Forum - View topicNEWS: Microsoft Closes Tango Gameworks Studio
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2559 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Oooh, we're bringing up Steam's player counts now, huh? Well, since I brought up Starfield wonder how that game's been doing? *looks up news regarding that* Wow, after only four months on the market Starfield went from a peak of over 330,000 players on Steam to just over 11,000, where even Dave the Diver beat it out. In fact, looking at those same Steamcharts right now, Starfield is currently only at 6,500, & just less than 5,000 on average over the past 30 days. Yes, Hi-Fi Rush never had as many "peak players" as Starfield, but it was never going to & was a smaller title, by any measure. By any & all logic, Starfield is the bigger bomb than Hi-Fi Rush, as while Starfield sold more copies, very few of those buyers are still engaging with it after just a little over half a month later, & that was the game that (even by our own wild guesses) had a budget that was many, many, many times larger than that of Hi-Fi Rush, and therefore would require more sales & more active playing to justify being a "success". However, Microsoft is effectively telling Bethesda Game Studios "That's OK, buddy! You'll do better next time, we're sure about it!", while Tango Gameworks got killed because someone needed to take the fall, and it sure as hell won't ever be poor old Bethesda Game Studios. I mean, who else would then make the next Fallout or Elder Scrolls game, am I right? Well, OK, I kid... Microsoft doesn't really need to make another Fallout game in the first place, because it also owns Obsidian Entertainment, which is currently making The Outer Worlds 2. |
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Wack Sage
 Posts: 33 |
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Grifters are so annoying. Genuinely seeing YouTubers now saying Hi Fi RUSH isn't getting a sequel because of Bethesda and it's like no dude it's not getting a sequel cause it sold poorly. Don't take your frustration out on another game and company just because it's more successful. Support your studio and games if you want more of them don't go after their co-workers and peers. |
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AliceTheHare
 Posts: 71 Location: Los Angeles |
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No, it's not getting a sequel and Tango is getting shuttered because Microsoft along with most of these major massive absurdly wealthy companies are ran by incompetent greed-stricken clowns who wanna make all the money instead of some of it. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5963 |
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Them owning Obsidian doesn’t stop them from making new Fallout games. Whatever’s going on with Elder Scrolls 6, lazy remasters, and continuing to milk Fallout 4 does. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14776 |
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Sony has their own problems: its very low profit margin. That's why it recently lost $10 billion in stock value and fired 8% of their workforce - despite all their recent successes. Sony's profit margin dropped to a decade-low 6%, down half from the usual 12-13% years ago. Due to very high development costs of their games, the sales of the games are not keeping up with the costs. Spending $200+ million and many years developing for just 6% razor-thin margin is dangerous - if something goes just a bit wrong, for all that work and all that time, that 6% could easily turn into negative. That's why Sony is now delving into live-service games (GAAS) and making more of their games nearer multiplat with PC (Helldivers 2 released on PS5 and PC same day). If all their successes still necessitated firing 8% of their workers, can you imagine if that 6% margin turned negative? "Sony plunged $10 billion after its PS5 sales cut. But a bigger issue is its near decade low games margin" https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/19/sony-gaming-margin-questioned-after-ps5-sales-cut-sparks-stock-plunge.html
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5963 |
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Or in Nintendo’s case go from the Virtual Console to NSO+Expansion Pass where you don’t get to buy any of their old stuff or carry over the stuff you already bought. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Tue May 07, 2024 10:34 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14776 |
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Quick show of hands: how many people here played Hi-Fi Rush? If ya didn't play it, that means ya didn't help Tango Gameworks neither when they needed it, so let's not all act high and mighty. A critically-acclaimed inexpensive game available on Xbox, PC, and Game Pass, so there's no reason not to play it. Tango founder Shinji Mikami leaving Tango likely just sealed the studio's fate. Maybe without his leadership, the rest of the studio has no one else who can take over with a good business plan.
Technically, they do since Amazon is paying them the license fee (and probably other fees too, like consultation fee, etc.) And as other have said, the Amazon TV show has boosted the sales of the Fallout games, so that's a big ancillary income: 
Also, Arkane Austin made the game Prey with very good reviews, but didn't sell as much as their previous game Dishonored 2, with also very good reviews but didn't sell as much as its predecessor. So good reviews didn't help enough, like good reviews didn't help Hi-Fi Rush enough. And now they're also gone after one Redfall failure (a GAAS game admittedly that was forced on them by the old ABK management).
