Microsoft is ruining the games industry

First off, sorry for the terrible microphone quality on this video, make sure to check your Audacity settings in future when you go to record something.
But as for the topic itself, Microsoft is ruining the games industry. They keep buying up studios and then closing down the smaller of the studios. After spending 69 billion, that's right BILLION on Activision and another 7 billion on Bethesda's parent company they're trying to pinch pennys as much as possible.
Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush), Arkane Austin (Redfall), Alpha Dog Games (Mighty Doom) and Roundhouse Studios, all closed. These are good studios, and it's being done to cover for the big dogs of Bethesda an activision.
But the long and short of this is the whole situation sucks and Microsoft wanting to bolster game pass is ruining the games industry.
After Buying Up Studios, Xbox Says It Doesn't Have The Resources To Run Them - kotaku.com/xbox-bethesda-stud...
Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio - www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/241...
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#microsoftxbox #gamepassultimate #gamesindustry

[@Andrew-nh1jf]

IMO they won’t sell the smaller studios because “if they can’t have them no one will”. They wouldn’t want to sell them and they turn out to work under another owner

[@SackyIRE]

Yeah that makes sense, it wouldn't be good PR if Microsoft sold one of these studios and then that studio released a banger of a game for another platform. That being said though it's still awful that is how it works, purely for the benefit of the company over the people

[@Mac_Omegaly]

There's the massive IP horde to consider too. But honestly there is a safe haven middle ground for developers. It's Nintendo. And honestly there's lots of decent middle ground games from Sega/ATLUS, Square Enix, Marvelous and Bandai Namco*. *(Sadly only on Nintendo as DRM and other junk is added to PC ports) I have a 9 year old gaming PC and a Nintendo Switch which covers 90% of the good game options available for what I'm interested in. And thousands of older games are accessible of things truly get bad. To be fair I've never been all that interested in owning an Xbox, and ever since PlayStation moved their office to California the AAA gaming world has gotten much simpler to just ignore.

[@SackyIRE]

I can understand the IP horde from a business perspective, but a lot of the games these studios made probably won't get revived. And while I'm not Nintendo's biggest fan I do respect that Iwata took a pay cut to cover the studios back in the Wii U days. More studios could easily take that action

[@Mac_Omegaly]

@RoseluckSerendipity Well the good news is old games are still very playable in many cases, and emulation projects are improving graphical fidelity options. (Just look at that Majora's mask upscale with ray tracing project.) Most people have at least 10+ game backlogs to play if the entire industry truly destroys itself. And if not there's massive amounts of cheap games (especially digital and DRM free options) even if you're avoiding the legal grey area of emulation and/or only own a system or two.

[@jerrydickerson1111]

while it sucks that people lost their jobs its important to note that Bobby's pay out was mostly due to stock options Microsoft was legally obligated to payout everyone who held stock in Activision Blizzard. Any person that had stock in this company got a pay out. Its unfortunate if you work in the tech industry but if you want job security you go work in the public sector it doesn't pay well but you have excellent job security. thats just the price you pay for those 100k jobs.

[@SackyIRE]

I can understand that it was a stock option that Microsoft legally had to pay out but Activision has also had it's share of layoffs in the past and Bobby Kotick easily could have taken a pay cut to save those jobs. But that's more a problem with capitalism as a whole as opposed to a games industry exclusive issue

[@nestormelendez9005]

Microsoft buying game studios was a mistake - the gaming community

[@SackyIRE]

Pretty much, they wanted to bolster game pass but cutting out all the smaller studios to keep stuff like call of duty and elder scrolls profitable, it sucks

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

remember when the old heads said that hyper-consolidation was bad for the industry? and then the fans said we were just console-warring partisans? i sure do

[@SackyIRE]

I was genuinely hoping that Microsoft would be able to do a lot with the studios they bought but they really are dropping the ball with all of these studios

[@adcaptandumvulgus4252]

To play devil's advocate maybe it will improve the gaming industry by forcing more indie developers to form and make great games like Larion did with baldur's gate3, ya?

[@SackyIRE]

That is an interesting idea! I didn't mention it but Toys for Bob did go independent from Activision so that may be an interesting case in future. Or it might prevent smaller studios from partnering with these bigger publishers so that's also a potential positive