It's always a sad day when peoples favorites studios close down. Unfortunately, nothing anyone can do about it.

We need to understand this won't be the last time we see studios close, and it won't just be Microsoft either. The industry you game in has become very corporate. I wanted to explain some notes below for better understanding. 

NINTENDO AND SEGA DAYS GONE

We have to accept the truth and move on with life. We no longer game in an industry that use to consist on Nintendo and Sega, those days are long gone. The industry has changed the moment the major leading corporations entered. The industry has become a money pit for major stake holders and its only going to continue this way moving forward. 

VALVE AND NINTENDO ARE DIFFERENT

Yes, we don't see these decisions that often with Valve and Nintendo and that's due to the fact they are not owned or under greater power. They make all the decisions inhouse. Whereas Xbox and Playstation have to answer to Microsoft and Sony and their shareholders. This is why we will continue to see more closures moving forward. The moment Valve or Nintendo get brought out, you will notice the same trend with Xbox and PS happen to them.

POSITIVE REVIEWS IS NOT SUCCESS

It's nice to play a game with positive feedback however unfortunately that isn't success for businesses. All companies make games to make money, and if they are not making money, they will be internally reviewed which can lead to selling, closures and layoffs. All companies have budgets that have to align to, its not how much more money another company has in this case MS. No one wants to lose money when it comes to capitalism. 

SAD DECISIONS CAN LEAD TO GREATER SUCCESS

Yes, sometimes making hard calls like what we have seen with MS lately, isn't as simple as turning off a light switch. No company wants to disband another company, it costs money to do that also. Sometimes you have to cut some to save others.

For example: Phil probably was given a bunch of studios by his higher ups and was told you need to cancel 4 of them, so the 4 he chose was probably to sacrifice to keep others afloat like maybe Rare, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Double Fine, who knows. Thats the corporate speak that goes on behind those walls. I had to make some calls in my life when I had to cut casuals from my job, and i was given a list and could only save less than half and its never an easy decision especially when they are all good. Thats life.

THESE THINGS HAPPEN WITH OR WITHOUT MERGERS

In Bethesda case, they weren't in the best way before MS brought them. Infact, 2015 companies like Tango were in a lot of trouble finically. The merger isn't to blame for closures, the mergers normally give companies second chances and unfortunately for a studio like Tango, Games like HiFi Rush just didn't sell well across XB, PC and PS. Steam Databanks were showing that HiFi only made $16m on PC, probably the largest userbase for that game. People will want to blame GP, lets not look past Forspoken from Square, a game that also had its Studio closed/merged with no GP service. Sales is the lifeblood of a video game. This is why companies focus more on GAAS and MTs, because companies need income to fund future projects. Thats why Fallout 76, GTA Online, Sea of thieves, Grounded, Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy Online etc all exist. They keep the heart pumping for these companies, even if some players don't like them. 

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

It's a difficult time for these companies, Capitalism mixed with Inflation is a horrible combination. However, the industry will always exist, companies will continue to fold while new companies will continue to rise. Also for the companies that have recently closed, not all staff lose their jobs, some internally get transferred, while the IPs are not lost, they still exist. We still might get a Evil Within 3 or a HiFi Rush 2. It's not the end. 

Enjoy the games and support your favorite studios. 

UPDATED

Wanted to add this little article for those that aren't in the loop. The truth behind Tango Games closure. 

“I was very close to a rank and file employee”: Shinji Mikami Reveals the Real Reason Why He Quit Tango Gameworks Even After Resident Evil’s Success - IMDb

Unionize the games industry. Protect the workers rights and you will have less of this bs happening.
SO much talent is leaving the industry forever right now because trying to survive as a an artist/programmer/QA-tester is becoming impossible with how volatile the industry is right now. People need a certain amount of stability to be able to live and be creative. You can’t squeeze people in survival mode for content forever. They will burn out and move to other industries.

Nintendo always gets pulled out as the one positive example of employee retention, even in the face of crisis. And we see that it pays off for them in a myriad of ways, but the simple truth is that while they might or might not reconize the benefit employee retention brings them, at the end of the day, they are forced, by Japanese law to retain their worker. Unless the company is literally going bankrupt they aren’t allowed to lay off workers. (Now Japan has other horrific problems with their work culture, that they’re making baby steps to remedy by law now, but that’s a topic for another day.)
It also lays bare where the vast amount of surplus money in any given company is going: to the executives.
Nintendos (in the grand scheme of thing pretty ‚reasonably‘ payed) executives took pay cuts in order to save all their workers employment, while in the US, thousands of employees get layed off on order for CEOs to get insanely astronomical 100 million bonuses.

Employment needs oversight. The market is an unrestrained monster that does not know how to self regulate and in the face of giant conglomerate monopolies can‘t ever learn how to. So laws and protections it is.

The reason why any profit seeking business exists is to maximise the wealth of shareholders. As a shareholder, you own the company and you want money. Unfortunately, I don't believe anything will change

Unionising the games industry would be a pretty handy way of sending all the jobs to jurisdictions where that doesn't occur.

It's all about how shareholders view their investment and how that is represented in C-suite compensation packages.

