.  Lets be honest, it wasn't really a studio just a bunch of department heads.  If they were not managing bringing this game to market in any type of shape well we see what happened.

If you really think about it, is this really is MS going through all the games that were in production and really taking a look to see if these games were meeting any type of quality to come to market.  People just see a game cancelled but we really do not know the full story.  It would be great if we get some reliable inside info on the situation but most of these insiders seem to suck if you ask me.  They are more throw darts at the wall and hopefully hit something than anything else.

Speaking to multiple sources familiar with the project, IGN has learned that Blackbird was to be a new, sci-fi IP. Though it had been in development since 2018, the length of time it was taking to make the game was expected, as ZeniMax was building an entirely new game engine for it.

In the last year, sources tell IGN that pre-production was going well, and the team was actively ramping up in the hope of moving into full production soon. Xbox had approved the scaling up, and some individuals were being moved onto the project from other teams such as The Elder Scrolls Online, as well as some people absorbed from the shuttering last year of Arkane Austin.

Wow....so we were looking at 10-12 years of total development for ZOS's new IP......that's insane to think after 7 years it was still in pre-production. Then again, that was also the case for Perfect Dark.

I wonder about the current status of the Blade game.

I want to say that game is safe. I didn't hear anything about layoffs at Arkane. Same with id Software, Machine Games, and the main Bethesda team. So if they had any layoffs they are likely small. Of course any layoffs still suck no matter how small.

It was in pre-production last we heard from it. The announcement trailer was most likely a means to attract talent to the project. So far we've just heard that it's safe from cancellation, but we're looking at towards the end of the decade before it releases. I wouldn't expect to hear anything about it for another couple of years.

For now Blade is fine, I think all the layoffs and cancellations are known now, but that doesn't mean it's safe in the future, quite frankly there's zero reason to believe anything is safe under Microsoft now, Blade can be cancelled in any quarter or fiscal year, we will have mass layoffs next year too, whenever Satya needs to funnel more money into AI. But out of respect to the teams I'll continue to try whatever I can do to support them and won't constantly be repeating that they're doomed because that's not fair to anyone, the developers at these studios must be under enough stress as it is and fear for their careers, and it's not a guarantee anyway that they're going to be shutdown but it is now a possibility.