So.............. this may be true.......... "Next Fallout Game May Release Sooner than Expected - The Fallout franchise is surfing a heady wave of popularity thanks to the Amazon show, and Xbox reportedly wants to capitalize on it with a new game." https://gamerant.com/next-fallout-game-when/
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2224 |
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What killed Hi-Fi Rush was MS putting it on Gamepass and thus stifling any chance it had for people to generate revenue for it. And considering how it's now common knowledge that Gamepass kills game sales MS has only itself to blame for sabotaging its release. Trying to pass the buck to consumers or the team is guilt-tripping nonsense when the blame always rests on the obvious: incompetent executives obsessed with "infinite growth" despite it being impossible and quarterly earnings reports that have no idea how economics or entertainment work. All MS did was kill a talented studio for no reason other than to manipulate a balance sheet. Disgraceful behavior |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14776 |
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People should stop treating Game Pass like it's free. Game Pass is not free! It generates revenue. How much revenue vs. perceived game sales revenue, we don't know. It's a balance depending on the game. Heck, PS Plus has a 50% margin I just quoted earlier: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/19/sony-gaming-margin-questioned-after-ps5-sales-cut-sparks-stock-plunge.html
Subscription makes money, and Hi-Fi Rush is a 1st-party game, so all that margin goes back to MS. If people played it on Game Pass, that still gives revenue to the developers. So yes, if consumers didn't play it on Game Pass, then they didn't help the game generate revenue. Buy it or rent it - either one helps. So if ya didn't do neither............. And being on Game Pass doesn't stop people from just buying it outright on Xbox or on Windows or on Steam. There are games that are on Game Pass still sold a lot, even if not on Xbox, but on PC. Hi-Fi Rush is also on Steam. Oh I initially forgot, now even on Playstation too, so people on Playstation didn't buy it, so much for PS buyers. As for another famous example: "Descenders' weekly sales increased five times thanks to Xbox Game Pass - No More Robots says subscription service has "elevated the game to heights we couldn't have imagined" https://www.gamesindustry.biz/descenders-weekly-unit-sales-increased-five-times-since-being-on-xbox-game-pass And let's not forget both Ori games (Blind Forest, Will of the Wisps). Heck, Manor Lords just released last week, and it already sold over 1 million in the first 24 hours. And yes, it's also on Game Pass. "Manor Lords shatters Steam city builder record with over 170,000 concurrent players - The early access survival city builder has already sold over 1 million copies." https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/manor-lords-shatters-steam-city-builder-record-with-over-170000-concurrent-players/ So being on Game Pass is no excuse, especially for less expensive games. The price difference between Game Pass and buying Hi-Fi Rush is not that much - its MSRP is only $30 USD. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4589 |
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"B-but numbers go up!" |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5963 |
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Maybe I might be misremembering but when Hi Fi Rush was first revealed didn’t some people knock it for essentially being an uninspired knock off of Jet Set Radio?
I also do find it funny people lamenting about the “alleged” death of Evil Within 3. Despite the habitual complaints of sequels among the gaming community annual or otherwise. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2224 |
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Gamepass has been a bust, just like every other streaming service. All it did was train people to not buy games, gutting a lot of studios' ability to make profit and with its growth stagnant MS is feeling it. And like every other company staffed with incompetent executives, they're taking it out on the actual workers instead of themselves. There was nothing forcing them to shut down Tango, they're the part of the division that didn't suck while a lot of other ones are stumbling around drooling while eating paste (LOOKING AT YOU, STARFIELD!). Plus they're goddamned MICROSOFT, they can eat losses in the billions for their games division for eternity. They will never be the good guy, they will never be the underdog in this. They have no clue what they're doing with their games division |
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psh_fun
 Posts: 44 |
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I'm not surprised at either of the studio closures. Redfall was so legendarily bad the devs even said it should have been shelved and written off rather than be actually released and I remember some people tried to hype Hi Fi Rush as the big thing that would destroy AAA games last year but obviously it didn't. I think people were trying to hype it up against Forspoken back in January 2023 but Forspoken was not exactly a high bar to clear since that game was bad too.
I have no opinion about Game Pass since I like to own my games and I don't have an Xbox so I play these games on PC when they come out. I assume it's like the PS+ or Switch Online where you can play games as long as you're subscribed and the minute you don't you can't play them anymore. For Switch it seems to mostly be DLC and older ROMs so it probably doesn't affect sales much but I can see how people would just "rent" a game and then beat it without buying it. Companies hated the rental industry back in the day too and purposely made games harder to discourage that. I wonder if games will adapt too. I wonder what will happen if Avowed comes out and isn't the Skyrim-killer like people tried to hypel The Outer Worlds up as being a Fallout-killer. I'm pretty sure they said already it's not going to be very Skyrim like anymore like they initially teased so people should not get their hopes too much up. If Avowed underperforms and Obsidian is next I can only imagine the outrage from angry fans who treat Obsidian as the anti-Bethesda. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2224 |
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Aaaaaand, it's confirmed MS is not finished with cuts:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/xbox-studio-closures-microsoft-plans-more-cost-cutting-measures-after-layoffs Highlights: -No explanation of why Arkane Austin was shut down -Tango was getting ready to pitch a Hi-Fi Rush 2. In fact, it seems the reason Tango was shut down was because a sequel would entail having to bring in new hires which is pretzel logic -Arkane wants to do another Dishonored -XBox president Matt Booty (I still can't believe that's his name) says how the studios were spread too thin The last point confirms a suspicion I've had all along and it's why these acquisitions were a bad thing even for MS: that it would be too much for MS to properly manage and lead to production issues. Lo and behold, it did. They were already having problems with their own titles even before the Zenimax and ActiBlizz acquisitions, so of course acquiring them would make things worse. It was never a fix for MS' production and studio problems, it was always a placebo at best. And the most aggravating thing is it's affecting the gaming industry at large. Absolutely infuriating. Last edited by AiddonValentine on Wed May 08, 2024 4:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 649 |
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Pretty much 100% of this post is absolutely nonsense, but I really wanted to highlight this part. You know, the part where companies literally helped out the rental industry by inflating the difficulty of games (especially arcade ports which were already meant to be quarter eaters) so that they would have to be rented multiple times and therefore encourage rental stores to buy copies of them. Your reality sounds fun to fantasize in though, but maybe shouldn't be near any serious discussion of the games industry and how it operates. |
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