Nintendo is a public company, but their shareholders understand the Japanese culture of long term thinking. This also reflects in the compensation packages for Nintendo's executives. There is a far smaller emphasis on payment in stock or stock options compared to US Public companies.

it is said that a typical US Public company runs from quarter to quarter. A generalization for sure, but there is truth in that. If the executives paycheck and bonuses are geared towards short term success, than that is exactly what you are going to get.

The only way to resolve this is a change in the compensation structure for C-suite executives. That reward comes primarily with long term success, not short ones.

The problem with today's business isn't that making a product is simply not good enough to the business. Most businesses today that are publicly traded and have enough shareholders all tend to follow the same mantra of "line must go up", never "line stays steady and income flow is steady", because to those same execs/CEO's/Shareholders, that means "bad", that means it's in decline, when it simply isn't the case.

It also does not help that the modern customer is artificially being replaced by the shareholder, the group that cares about gaming/products the least, and only invests because they simply want a quick or lump sum pay-out, or another revenue flow to fund their expensive lifestyles and capital gains. The customers that actually care often get fucked over, disregarded, and going by Bethesda's recent stints, openly mocked and treated like absolute idiots/children.

We're seeing more companies today going well out of their way to mock customers, treat them like absolute dirt, while also demanding more money from them, making the customer jump through more hoops, lose more rights, have less control, enjoyment factors being reduced over time, to a point where you may as well be carrying your life savings into an open street and getting mugged by a corp-hired Pinkerton.

But here's the real kicker; people simply don't care, or enough people don't care, to stop this from being the new norm. People don't care and are now Stockholm syndrome'd into coming up with excuses like "it's just an account bro" "it's just another skin" "it's just a cash shop", "it's just online only bro, do you not have internet?".

You take a look at social media and you will see people actively going to bat for a load of corps willingly, and without hesitation, even though said companies actively spit on and disregard them openly, and it's so fucked, it's so mentally fucked to see people doing that, to go against people that just want things to go back to normal, for wanting a good product/service, a good price.

Things won't change as long as shareholders are the main focus, and corp execs/CEO's and suits are still at the top of every company, making the worst calls imaginable, and the same goes for those being allowed to handle PR and social media. Far, far too many nutjobs handling social media, who have have their own secret political agenda, being hired by these corps who don't give a single fuck to check the background of said person, and then give them the keys to the gate, and let them run wild, or worse, those same people starting up companies like SBI, who go around actively causing damage to games themselves for their own political activism horseshit.

I hate modern gaming. I hate it so much, I hate how ugly and disgusting and vile it has become. The way devs are treated, the way people go into game dev just to deliberately fuck with customers, because their childhood was shit.

My most recent tipping point was discovering that Helldivers 2's lead balance dev is in fact the same dev who fucked around with Hello Neighbour, who went against customers and removed features that made that game fun, all before release, and then he bailed, and now he's actively fucking around with HD2 weapon balance, constantly nerfing the fun out of the game. People are slowly but surely catching onto that dev's crock of shit, and yet Arrowhead won't admit this, they won't acknowledge that they have hired an absolute asshole of a dev, who is currently damaging their game and driving players like myself away.

We saw what happened when an entire studio unionised under Epic, Epic just sold off the entire company shortly after, because he and every other CEO under the known sun hate unions, because it means they have to adhere to what is asked of them, dare I say, meeting them in the middle (and Timmy hates any form of middle men, unless he gets to play one between the other companies). 

Gaming is at it's core an art form, and everyone knows art isn't the easiest sell and when it does sell, it never really sells for much. Not unless it's found to be truly unique or special and even then, it tends to take decades or centuries to become ultra valuable.

Having massive Corps running gaming companies is already a problem. The more they consolidate, if they go that route, the worse it get's as they get larger and even more corporate. It's a bit different if the Corp grows internally or is gaming only and nothing else, but even then it can become a problem if unending greed sets in.
If one Corp is much larger than a competitor and they decide to just use that money to buy their way to a massive advantage, it also makes things worse because they eventually gain too much control, plus the smaller Corps have no choice but to focus on profits so they don't have to just sit there and watch the industry get gobbled up. Even worse, if a Corp cares more about instant profits, they are likely to just axe whatever isn't making "enough profit" so they can "cut losses" or redistribute resources to whatever else is making large profits. This is basically incompatible with art, if you truly want to spread that art to the masses.

Good gaming management requires being run by a fairly reasonable Corp, and those are getting fewer and fewer by the day, especially in the western world.

You know, the more I look back on our gaming history, the more I start to realise Steve Jobs was right, in that we are seeing suits replacing the people that loved making the products, and all we're being left with are people who only care about the money, not the customer, not the product, not the long-term success and reputation gains. 

I feel like the games industry right now is more cut-throat than it has ever been before. 

Reform capitalism. That's the only thing that *can* be done about it. As long as their is put value behind a number going up things will keep happening. It's not even if that number is even meaningful. After a certain point of richness more money is not bringing you more happiness or anything valuable. While at the same time even a little money does a lot if you are poor. Companies optimizing profits (and therefore leaving more and more people in the dust) ends up with more people in bad circumstance and the few winners don't even really enjoying their winnings. We have to stop this fucking rat race, it is ruining our health, the environment, our happiness and most importantly: our future as human civilization. This here is the last years of the roman empire. We will have to change or our civilization will crumble.