8th May 2024, 4:03 PM
So it sounds like what happened is ZeniMax is still around as a branch of Microsoft, and they were told they had to reduce staff as a part of the ongoing problems the industry is currently having, with how dev costs are increasing, development times are getting even longer, and income isn't going up like it used to. ZeniMax decided to shut two studios that were not currently working on a game and would need a project and to hire new employees instead of cutting staff at studios working on something. So yeah, MS is the one that decided further cuts were required ut it sounds like it's ZeniMax who decided what to cut. ZeniMax may not have been the best purchase, their games have been iffy and management is the worst... but I know, I'm a Bethesda/ZeniMax hater, so I'm biased here. Heh.
With that said, there are strong rumors that MS is going to focus more on bigger games and less on smaller ones. Given that a lot of MS's recent smaller games are better than many of their recent larger ones I don't know about that decision... though they own Activision-Blizzard now, which is obviously part of the equasion -- it was an expensive purchase they want to start making back. ABK makes money, unlike Bethesda/ZeniMax, but still MS seems to think they need further cuts. I think what we're seeing is the ABK purchase is going to make MS money long term, but short term they're cutting elsewhere to make up for the cost, which is understandable but short-sighted.
Of course, part of the story here is that things are kind of bad for high-end gaming now due to the aforementioned problem of costs going up while income doesn't. We've seen lots of layoffs across the industry within the past year, and that sadly is probably likely to continue, it seems. Microsoft's problems are also about Game Pass, though. They pushed hard for Game Pass, but Game Pass subscriptions have stagnated. Also, Game Pass probably is hurting sales of some games, like Hi-Fi Rush. I don't subscribe to Game Pass and never have since it doesn't interest me, but besides that MS wants people to both subscribe to Game Pass AND to buy games, but if you can finish a mostly single player game in GP why then also buy it? So people don't. Microsoft isn't a uniquely bad company, I like their products and they still own a lot of amazing developers. It's too bad they are having problems, but closing potentially good studios probably won't help that.
Overall though, I think the main takeaway here is that Nintendo's strategy is so much better than anybody elses'... because while the rest of the industry consolidates, buys studios then closes some of them, and such, Nintendo keeps showing the better way. But their way probably makes less money, so the big companies aren't going to try it. Capitalism has a lot of good to it, it allows people to take chances and gets us things that would never have been tried otherwise, but we're definitely seeing two things here: first that there has been too much industry consolidation, and second that the length of dev time and increasing cost of development may be unsustainable unless new audiences for AAA videogames can be found somewhere. You can't keep having costs go up while income stagnates... I don't know what the solution industry-wide is any more than anyone else does.
With that said, there are strong rumors that MS is going to focus more on bigger games and less on smaller ones. Given that a lot of MS's recent smaller games are better than many of their recent larger ones I don't know about that decision... though they own Activision-Blizzard now, which is obviously part of the equasion -- it was an expensive purchase they want to start making back. ABK makes money, unlike Bethesda/ZeniMax, but still MS seems to think they need further cuts. I think what we're seeing is the ABK purchase is going to make MS money long term, but short term they're cutting elsewhere to make up for the cost, which is understandable but short-sighted.
Of course, part of the story here is that things are kind of bad for high-end gaming now due to the aforementioned problem of costs going up while income doesn't. We've seen lots of layoffs across the industry within the past year, and that sadly is probably likely to continue, it seems. Microsoft's problems are also about Game Pass, though. They pushed hard for Game Pass, but Game Pass subscriptions have stagnated. Also, Game Pass probably is hurting sales of some games, like Hi-Fi Rush. I don't subscribe to Game Pass and never have since it doesn't interest me, but besides that MS wants people to both subscribe to Game Pass AND to buy games, but if you can finish a mostly single player game in GP why then also buy it? So people don't. Microsoft isn't a uniquely bad company, I like their products and they still own a lot of amazing developers. It's too bad they are having problems, but closing potentially good studios probably won't help that.
Overall though, I think the main takeaway here is that Nintendo's strategy is so much better than anybody elses'... because while the rest of the industry consolidates, buys studios then closes some of them, and such, Nintendo keeps showing the better way. But their way probably makes less money, so the big companies aren't going to try it. Capitalism has a lot of good to it, it allows people to take chances and gets us things that would never have been tried otherwise, but we're definitely seeing two things here: first that there has been too much industry consolidation, and second that the length of dev time and increasing cost of development may be unsustainable unless new audiences for AAA videogames can be found somewhere. You can't keep having costs go up while income stagnates... I don't know what the solution industry-wide is any more than anyone else does.
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