The Decline of Studios Acquired by Microsoft in One Image
- Thread starter Bryank75
- Start date
When Bryan comes back and finds titties in his thread, hahaha
The thing about Microsoft is that the only studios and publishers that will sell to them are the ones that are already struggling.
Rare sold because they were getting squeezed by Nintendo and their games were flopping for a couple of years. Obsidian was struggling financially and had to resort to crowdfunding their games. Zenimax only sold to Microsoft because Fallout76 was such a failure and they were already struggling. Activision only sold because their stock price was taking a pummeling with the ABK strikes and huge negative press from the scandals.
Usually when these things are happening, all the top talent leave for more stable jobs or better work environments, because they are in high demand and can get in almost anywhere. So the companies are a shell of themselves. Then Microsoft has absolutely no clue how to hire and retain talent for making great video games, all they know how to do is to throw money at the problem. That's why this happens, and will continue to happen. I expect it to happen to ABK as well - well, Blizzard is already mostly dead, and it'll be fully dead after this. I expect the CoD studios to still be fine, but I think it's only a matter of time before that IP's relevance has run its course. Candy crush is going to be on its way out soon too. I don't expect Microsoft to recoup even a fraction of what they invested in getting this deal done.
Rare sold because they were getting squeezed by Nintendo and their games were flopping for a couple of years. Obsidian was struggling financially and had to resort to crowdfunding their games. Zenimax only sold to Microsoft because Fallout76 was such a failure and they were already struggling. Activision only sold because their stock price was taking a pummeling with the ABK strikes and huge negative press from the scandals.
Usually when these things are happening, all the top talent leave for more stable jobs or better work environments, because they are in high demand and can get in almost anywhere. So the companies are a shell of themselves. Then Microsoft has absolutely no clue how to hire and retain talent for making great video games, all they know how to do is to throw money at the problem. That's why this happens, and will continue to happen. I expect it to happen to ABK as well - well, Blizzard is already mostly dead, and it'll be fully dead after this. I expect the CoD studios to still be fine, but I think it's only a matter of time before that IP's relevance has run its course. Candy crush is going to be on its way out soon too. I don't expect Microsoft to recoup even a fraction of what they invested in getting this deal done.
Microsoft has yet to show, over 20 years, that they can retain and cultivate talent, IP, and a good company culture.
We all know the sad story of Rare. Bungie became the Halo studio to the point of wanting to leave and go indie. We all know about Microsoft’s internal studios.
Forza is the one (or two) exception(s), to be fair.
Phil, I literally lie about everything, Spencer wants us to give them a new chance in a new era, but hey, it’s not looking particularly good here either.
There’s an honest chance that all or most of these studios crash and burn under Microsoft. As someone else said, they have no idea but throwing money at things.
We all know the sad story of Rare. Bungie became the Halo studio to the point of wanting to leave and go indie. We all know about Microsoft’s internal studios.
Forza is the one (or two) exception(s), to be fair.
Phil, I literally lie about everything, Spencer wants us to give them a new chance in a new era, but hey, it’s not looking particularly good here either.
There’s an honest chance that all or most of these studios crash and burn under Microsoft. As someone else said, they have no idea but throwing money at things.
Another thing is delivering a product in a timely fashion. It amazes me that buyouts started three, four, five years ago and the first mainstream, exclusive product to be ready is last month’s Starfield.
I’m going to do them a flavor and not count Redfall.
I’m going to do them a flavor and not count Redfall.
A symptom of what Anonpuffs said above. If you're purchasing a studio that has wide ranging organisational failures, they don't immediately get fixed because you fund them, do marketing for free, etc. 343 is the best example of when Xbox is hands on with studios, they fail, let alone being hands off. 8 years since FO4 and Starfield is likely 2-3 years away from being complete (not good, complete) so clearly bad internal structure at BGS to have their game bloat out like that and only just scrape by at release. If it released on the original release date it would have scored 5s and 6s for sure.
I think because they have a monopoly on their big products, Windows and Office, Teams etc, that they cutting corners on those and their principle is IP and product brands. Their tactics of employing short-term contractors show this.
They fucking cut corners on everywhere in their own products. When they making phone OS, they didn't even bother to pay developers, they just think, eh, whatever, Windows big brand letsss go. Same for gaming.
That why they were and are getting beaten down by Apple and Sony on whatever other industry they tried to get into. Their motto is, either you own everything, or you own nothing.
What MS did to RARE should be considered a crime. Also, I completely forgot they own Obsidian.
I think ABK is a big get, but Activision is mostly a COD studio now and it's going to be interesting to see if Microsoft tries to get them to do other projects while developer start leaving the company.
King is huge for mobile.
Blizzard? They're not the same Blizzard from 10 years ago.
People are against sony making so many GaaS titles, but they need major multiplayer games that's going to bring in a lot of money that's going to have millions of active players on both PC and PS5 platform.
King is huge for mobile.
Blizzard? They're not the same Blizzard from 10 years ago.
People are against sony making so many GaaS titles, but they need major multiplayer games that's going to bring in a lot of money that's going to have millions of active players on both PC and PS5 platform.
This doesn't seem like a really honest image : it doesn't show the last game done before the acquisition for most studios, but simply one of the best reviewed of their past. And their output under Microsoft is also somewhat misrapresented, considering, for example, that Rare didn't develop Battletoads or that Quake Champions was actually in early access well before Ms's aquisition and even before Doom Eternal was published.
Let’s be honest, there’s more than one game in that graphic that had seriously padded reviews, so it’s more that the more recent reviews have been more accurate regarding the mediocrity of some games.
Funny how people kept saying Skyrim is one of the worst of Bethesda's titles. Beginning to think that Ps is one of the main reasons any of their games stayed up in the ratings.
OP
OP
I can't muster the strength to complain about titties!
If you have the capacity to complain about titties, let alone the inclination to complain about titties, I will lose ALL respect for you!
